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mindhash

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This saddens me. I recently started psychology of human misjudgement.

Someone in thread asked what’s big deal about him. what did he achieve

My answer would be I never tried to look into his achievements or did care about them. The man was genuinely curious, humble and a geek. He constantly published his ways of thinking. I enjoyed how he thought about things, how i could relate self correct based on it.

The book also mentions that people who had built a habit switched back to old habits under stress. It looks like author had this situation. Multiple parallel things led to an overwhelming routine and he fell off the waggon. Meditation helped hi. apply breaks and re think on every day decisions

In my experience in order to build or break a habit you must be able to tie the action to its immediate results. It can be placebo but in your mind that association must settle in. Meditation for a lot of people creates a state of calm afterwords. Mainly if you breathe at a lower that 6 breaths per minute. The calmness likely leads to better decisions and helps that way. It looked like the author has been overwhelmed with stresses of life. Meditation helped to apply breaks and steer the wheel.

the question is 'what is serious?' generally one can go about every piece of code with a mindset that if it fails the sky will fall, or on the other extreme 'let it fail' philosophy.

I like to take a mix of slow and fast approach. While some cases demand test-driven development, in other scenarios the test cases can follow the user demand. I like to build test coverage slowly depending on most used parts of the code. So they coverage catches up slowly but at the same time i am not spending time on test cases for things that don't get used at all.

This means, I would prefer releasing features in small batches and as the features start being used, I start improving the coverage. While this may not work for all the teams or environments, it is one approach to build early stage products. which I mostly do.

My recommendation will be to track HRV (1) and do the high intensity only when you are on or above your baseline. This is to avoid unexpected side effects of HIIT. If you can't get a hrv tracker then best to keep track of your heart rate recovery. It is common to see heart rate stay high after the exercise, it should return to normal in a few hours (3-4 hours). if not then you are over doing it.

1 - Apps like Elite HRV, hrv4training or Devices like Garmin (watch), CoreSense (Elite HRV), Scosche Rhythm+, polar or garmin chest wrap.

such an important point here. The benefits of exercise are maximum when you start from a sedentary life. You will hit plateau at some point and then one has to re-think the plan.

I am doubtful that just 10 min exercise over a few years will get you in a better shape.

Another factor greatly ignored is HRV as key indicator of recovery and response to an exercise. Andrew Flatt (1) is a researcher and has been studying his cardio fitness through HRV for over 10 years. His observation is 10 sec high intensity + 50 sec break in between for 10 minutes improved his hrv. He also thinks 15000 steps contribute to better HRV as good as athlete level.

While there are plenty of questions about 10k steps, what if 15k steps do the trick?

In general, I think since HRV and VO2 max are trackable using hand-held and would be best parameters to track usefulness of an exercise over time. It is always likely that an exercise works at some point and doesn't at other. Possibly because you are more fit now or you have other life stresses dragging you down.

In my experience, a lot of these studies are not reproducible. Because every person is different and context is different too. Genetics add another layer to this. Best is to keep track of your own parameters and try things out.

References: [1] https://hrvtraining.com/

When I first looked at dGraph, I was unimpressed. The interfacing, documentation looked like it was meant for their internal team.

A few well-known Open source projects lack user-centric product thinking. I felt dgraph had this issue.

I had a similar experience when I joined a team. The architect was highly opinionated and wanted things to be done in certain way. The problem however wasn't with him. The management would usually pin all technical debt and issues on this architect. He was supposed to be answerable for anything that goes wrong. Which made him a control freak. He wanted to know anything and everything in detail.

It's more of a culture problem.

When I realized this, I started sympathizing a bit with him. Made sure he understood what I was trying to achieve and comfortable with the code base. He was reluctant to accept new ideas but I pitched them anyway.

This is the nature of the job I realized. And it brought peace to me. I did however consider new opportunities with more freedom. But the controlling nature of the team did not bother me

I was in a similar boat. I turned to books. Read all that I could find in philosophy, leadership, and science of life in general.

