Around 10 years ago, my friend and I were working on an assignment for our intro to programming course. The assignment involved controlling an LCD screen with an Mega 2560 board.
Finally, after many failed attempts and a few too many coffees we managed to complete the assignment. I left a comment in the code “// We did it!!!!”, and we called it a night.
The next day we tried to demo to our TA and suddenly our code wouldn’t upload. Tried multiple PCs, multiple arduino’s, and had multiple TAs look into our code. No idea.
Finally one brilliant TA heard our story and deleted the comment I left. Suddenly the upload worked! Turns out anytime the bootloader saw “!!!” anywhere in the code it would drop into debugging mode and cause the upload to fail. Even if it was in a comment! That bug gave me major trust issues working with that 2560 that semester haha
Exercise has some huge physiological and psychological benefits [0]. It won’t immediately cure serious mental illnesses, but it definitely doesn’t hurt.
Anecdotally, my mental health is much better with a good diet and some physical exercise every week.
I really recommend everyone to listen to Andrew Huberman's podcast [0] on Dopamine and how it affects motivation, focus, and satisfaction.
Many people see Dopamine as just a pleasure chemical, but it actually directly influences motivation and focus. We also all have a somewhat set amount of dopamine in a day, so participating in activities that release a short peak of dopamine (drugs, masturbation, etc) means that we have less dopamine, and therefore less motivation for the rest of the day.
I was also recently in a low motivation rut, however after making some lifestyle changes I feel much more motivated throughout the day. I stopped getting high, cut out all porn, and added 2 min of a cold water at the end of my regular shower. It was tough to start, but 100% worth it.
For me, being around friends and family and keeping myself busy helped the most. Keeping up with my hobbies, hanging out with friends, and focusing on work kept me sane. Not sure if it was the healthiest method, but I tend to get a little self destructive when my mind is left to itself.
Avoid the "what ifs". You cannot go back in time, and it is unfair to yourself to constantly question what you could have done different. Be kind to yourself.
Finally, one comment that deeply resonated with me during a time of grief is this reddit comment[0]. It helped give me some perspective in a time that seemed void of hope.
It does depend on the situation, and how easily you are able to change tools down the road. However analysis paralysis can be a never ending cycle, so at a certain point you need to accept that you just need to pick one.
If its a low cost, easy to switch tool then I'll force myself to stop over analyzing and just dive into the tool. Theres no better way to learn a tools shortcomings than actually using it.
A high cost tool is a lot more difficult. Personally, I assign myself a deadline to pick the tool (eg this week I'll research, next Monday I'll purchase) and then I must follow through on that day. Otherwise I will just keep overanalyzing every single comparison until neither tool looks attractive.
There are situations where you are going to pick the wrong tool. It happens. An example is I started music production in Logic Pro X, hated it, and ended up switching to Ableton. I spent a lot of time researching the two, but it was only once I started using them that I realized which tool suited me better.
Yes, that’s fair. My only exposure to LA culture is the entertainment industry and the large amount of influencers that are based in LA. So I’ll be the first to admit my understanding is shallow. I was just curious why you are so jaded to travelling.
My point still stands that travelling the world is not a completely shallow endeavour. However you seem obsessed with labelling people as shallow, which ironically comes across as pretty shallow in itself.
I don't mean to come across as rude, but maybe the LA influencer culture has you jaded? I can guarantee that not everyone wants to travel the world just for some instagram photos.
I do agree with some of your main points. You can't learn a culture in a week, and "helping" poor people for an instagram post is definitely problematic.
However being exposed to the different types of cultures around the world can be extremely valuable and eye opening. The world is a beautiful place with lots of interesting places to explore.
PG briefly touches on it here, but one of the biggest factors on being able to consistently work hard is reward.
PG mostly talks about intrinsic reward in this article. We should work on stuff that is interesting to us, and brings us fulfillment. However, I believe that Paul is missing a huge component here, and that is extrinsic reward.
Extrinsic reward complements intrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward allows us to push through the hard, difficult work that we might not be interested in, because we know the work will be rewarded. It is the light at the end of the tunnel for difficult work. PG, and Bill Gates were able to work so hard because they had internal belief that there was an extrinsic reward for all the work they were doing.
In a perfect world, we would all be completely self motivated to work on every task, but this just isn't realistic. Especially in today's working work. People like PG, and Bill Gates are able to fully credit intrinsic reward, but fail to mention that the extrinsic reward ($$) validated the hard, gritty work they put in.
This comment fails to see the real reason that Apple, Google, and Microsoft lock down their hardware and software, ease of use.
A vast, vast majority of the population could care less about learning about interrupts, tinkering with BIOS settings, etc. They want a device that is easy to use, and as simple as possible. So companies therefore abstract away 90% of the "creativity-inducing" components because a computer is a lot less intimidating when the user clearly knows what they can and can't do with it.
Apple and Google are not sitting in a meeting room pitching the best ways to stifle creativity. They are selling a product to a population that wants their highly complex device to be as simple as possible.
