In the beginning of the day, don’t look at phone or computer. Avoid news especially, and instead write thoughts, draw something, work on a song, make something, anything. Don’t let day get sucked away with things that can’t be controlled.

Excercise every day with “scientific 7 minute workout”. Also 20–40 minute walks or 100 basketball jump-shots.

Draw daily, even a 5 minute drawing.

Write daily, even for 5 minutes.

Publish first original song, publish first EP. Learn a new song or practice one or two from existing set. Keep learning piano by learning songs you like: https://hypertexthero.com/piano/

Write postcards to people.

Set up a weekly “office hours” livestream to help people with design or technical computer issues.

You, sir or madam, should probably focus on one habit at a time. To focus on everything is to focus on nothing. I say this from experience. I can maintain progress on a few things, but as soon as it increases beyond a few things I lose all of them.

> Don't look at the phone or computer in the morning

Avoiding wasting time is okayish but it pales in comparison to the state where you are naturally drawn to doing things that you consider to be more important.

Honestly i think these are the same though. I'm never _less_ drawn to doing important things than when i watch youtube for the first hour or two of the day. Starting the day with a complete dopamine dump (i don't know if it's correct physiologically but it feels like it) really kills motivation and thus avoiding it really makes the day productive. Since I've noticed in myself, it make a lot bigger difference than one might assume

I would agree that watching phone in the morning tends to make things worse but avoiding it does not automatically lead to being productive. For me at least.

I'm of two minds here.

On one hand, I absolutely agree that you should try to focus on maximizing the positive aspects of your life rather than overly focus on beating down the negatives. For instance, I'm happiest when I'm taking a lot of recreational classes outside of work, and when I'm doing that - my phone usage is not a problem - it's a fine way to spend my limited free time because I'm already doing the things I love.

On the other hand, in the morning especially it feels like looking at my phone can kinda derail my day sometimes. So I download Opal and just set a hard block (impossible to skip) from 9:55pm - 9:35am, that way I'm able to use my phone during the day, but not the very first thing in the day. I find that works well for me.

does this scientific 7 minute workout work?

I spend so much time rushing past moments, trying almost frantically to get through them by applying rules of thumb and not wasting attention. Of course if you do that too little you get stuck in the mud. But too much of it is a form of self-defeating panic. In survival mode you have to rush, eat things you normally wouldn't, put aside any non critical detail. But those details pile up when you stay in that mode for year after year. So my goal is to learn to apply my full attention to the details, and to work hard on picking the right ones.

Factorio teaches this. You work on some tiny little thing, like getting a belt to balance properly, and move on to the next. By iterating that you can raise up this great machine, like pointillist art. Mark Andreessen claims that is Elon's secret sauce. I'm not so much hoping to accelerate inter planetary diaspora as I am to figure out how to keep my shoes from coming untied. I'm considering making one small step for man and ordering those elastic shoe laces, and solve a problem that I've been faffing around on since about age four. And then repeating that.

I forgot to add this one to my list, but it's exactly what I've been trying for the past few days, after I was reminded of it after hearing John Carmack, in a podcast, talk about learning things deeply.

This is one of the reasons I'm dissatisfied with myself. My greatest successes have been when I applied full attention to details out of frustration, which have been rare. I genuinely believe that my life would drastically improve if I'd stop rushing from one thing to another.

If you’ve thought a lot about shoelaces, I assume you’ve seen https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/. I switched to a square knot a few years ago and my shoes basically never come untied.

This site is incredible. I applaud the craft and research that went into such a seemingly mundane part of life.

About shoe laces and if they always come undone, try tying them the other way.

What I mean is if once they’re tied they’re standing “up”/lying along your shoe instead of straight, then you’re doing it wrong and they’re slowly untying themselves.

Instead, make the loop with the other hand. The knot will lie perpendicular to your foot and this one stays tied.

Here is a random link with a video: https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/how-to-tie-your-shoes-righ...

I didn’t learn this until I was 32, and Im telling everyone since!

I gave up on shoelaces many years ago and now wear loafers almost exclusively. It has saved a lot of time!

Merry Christmas. Do you have a link to the Andreessen quote?

I'm going to be working on poetry this next year (something I've already started), and I will be taking a life drawing class starting in January.

Honestly, I'm just tired of taking on technical skills. It might be better for my career, but I'm sick of hobbies and interest that encourage me to be solitary.

Oh, but most importantly, I want to develop my relationship skills. My romantic life has had its ups and downs, but it's mostly been in the pits for the last decade, and I've realized that I have both relationship skills to develop as well as emotional repression I need to work on. I want to have a family someday and am afraid I may never will at this point, so it's important to me that I can be a good husband and father someday. In other words, I've been more of a scared boy than I thought I was, and I need to fix that.

Similar boat. Started pretty successfully in AI/programming since I've always wanted to do that. But romance is pretty bad. I also agree about the solitary hobbies vs social ones.

Started doing sports / gym this year, and will probably continue that next year. I've thought about taking a drawing art course or cooking course.

I want to learn how to properly build a habit/routine that isn't dopamine driven. I have ADHD and I recently realized, even as I'm pushing 50 years old, that all of my hobbies, habits, and "likes" have been dopamine driven. I need to learn how to exclude the reward of a dopamine hit as the reason for doing something. Resources welcome.

A good ADHD coach can be life-changing, as cheesy and corny as it sounds. As you’re likely aware (but for the benefit of everyone else), the ADHD brain is not extrinsically and intrinsically motivated by the exact same things of someone with a more neurotypical brain.

An ADHD brain is more motivated by external Urgency while a more neurotypical will be motivated externally by Importance. This often leads to ADHD people being perceived as anywhere from flakey, unreliable, to totally unconcerned with problems and/or commitments. In social relationships, they are perceived as being anywhere from touch and go to just unwilling to invest into social bonds. The worst part is that if you are able to mask well in one area, you just don’t have the energy to mask everywhere else. It’s like an unwinnable game of wack-a-mole.

It has taken many years and losing so much to get to where I am and it’s still objectively shit. Knowing that every in the world is not made for how your brain functions and is often made specifically for how the majority of people’s brain functions is depressing.

I’ve found that very carefully selecting work that lets me lean into my specific strengths (good under pressure, able to dive deep on technical problems and pull out results, and being a good business communicator), in conjunction with aggressively automating or pre-preparing parts of my life that suck (laying out clothes/tools/equipment the night before, having a checking “escrow” account all my auto bill pay gets pulled out of) helps me function more efficiently.

It gets better, you can carve newer and deeper neural-pathways by sticking to routines, and finding ways to get that dopamine.

Also medication, that really helps.

How did you go about finding an ADHD coach?

I would recommend you read Tiny Habits by Dr BJ Fogg. A lot of people recommend Atomic Habits but I will go against the grain and say I don't think Atomic Habits is a good book and Tiny Habits is a much better read.

I disagree. Both books suck for procrastinators/people with ADHD. Most of them won't finish reading these books. People should watch a 10/20-minute introduction to developing a habit on YouTube instead.

These books are written to sell, not to be read by the target audience. They're far too long, and their structure is bad. For dozens of pages, there is no actionable advice. The reader loses interest by that time, and the book lands on Tsundoku tower. I suspect short self-help books don't sell well, so each book must have 200+ pages, even if it sets up the reader for failure.

Thank you, I'm checking that out now.

Tiny habits changed my life. Severe ADHD

It'll be here this weekend. I'm definitely going to binge-read it.

Good luck!

Someone else suggested a 'coach' and please, I beg you, don't waste money on a 'coach'; they are a scam.

If you want some professional input or support (highly recommended!) see a psychologist or an occupational therapist who has experience working with ADHD adults.

OTs are the best option for ADHDers considering 'coaching' imo; OTs are professional problem solvers and will help you build the skills to be your own coach (among other things). They're also educated, trained, and regulated. OT as a field has some serious problems but that's a rant for another time. They're a fantastic resource for ADHD adults looking to learn to work with their brain on their own terms. They can absolutely help you achieve those goals. Working more regularly with one for a short while and then reconnecting when you need extra help or have new challenges is common.

If you're looking for professional body doubling/human rubber ducking or some more casual kind of motivation and support, disability support workers are also an option much better than 'coaches' imo. They should also be regulated and have at least some training. They're also cheaper than 'coaches' and they're not a scam trying to lie about credentials, regulation, or scopes of practice. I've had disability support workers help me with some really banal stuff I just needed that extra push to get done.

