I very much learn by getting my hands dirty, so if I were you I would find a project. Either write a a simple song and put in on paper, or incorporate concept you learn about music theory into a song or riff on the instrument of your choice. I honestly don't think reading music is 100% essential depending on what your goal is for learning theory.
I take piano lessons over Zoom (a byproduct of COVID, but I work remote so it's convenient to sign off of work and migrate over to my keyboard in my office for my lesson). I needed an excuse to practice more scales and expand my own knowledge of theory and be able to more intuitively find a key while playing or build cords. I ended up building this rudimentary scale-generator in Rust.
I did so because I primarily wanted to learn Rust but also wanted a tool to practice and memorize more diatonic major and minor scales.
This CLI tool is far from perfect or what I would call done, but I'm sharing in case you may find some use out of it or just as an example of what I did to expand my knowledge. In writing this I learned a lot about how diatonic scales are structured, and how Western musical notation was designed in such a way to make intervals easier to play on instruments such as the piano. It really forced me to understand how the major and minor scales are structured in order to be able to model it in the code.
I don't support the artist Lorin Ashton aka Bassnectar (google his downfall if you're not familiar with it) but I found the analysis of this implementation done by the sound engineer to be very impressive.
The C-suite command their salaries not because of what they know, but because of who they know. So making economic predictions may not be their strength.
This is literally the opposite point of this:
If you don’t understand how economics 101 works, you probably didn’t deserve your high paying tech job,
Why not apply the same logic to tne C-suite folks rather than just individual contributors or the regular rank and file. Why are tech workers who exchange their labor and knowledge of working with technology dummies if they "don't understand the fed" (which I can guarantee you is not an expectation when working as a software engineer, product manager, etc.), but the C-suite gets a pass? Arguably the execs should understand how to navigate different economic climates if they get a leadership role, regardless of who they know. Also on an anecdotal note, every job I've ever gotten I've had to know someone, whether it be someone who works there or a recruiter, and I'm a worker in tech. So that argument doesn't hold up from my point of view.
Maybe you are an executive, or someone who has an acquired a taste for their carpet-protected rubber soles, and it's just a difference in opinion. But it seems to me by your own logic the executives are even dumber than the workers, there's really no reason for the original commenter to be so hostile. The whole point of the article is that it satirizes the decisions tech CEO's make because they are completely driven by the shareholder, but they are also major shareholders whose compensation is in equity.
Many stockholders don't understand macroeconomics
Including the C-Suite, they are forced to act out of their own self-preservation, which after a certain point, is just pure greed.
Why is it that the C-suite folks, who are supposed to understand macroeconomic trends or "Economics 101" as you're calling it, didn't see this coming and didn't make better decisions to not over-hire and mitigate reactionary cost-cutting. These companies have billions of cash on hand, but they choose the easy short term route of slashing labor costs to appease shareholders. I would argue this is a terrible long term solution on growth and profits (despite the shareholders impatience.
Besides even the big tech employees are closer to the average American worker than C-suite folks if you look at median salaries. You're talking down to a large group of people as if you somehow saw it coming before everyone else?
spending it instead on $30 door dashed organic salads
This is effectively the same argument as the one made by the Avocado Toast guy, and it's out of touch. You can empathize with folks that make less than you and still criticize the action of management that could have had the foresight to prioritize people over profit, but chose not to out of greed.
People don’t always get a job in what they major in. If he’s doing well and continues to do well he should complete his degree, he may not use much of it but it will set him up with the ability to learn and solve problems that other majors may not emphasize.
AI is good at generating simple examples in any given domain, including programming.
AI can't refactor code, or debug (or at least debug well as far as I know). Folks here can correct me if I'm wrong, I stopped looking into AI once I realized it wasn't as far along as most non-technical people seemed to think.
Things like Stable Diffusion and OpenAI have made great strides, but they will only serve to enhance humans' skills and abilities. There are limitations to what these tools can do, I wouldn't worry too much about having to compete with them once you're in the work force.
