1. “Sometimes, you just have to trust people.” Said to me by the owner of a shop at a farmer’s market after I explained I didn’t have cash on hand to pay for an item so I couldn’t accept it, but would go to an ATM to get it. She gave me the items anyway, and I promptly went to an ATM to bring her the money. I grew up in an environment where I was constantly told about all the bad intentions everyone around me had, and how dangerous the world was. It was unnerving, so that moment was refreshing and eye-opening.
2. When I was buying my first bed, I talked with an older salesperson who did a great job helping me find what I was looking for. During our long conversation, he said, “You never know what someone you’re interacting with is going through. Keep that in mind and try not to assume bad intentions.”
3. The less time I spend on the computer/looking at screens/sitting down, and the more time I spend out in the physical world, allowing myself to explore, the more my subjective well-being increases. Similarly, the more time I spend interacting physically with people, the more meaningful, nuanced, and empathy-building interactions I have. I learned this when I quit my first job and spent a week in an hostel in Alaska, and just immersed myself in _life_ for a week.
4. It’s okay to not be productive all the time. I don’t have to side hustle if I don’t want to. Not doing so doesn’t mean I should withhold compassion from myself. Remember, there are other aspects of life outside of work, and in fact, time, relationships, and health are more important than work. I learned this during COVID when I had family in a coma for multiple months.
Hi HN! This is just a recent project I'm working on and thought others might be mildly interested in. It's still a work in progress, but I've had a lot of fun working on it so far, and wanted to share :)
Wow, so much this. I literally got my dream job this year and I’m just amazed I get to freaking _program computers_ every day. Like what??? It’s been 7 months and I still don’t believe it.
Life really could’ve turned out totally different. But I feel that same sense that nothing is ever really guaranteed/secure. So, why not relish the good things while I have them, try my best, and follow my own path?
I love the idea of using a dice to randomize the tasks you choose! Does using a physical object to “ground” your productivity practice make it feel more “real”/tangible-feeling than, say, running an RNG program on your computer? I’d imagine it does, but I’m curious.
Ha, it's funny I'm seeing this now! I'm doing a cross-country trip from Charlotte, NC to San Francisco (technically Emeryville) by train later this month (June 18th-21st). It was something of a spontaneous decision. I have an on-site with my team in SF later during the week of my arrival, so I felt this was a good excuse to experience something different! I'll be in a sleeper car for a short leg of the trip (DC to Chicago, iirc), then coach the rest of the way. Hopefully I survive, lol.
There’s a good episode [0] on Jane Street’s Signals and Threads podcast in which the creator of MirageOS talks a fair bit about the inspiration behind and origins of it:
I made a Firefox web extension [0] that makes it relatively easy to extract and download references from Wikipedia pages. I call it Wikiref.
I made it to scratch my own itch mostly, as I’d often visit Wikipedia pages and find myself wanting to save multiple references (text and links included), but didn’t want to manually copy + paste all the little details.
EDIT: I think at one point, when I was close to releasing the initial version, I really _did_ care about whether or not it “succeeded” (as judged by how many people used it), and I tried to write the code/docs to make the project as easy to use as possible. But then I realized it’s a bit niche, and I was just happy with the fact I made it. There are still multiple improvements to make, but I’m currently focused on a different project.
I don’t have access, though :/