MNTS #41
MNTS #41
[Week 8 / Year 2024] Book Notes, Algos to Live By, N=1, Attention Span, Slow Productivity, Tunnel
Mainly, Notes To Self - my weekly attempt to compress everything noteworthy I read, watched, listened to, and discovered during the past week
New Post: Book Notes
By doing these posts regularly in 2024, I’ve concluded that not every book I read deserves a dedicated write-up. Sometimes, I’m just compelled to read something and want to capture my highlights and let it simmer for a while. Ametora is one of those books. Perhaps I will revisit the highlights later to extract more value from them, or perhaps not. I will take a Noguchi-esque approach to building out my library of book notes, meaning the books I find myself revisiting most frequently likely contain the highest signal and, therefore, deserve the most robust notes and distillations.
Reading
I finished Algorithms to Live By Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths - I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have a bunch of highlights and was introduced to several really useful computer science concepts like Three Arm Bandits, Noguchi Filiing Sytems, Laplace’s Law, Hill Climbing, and several others. I feel that this book did an excellent job of explaining how to look at the world through the lens of computer science. These concepts generalize extremely well because they are all heavily logic and math-based.
N=1: Single Subject Research by slimemoldtimemold - I’m a big fan of N=1 experiments and have been running them less rigorously for the last decade. I will likely incorporate the suggested random number generator into my next experiment.
Even if the difference is much more subtle — perhaps a 75% chance of a migraine with 400 mg magnesium and 80% without — with enough days, she can still show to an arbitrary level of confidence that the magnesium has the observed effect FOR HER, however small that effect might be.
My Personal “Attention Span” Takeaways by David Epstein - I’ve been cultivating more awareness of my attention span lately and concur with Epstein on a couple of these points. First, “don’t plan big chunks of time for intense focus” I have also generally found this futile. My tactic is to time-block 15-30 min to start a task and then build in some slack. If I get into a flow and catch some momentum, I can keep going, but If I don’t, I move on to something different. I can never predict when I will get into the flow and be compelled to produce at an accelerated clip. Knowing this, however, makes it much more of a numbers game, meaning the more time I sit down and start, the more chances I have of striking creative output gold. The second thing he mentioned that I also have been tracking is “paying attention to my attention: at what time and under what circumstances did I find it easy to focus?” I’ve noticed that the morning hours between 7:00 - 9:00 am are when creative thoughts and ideas tend to surface for me. Realizing this, I try to guard that time of day to work on my hardest, most cognitively demanding tasks.
Listening
The more I listen to Cal Newport, the more I’m convinced he’s Jason Bateman re-skinned as a computer scientist. Jokes aside. I’m sold on the concept of slow productivity and emphasis on quality, fun episode.
Random
Back in the tunnel, framed this one better than the last.
Until next week!
Stay spirited, stay resilient.
AP