My six stages of learning to be a socially normal person

How to Talk to ANYONE (Once You Know Their Color!)

Besides communication, there are other soft skills:teamworklearning mindsetorganization/time managementemotional intelligence/empathyapproachabilitypersistence/patienceconfidence

There are better parameters to evaluate quality, not quantity, of the time spent staring at your screens

The key to hacking yourself is to increase your awareness of your emotional state. When you become aware that you are angry, the anger is losing the grip it has over you. When you are angry, you are sometimes doing things you would not have done if you were not angry. (Sometimes anger is healthy, it may also be a signal to us that our boundaries have been violated.)

As I see it, there are two hard things about getting into flow: loading the state of the system / problem / abstractions into your head (i.e. filling your L1 and L2 cache with everything you need to know to work on the problem) and building momentum and confidence for yourself.

Watching a TED talk gets you high for an hour. Watching an inspiring movie gets you thinking for a day. Reading a book keeps us motivated for about a week.

In summary, motivation is trying to feel like doing stuff. Discipline is doing it even if you don’t feel like it.

How you spend money can reveal an existential struggle of what you find valuable in life, who you want to spend time with, why you chose your career, and the kind of attention you want from other people.

Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness | Lex Fridman Podcast #123

If I wanted to set someone up for a good life and they could focus on only one thing, I would prioritize getting social skills, especially conversational skills.

Of all the people I know, I can only think of a couple people who I believe really don’t want to be 50% of the conversation. Topic introduction should also be split pretty evenly.

“Nice” “Cool” “Ok” If you get a lot of single word answers, you are not keeping the other person interested. They are trying to prevent you from saying more, either because you habitually talk too much or because the topic isn’t interesting to them.

I have a friend who has somewhat extreme political views, but he will always say things like, “I believe X, but I bet you believe Y and you always have interesting takes, so I’d love to hear your thoughts”. It’s a great way to disagree in a positive and constructive way, and I always enjoy conversations with him.

It seems that these days everyone is so focused on being right and believes that changing their mind shows weakness, but in reality it is the opposite. Only confident people feel are able to change positions without affecting their self image.

Factual questions are good, but questions that deepen the conversation are even better. “What were you thinking when she said that?” “Was that as hard as it sounds?” “How did you learn how to do that?” “What made you decide to go that route?”

An ideal conversation is a mix of listening, asking questions, and sharing in a way that allows the other person to politely guide the conversation. You must ask questions so that the other person knows that you are interested in them and what they are saying. The worst conversations are those where both parties are waiting their turn to talk, saying as much as they can before getting interrupted, and then being forced to listen to the other.

I could tell a story about building my pinball machine. A crafty technical friend might be very interested in hearing every step, but my mom might not be interested in more than about 10 seconds of detail on it.

A conversation is best when both parties are interested, engaged, and want to share. If you interrupt you show that you are uninterested and you blunt the other person’s motivation to share.

I asked why she thought that was happening, and she said, “Covid”. The lack of socialization, especially at such a key time in life, had made this incoming class the first one that lacked basic manners and social skills.

This sort of behavior puts a huge burden on the listener because it makes them responsible for your emotional state. Their options are to deny you the emotional state you want, or to give it to you by lying. This is exhausting and will cause people to limit the amount of social time they spend with you.

If I’m not able to write down any specific experiments, I know the book, video, podcast, article, or thread is just fluff and I should stop reading, listening, watching as soon as possible. This is an incredibly useful tool. Many authors and speakers are extremely skilled at creating the illusion of powerful insights through engaging stories, fortune cookie wisdom, and the use of sophisticated language.

The only thing that works is to remove yourself from the environment that is causing burnout, and then taking the time off to recover.

What makes you unique is not your specific attributes. It’s your specific ties to the network around you.

Becoming disentangled from your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility is to be rendered into a transaction, a slave.

Somebody once described balance to me as three buckets filled with water. One for career, a second for physical health, and a third for social and family life. At any point, one bucket might be running low. But as long as the overall water level is high enough, things should be fine.

45% less time spent in video & audio calls that day

What may be a hassle at first soon becomes habit, and eventually a source of pride and productivity for all involved.

So, to summarize, don't ask "Any Java experts around?", but rather ask "How do I do [problem] with Java and [other relevant info]?"

You're asking people to take responsibility. You're questioning people's confidence in their abilities. You're also unnecessarily walling other people out. I often answer questions related to languages or libraries I have never used, because the answers are (in a programmer kind of way) common sense.

