Badi badi baatein, vada paav khaatein

• We look for so many optimizations in our day to day lives.
  • There are people who are hellbent on collecting advance techniques to become better, ignoring the basics.
  • There are people who are hellbent with the basics, the cookie cutter approach, and they apply it well, but they never stop and think, maybe this doesn’t work for me?
    • Extraordinary output requires extraordinary input - Rich Piana, not verbatim. So you’re on your own.
    • Stop and think, am I at the diminishing returns stage now? Should this have been a habit already?
    • Stop and think, I have these 10 ways to make XYZ better, what are their respective impacts?
• Josh Waitzkin, I read an amazing book by this guy - ages ago, but the thing I still haven’t forgotten, is the extreme returns you get if you are focussed on never repeating a mistake twice.
  • Just imagine this in the context of chess for example
  • So many times you end up solving the same problem again and again, its fucking boring. In software, you solve a problem once, and then you solve it the second time, and the third time you gotta be automating that stuff right?
• Defeating Akrasia
  • “In Plato’s Protagoras dialogue, Socrates asks precisely how it is possible that, if one judges action A to be the best course of action, one would do anything other than A?”
• Theodore Strenuous Roosevelt - is the epitome of his middle name
• William James, the psychologist, has a book called “Habits” - and this far better than the trending Atomic Habits.
• People like me, are inclined to sprint, not inclined to start, and definitely not inclined to follow a program and be consistent. It is the toughest thing. But consistency will beat intensity everytime. Cry yourself a river.
• Procrastinate that undesirable behaviour. To the max.
• If the work is not interesting, either make it interesting or just be like that college roommate who used to say “I just wanna get it over with” - so that you can spend your time better
• In what order, must I do things?
• short lived stress >> long lived stress
• long term greedy >> short term greedy
• the room’s anxiety rises to the level of = max(anxiety_of_each_person), so never be the one with that max anxiety. Diffusing the anxiety of the room is usually the best way out.
  • The more anxious and panicky the room gets, the calmer you have to be. To average it out you know
• Watch Zima Blue = “I will immerse myself. And as I do, I will slowly shut down my higher brain functions… un-making myself… leaving just enough to appreciate my surroundings… to extract some simple pleasure from the execution of a task well done. My search for truth is finished at last. I’m going home.”
• Watch the story of God of War - it is a work of art, and there is tons of things to appreciate
• RDR2 - “Take a gamble that love exists, and do a loving act”
• Eric Bugenhagen - “fellas, it is a mindset”
• Weird productivity idea: Make sure you are using one sense organ + head/body at the same time at all times
• 70/20/10 Model for Learning and Development - says that people learn the most by challenging assignments
• ‘Rosy retrospection’ - people tend to remember the past disproportionately more positively

More notes from random & unclassified but publishable

“you can feel good about what you are not doing, only when you know what you’re not doing” - david allen

“kaun hai tu?” in the internal council sounds harder than “who are you”

Software is only as strong as the engineer writing it.

Maybe stop fucking consuming continuously. Fuckin read, and take a walk man. Think about that shit. Think about what you just read.

Mikey and the Dragons: To my son, Our kingdom is now what you must save And to do that, you have to be brave The dragons, they aren’t really that big at all It is only in our minds that we make them so tall Inside our brains, things always get overblown Especially things that are completely unknown Stand up straight, and hold your head high Look at your fears, right in the eye Don’t look away and don’t try to hide Know that you have great strength deep inside Fear is normal for every person on earth But this is where a hero proves his worth

most philosophy is linguistic confusion. exactness in language is an endless chase? what you mean by a word is not what the other person understands and people talk endlessly to come to the same page

life is about video games actually sometimes its outside the screen and there’s consequences

does the meaning have to extend from what x person thinks of your life?

“Solve elegantly”

chess principles, after reading and playing a lot of chess, to get better at it is simply about,

• analyze after play, recognize bad habits of thinking
• calculate diligently
• don’t blunder

Consume very less. And be very picky on what you consume. Then spend double the amount of that time consuming nothing, but just thinking.

Indiranagar idli places(in no order): Idli Guru - softest idlis Sendhoor Rameshwaram Filter Coffee Umesh IDC Om Sai Aroma Cafe Kasthuri Bhavan Sri Udupi Park Srirangam Cafe Bangalore Thindies Sri Udupi Food Hub

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

One must enjoy the absolute clusterfuck that is software?

we’re all just temporarily abled protect physical health

Thinking toolkit:?

• be cognizant of what questions you ask
• Zoom in and zoom out and piece it all together. Whole systems understanding. Concepts and details. Chug chug.
• 1st,2nd,3rd order effects

unperturbed - what a word. remain unperturbed in the face of it absurdism, Camus