Samiuls Blog

On Doing Things Daily-ish

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Habit formation is an important tool for productivity. If something is important, then it’s probably worth doing it regularly. Writers write daily, dancers dance daily, and so on.

There are many techniques for doing things daily. A simple one relies on creating a streak and switching your focus to maintenance (See Don’t Break the Chain by Todoist). Eventually, the chain itself becomes the motivation for doing it regularly.

People generally love maintaining a streak, a psychological trait that social media take advantage of. Reddit has a streak for interacting with the website, Duolingo has a streak for the number of days you practiced for 5 minutes, and Snapchat for the number of days you messaged a particular person. This feature is quite effective, to be honest. I admit that I used to open the Reddit app right after opening my eyes in the morning just to maintain my interaction streak (eventually it broke and I have since been avoiding starting another streak again).

While everyone talks about the upside of streaks, we silently ignore the downsides of it:

Trying to maintain a streak is stressful.
Once it becomes long enough, we start prioritizing the streak over the task. This results in doing meaningless actions just to continue the streak.
When the streak breaks, the thought of building the streak again becomes an obstacle.

Streak is ultimately a tool. We should be careful about how we utilize it. One way of reducing the downside (while maintaining the upsides) is to try doing things daily-ish instead. It’s fine to not do the task absolutely every day. Life is chaotic and it is possible to miss a day here and there, as long as we get back right into it again, the missed days are not statistically significant.

A daily-ish commitment has flexibility baked into it. It’s much more resilient than setting a process where a mistake can end the whole thing. Once you switch your mindset, a streak break won’t demotivate you. We can continue to streak indefinitely, as long as we are honest with ourselves (don’t do something only twice a week and think it counts as daily-ish).

I have committed to writing a blog post every week, but I already missed one last week. If it was before, I would have been devastated thinking I wasn’t disciplined or committed enough for this. I would have even procrastinated for a few more weeks thinking “Since I missed one week, I might as well take a long break and come back stronger later”. But now that I have shifted to a weekly-ish cadence, such misses no longer bother me. I can get back on my feet much quicker.

Book Review — The Psychology of Money

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I remember this book being short and sweet, and easily understandable. It was a good reminder of the basic principles, and I enjoyed the storytelling. While I already knew many of these ideas, rereading them nicely structured into a book was nice. 5/5 ⭐.

Here is a quick summary of the ideas that piqued my interest:

1. Being disciplined is more important than being smart.

The premise of this book is that doing well with money has a little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.

2. The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. You must know when to switch strategy from building wealth to preserving it.

Getting money and keeping money are two different skills. Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there.

But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.

3. Being Rich is not the same as being Wealthy.

Rich is a current income. Someone driving a $100,000 car is almost certainly rich, because even if they purchased the car with debt you need a certain level of income to afford the monthly payment.

But wealth is hidden. It’s income not spent. Wealth is an option not yet taken to buy something later. Its value lies in offering you options, flexibility, and growth to one day purchase more stuff than you could right now.

4. Saving money is the gap between your ego and income.

One of the most powerful ways to increase your savings isn’t to raise your income. It’s to raise your humility.

5. Know your own timeline. If possible, increase it.

Few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games than you are.

If you want to do better as an investor, the single most powerful thing you can do is increase your time horizon. Time is the most powerful force in investing.

6. Build an emergency fund – See The Importance of Cash.

Charlie Munger says the first rule of compounding is to never interrupt it unnecessarily.

If cash prevents you from having to sell your stocks during a bear market, the actual return you earned on that cash is not 1% a year — it could be many multiples of that, because preventing one desperate, ill-timed stock sale can do more for your lifetime returns than picking dozens of big-time winners.

7. Luck and risk are both real and hard to identify. Don’t get fooled by your results.

Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong. Because it’s never as good or as bad as it looks.

Bill Gates once said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”

Failure can be a lousy teacher, because it seduces smart people into thinking their decisions were terrible when sometimes they just reflect the unforgiving realities of risk.

8. Progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore. Be paranoid of ruinous risk. Don’t wipe out.

Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant.

The trick when dealing with failure is arranging your financial life in a way that a bad investment here and a missed financial goal there won’t wipe you out so you can keep playing until the odds fall in your favor.

9. If you wipe out, you erase all opportunities to get back in the game again.

A homeowner wiped out in 2009 had no chance of taking advantage of cheap mortgage rates in 2010.

More than big returns, I want to be financially unbreakable. And if I’m unbreakable I actually think I’ll get the biggest returns, because I’ll be able to stick around long enough for compounding to work wonders.