I know some people swear by coaching, but it's a repugnant scam preying on people. I think the market of ADHD adults realising they want or need help exploding combined with a lack of education and awareness that there are already existing actual professionals that can help has perfectly paved the way for these scam artists to swoop in and steer people away from professional help. Anyway, please see an OT or a psych instead of a 'coach'!

I am also diagnosed with ADHD. I can't change my brain chemistry so I've come to the conclusion that if dopamine driven activities is what keeps me going then so be it. Instead of fighting it, I welcome it. ymmv.

In the same boat and I am all for calibrating ones expectations and goals based on strengths and weaknesses but if one is in severe ADHD there is no way it is not affecting his life in very challenging ways

There are some things in my life that are too important for me to allow them to be impulse controlled.

Yeah this was exactly my conclusion too. And it enabled me to give up things that I wasn’t good at, couldn’t consistently practice, and felt as tremendous burdens. (Namely music and foreign languages). They just don’t stimulate me enough to be able to consistently practice as much as is required for mastery. Unlike jumping a bike which I can do for hours on end. Wish I could play music better and speak Japanese, but I can’t and I finally realized I never would for fundamental chemistry reasons

All these suggestions about different or better planning programs or habit forming things etc…. They have an efficacy that last six weeks, then wears off, and they themselves become another shameful burden.

And yes methylphenidate helps.

Try reading books, i'm always happy when i finish one, starting is the difficult part.

A 10 day Vipassana retreat is the ultimate dopamine detox imo.

> all of my hobbies, habits, and "likes" have been dopamine driven

Would you mind giving examples.

I ask because I’m wondering about a family member.

Google "adhd hobby jumping". Too much to explain here. The main thing to keep in mind with ADHD is that when a normal person simply thinks about doing a task, they get a hit of dopamine that gives them the motivation to do the task. An ADHD person doesn't get that until after the task is done, which leads to them never starting. The exception is with things that are an instant dopamine hit. The new shiny. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

What I've found helps me with hobby jumping or not completing tasks/practicing/etc. is to not talk about it. If I'm going to do a task or work on a hobby the act of saying I'm going to do something triggers the same dopamine reward as actually doing the thing. Instead I try to only talk about things that are already done in order to hold myself a little bit more accountable for actually working on stuff.

My goal is a non goal. Try to live in the present, enjoy leisure time, and stop stressing about always having to up-skill myself. As I near my 50s, I realise life is too short to always be working. It’s okay to take a break and just enjoy stuff guilt free.

Having said that I have allowed myself one time intensive hobby - to learn Japanese. I’ve memorised around 1000 kanji and my grammar is decent. My goal is to pass the N4 or N3 next year.

Lol. I found instead of japanese u should other things.

This year I got pretty consistent at strength training twice a week, a lot of times I'm dead and tired but I make sure I get to the gym and at least get one set of my workout done to (a) keep the routine going and (b) not be as sore the next time. I only train my whole body once a week, but I'm happy for now with that since I just don't have the stamina to push more without neglecting my life and hating the workout sessions.

For next year, I want to start taking actual meditation courses and build a regular habit to meditate before going to bed. On top of that, I want to also relax and unwind after work without being on my computer, phone, or the TV (it's ok to pick those things up later, but I just want to rest first without screens)

Highly recommend Barbell Medicine if you're interested in evidence based strength training info. The best workout routine is one that you enjoy and adhere to. Progressive overload (which is NOT just adding weight) is important for progression too. But you probably don't need to go "as hard" as you think - somewhere between 2 and 5 repetitions from failure (RPE 5-8) is fine assuming you're in it for general fitness/health (but even if you aren't).

Try rotating 4 weeks: easy medium hard hardest. It is great for keeping motivated as you are not slogging it out every week and consistency > bravado. Lifting weights that are now easy but were harder is great feeling too.

As someone about to retire, I'm looking to develop passions that involve more physical activity than computerdom allows, like:

- Fix up a 30 year old motorcycle that's been just sitting far too long. Maybe resurrect a classic bike or two thereafter.

- Tour by bicycle and motorbike and write about the journey, both physical and mental.

- Hike and backpack, day hikes and longer.

- Develop musically, maybe even play the myriad instruments I've accumulated over the years. Ideally, in an ensemble.

- Find others with similar interests to hang with offline.

- Stay actively curious and engaged.

> Tour by bicycle and motorbike and write about the journey, both physical and mental.

I have two perfect videos for this topic.

TWO YEARS ON A BIKE (four part video series)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0i2wUmIak&list=PL32DhVYS_c...

One Year on a Bike

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/oneyearonabike

One Year on a Bike "A thousand hellos"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtF92Rq36GI

I would add "A Bivvy, a Phone and a Drone: Cycling Home from China"[1] to that great list. As well as Ed Pratt Unicycling The World series [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmdxs_0yYwc

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLocRYksAqGOJnr-Y0eyP8...

Very cool! Thanks!

Nice. How old is the bike and how long has it been sitting? I recently tried to restore a old 92 Honda CBR600F2 that had also been sitting "far too long". Ended up spending almost as much as I paid for it due to my dumb butt leaving gas in it, ended up needing way more than its carbs cleaned out(surprise :p).

Called it quits at that point unfortunately although I am looking to get another bike for similar reasons, don't really care what kind as long as it isn't a hog if you have any recommendations!

Shame about the F2. I'm a big fan of the 600Fs. Mine's a 1986 Ninja 900. My first step: make sure the crank turns. :-( I drained the tank before storing it so the carbs shouldn't have gummed. But I'm sure that after 25 years of immobility its road to resurrection will be full of potholes, irregardless.

It's been sitting for 25 years... during which I bought two more bikes, a 2004 Yamaha FZ1 and a 2015 Ducati Diavel. Don't ask me why. Apparently owning an excess of bikes is my penance for... some past sin.

I’ve learned the same hard lesson. Restoring always cost so so much more than buying something already in that condition

So true. But I'm hoping that the need to resurrect the dead will propel me into discovering a whole other side to living with mechanized transport. Riding is certainly rewarding (and challenging) but wrenching is another dimension entirely. I'm hoping that, by letting my steed devolve into a basket case that needs emergency surgery to survive, I'll finally get motivated enough to learn the surgical techniques needed to bring it back to life, and that will reveal the secrets of life itself. Or at least some insights into what makes a bike tick.

Awesome! Would you hike by yourself?

That’s what’s holding me back. Even if I get past the loneliness aspect I start freaking myself out about bears and moose.

I'll play that by ear, begin with some solo long afternoon hikes and overnights, then take stock. The lack of others on off-season weekdays may require a plan B. It'll probably depend on the location. I think I'll also look into a satellite phone, which also might be handy when biking in the boonies.

I would, if legal, carry a revolver hiking anywhere with dangerous wildlife :)

Swimming! I started going 2x a week. I took lessons as a kid but hated it due to a fear of water after a traumatic experience in the deep-end. I don't have that fear anymore and I really enjoy it now. I can tread water! And I can float! The mechanics of swimming and floating make a lot of sense to me now. Now I'm swimming laps to find a technique that lets me swim the longest for the least amount of energy. Mostly I copy the techniques of older folks who are also swimming laps in the lanes next to me. lol.

I figure if the game I'm working on doesn't pan out then I'll go become a sailor or something. I think thats what I'm training for, potential career change.

I swim a great deal, but I don't really like having to constantly rotate my head back and forth because I have the ear canal equivalent of Freeza so I picked up a front snorkel. Fair warning: it makes a continuous overhand style into a brutal cardio exercise partially because your focused on purely swimming and also because your "air intake" is smaller.

I am calling 2025 the Year to Just Keep Swimming to get me to do some simple things over and over, but also to get back into swimming.

I learned this year too! Didn’t know how to swim at all and went to the pool almost every other day and did exercises from the book and Udemy course called total immersion swimming and was able to finish a triathlon this year, (very slowly but it was the most relaxing part). Hope it works out!

I'm learning to tailor and fabricate clothing right now. My wife and I are part time magicians and I want to be able to make our costumes ourselevs. At the moment I'm making a longline underbust corset for my wife's costume and will work up to a woman's tailcoat and eventually the goal is to make my own bespoke 3-piece late Victorian / Edwardian inspired men's suit.

It has been such a rabbit hole because, much like software development, it is not just one skill but lots of different skills and disciplines that combine. From design sketches to pattern drafting to understanding the nature of fabrics and how to cut them properly for wear and durability to the actual sewing and fitting etc.

