Being productive

In my last post, I used the word "productive" as if it's a good thing to be exactly that.

Before I continue, I should clarify what exactly I mean by productive. I think my definition is slightly broader than your average Wall Streeter, but narrower than your average hippie. I mean it not simply as "Earning money", "Creating value", etc., but not simply as "Expanding your mind", neither. Actually, I am going to use those examples as my definition: It's neither of those, but somewhere in the middle. Something like "Working towards one's life goals". Or something.

Anyway. I think it's a Good Thing to be productive. Others, especially in the particular area of the world in which I happen to live, are not so sure. Here, the importance of relaxing and not overworking yourself is stressed. "Noone who is about to die looks back at their lives and wish they had worked more", it is said.

Well, no, probably not. But why on earth should that be the reference point? The time you spend in being in "About to die" mode is probably very small compared to most other modes you're going through. Of course when you're about to die you don't wish you had worked more. You're a sentimental being at that point . You fail to recognize how important working was at earlier stages. How it was working that put food on your table. How working hard earlier in life made you m ore qualified for better and higher life-quality jobs. How working hard at anything makes you a more complete human being. Let me rephrase that idiotic saying: "Noone who is about to enter the job market looks back at their lives and wish they had worked less". And that is a way more important reference point in your life. It basically determines how the rest of your life is going to be.

An early case of workaholism.

The issue I have with the anti-productivity-notion that we have in some parts of the world (which I imagine to be the parts where it's not really necessary to work hard in order to survive) is that those of us who don't agree tend to be a bit stigmatized. A "Workaholic" can indeed be a legitimate term, but when someone uses the word "workaholic" to mean someone who works ten hours a day instead of eight... I get slightly aggravated. Especially if some of that work is at home with loved ones.

Personally, I work a lot because I enjoy it. I enjoy learning and I enjoy developing as a human being. Whenever I just watch random TV shows, I feel like Franklin and Edison are looking down at me with disdain. I can appreciate that many people feel like their spouse/friend/family member's work takes focus away from them, which I under certain circumstances can agree is not a Good Thing. However, if you complain that your partner won't rot his/her brain away watching TV with you every night, then I don't think I agree. Read a book together. Learn to dance. Anything other than being UNproductive. It's what I fear most.

Degrees of procrastination

The other day, I was supposed to start grading papers but ended up spending the whole evening watching YouTube videos from some TV show.

Procrastination is familiar to everyone, so I'm not going to talk much about what it is and to what degree that particular phenomenon is annoying me personally. I am more interested in combatting it.

That is, if it is possible to combat it. Is it possible to avoid procrastinating when you have a dreary task you have to do before you can do something you really want?

If it is possible, I think doing so is going to require a mix of several techniques. One technique that I think could be handy, but haven't really tried yet, is procrastinating
to a lesser degree.

For instance - as mentioned above, I was supposed to be grading papers but got stuck watching all the videos I could find from the particular TV show I found interesting that afternoon. Whether I found the TV show interesting in itself or whether it got more interesting because of the drearyness of the task that I was supposed to do, I don't know.

Big on inventing - not so big on procrastinating.

But what I realized was that there were so many things I could rather have been doing in that time - things that were less dreary than what I was really supposed to be doing, while still way more productive than watching YouTube videos. For instance, I could have done some Scheme programming to learn that better, or I could have written blog posts, or working on that music playlist manager I have been thinking about, etc. That would have been a good compromise between my desire to procrastinate the exam grading and my need/desire to develop as a human being.

So why didn't I? Because of the nature of procrastinating. I didn't set out with the goal of watching YouTube all afternoon. In the beginning, I just felt like watching a couple of videos. After watching a couple of videos, I just wanted to finish watching the videos from that particular show. Of course I didn't research whether that was actually feasible to do within a reasonable amount of time, which it of course wasn't. I ended up watching videos until bedtime.

The point of the above: I don't know until after it has happened that I have been procrastinating. So it's all well and good in retrospect to say that I could have done something else that would have been more productive, but I was already going to do something else - I was going to do the actual task at hand. It just... didn't happen.

Which leads to the conclusion that procrastination can't be fought. At least with this technique. At least with this technique alone. But maybe, by combining this 'lesser evils' concept with other methods, it actually can be possible to do something about it? This is something I will try to explore, and I also think this blog will make it easier to do so.

In retrospect, this post... I don't know. It's bad. Everything above has been sa id already, my someone, somewhere. Probably by a lot of people, a lot of places. But that's to be expected with this sort of blog, I guess. I just hope my posts improve.