10. Become OK with a lot of things going wrong.

You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune, because a small minority of things account for the majority of outcomes.

11. Avoid extreme ends of financial planning. Be moderate.

Aiming, at every point in your working life, to have moderate annual savings, moderate free time, no more than a moderate commute, and at least moderate time with your family, increases the odds of being able to stick with a plan and avoid regret than if any one of those things fall to the extreme sides of the spectrum.

12. Financial planning doesn’t have to be stressful. It’s up to you whether you want to maximize profit or have a balance of profit and mental peace.

Manage your money in a way that helps you sleep at night. That’s different from saying you should aim to earn the highest returns or save a specific percentage of your income.

Do not aim to be coldly rational when making financial decisions. Aim to just be pretty reasonable. Reasonable is more realistic and you have a better chance of sticking with it for the long run, which is what matters most when managing money.

The Importance of Cash as Emergency Fund

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I recently read The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel – A great book, full of great advice. One of the pieces of advice that popped out to me was about the importance of cash. It’s such a basic thing, and while I have heard about it before, I wasn’t following it.

Building your Emergency Fund is a prerequisite for investing, according to the flowchart from r/UKPersonalFinance – it even comes up twice! (step #2 and step #5). Yet, I failed to build up one while roughly following everything else. Why is that?

Me: “Why bother building such a large emergency fund? During an emergency, I can just sell my stocks to deal with it, right?”

I treated my investment and cash as interchangeable, and that’s exactly the kind of thinking that misses the forest for the trees. Turns out that dealing with emergencies was only half the goal of the Emergency Fund.

Here are the excerpts from the book that highlight the missed ~forest~ lesson:

No one wants to hold cash during a bull market. They want to own assets that go up a lot. You look and feel conservative holding cash during a bull market, because you become acutely aware of how much return you’re giving up by not owning the good stuff.

Say cash earns 1% and stocks return 10% a year. That 9% gap will gnaw at you every day.

But if that cash prevents you from having to sell your stocks during a bear market, the actual return you earned on that cash is not 1% a year—it could be many multiples of that, because preventing one desperate, ill-timed stock sale can do more for your lifetime returns than picking dozens of big-time winners.

So, an Emergency Fund of cash has two purposes:

Dealing with the imminent emergency.
Ensuring we don’t have to dip into our investments when doing #1.

Investment and cash are not interchangeable. Investment can go down and if emergency hits at a bad time, I could wipe out a lot of progress already made.

First rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.

Charlie Munger

Instead of thinking of cash as a lost opportunity, think it’s a buffer that prevents unnecessary interruptions.

Book Review – 10% Happier

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The book’s title promises a measurable improvement in happiness. The 10% number, however, is a hoax — people tend to prefer concrete numbers over subjective qualifiers — to lure people into reading the book. While I succumbed to the trick, considering the book provided a reasonable path forward to improving happiness while telling an interesting story, I am willing to let the clickbait title slide.

The book is about Dan Harris, a Journalist/News Reporter, who once had a mental breakdown on live TV. The story explains what led to his breakdown and how he attempted to fix his mental health following it. He tried many ways to de-stress and eventually stumbled upon mindfulness. As a journalist, he was skeptical about it. He interviewed various gurus to understand it better and eventually started practicing mindfulness to validate the effects. He was struggling to see quick results, so at one point he went on a meditation retreat — that was an interesting arc to read.

I found the memoir somewhat relatable. It’s not a book from a mindfulness guru, but rather an experience of an ordinary practitioner. Dan had a normal 9-5 stressful job with worries as typical as it gets — worry about promotion, layoff, love, and ambitions. He worried a lot and as an over-thinker myself, I get it. So I read the book intently to see how Dan turned it around. If he could do it, perhaps I could too?

If I were to take away a single lesson from the book, then it would be:

The brain, the organ of experience, through which our entire lives are led, can be trained. Happiness is a skill.

Happiness can be trained like a muscle. We just have to put in the effort
Here is a rough summary of the other lessons I picked up.

Don’t try to fast forward to the next moment

Live in the present, instead of trying to fast forward to the next moment all the time.

Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress.

Focus on things you can control

If we always live in the present, does it mean we give up on planning or striving towards a better future? Do we just stay content with our present life? Not quite.

It’s fine to strive towards a better life, as long as we focus on things we control. Focus on the action, rather than the result.

Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray.

Meditate

Mediate for at least 10 minutes every day

“On the cushion, the best opportunities to learn mindfulness are when you experience itches or pain. Instead of scratching or shifting position, you’re supposed to just sit there and impartially witness the discomfort.”

