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Comment by prashnts | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic but this practice of talking-out-loud to get yourself doing stuff is also beneficial to people with executive dysfunction. If your executive function is impaired you generally don't have the "internal monologue" or the voice in your head. This makes seemingly simpler things like taking a shower, driving, or eating, very difficult! I'd often "forget" to eat, simply because I could not get myself to start.

I found that it helps to announce (not necessarily loud) what I am to do, and the steps to do so. ("Okay we're going to get up and walk to the kitchen.", "We're walking now")

Though for some reason I use plural pronouns for myself -- we, us etc. Does somebody else do that too? :)

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This technique is also useful for software development, and is referred to as rubber duck debugging (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging). Verbalizing your problem lends you another point of view to your thinking and often allows you to discover the problem yourself.

Writing detailed commit notes can be useful in the same way. I have backed out of a commit during the write up more times than I would like to admit because I realized that I hadn't covered some edge case or I completely forgot about something (like the effect of the change on a report or other sub-system). Writing things out in a way that someone else can understand forces you to re-think through the task in different ways.

People sometimes tease me for reviewing my own pull requests.

But I am a big believer in roles. The reviewer role is different than the creator role. When I mentally switch, through the priming mechanism of my code review tool, I am often able to see the defects in my own design or code.

I sometimes do the same thing with design docs or proposals by imagining myself as the person who has the most to lose by my proposal succeeding and then commenting on my doc from their perspective.

I've read that adding the "BUGS" section to man pages in the early days of UNIX had a similar impact. The developers got so embarrassed by the content that they decided to fix the bugs instead.

It is similar with the product we are developing. When I need to explain to the user how some feature is used, I often end up redesigning said feature so that explaining should not be needed. Makes for a much better UX. :)

I try to explain my motivation behind change in commit log and avoid technical details myself.

But I have another checkpoint. I always diff the code and review it as if I had to show it to a reviewer. If I need to explain something, it should be made better.

I'm certain the value here comes from changing your focus and mindset. If you switch to a mode of thinking of "I ned to give you (the rubber ducky) context and explain concepts so that you can see intention and reasons for this code chage/ bug behavior". This change of mindset allows you to view and reason about things better.

I learned about that once when someone turned around, started explaining the bug, and during the explanation, realised what the issue was. He then said, "Thank you for being my rubber duck."

"Your what?"

"Look it up."

Indeed :). The background of the term is said to be in some university, which had a rubber duck near the CS teacher rooms. It was mandatory there to first ask help from the rubber duck, before bothering the real teachers. According to the tale, more than half of the students left after talking to the duck.

I take notes when I deal with a hard bug or write a email I never send.

I usually start making a Stack Overflow post and if the subject is general enough I'll end up posting it.

Sometimes if I find myself task saturated, I'll say to myself something like, "OK, what am I doing. We need X, Y, and Z. X is most important, so let's do X," as a way of regaining focus. Then again I work from home, so if I didn't think aloud from time to time, my vocal cords would rust from disuse. :)

I apparently so this a lot when I'm cooking. I never noticed it until my wife watched me cook for the first time.

This actually describes me a lot. I never had a word for it, but I often describe my ADHD by telling people that I don't have the internal monologue that tells me to eat, take out the trash, or what I was doing before I was distracted by HN. I've actually been in the middle of typing a word and had to remind myself, out loud, what I was doing. It's very strange to see something I thought was very specific to me be described by sometime else

Regarding the plural first-person, that's perfectly natural: just think of it as a heads-up to the legion of symbiotic gut flora and face-dwelling mites that you're carrying along for the ride. :)

And any scientific writer. Even with a single author you would still write "we" everywhere.

Ah yes, scientific writing and making sure your bodily ecosystem don't feel left out. :)

"Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their head." -William James

On twitch, the streamers like to say "we." I've never understood it. I wouldn't bat an eye at it being an unusual thing one streamer did, but it seems like they all do it.

I think it seems phony, in that context.

In yours--I think it's uncommon, but I can't think of a reason why it would be a problem.

"We" in a context like this refers to the speaker and the reader/viewer together, to me.

on youtube a lot of single people operation use the "We" pronoun a lot. I guess it' a mix of wanting to look bigger, wanting to include the audience, but now it's become a trend.

this isn't because of Youtube. this is because it helps to envision the "you" you as a different entity from the "you" you. I know that doesn't make sense :) It's like saying there's two of us: the one who forgets to do things like lock the door, and the one who really wants to lock the door. "We're going to lock the door right now," we say, because we know one of us will probably forget.

I'm a serial talk-to-myselfer, and I've been saying things like "ok we're going to get gas for the car now" or "we're making french toast this morning" since I was twelve.

I "we" too, the cause of this is imo because it's your brain's desire/automatic function and your brain's thinking part that are not entirely connected. Yet they are both an I, and 2 I's make a we.

Alternatives to we that also would work imo: Me and you( you being directed at one-self), Me and me, Me's (as in plural), I's (as in plural).

> Though for some reason I use plural pronouns for myself -- we, us etc.

It's just a special case of the inclusive "we". I think here "I" would evoke more of a sense of plurality: it suggests an addressee distinct from the speaker.

I always use the inclusive "we" when talking to myself about a program or writing comments, even when I'm the sole developer.

> If your executive function is impaired you generally don't have the "internal monologue" or the voice in your head.

You're assuming here that all people even have that in the first place.

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