I was literally just practicing a faro when I came across this post. Nice to meet another magician on HN! Are you more into stage-level magic or more parlor magic (card manipulations, etc.)?

Nice!

I would say that we mostly perform parlour with high ambitions of performing in 500+ seat theatres. It's not that we love box illusions and want to do a ton of them or anything. It's more that we like being in control of the entire experience, even down to what the audience experiences when they show up to the theatre before the show and leave at the end. This type of attention to detail is something that you can only achieve in a theatre setting. It doesn't have to be a traditional theatre with a stage... but it has to be a venue that you are entirely in control of.

What we're doing right now is trying to have the most of where we see ourselves in a few years, while working within our limitations. And we'll take a strolling gig or say yes to pretty much anything. But where we try to position ourselves right now is parlour because that's where we can do the type of material that lets us really showcase our characters and what we try to be about. We do a lot of material that plays just as well for a room of 20 people as it does a theatre with 1500.

How about yourself? Tell me your magic story.

oh yeah I get that - there's a lot more to magic then fancy flourishes. :)

In a way it's a return to the more classic era of magic (like Thurston) in so far as the magic is part of an overall experience.

Not much to tell for me, I grew up near a well known (and sadly mostly closed) magic shop, and used to while away hours there practicing sleight of hand. I must have read Henry Hay's Amateur Magician Handbook a hundred times over the summers - sweating over the hand-drawn illustrations and trying to parse how some of the more murderous figurations worked.

My professional magic experience consists of some a few live street magic performances back when I lived in Taiwan - before I spoke Chinese it was a great icebreaker that transcended language barriers.

I've mostly switched over to juggling (contact, and pin) because I like the fact that there's nothing to hide (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), so I don't get nearly as nervous.

Good luck on your journey!

Non-technical skills

* (Continue) Dancing - Beginning of 2023, I got into street style dance and movement (including stretching which I've done now for the past 223 days) helped me get through one of the most challenging periods of my life (i.e. divorced with a child, moved from U.S. to London to single raise my daughter). Dance has now taken its life of its own and I'm finding myself competing in dance "battles" as a way to test and grow my mental fortitude.

Technical skills

* UI Design - as a low level (i.e. C developer), I currently lack the skills to make my own little toy web apps more aesthetically pleasing for not just me, but to share with others

* Photography and videography - want to increase my current level(s) since I started a YouTube channel documenting my dance journey and also create little reels for community events

* (maybe) Rust or C++

[0] - Example of dance related YouTube shorts I make: https://youtube.com/shorts/cI2LAe-MMrw

I got into Dancing after a breakup as well.

I would advise to learn couple dancing as: * Zouk (and if you are already doing street style dance, you will love black zouk) * Bachata (there are so many Bachata dancers around the world, that any country or trip you do, you can go into Bachata socials and make local friends all over the world) * Tango (it is the hardest dance to learn, but it has the best connection of all)

And definetly go into dance congresses. There are multiple dance congresses on Europe, but if you can go to some of the best dance congresses like zoukmx or into brazilian zouk congresses during January in Rio de Janeiro, it will be a life experience.

Check on youtube "zoukmx social" and "black zouk"

Never thought I would see zoukMX mentioned on Hacker News. Funny, because I've signed up for next year for 1st time! Definitely recommend couple dancing in general as well and dance congresses. I've met so many people and shared so many experiences ever since I started dancing and going to congresses.

Cool to see more dancers on HN! I'm gettin into it more myself, I was wondering if you could share the software you used in some of your shorts to practice dance?

> as a low level (i.e. C developer), I currently lack the skills to make my own little toy web apps more aesthetically pleasing for not just me, but to share with others

How did you get interested in opposite ends of the tech stack?

Would love to help you learn rust. What’s the best way to reach out?

I'm happy with my software career at the moment and I think I'm on a pretty good "auto-pilot" for progressing. I want to focus on my physical health this year.

I'm about six months in of consistent weight training and it's been fantastic. I look better and I'm noticeably stronger. I want to continue my 30-45 minute, 4 day per week workouts through this next year.

The big addition that I've struggled with the most is increased cardio. My family has a history of heart issues (although I think a lot of that can be attributed to diet), and I'm definitely not the most cardio proficient individual. I'm not looking to lose weight, so eating enough will also be part of the challenge.

I'd just like to have better stamina, so it seems like regular cardio (maybe 3-4 times per week for 20-30 minutes) at a moderate to high intensity will allow me to do that.

It'll suck, especially here in the North East winters, but I'm hoping my cheap exercise bike can do me some good.

Life is pretty good right now as a young and single guy. I just want to make sure I get to live it in a healthy way for as long as I can now and hopefully get to share it with friends and family.

I bought a rowing machine and just toss on some game of thrones and row for 35 mins. Good way to start the day.

2 recommendations for cardio

1. Play a sport like basketball - join a league. You will run and not even notice

2. Workout outside if nice. Or in winter open a window to let fresh air in. A lot of people get stuffy and tired inside working out bc the carbon level in the room will build up.

Try pickleball for cardio. So much fun you don’t even notice.

Writing. My ability to write is highly dependent on the context. I'm much better at essays than emails, and fiction is completely outside my abilities. I would also like to change my style a little to be less flowery and more succinct. More Paul Graham than purple prose.

Marketing. I'm hopeless at it, and I need to be at least OK at it in order for my project (https://nuenki.app) to succeed.

Time management. I'm very good at obsessing over one thing; less so at managing lots of different things that need to be round-robined.

Physics and maths! I'm in my gap year at the moment, but I want to be prepared for my physics degree next year. I'm already really quite rusty.

Git. I know enough to use it, but I've no clue what a rebase is, for example.

I've had a vague interest in 3D printing for a while, but I've recently been getting into DND and it might finally justify getting one. It seems like miniatures are best with resin printers though, while most other things aren't. I also hate painting things, so maybe it isn't worth it.

German! Nuenki has distracted me from it, but I ought to properly get back to it. It's just something I enjoy - I've discovered how much fun language learning is.

And a number of other things, but the list is already quite long and I should probably be enjoying Christmas instead of browsing HN :)

Ok, you say you are bad at marketing but the Nuenki homepage is one of the best I've seen. The product and benefits are so clearly explained. Well done.

You may eventually want a small project to create a recognizable logo (think how much mileage Duolingo has got from their little owl fellah).

One thing I often see with SaaS offerings is no clear & simple concept / theme that separates the free and paid plans of a service. For Nuenki I would just lean into "works on mobile" being the clear value you get from the paid plan. Hopefully over time you can bring it to more mobile platforms with a small app or something.

Congrats on what you've built and hope to see more growth in 2025! Great idea well executed.

> Marketing. I'm hopeless at it, and I need to be at least OK at it in order for my project (https://nuenki.app) to succeed.

This project looks great and the homepage does a great job at explaining what it does. Especially the slider. And it supports Firefox which is a rarity in this space. I think you should take pride in what you have accomplished from a communication perspective.

The marketing trick that had the most impact on my mindset has been this article about how to structure landing pages https://marketingexamples.com/landing-page/guide.

If you didn't know about it already, I think that you could use it to tweak the Nuenki landing page, and you'll possibly have some aha moment that'll help in marketing down the line.

> Physics and maths! I'm in my gap year at the moment, but I want to be prepared for my physics degree next year. I'm already really quite rusty.

You should really check out Math Academy! It'll diagnose where your gaps are and build you up to all the math you need for a physics degree and then some [0].

[0] https://jonathanwhitmore.com/posts/2024-09-10-MathAcademy-af...

I'm just about finished Mathematical Foundations I on Math Academy:

95% finished

2950 XP

63 hours

I started October 21st and aimed for 60 XP a day, every day. I tended to miss one or two days a week (so the equivalent of a weekend), and I ended up having one period of 9 days I missed completely (last week).

One XP is supposed to be roughly 1 minute of work, so 63-(2950/60) means I've done 13 hours more work than I should've theoretically needed.

I found the course after looking up Hacker News recommendations for learning math. I had hoped to have gotten through the course faster, and I had wanted to be more consistent. I really wanted to grok the concepts and understand them with complete confidence, but don't feel total confidence in quite a few areas.

But ultimately, I'm very happy with this course. I struggle with consistency and underestimate time ranges (it feels like I've done MA for less than 6 hours, not more than 63), and it's got me interested in math again and given me the confidence to do other online courses after years of feeling behind and helpless. I did a SQLite course and I've been using those skills in a big way in two recent software projects.

