BigHatLogan

Geez--that sounds rough. I literally cannot imagine what that must be like (and hope I never have to). Good luck with everything.

Haha--I'm glad you also brought up the packages and waiting in line. It's such a strange annoyance. Like you said, you experience multiple surgeries per year, yet you still experience the same frustration with the packages! I find that incredibly...reassuring is the word that comes to mind. That hopefully means I'm not just some impatient, sulky person, and that we all experience similar day-to-day annoyances, no matter who we are or what our situation is.

Has having the heart defect had a noticeable "outcome" in your life? I guess what I mean is: Do you feel you've made different, better, more conscious choices about school, career, friendships, relationships, etc. due to your having this condition? I think most of us imagine that if we were suddenly diagnosed with a terrible illness or condition, we'd probably start immediately prioritizing things, maybe even quit our jobs, etc. But I'm also suspicious if that's really true. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Well said, especially the part about being intentional. I try to maintain perspective now and then, but I find that it goes away pretty quickly at the first sign of something frustrating. I guess that means I have to practice it a little more.

I like this idea. Five seems like a lot, but I like the general gist of it. One of my friends keeps a web page open called "Mori Clock" or something along those lines. You input your birthday and it shows you how many weeks, on average, you have left remaining. I'm not sure how useful it's been for his day-to-day experience, but it's an interesting idea, like yours.

That was quite nice. The writer seems to be in relative peace about the whole situation, or at least as peaceful as one can be knowing that the end is near.

Unrelated but related: How do we keep stories like this in the "middle" of our minds? I've noticed with myself--and many others--that we read articles and essays like this, contemplate them for a moment or two, think about how we should be more {appreciate, grateful, thankful} for what we have, but then--inevitably--somebody cuts you off in traffic, or the plumber is late, or your coworker does something annoying, and just like that, everything comes flooding in.

Is this just human nature (or my own nature)? While reading this essay, I became much less frustrated about a delayed shipment I'm waiting for, and thought to myself, "ah what the hell! It's just a small package! Life is too short to get worked up about things like this." But I know that tomorrow morning I won't feel that way.

Anyways, I'm rambling. It would be helpful to somehow keep these things somewhere in our minds for longer periods of time--not the forefront because we need to get on with things, but probably not the dark recesses either, where we'll inevitably forget them until we come across another one in a few months.

Wow. Very well said, especially the part about "internalizing the fact that I am the one not doing that too." That resonated with me in a painful, aching way.

I'm turning 30 soon. That is by no means "old", but it also isn't "young." And I also made a minefield of my 20s, to the point where I'm worse off today than I was when I turned 20--a constant series of bad decisions over and over again.

The good thing is I'm trying to recover from all of it now and fix what I can fix, but the bad thing is that I'm seeing my friends and peers leap past me, people who I was competitive with all the way into college. I know it's not helpful to think like this, but I can't help it. We journey on.

I can't answer your question because I have no experience with this, but I'd like to ask you: How did you acquire those first 200 users in the first place? I'd like to publish an application myself sometime in the near-future, but one of my "fears" is that nobody will use it--and I don't know how to acquire users.

By the way, nice job with the application. This is very impressive work for anybody, but especially for a 17 year old. Did you work on this entirely by yourself?

That's a touching story, and it illustrates something I've been thinking about recently: that we're not as "rational" as we think we are, to a certain extent, because all of our current rationality depends on everything that has happened, not everything that will happen in the future.

Paul Dirac, an absolutely brilliant man, decided early on that his life "was mainly concerned with facts and not feelings." In a sense he planned his life out with imperfect information--as we all do--until something came along and completely turned his life around, in this case his future wife.

I think that's a hopeful message? That your life and your thoughts are limited by all that has happened to you, not by what hasn't happened to you yet, by definition, because you can't imagine a future that hasn't happened to you. I know, anecdotally, a handful of people who swore off marriage in their 20s, only to turn right around and get married in their 30s after meeting somebody who changed their minds. The same is true for academics and, really, everything--a student who resigns himself to hating math until he finds a teacher who understands his feelings, etc.

Or maybe it's late and I'm rambling. Either way, I really enjoyed reading this essay.

Thanks for the response. The story about cold-emailing your future boss (hopefully!) is very cool.

And I agree completely regarding applying to jobs. I've sent out some applications recently but it feels like I'm sending them into a black hole of complete radio silence. Part of me thinks that I should go back to school to do a complete career reset, but my academic performance was abysmal during undergrad...lots to think about! Thanks again for the response.

Your comment and the parent's comment both resonated with me, as someone who also finds himself "stuck".

What do you suggest that someone do in this situation--one where they want to reset their career, carve out a new one, etc.?

