100$ to Invest

Ben Nesvig ‏@BenNesvig: If you had $100 to invest in self-education every month, where would you allocate the money?

Answer:

You don’t really need more than $100 a month to self-educate. Here is what I would do:

- read biographies and books about any topics that interest you. Most books are fairly cheap on Kindle or you can sit in bookstore cafes and read them.

- draw and/or paint. This gets the neurons firing in areas that have been lying dormant for awhile.

- by cheap pads (waiter pads, for instance), and just free form write down ideas, observations, thoughts of things you want to try.

- go to a museum and try to find at least ten things you didn’t know before that excite you.

- go to at least one networking event. Or dance class. Or something you never would’ve thought of trying. Just one. Don’t pressure yourself into suddenly doing kickboxing ten times a week.

- study yoga. And not just the physical exercises but the reasons behind each one. The reason a move twists a certain way, breathes a certainway, the history of that move throughout thehistory of yoga, the reasons for doing the physical exercises.

نفل حج

Owning Property

The tenant pondered. "Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so."

And the tenant pondered more. "But let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it—why, then the property is the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big—and he's the servant of his property. That is so, too."

— Steinbeck, John. Grapes of Wrath. 1939.

Quote, Unquote

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

— Christopher Morley

How to not do what you love

Today I was reading a really good blog post, titled The Three-day Monk Syndrome. It was about how when we dearly want to do something, we start if off with great dedication and passion, effervescing with energy like poured coke, and then lay it down flat after a few days.
The post argued that it's like being a monk, i.e. giving it your best shot and everything, but only for a few days.

We all have had our monk-periods, and we all know that despite we get quick, even encouraging results in those periods, somehow those activities never really hit home. Why does it happen? Because important thing is to stick with something for longer, and I don't even need to argue about it. But then, how to that? Well, for that, you need to stop being the monk, and, like the article says, say your good twenty minute prayer everyday! (metaphor alert!)

I am not going to reiterate what the post said about preventing the syndrome, but I will copy one thing that I absolutely loved, one of the points said:

Remind yourself of what you want. You’re doing the activity (exercise, language learning, meditation) presumably because you want to do it. When we stop doing something, it’s because we’ve forgotten that we wanted it. We start to fear it for some reason, and try not to think about it. Instead, think about it, but remind yourself of why you started doing it in the first place. That might mean reading some motivational articles, watching some videos that motivate you, looking at some pics that motivate you, referring to a vision in your head.

 That there, the underlines part, is what hit home for me. When you were beginning your endeavour, did you really want something? Or was just a whim? You saw somebody do it and thought it was cool? Or did you see someone have something, and decided you wanted it? Well, do you still want it? Remind yourself, you want it! It's not a chore!

source: http://zenhabits.net/3-day-monk/

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When we stop doing something, it’s because we’ve forgotten that we wanted it.

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How to do anything

Lewis Carroll's guide to doing anything:

'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.

And this, though the King said it to the rabbit regarding some verses it has to read out, holds true for almost every thing in this world.

I have found this to be the best advice that can be given to anyone about anything. It remains as the most effective way to do anything. 

If it doesn't offend, it isn't arrogance

“It’s quite exciting,” said Sherlock Holmes, with a yawn. “What happened next?”

— A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Guide to Thinking Hard

The Cycle of concentration:

Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert
Phase 2: Find and Execute
Phase 3: Disengagement

8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating

1. You can’t start concentrating until you’ve stopped getting distracted
2. Just do one important thing per day
3. Chunk into three’s
4. Questions that kill procrastination
    Question one: Does this really need to be done?
    Question two: Can I delegate this?

5. Be Smart With Your Time

A Sage is one that doesn’t involve themselves in dopamine-driven activities; instead, he or she is very selective about what they do. They have a habit of asking themselves questions that most people are too busy to ask. They pre-occupy themselves with the unspoken, yet meaningful assumptions that others fail to address. Sages ask questions about the meaning behind any activity that they embark on. They view turning down work as a logical decision, not an emotional one.

6. Mind Maps

Whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s critical to allow the mind to disentangle itself by mapping out your thoughts on paper.

There’re two types of maps:

(i) Problem-Solution Map
Top half of the page, write the problem. Bottom half, the solution.