Even if it is, he's right. Although this is anecdotal, I have a friend who works in finance that said the drop in stock was coincidental to the stock price dropping. Apparently pharmaceuticals are a defensive sector in a bear market, and the market popping up last week meant the price of Eli Lilly dropped, as I understand it. In his words that tweet causing the stock to drop was "fake news"
Just seeing this, I'm new to HN so pardon me for missing your response.
>Do you have insights on how you discovered joy/contentment in the process of learning new things?
It took time. In fact "enjoying the ride" is something I still have to remind myself of. Really it was reflecting back on times where I was most happy, whether in college or in my early career. There were also times where I wasn't happy with my job or my given state in life, but I spent a lot of my time trying to learn skills so I could earn more money or get a promotion/better job. This was a grind.
The pandemic made me do a lot of self reflection, I saw a counselor, read a lot of existentialist philosophy (I would not suggest doing this if you're depressed), and pursued hobbies that I couldn't necessarily monetize. Piano lessons, playing chess, and writing short stories without the intention of publishing are a few examples. Playing instruments and games were activities that I did more often in college/high school, and I got so swept up in my career and investments that I seemingly lost a lot of joy in my life. Revisiting these passions from my past, I have no end goal with these other than to get better at them, because the better I get at them the more enjoyable it becomes.
Keep in mind this is my experience and what worked for me. Now knowing that I enjoy learning and improving even more than the outcome itself, it makes for learning professional skills more enjoyable as well. I will still occasionally crack open a self-help book, but I try to read them through the perspective that the insight the author provides is specific to their perception of reality and experiences, but sometimes it's nice to find anecdotes that we can apply to our own life.
To summarize, I stopped trying to discover how to be happy and just focused on making time to do things that I enjoyed, regardless of my expectations of myself or that time spent will have on my productivity or success.
Even when the host country doesn't commit human rights atrocities to build the stadiums I don't end up watching. Not sure if that counts as me boycotting though.
I see reading self-improvement books in a similar way that an athlete or bodybuilder would approach to lifting weights, a means to an end. My early twenties I was all about it, the 4-hour work week, Thinking Fast & Slow (although this isn't a self-help, it's just a great analysis from two brilliant behavioral economists), all that jazz.
That being said, the voice in the back of your mind has some merit. The "self-help" industry is entirely based on this preface that people aren't happy with themselves, they are selling you ideas that solved their problems, so why not yours? It's easy to get stuck in this cycle of "self-improvement" where you're hyper-focused on being your better self and you miss out on enjoying life.
For me, my anxiety and emotional state improved when I realized I got a lot of joy and contentment from the _process_ of learning new things, and trying to gauge my improvement always meant comparing myself to others.
Read these books if they help you, but realize there is some survivorship bias with how those authors achieved their success or even got their book published. Enjoy the ride, keep working hard but don't feel like it's the end of the world if you aren't going as fast as you think you should be.
I have to do authentication on my phone for my work VPN and other logins, plus I go for walks and still want to be able to answer slack so I keep my phone around. This obviously leads to distraction with various social apps, so I recently installed an app called Opal which does the app blocking, but doesn't let you get around it unless you sit and wait for 30 seconds before taking a "break".
The app is a bit pricey, $100 USD / year, but I sent a message to their customer support and they offered me a year subscription for $30 / year, which ultimately is worth the focus I end up getting for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Having good habits also help, but that takes diligent practice and discipline, which for me ebbs and flows.
I take piano lessons over Zoom (a byproduct of COVID, but I work remote so it's convenient to sign off of work and migrate over to my keyboard in my office for my lesson). I needed an excuse to practice more scales and expand my own knowledge of theory and be able to more intuitively find a key while playing or build cords. I ended up building this rudimentary scale-generator in Rust.
I did so because I primarily wanted to learn Rust but also wanted a tool to practice and memorize more diatonic major and minor scales.
This CLI tool is far from perfect or what I would call done, but I'm sharing in case you may find some use out of it or just as an example of what I did to expand my knowledge. In writing this I learned a lot about how diatonic scales are structured, and how Western musical notation was designed in such a way to make intervals easier to play on instruments such as the piano. It really forced me to understand how the major and minor scales are structured in order to be able to model it in the code.
https://github.com/tlegnard/scale-generator