The goal of this blog was to track things to figure out what I like. Who am I? We consume, but we donāt track it. If we knew what we chose, whether consciously or subconsciously- we could make better decisions about who we are, and what direction to take.
There is a quote, but I canāt remember the full phrasing or who said it. Something along the lines of āwhatever you do in your free time, you should do.ā
In This Post:
- Discovering old f(r)iends
- Money Management and The Limbic System
- Commitment Devices
- All the YouTube videos I watched today
Discovering Old Friends
I found an old post about academic achievement from highschool. It listed students, and I realized I knew nearly all of them. I decided to look up what they were all doing. I couldnāt find everyone, but it was surprising to see what the top 10% of my high school (similar roots) started doing. I spent a decent amount of time doing this since I had a pretty big high school. It was sort of like catching up with old friends who you werenāt necessarily your friends but are still interested in knowing are not dead.
Itād be interesting to write a book about lots of people with diverging paths. Iāve never seen that done, probably because it would be too hard to keep people together.
Turns out one of my old friends lives in the same city as me doing the same type of work- so I reached out. Will let you know if there is a reply!
Iām wondering if it is better to split these giant recaps into more parsable short articles.
Watched
Money Management Skills Episode 1 - The Greatest Courses
This was the last day of my free trial of The Greatest Courses. I donāt know if I will renew. I did get some nice nuggets of Wisdom.
I gave the first episode of a Personal Finance course a chance, and it talked about commitment devices. A classic example is when Odysseus tied himself to the mast so he could safely hear the song.
In technical terms, it is a way to control or limit the limbic systemās response. They refer to Clocky, an alarm clock made by an MIT researcher. The idea is the first night, you will hit the snooze. Then you hit it again, and Clocky starts to wheel around. After doing that one night, your brain response will decide it is easier to get up than to snooze again and have to wake up to chase something around.
The concept of commitment devices is something I knew about but never really thought about before. We are constantly competing with ourselves between emotional and logical responses, unconscious and conscious choices.
My mom gifted me a Sonic Bomb alarm clock when I was in college. I had to say- the shrill noise works but only because of social shaming. Once I moved out of living with others, it was still quite easy to snooze. Even worse- I would unconsciously wake up, disable the alarms, and go back to sleep without realizing it. This led to many awkward situations.
The only thing that worked was multiple alarms in multiple places. Iām a lot better about it now, but I wonder if the Clocky would be a good fit for me.
In general, though, it is about putting systems in place that make you resist temptation. Iāve been reading the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which talks about setting up systems like this. For example, at Google, they did not remove any unhealthy snacks. They made healthy snacks more visible and upfront while hiding the unhealthy snacks behind frosted glass. In the end, people ate more healthy snacks even though they technically had the same options.
YouTube
- Does Coffee make you Fat and Anxious? by What Iāve Learned
- Why Avril Lavigne Disappeared by honest
- This is NOT How People Talk by Nerdstalgic
- Songs That Shouldnāt Work Together But Do by RoomieOfficial
- Logic Packs A Charizard! Pokemon Pack Opening
- Confronting Logan Paul | I Bought His $200,000 Pokemon Cards
- Half of The $10,000 Singing Tournament) by RoomieOfficial w/ Daniel Thrasher & Tristan Parades
- Can a Country Expert Make Me Like Country? by RoomieOfficial
- Rap cover songs donāt exist (and hereās why) by Adam Neely
- How Doritos Were Made from Disneyland Trash by Hook
- Adobe Inc.- From Garage Startup to an Empire by ColdFusion
- Why āsenior software engineerā isnāt worth itā¦ by TechLead
- Serverless Doesnāt Make Sense by Ben Awad
Does Coffee Make You Fat and Anxious?
TL;DR The claim is that coffee could mess up your brain by creating more adenosine receptors in response to blocking existing ones. Didnāt look too deep into this. It was more of something to put on in the background. I donāt even really drink coffee. Presumably, any caffeine would have a similar effect to what it claims.
Why Avril Lavigne Disappeared
A surprisingly tragic story at times- between health problems and recording companies trying to keep her down. It is crazy how impactful one person could be. She wrote/co-wrote all her own songs and obviously made a splash.
This is NOT How People Talk
A look at dialogue in movies and how to get your message across. āPerfectā dialogue versus natural dialogue.
