2020 August. Efficiency and "time is money" thinking is terrible.

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Go-lang Course #

Ultimate Go Programming, Second Edition by William Kennedy. I didn't know much about Go before taking this course, but I've learned much more than I expected. I highly recommend it.

Books I've read #

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. Finally, a book about breathing I can recommend. All the basics are covered. You get an intro to some extreme breathing techniques like the Wim Hoff method. Most of the book is rooted in facts and science. The best thing is that it's fun to read. The most important lesson learned: always breathe through your nose.
The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything by Neil Pasricha. I'm a little disappointed with this one. It's okay (as I don't mention bad books), but my expectations were high. The most exciting ideas were about what to not do like don't take advice or don't answer email.
The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating by David Kadavy. One of the critical lessons I've got from it is that emotions matter when doing your work. It shows through.

Art #

Something is pulling me into the visual arts recently. Because of my lack of skills, such unapologetically "ugly" sketches speak to me a lot more than more beautiful books.

Sketch Now, Think Later: Jump into Urban Sketching with Limited Time, Tools, and Techniques by Mike Yoshiaki Daikubara. A quick read with the basics of Urban Sketching.
Urban Watercolor Sketching: A Guide to Drawing, Painting, and Storytelling in Color by Felix Scheinberger. I like Felix another book Dare to Sketch. If you look to learn something about watercolors and see some unapologetically ugly drawings, then this book is for you.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi #

The order indicated how much I liked the book:

Elsewhere on the Web #

The impact of news is something of a psychological mystery, because most of it doesn't actually affect us directly, if at all. And when it does, several studies have found that – as with the Boston Marathon Bombings – the coverage can be worse for our mental health than the reality.
The lesson is pretty straightforward. Don't watch the news as much as possible.

Efficiency and "time is money" shortcomings #

I've read a lot of criticism of those two ideas. I've been exploring alternative mindsets like thinking about inefficiencies as insurance. One of them is having free time to experience boredom. I can't say that it was easy to accomplish for the past month.

Buying time promotes happiness

Feelings of time stress are in turn linked to lower well-being, including reduced happiness, increased anxiety, and insomnia. Time stress is also a critical factor underlying rising rates of obesity: lacking time is a primary reason that people report failing to eat healthy foods or exercise regularly. In theory, rising incomes could offer a way out of the "time famine" of modern life, because wealth offers the opportunity to have more free time, such as by paying more to live closer to work. However, some evidence suggests that wealthier people spend more time engaging in stressful activities, such as shopping and commuting. Experimental research shows that simply leading people to feel that their time is economically valuable induces them to feel that they do not have enough of it.

Why efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better. It's a lot more about the economy than life satisfaction, but still worth reading.
Growth Without Goals by Patrick O'Shaughnessy.

Inventing the future is another way of saying "setting goals." Success, especially in the West, then becomes about achieving those goals. We accumulate accomplishments and call it success. Success means something very different to me, and I think being a great father will be about effectively communicating this different definition of success to my kids. Success is about building a set of daily practices, it is about growth without goals. Continuous, habitual practice(s) trumps achievement-based success.

I think "accomplishments" are traps. Accomplishments, by their very definition, exist only in the past or future—which are not even real things.

Why you should get bored more often by Ozan Varol.

Following in the footsteps of these masterminds, I decided to rekindle my long-lost affair with boredom. I began deliberately building time into my day that I would call "airplane mode" when I sit on my recliner doing nothing but thinking and daydreaming. I spend 20 minutes, four days a week, in the sauna, with nothing but a pen and paper in hand. Odd place for writing? Yes. But some of the best ideas in recent memory occurred to me in that solitary, stifling environment.

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