You brought up some really good points. Your second point about interest--that's a great point. I think interest--and, subsequently, focus and attention--are force multipliers, especially in a field like programming, where experience and expertise don't just help you lay more bricks, but actually increase how many bricks you can lay in the same unit of time as before.

The negative effect is interesting. I've heard it said before that non-experts often come up with novel solutions in some fields. That might because of what you pointed out, that the experts are too focused on a certain range of solutions, so they might be missing out on a range that a "layman" can easily identify.

I find posts like this simultaneously heartening and disheartening. Heartening because it means a lot of behaviors that are billed as "genius" or "high IQ" or what have you, might just be an individual unconsciously drawing upon years, maybe even decades, of experience that is layered on top of each other. The most obvious example of this, for our community, are actually codebases. The more you work on it, the easier it becomes to debug and figure out issues, sometimes without even looking at the code. When I was first starting out as a junior software engineer, I was shocked at how quickly some of the seniors could figure out bugs. I was upset because I thought that they might just be smarter than me, from a raw intelligence perspective.

But now, some years later, I've become that person, at least in my current company. I can debug issues pretty quickly, and my brain has a store of literally thousands of bugs and snags that have come up over the years, to the point where if someone says, "This feature isn't returning the right variables", I can usually point them to the fix without even looking up from my laptop. It sounds like magic, but really it's just localized expertise.

That's the heartening part--that all it takes is years to do it. The expertise is available to everyone, perhaps.

The disheartening part is the other side of the coin--what if you've started late? Does this mean that software engineers who start late, in their 40's or 50's, for example, might never reach the heights of software engineers who started early? That isn't true--there are examples to the contrary, I hope--but maybe they have a much steeper hill to climb. Or they have to figure out a different approach to getting up the hill, maybe combining years of experience from a different field.

I love essays about these topics: expertise, pattern-matching, your brain being shaped by what you do, etc. If anyone has any others, I'd love to see them.

EDIT: Some grammar mistakes.

Thanks for the recommendation. I think you're onto something--this idea of being more aware and conscious about the things around you.

I've noticed that when I spend time away from my phone I'm a lot more clear-headed. Initially, I get really antsy--"What's happening on HN? Twitter? Reddit?"--but after some time I become a lot calmer.

That's the one--thanks! I've read three of his books, so a lot of the stories have bled together over the years. I forget which book had which stories.

I think he's basically using it as "passive income." They pay him a few hundred dollars per month for "maintenance", but I'm not quite sure what that entails. There was a lot of initial legwork to write the software, but it's a pretty simple CRUD app, according to him. He noticed that everybody at the office was using expensive iPads to do basic tasks, so he convinced the manager that he could do it for cheaper. He's not actively growing the business or finding new clients. This was more of an experiment on his part to see how easy or hard it would be to get a paying customer.

"Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are." - Jose Ortega

This is fantastic. I've always had a hunch that experts are "seeing" things differently than novices, and seeing things that people who aren't in the same domain aren't even aware of. As people develop more expertise, I imagine the gap becomes larger, to the point where they're aware of things that "laymen" aren't even cognizant of.

Two examples:

In one of Malcolm Gladwell's books--I forget which one--he writes about a firefighter who, almost unconsciously, ordered his men out of a building right before it collapsed. He didn't even know why. After going through the day's events with a researcher, the researcher realized that the fireman was subconsciously (unconsciously?) attuned to what was happening around him. His brain was operating unbeknownst to him due to his years of expertise.

A friend of mine started a small business late last year. He started it on a lark, after a trip to the local autobody shop. Usually his spouse handled all of the car-related affairs, but for some reason he ended up having to do it himself this time. When he went to the store, he noticed that the software they were using to manage their inventory was dated and quite awful. He took down the manager's information and messaged him a week later with a proposal for revamping their software system. The autobody became his first client. The manager said that hundreds of people come in and out of that store every day, but my friend was the first person to point out that their software wasn't very good. My friend isn't an expert programmer by any stretch, but he was more of an expert than anybody in that office in regards to developing software. His brain basically zeroed in on it without him noticing.

Related to a thread from last week about our brains physically changing depending on what we do and pay attention to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22201771

I've become somewhat "obsessed" with this topic recently and would love to know if others know of any resources I can check out. I read "The World Beyond Your Head" by Matthew Crawford recently--he spells out this phenomenon quite well.

EDIT: Jose Ortega's full name is Jose Ortega y Gasset--I forgot to add the last part.

Haha that’s right. But unlike Logan, we should make an effort to connect to the world, lest we lose ourself in his thoughts and obsession like he did!

Thanks for the comment. It genuinely made me smile. Always good to run into another Souls fan. I can’t quite explain why, but that franchise means a lot to me.

