One brick at a time has been my philosophy for a while and it's worked well. Making a bucket list of life, then turning that into to do lists, then doing the things 1 by 1.
I think a big problem is that many people like me don't have the discipline to learn anything in depth.
Here is a service I always want: I'm in a prison cell. I cannot get out until the prison evaluates my progress on a target that I submitted for the service (say fully read a tech book and create a demo). I'd also setup a default end date which will be evaluated and confirmed by the prison. If I don't complete the target before the end date I get double charged for each day and food becomes shittier. Of course there is a hard deadline to make sure my bank account still exists afterwards.
I'm sure you could edit that list, come on, don't let some earlier you dictate what today's you wants or needs. Just keep a list (including all the achieved goals you already met for good comparison) and go on on them.
Wow! It's amazing that I can run python in my browser using an IDE that feels like my daily driver. Even the little keyboard shortcuts, ctrl+} to indent a line of code worked as expected. I became so immersed I accidentally used alt+f4 to close a terminal window, and instead closed my browser!
Thanks! That's great to hear it was able to trick you a bit. In fullscreen I use keyboard lock to bind the Windows/Meta key, I'll add ALT+F4 also so at least people in fullscreen can continue the illusion a little longer.
Very cool! 8 years is pretty wild, I could see still being at it had I not found my wife in Santiago. I ended up in 50 countries over 4+ years before taking my Chilean wife back with me to Canada in 2015.
We need more desktop environment / "OS" websites out there. I feel like one day they could be something more as technology is moving fast in the worlds of WebAssembly/AR/VR, so who knows what my site might be in 20-30 years. If you want to check out the source code it's open source, https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS.
Okay I'll be the first to say it - having a working virtualized DOM and Dev Tools on your virtualized desktop themed site is pretty slick. Well done man!
Thanks glad you liked it! There other "desktop environments" in the browser (https://github.com/syxanash/awesome-web-desktops), but I tried my best to be one of the more accurate/functional ones.
Umm, yeah… I think you got the website ticked off.
Seriously awesome shit. Did you have it in mind more or less like this, or were there a couple of evolutions along the way?
Haha thanks, much appreciated! The original idea came out of laziness and thinking it would be easier to just give users RDP access to my computer than actually design a cool site for my blog/pics/etc. I also give credit to Windows 10's UI for being so simplistic that I got inspired to thinking I could recreate it with CSS/HTML/JS. The code itself did have a bit of an evolution as my career in software development evolved and I moved from working with Angular to working in React. Over the last 4 years I've re-made the project 3 times, my latest iteration being named daedalOS and taking almost 2 years. I streamed most of it on my YouTube channel as I was making it and it's open source (https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS) if you're interested.
Me too, but I think that it an important realization to internalize. My list would take many lifetimes to complete. This is an important part of being a self-aware person or some people call it "adulting". For me at least, it is easy to get scared and run away from it. The more productive solution is to:
Realize these are things that you get to try, not have to do
Prioritize a few items, ideally some short term and some long term.
Set aside the master list and work on your immediate tasks until they are complete you realize you dont want to complete them.
occasionally revisit the master list and update it.
It can indeed be dauting. I think once I had the list I tried to make a plan that allowed me to hit multiple goals in the long term. For example building my website in high detail was so that I could learn enough to get a Big Tech type of job. Traveling around the world at least partly was to find a wife and start a family. For me, I took all the items on my list and tried to turn that into a direction. I also prune/add to the list when I am feeling down and trying to think of what to look forward to.
I'll defend him a bit and say that I actually did want to do this and have a bug report out to do just this (https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS/issues/70). But I also see what you are saying about inconsistent sorting. That being said I do have a desire for the site to be a version of Windows 10 customized to my styles, such as the desktop icons being sorted the way they are.
Also happy to see you noticed that sorting does indeed work manually still, but on load it's not behaving.
Ya you are right. It's actually something I wanted to do and planned to, but ran into a bug that I basically have been putting off cause nobody ever mentioned this except you.
Ah cool to see that! I was reading the posts and got really confused because you said you were living with your wife and then later you were talking about moving to Vancouver and getting married and I was like, wait, you got divorced and re-married, but didn't write a blog post about it, what is going on here?? And then I realized it was alphabetical sorting haha.
