qazzquimby

Karma: 213

qazzquimby 10 Sep 2021 16:09 UTC
45 points
on: The Best Software For Every Need
Software: Pycharm, and other jetbrains IDEs https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/

Need: Programming environment

Other programs I’ve tried: Vscode, atom, sublime, etc.

Jetbrains ides make so many things easier that I would have a pretty bad time if forced to work without them. In particular their debuggers probably save me hours of pain every week. I also appreciate the perpetual license, where any version owned for at least a year is kept for life.

qazzquimby 10 Sep 2021 16:18 UTC
60 points
on: The Best Software For Every Need
Software: Obsidian.md

Need: Knowledge management system.

Other programs I’ve tried: Roam, dynalist, tiddlywiki, lightweight or physical note taking systems.

If you’re not using a personal knowledge management system I highly recommend you read about what they can do for you, possibly under “zettlekasten” or “digital gardening”. I wish I’d started earlier. Obsidian.md is sadly closed source, but it works entirely on standard markdown with locally stored files. It has a thriving thriving plugin community supporting things like sql queries of your notes, kanban boards, and spaced repetition.

qazzquimby 10 Sep 2021 16:36 UTC
3 points
on: The Best Software For Every Need
Software: Zenhub https://www.zenhub.com/

Need: Agile project management for multiple projects.

Other programs I’ve tried: jira, Monday, clickup, trello, etc

I use scrum to manage my general productivity (not just professional work) and other programs have tended to be painful when managing multiple projects, or have been fiddly in ways I didn’t need. A downside to zenhub is it’s only free for public projects, so someone inclined could read through your tasks. Zenhub’s main selling point is github integration, but I largely ignore that and just use it for standard issue management.

qazzquimby 11 Sep 2021 3:28 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Hans R’s comment on: The Best Software For Every Need
Obsidian’s dataview plugin might have all the database features you’re looking for.

Strongly agree with sync and publish though. The free solutions I out together for each are ugly.

qazzquimby 2 Oct 2021 23:17 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 1: Bug Hunt
Strangest bug fix is willfully changing perspective often, similar to how this page suggests imagining the perspective of a friend, or looking at the far future, or taking an outside view.
While it feels a little silly in principle, changing perspective often gets immediate results in overcoming a bias or seeing things I would have missed.

qazzquimby 4 Oct 2021 8:45 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 2: Yoda Timers
Most of the bugs were solved through rapid googling, which felt a little like cheating, but was probably the best method.

Results
- Realized the shelf on my desk was only used ~ once per month, and removed it, giving me more work space.
- Found trivially easy healthier breakfasts.
- Resolved to continually add gratitude notes to anki at least once a week. Method is to appreciate the item on the card, visualizing life without it to better feel the value.
- Learned about linters for technical writing like vale, and plan to incorporate. Found a book to skim later.
- Reread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4K5pJnKBGkqqTbyxx/to-listen-well-get-curious
and made notes on how I can approach conversations differently. In particular “if a solution to someone’s problem looks obvious, assume it isn’t and try to understand why.”

Open & Welcome Thread October 2021

qazzquimby4 Oct 2021 19:52 UTC

21 points

49 comments1 min readLW link

qazzquimby 4 Oct 2021 20:26 UTC
9 points
on: Open & Welcome Thread October 2021
I’ve decided I should be less intimidated by people with qualities I admire, and interact with them more.
Hello.

Recently I’ve been thinking about how certain ways of reframing things can yield quick and easy benefits.
- Reversal test for status quo bias.
- Taking an inside or outside view.
- And in particular, deliberately imagining that you are another person looking at yourself, to advise from outside yourself. In my experience that can be very helpful for self compassion, and result in better thinking than I would have had in first person. I recommend trying this, particularly if you notice you treat yourself differently than others.

Is there a collection of such perspective shifts, or searchable name for it?

qazzquimby 5 Oct 2021 5:29 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 3: TAPs
I think taps are great any time you actually want to act some way automatically, but often things are more contextual than that, and the miss rate would make the tap unproductive. Sapience seems like such a tap, as Raemon says. Maybe a better solution would be more specific taps for avoiding common automatic failures, like learning what status quo bias feels like, and practicing detecting that so you can tap it to a fix.

I’d be interested in seeing other’s experiences with picking up many taps, and which ended up being useful.

qazzquimby 6 Oct 2021 6:28 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 4: Design
I had a hard time with this one for a few reasons.

I have a very unusual living situation that gives me very little space that control. Pretty much just a desk. I’ve already optimized my desk pretty hard. I adjusted my startup-apps, but otherwise my phone and pc are both very streamlined.
I think noticing and being irritated by repeated time costs may be related to me being a programmer.

qazzquimby 7 Oct 2021 7:11 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 5: Comfort Zone Expansion
I spent 2 timers writing down approximately nothing. My brain mostly generated large projects I’m already interested in (like itavero’s), and things where I have no interest or potential benefit. Many of the examples like “shout as loud as you can” felt like this.

I understand forcing myself to do things I’m slightly uncomfortable about for practice, and in entertaining more ideas to avoid under exploring.