I have been trying to meditate regularly for 3 months now and I haven’t been able to maintain a streak for a week. This has been much harder than I anticipated. 10 minutes sounds like a short time, but once you start meditating, you will realize how long a minute can feel. I need more practice.

Hiatus #001 – How to get back from a long break in blogging?

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I haven’t written anything for the last two months. I have been constantly thinking about writing, but somehow my fingers didn’t find the keys. Once you break your momentum, sometimes it’s hard to get back into swing.

When life is up, be consistent. When life is down, be persistent.

This is the first time I went on a hiatus, and honestly, I don’t think it will be the last. Taking a break from anything is natural. I shouldn’t panic too much about it. I should instead have a plan for dealing with it when it eventually happens.

The first post after a hiatus is hard. We are much more likely to break out of hiatus if we make the first post easier. Here is the plan I came up with:

Accept that I have broken the momentum. Instead of panicking, use this as an opportunity to take a break for real. Perhaps I am burnt out? Focus on recovering rather than jumping back into the game full force.
Once I am ready to start writing again, I will simply write a post that will summarize why I stopped, what I have done during the break, and what I plan to do now.

That’s it. The summary post describing the break may not be interesting and that’s fine. The goal of the post (including this one), is to get started again. So let’s give this a try?

Why did I stop writing for 2 months?
- I was visiting my family in Bangladesh. I was too busy traveling and working from a different time zone. I also got sick in the middle which didn’t help my mood.
- Once I came back, I fell sick again. This time for two weeks. It was a viral infection with a fever as high as 105. I simply prioritized recovering. By the time I recovered, my routine was out of whack for good.
What did I do during the break?
- I finished 10 books in November and 0 books in December. Awful pacing. At least I managed to hit my 30-book goal on Goodreads. Hoping to write about some of the new books I read.
- Visited Albania for Christmas and a Safari Park where you can stay in a lodge with a Tiger as your neighbor.
What am I planning for 2025?
- New Year Resolution: Similar to the previous 2-3 years, I am trying to make this year about health. All my attempts at better health have failed in the past, perhaps this year would be different?
  - [New hobby] Calisthenics: I have tried both running and going to the gym in the past. Didn’t manage to stick to them. So I am trying something new this year. Only time will tell if this one will stick or not. So far, I have been going strong for 3 weeks now.
- Read a book each week: So a total of 52 books in 2025. I believe this is doable as long as I pace myself right. I am already off-track though since I haven’t been reading much since November. No need to panic though. I am just one book behind.
- Continue writing: Still not planning to abandon this blog. It has been fun so far and I don’t see myself getting bored just yet. I may have to reduce my cadence even more to accommodate my other commitments.

And that’s it. My first post of the year 🎉

Book Review — Into Thin Air

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Life is stranger than fiction — that’s what reading “Into Thin Air” made me feel.

The story began when Jon Krakauer was assigned by Outside magazine to write an article about the commercialization of Mount Everest expeditions. Outside paid $65,000 to enter him into an expedition to climb Everest in 1996. Little did he know that he was stepping into a disaster that would take the lives of eight people.

The book is a personal account of the author’s experience with the disaster. Through the story, I learned a brief history of Everest, who climbed it first, how exactly the Everest expedition works, what were its main challenges (lack of oxygen and cold), and the role of Sherpas in handling logistics and blazing out the route for people to follow. Although these historical and mechanical parts of the story were informational, the non-mechanical parts, the climbers, gave the story life.

Why were more than 30+ people climbing the mountain in the first place? Each had their own reasons: one who wanted to write an article, one who wanted to promote his expedition business, one who rivaled the previous, one who live-blogged their journey (yup, an influencer in 1996), one who climbed alone, one who wanted to vanquish their reputation for clumsiness, and a few more. The next time I see a movie with random people gathering to go on an adventure, I won’t doubt its reality anymore. It happens.

Everyone is a protagonist in life, and I found myself thinking about what each of them was going through. People make mistakes at 8000 meters above sea level with 1/3rd of oxygen going to your brain. After finishing the book, I spent quite some time Googling about them to see if there were any repercussions for their actions. This is the advantage of reading a non-fiction memoir, you can see how the characters are doing beyond the book.

Some of the characters have criticized the author of the book. You can’t write a book truthfully without hurting people’s feelings. They shot back with their accounts of the incident and now we have multiple versions. What really happened on top of the mountain? There is only one truth, but the perception of it varies.