Admittedly, upon burning out, it took a while for me to actually acknowledge the multiple issues I was having in my life. I still had the toxic mentality of “just push through”, and therefore a lot of the personal work I did was incremental.
The very first thing I did was reduce my workload. It was probably still too much, but at the time it was unthinkable to stop working entirely.
Sleep, diet and exercise were next. Diet was nothing crazy, but I just wanted to eat consistent meals (I was massively underweight). Unfortunately I also had to come to terms with the fact that I am part of the population that needs at least 8 hours of sleep. I really wish I could manage on less sleep, but it is what it is. I’m also not a huge fan of running, but it massively reduced the amount of depressive and anxious thoughts, so I kept doing it.
After those changes I found that my energy levels were much better than before.
The next phase was completely mental. I hated that I failed at something, and had to learn to forgive myself. To be honest, I am still working on that. Also, I was terrified of burning out again, and went through a weird phase of over thinking and analyzing everything. Turns out it was analysis paralysis. Experimentation/tinkering helped with that. It also helped me relearn how to learn, and how to enjoy work again.
A therapist probably would’ve sped up this part of my recovery, but I hated admitting that I had a problem that I couldn’t solve myself. Very toxic mentality and one I still face to this day.
I also recently started journaling. I’m not overly consistent (working on that!), but it forces me to take a step back and evaluate my mental state at the time of writing.
It’s an ongoing process, and there are probably a lot of steps I’ve missed. However these were the major goals that I had, and achieving them definitely helped. It’s very cliche, but forgiving yourself and being honest with your capabilities is crucial.
Hopefully someone reading this can take something away from this. Burnout is no joke, and it has permanently changed my life.
TL;DR:
1. Reduction of workload.
2. Prioritize physical well being (food, exercise, sleep), and being honest with my body.
3. Improve mental well being.
4. Start experimenting, and relearning how to learn/work.
As the author mentions, the most critical part of pushing yourself is setting up a lifestyle that enables you to do so.
A couple years ago I was extremely naive and prioritized my work over everything else. Exercise, nutrition, sleep, and even relationships were seen as a waste of time, and were just a barrier to achieving more.
Then, eventually I burnt out. But even then I still tried to push myself. I started having anxiety, dissociation (mainly depersonalization), and a lack of passion towards anything in my life. It was a really rough point in my life.
After a lot of work I am now at a stage in my life when I can push myself again. However my highest priority is to maintain a lifestyle that allows me to push myself in a sustainable manner. This means good nutrition, fitness, and prioritizing my own mental well being.
The effects of that burn out are unbelievable. I still live with a lot of that today, but have learned to manage it. Push yourself, but please take care.
One of my favourite examples of sleep deprived hallucinations is from Courtney Dauwalter. Courtney is an ultra marathon runner (eg 200 miles) and there are many times we she is extremely sleep deprived while running.
She has mentioned that while running she has seen bunnies running alongside her, a violin playing man, and even a woman churning butter[0]! Very interesting how our mind reacts to minimal sleep.
Honestly, I am a big fan of this. I lived in Calgary this summer, and downtown they have a dedicated street for the train, busses, and emergency vehicles. No regular vehicles are allowed to drive down this street.
It's genius. The train lines are above ground so the lines were cheaper to manufacturer, Emergency vehicles can get across downtown very quickly, and busses also don't have to deal with congestion.
One of the worst interview questions I have had was "Rate your C++ knowledge from 1 - 10".
I had just finished my second year of college, and although I felt fairly confident in my C++ abilities I had no idea how to answer. I thought it would be best to be honest and said "4" based on the subset of the huge language I knew (honestly this rating was probably too high at the time!).
One of the interviewers was obviously unhappy with the answer, and was unpleasant the rest of the interview. I have always wondered what they expected from such an vague question.
Not a dumb question at all. Electronic music can be a lot of fun to make.
The fact you have a Mac, and a MIDI controller is a great start. The next steps would be choosing your DAW and then starting to experiment with the many different features.
I started working on my own mini synth with Teensy and the Teensy audio shield, however this seems like a great project to pivot to. Definitely plan on reaching out to the team and seeing if there is any way to help!
I used to buy Call of Duty every year. I love playing FPS games, and getting the newest game meant new guns, new maps, and just new ways to enjoy an FPS. Sure, you could argue that it is just a reskin, but I really enjoy playing FPS games and I'm okay with paying the retail price.
It baffles me that you are gatekeeping the concept of fun.
Finally, after many failed attempts and a few too many coffees we managed to complete the assignment. I left a comment in the code “// We did it!!!!”, and we called it a night.
The next day we tried to demo to our TA and suddenly our code wouldn’t upload. Tried multiple PCs, multiple arduino’s, and had multiple TAs look into our code. No idea.
Finally one brilliant TA heard our story and deleted the comment I left. Suddenly the upload worked! Turns out anytime the bootloader saw “!!!” anywhere in the code it would drop into debugging mode and cause the upload to fail. Even if it was in a comment! That bug gave me major trust issues working with that 2560 that semester haha