Looking at my recent history I have asked strangers for help with something, joined and started posting here, and started trying to mashup melodies on a piano roll. That looks promising, though I expect I should still be exploring more.

For the next week, I resolve to watch carefully for opportunities for new actions, and especially the feeling of discomfort that may cause me to avoid them, and to pause to consciously examine the choice.

qazzquimby 7 Oct 2021 20:34 UTC
3 points
on: Open & Welcome Thread October 2021
Inspired by the SSC post on reversing advice:

How can I tell what should be moderated versus what should be taken more-or-less to an extreme?

Also, is rationality something I should think about moderating? Should I be concerned about not having enough spiritualism in my life and missing beneficial aspects of that?

Tentative plan: look for things I strongly value or identify with, and find my best arguments against them.

This also reminds me of something I read but can’t find about problems arising from “broken alarms” in self inspection, such as a person being quiet and withdrawn because they fear that they’re loud and annoying.

qazzquimby 8 Oct 2021 7:45 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 6: Mantras
I’ve never consciously thought in terms of mantras as far as I know, so there’s probably a good answer in my brain I’m failing to recollect.
This sounds like a good way of making a thought easy to recall.

Not a series of magic words, but I regularly think along the lines of “it can be done.” That people can accomplish amazing things with time and effort. It is not a question of if I can, but if it is worth my unfortunately limited time.

”If I was born in their body, and lived their life, I would make the same choice.”—If you believe human behavior is predictable like any other physical system, this lets you feel some empathy for people you don’t understand.

”That sounds like the plan of an ordinary man”—Jonathan Coulton.
Reminds me that I have high standards for myself, and I’m not going to meet them by taking the easy options.

Not words I live by, but I like the energy behind “If you can’t beat ‘em, make ’em bleed like pigs.”—Mountain Goats
The sense of “all hope is lost? Then push harder.”

qazzquimby 11 Oct 2021 4:38 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 7: Aversion Factoring
The tedx video lost me at the “just get over it” step, which at first glance looked extremely unhelpful. Looking at the CFAR handbook helped it make sense: Ideally at that point the things you’re getting over are small, concrete, and approachable.

For minor inconveniences having drastic outcomes, I didn’t get a significant haircut for years because I didn’t want to hear a day of “oh you got a haircut” comments.

qazzquimby 14 Oct 2021 20:17 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 9: Time Calibration
I’m not certain if this qualifies as a planning fallacy, but I’ve noticed a class or problem where a large nebulous task isn’t made actionable, and we just expect it to happen at some point. More an error of “when it will be done by” than “how long it will take.”

For example, my family knew for maybe a year that we would benefit from an exercise machine, and had discussed it many times. It was only when I realized the problem and set a deadline for myself that we actually got it.

qazzquimby 16 Oct 2021 6:30 UTC
2 points
on: Research productivity tip: “Solve The Whole Problem Day”
The “drilling down along a new and different branch of the tree” concept makes me think of tree search algorithms, naively being depth or breadth first searching. It’s overly simplified, but might uncover related theory.

The goal is to search from whichever node you estimate to being closest to the goal. Calculating the estimate is difficult, so we tend to only look at a small nearby neighbourhood, which is usually low level. Backtracking forces you to make estimates for earlier nodes.

If I was making this algorithm faster, I’d try to find a way to make the heuristic (the estimate of nearness to the goal) more efficient. I’ve no idea how to do that, but maybe looking at how past discoveries were made could help.
Then again, given that research takes a long time, maybe it’s not worth making any sacrifices to the heuristic accuracy.

qazzquimby 20 Oct 2021 23:19 UTC
1 point
in reply to: MondSemmel’s comment on: Open & Welcome Thread October 2021
Thank you! I had been looking through tags, and even thinking “what I really need are ‘techniques’”—yet I did not search for techniques.

qazzquimby 24 Oct 2021 20:44 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Pattern’s comment on: Open & Welcome Thread October 2021
Thank you for making my floundering into something actionable...
I’ll first try looking into what people have found before on this thinking. I find it surprisingly difficult to see what my outgroups are or what advice I should be thinking of reversing.

Walking and Navigating

qazzquimby25 Oct 2021 1:54 UTC

6 points

0 comments2 min readLW link

qazzquimby 25 Jun 2022 20:40 UTC
2 points
in reply to: illusionary’s comment on: Hammertime Day 2: Yoda Timers
I guess it generalizes to: if there’s an unsolved problem and the solution looks obvious, you’re probably missing something.
- Beware the natural tendency towards overconfidence
- It’s easiest to think of the easy happy path. The problems are usually more nuanced and less mentally available.
- Other people thinking about it are probably not being dumb or thoughtless.
I don’t think it’s caused me to overthink in that if something seems one dimensional it’s probably being underthought.

There are learnable exceptions, like a friend might have a mental blindspot to a certain kind of solution, or you might consistently overthink certain situations.

To be honest, I’m still not a great listener because I haven’t squashed the urge to think of advice before empathizing.

qazzquimby

Open & Wel­come Thread Oc­to­ber 2021

Walk­ing and Navigating

Open & Welcome Thread October 2021

Walking and Navigating