Thanks glad you liked it! It's actually not a port but is running on DOS via https://js-dos.com/, same as Doom and Jazz Jackrabbit. I actually have my 8 favorite Shareware games on my website which can all be played.
Seems like a proof-of-concept that an online platform for many old DOS games can be implemented... Guess I have a new project to add to my (very long) to-do list :)
Ya it helps to have some clear timelines to keep yourself honest. I noticed when I originally set out on my world travels that there were people who said they wanted to come that ended up being to distracted with life to take the leap. I keep my notes and reminders and goals very visible in my life through Google Keep and actual post it notes all over my walls. If I did have those reminders I would very likely do nothing and feel bad about it.
skifree on your website, that is awesome! in middle school technology class me and my friend Alex found a hidden cheat in skifree that racked up ridiculous high scores. if you situate yourself directly below the lift chair and press up so you stay right behind it, your score just keeps going up and up and up. without a doubt I can tell you that our high scores survived until that equipment was replaced and im certain it dumbfounded every kid in that class who played skifree for years how scores like that were obtained.
Glad you liked SkiFree. I actually got the EXE directly from the authors website as he gives it out for free now. It runs via http://www.boxedwine.org/ which can run all sorts of Windows EXE's. I have a similar childhood story of messing with old games, but mine was Doom which is why I gave it some credit on the desktop of my site.
Thanks, much appreciated! I wish I could enjoy it more, but something about the attitude that got me here keeps me moving forward. I'm the kind of person that always needs to be doing something which I consider of value, or else I feel like I am wasting my life.
Cool, I hadn't heard of that specific method possibly, but it seems self explanatory. I've always liked breaking down problems into smaller parts, so maybe that has helped me in several areas of life. My home office is full of walls of post it notes of plans for my life and my side projects.
Thanks very much! It's taken years of work and I still try and work on it daily if I can. I like to imagine what it will be like in 20-30 years (assuming I'm alive).
Thanks very much! Hearing people like it is a huge motivator to continue work on it. Even when I could say it's good enough. I want to get 1 more "wow" out of someone, somehow.
Thanks! I started with an Angelfire site back in 1998 and it's taken a long time to get to this. I always wanted to have a little miscellaneous site where people could come and play around a bit and check out some info about me if they wanted.
The idea to turn my website into a desktop environment came out of me trying to think how to present all my various content to users, and thinking how it would be easier if they could just RDP into my machine and see everything locally. Also inspiration from sites like http://www.windows93.net/, https://windows96.net/ & https://aaronos.dev/.
After visiting the website, I came here to post the same comment, and I see others have done the same. Kudos OP! Your website knocks the socks off any other website I've seen, really well done.
Thanks! I'm glad to hear you liked it. It's indeed a goal of mine to be one of the more interesting websites out there. Every time I think I am missing something or find a bug, I try and do something about it.
I've also taken a lot of effort to keep everything client side. This makes hosting easier and also adds an interesting challenge of pushing the browser to the limits just to see what can be made within those confines.
The original topic that you cited is symptomatic of ineffectual autodidacticism (knowledge management) and analysis paralysis.
As for the former, I recommend taking notes diligently while studying/learning new topics and filing these notes appropriately where you make consulting the original material be it YT videos, online tutorials/posts, articles or books unnecessary since your notes are more than enough and are kept up-to-date accordingly; adding, removing or archiving as you deem necessary.
As for the latter, I struggled with this lately but I think that I made some progress to overcome this roadblock by making snap decisions on the spot by resorting to the old trick of "heads or tails" everytime I start to overthink a solution, and for more overwhelming alternatives, I built a custom randomizer that's fed a list of choices, and then spits the decision that I should make, and I comply with its wish enthusiastically every time.
I wouldn't say that this is the most efficient decision making process out there but for me action is always far better than inaction, and I don't think that perpetual state of deliberations and contemplation was any better as it hindered any progress to be made in the name of picking the most rational or efficient course of action to be taken which it didn't seem to emerge no matter how hard I tried to think a way out of it.
Let me applaud you. I’m 43 years ald autodidact. And it’s only last month I started to take some note in a notebook about my reading. I feel this simple thing missing in my life had a huge negative effect.