Driving the Bealach na Bà

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes, when traveling, things you don’t plan for amaze you more than the planned ones. The unplanned is unexpected, unburdened by any preconceived notions or expectations. It’s a real surprise gift, unlike the birthday ones you have to fake being surprised about. That’s exactly the feeling we got when driving through one of the deadliest roads in the world, unintentionally.

We had just finished a circular tour of the Isle of Skye and were heading back to our Hotel outside the Isle. Due to “Skye” high hotel prices, we booked a B&B in Apple Cross two hours away from the isle. In these two hours, we unknowingly got on Bealach na Bà.

Bealach Na Ba to Applecross sign.

Bealach Na Ba to Applecross sign.

A sign near the entrance to the road warned about the danger and advised an alternate safer route. We missed the sign as we rushed through to reach our destination before sunset — the Scottish Highlands have narrow roads devoid of artificial light at night, making driving dangerous after sunset. If we had seen the warning, we (probably) would have taken the alternative route. In retrospect, I am happy that we missed that sign; ignorance is bliss, as they say.

Not knowing we were about to climb 2053 feet, I still hurried to beat the sunset, until we climbed a little higher and the view made me forget about my haste. A winding road through a valley, turning and twisting in the middle of nowhere, with peace and calmness mixed with fear of falling over the edge — thrilling. I glanced at the rearview mirror to see the flat land we were leaving behind.

Winding hairpins near the top of the mountain

Winding hairpins near the top of the mountain

Right before the top, we hit a steep section of the road — I learned later that the steepness was 20% — and that’s when I started wondering, “Where the hell are we going?”. I was glad I replaced the car’s old tires for a new set right before this 1500+ miles road trip. I slowed to less than 10 mph to climb the steep hairpin turns; no longer bothered to beat the sunset. Any mistake here wouldn’t go unpunished.

Passengers in the car held their breaths to avoid disturbing my concentration. Everyone sighed a breath of relief when we passed the top to descend. There were no more hairpins to maneuver, but I couldn’t relax. “I should have replaced my brake pads too”, I worried as I repeatedly braked to stop rolling downhill too fast.

We reached the bottom safely soon. We stopped by a restaurant for dinner, the Walled Garden (probably the only one open in a 90-minute radius), before going to our B&B. The next day, our B&B host was surprised to hear we took the route over the mountain. Apparently, most visitors tend to come via the alternative coastal route, which is also scenic in its own way.

We decided to use the alternative route for our onward journey. While all of us were pleased to avoid the mountaintop then — driving through Bealach na Bà once was enough for a single trip — we definitely wanted to revisit it in the future, and instead of rushing through it, we would love to take our sweet time to enjoy the views.

Write with Reduced Scope

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This year (2024), I drove 1500+ miles round trip from London to the Isle of Skye. After returning from the seven-day journey, I had planned to capture every detail in a travel article. However, despite having tons of materials for it—probably too many materials—I couldn’t summarize the trip properly.

Fitting all the materials in one article made it boring, so eventually, I gave up. I blamed my writing skills for the failure, not realizing that the missing skill I needed was far simpler than I expected.

Nobody can write a book or an article “about” something. Tolstoy couldn’t write a book about war and peace, or Melville a book about whaling. They made certain reductive decisions about time and place and about individual characters in that time and place — one man pursuing one whale. Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write.

~ On Writing Well.

I had bitten more than I could chew by trying to write “about” the whole trip. I thought I could make even the mundane matters (eating at motorways, refueling from stations, and sleeping at slighly quirky hotels) interesting with my writing, but it was a lost cause all along. A good writer not only knows how to write, but they also know what to write on. Like journalists, they are able to discern the core of a story, and garnish that with mundane matters only when it elevates the highlight.

All I needed to do was think, and eliminate the clutters from my materials. The narrower the writing scope, the more unique it would be. The concept is similar to Atomic posts I write on my blog, and to Essentialism. I am surprised I didn’t see these connections before.

Instead of writing an article about my Scotland tour, if I had focused on the best parts of the trip, I would have felt less overwhelmed. Perhaps there is still time to salvage a story out of that drive. Let me give it another shot with reduced scope and see how it goes.

Retrospective of 100 Blog Posts

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Wow! I can’t believe I published my 100th post already. I never expected to write so much in so little time. I wrote about blogging, writing, productivity, essentialism, health, coding, unix rice, etc. I think I went slightly overboard with creating a niche-less blog. And yet, when I look back at the previous months, it’s not these posts that fascinate me, but the writing journey itself.

