Dino’s Journal 📖

reflection

I read a post from Cal Newport titled “Pliny the Younger on Happy and Honorable Seclusion”. After reading this, I thought to myself, here is another example of people battling with distractions. This one was from 2,000 years ago.

So, I'm starting to realize that the smartphone in and of itself is not the cause of distraction. Rather, it is just another form of distraction. Distraction has always been with us. It just takes on different forms as human civilization advances.

The problem was/is distraction itself. The solution was/still seems to be the same — to set up an environment that is, as much as possible, devoid of distractions, so that you can do your best work.

Tags: #Reflection #DigitalMinimalism #Distraction #SmartphoneAddiction

Discuss... or leave me a comment below.

For this journal entry, I'm not going to reorder my thoughts/notes like I normally do. These were basically copied off my journal and pasted here in the order that they were written down. I think it's as close as you can get to actually reading my journal. But the main reason I'm doing this, is to lessen the amount of time it takes for me to publish a journal entry. So here goes...


“We lost!”, my son said as he finished 10th place in a Mario Kart race. He said this happily by the way, in a way that only a child could ever do. This is what we lost when we grew up. We lost that childlike innocence. We lost the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child. We lost the ability to be happy in any given moment like a child could.

The question I have is, how do we get it back?

#Reflection


I noticed that I write down notes with the expectation that I'll be publishing them in the future. This causes me to write longer, fuller sentences in an unconscious attempt to make my notes ready to be published with minimal editing.

I think this bogs down my note taking process. Instead of writing down notes for the purpose of referencing them in the future, I write down notes with the purpose of stringing them all together into a future blog post. I think that if I stop writing “ready to be published” notes and instead go back to writing notes just for myself, that will make my digital garden a lot easier and less exhausting to maintain.

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Interesting Reads

Creating habits: how long does it take to form a habit? — the title pretty much explains what this article is about.

So, how long does it take to form a new habit? Apparently, it takes an average of around 66 days, or 2 months, to form a new habit. That is way longer than what is normally mentioned in articles or magazines I’ve read. That means if you want to build a habit of doing pull-ups right after waking up, you need to consistently do it for 2 months straight.


After reading this essay, Peter Thiel's Religion, and finding out about the idea of mimetic theory, of us imitating others, my mind was opened up. I'm starting to see it around me. Most of everything we do is imitation. I don't quite know yet what to do with this new found information, but I'm excited to find out more about it.

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It was Blaise Pascal, back in the 17th century, who said “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Fast forward to today and I can't help but feel that this quote is applicable to online discussions nowadays.

I think one thing that contributes to toxic discussions and debates online, is that people cannot accept a difference in opinion anymore. It's like everyone has this need to correct someone else online, to tell them that they're wrong and that their beliefs are stupid. The better reaction is to take a deep breath, understand that you don't agree with what you've just read and just let it go.

There's so much more to life, than spending your precious time trying to tell someone else online that they're wrong. Every once in awhile, you have to be able to just let it go.

Tags: #Reflection #OnlineBehavior

Discuss... or leave me a comment below.

I could have a Porsche or a Ferrari parked in my garage, but even that would pale in comparison to the joy I get from being able to enjoy a quiet breakfast with my son. As I grow older, I'm learning that it's the simple things in life that bring the greatest joy.

Tags: #Reflection #Parenthood #TheSimpleThingsInLife

Discuss... or leave me a comment below.

It's the end of the year and for some reason I'm itching to start writing journal entries again. I considered just turning this into another Weeknotes post, but I don't think I can keep up with that schedule. So, this will be the start of a new journal entry series.

I say new because I've had a journal entry series before. If you are a returning reader, you've most likely even read them. If you are a new reader, then you missed out on a number of cringe-worthy personal posts. And that's part of the reason that series came to an end. I somehow outgrew that phase and no longer wanted to write about overtly personal stuff.

So, for this new series, one of the things I want to focus on is just sharing what I've learned. Instead of this journal/series being about “What's been going on with my life?”, I want it to be more about “What have I learned today?”