So many content I read, watch and my brain is never full of new things new topic new understanding but the biggest difficulty is recalling things when needed. Taking notes, summarising key points, and being able to reread it has a huge power to structure though and articulating idea between them. Also it’s avoid thing to stay in a vague memory in the brain.
Also I use my notebook to write down any idea that cames to my mind anytime. Cause the brain is never stopping working, while I pop, while I walk the dog out, while I shop. Anytime I feel I have something interesting showing up I my mind I write it down.
Since almost 2 months. And I can say this simple act was the missing piece in my life.
In a year or two, when that notebook has been filled and replaced with newer notebooks, make some time to go back and reread. It is wild sometimes, re-reading things I forgot I know/knew. Pretty sure this helps for recall, even if not, it is still nostalgically entertaining.
Edit: swapped 'enlightening' for 'entertaining'. Admittedly, could be both.
I just want to share my agreement on picking any path forward when confronted with analysis paralysis. I also suffer from this and have found that ANY choice is better than no choice in this situation, precisely because moving forward gives you more information. For me making a decision in the face of uncertainty was very uncomfortable because I always want to be perfect, but what I found is that the new information you get even when you pick the wrong path forward makes making the right decision after that point orders of magnitude easier. I have trained myself to get past the discomfort of making a less-than-perfect decision to “lube the rails”, so to speak, on making future decision easier.
Thirded, and I want to expand on your point about "picking the wrong path". For a lot of decisions (especially low-stakes ones) you don't even have to go down the path. Just having taken a decision, arbitrary as it is, gives you information.
Simple example, happens often: my partner and I want to go out to eat, but can't make up our minds where. Take the top two choices and flip a coin. Then just see how you each feel about that decision the coin made. Often it reveals a stronger preference than anyone was aware of. In that case, disregard the coin's choice. And if it doesn't, then just follow the coin's choice, since you're not losing anything by it.
And I would like to expand on this answer. Most of the time I noticed, that it doesn’t even matter what I choose because each option has pros and cons and most of the time they have equal weight (otherwise it would be easy to choose). So in the end, I‘m happy regardless what I choose. The example with the food fits quite well here too.
Not really. The only way to actually get things done is to do them, and that will never change. Planning and daydreaming is very satisfying and feels much easier than actually doing, but it's a dopamine trap. Plain old setting a schedule and applying self-discipline is the simplest way forward...
> The only way to actually get things done is to do them, and that will never change.
This is the most blunt, real, and effective advice that can be given.
It is very important to emphasize that daydreaming of doing everything (and all at once), is a dopamine trap! No matter how long one mentally masturbates on a beautiful idea, it’s only through charting a course, breaking the problem down, and going through the motions and the steps to completion, humbly and dutifully, that will yield any results.
Another commenter, unfortunately downvoted, also said something important:
> Never tell others what you gonna do unles you have done it.
This is equally important advice, as it falls in the dopamine trap category.
Namely, refrain from satisfying the creative urge merely by talking about it. Instead, act first, and talk about the results.
Goes without saying, but let’s say it anyway: of course this doesn’t mean that you should hide like a mad scientist; communication is crucial in creation. Just don’t spend all your time talking about all the nice things you’d have done, if you weren’t spending your time just talking about them while leaving them undone.
Also, if the thing you want to make has some sort of personal meaning or cause, that’s a great impetus.
And don’t forget to fail, and don’t be afraid to fail, either. Try, err, try again, err elsewhere, keep moving, keep learning, keep making.
>> Never tell others what you gonna do unless you have done it.
>This is equally important advice, as it falls in the dopamine trap category.
I strongly disagree. Or at least caution that there is a trap on the other extreme.
I spent a lot trying to be consistent, not committing or vocalizing a plan until I was sure.
This was a big part of paralysis and stagnation for me.
like you said, dont be all talk, but dont be afraid to take a position, communicate a desire, and try things. This is necessary to make progress in an uncertain world.
Just be upfront with yourself and others if you change your position. You dont need to be consistent, it is more important to be honest.
agreed, I think this trap is related to fear of failure. if you're not telling people your plans because you're worried you won't finish, that might be bad. but then you don't want to take any credit for simply making me g plans either. maybe better to discuss what you have done _so far_ toward your goal
Seven years ago I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, nor a mortgage.