Songs That Shouldnāt Work Together But Do
Funny little mashup remixes. Iām subscribed to a couple mashup channels on YouTube but donāt watch them actively.
Logic Packs A Charizard!
I watched these videos in reverse order of the list. I watched this because it was mentioned in the below video. But he pulls a Charizard (rare & expensive). I donāt know if this is a 1st edition, but it is a base set either way.
Confronting Logan Paul | I Bought
I love Graham Stephan. Logan Paul bought a $200,000 box of cards and resold the packs for $11k each. I didnāt realize this meant Logan Paul would open them on stream. What times we live in. Graham got a holo, but I wonāt spoil which!
$10,000 Singing Tournament
I love singing competitions. Didnāt get all the way through, though. It is a 43 min video. Will revisit later.
Can a Country Expert Make Me Like Country?
Iām not a huge country guy, but I listened a lot when I was younger. Would watch CMT with my brothers. 2000ās country and older ārealā country are good.
But I donāt actively seek it out, and most of it is just pop/hybrid songs with accents.
Rap cover songs donāt exist (and hereās why)
Interesting analysis.
How Doritos Were Made from Disneyland Trash
Insane story. In some ways, similar to the Stacy Pita chip story. Stacyās was using their extra pitas from sandwiches to make chips. Since they would get stale, the chips offered a way to use their excess stock and monetize it.
Arch West, a marketing executive at Frito Lay, tried deep-fried tortillas at a stand he stopped at on the way home. This gave him the idea for Doritos (though the name didnāt exist yet and was part of the journey).
Taco flavor was the breakthrough! I wish they stocked them near me.
Adobe Inc.- From Garage Startup to an Empire
I did not expect this to turn into a kidnapping story. Exhilarating watch. Crazy how much Adobe has affected the world. They disrupted industries before that became a common term. This includes the story of the company and its acquisition. I didnāt realize Photoshop wasnāt originally an Adobe product. I own some Adobe stock, so.
Why āsenior software engineerā isnāt worth itā¦
Similar to the arguments of Company of One by Paul Jarvis. At some point, there is so much responsibility. Is the extra stress worth the little bit of extra money?
Serverless Doesnāt Make Sense
Iād be interested to see Ben Awadās opinion on Cloudflare Workers, which seems to fix most of the issues he references. The main sum is cold starts are dumb.
As someone who had to make a serverless function warmer and the fact Serverless providers offer this as a service is silly.
Iād argue there are still some benefits of a Function As a Service (FaaS), but it works better for certain use cases. To be fair, Serverless != FaaS.
Commitment Device Ideas
Money over dieting system
I donāt think diets work. Iāve skimmed through the book The End of Dieting. If you eat healthy, nutritious food, then you should be good. Trying to change fundamentally who you are is a bad idea.
You canāt try to fight your natural biases or inclinations in one fell swoop. Maybe you shouldnāt at all. If you get cravings for salty food- you can still eat salty food. Just find a healthier alternative that fills that void.
Take it one at a time. If you donāt have the temptation around, you canāt get into it. If a choice is easier, you are more likely to do it. If there is no choice at all, it is an even easier decision.
What are you more likely to do:
- Get off your butt, go outside (into the cold, cold world), and buy your favorite dessert
- Eat whatever is on the counter/in the pantry- whatever it is
Iām lazy, so if I had another alternative and it was good enough- I would be satisfied enough.
I personally think that is the key.
Donāt just get rid of your bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos.
-
Eat less of the same thing.
- Buy pre-packaged snack-size ones.
- Buy a big bag and immediately put it into smaller bags.
-
Buy a different version of the same snack
- Example: Baked lays instead of regular lays.
- Try a different healthy snack that is still salty/spicy/etc.
It would be better to make a small step that gets you closer. Once you are used to that alternative, make another one.
I switched from regular soda to diet soda to less diet soda. I donāt even like the taste of regular soda now. Iāve desensitized and weaned myself off.
A clean break might be better in some cases. Sugar is an addicting thing that probably is easier to wean off. But a lot of the processed food we eat acts the same way.
Imagine you used Monopoly money to budget your food. Imagine you get $100 a day. A cookie might cost $50 and be very expensive, but a healthy entree might only be $10. It could be an interesting path to consider personally implementing.