the "CEO Grindset" or "daily routine" stuff I see on Youtube and Medium has always struck me as a sort of peacocking for a certain level of the office crowd.
I once worked a construction equipment maintenance job. Basically we'd roll out of bed at 5 am, climb into a big truck, and drive out to wherever someone called us to fix everything from dump trucks to excavators. I cant remember a consistent day, ever. Some mornings its pouring rain and breakfast is a slim jim from the truck stop. Other days youre driving so much it hardly feels like anything is getting done. I started making lunch about calorie counts instead of time of day, and eventually got to just taking a couple of cliff bars for lunch tucked into my overalls. I guess coffee was consistent. we filled four thermoses at the truck stop and that used to cost us about $20. after we fixed the air hose in the parking lot we got all our coffee free. i digress. I didnt have a routine, no "stoic virtue" stuff. the only thing i did religiously was the vehicle check in the morning.
People who obsess over a pattern or "grindset" in life rarely do the work necessary to fulfill the ethic of that said routine. They miss the forest for the trees. Theres way more meaning and reward to being adaptable and resilient than there is in worshipping a pattern or coddling a routine.
This has kind of crystallised for me why I find the whole generative AI and "prompt engineering" thing unexciting and tiresome. Obviously the technology is pretty incredible, but this is the exact opposite of what I love about software engineering and computer science: the determinism, the logic, and the explainability. The ability to create, in the computer, models of mathematical structures and concepts that describe and solve interesting problems. And preferably to encode the key insights accurately, clearly and concisely.
But now we are at the point that we are cargo-culting magic incantations (not to mention straight-up "lying" in emotional human language) which may or may not have any effect, in the uncertain hope of triggering the computer to do what we want slightly more effectively.
Yes it's cool and fascinating, but it also seems unknowable or mystical. So we are reverting to bizarre rituals of the kind our forbears employed to control the weather.
It may or may not be the future. But it seems fundamentally different to the field that inspired me.
First, I have to make a personal confession — I never liked the SMS short-hand thingy that worked with pre-iPhone phones. That was one of the reason I seldom use SMS/Text-Messages unless I really need to.
I have been using text-expansion since the early days of TextExpander[1], an app that works on iOS and macOS. However good the iPhone keyboard was, it was always not convenient to type and retype details such as home address, home/work map, and many other work/personal related info. TextExpander helped a lot.
I started looking for an alternative when TextExpander converted to a subscription model, which I (personal) believe is not suitable for such a tool. I found a better alternative in Alfred[2], bundled with its Powerpack — Snippets.
macOS/iOS also has its built-in “Text Replacements” but it fails me quite often in non-Apple apps. What you have here is similar to that of Apple’s Text Replacement. I let that remain and the others are managed via Alfred. Honestly, I may move to this once I can totally walk out of Alfred (Spotlight is becoming good enough.)
However, I’d like to use a delimiter to expand so it does not come in the way of my normal typing (I can touch type). Currently, I use “,” (comma) as a delimiter (Affix) because, in English, there is always a space after a comma and my expansion is only after I type a comma and the short-text without a space. Also the comma key is located conveniently when you touch type.
If I do reconcile and stay with the OS’s Text Replacement, I might still introduce the delimiter to prevent automatic expansion of the word which wasn’t intended for that particular scenario.
I should look up the discussions for this quote, but I share your view -- such achievements are not _difficult_ or unattainable, they are a _necessity._
I pay for the convenience, productivity, and in some cases _safety_ of having someone else do certain jobs -- but I _always_ make it a point to understand _what exactly_ a professional is doing for me.
I've done all sorts of things in my two decades: I've replaced garage doors, high voltage lighting fixtures, electrical panels, theatre lighting, wheel bearings, strut towers, head gaskets, automobile brakes, ignition coils, automotive and marine batteries, flat tires. I've installed car radios, 120V 10+ Amp switches and outlets, appliances, cabinets, plumbing fixtures. I've assembled computers, shortwave radios, robots [out of legos, soon arduinos], model R/C planes, cars, etc.