Now I have all of that.
Decisions are often made for me as I prioritize meeting the demands of higher minimum income and time spent with family and kids.
For better or for worse, growing older and gaining extra responsibilities acts as a forcing function. You need to prioritize more ruthlessly.
Choosing what to spend time is harder! The opportunity cost increases as you have less time available to spend on yourself. Choosing, therefore, becomes a bigger gamble.
If you’re relatively free in time, you should come up with a framework on making decisions on what to work with. It will depend on your goals - making a business, learning an instrument, learning skills to further your career - whatever. Make a goal and act in ways that furthers your goal.
Very relatable what you wrote. I became a digital nomad in my mid 30s. It was great at first, but then it got to the point where I engineered too much freedom in my life. The result was indeed paralyzing. Suffered some of the worst indecision in my life, in my mid 30s!
During covid times, I met my wife, we had a son together and now we're a digital nomad family. Having a family removed a whole range of choices that let me narrow into the obvious and not have to stress out about what to focus on. In a way it's been more liberating, to take on these constraints and responsibility. I know it sounds counterintuitive but I think Jocko got it right with "Discipline Equals Freedom".
In 3 months I'm going to take my family (wife and 3 year old) on a 6 month trip. My goal is to become a digital nomad family with "bases" where we have family and friends.
The rough plan is Bali, Japan, Sri Lanka, Kerala(India).
Do you have any advice or tips?
My biggest question is how do you meet other digital nomad families? I've done a lot of solo travel, and on the way I'd occasionally meet a traveling family, but they were pretty rare.
I've found it to be rare in my experience as well. It seems our demographic tends to not believe in having children, ranging from the apathetic hedonist to strong antinatalist beliefs. Since I have a 9-month-old, I haven't had the need to go out and find nomad families as much. Having bases helps with this since you can just meet local families and hang out with them while you're in town. Hopefully we can find a solution to this, maybe we need a nomadfamilylist.com to arrange playdates!
Kerala sounds interesting, One place we went to recently was Bangalore and once we got used to the traffic, we enjoyed it. I've heard good things about Goa as well from a local tech entrepreneur friend.
I'm curious as to what it's like to fly with a 3-year-old. We've had to keep our flights short, below 4 to 5 hours max, which has been cool because we then had to visit certain places we might have flown over, so we've seen more countries along the way, albeit at a higher cost. I guess in the age of media devices, longer flights shouldn't be that difficult with kids that age?
Relatable. I don't have kids and lots of freedom in my life at least in the evenings outside of work. Somehow without the pressure, I tend to procrastinate on my decisions to take on the next chapter given several options available. That paralysis then turns into anxiety of not taking the choice and understanding how hurtful it is which just opens the vicious circle.
I've realized that the boundaries have given me more discipline than when I had none.
Before kids, mortgage and a work visa, I would just pick something up and spend 4-5 weeks on a single thing before hitting a plateau. Then the going gets tough and there's a new thing which I could dig into right around the corner. Everything I did was at an unsustainable pace and it did broaden my horizons, but it was very much like dating.
First the commute ate up the first hobby, the kid ate up the next hobby, but then the pandemic kicked off the hobby mode all over again. I almost went back to the old approach of hobby-crazy, but I couldn't with two kids in the mix.
My rate of picking up new things have dropped to about 1.5 a year since 2020, but it's spread out onto a weekly schedule where I don't always have to drop the last thing I was doing to pick up something new. Also I no longer want to "get great" at things.
I still jump into new things without prioritization, but I no longer burn twice as bright for half as long in my hobbies.
Also the kids will drag you back in too - I'm going to go gokarting every weekend for the next year, because the alternative is sitting there in the bleachers with the phone.
I've learn a few things about this problem over the years:
"Wanting to have done something" and "wanting to DO something" are very different. E.g. "I'd like to be able to play Claire de Lune on piano", vs the deep work of becoming intimately familiar with every single note and phrase of the piece. The latter necessarily involves getting obsessed for a while; you don't be able to do it if you don't find something deeply stimulating about the specific piano piece.
