plumsempy

> Slow down to go faster yes! I had a similar problem with bigger projects. I used to start coding too early before understanding the problem completely.

I have decided to write an essay since, about everything I am about to do. This slows me down and makes me look at every detail that might be crucial in the project execution.

These docs then become some sort of a data lake about the process of building this project, from which later I can derive documentation or slides for presentations from or send people there when they ask me why I did something the way I did.

On a meta level, order alone and no chaos means no order at all. You need some chaos to compare order against.

More particularly, let's continue your thought experiment. There is sexual desire in men still right? so they made sex robots. Let's assume all sex robots are equally good. In other words all are mediocre. Then one person adds a feature to this robot to make it exponentially better. Now billions of men on this planet line up to have sex with this new robot. Then those at the back of the line will start getting angry and call it unfair. And truly, it is unfair. This is chaos again.

So see what happened, one person added more order and it immediately caused more chaos. And they seem to be a natural byproduct of life: to live means to strive for the better and that means exercising your will and that means exacting some order here and spreading some chaos there. Also, you cannot create chaos without order, because the act of willing something is of order, even if that will is chaos.

I do feel obliged to tell you about something nuanced here. It is true that chaos is feminine, but this doesn't mean women are chaotic. Women are humans just like men, they "have" femininity, which is, on average, higher than men. Meaning they are more emotionally flexible, they are more forgiving, it is the mother who will forgive your transgressions. While masculinity is more rigid, less forgiving, it is the father that will punish you. These are all averages. As Jung says, averages take the sample and strip off everything unique about the individuals and present something that does NOT exist. So I am sure masculinity and femininity are variable in both men and women.

If you want to explore your idea more you can journal about it; write a make believe journal entry every night of your day in this planet. But also analyze the effects of your actions there carefully.

In summary, you cannot get rid of chaos without annihilating life itself and feminine does not mean women.

Don't.

Piracy has its awesome use-cases if not abused.

I grew up in Iran where we have access to very little. Had it not been for piratebay, I could not educate myself on so, so many topics. Even Udacity was blocked there cause their videos are hosted on Youtube!

So if someone reads HN and they need to pirate it, I'm pretty sure McWhorter would be okay, he's a chill dude.

I believe the problem lies with people who can buy it but decide to not; in which case it becomes abusive.

So I wouldn't express dismay just at the suggestion of piracy. It's more nuanced imho.

I don't know but sounds likr assassin's creed.

Yes! I have just discovered this recently myself as well: whenever I wander off I context switch to something else I want to do instead of reforcing focus: multiple books, work, anki, side projects. Good so far.

Write and Journal.

Whenever I feel unmotivated and cannot move forward, if I am not tired or burnt, then it is because I don't see a path forward. That is because my thoughts and information are disorganized and they pollute my sight.

Writing is a very good tool for organizing one's thoughts. For whatever reason thinking with one's short term memory, at least for me, is inferior to writing or even speaking(rubber ducky?) As Jon Haidt says, we are not a logic processing machine but a story processing one(or something like that).

If you have requirements for your work, sit down and write about it. If you don't know how to start then write about how you acquired those information; write about what they mean, what you want to do and anything that peaks your fancy. Over time you will develop your favorite style.

As an aside, journal your days too; looking back on your day you can put your personal story in order and then see if something went poorly, or well. If something doesn't make sense.

Again, over time, you can use your work or personal journal to derive other artifacts. Think of it as a data lake. Want some slides? documentation? forgot a command? forgot why you did something? open up your work journal and copy paste some lines, images or code snippets.

In summary I highly recommend writing. It is a valuable tool that for some reason is not emphasized enough.

One more thing, if you are expressing something, telling a story and such, you may type for speed. If you are thinking and exploring, its best to hand write, it will slow your brain down; plus, there is something about writing letters, a meandering doodling hand an rhythm that helps think.

This reminds me of a couple of cute Yahoo! answers story.

In a past life I was misplaced by the high schools sorting-hat counselor into the house of civil engineering. I was motivated and so our Hydrology professor made me the TA for his Hydraulics class.

He would give me questions with no answers to go through in my sections. The questions were damn hard and I would sometimes ask them on Yahoo! answers and this particular guy from India would always come and answer them meticulously and write integrals using unholy script like: int(a,b)Sin x dx and such and I would happily decode them for half an hour before trying to understand the solution. Fun times.

A similar guy helped me a lot when I was learning C. Hey Manjunath! if you're reading this thanks I'm a software engineer now.

I had a similar problem with StitchFix way back when; after finding out about my profession they truly pigeonholed me into a generic software engineer's fashion, almost caricature-esque.

I switched to Bombfell and I had been very happy until my cancellation.(canceled cause I wanted to explore fashion myself)

Tangential.

Games with good stories and gameplay are the same to me as novels, if not better. In that they allow me to experience things otherwise not possible. Like running for dear life when Dhaka is chasing you in Prince of Persia; or decimating a whole village in Skyrim and having that dark big hole in your chest for what you did carry on until you load the game again.

But the most recent learning from myself has been from Divinity 2 Original Sin. Great game. There you have a main avatar and 3 other players, equally qualified in every sense, and you control all 4. The only difference between the avatar and the rest is one's identity tied to the avatar.

At some point I realized my ranger and melee are pretty strong while wearing nothing but tattered loin clothes; while my avatar, a jack of everything cool and carrier of all the gear he could not even wear sucked. This was an epiphany for me in team spirit. I was hoarding everything cool for my avatar. This had 2 effects. Firstly, it starved the rest of the team from getting good, relevant gear. Secondly, the rest remained laser focused on a couple of skill trees while my avatar, or "I", was hoarding all the cool skills wanting to become a god of all the things or something. So I gave away some epic gear to my ranger and melee units and they got buffed a lot. And I also trimmed the avatar into a single well defined role (pyro summoner) and now I have a pretty strong team.

I am pretty sure this pattern would have had a longer lasting effect on my personal and professional development as well, had I not felt it on my skin like that. Everyone knows you're supposed to share or not to be greedy but I wonder for how many that has been a matter of "life and death".

Yo! Same! I started playing boardgames with my partner a 2 years ago. I was such a noob that I lost to everyone in every game. He is really good and after I learned all his tricks the only two that I think are remaining that makes me consistently second is a) more risk taking and b) being first player.

Which makes sense the higher the risk the higher the reward; when he wins its by quite a bit and when he "loses" its either a couple of points behind me or ahead of me

it has become such a preference for me: silence, dimmed lights, some synthwave music, surrounded by all my machines and a lot of fun.

dibs on biyomon

I think a person who overthinks does it regardless of the stakes. Focus is very closely related to not getting interrupted by your own thoughts. I agree with you that you need to have the skill to be able to perform well, but I'm suggesting that even in a low-stake one, one who can't focus won't focus, be it overthinking or distractions.

I learned this from this brain exercise game, Peak. I started leveling up like crazy when I stopped thinking and speaking to myself and let my brain do what it does best, which learning.