This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things.
"Have less exposure towards super fun things". "Get bored". These describe the same general concept as dopamine fasting. The third bullet point can be reduced to "focus on what you have to do, until you can focus on it" which is circular.
I'm not buying in. Maybe I'm getting old but "failure to start" is starting to sound like a meme to me perpetuated by vultures trying to exploit creative personalities, hackers included.
I think what we need to do, is to step back and appreciate ourselves for the effort we continually expect from ourselves. As hackers in one way or another, we are constantly putting up our ego as collateral in order to take on challenges that threaten to knock us down a peg or two if we fail. For many of us, failure is a threat to the core of our identity, yet we dive on in anyway. Exhaustion from that sort of loop is to be expected.
Most people don't live like this. Most people reduce the flux in their lives instead of seeking to increase it. Why? Because most people cherish their egos to the point where they cannot commit to a goal with an uncertain outcome. They would rather work a 9-5, which is fine, but it doesn't describe our community. We are addicted to risk if it means building something new and that we can call our own.
> You built a formula 1 race car and tossed the keys to kids with ego problems.
I laughed. Curl: The Formula 1 race car of command line tools!
Aside from that, I am surprised that the harasser followed up in a mostly non-violent way. I expected an absolute troll. Sadly in fact it seems the harasser is in need of psychiatric attention.
Shouldn't it be "had he looked."? Also the second rendition makes doesn't include what the rest of the joggers are doing, yet the first one does. Not sure if intentional.
At first I gasped at your practice, because I never do that, but I see the point now. Mastery of language.
//They showed an actual chip last time[1] but it seemed to me that it couldn't possibly house the logic necessary for data exfiltration. It looked like some sort of voltage conditioner. I am not an electrical engineer though.
This is shortsighted. The reason deep knowledge is more valuable is that learning anything stops being fun, and therefore presents less of a biological pull, after the first few milestones. There's a logarithmic decay in reward to effort put in. So naturally you're going to want engineers that have put in the hard work to build their knowledge, rather than the posers who read about engineering but never actually got into the nitty gritty. Why? Because it becomes rare, and scarcity drives up value. Simple!
EXAMPLE: Why would I care if my plumber also moonlights as a surgeon if all I care about is getting my faucet fixed without him passing the buck due to perceived complexity?
Those things are great in a dinner party setting, but in the professional workplace you want professionals not dabblers. Whenever I meet a self styled "generalist" nowadays I scoff. It's not hard to read HN daily and pick up on the lingo and memes and fake your way to 99% of a "generalist" in both knowledge and impression, but that doesn't make one a good engineer.
"Have less exposure towards super fun things". "Get bored". These describe the same general concept as dopamine fasting. The third bullet point can be reduced to "focus on what you have to do, until you can focus on it" which is circular.
I'm not buying in. Maybe I'm getting old but "failure to start" is starting to sound like a meme to me perpetuated by vultures trying to exploit creative personalities, hackers included.
I think what we need to do, is to step back and appreciate ourselves for the effort we continually expect from ourselves. As hackers in one way or another, we are constantly putting up our ego as collateral in order to take on challenges that threaten to knock us down a peg or two if we fail. For many of us, failure is a threat to the core of our identity, yet we dive on in anyway. Exhaustion from that sort of loop is to be expected.
Most people don't live like this. Most people reduce the flux in their lives instead of seeking to increase it. Why? Because most people cherish their egos to the point where they cannot commit to a goal with an uncertain outcome. They would rather work a 9-5, which is fine, but it doesn't describe our community. We are addicted to risk if it means building something new and that we can call our own.
So appreciate yourselves more.
And get better sleep.