A lot of the things I've "wanted to do" I really just wanted to have done—I wanted to be able to do something, I wanted to know if I was capable of it. But I didn't really want to do it. I didn't really care. I just thought I was capable of all kinds of things and wanted to delight in verifying that. It had a sort of superficiality to it—my reasons for wanting all these things were not compelling enough to drive me to actually do them.
(Especially faced with the immediate rewards offered by video games—games and things like that change the "weights" on your internal reward system; you can feel this if you just think about the game, it feels like everything else shifts out of focus and the anticipation of the dopamine prize expands to fill your view.)
When you're in school it's relatively easy to do whatever you're told, and it doesn't really matter if you care about it. But accessing this sense of internally-generated energy that can drive you towards things that are important is a completely different skill, and you can't force it.
So either:
* figure out what you deeply, truly want to DO, and do that (which may be completely different from the things you enjoy imagining HAVING done)
* or, think deeply about what you want to "have done", and figure out why it excites you, and focus in on that, activate your curiosity for it, and let that draw you in
This is a great comment. A good extrapolation of this on another example is:
- We all want to start a startup, with a caveat that the vast majority of us don't want to sacrifice our time, energy, mental and physical health to get to the an exponential outcome with extreme costs. But the daydreaming and the lure of successes we see around us makes us think its all there is.
- Perhaps instead, we can just focus on doing the craft that we actually enjoy doing as a process to get to mediocre (and sometimes extreme) outcomes since most just crave freedom of choice, not the $.
I have wanted to do a lot of things throughout my life since 15/16 but lack of discipline usually pulls me away from having a deep study on any of them. I'm now 40 and achieved nothing I have wanted. Everything I "achieved" I either wish I didn't achieve or I just completed them grudgingly.
I kinda give up and wish I lived in a prison that just forced me to achieve anything I have wanted to do. Maybe I'm not actually interested in all those but at least I get more trophies to show.
Younger me wanted to do things like learn 10 languages, go to grad school, get really good at judo, etc.
Older me knows that languages aren't something you 'learn' as they are something you join, that 'grad school' is pointless and that your advisor is everything, that 'judo' is one of many paths to a better mind and friendships, etc.
I know that sounds trite and Iroh-y, but it ends up being true. It's not the 'accomplishment' but the people that matter, including yourself. Focusing on the brass ring get you the ring, and not much else. Focusing on others get you a filled life.
I know people that are enormously successful, yet are empty holes. I know of one that has both. It's not a pastiche or a fable, it's very true. I've seen a lot of people die and leave us. And I've been able to reflect on their lives. The best way, to my eyes thus far, is focusing on others. Lifting up other people, getting in with groups of good people, and helping out as you are able, those people seemed to me to have had the best lives.
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment."
Yeah, I agree. Younger me not only didn't know what he wanted, he didn't even realize that what you think you want and what will actually satisfy you can be drastically different things. Nearly 40yo me is still working on figuring out the latter.
This was true for me as well, but I'm happy I started working towards those things anyway.
I wanted to abandon "normal life" and live on a sailboat, so I developed healthy financial habits and a career in order to achieve that. During that journey, I met my now-wife. Now, I realize that living in a walkable community filled with trees and friends is more fulfilling than the liveaboard fantasies of my youth... but I was able to leverage the real work I put in towards that original dream towards what I want today (a satisfying home, traveling with my family, etc).
Really successful people get a lot of offers to say "no" to.
It was probably Derek Sivers, whom is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, that said: Early in your career, or when just starting something new - say "yes" to everything. You are collecting opportunities. Later once you have found or reached a sustainable level - then you can say "no" to everything.
Not much has changed unless yourself did. Then fundamentals still stand:
- figure out what you want
- figure out how to get it
First point is the hardest. Since most of us don’t really know what we want. We might describe an incomplete picture at best. Hardly a clear vision. So start with what you don’t want and go from there.
Second point is about organizational skills. Research, plan, execute, iterate. Rinse and repeat.
Don’t forget to be kind to yourself. The world is has enough without an enemy within.
Yeah, that sounds somewhat familiar. To add, I recently read this book :“love+work” by Marcus Buckingham. His insights are really good at what decades of research have taught him about loving your work (and how to get there)
Love the work? No, not at all. Love one aspect, part, degree, radian, whatever of it. Just one thing. Don’t go for full on love. Cause you fall out of love and then what? Love a part of it and then you can keep it going for longer.
