This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things.
"Have less exposure towards super fun things". "Get bored". These describe the same general concept as dopamine fasting. The third bullet point can be reduced to "focus on what you have to do, until you can focus on it" which is circular.
I'm not buying in. Maybe I'm getting old but "failure to start" is starting to sound like a meme to me perpetuated by vultures trying to exploit creative personalities, hackers included.
I think what we need to do, is to step back and appreciate ourselves for the effort we continually expect from ourselves. As hackers in one way or another, we are constantly putting up our ego as collateral in order to take on challenges that threaten to knock us down a peg or two if we fail. For many of us, failure is a threat to the core of our identity, yet we dive on in anyway. Exhaustion from that sort of loop is to be expected.
Most people don't live like this. Most people reduce the flux in their lives instead of seeking to increase it. Why? Because most people cherish their egos to the point where they cannot commit to a goal with an uncertain outcome. They would rather work a 9-5, which is fine, but it doesn't describe our community. We are addicted to risk if it means building something new and that we can call our own.
I agree with your points on appreciating yourself and better sleep.
As for this seeming like cheap advice, keep in mind that A) many people have not heard it yet, and B) sometimes a new twist on an older concept drives the point home.
And you don't have to buy anything. Most of the stuff we create is free on our blog or Twitter. We're not "vultures," we're 2 guys helping people to stop scrolling and go do stuff, driven by our own past struggles. Fin.
The article was what I needed to read, when I needed to read it, as it is something I am actively struggling with. And some of the advice, while I have heard it before, was framed differently enough that it allowed me to "get it" this time around.
Thanks!
Where do you think depression fits into this model? I have depression and take antidepressants, but I still experience an undercurrent of inescapable ennui that appears to be resistant to even the most interesting, well-defined and meaningful work.
IMO depression is something that only resolves with endurance and time. Luckily there will be people in your life that will find you or that you may find by chance that will help you with this. All this happens on its own time though, it sounds a bit religious but one needs to have faith. I am not a doctor but I wouldn't recommend anti depressants to anyone really as it numbs you and takes away your ability to think which means that it doesn't really solve depression. On the other hand if you're going to kill yourself then anti depressants may help you but always bear in mind that they should be temporary and that you should try and get off them if you can.
YMMV but it's generally possible to improve that sensation over time by conscious appreciation and a return to less information-intensive activities.
Generally philosophical visions of the world are a product of emotions and neurological and physical conditions that are sometimes as mundane as bad digestion.
Speaking of compassion for yourself, I also often feel lonely and depressed. Somebody once suggested that I read "Radical Acceptance", a book by Tara Brach. I've only managed to read part of it before putting it down. I couldn't really agree with some of the arguments in the book (e.g. people in the West having more self-acceptance problems due to biblical story of the original sin). YMMV.
ennui
ennui /ɒnˈwiː /
▸ noun [mass noun] a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement:
he succumbed to ennui and despair.
– ORIGIN mid 18th century: French , from Latin in odio(n-), from mihi in odio est ‘it is hateful to me’. Compare with annoy.
>This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things.
Funny but I thought the exact opposite. People believe something much more easily when they want it to be true, so the typical sales approach is to tell people what they want to hear. Ridding your life of whatever seems most fun doesn't seem like cheap advice in that regard.
On the other hand, I think you're spot on with creative types too often getting exploited, and the involvement of ego being such a key factor in why/how we hackers get burned out.
There’s a second Christian-esque type of self help which states, “you are a broken and pitiful person, your fundamental nature is flawed. Take these steps to salvation.” Jordan Peterson is like this with all his requests to empathize with gulag prison guards and the like.
I think people don’t just like hearing what is good or easy. Sometimes we want to have an incredible cross to bear. It’s the mentality that causes people to commit to overbearing self-regulation, like using pomodoro for the entire day or going on an impossible diet. Self-transformation sells just as much from the mouth of the stern father as it does from the caring mother.