This isn’t MAIN_PRIORITY, so we aren’t going to do it until at least ESTIMATED_DONE_DATE. Right now our priority is MAIN_PRIORITY because of ONE_SENTENCE_JUSTIFICATION, and this is 100% our shipping focus. I agree this sounds like a really useful feature - once we finish MAIN_PRIORITY, should we consider dropping SECOND_PRIORITY and do it?

It isn't about note taking, it's about supporting a brain that simply isn't capable of retaining the level of information that we have to deal with. The ultimate note taking device is actually an augmented human brain that has perfect recollection and organisation.

the curse of knowledge. It’s a simple but devastating effect: Once we know something, it’s very difficult to imagine not knowing it, or to take the perspective of someone who doesn't.

two main problems with framing decisions and policies in terms of usefulness: (1) being useful is not always to our own benefit – sometimes, we are being used as a means to someone else’s end, and we end up miserable as a result; and (2) the lenses themselves of usefulness and uselessness can obscure our view of the good life.

The most important thing you can do is provide actionable feedback. This means being specific about your observations of their work. It also means providing direction about what they could have done differently or what they need to learn or practice in order to improve. If your mentee doesn’t know what to do next, your feedback wasn’t actionable.

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that cannot be captured through words alone.

be microfamous. Microfame is the best kind of fame, because it combines an easier task (be famous to fewer people) with a better outcome (be famous to the right people).

A lot of us are going to die of unpredictable diseases, some of us young. Really, don't spend your life getting fitter, healthier, more productive. We are all going to die, and Earth will explode in the Sun in a few billion years: please, enjoy some now.

While people who are both trustworthy and competent are the most sought after when it comes to team assembly, friendliness and trustworthiness are often more important factors than competency.

The researchers found that people who exhibited both competence, through the use of challenging voice, and trustworthiness, through the use of supportive voice, were the most in-demand people when it came to assembling teams.

80% of developers are "dark", they dont write or speak or participate in public tech discourse.

They'll teach you for free. Most people don't see what's right in front of them. But not you. "With so many junior devs out there, why will they help me?", you ask. Because you learn in public. By teaching you, they teach many. You amplify them.

Try your best to be right, but don't worry when you're wrong. Repeatedly. If you feel uncomfortable, or like an impostor, good. You're pushing yourself. Don't assume you know everything, but try your best anyway, and let the internet correct you when you are inevitably wrong. Wear your noobyness on your sleeve.

start building a persistent knowledge base that grows over time. Open Source your Knowledge! At every step of the way: Document what you did and the problems you solved.

Whatever your thing is, make the thing you wish you had found when you were learning. Don't judge your results by "claps" or retweets or stars or upvotes - just talk to yourself from 3 months ago.

My favourite tactic is to ask a yes/no question. What I love about this is that there’s a much lower chance that the person answering will go off on an irrelevant tangent – they’ll almost always say something useful to me.

instead of finding someone who can easily give a clear explanation, I just need to find someone who has the information I want and then ask them specific questions until I’ve learned what I want to know. And I’ve found that most people really do want to be helpful, so they’re very happy to answer questions. And if you get good at asking questions, you can often find a set of questions that will get you the answers you want pretty quickly, so it’s a good use of everyone’s time!

As a character, I believe that I am quite a responsible and hardworking person. The combination of the two becomes dangerous when you lose the measure of how much you should work to get a job done right.

Reading books, being aware of the curiosity gap, and asking a lot of questions:

The difference between smart and curious people and only smart people is that curiosity helps you move forward in life. If you shut the door to curiosity. You shut the door to learning. And when you don’t learn. You don’t move forward. You must be curious to learn. Otherwise, you won’t even consider learning.

Smart people become even smarter because they are smart enough to understand that they don’t have all the answers.

The difference appears to be what the primary causes of that burnout are. The top complaint was “being asked to take on more work” after layoffs, consolidations or changing priorities. Other top beefs included toxic workplaces, being asked to work faster and being micromanaged.

A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can.

Whereas what drives me now, writing essays, is the flaws in them. Between essays I fuss for a few days, like a dog circling while it decides exactly where to lie down. But once I get started on one, I don't have to push myself to work, because there's always some error or omission already pushing me.

And if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself.

That limit varies depending on the type of work and the person. I've done several different kinds of work, and the limits were different for each. My limit for the harder types of writing or programming is about five hours a day. Whereas when I was running a startup, I could work all the time. At least for the three years I did it; if I'd kept going much longer, I'd probably have needed to take occasional vacations.

