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When I stopped trying to self-optimize, I got better
- datadrivenangel 3y agohttps://archive.ph/TUmGl https://archive.ph/TUmGl Boils down to: just do the thing, don't be anxious about it. Doesn't have anything to do with optimization.
- jaxelr 3y agoThanks for the TLDR.
- gloryjulio 3y agoTypical clickbait title. Thanks for the tldr
- eli 3y agoI think anxiety about doing things is very often at the core of self-optimization
- nonrandomstring 3y ago"The English have a system. It is no system. That's also a system. Only better." - unknown but mentioned in passing in [0] [0] Steven B. Smith's course polsci https://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-114 https://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-114
- tick_tock_tick 3y agoSounds like they weren't 'optimizing' if stopping yielded better results?
- Jensson 3y ago"I tried to self optimize and got better" is a more descriptive title. The article is just them discovering that self optimization is more complicated than they initially thought, but they never stopped trying.
- slothtrop 3y agoAgonizing about optimization =/= optimization. You don't need to "try".
- riwsky 3y agoDo or do not, there is no
- sambazi 3y ago> =/= which language does this?
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoit is called English
- sambazi 3y agonaturally the question was not targeting natural languages
- knallfrosch 3y agoIt's a deconstructed ligature: ≠ ⇒ =/=
- binarin 3y agoErlang
- blueyes 3y agoThe headline is misleading and kind of troll-y. Sure, self-optimizers can get in their own way, like everybody else, because there are lots of ways to try to improve, and not all of them work. This guy is basically saying he learned to focus and then he did the task in front of him better. That's also optimization, even self optimization. It's just not visualizing your future in a pink bubble/Tony Robbins stuff. The funny thing is, the headline will attract a lot of people who care about self-optimization and they'll read this and think "yeah that makes sense" and wrap it into their workflow. There's noise in the self-help space, nothing new. People who try to get better make mistakes (experiments), and try again. It worked for this guy!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ajkjk 3y agoI have found that happiness seems to be inversely proportional to how much time I spend worrying that I'm acceptable or likeable to others. Got a notion early in life that being liked would involve being the way other people are and trying not to be the way I am and that messed everything up for fifteen years or so. It was the realization that 'as myself I will still be appealing to others' that finally dispelled a ton of anxiety, or at least, seems to be dispelling it. Sounds trite but there you go. Anyway, the whole time it felt like being driven to optimize.. the wrong stuff. I now believe that the healthiest way to be always seems easy and happens for free, without willpower. But it requires being able to hear your own intuitive preferences, instead of rationally computing what you think they are from from what others seem to think you should be.
- HansardExpert 3y ago“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde
- phforms 3y agoI think what the author describes has a lot to do with relaxation and letting intuition take over (which is how I believe this “flow” state is achieved), instead of thinking too hard or making too much conscious choices and putting the mind under pressure with expectations of success. It is natural that this “strategy” would lead to more success in the end, which applies to any kind of challenging activity. I like the description as “subtracting”, since you kind-of have to empty your mind before doing the thing. But I believe this does not apply to practicing, where you do have to make conscious efforts and “add to” yourself a lot of stuff in order to internalize it and hopefully build up the intuition required for this flow state to work. As some here pointed out, doesn’t have to do anything with self-optimization. Although self-optimization may lead someone to believe that a lot of conscious effort is the key to success, when it can actually set them up for failure.
- nebulousthree 3y agoHear me out here: what if the realization that the conscious effort was in the way of optimization was part of the optimization all along??
- nicbou 3y agoSame. I found that the essential floats to the surface if you stop muddling the water. A free schedule, tea on the balcony and a long bicycle ride is how I get my best work done. I let ideas simmer for a while, and tackle them with a relaxed mind. Sometimes it's also good to just play and experiment. Without play we're just moody machines. It's just really hard to do things just because they're nice in an hypercompetitive society where it sometimes feels like there just isn't enough to go around. Stepping off the treadmill is a rare privilege.
- jihiggins 3y agoI think "self-optimize" is the wrong term to focus on. Imo, it's more about self-compassion / a more personal version of "psychological safety." Anecdotally, a few years ago I made a decision to run with my (ADHD driven) impulses when deciding what to spend my time on. It was difficult to let go, but I decided to let myself just fall behind with projects / work for a year or two (or until I was fired.) Long term, the benefits have far outweighed any downsides. I actually accomplish things without burning out now, and the drastic reduction in burnout has meant that I get much more done in general (work, side projects, life, etc.) Ultimately, worrying about success, failure, self-control, etc, seem to be fairly self-defeating.
- jakeinspace 3y agoIf you don’t mind, I’d love to hear a bit more. I feel like I’ve been pushing hard against my ADHD tendencies as well, very curious what it means and looks like to give in and flourish.