Hmm, I don't quite agree with that characterization of Jordan Peterson. I believe his main point when talking of these prison-guard horror stories is to "embrace your shadow", as in: Realize that you might not be as far away from being dangerous as you would think, if you just thought of yourself as a good person. Considering the numerous crimes against humanity that have been carried out by people as soon as the "veil of civilization" showed a few cracks in the past, I don't think it's an unreasonable aspect of human nature to remind people of.
I believe the concept of the shadow stems from Jung's work, and I admittedly don't know precisely in which context Jung applied it. But ostensibly, being mindful of the dangerous paths one can be lead down if you don't take care to stay in balance seems like a reasonable thing to teach people, without it instantly degenerating into a "you are a sinner and need to atone"-routine (as you seem to see it).
Totally agree. I thought this closing statement on this recent BBC article [1] hit the point home:
"Sometimes the women are portrayed as exploited victims. At other times as sadistic monsters.
The truth is more horrifying. They were not extraordinary monsters, but rather ordinary women, who ended up doing monstrous things."
I think we have enough data-points by now to know that any large group, regardless of race, gender, country, sexuality, etc., has a much larger percentage of people capable of doing horrific things that we would like to believe.
>your fundamental nature is flawed. Take these steps to salvation.
When a cheap sales pitch uses the "you're flawed" format, it's usually telling people "we are all flawed, but here's how you can be morally superior to your peers" or "do this thing and you'll receive a divine reward/achieve enlightenment." The promised reward or feeling of superiority is what makes people want to hear the message.
It's cheap to tell an aging church congregation about the dangers of video games and internet pornography, because it let's people pat themselves on the back without making a sacrifice. It's a little harder to tell an audience of young professionals that they need to limit high dopamine activities to find low dopamine activities appealing, and given that it's a real call to action based on a reasonable, falsifiable claim, I don't think it's cheap advice.
I don’t think it’s cheap advice. He may have spent a lot of time writing it.
The only thing I read that was humorous and slightly wrong was the interesting take on meditation: getting bored more often.
I enjoy quiet, so I’d be a “zen master” according to the post, at least for some minutes each day. But those who know me would not confuse me with a zen master.
The advice may sound formulaic, but that's because there are only so many ways you can talk about productivity and procrastination. The fundamental issues being addressed are always the same: distractions, instant gratification, poor discipline, lack of measurable goals etc.
Not everyone procrastinates for the same reasons. I wish I could do more, but after reading that article I'm fairly sure I'm just exhausted, not procrastinating.
> As hackers in one way or another, we are constantly putting up our ego as collateral in order to take on challenges that threaten to knock us down a peg or two if we fail. For many of us, failure is a threat to the core of our identity, yet we dive on in anyway. Exhaustion from that sort of loop is to be expected.
I've never really heard this feeling described this way, but it totally resonates with me. What a beautiful way to put it. Thanks.
Failure? I think failure is the inability to do what we wanted to do in the first place. A lot of failure is from the inability to finish a project due to lack of motivations, not because it's impossible.
Many of these goals are quite beneficial, like working out everyday.
I agree 100%. I didn't read your comment before I wrote mine because I had this page open for a few days and for some reason just wanted to post, but it's nice to see!! I agree especially with the last point and the mention of the ego.
From your own description, it sounds as though the self-perception as a creative and continual risk-taker different from the nine to fivers is where the ego maintenance lies, so it might not actually be put in danger by failure.
re sleep: is it common for sleep schedules to "drift"? I'll sleep at 11pm on one night naturally and wake up refreshed at 7am in the morning the next day, but I won't naturally go to sleep until 12am that night. This leads to a 8am wake up time the next day. You can see how this will quickly lead to an bad sleeping pattern.
is it possible to fix this with a few weeks of consistently sleeping at the same time somehow? will I eventually sleep at the same time naturally? or will this take months of "forcing" myself to sleep (as ridiculous as that sounds)?
If you solve this problem, would you share the details? I've been dealing with this for my entire adult life. When I can convince my body to actually sleep when the sun goes down, the day that follows is typically one of my most productive, but I also only seem to get one of those per week or so.