There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.

One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard.

Once one has learned how to concentrate, the next thing to learn is to be able to concentrate on the right thing.

You can have more experiences in life by simply paying more attention. What you pay attention to is going to be your life. It's so basic that it hits me.

Everyone hates the feeling of having wasted their time doing nothing. But, even when I am doing many things in a day, when I am on autopilot, which is to say doing something for the sake of just completing them, I don't feel fulfilled. This makes total sense because the day wasn't filled with any intentionality. There was no mind.

Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under our control, to do with as we please; hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.

Instead of avoiding anything hard, let's turn down the difficulty dial by focusing on small steps.

The important part is not only to know the reason, but to feel it, to get excited about it. How to do that? Link the task to a personal goal that you want to achieve. Attach exciting reasons to the task.

We feel motivated when we viscerally feel how an action is meaningful, or valuable to us and when we believe we can take it

According to FBM, there are three things we need to do something

If there were no miracles, what then? Well the answer is really quite boring: notes. I would keep notes religiously of everything, detailed accounts of debugging and records of conversations throughout the day, if even a few words. If it happend I was going to have some recording of it somewhere.

Why [[Tyler Cowen]] still responds to every [[Email]] and loves it. He finds time for this because of what he doesn’t do: he hardly watches [[TV]], **his social life is basically the same as his intellectual life **- his social life is geared towards thinking, discussing, exploring ideas. With no TV, you end up with a lot of [[time]]. #[[unproductive internet activities]] Isn’t [[email]] a low leverage use of his time? **He learns a lot from people that email him, and has filtered his audience so it’s mostly smart people. **He does this by being "sufficiently weird". He’s not even sure it’s highly leveraged. He met [[Patrick Collison]] that way. He doesn’t care if it’s highly leveraged if he’s learning from it. #[[Audience Building]]

As you get older and more successful, it’s harder to get critical [[feedback]] from people. Hang out with critical people and hope you can get benefits. It’s hard to do this. If you are around people that are above you in the hierarchy, you should be critical too. #aging

Alternatively, think about the decision in different timelines. Ask yourself: What will be the consequences of this decision in 10 minutes?  10 months? 10 years?

Consider a decision you have to make. Start by looking at the most immediate effects of making this decision – the first order. Then for each of the effect ask yourself: "And then what?"

I've found that the most underrated problem solving tool is simply typing out my thought process.I used to be the type who asked a lot of questions until I realized that formulating the question was often more important than getting the answer.

This might be super basic, but... assume positive intent.Your parent is not your enemy. Your teacher is not your enemy. Your boss is not your enemy. The other team at work is not your enemy.

Defining what “time well spent” means to you and making space for these moments is one of the greatest gifts you can make to your future self.

He is intrigued by the unique qualities of each person, organizes for maximum productivity, has a great desire to learn, can sense other people’s feelings, and is introspective and appreciates intellectual discussions—strengths that have been confirmed both through the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment and are reflected in his personal and professional life.

Think of mental laziness as a lack of mental exercise. Mental exercise, such as tough decisions, actually burn more calories and impact your overall physiology.

Laziness is stagnation without regard for enjoyment or perceptions. In other words it is the opposite of ambition or progression.

Z gier można wyciągnąć też inną naukę. Jeśli Twoim celem jest przejście do następnej lokacji, to czy musisz wykonywać wszystkie zadania poboczne?No nie musisz. Dlatego wyżej, gdy podawałem wymagane umiejętności dla osoby, która prowadzi szkolenia z Reacta, albo pracuje dla startupów, to napisałem “dobra znajomość JSa”, bo “doskonała” nie pomoże Ci w osiągnięciu tego celu.

W miarę jak będziesz się rozwijać i zdobywać nowe informacje, Twój plan będzie trzeba dostosować do nowych warunków.

Arnie miał wielkie plany, ale nie realizował wszystkich na raz.Skupił się na jednej rzeczy - kulturystyce - bo wiedział, że to otworzy mu drogę do Ameryki i do aktorstwa.

Jeśli wybierzesz kilka rzeczy na raz to ryzykujesz, że znowu zaczniesz miotać się we wszystkich kierunkach.Nie polecam takiej opcji, bo właśnie przez takie myślenie kończymy potem wkurwieni, z siwymi włosami i podkrążonymi oczami.Doświadczyłem wszystkich tych trzech objawów i dopiero kiedy skupiłem się na jednej rzeczy, to odzyskałem balans i przestałem się denerwować.