- appleiigs 3y agoWorking from home really helped me. I use the Tomato/Pomodoro technique, but backwards. I let myself be distracted for 10 minutes first, then I work for 20 mins after. Distractions such as laundry, reading news come first, which relieves the feeling that I need to do something else, calms me down. Then I can do 1 work task for 20 mins. Then when I feel restless again I spend another 10 mins doing what my mind wants (eg. brush dog)… then back to 20 mins of work. For me the point of the timer is to snap me out of the distraction or I’ll be on Hacker News for an hour.
- danShumway 3y ago> For me the point of the timer is to snap me out of the distraction or I’ll be on Hacker News for an hour. Timers are such a big deal with ADHD. It's not news to anyone that people with ADHD suffer from time blindness, but even knowing that I'm constantly underestimating how much it affects me. Even if I'm not doing a scheduled task, having something that regularly beeps or vibrates to shake me out of whatever I'm focusing on so I can ask, "how am I feeling, what am I doing, when was the last time I drank water, have I eaten today, what should I be doing right now" is very helpful -- at least until the brain learns to tune out the beep and you have to find a new sound. I highly recommend people having trouble with focusing or distracting to get a cheap wristwatch or some kind of timer and setting it to beep or vibrate every 10-30 minutes. Doesn't solve every problem, but helps a lot with staying just a bit more rooted in reality.
- Synaesthesia 3y agoOne of the important points in this essay is letting go of the outcome, and focusing on th process. This is something which I’ve discovered has helped me lately. When you are focused on the outcome, whatever your goal is, you will be anxious because you’re not there yet. But when you focus on the process, which is the way to get there, you become more forgiving of mistakes, and adopt a more resilient attitude.
- pdmccormick 3y agoOver the past year, I’ve made a deliberate effort to improve my “personal computing”, which for me is about how I use the shell. I start by trying to notice when I’m doing the same task multiple times and getting tripped up on the specific syntax or sequence of commands (i.e. what’s the Git command again to split certain files out of a previous commit into a separate one?) I will then create an alias, a shell script or maybe a larger program to start addressing it, solving my initial use case first, and gradually revisiting things over time to make improvements. Through this process I’ve created a whole idiom of commands for myself. I have no pretense that they would be useful to anyone else, and I don’t sweat them beyond their ability to make my life easier. From these incremental efforts, I find I have access to a new kind of language in my mind. Especially with Git, I find myself seeing it as an extension of my mental process, integral to how I even think about solving problems, not just a VCS I use to push code around. By noticing how I was working, I didn’t seek to optimize where I was at, I sought to graduate to levels where what previously needed optimization just doesn’t exist.
- adasdasdas 3y agoI thought everyone does this haha
- keyle 3y agoEveryone does this. Otherwise you'd go bat sh*t crazy trying to remember every intricate details of common tools. also using ctrl+r and filter through older commands (ctrl+r to cycle) is also necessary for good mental health. for example alias ll="lsd --icon never -l" alias lla="lsd --icon never -l -a" # all alias llr="lsd --icon never -l -r -a" # reversed alias lls="lsd --icon never -l -r -a -S" #by size alias llt="lsd --icon never -l --tree" #tree alias lld="lsd --icon never -l -d -a --tree" #directories tree alias m='micro' alias ss="git status" alias diff="git diff --color | cat" alias log="git log --graph --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" alias lz="lazygit" alias dc="docker-compose" # rust alias cr='RUST_BACKTRACE=1 cargo run' alias clippy='cargo clippy' ... many others Soon enough, when you start piping these, you end up with your own bash language, cca. of that time you thought it was a good idea to augment C with macros (sic!)
- stevage 3y agoSeems the subeditor put a really confusing title on this.
- nirui 3y agoI'm sure the scenery near the cliff is beautiful, and climbing can be a good experience. But then I don't really think failing the first few tries is a lost. Funny enough, the first few things that I want to learn before a "self-optimize" includes what could happen if I failed (and how to recover from it). The combined knowledge makes the process safer (for your time and effort). The first time I tried to drive a car, the first thing I asked the teacher even before I started the engine was "what should I do in order to make it stop?", because I expect mess ups, the knowledge on how to react to it might be valuable later. BTW: Another thing that I've learned in my life so far is don't get too fixated on something. Life is short, putting your effort on one thing removes it from another. Not all optimization is required, which is true in software development as well as in life. The city where I live got a few cliffs from mining operations, almost 90 degrees up down and very tall. I lived under one of them when I was little, but I never developed any passion for it. If I try to climb it base on my none-existing skills, I'll probably end up as a missing-person record and food for mountain rats. But I never feel any lost in my life for not able to climb those cliffs. There are so many struggles we can commit our lives to fight against, the act of picking a good one is equally important as the fight itself.
- llimos 3y agoI've always been most successful at work in places where I don't care about the result and I'm just enjoying myself.
- dqft 3y agoI see that art at the top of the page and I reflexively close the window.