- - -

My goal for early 2024 is to start and finish Foundations II, as well as independently learn mental math to a higher-than-average degree. I've felt the lack of clear mental math impeding my life as well as greatly slowing down my math progress, so I'd like to be able to understand numeric relationships on a more innate level. I'd also like to learn some graph theory and release my Unicode graph website in the next month!

Thank you for the recommendation! I hadn't heard of Math Academy. "The Challenge: Knowledge Retention" sounds like precisely my problem. I'll try it out.

I can't think of any effective marketing in my entire life that didn't involve repetition.

I think when people say they need to learn marketing they really mean they want to learn to skimp on spending on marketing.

Nothing anyone could come up with for 1 or 2 passes would really beat a white background with black text that just says https://nuenki.app that the target market sees 10 random times for 10 seconds.

I am hopeless at marketing because I think it is just that stupid at this scale of market size and being good at it goes against all my sensibilities.

The site is solid, but as somebody who has also built a foreign language partial translation extension over a decade ago, there's a TON of competition in this area.

Off the top of my head, I can think of Langulearn, Language Immersion for Chrome, Polyglot, Alpharabius, Mind the Word, Gloss (I think defunct now though), and Toucan. These are all extension-based approaches and range from individual words to entire sentences.

Would love to help you learn Git. What’s the best way to reach out?

Mental endurance and discipline to better handle tasks that require sustained focus, especially those I instinctively resist or dismiss, whether because I dislike them or I downplay their importance. Examples are thinking through unfamiliar and difficult problems or reading dense documentation and contracts.

I also want to improve my prioritization skills to better judge which challenging tasks truly deserve my time and mental energy, and which ones don't.

One of the skills I already have is the ability to work with difficult people or take on projects that need to be rescued and turn them around. That has been a valuable skill and has allowed me to develop a brand around it.

However, that doesn't mean that I enjoy working with difficult people or cleaning up other people's messes. I find those people just as off-putting as everyone else; I just happen to be better at masking it. And I find cleaning up messes just as tedious and challenging as everyone else; I just happen to be able to do it anyway.

So I think one of the skills I want to better develop in 2025 is being able to strike a better balance between the things I'm recognized for being good at and the things I actually enjoy doing.

(And if anyone has tips for how to make use of this skill set in a way that's genuinely fulfilling rather than draining, I'm all ears!)

> One of the skills I already have is the ability to work with difficult people or take on projects that need to be rescued and turn them around.

That is one damn good Superpower! Develop it further and charge/ask more for the job. Advertise it in big bold letters to management/clients/everybody. As you say, that is your "brand".

> And if anyone has tips for how to make use of this skill set in a way that's genuinely fulfilling rather than draining, I'm all ears!

Do not let the above take over your life. Practice detachment via "Self-Distancing" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distancing_(psychology)) and drop it from your mind/consciousness when not working. Also see;

Self-Distancing: What It Is and How You Can Use It to Make Better Decisions - https://effectiviology.com/self-distancing-rational-decision...

I use this same (or similar) skill to solve the unsolvable problems by listening to a customers needs, which usually somebody hasn't done by the time they get to me, and then work on fulfilling that need in a way the customer never would have expected. It's very rewarding and turns a negative interaction into a positive one. It's customer service 101 type stuff, but when you get the technical side involved, and you're competent, you become more than a punching bag and become the solution. It's so fun.

> work with difficult people

My strategy, to avoid getting frustrated, is usually to work around them or not take them seriously, rather than work with them. I speak from experience (generally a people pleaser).

That said, sometimes people feel difficult at first, but after giving what they say or do some thought, it starts to make sense.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it sounds like you should look into stoic philosophy. I think it is overly hyped, and actually caused me some damage when I applied it too much, for too long, but definitely one of several worthwhile perspectives to have deeply internalized.

Those are great skills. Would another course of action work for you ? For example selecting projects that bring more money, so as to spend less time on those boring projects (saved time could be used on things you enjoy then)

Maybe work with difficult high performers? Talented people who are difficult because they're brash rather than untalented people who are difficult because they're messy.

Isn't it fulfilling already because you get things done where others may fail? Also how do you do it? I'd love any tip you may have.

Thanks to LLMs, I am now able to build iOS apps with Swift, which has been not only quite fun but also very useful since I was able to come up with a learning app that I wished existed for my kids with minimal effort. So I will definitely spend more time on that. Also, I'm trying to improve my time management and reduce distractions/procrastination. I enabled screen time for myself so I can create some friction between distracting habits such as social media, YouTube, etc. Also, I will be utilizing the Pomodoro technique more as well.

> Thanks to LLMs, I am now able to build iOS apps with Swift

Build iOS apps is one of the few areas where I have excitement in software engineering, and one of my biggest regrets was to get into ML/backend instead of app development.

Maybe I am 15 years behind, but the whole idea of being able to deliver something to the phone of our final customer is beyond magic for me, even working on SWE for a very long time.

Every person that has the capability to deliver something to the end user via a front-end that you can build by yourself has one of the biggest senses of agency in the SWE field in my opinion.

Relatedly, I've been using Flutter for this, it works great and the developer experience is top notch, even for iOS development, you should give it a try. Apparently 28% of all new iOS apps on the Apple App Store are actually written in Flutter, according to some independent research that was done, which is pretty wild to me considering that it feels fairly niche compared to React Native, much less native app development, but well, I guess perceptions aren't everything.

Learning machine learning through maths and implementing some of the most common ML algorithms from scratch.

Writing technical blogs - I find it easy to write topics where there is no right or wrong, just a perspective. But would like to write some technical stuffs i learnt over the year.

Hey! Not sure if you're looking for recommendations, but Andrew Ng's original coursera course for Machine Learning is what you're looking for. I took the course back in 2015 but it's timeless, and gives you the algo and maths foundations you're looking for.

1. Your first one is also on my list.

2. I have written technical blogs and it is very rewarding when you see your article ranking at the top of Google, and people sharing it because it is genuinely useful.

I may have some advice here.

If you've never had a blog, you'll be surprised how easily you can rank in search engines and get visitors. Technical blogs that haven't been tainted by monetization aren't as many as you'd think. You probably see many of them here on HN, but in Google most websites fight to stay on top for major keywords to make money.

Furthermore, many experts don't write. You'll be amazed when you start seeing impressions in Google Search Console (their dashboard for search activity).

I highly recommend: - Setup the site quick, in an imperfect state - Post a few articles in an imperfect state - Install Google Search Console

Then follow the data in Search Console - you'll see which keywords and pages are getting traction. From there, keep posting what you think would be helpful for people like you.

That's really encouraging, I might start a blog as well.

Marketing and sales, so this time I succeed with having paying customers in my next product :)

Any tips or resources for solo entrepreneurs is highly appreciated!

I've been running my brand of scented products and cosmetics (https://yuma.gr) for 2 years now. 2 months ago we completed a rebranding and we're steadily gaining national consumer awareness of our existence as a brand.

From the top of my head, in order of importance:

1. Your perspective is unique - no one else shares your exact point of view. Try everything.

2. Master digital marketing: Google & Facebook Ads, Server Side Tracking, Google Tag Manager, and Analytics. Recommended communities:

- reddit.com/r/PPC

- measure.chat

3. Keep creative talent in-house (designers, developers)

4. Study pricing psychology (eg. kolenda.io/guides/pricing)

5. Good books with warstories:

* Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

* The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing & of Branding (2 separate books) by Al Ries

6. Learn accounting essentials, each country has its own system

7. Provide solid support via multiple channels (phone, email, chat, social etc)

Thanks! This is solid. Good luck with your store. Btw when I open the website, I’d expect it to show me English descriptions (ideally it recognizes my country)

Thanks! The shop currently is Greek only and I disabled google translate sitewide because it breaks React (https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41407169)

Same here! I really underestimated marketing. I've got a lot more respect for it now.

I assumed "build it and they will come" would work, and while there are definitely areas I could improve my product, the bottleneck for me is getting people to see it and try it. Once they're using the trial, I have an excellent conversion rate.

Managing The Professional Service Firm by David Maister was recommended on HN for all entrepreneurs. It has a very practical and commonsense way of explaining how to approach all facets of a business and well worth reading.