Also, I won't commit to a schedule for posting. It could be once a month, once every 4 months, or even just once a year. Whatever it will turn out to be, I'll write one when I feel like writing. So before that urge to write fades, here goes.

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We can't go on a walk, or a run, or a bike ride without sharing photos that we did so. We can't read a book without sharing a photo of the book we are reading. We can't drink a latte without first sharing a photo of it. We can't eat without sharing a photo of the food we are eating. We I can't listen to music without sharing what song we're I'm listening to. We can't live our lives without documenting a part of it — if not all of it — online.

Why? Why are we doing all this? Why do we feel the need to do all this? Does anybody else think that's not normal? I've been asking myself those questions for months now.

There's lots of advice on what to do to take control of your data online. For instance, you should have all your blog posts and photos under your domain name, so you keep control of them. And if you're not concerned about that, there's lots of advice on what platform is the best for photo-blogging, long-form blogging, micro-blogging, etc... There's all sorts of advice regarding the best ways to manage your data online. But no one seems to be asking the question, why?

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Don't force yourself to blog when you don't want to.

This is a rule or tip I've seen from other bloggers in the past. But I didn't really internalize it, until I made blogging less of a priority in my life.

I always had something to say. In fact, I kept writing down thoughts and ideas into my journal, so that I would always have something to say. But soon enough it became like work to me. More of a chore instead of a fun hobby.

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If you don’t know about your past, you can’t shape your future. Now go. Learn where you came from. ~ Kemal, The Protector S1, E5

You can't shape your future, if you don't know your past. This applies to most things in life — and can apply to a person, to an organization, to a company, to a country, etc... Sometimes we get too caught up in the present, that we forget to look back to the past, to figure out where we should be going or what we should be doing.

For instance, the whole human race has come so far. From barely being able to survive in the wilderness, to building out amazing skyscrapers, to even flying out to the moon and back. It would be such a shame to let all this collective knowledge and progress go to waste by only focusing on the present.

A lot of the problems we have now, have already been encountered in the past — they just look a little different. For instance, a problem with addiction to books in the past, morphed into addiction to television, then to computers, and now in its most potent form yet, addiction to smartphones. Like it was mentioned in the The Social Dilemma documentary, these are the same problems that we've encountered before. They've just taken on a different form.

But not every problem we encounter today needs to be solved by a new app or new gadget or even new technology. Sometimes, all we need to do, is look to the past for answers.

From the standpoint of personal self-improvement, you should look to the past, study it, find out where you failed and where you succeeded, and use that to figure out how to shape your future.

Tags: #Reflection #SelfImprovement

Discuss... or leave me a comment below.

2) Writing wasn't fun anymore

When I would write a blog post, I would always start with a blank page and a massive backlog of ideas. The act of writing a well-formatted blog post is intimidating. That is the part I don't enjoy.

I realized I was overthinking it. The things I write about are straightforward and often very technical. They're more for me than anyone else. Writing helps me think and understand so I decided to embrace this and change the way I write.

Instead of writing long, formal blog posts for others, I now write smaller (usually) brief notes about a specific topic to build up my own personal knowledge.

This collection of notes can then be used to Learn in public, sometimes referred to as a Digital Garden.

Link: How and why this site exists – Eric Gregorich

Sad to say, but I'm at this point right now. Just the thought of writing a decent blog post somehow renders me exhausted. Not to mention, my mind has been stuck on the idea of, not everything has to be shared online. It's perfectly okay to go through life, to let things happen to you and not have to share it online.

Writing this post took a good bit of effort on my part. I had to make sure to finish it in one sitting, otherwise it would have gone unpublished for sure. Needless to say, I've all but given up on the 100DaysToOffload challenge. I got to 76 posts. That's as far as I could go.

Lately, I've been spending time writing code, instead of writing entries on here. At this point in time, I find more satisfaction in producing a working application, as opposed to a new blog post or journal entry. It's not that I don't have anything to write about — my bullet journal is filled with topics to write about. But lately, I just don't feel like I'm publishing something of value on here. I guess I also finally got tired of writing journal entries.

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