161–170 of 224 posts
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just replying to this to bookmark for myself to read later. sry
Hacker News is not a bookmarking service, here are some I know of: * https://delicious.com/ - Discover, share, and organize the hottest links online * http://pinboard.in/ - Pinboard: social bookmarking for introverts * http://www.xmarks.com/ - Xmarks | Bookmark Sync and Search edit: links and descriptions edit2: Anyone care to explain the downvotes?
At any one time I'd have a dozen projects all being worked on, none of them ever being finished. As I got older I made a rule never to start a new project until the old project is finished. As I've switched, I've noticed the motivations have changed. The last 20% of any project is un-fun work. All the excitement is gone and all that is left is tedium. This is when your eyes start wandering to other projects. It's add…
One of the things to do is to minimize the number of choices you have. Then try and reduce your distractions e.g. tidy up your work area, go minimalist.
One of the best ways to avoid procrastination is to use the Pomodoro technique http://pomodorotechnique.com/ This is one of the recommendations from Coursera's Learning how to Learn course: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003
Finally you can try and develop a habit to Do One Thing: https://emson.co.uk/2015/01/do-one-thing/ (sorry self plugged post).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And to help yourself remember to do your pomodoros, you can use a tool like Beeminder[0], which can track and show you your progress towards your goal as well as act as a commitment device[1] to keep you working on goals over time. [0] https://www.beeminder.com/ [1] http://blog.beeminder.com/akrasia/
But how will I remember to use Beeminder?
● Committing to one means you have to let go of committing to others. So you fear commitment to one.
● As soon as you find "the one" you become afraid that you'll find another "better one" that will make you happier. So you fear commitment to one.
● If you're attractive/talented you've got a line of [women/ideas] out the door and around the building wanting to be with you. So you fear commitment to one.
● If something goes wrong with a relationship/idea you can abandon it and run off with another instead of fixing and mending the original. So you let go of commitment to one.
● I've noticed that men/women who are [attractive, desired, popular] live a "player" lifestyle and don't settle down because they don't have to. There are too many options. Then a decade later when they lose muscle, gain weight, lose hair, their options in mates are more limited and they finally settle down.
TLDR: Maybe you're too young, too free, and have too many options, and not ready to settle down to one idea and should instead spend your time exploring and finding out what you're not good at. That way you can limit your options. Sounds strange but it worked for me. Now I have a profitable business and next year I may be able to live off of it entirely.
I've been in a similar limbo for the past few years. I was going to a university for computer engineering, but I fizzled out due to compromised discipline (excessive pot use). I liked the way it was described in a previous thread ("makes me excited about the world") because I wouldn't necessarily veg out - my thoughts would go all over the place with the possibilities.
I still get excited about the world and the advancement of our species, but in order to tie all my thoughts together I try and commit them to memory with all things considered. Here's an example:
Electrical engineering involves pathways of distributed current, increasing and decreasing voltage for certain applications, and components that perform work or output corresponding data. I'm about to get a job with the Department of Transportation. Do you see how I can relate these two subjects?
Traffic density = voltage. A traffic jam = increased resistance and effects the flow of the economy. This flow powers components, factories, retail stores, consumers that spend their chemical energy (digested food) to acquire more chemical energy (fresh food).
I'm sure I could tie all that in with the ever increasing toolbox for web development and computing, but you get the idea. Maybe this school of thought is terribly inefficient because one couldn't possibly register the intricacies of each idea. But I'm sure the brain in some way naturally does this anyway. I've read thats what they're trying to achieve with DeepMind (or any other deep learning venture), teaching AI one thing and it learns similar fields on its own.
This entire comment may digress terribly - ADD is natures response to the Information Age.
1) Discipline (e.g. dedicate 1 hour daily towards a single project until you finish it)
2) Leverage. Think about which thing / project will provide you with the most leverage in the long run. (e.g. doing ML course will allow you to achieve so much more with new gained skills than (likely) learning discrete mathematics.)
I personally chose to start a business which allows me to have significantly higher learning rate than otherwise would be possible, which compounds over time to significantly more leverage in long term. Do mind, now I am sacrificing my living standards compared to same-age peers (working in big companies), but life is a marathon, not a sprint :)
"Zen mind, beginner's mind" is a small, wonderful book on the basics of zazen -- the art of sitting quietly, without thoughts.
Getting started is easy: take easy, natural breaths, counting them until you get to ten. As thoughts enter your mind, acknowledge them and return focus to your breathing.