- Learn Rust so I can contribute to some open source tools I like

- Self hosting; got a raspberry PI; hoping to self host a bunch of things on in

- Continue studying/deep-diving various topics. Networking, docker, Linux, databases

- Marketing, Sales and SEO

- Make some changes to my Neovim config

- Make some changes to my QMK keyboard

Me too on Rust, self-hosting, and devops stuff! Good luck.

Would love to help you learn rust. What’s the best way to reach out?

Would love to help you learn rust. What’s the best way to reach out?

Writing blog posts and being ok with them not being perfect.

I often have an idea for a post that would be interesting, but then as a learn more about the topic in order to write, I start to realize how much I don’t know. At this point, the post either dies or I spend way too long learning every irrelevant detail until I feel like I know enough.

So I think the skill I am trying to learn is writing as a non-expert. Learning to write in a tone that makes it ok to not know everything. Writing in a tone that conveys my experience and understanding, but doesn’t try to be an authority on the subject.

Writing is a tough skill!

Who is your blog's target audience? I write https://www.curiosities.dev/ for myself. I'm a non-expert in all of the posts.

When I revisit old posts, I digest the information differently and add more explorations/questions. It's much easier to build upon scaffolding that's already there. Maybe in N years, I'll have something insightful to say about X, but I don't have to hold off writing anything until then -- incomplete notes and rephrasing of other people's ideas already benefit me now.

I’ve been working on writing this year. It’s hard. I have countless posts or ideas for posts sitting there because I don’t like them for one reason or another.

For me I don’t collect metrics or really try to think that anyone might read a shred of it. I think that’s been helpful. And also just publish it. In the grand scheme it’s for you anyways to enjoy and develop. One piece of advice that I’ve gotten, is to commit to your points or idea. I think that’s can even include committing to uncertainty. You might need to revise it later, but done thoughtfully if you have readers, they should respect that. If not, well, without comments and metrics what does it matter?

Over the holiday break I’ve migrated to my own blog instead of a platform. So I’ve certainly found it enjoyable even if frustrating!

Personally I think that even if you don't know everything, just make clear what you are certain and uncertain about.

You probably know a lot, and what you write is still good as long as you don't spread misinformation. I have issues trusting most sources that are not clear about what they are uncertain about, cause most people are not experts.

Oddly enough, for 2025 I would say writing.

I would normally think that with the rise of LLMs, writing would be come obsolete. Interestingly though, I think LLMs make good writing more valuable and at the same time more rare.

> I would normally think that with the rise of LLMs, writing would be come obsolete

If LLMs obsolete writing, then they will also obsolete reading. Why waste time on reading texts when you know that no effort has been put into creating them, when they do not encourage trust, or sparkle joy.

Bare-metal Rust: I’ve worked professionally with Rust for 3 years, and embedded Rust for 2. But mostly on RPi 4. I want to make more hardware prototypes, and I have half a dozen ideas.

Nix for production: I’ve used NixOS on my work laptop for 9 months, and I’ve deployed it in production for on-prem CI, dashboard web servers, blogs, VPN gateways, DNS servers. But I could sink another 200 hours into more “katas”, especially wrt. deployment and handling a network of devices.

My path is to create learning material for others.

I already make music, but I’m a really crappy piano player. I can bang out chords, but my fingerings are way wrong. I want to try to actually learn the piano.

WebGL. At least for 2d graphics. And brush up on the simple aspects of the maths that are involved.

Web accessibility.

Would be great if I could finally finish a simple static website for myself. I've been stuck in the analysis paralysis phase for so long it's embarrassing.

Check out three.js, it's amazing and has a 2D api

After procrastinating it for months--heck, years even, I finally started learning to draw. I just bought some sketchbook last week and already used up all of the pages.

Also is there anybody here who also draw?

I loved to draw as a kid and in 2015 I tried to really learn so I bought a cheap course in one of these learning platforms (I think it was udemy). I haven't really kept drawing and have been on and off since then. Last year I decided to get back at it again and have been drawing a bit more consistently but I still can't keep it a daily routine.

TL;DR: I draw, not consistently, but I do enjoy it.

You should try out drawabox.com. I think some people like it and some don't. Even I stopped following the tutorials from that website, but it actually has taught me important fundamentals to get started drawing, like something as simple as how to hold a pen, about perspective, how to draw a box or other shapes, etc. Also, don't stick to one tutorial, so you don't stuck in yet another tutorial hell haha. I think art is subjective enough that you can disagree on tutorials you follow.

Also, this is a good practice about learning things in general: _take a break_. Don't draw continuously. I find that taking a break and purposely "forget" how to draw very helpful on learning, specifically learning to draw.

How to parent/be a parent. I don’t have much choice in the matter, as my firstborn is coming this spring ^_^

New parent here !

Best book hands down - “Be prepared A practical Handbook for new Dads” It’s funny and short and every page is insightful. And you will lol while reading it.

Pathways.org - Great app that suggests activities for right age. And it’s free.

Do you have any other advice that was not covered in that book that you think would be helpful to know about for a first time parent?

Congratulations just had mine a few months ago so this is certainly the skill I’m working on!

Other than that sharpen guitar skills, linear algebra, and as a rubyist thinking about doing something in elixir. But we will see how the time allotment goes with an infant part of the program now.

Same here but within a few weeks :)

Just read the manual that comes with the child. /s

All kidding aside, my kids are 16 and 19 and I am still trying to figure it out.

Pretty sure it is a journey and not a destination.

When I was a young parent, there were moments when I would have strong feelings of inadequacy and feeling paralyzed about what I should do and what I should not do. The most calming thought I had at the time was to remind myself that humans have been parenting for thousands and thousands of years and that I would consider myself to have higher than average intelligence and at least average societal training (through observation of others) about how to care for infants.

we found that manual in "the baby book" by william and martha sears. it was really helpful in the first few years. the book promotes the idea of attachment parenting, which i feel is the right approach. but any parent should decide that for themselves. the general rule for parenting advice though is to only apply advice that makes sense to you. don't let anyone pressure you into doing anything you don't agree with.

i think you'll never stop figuring things out as your kids grow. not with the first few anyways. i guess repetition only comes in with the fourth child or so ;-)

I was just recently a developer, not even a senior, at the current job who was elevated to lead on two different teams, and there is no raise because my terms are defined as part of a larger contract. If I want more I need to become a director equivalent project manager as that is also part of this contract. That is offered to me but PMP is a required prerequisite that I don’t have. So, I guess I should get PMP.

In the meantime I have found ways to self host personal media this year from the house and make it available across the internet behind find a personal domain name. Everything is fully automated and free. If can get my finances in order this would be my start up idea: a preconfigured hardware box with custom dashboards for all household and media services that are privately available across the internet. The MVP is complete.

1) Learn AWK deeply, in which I will meticulously go through a copy of the original 1988 book.

2) Get better at Git.

3) Study and pass the RHCSA.

4) Get better at troubleshooting Linux servers. I can actually feel my skills improving when I can find the actual root cause of an issue, and not just a symptom that is irrelevant. (Thanks, sadservers!)

Would love to help you with number 1 and 2. What’s the best way to reach out?

The authors actually just released a second edition of the AWK book!

You might also want to check out the various books on Unix by Sumitabha Das.

(SadServers guy here) happy to help!

* Learning Ada. It's a language that seems to have had a lot of thought put into the avoidance of errors and bugs. I often hear people say "Language X has this amazing feature!" and the Ada people seem to say "Oh that's cool. We've had that since 1985."

* Improving my audio description skills. I'm an AD writer, and I want to get better at that, but also possibly start performing. I've got a little notion to do a podcast of Audio Description Introductions, but they're pretty hard work and I'm a bit time poor.

* Improving my writing skills generally. I've learned a lot of techniques intuitively and not with any discipline. For example, have no idea what a past participle is, but I'm going to jolly well find out.

Mental fortitude and strength.

As I enter mid life I’m finding a lot of things (mentally) challenging. I’m hoping to find peace and mental strength to stay the course and enjoy the life I have built. Worry less, appreciate more, and generally just be happy.

How to skill up in this area? I’m honestly not sure, but starting with reading.

Nice! This is the most important life skill to develop and maintain as you get older; Needs daily practice and struggle.

Subjects to study are General Philosophy(Hinduism/Buddhism/Stoics/Cynics etc.) and Martial Arts Philosophy (all works translated by William Scott Wilson).

Agreed.

Also, I found The Courage to be Disliked an interesting paradigm shifter.

The book looks pretty interesting and not what i thought it was based on its title; need to check it out.