I also spent lot of time studying other startups and what they did differently to win.

The founder fatigue is natural especially when we pour our heart into it. Failure hits hard. I read an interesting discussion between kapil gupta and naval. We attach our 'self' to much with the startup.

While most literature focuses on avoiding thoughts, my learning after last couple of years is - the only skilll that can help is patience. Being able to wait is the primary skill I now focus on.

Good luck.

Some book recommendations: Anything from JD krishnamoorty, why zebras don't get ulcers, extreme leadership, charles duhigg both books, power of now (mindfulness), and most important why we sleep.

My dad lived in a small town in India for most of his life.

When I come across stoicism and read about it, I realized he has been living like a stoic his whole life. His way of approaching life is so aligned with the concept. And yet he has never read or heard about Epicteus.

I have been reading a lot of books about philosophy lately, but I realise the most you can learn is from people around you.

The books are often contradictory. In the exact same situation, a book titled why zebras don't get ulcers, the author claims venting out is much healthier to reduce stress. There was a study done which indicated people who vent out on the spot are less likely to be stressful (less stress harmone).

Observing how others deal with situations and picking the best out of them works out well for me.

When I come across a friend who managing a heated argument and is calm after ward, I try to learn from him. Understand why he is able to do so.

I read in a book, the idea is to break away from a similar kind of task and get back to it after break. If you are still at the computer doing other things while the code is being executed, you are in the same zone different task. But if you use the breaks to do a completely different activity you will be able to come back with a fresh mind and do the task well.

So read a paper book , take a walk, print research papers and read them when you are waiting,

The idea is to treat each of the tasks between waiting as individual task.

Edit: book mind of numbers

Reminds me how the author of sapiens failed at self publishing selling just 2k copies and then went kn to republish with better marketing, strategy, which led to over 2.7 million copies

I think writing is no different than a startup, it takes incredible amount of time and strategy to make it through.

The important thing is not to market your app or product but focus on the job it performs. Write about that job, what can be done to get better at it and then pitch your product sometimes when its relevant. The core idea of this is to focus less on the product and more on making the job of people easier more productive even if its out of your products scope. Iterate your product to get closer to above goal. For more: read about Job to be done theory.

Imp thing is to realize nothing is free. If someone is offering free plan, its mostly because they are monetizing on features or other products. So compete with the paid features of product instead of worrying about free plan.

Gmail has a free plan but there are superhuman and hey. Both competing in paid email space.

Don't worry too much about free plan, add features that users will pay for.

I would advise looking for free lancers who have build their own products either a side project or a startup that failed/succeded. This will make your life easier.

And when you hire them, try to treat them as partners and involve them in decision making.

This is spot on.

I had a similar experience. Especially first time entrepreneurs are not great at making choices. You ask A vs B and they say I want both.

Given the constraints of a startup, one has to learn to let go. In corporate world, with unlimited resources you can buy all candies and not pay for it. But startup is a different game

Just sharing my flow for those looking to build note taking apps:

I use whatsapp for note taking. It solves a similar problem for notes as drop box did for files.

My notes are usually pointers. I don't track tasks in there. Tasks go into a separate app. I use apple mac reminders for task tracking. The way I use it is - I ask siri to set a reminder with task desc.

My tasks are reminders that I extend if they are not done by the expected time.

I like to write a personal log of discoveries and my day. It seems to help my team catch up on stuff I am working on.

I got this idea from dask dev notes [1]

Its amazing how every day/week history of project can help new comers.

It also helps getting your team members reach out to you. When I used to work in office a lot of people used to reach out with problems and I loved solving them. There was a freshness to these problems

But in remote scenario when I joined a new team, no body knew my strengths and I missed those times. But I think a log of this kind can help people know your abilities and give you more opportunities to solve problems outside your routine context.

https://blog.dask.org/

I had a similar experience. It does reduce the calls after a while. Some people will still not get it, thats ok.

I also tried posting video walkthroughs for those who don't read. Okish response.