I don't consider any of this _unattainable_ or even _extraordinary._ -- There are many things I hope I never have to do again, and there are many things that took me ages to do: but I'm still glad I did it, and I would _never_ put an upper bound on the number of things I _still need to obtain._
That is the key. I am not done, I will _never_ be done. I will go to the grave wishing I had accomplished more.
To say that two or three of these feats is a major achievement is laughable. _These achievements are what life is about._ Not the 8-hours I spend at my desk on a weekday, not the X-hours I spend watching television series, or reading fiction. Not the Y-dollars I spend or invest.
Life is about learning, creating, experiencing. Achieving two or three of the listed feats is no major achievement, it's the mark of a boring individual who cannot claim to _truly have lived._
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I don't expect everyone to be an expert on every field of study -- but I cannot understand the lack of desire to know more. You commute every day, why _wouldn't you_ want to know more about your preferred mode of transport. (How it works, how to repair it, etc.) Even if that's _walking_, there's plenty you can learn about exercise, biology, etc.
You probably get sick several times a year: why wouldn't you want to learn about modern medicine? Hygiene? etc.
How can one turn on a radio and not be _amazed_ that the signal is being broadcast from 10s or 100s of miles away? (Even 1000s in the case of shortwave radio.) The same thought applies to using a cellphone, or a wireless internet connection.
Many of my peers grew up with dial-up -- how are you not amazed that we have speeds a hundred times faster _with no wires!?_ How can you be content with the poor broadband speeds in North America when these same people have _seen first-hand_ what happens when we increase our speeds by an order of magnitude?
My fascination for corvus started when I saw Joshua Klein's Ted presentation in 2008[1]. Inspired by these recent findings I two weeks ago decided to get to know some crows. I bike commute every weekday and pass a place were I've noticed there's almost always a flock of hooded crows (corvus cornix).
I decided to feed them twice a day (when going to work and when leaving work). The first time they were very reluctant to pick up the nuts and seeds I threw to them. Me throwing things in their direction understandably made them hesitant. After I left however, I saw from a distance how they inspected the nuts and picked them up.
I did this two times a day for two more days. The day after that I saw a crow sitting on the ground a few hundred meters away. Soon it started flying straight towards me on the bike path. I slowed down and it landed straight in front of my bike and started cawing. I picked up the plastic bag of nuts, and it came right to me.
Fast forward to now. When they are at the place they come to meet me. A few times they have also showed up from nowhere (almost eerily) when I stop with my bike. One second I swear I can't see a bird anywhere, and a second later they land next to me. I've also had a fantastic experience were 10-20 crows flew with me and right next to me (when riding my bike) for a few hundred meters.
It has become a nice part of the day that lightens up my commute. I will keep doing this and see how things evolve. All in all, I would recommend building some interspecies relationships with crows. :)
I once worked a construction equipment maintenance job. Basically we'd roll out of bed at 5 am, climb into a big truck, and drive out to wherever someone called us to fix everything from dump trucks to excavators. I cant remember a consistent day, ever. Some mornings its pouring rain and breakfast is a slim jim from the truck stop. Other days youre driving so much it hardly feels like anything is getting done. I started making lunch about calorie counts instead of time of day, and eventually got to just taking a couple of cliff bars for lunch tucked into my overalls. I guess coffee was consistent. we filled four thermoses at the truck stop and that used to cost us about $20. after we fixed the air hose in the parking lot we got all our coffee free. i digress. I didnt have a routine, no "stoic virtue" stuff. the only thing i did religiously was the vehicle check in the morning.
People who obsess over a pattern or "grindset" in life rarely do the work necessary to fulfill the ethic of that said routine. They miss the forest for the trees. Theres way more meaning and reward to being adaptable and resilient than there is in worshipping a pattern or coddling a routine.