rnoorda

I find myself struggling with this sometimes. I know I shouldn't, but it's easier to justify time spent with some sort of idea that it will be "worth it" in some way in the future. This is mostly an issue with new interests- I'm more content with old hobbies just for fun.

> I see it all the time in other fields and I just shake my head. If you ever find yourself saying "Why don't they just..?" you almost certainly don't understand the problem.

A political corollary to this that I enjoy came from an old professor of mine- "If your political opinions require large amounts of people to be stupid or evil, you don't understand the issues well enough." (A rough quote, I don't remember exact phrasing.)

One variant of this that I've seen lately is some sort of wrong or easily-disproved assertion or challenge. "Bet you can't name an American city with an E!" or "95% of people can't name three European countries. Can you?" It drives engagement not only for people answering the question, but also for those talking about how stupid the post is- either way, it's engagement.

I sometimes wonder what individual decisions are being made now that we'll look back on as important in a few decades. Petrov's role in the incident took 15 years to become publicly-known.

I ran into this with Red Alert as well- I mostly played single-player, and I didn't play the "optimal" way. I would design a nice-looking base, and try to design a mix of units that seemed fun. The few times I played against other players, I would get destroyed. There are other games that I've played more competitively, and it can be fun too, but realising what my goal is (fun single-player experience v. competition v. enjoying time with friends, etc.) helps me play that game better.

I read Don Quixote in school, but it's been a long time. In my mind, the "canon" version is now Man of La Mancha which, as the article notes, "could not be more distant" from the original. I find the same has happened with The Secret Garden and The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I'm not immediately convinced that Don Quixote is a more effective manual for living than other classic works of literature, but it's interesting enough to make me consider a reread. I'm sure it would be a completely new experience.

I spent hours playing Red Alert, and loved C&C as well. Something about the absolute craziness made it so much fun. Then RA2 amped it up even more, being able to train giant squid and teleporting infantry that erase units from the timeline.

I loved the C&C/RA computer aesthetic. That's how I always imagined the future of UI. The modern digital experience is fine, but I sometimes wish we had more rotating graphics and phosphor green text.

> Reflecting back on it now, I realize that no one ever asked me to work as hard as I did. No one ever explicitly told me that I wasn’t doing enough work. In fact, a few colleagues in the company actively reached out to me to tell me that they saw how hard I was working and how much I had on my plate.

This really resonated with me, and is making me evaluate to what extent it's true for myself. I've seen a lot of burnout discussion lately, and this aspect sets this piece apart.

Love this! Your site sounded familiar, and I realized you're the guy with the After Dark screensavers. Thanks for doing interesting things.

Fictional books are always fun for me, and one of the things I love about Cthulhu mythos stories- the Necronomicon is well-known, but also Unaussprechlichen Kulten and De Vermis Mysteriis. In a similar, but earlier vein is The King in Yellow from Robert W. Chambers.

I agree that travel planning is a common (and often bad) startup idea, but I disagree with the reasoning.

Part of the enjoyment of many trips, for me, is the planning. I get to learn about the city, see which places/activities I am most interested in, and gain some small level of insight into the location, the history, the culture, etc. I enjoy talking with friends about what we want to do while we're there, or asking what they liked last time they visited, so I don't feel a huge pain point here. There are certain aspects of travel I don't like planning, such as transportation, but that seems to be where travel startups have been most successful (booking flights, etc.)

Similarly, travel apps don't know what I like. A museum about a certain artist that I'm interested in? Great! A concert for a musical genre I don't have strong opinions on? Meh. And while the software could take my interests into consideration, inputting my preferences to useful levels of detail adds friction to the process.

Finally, I prefer my trips to be flexible. I rarely plan what restaurant I'm eating at; I'll walk around and see what looks good when I'm there. And if I see something near where I'm staying that seems interesting, I can do that instead of whatever I had planned for that afternoon. Travel planning generally strikes me as more limiting than freeing.

Perhaps there is something great that just hasn't been created yet, or maybe my travel needs are sufficiently unique that I'm just not the target market, but I'm not holding my breath.

Just use normal Tinder, and ask every match to a date playing basketball! The problem solves itself.

