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Ask HN: Staying Sharp

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Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#21

Post by sb »

apu wrote: post #11
californiaguy wrote: post #8

Set lofty goals. Attain them. Repeat. Right now you're living a mediocre life. You live in an apartment, you program web sites and haven't finished college. What's so special about that? Why do you need to be incredibly sharp for that? You don't. Do something you need to be sharp to do and you will become sharp. My best advice for you is to not worry about this shit until you're 25 and have a normal young adulthood i…

Wow this is some bad advice. And with an arrogant/demeaning attitude to match.

i don't know if you know, but there is a great quote concerning at least a partial aspect of the argument:

The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. --michelangelo

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#22

Post by jperras »

californiaguy wrote: post #8

Set lofty goals. Attain them. Repeat. Right now you're living a mediocre life. You live in an apartment, you program web sites and haven't finished college. What's so special about that? Why do you need to be incredibly sharp for that? You don't. Do something you need to be sharp to do and you will become sharp. My best advice for you is to not worry about this shit until you're 25 and have a normal young adulthood i…

I never purported that my life was special - I only stated facts relevant to the discussion that I was attempting to create.

Believe it or not, I am acutely aware of the fact that I lead a mediocre (albeit enjoyable) life, and I'm trying to prevent myself from falling into a rut of ignorant bliss.

However, I'd rather try and do that in a way that doesn't require me to drop the girlfriend, ditch friendships that have lasted for over 15 years and quit my job.

Maybe I am too young (23) to even care about this right now. Maybe not. That's part of what I'm trying to figure out.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#23

Post by ams6110 »

apu wrote: post #11
californiaguy wrote: post #8

Set lofty goals. Attain them. Repeat. Right now you're living a mediocre life. You live in an apartment, you program web sites and haven't finished college. What's so special about that? Why do you need to be incredibly sharp for that? You don't. Do something you need to be sharp to do and you will become sharp. My best advice for you is to not worry about this shit until you're 25 and have a normal young adulthood i…

Wow this is some bad advice. And with an arrogant/demeaning attitude to match.

Not really. A slap in the face is sometimes a good thing. It's very easy to get comfortable when you have a job and a decent apartment and a girlfriend -- enough of a life that you're no longer as "hungry" for more. You can coast like this for 5 - 10 years pretty easily then suddenly realize you've let a lot of time go by.

Better to go for the goals now, before you have a mortgage and marriage and kids and other responsibilities which while not bad things, definitely complicate decisions about what to do with your life.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#24

Post by rw »

What do you think about reading academic papers and posting distilled versions to a blog?

How about doing a reading course with a professor-friend of yours?

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#25

Post by jey »

If you're coding for your job, why go home and code more on open source stuff? If you miss the discovery and excitement of learning science, you should consider putting the OSS time toward reading papers and working on problems.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#26

Post by spaghetti »

I keep my mind sharp by doing a variety of things. For example daily participation in programming contests/on-line judges (topcoder.com, spoj.pj etc) is a great mental exercise. Importantly I do this only when I feel like it... so daily for 2 months then take 5-6 months off is common. Also physical activity is a great compliment to rigorous mental activity. Lastly I take time off to just relax. These breaks range from 10 minute breaks throughout the day to month long breaks where I don't work at all (because long term mental clarity and growth is far more important than short term monetary gain... in most cases... some startups that are about to go IPO would be a counter example). Sounds like you're doing a lot of things (open-source, girlfriend etc)... try doing nothing or just walking... this could greatly improve one's mental clarity.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#27

Post by sid »

justlearning wrote: post #7
lsb wrote: post #3

Sit in on some classes at a nearby university? Watch Feynman's lectures again?

"Sit in on some classes at a nearby university?" I assume you mean without paying for the course? how does one go about doing this? I sometimes have the strong urge to sit in a class - to feel like a student. I never knew you could just go and sit in a class? I also read similar HN suggestion on a post some time back. I want to try this out fwiw.

Its actually quite easy. As long as you know the timetable there is no guard at the door to make sure your paying. So if you stroll up, grab a seat on one of the lecture theater benches and just listen no one is going to kick you out.

Im pretty sure you could even go to tute classes because they just call out the roll to make sure that your there .

Some classes do roll just to make sure you dont truent more then X amount of times otherwise they may dock you 3% of your marks but your lecturers hardly remember everyones face to know you dont belong.

I would love to actually go back and do this too but i need to work. Hence i agree with one of the posters earlier that suggested to try to accumulate enough wealth to be able to spend your time learning things that you like.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#28

Post by jperras »

rw wrote: post #24

What do you think about reading academic papers and posting distilled versions to a blog? How about doing a reading course with a professor-friend of yours?

I never considered either of those, actually.

I think reading & interpreting results from academic papers and posting 'distilled' versions to a blog would actually be pretty good, especially since I'd (hopefully) get some constructive criticism out of it as well.

Re: Ask HN: Staying Sharp

#29

Post by gruseom »

sb wrote: post #21
apu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is some bad advice. And with an arrogant/demeaning attitude to match.

i don't know if you know, but there is a great quote concerning at least a partial aspect of the argument: The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. --michelangelo

I have a pet interest in cuckoo quotes: lines that sound good that get falsely attributed to a famous person. (For example, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678282)

As an experiment, I'm going to say that this sounds like one of those to me. It feels too much like a modern species, not something from the Renaissance. Now I'm going to go check and report back. :)

Edit: here's what I found. Wikiquote lists it as "unsourced". Google Books shows the phrase as appearing in a few dozen recent inspirational and self-help books (Marry Your Baby Daddy, anyone?), but no scholarly or historical ones (http://books.google.com/books?q=%22greater+danger+for+most+o...). Google web search comes up only with reams of those awful junky quotation sites. It's possible that the wording is a modern translation of an authentic quote, but in general, if 5-10 minutes of Googling doesn't come up with an original source for a famous quote by a famous genius, the odds are against it.

It's still a great line.

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