Hmm... I am big believer in mini-habits[1] and chaining habits. The way how I structure by day is to start off small with one habit then keep chaining it to other habits. For instance, I would start my day brush my teeth. It is a small easy habit to get going in the morning. Then, I will chain this habit to exercising. With exercising there are two versions... one I call my minimum and the other is my regular training regimen. My minimum is like 2 min or so of working out, something easy to do that can be replicated each day without any problems. Then, I chain my exercise routine with creating a todo list of the day. Which is chained to tracking my spending. My goal right now is to establish some evening habits. Right now I am little reckless with my evenings.
Reinforcement Learning, second edition: An Introduction by Richard S. Sutton & Andrew G. Barto is like one of the, if not the, best book to learn reinforcement learning. I really enjoyed it!
Are you kidding me? Now is like the most exciting time in tech.
1. You have Dall-E coming out that can draw pictures based on description. Just imagine a AI generated story then followed by AI generated pictures based off of the story aka AI generated movie.
2. You also got Co-pilot by Github with possibility of reducing bug in code and speeding up develop time.
3. AlphaFold for drug development.
Personally, I like where tech is headed. Hope I can be on the frontier of some of these new tech.
"A mini habit is basically a much smaller version of a new habit you want to form. 100 push-ups daily is minified into one push-up daily. Writing 3,000 words daily becomes writing 50 words daily. Thinking positively all the time becomes thinking two positive thoughts per day. Living an entrepreneurial lifestyle becomes thinking of two ideas per day (among other entrepreneurial things). The foundation of the Mini Habits system is in “stupid small” steps."
I've read Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, and a different book from Stephen Guise.
BJ Fogg's writing is much better organized than Guise's. Between Tiny and Atomic, I find Tiny covers much more conceptual ground on human behavior. The interplay of motivation, ability, and prompts is relevant even for behaviors that aren't habits. Also, Tiny covers much better the "why" and "then what" of these small habits.
Another book I would recommend that ties in nicely with Tiny Habits is The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. She covers a lot of ground on the topic of why we do or don't do things. I think it could be a helpful debugging guide if you're struggling with a habit or behavior and need more depth than Tiny Habits.
Between all of the books mentioned though, just to be clear, Tiny Habits would be my pick if you were only going to read one. It's much more than just "make a habit of doing something really small". It's changed how I work on my own behavior and how I manage my team at work.
I never read his book, but I have taken a course by him via email. But yes, I believe they are the same thing. I think BJ Fogg has a more academic bent to it while this is a book from someone telling a story about what worked for them. I tend to like personal stories backed up with scientific evidence(I don't know if tiny habit is like that since I never read it). But, I like the practical implementation steps given in a personal story. What this book has over the stuff I was doing via email is that it is less complicated.
We haven't, but it's on the list! We've mostly stuck to the US coast and Western Caribbean, visiting the Keys, the Bahamas, a bit up North, and the stuff in between. Currently anchored in Biscayne bay (Coconut Grove), but will probably be headed down to the keys in a month or so.
There is definitely a sweet spot in learning to play chess; too much, your performance declines. My training protocol for maximal improvement(empirically derived): Practice 25 tactics, play 5 games reviewing after each game... Repeat 3 times daily. When you are reviewing the key thing for your opening is to ensure you get out perfect. Your first 10 moves should be absolutely flawless...Your next objective should be gain a tactical advantage which tend to arise by your opponent making a mistake... be patient don't force it. Once you have the advantage, rapidly trade off pieces.
My claim to fame... I drew a FIDE Master in the 2020 online Olympiad[1].[the most unlikely draw based off of ratings.]Also, had the 11th most unlikely win in that Olympiad. [2]
Also, wrote tactics app that I am kind of embarrassed to share on HN. But, here it is:
Why would I need to write a tactics app? Well, I teach it. Not all tactics are created equal. Some tactics you will not see it again in your lifetime in a real game, so why practice it. My app focuses on the common patterns. Also, I wanted a reporting function to see how much my students are practicing their tactics in one view.
I think there are hard problems and easy problems, and smarts reflects ones ability to solve hard problems.
So, the question should be how does one solve hard problems?
The solutions to any problem can trivially be found by searching through the possible solutions and checking which solution works. The problem with this approach is that it is intractable space. Thus, the main ways that we traverse the search space of solutions is limiting the search space and by pattern matching. [Think in terms of chess where the search space is large to find the best possible move...The way they get around it is by simply reducing the search space and pattern matching.]
Consequently, a smart person would be one who has developed intuition about a problem enough to limit the search space of the available solutions and has a vast collection of patterns to draw from that will aid in the problem solving process.
He did touch on one point with all extraordinary genius, they were all obsess. I think this fosters having enough intuition about a problem and having a toolbox of patterns necessary to solve hard problems. Is there any genius without a vast toolbox of techniques to solve problems? Is there any genius without a supreme understanding of his problem area?
Having intuition and huge toolbox for solving problems we know are necessary conditions for solving hard problems, but are they sufficient conditions?
Good comment. I think that maybe what you're getting at is the intuition on particular problems is not necessarily correlated to high IQ beyond a minimum threshold.
From everything I've read, almost every contemporary of Von Neumann says he was the 'smartest' person they ever met. It seems his brain just worked at a completely different clock speed than normal people, even normal geniuses.
However, while is contributions are immense and widespread, I don't think they come close to the utterly astounding work of Godel.
While Godel was insanely smart, he also just looked at the world in a very unusual way that let him see certain meta axioms that have profound implications for pretty much every scientist and philosopher. I don't know if it was circumstance that led him to a special tool box, or obsession, or a certain spark of creativity everyone else lacked, but there's something worth exploring there.
Well more like highlights that I found interesting. It is definitely on my top list of books for entrepreneurship. You should get a copy and read at least once a year, very insightful.
> A students are often formerly unhappy C students.
Is there any empirical evidence for this? It flies in the face of my experience, which is that A students were A students from the start; that C students almost never become A students, and that A students sometimes become C students.
There are plenty of people entirely capable of A marks in most educational situations who don't get them because they don't care and don't do the work. Something changes and they get interested. The jump from an indifferent C to a solid A often isn't that far.
Somewhat related: There are more PhD's than you might expect that were also high school drop outs.
1. https://www.chestergrant.com/26-highlights-from-mini-habits-...