I started blogging in January 2024 to write about my hobbies. Yet, I barely wrote about the new hobbies I tried in the first quarter. One such hobby is astronomy. I saw the Moon, Jupiter, and Orion’s Nebula on London’s rare cloudless nights, and I could have written a post on it, but I held back to see more planets and read more books before writing one so that it would be “better”.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Perfectionism was holding me back, and it was Mike’s article, Write 5x more but write 5x less, that brought me back from a two-month hiatus. Otherwise, I might have stopped for good.

I re-started blogging in April with a new approach. Instead of writing perfect posts, I shifted to writing Atomic Posts. This worked like a charm, and soon I was pumping out posts every other day. I wrote about anything I was involved with: travel diaries, tech hacks, my sickness, and books I read. I maintained the streak for over six months, a great accomplishment for my standards.

The benefit of posting frequently, even of low quality, is that it forces you to create a system. To write more, I had to read more first. As I gained ideas faster than I could write, I began storing them on a second brain that I built on Obsidian. Obsidian slowly became my primary tool for writing, storing, and developing ideas.

Consistency doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a deliberate effort.

I kept tweaking the system to make writing less stressful. I eliminated any issues that slowed publishing: stopped SEO keyword analysis, stopped creating featured images for every post, and separated writing from editing. “Writing more” was my essential blogging intent, and I stayed true to it.

As the months passed, I was amazed by my own consistency. Sure, my writing standards weren’t high, but it still took effort to write bad. Considering I never stuck to a single hobby for so long in the past 5 years, could it be that perhaps I liked writing?

In the six months of consistent writing, there were two moments when I thought my streak would break, and both involved accommodating visiting family members. I usually wrote on weekends and in my free time after work, both of which got busier as I took my family around the UK on tour. I knew beforehand that I wouldn’t get regular writing time for those 9 weeks, so I was mentally prepared. These were my tests of discipline.

Even though I didn’t get time to write every day, thanks to WordPress’s schedule-post feature, I stayed consistent. On days when I had time, I squeezed in more writing. It helped that I didn’t need to worry about quality.

After overcoming these expected challenges, I grew more confident. The more I wrote, the more I discovered things about myself. Somehow, I wasn’t just writing about my daily life, I was also self-exploring. I began to write more, to take notes, to journal, and to think, and it helped me understand myself better.

If you tell me to write posts similar to the last 100 for another year, I can easily do it using my existing system. Writing consistently isn’t the challenge anymore, writing well is.

“Writing well” will be much harder than the mechanics of just writing more. I already read a few books on this topic, and frankly, I am not even close to the starting line of high-quality writing. I need to read more (a lot more) and work on building my writing toolbox while keeping my eyes peeled for ways to improve.

With the next 100 posts, I hope to write better than the previous 100. While I don’t know what exactly I will be writing (I have a hunch I will be writing more about Writing), I know it will take longer than writing the bad ones. No more churning out posts every other day. I will have to slow down, and that’s exactly what I want: a slow life.

A Writer’s Journey – Stephen King

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The first time I noticed the fiction section in Waterstones, I was baffled to see how many books Stephen King had written. It was abnormal. “Who is this guy? How did he manage to write so many books?” I wondered. These questions were answered when I picked up a nonfiction book written by King, and it turned me into a fan.

I stumbled upon his book “On Writing — A Memoir of the Craft” when looking for writing advice. I was intrigued. What did the author of 60+ best-sellers have to say about writing? Did he have any advice? More importantly, did he have any advice for beginners like me? Turns out he did, and it was more than I hoped for.

My primary goal in picking up the book was to learn technical writing tips, but King wanted to “show me” how to write better instead of just telling. He showed me a writer’s journey, a writer’s life, and that in turn made me understand writing more than any tips could.

As a small boy, King read comics and copied them to create hybrid stories. One day, he showed his hybrid copy to his mother. She loved it, but only until she heard it was not an original work. “Write one of your own, Stevie”, she said, “I bet you could do better.” She nudged King towards writing, and sometimes that’s all you need in life – a little encouragement.

King continued writing, at first to impress his mom, and later for his own enjoyment. He sent his stories to magazines. His first formal rejection came when he was 13 years old, from Spaceman in 1960. He poked the rejection slip on a nail in the wall and carried on writing. “When you’re still too young to shave”, said King in his book, “optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure. By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it.”

At sixteen, his rejection slips came with handwritten notes and encouraging words. He replaced the nail with a spike to accommodate the increasing rejection slips. He was 18 when his first story was published.

King married a year after graduation and became a father of two within three years of marriage. Financially, two kids were two too many for the King couple. King had a certificate to teach high school, but the degree didn’t fetch a job immediately. To make ends meet, he worked at a laundry shop, while his wife worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, for wages not much higher than his high school part-time job.

