I recently realized (when pair-programming) that I spend a rather obnoxious amount of time dealing with the fallout from typos. I have known how to touch-type since school, but this was only good for the non-symbolic keys, omitting the parentheses, bars, etc. we programmers use for syntax. I started using this site (and another similar one: https://typing.io/) and after two weeks, I've already noticed a reduction in errors — and a big improvement in getting VIM to do my bidding. I feel this is one of those areas where a small investment in training (say 12 hours lifetime total) has a big pay-off, so I wanted to share.
Magnesium truly does wonders for my sleep but every single person I’ve recommended it to has not had similar results. Like many things I’m sure there’s a significant difference depending on your biochemistry.
What were your initial sleep issues and how does MG help? Also, do you take it right before bed or is it something that just builds up in increasing effectiveness after taking it daily for weeks / months?
It's a long read with a lot of data and can be hard to make sense of. Here is the TLDR:
Conclusion
The interpretation which seems to best resolve everything I know about magnesium with the data from my experiment is that magnesium supplementation does indeed help me a large amount, but I was taking way too much.
The couple paragraphs above this citation are also worth reading, in particular:
I find this very troubling. The magnesium supplementation was harmful enough to do a lot of cumulative damage over the months involved, but not so blatantly harmful enough as to be noticeable without a randomized blind self-experiment or at least systematic data collection—neither of which are common among people who would be supplementing magnesium I would much prefer it if my magnesium overdose had come with visible harm (such as waking up in the middle of the night after a nightmare soaked in sweat), since then I’d know quickly and surely, as would anyone else taking magnesium. But the harm I observed in my data? For all I know, that could be affecting every user of magnesium supplements! How would we know otherwise?
I'm not sure about this at all, but I wonder if both parties feel they have to smile first for something to happen. A social protocol, a non-verbal handshake, carried out before moving to the verbal. Kinda like how all partners in a remote business sometimes feel they are doing more work than everyone else, even if they are not.
Independent of whether this "mutual sensation of making first moves" idea is true or false, the right answer, as an actor, is to smile.
My biggest realization about doing hard things is that I needed to let go of my intellectual entitlement. Just because something is (or seems) effortless to others, doesn't mean it will be the same for me.
Part of this entitlement stemmed from a (now eroded by bitter experience) belief that I'm somehow a faster learner than normal, that _I_ don't have to do the work.
For example, about seven years ago I wanted to learn Calc I-III on my own. I went down the usual, lazy, intellectually-entitled route of watching lectures and YouTube videos online without doing a single exercise.
A year later, guess what? I couldn't remember jack-shit. Moreover, I couldn't solve problems, which is basically the reason I was learning math anyway. Any bystander could have predicted this outcome, but I was blinded by my own entitlement.
Now, after being humbled (here and elsewhere, e.g. in learning to play music by ear), I realize that there's honor, even long-term efficiencies in following every step the great teachers of the past have laid out, in moving slowly albeit with rigor and confidence.
I resumed my math study with Geometry 101, the absolute basics, using a book of 5000 (short) exercises. It probably took me three times as long as Calc I-III lectures combined. But I realized something — I found more joy in doing the exercises, in doing things the _right_ way, than I ever had in watching lectures.
>Just because something is (or seems) effortless to others
My favorite part of skate videos growing up was at the end when they showed all the wipeouts and crashes. They hurt to watch, so much, but they always drove home the fact that it took a lot of painful and frustrating failures before the guy landed that really smooth 35 stair grind.
The point it, things often seem effortless to others but that's just cause you're not really seeing the effort being put in.
> Just because something is (or seems) effortless to others, doesn't mean it will be the same for me.
I think it's also important to remember it is rarely effortless to others. You just don't see the effort. I was fortunate enough to hang out with some people in college who were valedictorians at their high schools, and would generally be considered smart. They ended up graduating college with 4.0s. Since I hung out with them all the time, I got to see just how much they worked at it. They took amazing notes, and studied all the time. We didn't have a name for it then, but they essentially did the Pomodoro technique to pull all nighters studying for big exams.
Seeing them definitely helped me realize that getting through hard problems is work, and requires time. Thinking time, studying time, and practicing time. Do some things come easier to some people? Sure, but almost everyone has to put in the work at some point.
As an aside, not understanding how much work goes into something is common in sports. People see Michael Jordan hit the final shot or Tiger Woods hit an amazing shot out of a bunker, but do not realize they have probably practiced that shot hundreds if not thousands of times.
As much as it hurts me to believe as much, I'm confident that there really are people for whom at least certain things are "basically effortless". I've seen this occur around my peers, especially with music, where some (who already play piano but only by notes) learn to play by ear in a summer, but others are still struggling after five years of daily practice.
Absolutely. There are definitely people where certain things just come easier. You mentioned music, which I have seen. Same with athletics. But even those people often spend way more time practicing than they are given credit for.
> long-term efficiencies in following every step the great teachers of the past have laid out, in moving slowly albeit with rigor and confidence.
I always return to this [0] diagram when thinking about learning. Am I taking shortcuts that'll actually stunt my ability to progress further in my development. The "Expert Beginner" is a dead-end development wise - it might be a perfectly reasonable place to end up, but not the right way to expertise.
>A year later, guess what? I couldn't remember jack-shit. Moreover, I couldn't solve problems, which is basically the reason I was learning math anyway. Any bystander could have predicted this outcome, but I was blinded by my own entitlement.
I'm a third year university student; I did all the exercises set last year to do well in the exam and over the course of the whole year. And now, only one year later, I can't remember how to do some of the most fundamental problems. I can remember the derivative and integral of trig functions, but the method of doing even moderately challenging exercises with them I don't remember well and I'd need to look it up. I don't know what that signifies, but I have the impression that even just doing the exercises doesn't last long unless you use what you have learned semi-regularly at the least.
To add to your point, I think this reinforces the value of spaced repetition learning. It's been show to been one of the best ways to actually retain information. So, as you said, just doing the exercises only gets one so far. You'll need to either use what you learned or at least do refresher exercises to better put what you learned into memory. The benefit is that you may be able to do these refreshers and greater intervals over time, effectively retaining the information longer.
For me personally, there does seem to be a tipping point where what I learned really sticks in my brain and degrades much slower. However, I can't seem to pinpoint where that point happens or if it is even consistent. There are some coding concepts I never forget, and some that seem to leave me within a month.
> My biggest realization about doing hard things is that I needed to let go of my intellectual entitlement. Just because something is (or seems) effortless to others, doesn't mean it will be the same for me.
The movie Goodwill Hunting has a scene that describes this [0].
Going non-clickbaity is not only about sacrificing revenue: it's also about sacrificing readership. Even if your only goal is readership, living in a world where the competition employs click-bait means your hands are somewhat forced.
Although the article seems spammy at first, it's surprisingly deep, and I can tell, from my experience of content marketing my own projects, that a tasteful version of what they suggest would benefit most startups.