Exactly. I don't know much about the "Law of Attraction", but I imagine it's something that gets waved away by a lot of people. That might be for the better, I honestly don't know. A basic google search seems to mention a lot of "pure energy" and other things like that. I'm usually on the defensive when I read things like that.

But you're correct--the underlying aspect is appealing and true. You can't hit something unless you're aiming at it. You will undoubtedly have serendipitous moments in your life where you think, "Wow, this wonderful and unexpected thing happened!", but I imagine for anything long term those will be few and far between. It's hard to stumble your way into getting in shape or eating healthy. It's hard to stumble your way into a long and fulfilling career too, without a series of reflective steps along the way. Is luck a factor? Certainly. But just the mere act of aiming might help us get a lot closer than we would otherwise.

EDIT:

Even stumbling onto meeting your future wife, as the person commented in another comment, likely has a lot to do with thinking of things beforehand. Were you fit and healthy when you met her? Were you in the middle of a promising career or education? Did you take care of yourself? I'm not saying you woke up and said, "Today, I'll meet my wife!" But there were a series of things beforehand that facilitated it. Like the saying goes, "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity." Preparation is part of deciding what to pay attention to. If you consciously decide to be more open and friendly, then you might have more "coincidental" social moments. What changed? The universe, or you?

I agree with you. I think a lot of the recent desire, especially in Silicon Valley / San Francisco, surrounding zen buddhism, meditation, yoga, and other "ancient" traditions and practices stems from a feeling that your mind is being invaded by some aspects of modernity. We're not quite sure what to do, but maybe some of these older texts had some answers? Nothing absolute, but maybe something that can help you contend with this current onslaught / ambush in every corner and crevice of your mind. I'm feeling more and more everyday that I want to do nothing but retreat to older books, older music, and some older traditions.

I don't think they make you more violent, but I do think they condition you to expect a certain reward for a certain input. In that sense what they're priming your brain for is an exploitable addiction cycle. I used to play online first person shooting games all the time, but lately I've noticed that I'm playing them just for the sake of playing them. I'm no longer deriving any enjoyment from the activity; in a sense I feel like a conditioned rat inside a maze. The final sensation isn't one of fulfillment but rather one of helpless attachment.

Contrast that with another game I played recently, God of War. That game ended after about 30-40 hours. I completed the story, and I never returned to it. When I think back on it, I have a lot of satisfaction attached to it. It was a wonderfully told story that eventually ended, whereas Call of Duty is designed to be an infinite time sink, both for your attention and for your wallet. The difference, for me, is playing basketball with your friends versus going to a slot machine.

I wish I could edit my comment, but it looks like HN takes away the ability after some time. What I wanted to do was to recommend everybody read two books: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (cheesy title, I know) and "The World Beyond Your Head." Both books are my Matthew Crawford, a "knowledge worker" turned mechanic / author in Virginia.

He writes wonderfully about this whole idea of what to attend to, what to pay attention to, and how those two things end up influencing your own thoughts and feelings. He's far more articulate and in-depth about this "phenomenon"--how social media is, in a way, dethroning your usual mental faculties.

Thanks for the advice. I think you're right. I've been trying to "white-knuckle" it for the longest time, and it just hasn't been working. I find myself staring at the wall or the train, spiraling into a cycle of intense boredom. Well, I might as well check Instagram, is what I tell myself, but that isn't good for me, because I end up falling into a different sort of vicious spiral.

That's a brilliant way of thinking about it. I'd say I honestly spend 80% of my free time (defined as time not spent working or sleeping) scrolling the internet mindlessly and passively. In that case, 4 of my 5 friends are the internet. I definitely have to change this ratio.

Well said, especially: "...is shallow and wearing off your, now deprived from depth, mind."

Modern social media seems to me a lot like fast food. You feel good while eating it; it fires off a lot of pleasure-seeking receptors in your mind and body; and it's addicting. But then, like with fast food, you feel the crash.

The problem with the internet is that the crash is mental, not obviously physical, like gaining weight would be. In the past two months I'm realizing that the constant, jittery nature of social media is genuinely affecting other aspects of my life. I used to love hanging out with my friends and family, watching movies, playing video games, and reading books. Lately I've been finding that I want to do none of that--all I want to do is lie down and scroll through YouTube. The irony, of course, is that while I'm doing that, I wish I was doing something else.

It's a weird cycle I've found myself in that I'm trying desperately to break now.

I want to consciously pay attention to other things, specifically my friends and family, my work, and "meaningful" leisure e.g. good films, not instagram pictures.