He landed a teaching job eventually. “I felt as if I’d spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain”, wrote King about his new 9-5 job. The job didn’t provide much free time to think or write. King felt despair for the first time, but he pulled through somehow. He wrote during his lunch breaks, and at late night. He wrote to provide food on the table (occasional stories in men’s magazines helped pay bills) and to stay sincere in his love of writing. It was the love that made him start writing “Carrie” – the novel that changed his life.

Carrie was a story about a teenage girl who awakened her supernatural powers while being bullied at school. As a man, King found it difficult to fathom what went inside a teenage girl’s mind. Frustrated, he dumped the few pages he wrote into the bin. His wife, Tabitha, literally rescued the story’s crumpled papers from the trash. “I want to know what happens next”, said his wife after reading it. Once again, all King needed was a little encouragement from the people he cared about the most. If he had given up on the story, he would have missed out on selling its paperback rights for $400,000.

I published my first story, ‘The Glass Floor,’ in 1967, which means I have been in this business for 55 years. I have sat down to write on days when I was feeling fine. I have sat down on days when I was sick with the flu and running a fever. I’ve sat down on days when I had a horrible hangover. I worked on this book after being struck by a minivan while I was out for an afternoon walk, with my broken leg stretched out under the desk. And do you know what? The worst day I ever had was fucking great.

~ Stephen King

Consistency is key. A bit of discipline to keep us on course amidst all the distractions of the good life. Life, however, is not smooth sailing. It has its ups and downs. I would say it’s easier to be consistent in the ups than the downs. Downs that are so low that instead of being scorned for giving up on consistency, you will be praised for surviving. What do we do in such depths?

We survive and wait. The slumps are never continuous. In the gaps between the slumps, when we float above the water briefly to catch our breath, we get the opportunity for persistence. That’s what I saw in King’s journey, a writer’s persistence in writing.

When life is up, be consistent. When life is down, be persistent.

Creating My Toolbox for Writing

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Every professional has a toolbox that helps with their work. Chefs have knives, artists have brushes, and carpenters have power tools. Writers are no different. They also need a toolbox to work effectively.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King describes how to build a toolbox for writing and carry it everywhere. That way, instead of getting discouraged when facing a hard job, you are more likely to seize the correct tool and get started.

The toolbox consists of four layers, with basic tools in the upper layers for frequent access, and advanced tools stashed deeper. The four layers are:

Vocabulary & Grammar
Elements of Style
Tools for story shape and individuality: description, dialogue, and character development.
Tools for help with revisions: character motivation, coherence, theme.

You can read more details about the toolbox from the summary by Dale Fehringer.

Creating My Toolbox

I am building a toolbox based on King’s guidelines, focusing mostly on the first two layers. I don’t feel ready to tackle the advanced topics from the 3rd and 4th layers yet. I can worry about those two layers once I fill the first two with more tools.

Vocabulary comes first at the top layer. My vocabulary is mediocre. Fortunately, King says there is no need to put conscious effort into improving it. It should increase naturally as I read more. The basic rule of vocabulary is to use the first word that comes into your mind if it’s appropriate and colorful.

Grammar comes in second, also from the top layer. This time, we have to put in some effort. King advises us to pick up a high school grammar book to brush up on what we learned in school. Since I didn’t pay attention in class, I will have to do more than just brush up here.

There are many grammar books in the market. After going through the table of contents for some of them, I picked Complete English Grammar Rule on Kindle for learning Grammar. The same book is available for free online at The Farlex Grammar Book. It felt more complete than others based on TOC. It’s a huge book though – 1400+ pages long. I don’t think I will be finishing it any time soon.

Third, on the second shelf, we have Elements of Style covering a huge range of topics. King provided some advice on this: avoid passive voice, and remove adverbs. But we will have to read more books to get more style ideas.

Two books I have picked for style are The Elements of Style and On Writing Well. Most writing books are about style, so there is no shortage of style books. Most likely, I will have to read those too.

Expect to see more posts on these two layers in the future. As I learn more and build up my toolbox, I will be sharing what I learned here.

Unlimited Content Glitch – Document Your Life

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Lately, I have been writing about lessons from books I read mixed with my thoughts on them. It was fun until I wrote my 20th blog post on the same topic. I guess eventually everything becomes monotonous if you repeat it enough times.

Pumping out new blog posts every other day is stressful, especially when it needs heavy research. I have been considering mixing some new topics here, but wasn’t sure how. Until I read the following post on threads:

The post deserves more likes.

The post deserves more likes.

