25. Summer Goals

I remember my father sometimes saying at the end of his vacation: "Another wasted summer. Didn’t get anything done."

And my father, mind you, back in the days of chronic late-Soviet shortages, managed to build a two-story brick house with his own hands, plus a separate solid garage.

I recall him scraping the bark off long round pine logs on sawhorses — making rafters for the roof. That’s not like running to Leroy Merlin today. Back then you couldn’t buy a single straight board, nor a nail, nor any metal.

24. Anthropology

Why does anthropology stir us so deeply?

Especially the sites of ancient people. Kostenki, for example.

This is us.

We lived there, hunted mammoths. Used their skulls to fence in our dwellings. Walked dozens of miles a day, hungry. Huddled by the fire, pressed close to each other, afraid of the dark.

And all around, the same Nature. The same rivers, the grass in spring, the Sun!

23. Laziness and Static Friction

Laziness seems to be simply inertia. That is, the body prefers to continue the work it is doing at the present moment. If it was moving, it wants to keep moving. If it was sleeping, it wants to keep sleeping.

That’s why it’s so hard to start something. Inertia, or "static friction," gets in the way. Well begun is half done!

Of course, for humans, an emotional component is added to this laziness: expectations, fears, "I can’t do it," "what’s the point," and so on.

The main rule for fighting laziness: do the first Pomodoro right away.

22. Time Budget

The desktop version of LaborGit includes a fully-featured module for time budget planning.

Suppose the goal of Your Entire Life includes "Flying to near-Earth orbit." Create a separate Budget Item and set a time expenditure plan, for example, 10,000 hours. Add tasks to this item (read Carl Sagan's book "Cosmos," buy Elon Musk's business, etc.).

Now, any time spent on these tasks will be aggregated at the Budget Item level.

You can see the dynamics by month or quarter.

Convenient, innit.

2022-05-22

21. Why do I need this?

LaborGit is a publicly accessible Internet service for the "eternal" storage of the history of an individual's Labor.

Mission: to preserve the memory of every Person's Labor on Earth.

Motto: "No Labor is ever done in vain!"

Why do I need this?

  • So as not to live in vain
  • To leave a memory
  • To have something "to justify myself before Him"

2022-05-15

 

Dzen: https://dzen.ru/a/adK8Ue_85n2ELxX8

20. Manifesto

I. Labor. Man is born to labor.

II. Time. The necessary and sufficient criterion for evaluating Labor is the Time a person consciously spends on it.

III. Memory. Man has the right to leave a memory of his Labor on Earth.

IV. Freedom. Man is free to decide for himself the degree of publicity of his Labor.

V. Honesty. Every Life is unique. You cannot live another's life. At the very least, do not lie to yourself. Write honestly.

2022-05-11

19. What are you working on right now?

Grigory Gorin, the screenwriter for the film "That Very Same Munchhausen," was a very wise and peace-loving man.

When conversations in a group of his fellow writers and artists began to heat up, he would masterfully defuse the situation by asking the main arguer his trademark question: "What are you working on right now?"

And the person would immediately switch to a constructive mode. They would remember their own concerns, their own work, and everyone would be interested in hearing them talk about it.

18. Holy Grail

At some point, I became acutely aware of the need to type without looking at the keyboard.

The usual "two-finger" method had run its course and started to annoy me. I clearly understood that I needed to type faster, but the physical reality wouldn't allow it.

Since I had been typing with "two fingers" for many years, retraining was daunting.

I didn't believe in the outcome.

It seemed like pure fantasy, something that couldn't possibly exist. Like it only worked in American movies. I hadn't seen a single living example around me.

16. The Need to Preserve

Tracking my activity during working hours has become almost a physiological need, like brushing my teeth. Outside of work, I don’t track anything: not chores, not leisure, nothing. Those things aren’t important. Only labor has value.

V.S. Vysotsky, for example, despite his turbulent, disorderly daily life, treated all his manuscripts with great care. He recorded everything and preserved everything. He felt he had no right to do otherwise.