Lately I've been finding more and more that the exact techniques I use are less important than my motivation. When I begin learning something new, I try to start some sort of project right away. It can just be something simple for myself, maybe just reading a kid's book in a new language, but it helps to ground me when I encounter tons of new information. Once I get excited about learning something, then the tools/tips so many of the other comments have mentioned help me learn better. But if I can't get that initial interest going, those techniques don't do much.

I'm not saying to only learn things you're passionate about- almost all of us will have to learn skills that we aren't particularly interested in. But finding some goal to push for beyond just "learn x" can give me that motivation.

Thanks for sharing, that's great! I watched the railway video and it's just what I mean- fascinating things that are too often ignored.

I remember reading about Ed Stafford walking the entire length of the Amazon 10+ years ago. The Amazon is the perfect exotic place to imagine adventuring and exploring- but in his travels, he's running into people all the time. It's exotic to me, but there are people living there who I'm sure find it as normal as I find my local park.

And that's what this reminds me of- I love the idea of exploring where you are.There are many things close to home that can be experienced, not just the foreign destinations I imagine from an adventure novel.

For anyone interested in this conceit, I recommend an episode of The Outer Limits called "Think Like a Dinosaur" dealing with this idea and what happens when it goes wrong.

Thanks for finding these! I'm often impressed by how often jokes in other languages/cultures are funny, without much cultural or linguistic context needed.

I recently set up a short campaign for a few people at work who had never played D&D but wanted a taste. I was surprised that several people were immediately worried for us because of the "darkness" it would bring into our lives. I always thought that was a concern from decades ago, but apparently I was wrong.

I've come to separate travel and vacation in my plans. They are rarely the same for me- I travel when I want to see new things, visit people, explore, etc. Vacation is largely reading, working on relaxing hobbies, or spending unstructured time with friends/family.

I enjoy both, but can understand hating the stress of traveling and spending money.

I've seen this quite a bit- very educated people who forget how to write characters, but can type them and read them easily. I remember reading years ago about how few college students could correctly write "打喷嚏" (to sneeze) without a computer.

My alarm could be a significant failure point for my daily life- I have had few issues so far, but I always worry. This is one reason I generally prefer stand-alone alarm clocks over a phone.

Great job! I absolutely love dumb, useless projects that make no sense, and this fits the bill perfectly.

I love this, and the content generator is brilliant. "I lived in a decrepit neo-modernist mansion barely worth $3.2 million. We had to fight to survive — I once had to pickup my seamless order in person because of an issue with their app."

I can understand this. The last time I didn't get a promotion, I saw the coworker that got it and thought, "Yeah, that makes sense, she's great for that role and more experienced than I am." I didn't feel slighted the same way I may have been if it were someone completely new.

Off-topic, but I remember feeling disappointed that Ozymandias was a Greek name for Ramses, probably the most famous pharaoh. There are still valuable lessons from the poem, but there was something beautiful to me about the idea of such an important leader fading into such obscurity that people don't even recognize his name.

I'm not sure if I can completely describe this, but I have many times felt some level of grief at the loss of a what-if, a potential future. I make a choice (or someone else makes a choice) and some small part of my future feels closed off. It's a relatively small grief and doesn't compare to losing a loved one or a relationship, or even a job, but I don't feel I have a clear way to address it.

I find myself feeling naked whenever I'm too far from a pen and paper. I take most of my structured notes on a computer, but paper is where I think through ideas. I can draw diagrams, do math, and organise thoughts visually more easily on paper than digital.

I also hate taking notes or writing much more than a text on my phone, so I enjoy having a notebook or looseleaf paper wherever I am.

It helps to plan something at a certain time, even just going to dinner or on walk. Even if I'm totally engrossed in whatever new project I'm doing, I need to leave. I can keep thinking about it and stay excited, while not burning out on it.

I also try to find things I can work on a little bit every day for a longer period of time. If I want to learn a foreign language or the fancy programming framework of the month, I do much better if it's used every day for 15 minutes than all at once and then forgotten.

Containing momentum is a common issue for me as well. When I start learning something, I tend to become obsessive, spend 30 hours over a weekend on it, and then burn out. Once my energy evens out I often need to work on continuing momentum, but deliberately limiting my energy spent at the beginning of a new project tends to get me further long-term.