My life isn’t interesting enough to write about it every other day. It’s easier on micro-blogging sites since you can just write a 4-line summary of your day, but that won’t work on blogs (unless you are a celebrity; your fans might want to know what you are doing every hour).

But who says I have to document my present life? I don’t have to tell stories in chronological order. I can just tell stories from my 30+ years old life. Surely I have some interesting stories to tell?

Documenting my past life

I brainstormed for 5 minutes and managed to think of a few stories:

My first interview experience.
The best hike I went on.
My favorite manga.
The time when I wanted to befriend a Jinn.

I have to admit, the list above sounds boring (except for the last one maybe). I am sure I have more interesting stories, but can’t seem to think of any at the moment or explain them in one line.

But that’s fine. The ideas will come when I sit down to write them. They always do.

Telling a story over speech, based on situational context, is easier than on paper. Perhaps it’s cause I never tried doing it before. This will be an interesting writing exercise.

At the least, it will provide an opportunity to experiment with a new writing style. I focus on being concise in my writing, but it makes it very dry. I thought of adding stories to make it more engaging but held back for fear of sounding like story-in-food-recipe.

With memoirs like blogposts, I can practice storytelling via writing.

Deliberate vs Opportunistic Action

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Actions are either Deliberate (pre-planned, intentional) or Opportunistic (accidental, by chance).

For example, blocking time for meditation or journaling on our calendar is deliberate thinking, and thinking while waiting in a queue, driving, eating, or daydreaming (assuming you don’t bring out your phone instead) is opportunistic.

The difference between the two is intention. Regularity of an action doesn’t mean it’s part of our intentional life. If it happens opportunistically, then we are just getting lucky.

If we only rely on luck for certain actions, it becomes harder to see any meaningful result from it. Imagine you only exercise on days when the stars align; when you finish work early, feel energetic, and your friends don’t call you to meet up. Is it possible to get fit with such a schedule? Maybe, if you are lucky. You will have a higher chance if you plan for it and be more disciplined about it.

If an action matters to you, make it deliberate. Don’t rely on chance. That’s the only way of making it a permanent part of your life.

Is deliberate action always better than opportunistic one?

Everything has its importance. Trying to do everything deliberately is exhausting, and you will burn out soon. Meanwhile, relying only on opportunistic moments might not be enough for the actions to be meaningful as stated above.

The best approach is to use both forms.

Opportunities Are Not Equal

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This post reflects on the book Essentialism: Disciplined Pursuit of the Less. So far we have discussed the following:

What is Essentialism?
Finding the vital few by:
- Creating space for thinking.
- Embracing Trade-offs during prioritization.
- Extracting the Essential Intent.

With the tools above, we can filter out many trivial distractions from our lives, but it’s still not enough. That’s how big the sea of trivial things is. We need even more tools to eliminate the non-essentials from our lives.

To explain the next concept, I found the fabricated story about Warren Buffet’s advice to his Pilot the simplest.

The Fake Story of Warren Buffet – 25/5 Rule

Mike Flint, Buffett’s personal airplane pilot for 10 years, once asked Buffet for career advice. He suggested Flint go through the following 3 steps exercise:

Step 1: Write down your top 25 career goals.
Step 2: Then review the list and circle your top 5 goals.. The 5 items circled are List A and the 20 items not circled are List B.

This is where it gets interesting. Flint planned to focus on List A, but still work on List B on the side when he got time. He reasoned that List B contained important career goals close to List A’s value. But Step 3 was different than his expectations.

Step 3: Focus all your energy towards List A, and avoid List B at all costs.

List A vs List B

At a higher level, we understand what a distraction is: Excessive social media, sleep, procrastination, gaming, etc. We realize that we must avoid these, and more, to be productive. If we waste time on any of these, we often feel guilty.

But what about List B? It has 20 career goals that are part of our top 25 goals. They are not distractions in the traditional sense. List B is full of “Good” goals; very close to List A’s value.

But any time you spend towards List B robs you of time for List A. Ultimately, they distract you from List A, but you don’t feel guilty since you are unaware of the distraction.

That’s why they say: “Good is the enemy of Great”. It’s much harder to avoid items that score 8/10 than 5/10.

Opportunities are not equal

Life is too short to pursue every opportunity you get. The next step in Essentialism is to understand that:

Opportunities can be distraction.

When we say: “Eliminate the non-essential”, it also includes sub-par opportunities. So eliminate them. If you don’t say no to trivial opportunities, you will not have time for the essential ones.

Use extreme criteria to judge the value of each opportunity. Pursue an opportunity only if it scores 9/10 or 10/10. Everything else should be eliminated.