In case you didn't know of it; you might also like Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_World

Certifications

  - Last month, I purchased the CKA, CKAD, and CKS certifications for approximately USD 400 during a discount. I plan to take the exams in April.  
  - I might also attempt the AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification to deepen my knowledge of AWS.

University

  - I am currently pursuing a degree in AI Engineering at Universidad de Palermo. I need 16 more credits to graduate. In 2025, I plan to earn 11 credits (compared to the 14 credits I completed per year over the past two years), as I’ll have a bit more free time this year.

AI Research

  - My Neural Network professor is involved in research papers, and a few other students and I will be assisting him with his current projects.

Local Business in Maceió

  - I’m currently living in Maceió, Brazil. My fiancée recently earned her university degree and plans to open a local business next year to gain experience and generate income. I’ll support her by providing funding and helping with any IT systems she may need.

Improving Dancing Skills

  - Now that my fiancée has graduated and we no longer need to stay in Maceió as in recent years, I plan to spend some time in São Paulo improving my Zouk skills and in Buenos Aires refining my Tango.

> I purchased the CKA, CKAD, and CKS certifications for approximately USD 400 during a discount. I plan to take the exams in April.

Woah, that sounds an amazing deal. Is this deal still up? I could not find link to i5.

I started with non-technical skills at the earlier stages of my life (sales, marketing, communication) so my goal in the next 10 years is to pick-up:

- Programming and be proficient with one language fundamentals (for now JS/TS) - launchschool seems like a great place for mastery learning.

- Math academy for learning math as an adult with a similar principle of mastery.

On a personal front I've managed to lose 14kgs with the skill of consistency of calorie tracking with Macrofactor and strength training + walking.

And last but not least the self-discovery, meditation and couple counseling made the major difference in my day to day.

I'm torn between: Learning systems (POMDP, RL, etc) for planning, Quantum computing basics, or jumping whole hog into the a learning-from-scratch type course track.

With RL+Planning, my goal is to eventually be able to tradeoff classical estimation and planning with end-to-end systems, and use the best parts of either for a better-than-either pipeline. At the jobs I've had I've seen a weird false dichotomy that produces decent results once committed, but there's always this tension that "the other way" is better, producing weird politics.

Most recently, a classical planning pipeline was completely broken by an ML-based estimation of orientation of obstacles. On inspection they were using quite possibly the worst estimator you could use, and ignoring all kinds of good data, because (I think) they were counting on perfect "measurements" from the ML-based vision system. That kind of thing must happen all the time - get stuck in a local minimum of "tune just a little better" when a good filter on top of a noisy estimator could solve all your problems. There's probably a million such examples in planning systems too.

I want to learn how to make fairly simple characters in blender, so that I can make more unique games, as opposed to using 100% pre-made assets.

If blender is a bit overwhelming for you (it was for me), give blockbench a try. I love how simple everything is, and you can always add plugins if you miss something. Its open-source too!

Thanks, that looks super useful for many of the projects I have in mind!

1) Improved fluency in reading Latin, so I can get through more of Seneca's Letters without so many hours referring to dictionaries and my first-year (and only) textbook; 2) improve Morse code copying speed from 15 wpm to a solid 20 wpm.

Hey, that's really cool. Why did you pick Latin over Greek? Or do you study Greek as well?

Back to embedded systems, particularly with Rust.

I did computer engineering in college some 10-15 years ago, where these projects were super basic and difficult to get into. Seems like massive advancements in the past decade. Maybe my eye has been watching for these, but I'm seeing many more posts about ESP32 projects, for example, being linked here. Same for RP2040s, along with sensors galore and wifi / bluetooth connections.

Picking Rust as language for the chips instead of the C and MicroPython. Rust has applications beyond the embedded systems and learning it lower level can be helpful if wanted in other cases.

I've been a (professional?) embedded software engineer for 25 years. I tried rust a few times, but did not particularly enjoy the experience.

MY_GPIO.borrow(cs).borrow().as_ref().unwrap().odr.modify(|_, w| w.odr1().set_bit());

It seems like the options are 1) MicroPython, which is really easy to use (use python for everything) but lacking in anything lower level to a quick restriction on what you can do. 2) C, which I've used before and understand, but going from the Arduino or PlatformIO experience would require a lot of learning as well. 3) Rust (with embedded_hal and embassy), which is newer, along with different language, but with ability to go lower level with complies, and seeming overall goal to be more widely used.

College was all C/C++ so I've used that before, so I can understand and pick up the code. Since I have brief experience rather than your experience, I'm betting that the time it'd take for me to get up to speed with C and fuller dev environments would take as long as with Rust, and since I can use rust in more applications for what I do professionally, I'm figuring to put the time there.

What have you built and with what in your 25 years? Too many posts and vids about these things are intro rather than more in depth. It's great to hear from people who actually do this into production rather than mini-projects.

A fourth option might be Ada.

I'm learning Ada next year. I'm not interested at all in doing low level programming with it, but the text books I have note that it's actually an area where it excels. Maybe worth a look.

Database engineering, and container engines/runtimes. I've become absolutely bored out of my mind writing backends, web services, etc.

For the past month I've been contributing to a sqlite rust rewrite, and I want to continue until such a point that I would feel comfortable working full time on that (not just on the relatively low hanging fruit). Also want to explore more OCI runtime internals is something I've been fascinated with for a while that I want to get into.

Functional programming, either Haskell or Ocaml. Been putting it off for years. I know at least a glimpse of it from other languages. Just haven't doubled down to actually studying it formally.

Similar for me, but using F♯

Computer Science. After transitioning from Mechanical Engineer, and 5 years of being a "Software Engineer", I want to understand more how computers, operating systems, network, etc. work

The "Science" part is different from the "Applied" part which is what you are listing.

A good introduction to the former is Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing by David Harel and Yishai Feldman - https://www.weizmann.ac.il/math/harel/algorithmics-spirit-co...

One of the resources to be aware of is 'From Nand to Tetris'. It's online and it's free. It's of very high quality and very eye opening.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm following the website https://teachyourselfcs.com/ , which also mentions this course. It looks very good so far.

Website : https://www.nand2tetris.org/ Don't forget to get the book.

Marketing and sales, like everybody else. :)

Desktop application development. I want to make it as easy and fast to create desktop apps as it is to create a web app or a command line app.

Funny you mention that, while I know quite a few programming languages, I think most desktop applications that don't need a lot of bells and whistles, I'd probably make it with Pharo.

I haven't programmed in a while with Pharo but they have a built-in GUI framework. But there was also Bloc, if remember correctly.

Fun fact: you can then also ship the IDE itself with it, so people can hack into your application, if that's the sort of thing you'd want.

pharo is awesome. if i had any need for desktop applications, it's the first thing i'd try to use.

I want to seriously boost my Japanese vocabulary and kanji knowledge through reading. I'm already fluent, but my goal now is to reach a level where I feel comfortable and legitimate to request naturalization.

English, German, and all hard skills i'm slacking off: Cloud, Deep knowledge of networking and linux. Maybe finish reading Design Data Intensive Applications for good. And definitely getting a Java certification as I find it useful as a personal metric.

For my hobbies, I still hope to get things organized (in my computer, my desk and my mind) to record some metal composings.

To not feel like I'm constantly under pressure and it's valid to just sit around staring holes in the environment doing nothing at all, not even thinking. Time flies but it does so anyway and you can't change that you will die eventually. Try to enjoy the moment. Also to be more tolerant of other people's stupidity, even if it affects you.

Development wise, there is nothing I need to know. I know all I need to know and I'm productive and efficient. If only other companies would and could see it that way instead of requiring the use of bullshit tech like cloud, microservices, k8s.

I am retiring from tech after 20 years and embarking on a new career which requires intensive schooling. As a high school and college drop out, I will need to learn how to study again, and want to be as efficient as possible so that I may still spend ample time with my family. Any tips greatly appreciated!

I would look up how medical students use Anki.

The efficient part would be learning to make cards and decks efficiently.

I can't imagine going back to school and not using Anki.

Sounds like the Learning How To Learn course on Coursera was made for you. Good luck on your new pursuit!

1. Non technical skills: Going to be parent for first time. So anxious and so learning to be a good parent 2. Technical skills: Improve Rust understanding, writing a technical blog.

Does anyone have tips on how get started with technical blog?

Think of it as sharing questions and your approach to finding an answer. That way learning anything at all is a success, even if all you learned was that you underestimated the work involved. Don't wait for it to "be presentable" share your interests and learnings. 80% is actually 100%.