(ii) Fear Map
On paper, map out the following formula “if x, then y.” Where “x” is the fear, and “y” is your estimate of the fear’s result.
Through mapping out your thoughts, you can calm the racing mind, which will free your mind to focus on the task at hand.

7. Blame something

You can reward your mind for concentrating by saying, “OK, mind, here’s the deal–it’s hard to concentrate on this right now, but I’ll pick up a bonsai tree, which will create a more compelling environment to concentrate.” You’ll find that this object-based motivator actually works.

8. Interest

Researchers found that concentration is not a gift. It’s not about intelligence. It’s not about being a prodigy with a gifted memory. It’s not about possessing the ability to recall an insane amount of facts (That’s what Google’s for). Researchers found that concentration is driven by interest, and interest is driven by attitude. If your attitude towards a specific project swells with interest, intrigue and passion, concentration is astonishingly easy.

source: http://howtogetfocused.com/chapters/8-things-everybody-ought-to-know-about-concentrating/

Talent

From the great Ernest Hemingway himself, about being a good writer:

“Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. … I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. … The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he has read but something that has happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing.”

— Ernest Hemingway

It's true. The best of the writings I have, I feel about them as if they had happened to me. I remember them. Not the stories, the feelings!

source: http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/05/22/pro-tips/ 

Software Construction

So I am reading this book that my colleague recommended, Code Complete by Steve McConnell. It's supposed to contain the best practices of software engineering, without which, not only your software is mediocre, it's also very expensive.

The book makes it clear early on that it's only about the Software Construction part of the software development life-cycle, but does talk about what to assess before doing construction. So it does talk about what're the steps before it.

Here's the life-cycle as the book mentions it:

• Problem definition
• Requirements
• Architecture
• Construction
• Systems Testing
• Future Improvements

What I was surprised to learn is that problem definition really has to be just the problem. It can't contain any solution in it, and it can't contain any technical terminology. It should state the problem, as faced by the User, in User's words. Only then can the requirement analysis be unbiased and most suitable. 

From the book:

A problem definition defines what the problem is without any reference to possible solutions. It’s a simple statement, maybe one or two pages, and it should sound like a problem. The statement “We can’t keep up with orders for the Gigatron” sounds like a problem and is a good problem definition. The statement  “We need to optimize our automated data-entry system to keep up with orders  for the Gigatron” is a poor problem definition. It doesn’t sound like a problem; it  sounds like a solution. ...

Suppose you need a report that shows your annual profit. You already have computerized  reports that show quarterly profits. If you’re locked into the programmer mind- set, you’ll reason that adding an annual report to a system that already does quarterly reports should be easy. Then you’ll pay a programmer to write and debug a time-consuming program that calculates annual profits. If you’re not locked into the computer mind-set, you’ll pay your secretary to create the annual figures by taking one minute to add up the quarterly figures on a pocket calculator. 

— McConnell, S. (2004) Code Complete.

Excellence

The other day I was reading an article (that was really good) on a blog, and I figured really, what we really want is less of the fleeting pleasures that we so crave! That we so are addicted to...

Speed is a source of stimulation and fleeting pleasure. Slowing down is a route to depth, more enduring satisfaction, and to excellence.

source: blog.hbr.com - Slow Down, You're moving too fast. 

The Cure for Loneliness

I recently read an article about ways of curing loneliness. Now loneliness is not a disease per se, but people who have it do seem to have some defficiencies. Those deficiences may be biological, but one of them is the distortion of perspective. I read in the article that people who are suffering from loneliness tend to associate negativity to any doubt or ambiguity they encounter. That is to say that in any instace, where there is no or little evidence of explicit positive response, they will assume that there is a negative response for it. 


From the article itself:

 In ambiguous social situations, lonely people immediately think the worst. For instance, if coworker Bob seems more quiet and distant than usual lately, a lonely person is likely to assume that he's done something to offend Bob, or that Bob is intentionally giving him the cold shoulder.

This is the article I am talking about. And I found this article to be very helpful, especially this last part about maladaptive thinking. What I found even more remarkable was that, once I tried to force myself to stop making this thinking mistake, I was feeling a lot better! I started to feel worthy; as earlier my sense of worth, unfortunately, was being lowered by the perception that I am not worth liking, now it began to stop depending on an ungrounded assumption, and started shifting towards other, more real things.