I graduated from engineering school 20 years ago and I've gotten to do a lot of interesting, satisfying projects since then. The advice that I give my kids (and anyone else who asks):
1) Pick one or two things at a time to get good at. When you start feeling like you've pretty much got that nailed, then pick some other way to challenge yourself. Ideally one intellectual challenge and one physical challenge.
1a) This becomes much easier under pressure. For example, instead of just "oh I want to learn something" it needs to be in the service of some larger goal. Maybe it's for your job, maybe it's for something you're doing as a hobby, but it needs to be a Project, not learning as an end in itself.
2) Incremental progress is the only kind of progress that exists. Make incremental plans. Celebrate small victories.
If you peel away all the controversial things about scrum in software development you are left with "finish what you start". It's also a common practice in cafes and restaurants.
It’s a struggle still! I get some must do stuff done, but I’m definitely overwhelmed with what I want to do! I call myself idea machine - but I think I have ADHD or something of sort!
I’m currently reading The One Thing [0] and it’s actually making a lot of sense. Plan on giving it a try!
Understanding progress vs activity, and 3 types of effort.
Rock metaphor: The goal is to deliver a big, shiny rock to the top of the mountain. You can (1) move the rock, (2) polish the rock, and (3) other distractions.
* Push the rock up the hill. You have to keep pushing until you get to the next flat land. If you stop whenever you’re interrupted, the rock will roll back down to the bottom of the hill. Requires a chunk of undistracted time (Cal Newport Deep Work, etc).
* Polish the rock. You can engage in this type of effort well, even with frequent interruption. Polish for 10 minutes, answer a phone call, polish another area, go to lunch, polish more, repeat until finished.
* Other stuff. Sometimes required maintenance (paying bills, paperwork, etc), but often unhelpful distraction.
Getting more tactical:
* Bucket selection - pick the right buckets, and right number of buckets (not too many, you can only move a few rocks each day)
* Move rocks in each bucket consistently (no starved buckets)
Summarized: Move rocks, in a few areas, that are important to you (not to other people)
To illustrate, my buckets are: day job, freelance work, trading, family, and health. Every time I’ve been “off” in life, one of those buckets has been starved (workaholic, neglect family), or I’ve had too many buckets, or one bucket explodes (family health crisis, newborn child, etc), or efforts become distracted and while much activity happens, no rocks move.
Most of this I derived from The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, originally published in 1966 (so nothing new since 2015).
There is no higher accomplishment than living in the moment. % of time spent living in the moment is the most important metric I can think of.
The "problem" is that it's something that you can't see in others, whereas wealth, assets etc. are for everybody to see and so people start competing to get those things.
There lies the difference however, to call yourself a competitive person you must be able to compete without ever knowing how you are faring against others, that's the ultimate form of competition. That's also how life begins. A Spermatozoon doesn't know and won't ever know the position of other spermatozoa, if they are ahead, behind etc. in the race to get to the egg. They only know that they have to swim as fast as they possibly can.
Likewise humans can't possibly know the amount of time that other humans are spending living in the moment, but, like sperm, you don't need to because your goal is to get as close as you can to 100%
I freed up insane amounts of time by decustomizing my personal use of tech.
I am no longer willing to spend $100 and 30 hours to make something I could buy for $30.
I no longer insist on learning everything about the tech I use, while the history book I want to read sits idle on a shelf.
I no longer buy random stuff "just to try it out" when I don't have any real reason to think I'm going to enjoy having it. I don't buy random stuff for DIY projects very often if I'm not totally sure I want to do that project.
I do buy things that I think will make life easier.
I'm still working on social media time drains. Even this site itself is a bit of a time sink.
I like the way the idea of a goal hierarchy as presented in Grit: one top-level goal which is the unifying theme of your foreseeable life, mid-level goals that are the different topics to help your reach your top-level goal, and the low-level goals for the day-to-day life.
For example to become a successful entrepreneur (top), you need to understand how to run a startup (mid), raise money from investors (mid), understand your users (mid), and that comes from understanding your cash flow (low), cold mailing tens of VCs (low), interview a user (low).
Deciding and committing to a top goal is the hard part in my opinion. It means to abandon the other (incompatible) goals you'd like to pursue. But focus is the best way to go forward.