I present my outline to an AI chat and ask for other ways to structure it. Ask for some fun headings and the paragraphs will flow.

Share any failed search terms or unsearchable ideas. That way people can respond with "you have to search for frobnocator".

Understand that the faster you can go from and idea to a post the happier you will be. A quick one pot pasta dinner with interesting touches. Not a multi pan demanding process that requires that 6 things go exactly right.

Think about writers that you like and what it is you like about them. I like Joe Armstrong of erlang fame. He wrote it a casual friendly style that got you curious about the system and any number of deeply technical issues

Finally finish a workable infinite canvas + decentralized knowledge graph project. Been way too distracted with other subplots of the project the past few months.

As for the non-technical stuffs, I'd like to at least breach the 25-minute mark in my 5ks (just under 26 minutes flat is fine). Running's been such a revelation for me this year. Definitely agreed with the idea that avoiding burnout is mostly a matter of doing the inverse of what you do on a regular basis[1].

[1]: https://gwern.net/backstop#burnout

Effective multiple team management. Keeping multiple teams of developers effective, motivated, and pointed in the right direction in a deadline oriented project (enterprise consulting) is almost impossibly hard. Way harder than any technical skill I’ve ever encountered.

Sleep, making quite some progress and it shows. I want to be even better.

Dev-wise: python and SQL. I have some skill in both but my new job requires it.

non-technical: marketing. My new job will be a good opportunity for it.

Perhaps also leetcode, but only if I can scooch that in.

Creative skill: starting any side project really.

I want to build/finish my second stand up paddleboard from wood (https://sliverpaddleboards.com/). I want this one to stay floating longer than 15 minutes :(

Utilizing advice without having to learn lessons the hard way.

Probably should B1 my Spanish.

Sales. High volume sales specifically and capitalizing on opportunities that I’m maybe not ready to take on yet.

Applying consistency to my goal setting. Ie reading run rate.

1. Finishing a novel.. I finished a first draft of a novel a while ago. I'd like to finish another, and then take it to final draft. 2. Animation. With the skill of finishing my novel. I'd also like to animate it. 3. Voice acting. I'd like to be able to narrate said animation/novel.

Steps I'm taking. Write every day, Draw every day, Practice voices while I go for walks every day. (with my iphone/airpods recording me; so I look like I'm on the phone, not nuts.)

I want to be able to run five miles and start weightlifting for more overall strength.

I also would love to get better at developing partnerships with experts and those who are skilled in areas I'll never be skilled in.

Couch to 5k has worked wonders for many people in my life.

As for weightlifting - I’ve had amazing success with Dan Go (https://www.dango.co)

One-arm handstand.

And I wanna play keys (and ideally also sing) in a band again.

Deploying ML models to production. I work in silicon at an established company, and management every year wants to incorporate “ML” and “AI” into our workflows, but it doesn’t happen because a) nobody wants to risk their review on it b) the median age is 40 and it requires a brain rewiring.

I spent part of a bout of FMLA learning to develop simple PyTorch models to help with our data processing, which is sometimes frustratingly qualitative because nobody can define rigorously what they want to compute, just endless sketches and corner cases

* Improving K8S knowledge and maybe obtain a certification

* Learn a functional language (probably Elixir/Gleam)

* Launch at least one of my side projects

* Improving Mandarin skills

* Ending the long track of one of my favourite cycling granfondo (Nove Colli)

I want to solve a rubiks cube in less than a minute. Less than 30 seconds would be really cool.

Got a nice speed cube with magnets for christmas, so that's the first important step on the journey :-)

Nice. I did that for 2024. It was a secondary goal/effect of aiming to limit phone time when “idle”. When I carry the cube around, screen time goes down. I’m not at 30 secs yet but < 1 min often.

I will work on actually connecting with people IRL. It’s always been my tendency to retreat socially but Covid was the final nail in the coffin for my social life. So I will go out of my way to spend time with others.

Also I will keep working on learning rust for no particular reason at all :)

Pottery/ceramics throwing. I want to learn to make cups and plates. I'm tired of computers. I already know enough to be able to write useful programs and get the job done.

Spanish! Been learning for about 4 months and just had my first opportunity to speak a lot, stayed with a spanish speaking family for 4 days. It went much worse than expected, I couldnt understand anything and spoke so slowly that I only had a few oppirtubities to join the conversation. So I hope by the end of 2025 ill be a little more fluent.

Using a program called learncraft spanish currently and its been very very effective imo. Recommendations for learning strategies are welcome!

I am using dreaming spanish - https://www.dreamingspanish.com/faq

It has the sort of content that can be used to supplement other Spanish learning approaches. It has videos suitable for all levels.

In my opinion, Spaced Repetition Systems (SRS) are the best way to retain vocabulary - provided you use a good deck (the vocabulary ordering should make sense and, IMO, example sentences are key). I use Anki but there are many alternatives.

Otherwise, immersion through Spanish media helps - you can listen to Spanish music or watch movies/series in Spanish (initially with English subtitles, maybe later with Spanish ones).

In-person Spanish teachers are pretty affordable in many Spanish-speaking countries — in my experience, often around 20 USD / hour. I was in Argentina for three months this year and got one-on-one lessons for two hours a day for $800/month.

One-on-one lessons are super fun because you can do whatever sounds interesting to you, and doing it in a Spanish-speaking country means it’s automatically in the target language. I would get ice cream with my teacher, go for walks, watch movies, read short stories, listen to music, browse meme pages, etc.

They can also go with you to turn errands like renting a car into learning experiences, or help you specifically prepare for an errand you need to run.

Not to mention all the other benefits of immersion, and it gives you an excuse to travel.

unfortunately I live in the middle of the USA, immersion is not much of an option and lessons aren't cheap

4 months and you’re already starting to understand and able to join in some? That sounds pretty good tbh.

I’ve been partially avoiding learning whilst mostly living in Spanish speaking countries for the last 6 years. Concerted effort is key but don’t beat yourself up about having difficulties listening, native speakers have the whole dictionary to pull from whereas you only have a few words and phrases with basic grammar.

It helps to be around other people that are learning or have learned as there’s a lot of cracks to fall into between a direct literal translation. These are obvious for bilinguals but can’t be appreciated by native monolinguals. Try asking someone to go on a fecha with you to the movies.

And don’t worry about being slow, find good people with patience.

Thank you! that is encouraging. I have been making a very concerted effort to learn. typically at least 2 hours of studying a day. My girlfriend is Spanish speaking actually, but she almost never speaks Spanish with me. I may need to convince her to turn up the Spanish a notch so I can get more practice.

Glossika.

Also, the best grammar reference for English speakers is "A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish" by John Butt et al.

Spanish is extremely pattern-regular and maps to English very well once you "see the Matrix" and learn the tricks. Happy to help — if you like, let me know your contact info and I can get in touch back-channel.

agreed I have been honestly very surprised at how consistent and logical Spanish is, especially compared to English.

The ability to separate work and family, spending time with my family, and to act on some long-standing personal projects and books waiting to be read. I want rely on work to drive work-related skills while re-capturing some of my personal time for personal endeavors. For work, I hope to get into Rust with embedded systems, FPGAs, and increasing general-purpose software skills on the backend and frontend side as well.

Based on my current job, something related to global water monitoring and modelling, rock water reactions, and geophysical inversion methods.

Based on my interests, music theory, acoustic wave modelling, bicycle maintenance.

Based on the job interviews I been on, Rust.

The decisions were made more than a year ago, but the goals should be reached in 2025. Nothing special, but I just have to put in the work

  - Running: I want to run a marathon under 4h in 2025. My smartwatch currently predicts 4:01:20 (was 4:30 beginning of the year)
  - Chess: I want to improve my FIDE rating to 2100 (I'm at 2050 now and was 1930 in 2023)

Study for and Pass the CKA exam

Ansible

Improve my programming, either via CS50 or the new edition of Think Python

Put my synth collection to use

I just want to do more math.

Simply survive the hardest year of classes I'll ever take. Help finish the paper from my undergrad, get a good start on my PhD research, maybe date a girl, start going to open mics again

Ruby. I've done a range of languages, for example C, pascal, java, VB, PHP, javascript. But Ruby seems distinct from all of them in both syntax and concept (hashes, etc). I'd like to get to a point where I have a confidence that the programs I write are using efficient data structures and algorithms.

It's a great language.. and what makes it fun is the flexible nature of it..

