101–110 of 203 posts
from Nicholas Carr's The Shallows.
My local library got a copy right after the review of it was posted on HN. It makes a really good case against too much browsing web pages or other hypertext.
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> It is only true if someones self is defined by the culture of turning the other cheek. Not true. You evidently didn't understand the essay, which makes it clear that the advantage of turning the other cheek is it frees your mind to think about productive things rather than unproductive ones.
> the advantage of turning the other cheek is it frees your mind to think about productive things rather than unproductive ones. Your definition of "productive" has the same bias. Turning the other cheek is by origin an alternative to an eye-for-an-eye. For a mind that can only be freed with an eye-for-an-eye settlement, turning the other cheek won't do it. But an eye-for-an-eye approach can be productive: And Samson…
The metaphor I had for this is background process, stressing my suspicion that they hog precious mind resources even when you're not consciously pondering them.
I suspect that one of the major reasons why big companies are incapable of innovating is that the top idea on most employees minds' is "What is my boss thinking about me?" Followed closely by "What are my coworkers thinking about me?" Social approval is a powerful motivator, particularly when that social approval is essential for your continued livelihood. Only the most self-confident (or delusional ;-)) people can c…
As far as Google goes, I don't think the hands-off culture can totally eliminate distractions from turf or budget. I have read that there are steps that must be taken to get a project going beyond a certain stage. And the distractions seem to be related to human nature. Perhaps they have streamlined these distractions to the minimum needed. I'd sure like to know how, and I if was king of my company I'd institute them.
I realized the ability of my unconscious mind to solve hard problems some time around high school. I made good use of it in college, especially in courses involving coming up with algorithms or proofs. I could rarely come up with a good solution consciously, but if I spent 30 minutes thinking about the problem right before bed, the next morning optimal answers would come easily. I also formed a habit of driving at le…
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Actually there was a paragraph about this in the essay that I cut: The Nile Perch quality of disputes may help explain why large organizations are so unproductive. The size of large organizations insulates them from the forces that keep smaller ones in line. Questions tend to be decided instead by political battles, and such disputes have a terrible cost because they push other ideas out of all the participants' head…
What a great time for me to read this essay and in particular this part you left out. My small team operates as a startup inside of a large company. We have produced more software at a faster pace than any other group in the company. We had a conf call today with the powers that be who have decided they want more process. Why would they do this? Well, while other groups are sitting around talking about resource this…
I worked on a system that we had deployed and that was working. A competing group, highly process oriented, who were was still generating requirements paperwork, but not a single line of code. Their objective was to take over our project. They played mean politics. Eventually they took charge.
A very closely related idea is that most people have a "ground state": an activity that they naturally gravitate toward when nothing else intervenes. For many people, their ground state is shopping, or talking with friends, or watching tv. Nothing wrong with any of these. For some people, their ground state is aimless coding, or writing, or drifting around some community (e.g., the community of actors, or musicians,…
These days, the ground state of most people is aimless browsing, Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately,I am becoming most people and that has to stop now.
Let me give you some anecdotal background story...
I realized this was happening to me a few months ago - that I was wasting more and more time just surfing Facebook or Twitter and so forth. So I started adding websites to my /etc/hosts file. (That is, my computer now blocks me from accessing these websites, unless I edit a file, and then restart).
It started with Reddit - one day I read an article on Reddit that said something along the lines of "How many of you are intelligent, but waste a ton of time on the Internet?". It struck me that I was one of those people - that my potential was dwindling away because I was wasting tons of time on Reddit rather than getting interesting things done.
I blocked Reddit a bit later, figuring I might unblock it given time, but I never have. After the first day or two, the instinct to open up a Reddit tab just died. I still feel an attachment to the community, and I feel kind of bad that I left, but I don't feel that I was addicted like people get addicted to drugs or so forth.
Later on, I blocked some other sites that I frequent, including Facebook. I even blocked HN for a while, but I realized that I wasn't wasting nearly as much time on here as the other sites, for some reason. Perhaps it's because the rate of change of articles is small. Plus, HN has noprocrast settings, which are great. Anyway, I digress. Sure, there are disadvantages, but the advantages, and the savings in time, are huge. I know a lot of people say they don't want to leave FB because they'll lose contact with people. 2 responses: One, my last FB status says to contact me on gmail - so if anyone really wants to get in touch with me, they know how. Two, it's only blocked on my computer, so if I really want to take the effort, I can hike over to a library computer or something and respond to people.
Now, the point to this comment is to convince you that you have to block these websites too.
There are two things that I would want to tell myself in order convince myself that I needed to go through with it.
1. The reason I didn't want to do it - and didn't do it, for a long time - is because I always thought that I should just have enough will power to stop doing it. If you believe this, remind yourself that even though you believe this to be true, you keep coming back to Facebook every few hours or days. Why is that? It's because even if you have enough willpower 90% or 98% of the time, that small fraction when you don't is enough to open a tab to FB, but once you open a tab, you could end up wasting an hour.
2. You become more aware of how you spend your time, and you become more productive, after you stop wasting it. I used to dump hours into just surfing the web. Now I'm quite sensitive to how much time I spend, which is advantageous. Plus, most of the sites that I visit (like HN) require constant focus, so you can't really get into that vaguely unfocused mindset that allows you to waste tons of time on things like Facebook.
In short - you said that it had to stop now. I challenge you to follow up on it :) Blocking FB, etc, was an awesome choice on my part. I think it will be for you as well.
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In my experience, yes. I shifted my ground-state from 90% video games to 33% video games + 66% coding. It's helped a lot, but I would like to push it further.
All work and no play..
As long as you don't believe that coding is work, you can do so much of it. Just find a project or a problem that you really enjoy working on and hack on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the advantage of turning the other cheek is it frees your mind to think about productive things rather than unproductive ones. Your definition of "productive" has the same bias. Turning the other cheek is by origin an alternative to an eye-for-an-eye. For a mind that can only be freed with an eye-for-an-eye settlement, turning the other cheek won't do it. But an eye-for-an-eye approach can be productive: And Samson…
Killing yourself and a bunch of other people and destroying a large house? That is productive... how, exactly?
(if you've been taught to turn the other cheek you will not see why, but if you've been taught another way, you will. This is cultural and fundamental)