I’ve found that having ‘tab groups’ (in whatever browser you fancy) has helped me to juggle around 20 different ‘interests’ at a time. Oh, it’s a Lisp sort of day? Hit the Lisp tab group and continue that weird session I started earlier in the year. Typography on my mind today? Go through and finish half of what’s in the typography tab group. It seems the same as bookmarks, but it’s just not. I used to just collect bookmarks, get overwhelmed, never read them. Tab groups are sort of ephemeral bookmarks, and I don’t have to worry about saving bookmarks in the correct folders. It more or less just sorts itself out if I open tabs inside the correct groups.
When it comes to the computing field, there is a core to it: what is computation. What it means to have a programmable machine: and algorithms and all that jazz. The pragmatics of it: how do we design, develop, test deploy. The hardware: what computing architectures do we have and what are their strengths and limitations.
On the opposite end, there are specialized applications, and in between there are application areas with specialized tools, infrastructure, software components and whatnot.
You're simply not going to be an expert in every application area. Realize that, and stop trying!
Buckle down and specialize. Be an expert in some subset of the abstract core, and its realization in some choice of platforms and tools that you follow, and beyond that, pick just a few application areas. Have a main area or two, and then some fringe areas that you are interested in that are little bit on the side.
You can switch application areas in mid-career. Being good in one application area is better for being able to dive into another than just knowing a smattering about many areas without any expertise.
Going far and deep in any application area as a developer will give you the skills to be able to work on almost anything.
Any code base in any application area has lots of code that is not specifically in that are which needs general expertise and experience; you can make meaningful contributions to those areas almost from the get go.
In my university time, I was crazy into OS programming: systems programming on Unix, and kernel level. I was also crazy into computer graphics. Alain Fournier (RIP, cancer) tried to award me 110% in CS414 at UBC, but he reported that the antiquated mainframe wouldn't take the value. Compilers and languages interested me, but not as much as today. I used Lex and Yacc regularly, and in one contract project I created a billing system with a custom query language. I had an interest in implementing data structures as well.
There were things I was not into, like for instance databases or anything having to do with AI, or programming language semantics (other than taking one compiler construction course, for which I lacked prerequisites); when some buddies started on about what they were doing with, say, Prolog, I didn't follow that. I was impressed, but my plate was full of my current interests to be actually distracted and derailed. I had this intuition that life is long, and there will be plenty of time to get into other things, and that as long as you're constantly learning, you're preparing yourself for the stuff you don't yet know.
People’s comments then were more genial, thought out, and verbose. I’ve noticed this before reading old posts on the internet. Language is changing. We are changing. Everything is as short and direct as possible. Unfortunately leaning towards blunt and hostile. Ennui from reading the internet too much? Maybe Twitter and texting? I don’t feel like this is a change for the better.
Digital natives regularly post without putting sentences/paragraphs on a new line, because they're accustomed to "that button" submitting what they already wrote. Ask somebody in their 20s to hit "Return" and it's a dice roll if they know you mean the "Enter" key.
The difference between desktop-first and mobile-first is far greater than I would have predicted a decade ago.
>The difference between desktop-first and mobile-first is far greater than I would have predicted a decade ago.
I think this is a large portion of it. Despite digital natives being very comfortable on mobile, There are still relatively higher barriers to effective communication on mobile.
Slower input, harder to review, harder to edit, ect.
Perhaps people were more thoughtful when the demands and inefficiencies of quill penmanship necessitated measured words and deliberate prose. We could all stand from time to time to step back, take a deep breath and count to 10 before speaking words we later regret, yet our endeavours are ceaselessly moving forward to shorten the distance between inception and delivery of information, from postal letter to dms. If we are constantly striving to shrink this distance, isn't there an implicit argument against development of ideas as an urge? Maybe a philosophy of "fail fast" as the tech industry adage?
Watching the news and how people are treating each other and arguing, it doesn’t seem like life and mental health is getting better for most people. The most obvious answer for me is technology and the internet.
If you really care about mental health and particularly your own, just cut on the consumption of online media to the bare minimum, and you'll experience improvement albeit gradual in your well-being.
