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I like your idea... it makes me wonder if it's possible to change your own "ground state". It certainly seems like it would be an awesome lifehack if you could

I like your idea... it makes me wonder if it's possible to change your own "ground state". It certainly seems like it would be an awesome lifehack if you could change it over time to suit your objectives.

DarrenMills 16y ago
I would say yes. But not in the sort of way most people would hope to. Meaning, you can't just pick any new ground state and change to it very easily. Instead, you must educate yourself in new areas and you'll find yourself being driven to new ground states that were impossible options before your new education. Now you are 'falling' back into something that is, more or less, the same concept... but far more powerful now that you've given yourself more tools. For example, my ground state used to be browsing the web and aimlessly brainstorming business ideas when I was in high school. Seven years later I've thoroughly taught myself how to build concrete business models and virtually test/evaluate them with thought experiments and many other similar concepts. Now my ground state falls to that: effectively the same sort of ground state but amplified with skills and knowledge.
mortenjorck 16y ago
My ground state appears to have consisted for some time of sitting down and reading discussion boards. Somehow, over the last month, I seem to have replaced it with instead working on my music project. It wasn't really a conscious decision, but I found I started to engage the same pattern of either completing or losing initiative in whatever I was doing, pacing aimlessly for a brief period, then almost automatically starting up my recording software instead of a web browser. Maybe it was just as simple as finding inspiration. I've become slightly obsessed with a couple of albums recently, and have been composing more in the past few weeks than I did in the last six months.
alnayyir 16y ago
In my experience, yes. I shifted my ground-state from 90% video games to 33% video games + 66% coding. It's helped a lot, but I would like to push it further.
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago
  All work and no play..
  - johnfn 16y ago
    I code all day - well, so long as I'm not on HN :) As long as you don't believe that coding is work, you can do so much of it. Just find a project or a problem that you really enjoy working on and hack on it.
  - alnayyir 16y ago
    I do a lot of non-work-related coding in addition to my work-related coding. I do it because I enjoy it. Nobody's going to pay me to (edit: because I'm not a tenured professor) make finite state machines, toy languages in LLVM, and roguelikes.
    - klipt 16y ago
      The problem with roguelikes is that while coding them is good practice, actually playing them is pretty much a pure waste of time. Which makes me wonder whether I can still justify coding them...
      - thewhitewizzard 16y ago
        This can be said of any game. Whether or not something is a waste of time is determined by the user, not the creator of the game. If you like coding them, then code them and gain the experience of coding them.
jdavid 16y ago
i have found that if i want to be a designer, it takes a few weeks to get thinking about design, about noticing good design and bad design everywhere and the imitating it in my work. however, if i want to think about raising money, or engineering the same is also true. so it may be possible for people to wear many hats, but maybe it's best if you only where one hat a month.

DarrenMills 16y ago

I would say yes. But not in the sort of way most people would hope to. Meaning, you can't just pick any new ground state and change to it very easily. Instead, you must educate yourself in new areas and you'll find yourself being driven to new ground states that were impossible options before your new education. Now you are 'falling' back into something that is, more or less, the same concept... but far more powerful now that you've given yourself more tools. For example, my ground state used to be browsing the web and aimlessly brainstorming business ideas when I was in high school. Seven years later I've thoroughly taught myself how to build concrete business models and virtually test/evaluate them with thought experiments and many other similar concepts. Now my ground state falls to that: effectively the same sort of ground state but amplified with skills and knowledge.

mortenjorck 16y ago

My ground state appears to have consisted for some time of sitting down and reading discussion boards. Somehow, over the last month, I seem to have replaced it with instead working on my music project. It wasn't really a conscious decision, but I found I started to engage the same pattern of either completing or losing initiative in whatever I was doing, pacing aimlessly for a brief period, then almost automatically starting up my recording software instead of a web browser. Maybe it was just as simple as finding inspiration. I've become slightly obsessed with a couple of albums recently, and have been composing more in the past few weeks than I did in the last six months.

alnayyir 16y ago

In my experience, yes. I shifted my ground-state from 90% video games to 33% video games + 66% coding. It's helped a lot, but I would like to push it further.

aaronblohowiak 16y ago
All work and no play..
- johnfn 16y ago
  I code all day - well, so long as I'm not on HN :) As long as you don't believe that coding is work, you can do so much of it. Just find a project or a problem that you really enjoy working on and hack on it.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  I do a lot of non-work-related coding in addition to my work-related coding. I do it because I enjoy it. Nobody's going to pay me to (edit: because I'm not a tenured professor) make finite state machines, toy languages in LLVM, and roguelikes.
  - klipt 16y ago
    The problem with roguelikes is that while coding them is good practice, actually playing them is pretty much a pure waste of time. Which makes me wonder whether I can still justify coding them...
    - thewhitewizzard 16y ago
      This can be said of any game. Whether or not something is a waste of time is determined by the user, not the creator of the game. If you like coding them, then code them and gain the experience of coding them.

jdavid 16y ago

i have found that if i want to be a designer, it takes a few weeks to get thinking about design, about noticing good design and bad design everywhere and the imitating it in my work. however, if i want to think about raising money, or engineering the same is also true. so it may be possible for people to wear many hats, but maybe it's best if you only where one hat a month.