Reviewing papers

Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing a paper. You might think I am being sarcastic, but I actually found the process very interesting.

For one, it is actually a bit terrifying to think that you are responsible for he quality of this particular bit of scientific progress. The Impostor syndrome is as valid here as in any place, and I couldn't help but feel like a fraud when I received the review request. (I'm not saying that the only reason I don't feel worthy of reviewing a paper is because of the Impostor syndrome - it's also very likely that I am partially incompetent).

However, once those initial doubts receded, it was quite engrossing to review the paper. I found myself really trying to understand what the author was saying in every sentence, and it was almost as if i had written the paper myself.

Eventually, the doubts made their reentry, because I couldn't find that many faults with the paper. There were no big guffaws that I could pounce on (at least that I noticed). This leads to one of two conclusions: Either the author did a good job and had covered all eventualities, or I suck as a scientist.

Which of the two conclusions is the right one is not something I can with only one data point. My brain did its best to rationalize, though - the author is quite famous in my field so he probably has a lot of experience. Also, I did manage to find some points that could be clearer or that should have had less hand-waving and more calculations.

All in all, the reviewing experience was a positive one, even if it stole precious hours out of my work week. I honestly wish I could spend more time reading papers as thoroughly as I did this one, but alas..

Music makes me less productive and does not stimulate creativity

I enjoy music (wow, REALLY?? How profound and unique!) (Shut up.), and I am divided temporally over whether it's a good idea to listen to music a lot.

One the one hand, it's supposed to have all these nice effects on your brain (although while I'm writing this and researching my statements, they're not as well documented as I thought).

On the other hand, I find that when I listen to music, it becomes harder to get anything else done. I have a certain number of "Programming" tracks on my computer that I believe will have minimal disruptive effect on my work flow (being mostly instrumental tracks), but even listening to only such tracks I believe makes me less effective than I would without music.

This is related to a problem that I really want to get rid of - not being able to focus properly on the task at hand. This issue deserves a blog post on its own, but in short, I really need to build better focus discipline. And I don't think listening to music is helping with that. Rather, it is making me addicted to constantly needing stimuli that is stronger than what the task at hand is able to provide. Right now, for instance, as I wrote the last sentence, I took a break to check on some social medium. It's a terrible situation, and I must get out of it.

And it's not only while working - whenever I'm travelling, for instance, I have had the habit of bringing my music player so as to avoid the drearyness of doing nothing. I am actually slightly afraid of not having anything to do (other than entertain myself).

I think it's vital for me to accustom my brain to the notion of not getting stimuli at all times, and that if it wants stimuli, it had better make it up by itself.

Beethoven - did not constantly listen to music on his MP3 player

Doing this to your brain, however, is hard work. It yearns for input. Withdrawal happens. And somehow, it eventually manages to come up with some reason why listening to music at every idle moment actually is good for you, after all.

However, this time I must try to fight it. This blog post shall be a testament to my determination. I will try to stimulate brain activity by not listening to music, instead letting the mind wander to wherever it wants and explore that realm.

This is not to say I won't ever listen to music. I probably still will on a daily basis. But I will try not to fool myself into believing that the best way to stimulate my brain is to listen to music, and I will try to avoid music whenever I need to focus, to work, or whenever I have time wherein the only possible activity is to think. Thinking is a good thing!

New standard label

In writing yesterday, I found myself wanting another label, because sometimes a
post is neither useful nor thoughtful but it doesn't quite qualify as brain sputter either. The post I wrote yesterday was a progress report, I would say, on learning Lisp. And so, I think a useful label will be exactly this: "Progress Report".

To be implemented retroactively and proactively.

Learning Scheme

I am currently in the process of learning Lisp, more specifically the Scheme dialect of it. I was in doubt over whether to start with Scheme, Common Lisp or Clojure, but eventually I found a random internet comment essentially saying "rather than spending a lot of time figuring that out, you should just start". So I chose Scheme because I also have an ambition to read SICP at some point.

I have heard a lot of good things about the Lisp family and how it can change your perspective on programming if you're coming from an OO/procedural background. So far I haven't had the motivation to spend time on something that only seems tangentially relevant to numerical programming, but I find myself more willing to prioritize learning new programming-related stuff of whichever type presently.

As I'm writing this post, I am also researching whether what I'm writing is actually true. I was about to write that lazy evaluation was one of the ways in which Scheme could shine in some numerical applications (iterative schemes etc.). However, now I see that Scheme also does eager evaluation. So as of now, there is nothing that suggests to me that the Lisp family will be of use in a way that Fortran or C cannot do better, numerically speaking.