Niestety, jeśli faktycznie chcesz być najlepszą osobą, to z moich obserwacji wynika, że trzeba zapierdzielać.

W czasach młodości Arniego, Reg Park był wielką gwiazdą kulturystyki, sławnym oraz bogatym aktorem i otaczały go piękne dziewczyny.Arnie chciał się wydostać z zadupia w Austrii, przeprowadzić do Ameryki i mieć dokładnie to samo co Reg.Wolność, sławę, kasę i dziewczyny.Wszystkie jego działania były podporządkowane dotarciu do tego celu.Arnie dokładnie zawęził czego chce.

👉 Wiele osób ma cele w stylu “chcę się nauczyć Reacta”. I jest to zbyt słabo sprecyzowany cel.👉 Celem musi być coś w stylu “chcę się nauczyć Reacta, żeby pracować w firmie X i robić projekty dla startupów z Doliny Krzemowej”.👉 Albo “chcę się nauczyć Reacta, żeby pracować w Facebooku z Danem Abramovem nad kolejnymi wersjami Reacta”.👉 Albo “chcę się nauczyć Reacta, żeby prowadzić szkolenia stacjonarne dla backendowców, którzy nie umieją we frontendy”.

Pytać wszystkich wszędzie i powiększaj swoją znajomość tematu. Poszerzaj worek możliwości.Przeszukaj Reddita, Stacka, grupy na Facebooku. Znajdź jakiegoś mądrego człowieka na social media i napisz mu DM.

Learn how to write good emails, how to present your work, how to phrase your questions in a thoughtful manner.

I want to have a choice whether to forget or remember events, and I'd like to be able to potentially access forgotten ones.

Even ignoring quality of life you are looking at a 3-7 fold return on every minute you spend exercising in extended life,[1] perhaps even exceeding that if you are making optimal use of your time. Something just clicked and I was consistent since reading this. Even 1-fold return would worth it: basically you gain free consciousness (quality of thinking is shit when I exercise, but it's better than nothing).

Exobrain, or "second brain", or "brain dump" is something like public wiki where you can keep your notes, ideas and thoughts.

Annotation is the process of adding a layer of personal (with a potential for sharing) metadata on top of existing content such as highlights, notes, anchors etc.

Human brains seem to be best for generating new ideas. I want to learn more, think faster, distract less, interact and visualize, effortlessly remember everything; not memorize and do routine information processing, which computers seem better at.

Extended mind is the idea that your mind isn't limited by your physical body, but augmented by external means. Paper notes & diaries, data in your computer/phone/cloud – all these things contribute to your cognitive process, thinking and help you navigate the landscape of ideas. One of the biggest motivations to start dumping my brain out here, write and share is to offload my mind a bit and interact with people even in my physical absence.

I can't imagine going on a run without my HR monitor, because whatever the benefit exercise has and however exhausting run would be, at least I'll have a data point. learning about routine and trying to optimize routine is also way more fun than doing the actual routine Human body is fragile and needs constant care, but it's still a fascinating mechanism.

quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in “self-knowledge through numbers.”[1] Quantified Self practices overlap with the practice of lifelogging and other trends that incorporate technology and data acquisition into daily life, often with the goal of improving physical, mental, and/or emotional performance.

But I think we read a lot of self-help because we need to. As I’ve already mentioned, we need lots of examples to drive this wisdom home. We should be more forgiving of self-help (the genre) and more forgiving of ourselves. Putting wisdom into practice takes requires reading, reflection, and practice—but it’s worth it.

advice can either be arcane or obvious, general or specific.

We feel divinely inspired while reading Minimalism, but when it’s time to actually cull our wardrobes, it turns out we have good reasons for keeping everything!

We’re embarrassed by self-help because (at its best) it’s full of banal platitudes—but these are platitudes because they’re so general.

Wisdom Knowledge

So which is it? Is our obsession with self-help embarrassing or admirable? Is self-help snake oil or salvation? I’m going to argue that it’s both.

I decided that the name of the game is to optimise quality of life. That means, infrequent brutal deadlines, minimal (pref. zero) commute, opportunity to learn, and spend time with family and friends and be of use to society at large.

My mom is the best example of how to enjoy life in the present. She takes her work seriously, but doesn't take herself too seriously, and by putting fun first, every accomplishment and accolade is merely a bonus