I love the `x ||= 0` feature of the language, and miss it when working in elixir.

I also got to like the tailing if. `puts "hey" if x > 0`

Sometimes that things are pass by reference catches you buy surprise.

Now you can write efficient ruby, and structured algos too. The language isn't primarily used for this, but it can be done. Or rather one can easily write inefficient code. I've had a co-worker say "I don't write my code to be efficient." I (not liking the guy) replied. "It shows"..

Most times though (from a practical POV) I've found the code isn't the slow part of many apps; it's the data (database/file/api's). Still writing better ruby, with smart use of memoization and loops is a great boon.

If you choose Ruby because it seems distinct in syntax and concept. I would recommend you to take a look at OCaml. Some keywords: immutable, functional, loop via recursion, accumulators, tail-call optimization, monads, pattern matching, type inference, ADT, etc A small hobby project I made with it: https://stackl.remikeat.com

I'd pick elixir over Ocaml. Same feature list, but it's a bit better in the documentation department.

Efficiency isn’t the goal of writing ruby. I think “thinking in ruby” can be expansive to you, but “how do I program efficient ruby” is actually antithetical to that.

Efficiently thinking in ruby is more what I was getting at, yes. Right now I'm spending a lot of time just conceptually deciding how to tackle things that in other languages would be a matter of using the right syntax.

Ah yes, wonderful! The koans sites used to be a great way to get into ruby not sure if they are anymore

Try doing Advent of Code with Ruby. It is perfect for that, much better than Python which is most popular according to the AoC users survey. At least it looks way more elegant and having lots of useful built-ins (.tally, .select/.reject, .count, .sum, .combination(n), .permutation(n), etc. etc.) does not hurt either.

* I want to learn how to make a game from beginning to end.

* Math. Got two books to refresh my skills.

* Improve my parenting.

* Get back to sxratchin (turntables) and making beats.

* Put my work out.

I want to learn how to sleep well again. The difference in how I feel when sleep deprived versus fully rested is staggering.

I'd recommend reading "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker, it was a game changer for me.

Basic Electronics- So I can modify my kids toys to change the sounds on it or lower the volume on some toys. Then progress into something like bird feeder with camera and bird recognition

Learning to forgive and let go of resentment

A very important "Life Skill". A study of Philosophy and the conscious development of appropriate positive mental attitudes and habits is needed. From Tibetan Buddhism;

1) Lojong aka "Mind Training" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojong

2) Tonglen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonglen

I keep hearing about people building entire programs with Claude, etc and I haven’t figured that out yet. So far I use and like copilot, etc but it’s just a slight improvement, nothing huge. I’d like to figure out what I’m missing.

Also, professional development. I think I’ve never learned to sell myself.

I found the tutorials on this YT channel[1] helpful in learning "what I'm missing". This playlist[2] in particular.

I need to learn how to sell myself as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@CodingtheFuture-jg1he [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMXP2wwC5Ss&list=PLk7JCUQLwR...

1. speak english properly, because i'm planning to move abroad, and get a job as an engineer.

2. how to self hosting, like buy a cheap machine, create a website like blog, setup a kubernetes cluster, backup and security stuff (for learning purposes)

3. drive a car

Idk if this is appropriate on this thread but I can't recommend the Michael Gruinberg flask mega tutorial chapters on deployment highly enough for getting devops skills off the ground

Depending on where you're going.. I've got some sad news about 2.. Most ISP's in Canada and Australia don't allow you to self host. Not from home. I've set up a system to do it, and then run into a wall when my isp won't let port 80 connections. You can Ngrok (or the likes) but honestly these cost as much or more than hosting on Fly.io or something.

Just giving you the warning.

> Most ISP's in Canada and Australia don't allow you to self host.

I can't speak for Canada, but you have to go well out of your way to find an Australian ISP where this is actually an issue. And even then, they're almost all on the same physical infrastucture (NBN) so you just go and choose a different one.

i lived in third world country rn, so i guess its fine. actually i am planning to use cloudflare tunnel since its pretty easy to setup

Film photography and Darkroom work, with an emphasis on street photography. I started a few months ago after two decades of shooting digital and have had a lot of fun with a more physical chemical process.

1) finish EMT rookie book, become full EMT

2) understand and perform experiment power analysis, run several experiments

3) get certified on ski toboggans to at least blue runs

4) drop 30 lbs to survive #5

5) pass fire academy

6) learn enough android and ios to build UI to run several experiments

7) 1 pull-up

I'd like to get a deeper understanding of dynamic recompilation and implement a few PoCs based on different stages of techniques.

EKG interpretation - I doubt I'll get around to ultrasound and CT in 2025, they're a good bit more complicated.

I also recently got a Quest 3, so hoping to learn some basic modeling and rigging, I want to make a VR medical clinic.

I'd like to drastically cut out alcohol, do more home improvement projects, and go out to events solo more often.

Learn Rust (for real this year). Increase my lifting PRs. Paint 40k models well. Honestly just get healthier. I've been lacking in 2024. Take up bow hunting because guns are too loud and if you ask me a bit gauche.

Perfecting the Zen of my Solipsism, thereby manifesting good Solomonic world domination.

Better modulation of the implosions caused by short, consecutive teleportations.

Social skills, full stop.

I want to learn hosting, making and maintaining friendships, fluid small talk with strangers, and becoming magnetic.

Practical AI/ML, and not all the marketing buzz.

Does anyone know of a good “AI/ML for Dummies” … from the basics.

I do not want something that is just teaching me dozens of frameworks or toolkits.

I am no expert, but i found the following really helpful to understand AI/ML from the basics;

1) Neural Networks for Applied Sciences and Engineering by Sandhya Samarasinghe. Old book but great for understanding.

2) An Introduction to Statistical Learning: With Applications in R or Python by Hastie, Witten et al.

3) Any Statistics and Probability textbook should be at hand for reference.

I've been following Math Academy's Mathematics for Machine Learning Course and it has been great.

Did you start at that level or did you work up to it? I'm about to finish Fundamentals I and I'm curious what other people have to say about the site.

I started at that level. I studied mechanical engineering at university (bachelors and masters) and have been working as a SWE for four years so I have a strong base in mathematics (more so in calculus and linear algebra, a lot less in probability and statistics).

But the way the site works (as I'm sure you know) is that you take a placement test and then they build a knowledge graph taking into account what you know and what you don't know. So in theory, I should cover all of the subjects I am unfamiliar with.

So far I've been liking the site. It's worth noting that I enjoy math, so I have fun doing it every day and I really like the spaced repetition aspect. I've only been doing it for a month and probably won't be done with the course until March at my current rate. Perhaps my favourite aspect is that it does take the guess work out of self studying mathematics, which I find it be a more challenging subject to self-study compared to say programming. This does, of course, mean that you must trust the teachers behind the product quite well but I have taken the time to research the employees and founders behind the product and I was left impressed.

I'm not sure what my end goal with it is at the moment. I've been fortunate to work for a big tech company in a product software engineering role, which pays well, but I find it immensely boring. I'd love to move towards AI, but not sure if that will work out just yet.

How have you been finding it?

Thanks for the response. I've enjoying it and learning a lot. My base in math is a lot weaker though, so it's taken me quite a long time to get through even Fundementals I. I'm almost there. I went into more detail in another comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42509408#42519882

I'm planning on improving my mental math this year too which should help with the speed of the more concrete problems. I love algorithm design so having a stronger base in math will be a big help.

Andrew Ng's courses tend to be widely recommended, including by someone I know who went from physics to ML.

This was pre-gpt-3.5 release. It's classical ML.

Definitely Andrew Ng's courses, especially for concrete explanations.

The two fast.ai courses end up implementing Stable Diffusion from scratch if that’s the sort of thing you are looking for.

- financial management skills. how to allocate and manage capital and get value from money. to me elon musk is mainly a very successful private equity investor. imo if you can do that, you can do anything.

- fitness discipline, moderation and better consistent average performance than hitting PR's.

- musical literacy. I'd like to be able to read a score and hear it instead of just sounding out each note.

- horsemanship, continue the journey into a third decade, train up another young horse but this time with more lightness.

having amateur interests is a strange dynamic. what is more absurd? the ridiculousness of being an adult trying learn things that children do and that other people have already spent entire lifetimes and sacrificed other opportunities to learn- or not learning them or developing the physical competence, but having mere opinions and taste about them?

Patience, empathy, understanding and forgiveness.