I never feel like going out for a cycle but I always feel better when I do.
July 2016
Daily life and fulfillment
Usually when I'm happy I tend to think that I am happy despite daily life. I tend to think that spicing things up and doing random things is part of what makes life fun. I still think that, but I also think that doesn't necessarily imply that not doing that makes life not fun. I find pleasure in doing something well, and I'm getting better at doing my every day things, every day. If you focus on something and focus on getting better at it, then you can find enjoyment.
I love building things. I love it when there's a problem I can't quite grasp, but then I start working on it and, as I am working on it, the solution becomes clear. That's just such a satisfying moment. But it's also where my flaw lies, because as soon as I grasp the solution I lose interest. I get the fulfillment from thinking about the problem, starting to solve it and finding the solution in my mind, but not from working it out until the end. So after I find the solution it just becomes a chore; yet another thing to finish.
(No moral or life lesson. Just observations.)
Posted in
Daily Life
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Thoughts
Guidelines
I've been following three 'principles' of sorts lately. I think they've been quite useful for me. Maybe they'll work on other people too. In no particular order:
- Own it - whatever you do, don't feel embarrassed about it. Pretend if you have to. Eventually it becomes second nature.
- Always leave something left to do for the next opportunity. Be it programming, gaming, travel, or that TV show that you were intending to binge-watch. Leaving something open means it's easy to get back into things the next time.
- Avoid procrastination by not thinking things through too much and just taking the first step. Don't try to solve the entire thing in your head from beginning to end, just start somewhere and keep making progress incrementally. It works for me especially on the things I don't like, because once I've started I feel like I might as well finish it.
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Daily Life
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Thoughts
The old ways
The last time I shot old-fashioned analog film was back in the early 90s, when I was less than ten years old. It wasn't old-fashioned back then. But after my girlfriend gave me an old SLR that fits my Canon lenses and promised to develop the film, I quite fondly took it with me on a cycling day and took some photos.
Analog is tedious! Shutter times matter a lot, whereas with digital I'm used to using a bit more risky shutter times and just shooting a couple of photos, knowing that usually at least one of them will be sharp. With analog I'm constantly worrying about not wasting film. It helps with the composition and thinking about what you're doing, but I doubt that it beats the brute force of digital. Not to mention the fact that with digital you can immediately see your result and make adjustments.
One thing I will say about analog is that the colours and the contrast is pretty unique, and very distinctive to look at. The images have such a different characteristic that I can hardly apply anything from my usual Photoshop routine of touching up photos. It'll probably take me a while to figure out how to improve analog photos.
Depth of field is fantastic with a 50mm f/1.8, better than I get with my DSLR since that has a crop factor. More experiments to come. (Slowly, because it's analog :p )
Posted in
Photography
Fatigue, part two
First off, let's call the beast by its name: burnout. When I'm working on things, my natural state is to use an unsustainable amount of brainpower. Sometimes I get recharge moments and everything works out ok, but at other times I reach the bottom and cease to be effective. Once I reach that point it's damn hard to get out of it. It takes weeks or even months to return back to the mindset of peak performance after burnout. I've experienced burnout quite a few times in the past, and I know exactly what to do to get myself back from it. But preventing it from happening in the first place, that appears to be a lot trickier. You need willpower to tell yourself to stop working on something interesting, and if you continue working at that point your willpower slowly slips away. It's easy to get lost. Especially if you're faced with the exact thing that would keep your brain busy.
An interesting problem is like a burnout virus for the mind. All you need is a problem that is challenging, exciting and complex, but also not complex enough to seem too daunting. Maybe you'll know how to solve 90% of it and the challenge of solving the remaining 10% is what motivates you to keep working on it. Then after you've worked it on for a while you start to realize that the remaining 10% of the problem is actually another problem that is as difficult as the original one. Once again, you know how to solve 90% of that problem and the remaining 10% is a challenge. Repeat ad infinitum. Or until your willpower is gone and you've achieved peak burnout. Congratulations.
Recognizing that you're about to get stuck in this loop is important. It's the mindset of believing that you'll solve these kinds of problems immediately, or by just devoting more brain-time to them, because then you'll get into the willpower-draining self-loop that eventually leads to burnout. There's always one more thing to solve; one more thing that needs fixing or thinking about. What matters more than solving the problem is keeping yourself in a state where you're able to solve problems. And draining yourself towards burnout is the exact opposite of what you should be doing. Take time off. Think about other things. Don't worry if you still think about the problem in the shower or before going to sleep, it'll drain itself from your brain eventually. No problem is as important as keeping your mental self in its best possible state.
(Yes, this post was totally advice to myself. Felt good to write about it though.)
Posted in
Daily Life
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Thoughts
Fatigue
I read a great article the other day about how Navy Seals are trained to ignore their body's signals for pain, because in reality muscles can be pushed a lot harder than when the safety signal goes off. The article also mentioned a seal who did a marathon and ended up breaking his foot because he ignored his pain signals. It doesn't even seem to be an uncommon thing with pro-athletes. If you've got a strong mind then you can force yourself to endure things that are not healthy to endure in the long term.
Yesterday my co-workers and I kicked off an exciting new thing, and we spent several hours thinking of a technical design for what we're going to program. When the day ended there were still things left undone so I felt excited (at first) to work a little more on the idea to get some important bits fleshed out. As time went on that excitement dissipated, but I forced myself to continue anyway because I was nearing the end. I managed to get a lot done before I went home, but in the evening some of the problems were still stuck in my head, and I found it hard to stop thinking about them.
Today I went to work at the usual time, did all the usual things, and continued deeper into the new idea. But at around 3 o'clock my brain just.. stopped. I ceased to be able to solve problems or find creative solutions to things. I tried forcing myself again to do a little bit more, but the results were not as effective as yesterday. I think I've reached a point where it's just not useful to try to do more. I don't think that forcing myself to work longer trains my brain to be more effective for a longer period of time. I've tried that for over 10 years now, and it just does not work. When my brain runs out of energy then the best thing to do is to just stop, walk away and do something else. Passive entertainment or a braindead session of Minecraft usually does the trick of keeping my mind occupied without feeling bored. But when the energy's gone I just don't feel like doing much else.
It seems much easier for me to hit my mental limits than it is to hit my physical limits. During cycling trips there were a few moments during which I really just felt all my muscle strength disappearing, and the only thing I could do was stop and have a snack before I could go on. But those moments were quite rare, whereas I hit my mind's limits just about every other day at work. It seems like my mind is permanently limited to under 7 hours of useful time when I'm at max capacity. the obvious thing to do is to not push myself so much and spread out the workload a bit more, which in the end is probably more productive. Sometimes you can't avoid getting fired up for a problem though. Next time I'll try to spread out my mental load a bit more. Pacing is key. Sustainability improves satisfaction.
The 9gag data mining scam
(Or: what is your <insert meme here> name? Click here to find out.)
Perhaps you're an occasional browser of 9gag or similar sites, and have come across images like these before:
People inevitably reply in the comments section with their hilarious name. Lately I've seen a lot more of these images than usual, and I'm guessing it's actually an attempt at data mining by some hacker trying to dox people. The questions on the images vary; sometimes it's the first letter of your name, sometimes it's the date you were born, the month you were born, the first letter of your mother's maiden name, and so on. People who are stupid enough to reply to these images with that data eventually create a very usable data trail that can be used by hackers to impersonate them on the phone. So yeah, have fun explaining to your bank that you publicly posted all details about your life in a poorly obfuscated manner.
Posted in
Tech