> Whatever it is that you do, you have to really do it. If you have a choice between doing it for three hours on Sunday or doing it for 15 minutes a day for the rest of the week, do it 15 minutes a day, because what you do every day is what your brain is working on when you’re not paying attention. Your subconscious is making progress on the things you do constantly.
This very much resonates with me. The difference between doing something everyday vs cramming it into one big session (say, once a week or once a month) is huge! In fact, the bigger the challenge, the more pronounced the difference is.
For instance, I recently picked up a new hobby: reading full undergraduate or graduate level mathematics textbooks, and solving the exercise problems. A few years ago, I spent time with analytic number theory [1]. Currently, I am learning Galois theory. I have noticed that reading even as little as just one page a day yields far more insight, intuition, and problem-solving ability than trying to study 5-10 pages together during the weekend.
Even if it is just a page (or just one theorem or just one proof), the act of engaging daily keeps my mind working on the material. I can almost feel the ideas maturing in the background. Every morning, I wake up with a deeper understanding of the material, not because I studied for hours, but because I took the time to struggle with a few new concepts, no matter how briefly, the night before.
Having done this for a few years, the process feels almost mechanical. Just feed the brain with new concepts before the day ends. Even if the ideas feel challenging or difficult to fully grasp in the moment, I've learnt not to worry too much. Just feed the new ideas to the brain anyway and go to sleep. The brain digests complexity quietly, in the background, and returns the next day with fresh insight and deeper intuition. It's a remarkable machine we carry on our shoulders!
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
I was expecting something snobby but this was actually a very interesting view into the mind of a self-actualized person. I guess this is what happens if you keep working hard and don't burn out! Thanks for posting this
throwaway290•9mo ago
Didn't address the problem of LLMs and such making publishing original work a self defeating challenge because any of it can be emulated and expropriated by anyone in a pinch.
If not licensing training data is legal then you have no ability to say "I made this" and mean it in the eyes of other people. It's empty air because everyone can and will assume you could just ask a model.
susam•9mo ago
This very much resonates with me. The difference between doing something everyday vs cramming it into one big session (say, once a week or once a month) is huge! In fact, the bigger the challenge, the more pronounced the difference is.
For instance, I recently picked up a new hobby: reading full undergraduate or graduate level mathematics textbooks, and solving the exercise problems. A few years ago, I spent time with analytic number theory [1]. Currently, I am learning Galois theory. I have noticed that reading even as little as just one page a day yields far more insight, intuition, and problem-solving ability than trying to study 5-10 pages together during the weekend.
Even if it is just a page (or just one theorem or just one proof), the act of engaging daily keeps my mind working on the material. I can almost feel the ideas maturing in the background. Every morning, I wake up with a deeper understanding of the material, not because I studied for hours, but because I took the time to struggle with a few new concepts, no matter how briefly, the night before.
Having done this for a few years, the process feels almost mechanical. Just feed the brain with new concepts before the day ends. Even if the ideas feel challenging or difficult to fully grasp in the moment, I've learnt not to worry too much. Just feed the new ideas to the brain anyway and go to sleep. The brain digests complexity quietly, in the background, and returns the next day with fresh insight and deeper intuition. It's a remarkable machine we carry on our shoulders!
[1] https://susam.net/journey-to-prime-number-theorem.html