I've been thinking about this a lot more recently, especially because I've been trying to quit social media. One of the more insidious parts of spending all day scrolling, tweeting, and swiping, is that you become what you pay attention to. I think it was Frederick Douglas, the 19th century abolitionist, who said: "A man is worked on by what he works on." We don't live in a vacuum, conjuring thoughts on our own. The things we do have a huge impact on the things we think, whether we realize that or not.

I'm also reminded of the biblical passage: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds." I'm not particularly religious but that line has always stuck with me.

I think that might be less, "If I ask for a car I'll get a car", and more "If I tune my senses towards whatever it is I want (a promotion, a new job, to be a better parent), then subconsciously my brain might start working to better see those opportunities where they exist." I've seen firsthand in my career that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about the whole endeavor. I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my coworkers were seeing.

I'll stop myself before I keep rambling.

Thanks for the response. That’s pretty cool to hear. So it sounds like you get anywhere from 15-30 downloads per month. That’s not bad for money earned while you sleep.

I’m thinking of getting into the space to see how I can do. My eventual goal is to earn $1000 / month without too much maintenance / time beyond the initial development.

Yeah that’s what I was thinking—that the store is so over saturated right now that it would be hard to make your app visible.

Very cool that you made these apps. I’ve wanted to make some educational apps for quite some time, but have been too lazy / indecisive about the whole thing.

If you don’t mind sharing, how are the apps doing? Are you seeing consistent downloads? How about pricing? I noticed both are free—are you planning to monetize at all?

You don’t have to answer anything you’re not comfortable with. This is just a space I’m interested in, and I wanted to see how your experience has been.

First, congratulations on the wedding!

Yeah, exactly--you nailed it. The mind is incredibly capable of coming up with excuses to put things off. If you don't plan things out and come up with a schedule, then you'll inevitably find that the time has more or less slipped out of your grasp.

Today, it's, "I'll wait for the wedding."

Tomorrow, it's, "We just got married! I want to spend some time settling down!"

And so on and so forth.

Best of luck to us both.

That's great! I'm starting to view things through your lens as I get older--that work is more about setting up the foundation for the rest of your life instead of being the central focus of your life. I think if you can make it the central focus of your life and manage to succeed--however you define it--that's a wonderful thing, but there's also nothing wrong with taking, as you said, a "seemingly dull job", performing well at it, and then coming home and pursuing other interests. It doesn't sound as defeatist as it did when I was in my late teens and early 20's. It sounds practical and even somewhat motivating to me, that your work doesn't have to be this grand adventure. It can simply be a job that you show up on time to and perform well in, and then afterwards you can close your laptop and do something else.

The main thing I learned is that there's no such thing as a perfect day. If you sit around and wait for it to come, you'll be waiting until they haul your corpse away. The truth is that things always come up, especially as you get older. You have to plan around uncertain events instead of planning for your day to go a certain way.

Over the past few months both of my parents have been in and out of the hospital repeatedly. I live closeby, so I've been taking a lot of days off work or working remotely to help them get to and from the hospital, and then to help them get situated afterwards. I had to carry my mother up the stairs in her home a few weeks ago because her knees are giving out. I didn't think I would have to do something like that at this age--I'm in my late 20's--but, as the phrase goes, "shit happens."

The reason I brought that up is because I've also been thinking about making a job change to a different company. It'll probably require a few weeks of preparation, and then another few weeks to interview with various companies. I'm also a little scared about the whole situation because I'm woefully underprepared, so I don't know how I'll perform.

So I keep telling myself, "tomorrow, when I'm fresh in the morning, I'll come up with a study guide!" Then something comes up, and "tomorrow" becomes "this weekend." Then something else comes up, and "this weekend" becomes "next week." The something's aren't always bad things--I've been attending a lot of weddings recently, and also some of my friends and family are having kids, so it's been an overall positive thing--but distractions are still distractions, and I haven't been able to plan out any of those.

So I think what I have to do is just carve out time when and where I can. I might not get the six hours of uninterrupted study that I could get when I was 19, but I could certainly have done a far better job of studying than I actually did.

I have some more thoughts on all of this, but I really liked this question because it made me think about how these past few months really went.

EDIT:

I just wanted to edit this post and say that there are some outstanding responses in this thread. I'm never less than amazed at how reflective and thoughtful people can be. There's probably enough life advice and experience in this thread to fill a few books.

I have this habit of checking how "great" people have responded to certain situations, but now I'm realizing that "ordinary" people (whatever that means) might have just as thoughtful, reflective, and wise approaches to things. Instead of looking up the 18th article of how entrepreneurs respond to stress, I could probably sit down with my grandmother and ask her what it was like moving to a foreign country by herself where she didn't know a single person or speak the native tongue.

I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to say that the advice in here is pretty spectacular. I usually regret the time I spend on Reddit and YouTube, but I seldom regret the time I spend on HN (unless I find myself in a political thread).