Becoming A Magician
Source: https://autotranslucence.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a-magician/
- Not only is any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic; any sufficiently advanced technologist seems like a magician. In order to write the new version of this life description, I need to imagine a version of myself who, by definition, I cannot understand. If I understood her she wouldn’t be magical. (View Highlight)
- The feeling I get, as a very good bodypainter looking at Sanatan’s work, is that I am looking at magic. And that, in fact, is my definition of magic — competence so much more advanced than yours with such alien mental models that you cannot predict the outcomes of the model at all. (View Highlight)
- Note: This is when I truly admire people! When the work that they’re doing is so far outside my mental model that it seems like magic.
- One of my heuristics for growth is to seek out the magicians, and find the magic. Often without noticing, your progress in aspects of life or all of it unconsciously becomes linear. (View Highlight)
- The ‘describe the version of you that seems impossible right now’ trick I described above is largely an attempt to bypass that part of my brain that dismisses the work of magicians as crazy and starts allowing it to make the necessary shifts required to become the kind of magician I am envisioning. (View Highlight)
- Note: Someone who’s in shape — nay, ripped
uid: 202207101347 tags: #literature #insights #favorites
# Moving the Needle - MacSparky
source: https://ift.tt/QkHoR41 tags: #productivity #literature uid: 202207100234 —
The question of getting my most important work done is much more present in my mind now, and that has obvious benefits for me both mentally and in terms of actual production.
There still is some work that both must get done and doesn’t move the needle. I think plenty about that work as well every time I set time aside to do it. This is work that gets in the way and, with this practice, I’m more motivated than ever to throw it overboard. I’ve got a series of questions I ask myself every time I pick up this type of work:
- Does this need to be done at all?
- If it must be done, can I automate/delegate it?
- If I must do it, what is the least intrusive way for me to accomplish it?
First, I’ve been intentionally scheduling time for that stuff when I’m the least productive. For me, that’s after 3 pm on most days. Also, I find I get that type of work done faster if I pile it all together and set aside a few hours to do it, rather than picking it up piecemeal throughout the day and week.
Areas in Which I Can Be Creative
Creating this note just to document the fact that there are a lot of areas in life that I could be more “creative” in (because I’ve had a lot of exposure to them, and if the only thing you need to get your creative juices flowing for a certain topic is exposure, then I should’ve had more than enough of it in these areas). The areas include
- Political thoughts (facing you facing me, reading up about politics, stuff in general)
- Quizbowl (specifically, making quiz bowl questions). In fairness, I think that this is something that I could do if I had some mentorship and guidance about it.
- Writing math olympiad questions. I also think that I would need some guidance about this as well.
- Writing in general. I think that this is something that I feel relatively confident about since
- I’ve written and read so much in my life
- Recently, I’ve read a lot of things about #writing :
- Writing (Index) 202204102006
- Blogging (Index) 202204101822 That’s given me some guidance and creative direction.
Created from: My Interests 202206190241
uid: 202206190245 tags: #writing #living-well
My Personal Mottos
I read an article 202207171823 at some point that detailed that you should have starting principles in life to do cool stuff with your principles. If productivity advice that you get isn’t either supplementing or replacing one of your starting principles, it’s basically useful. With that in mind, I’m going to try to enumerate my “starting principles” here, but instead of calling them starting principles, I’m going to call them personal mottos, because that sounds less scary.
- 202205030052 I’m most productive without external stimuli
- 202205212334 Think Of How You’ll Win. Think Of How You’ll Not Lose
- 202205030156 Don’t prematurely optimize but don’t ignore low-hanging fruit either
- 202206010039 Always Have Something To Look Forward To
- How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably 202210031623
(Will populate more of these as I go along)
uid: 202206170059 tags: #insights
Useful habits for a software engineer
- Go for a walk first thing in the morning.
- Talk about 3 things that you’re grateful about.
- Do 2 hours of core work after the walk.
- Use single purpose electronics to avoid phone/kindle usage.
- Read important things many times.
- Think of how you’ll win. Think of how you’ll not lose. 202205212334
- Rehearse. Actually prepare for things. Think about them, rather than just going “uh-uh” and assuming that you’ll figure them out eventually.
- Meet with a life coach.
- You can talk about projects that are currently going on in your life, and how I can tackle them.
- Do a shutdown ritual. Look at all open tasks. Look at the tasks I completed today. Look at the schedule for next couple weeks. Say “I’m done for today”.
- Spend 30 minutes each day doing my oldest tasks. things:///show?id=JmfgSLhhQ2vZyJHd4fv3pi
- Put my phone and laptop away past a certain time at night.
uid: 202205212326 tags: #insights #habits #productivity
How to have a reasonable Git tree
As of time of writing, my Git tree is in a messed up state, because I wanted to focus on feature development rather than breaking things up into logical commits. However, I think I could still use Git to somewhat break things up, and not leave things until the very last minute, although there is a fine line to be found there (see Don’t prematurely optimize, but don’t ignore low-hanging fruit either 202205030156). One interesting heuristic is:
- Incrementally add “wip” commits. In the commit, describe the primary idea that was changed in 5 words or less
- Once I’m done and want to coalesce things, do an interactive rebase to align relevant changes with each other. This is before you’ve pushed anything up (on the primary branch at least, so it’s okay if you’re “breaking history”).
Created from: 3-5 Things I Want To Do Today 202205030143]
uid: 202205030149 tags: #software-engineering #insights #howto