## August A good rule for meetings: Don't bring your ego to a facts fight. Sadly, the reverse is also true. ___ > "Writing is nature's way of telling us how **lousy our thinking is**." *— Leslie Lamport* I've just heavily edited my piece on the [[Zeigarnik Effect]]. As I wrote it, it felt fairly clear and straightforward. Asking around for feedback and letting some time pass helped me realize how unclear and unstructured it was. The argument was full of holes as I was jumping back and forth between ideas all along. Funny how you don't notice what's missing from someone else's perspective, how many gaps your brain is filling either to protect or help you, and how confident you feel that you've said all there is to say for your interlocutor to understand you unless you actively seek feedback. A critical issue when writing is getting relevant feedback, which is not straightforward depending on what you write about. This is something I'd like to work on. ___ >"All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone." *— Blaise Pascal*  I have been more or less respecting a Sunday Shabbat for a couple of months now. It gives rhythm to my week, and I started to realize how much I forget to let myself breathe. In music, silences between the notes are as important as the notes themselves, this is where they hang and dissolve into one another. Similarly, we need time doing nothing, so that our mind can process everything that we've been doing. ___ Seneca's Letter II from [[Letters from a Stoic - Seneca|Letters from a Stoic]] clicked with some other ideas I had been compiling on [[Rejection]] in the background, so I felt it was about time I structured them here. What resonated with me the most: "Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing." ___ 18 years have gone by since the last line of C++ I wrote. I plan on alternating courses and personal projects to get up to speed. My first project (where is the fun in starting with a course) is [[Drawing the Mandelbrot Set with SFML]]. I will enrich the project notes as I move the project forward. In the meantime, I've started taking [Introduction à la programmation orientée objet (en C++)](https://www.coursera.org/learn/programmation-orientee-objet-cpp/). I've already found quite a few inaccuracies, mostly statements on how the language works, and outdated content. But it's still a decent outline of the core concepts. I'm taking the time to dig deeper and proof check the materials for myself, and compiling them into a [[fieldnotes/Topics/C++ Reference|C++ Reference]] so it can benefit myself in the future, and others. ___ Earlier this year I read [[How to Take Smart Notes - Sönke Ahrens|How to Take Smart Notes]]. I discovered the [[Zeigarnik Effect]] and made a few notes on the topic, at last. The gist is, either you get the compounded effect of being focused on meaningful problems, or that of being distracted by menial stuff. I'm trying to implement simple daily strategies so that it can benefit me instead of derserving me. ## July Read the article [You and Your Research](https://d37ugbyn3rpeym.cloudfront.net/stripe-press/TAODSAE_zine_press.pdf) by Richard Hamming, which has found his way into his book [[The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming|The Art of Doing Science and Engineering]]. Just like Schopenhauer advocates that the best way to read good books is to avoid reading bad ones, he outlines the necessity of working on important problems if one wants to achieve meaningful results, while noticing most of us are busy with what we deem ourselves to be second-order problems. Of course, your definition of important is unique. A puzzling problem he offers practical solutions to. ___ As I'm teaching myself Calculus, I've started writing a series of articles, [[Calculus by Example]]. Those are meant to walk you through practical problems of gradually increasing complexity, introducing one concept at a time. The motivation for this is twofold. First, most Calculus courses, books and resources I could put my hands on presuppose you have either access to external help, like a university TA or prior extensive knowledge, making some of the explanations circular, at least to me. Second, explaining things helps me identify the limits (punintended) of my understanding and ask questions to refine it. ___ Had some thoughts on [[fieldnotes/Essays/Positioning Beats Grinding|positioning]] while watching *House of David*. ___ I've been reading [[The Bed of Procrustes - Nassim Nicholas Taleb|The Bed of Procrustes]]. It's a repository of aphorisms, and as a review I thought it'd be interesting to (1) explain the book's leitmotive (2) try to write a few aphorisms myself on the subject. Talk the talk and walk the walk, as they say. ## June > "If you're wrong, you will die. But most companies don't die because they are wrong; most die because they don't commit themselves. They fritter away their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in standing still." (Grove 1996) Indecision kills. [[Two-Way Door Decisions|Most decisions are reversible]], so instead of staying stuck in [[Analysis Paralysis|analysis paralysis]] or committing yourself to everything at once, you can approach them are tests or [[Thinking in Bets - Annie Duke|bets]]. The only thing you really need to decide *ahead* of time is (1) how you're going to evaluate whether the decision you're making is living up to your expectations, (2) the criteria based on which you'll get out of the decision, and (3) how much resources you're willing to sacrifice to get the answer. Then you can just let the answer self-compute. ___ [[Resulting|Resulting]] works both in hindsight and foresight. If you're focused on what your ego wants to achieve instead of what you're actually doing, you can't perform well. A mental trick to distance yourself from your ego is trying to fail. Below is Willem Dafoe discussing the idea much better than I ever possibly could.  ## May This morning I came across a mother and her child on their way to school. She asked her son: Do you enjoy learning? I feel this is something we often dismiss. Enjoy ourselves and laughing at work is essential. We're told or tell ourselves the struggle must be part of the process. And by struggle I mean being bored to death. Maybe struggling is what we do because it feels familiar, safe and under control after all the lousy teacher we came across. Maybe we should unlearn learning. Paradoxically, I'm convinced having fun is the only way to get good at anything. At least the only thing I ever became good at were things I enjoyed doing. I don't remember who it was who said you can’t compete with someone who's having fun. It would then follow that a good strategy for life is to focus on what is fun to you and work to others. ___ >"Ce qui se conçoit bien s’énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément." >— *Nicolas Boileau* My litmus test for bullshit is both simple and deadly effective. It's useful in hiring and other kinds of situation where someone's bullshit can harm you. The best part is, it works even if the person if front of you knows you're doing it. When someone engages in name dropping and complex jargon, there are two possible explanations: (1) They know something you don't, or (2) they're faking it. The test is to simply admit you don't understand and persistently ask for clarification. People bluffing rely on the fact you are afraid to look like an idiot. If you demonstrate your willingness to ask as many 'stupid' questions as it takes, you neutralize their strategy. Three things can happen from there. (1) Your interlocutor actively tries to drown you in jargon while acting as if they're saying trivial things to discourage you to ask further questions. They're building a wall and failed the test, so act accordingly. (2) They genuinely know something you don't and you can see they're trying to find a way to explain what they thought to be obvious in simple terms. You're both trying to build a bridge, but you still fail to achieve clarity after a reasonable amount of efforts. Either you should not be the person interviewing them or they're not the right person for the job. In any case, establishing communication proves to be hard, which is a red flag. Do what you must. (3) They welcome questions and the pool of shared understanding grows by the minute. They've passed the test. Bullshit relies on your passive acceptance. So don't give it. ## April Rain is much more fun when I'm running. I call it "free coolant" then, and take it as a challenge. I actually feel energized by the sheer realization this will demoralize many a participant, thus giving an edge to whoever doesn't care or benefits from it. Yet, for some reason that escapes me, I keep noticing how pissed I am when it rains while I'm walking around the city. [[Stressors|Stressors]] act as sources of energy and motivation only if you allow them to. Otherwise, you will be crushed under the weight of all the things you don't control accumulating in the background. I remember reading something on athletes and stress; a journalist or a researcher was surveying athletes and telling them they must be stressed before competition day. Most athletes responded by stating they were feeling excited and energized. Studies have shown both stress and excitement have the same physiological cues but drastically different results. Framing matters.