I can work around this by moderating the length of my sleep, ie, allowing myself to go for at least 7.5 hours no matter when I fall, but sometimes IRL obligations get in the way. For most folks working more strict office hours (or god, retail) this is not a workable suggestion. Even then, eventually I'll drift too far, one of the sleep cycles gets shorted, then there's this weird recovery period with some short naps, and surprise now we're waking up at dawn again.
I'll bite and say I think it can be pretty personal. I struggled with insomnia-like symptoms for a while (eg, I simply was not tired and could not fall asleep) until I began to experiment with a couple of things. For me the most important where
- waking up at a consistent hour, every day, even the weekends
- no caffeine after noon, ideally not after 11, but I like coffee (individual tolerance will vary, I'm apparently on the sensitive side)
- make sure you're comfortable at night. It's baffling that I didn't realize this sooner, but the trick to falling asleep for me is to just get comfortable enough that I don't really want to move. When you hit that point where you're so comfortable and don't feel the need to move, then drifting off is easy.
- have a planning method to make sure you are organized and offload any thoughts about what needs to happen. I read Getting Things Done and implemented some of the stuff there and that helped a lot in freeing up my mind from worrying
- remind yourself, routinely, that whatever you are doing, you'll be able to do it better in the morning
> I can work around this by moderating the length of my sleep, ie, allowing myself to go for at least 7.5 hours no matter when I fall, but sometimes IRL obligations get in the way. For most folks working more strict office hours (or god, retail) this is not a workable suggestion. Even then, eventually I'll drift too far, one of the sleep cycles gets shorted, then there's this weird recovery period with some short naps, and surprise now we're waking up at dawn again.
That is pretty much where I was. I'd go to sleep at varying hours from 10PM to 5AM, always somehow later each night. Sometimes it would take me very long to fall asleep (ie 2 hrs +) unless I felt very tired. Looking back, it is like I needed to be truly exhausted -- not just sleepy, but exhausted -- to fall asleep and that pushed back my sleep schedule every night a little bit.
It wasn't until I got brutal headaches and brain fog everyday that I made it my top priority and began to take an inventory of everything that got in my way. I still go to bed late (between midnight and 1) though, in part because it lets me do regular social things and still, usually, go to bed on time.
It is called Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder [1], and is very common in blind people. I have it (though not blind). The Wikipedia article suggests some treatments. It's impossible to fix in my experience by forcing myself into a consistent cycle; I'll just grow more and more tired over time until I simply fail to wake to alarm.
I solved this by exercising, it normalised my sleeping patterns drastically compared to what I had in my student days. Now I am 'ready' at 12, and consistently wake up at 8-8:30 in the mornings.
Okay, that Wikipedia page reads like a personal biography lol. I probably have this in some mild form. The drift is usually about 20-30 mins for me (I used an hour as an example in my original comment), so it's mostly manageable by shortening my duration of sleep by an hour once or twice a week, but I should get this fixed.
It seems common enough and from what I have read, it is just something a certain number of people have innately. And it doesn't fit well with an 8-5 workday unfortunately.
The only way I have found to moderate it at all is using a moderate stimulant in the morning (pseudoephidrine) and a moderate sleep aid (allergy pill, diphenhydramine) at night, plus being very disciplined (no caffeine after noon, go to bed at a certain time with no video screens/close my book).
> You built a formula 1 race car and tossed the keys to kids with ego problems.
I laughed. Curl: The Formula 1 race car of command line tools!
Aside from that, I am surprised that the harasser followed up in a mostly non-violent way. I expected an absolute troll. Sadly in fact it seems the harasser is in need of psychiatric attention.
Shouldn't it be "had he looked."? Also the second rendition makes doesn't include what the rest of the joggers are doing, yet the first one does. Not sure if intentional.
At first I gasped at your practice, because I never do that, but I see the point now. Mastery of language.
Yes, I had a typo. I was editing in place, and then decided that I had made some poor choices and needed to start over. I didn't bother to fix the typo.