I've found it useful, in periods of analysis paralysis and burnout, to throw away all my to-do lists, archive all my projects, and start from scratch.
The backlog weighs heavily on my current efforts. So starting from scratch ditches the burden. Then, once I've made actual forward progress, I can go back to the archives and figure out how to work the new stuff in.
1) Doing something is better than failing to do everything. I was accumulating notes on useful low-pri habits to have / things I maybe want to do for like 7 years, hardly doing any of them. Sometimes I'd try to do all of them - start the day with a cold shower, meditate, do hard work before email, go for a walk, apply pomodoro, message a friend, exercise, 50 more things, and have a perfect day, but it's pretty much impossible to maintain. Making a list and doing one habit per week (or an approximation) I actually started to make progress and get better at some things. Ditto with exercise - consistent simple short workouts are much easier to maintain than perfect workout program with long awesome workouts.
2) For projects too, doing a little bit is better than failing to do a lot. Ditto, I've made a lot of progress on projects, especially icky ones like minor house repairs (but also e.g. personal coding projects that became hard to do quickly after my early 20ies due to other things) by committing for 10-30 minutes at a time and accepting that it might take me a year to finish.
3) Life-scale timing. That's something I really wish someone told me when I was 25, although it probably only applies to exercise. I got serious about training for climbing (my hobby) when I was 34... that is too late, and now I'm 38 and I get injured easily from intense training. I wish I did that earlier and did whatever I did then, now :)
4) Getting rid of hassles and not introducing new hassles that are not worth it. Something as simple as choosing devices/tools/appliances/building materials - how much maintenance worry does it require? How much manual labor does it add vs a more expensive/less pretty/... option? To where to live - how long do you want to spend driving around places/etc.? Feynman's bio where he describes putting on chains and his thoughts about that were very instructive for me.
Then, larger choices, like I am the type of person who would enjoy skiing, but I find skiing to be logistically complicated and generally a giant hassle, so I can find similar hobbies, like climbing, with much less hassle and cost. But also larger life decisions, after looking at tons of people (from close friends/family to coworkers) with kids I choose not to have them, it's just not worth it, your whole life becomes one project with (for me) very low reward. Ditto about buying a house - an interesting tradeoff for me, cause I'd prefer semi-rural living with condo-level hassle level, but they don't build condos in rural areas ;)
I think doing things in little steps is the key to moving big things over time [0] - especially so with the help of others around. There's been a good amount of research showing that having others around encourages us to do things and to do them better.[1] (Actually building something if you're keen to try it to do things with others [2])
It really comes down to just doing and let the act of doing find your way.
I am a big daydreamer and like 99.99% of all ideas/projects i tried went nowhere. I always felt i have too many hobbies and interests and not enough time.
However, in the last 10 years i managed to get some things done which i feel are quite something. What separates those from the rest?
a) i got paid for doing them b) i was lucky to be there at the right time & place, due to:
c) i was freelancing which gave me more opportunity to seek out interesting things to work on rather than staying in one place and doing what hierarchy tells you.
a-c) made it possible to unlocked my passion and as a consequence i did not mind working hard. to be precise, by „working hard“ i mean doing 40-45 hours a week, not more but those hours i was extremely focused over a few years.
I have the "I want to do everything but end up doing nothing" issue, and my current hypothesis is that I have undiagnosed ADHD. I don't think that is something I will change as long as I am not causing harm to anyone else.
I don't want to be preachy, but as someone with similar issues who's navigating my way through it...it's worth considering whether you are not harming yourself, in a very passive and silent, but chronic way. Each day that goes by is gone and won't return.
1) Pick your goals
2) Divide them into subgoals, then divide those subgoals into subsubgoals.
3) Repeat step 2 until you have something concrete and actionable, something that you can do TODAY
Bonus tips:
1) Learn how to learn (books like Make it stick, a mind for numbers etc), use spaced repetition software like Anki.
2) Prioritize sleep, diet and exercise.
3) Feelings of inadequacy never go away so relax and enjoy the ride.
- Travel around the world solo for years
- Find a wife, get married & have kids
- Build my dream website (https://dustinbrett.com/)
- Get a job in Big Tech as a self taught developer
It's been 10 years since I started living this way and it's worked out so far. Before living this way I had no real plans, just hopes.