Wait a minute! Now I see that Scheme indeed supports lazy evaluation, just not as thoroughly as Haskell... much to learn here!

Learning Scheme definitely is making me think. At first I was mostly thinking "this is just a really illegible way of writing a program" but it's starting to grow on me. Now I am working on learning about continuations, which is a hard concept to grasp, and I don't fully understand its implications yet. Hopefully, soon I will, and it seems like this is one of those concepts that can be mind-expanding. For example, the yield statement in Python seems to be closely related to the continuation concept.

There will probably be more on this later. I thought this should be a 'useful' post with a 'quantity' tag.. but now reading through I cannot see how this post is useful for anyone but myself. Brain Sputter it is!

EDIT: This last comment prompted a post about the need for another label. Thus, the label for this shall be "Progress Report"!

Board game session review: Eclipse

The other day I was invited to a game of Eclipse, a board game about galactic conquest. I thought I might as well do a review of the impressions I got from the session.

This is the first time I've played Eclipse. It was reminiscent of Twilight Imperium in the basic premise - you're playing as a human or alien race and the goal is to ... win. You win by earning lots of victory points, which can be gained in several ways. You have to balance resources and research new technologies in order to stay ahead of your competitors, annnd... the board consists of hexagons.

The similarities end there, and the specific game mechanics is what sets this game apart from Twilight Imperium. Eclipse is turn-based and does not have the "roles" that TI has (the roles system is the same as in Puerto Rico, if you've played that). In Eclipse, all players have access to the same actions. But taking an action requires resources, so in a given round the players may take various numbers of turns, based on how many resources they have. Maintaining control over various star systems also requires resources, so the more systems you control the less turns you can take - unless those systems also provide you with more resources. The hexagons aren't in place as the game begins - well, some are, but most of them you add as you explore. And you cannot necessarily move from one hex to an adjacent one - there must be a connecting wormhole. Since you're allowed to place the hex in the orientation you want, this allows for strategic placement of the hexes - if you're defensive you can close all entries to your own part of the galaxies (except there's always a way through the galaxy center) or if you're aggressive you can create shortcuts to the weakling nextdoors.

Each turn, you can build, upgrade or move your ships, research technologies, reshuffle your resources or explore new systems. At the end of the round (when everyone have taken all of their turns) combat is resolved and resources replenished.

You can play as the mysterious and tech-savvy Hydran Progress...

 I played as a human race (here is a peculiarity, by the way, which I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind: there are very many human races, all of which have the same racial boni). I was situated between two alien races who were both quite aggressive, while the humans are more balanced. So initially I chose to explore and turtle, leaving only a couple of ways into my territory. I ended up not having to fight once throughout the whole game.

I wasn't really going for a turtling strategy per se, and my exploration was rather aggressive initially. At a pivotal point though, the neighbor who had the easiest way into my territory offered an alliance. This was when he was about to move into his other neighbor's territory, so he didn't want a war on two fronts. I should not have accepted, but not having a very strong military myself, I did. He could easily have turned around and charged me instead, offering the same deal to the other neighbor.

In the end, the lack of fights turned out to be a major show-stopper for my part. You gain victory points from participating, and these victory points are an important part of your complete portfolio, the other two parts being technology victory points and territory victory points. I ended up having victory points from only two out of three of those parts.

I beat one other player, who just committed hara-kiri early on (if he had pulled off what he tried to do he could easily have won, but he lost a crucial battle and thus ended up being dead). All the other players lasted until the end and had plenty of victory points from all three sources.

...or you can play as the extremely interesting Terran Alliance. No really, they're fun once you get to know them.

So what is my impression of the game?

I am not a big fan of this kind of games in general - you know, the kind where resource management and tactics are important, and where it's every man for himself. For some reason, I don't get much joy out of it, just a lot of competitiveness and adrenaline. I prefer more casual games where the outcome is less up to you. However, I must say this is one of the better games of this kind I have played. I liked it better than TI, because it feels almost like the same game but it plays twice as fast. I do wish the diplomatic part of Eclipse would have been deeper than it currently is. Other than that, this game ranks close to the top (of resource management games, of course - there are many board games I would rather play than Eclipse) as of now.

This was just one session, though, and one data point has no significance. I have also just played TI once so the comparison between them is equally invalid. In fact, all I have written above has no error bars whatsoever, so it is useless for any practical purposes.