Yes, there is a shift in point of view between the two versions. But the story is mostly written in third-person limited, and so my first version deviated from that.
But I rewrite everything every time I read it, so who knows what will happen tomorrow.
I used to use pass. I must be too dense to understand how to properly backup pgp encypted files, because I had to reset all my passwords when I couldn't decrypt my backup.
They're just files. You back them up like any other. Do be sure you backup your private key though, if you lose that you've lost everything. Sounds like that is what happened to you.
Yep, it's pretty painful to have to use a separate app just to manage the PGP key. I've also found it very difficult to sync with git over SSH with a key instead of a password.
pass is great. I use the dmenu script to get passwords into my clipboard without leaving the keyboard or being locked into browsers with a supported extension.
As others have mentioned, the Android app has slight issues, but they're not dealbreakers for me.
There's some interesting pass plugins, e.g. pass-otp. You can get 2FA passcodes from the commandline rather than being locked into Google's Authenticator.
//They showed an actual chip last time[1] but it seemed to me that it couldn't possibly house the logic necessary for data exfiltration. It looked like some sort of voltage conditioner. I am not an electrical engineer though.
This is shortsighted. The reason deep knowledge is more valuable is that learning anything stops being fun, and therefore presents less of a biological pull, after the first few milestones. There's a logarithmic decay in reward to effort put in. So naturally you're going to want engineers that have put in the hard work to build their knowledge, rather than the posers who read about engineering but never actually got into the nitty gritty. Why? Because it becomes rare, and scarcity drives up value. Simple!
EXAMPLE: Why would I care if my plumber also moonlights as a surgeon if all I care about is getting my faucet fixed without him passing the buck due to perceived complexity?
Those things are great in a dinner party setting, but in the professional workplace you want professionals not dabblers. Whenever I meet a self styled "generalist" nowadays I scoff. It's not hard to read HN daily and pick up on the lingo and memes and fake your way to 99% of a "generalist" in both knowledge and impression, but that doesn't make one a good engineer.
I think your premise is flawed. Generalists are not "dabblers". They are professionals just as much as specialists are. Either you have a very odd (and incorrect) view of how software development is done, or you're presenting a straw man that doesn't have anything to do with the article's premise.
I find most specialists useless when it comes to architecting and building a full system, and often when they are a part of a team, focused on their specialty, they build in a way that is difficult to fit into the whole.
Obviously there are good things, too: my knowledge of things like data science and graphics is limited; if a part of a project called for deep knowledge in those areas, I'd be happy to have a specialist on the team. But unless they are more of the "T-shaped" type the article talks about, they need a lot of hand-holding when it comes to anything outside their domain.
Generalists bridge that gap, and handle necessary concerns that most specialists don't even consider, let alone know how to handle.
(Full disclosure: I consider myself a generalist, though at times I have ended up diving deep into particular areas when projects have required it.)
You’re not arguing against a generalist (varying depth over a handful or many areas), you’re describing, sure, let’s call it a poser or dabbler (little to no depth in any area).
"Have less exposure towards super fun things". "Get bored". These describe the same general concept as dopamine fasting. The third bullet point can be reduced to "focus on what you have to do, until you can focus on it" which is circular.
I'm not buying in. Maybe I'm getting old but "failure to start" is starting to sound like a meme to me perpetuated by vultures trying to exploit creative personalities, hackers included.
I think what we need to do, is to step back and appreciate ourselves for the effort we continually expect from ourselves. As hackers in one way or another, we are constantly putting up our ego as collateral in order to take on challenges that threaten to knock us down a peg or two if we fail. For many of us, failure is a threat to the core of our identity, yet we dive on in anyway. Exhaustion from that sort of loop is to be expected.
Most people don't live like this. Most people reduce the flux in their lives instead of seeking to increase it. Why? Because most people cherish their egos to the point where they cannot commit to a goal with an uncertain outcome. They would rather work a 9-5, which is fine, but it doesn't describe our community. We are addicted to risk if it means building something new and that we can call our own.
So appreciate yourselves more.
And get better sleep.