If you don’t feel “Hell Yeah!” about the opportunity, turn it down.

This is easier said than done. Especially when the opportunity is knocking (with a ton of Endowment Effect) on the door. All I can say (and hope) is that it gets better with practice.

Essential Intent for Travelling – Why I Travel?

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Here is another example of how Essential Intent has helped me.

I used to travel with lots of focus on consumption. I would visit as many iconic places as possible, take tons of photos, and be out till late night to maximize travel value.

I was reading the chapter on Essential Intent in our vacation to Cappadocia when I decided to peruse my reasons for travelling. What exactly am I trying to gain by traveling and are my actions aligned with that intent?

Eliminating the Non-Essentials First

Finding Essential Intent begins with eliminating the non-essentials.

I don’t travel to learn facts. It’s nice to know the height of the mountain and the depth of the sea, but I forget most of the facts. Only a vague story of the journey remains with me.

If learning facts was the goal, then instead of trying to memorize them, I should take notes. Just collecting notes isn’t helpful either (Collector’s Fallacy), so I will have to spend more time to integrate them with my knowledge. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for all these.

I don’t travel for social media either. At least, not anymore. I once had a TikTok account where I posted videos of my adventures. It was nice; like a video journal. I gave it up when I realized it made traveling stressful.

Video making is hard, and with TikTok, vacations became work! I was thinking about videomaking more than enjoying what was in front of me. Which angle gave better view? Should I go back to film the building from further away? Maybe I should wait a bit more to let the crowd disperse? Then there was editing! That took even more time 🤦‍♂️

The Essential Intent

It didn’t take ten steps for finding the essential intent? Sometimes all you need is a bit of thinking to realize the truth.

It was obvious what the common pattern was here. I didn’t want travelling to be stressful or be a chore.

Essential Intent: Rest via Mindfulness.

(There are many ways to relax, so I made it a bit more specific to say: Relax via Mindfulness.)

That’s it. That’s what many of us travel for, don’t we. But sometimes we just forget about it. Now that I remember it again, how did it impact my traveling habits?

Impact of the Essential Intent

Just because I want to rest doesn’t mean I will take it to the extreme and stay in the hotel all day. The intent is an overall theme to be maintained throughout the activities.

I don’t have to take (too many) pictures, video or notes. I can just be mindful of the beautify and let myself relax.

I don’t have to be out and about till late night either. It’s fine to visit few places and return back to hotel early-ish (5-6 pm) to cool down. If we rest enough during vacation, the vacation won’t feel like a chore.

I don’t have to chain activities tightly what didn’t even allow a 10 minutes mistake. I can leave longer gaps between activities to de-stress. Drink coffee from the cute shop I see in the corner, enter a local shop, or just sit on the park to admire the nature.

As long as I can rest via mindfulness, the vacation is a success to me.

Essential Intent for Blogging – Why do I Write?

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Before discussing more lessons from Essentialism, I wanted to provide an example of finding Essential Intents. This is MY essential intent, valid for NOW (they can change over time, and that’s fine).

Since I spend a lot of time blogging, I thought this would be the perfect subject for finding essential intent. The more time you spend on an activity, the more important it is to find its Essential Intent.

So what’s my essential intent for blogging?

Write more.

This single intent encapsulates all my primary and secondary goals for blogging.

Write more to Create!
Write more to improve my writing skills.
Write more to challenge my creativity in finding new ideas.
Write more to embrace imperfection.
Write more to think, self-improve and organize.
Write more to help others.

Anytime a new idea appears in my blogging domain, I ask myself: “Will this help me to write more?”. I avoid it if it doesn’t help. For example, I dumped my urge to make YouTube videos since it would prevent me from writing more. Without Essential Intent, it could have been harder to make this trade-off.

Essential Intent helps with making meaningful progress by letting me judge if I am spending time doing the core work or fluff. In the last week, I spent too much time marketing on Threads. So even though it’s bringing more viewers, I am cutting it back to make more time for writing.

The essential intent keeps on coming back every time I make a decision. Do I spend more time on SEO? Should I create a new cover photo on Canva? How about polishing the post a bit more to make it sound natural? Whenever I make a decision, I have the thought “Write More” back in mind influencing me.

Note that I don’t sacrifice everything for the sake of writing more. I just try to ensure I never lose focus on it. It’s fine to occasionally do things that go against the intent, but such decisions must be deliberate.

Don’t Just Consume, Create!

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Consumption is a necessity for living. Food, entertainment, shelter; we consume many things. It’s hard to live without consuming.

For some people, consumption defines who they are. Swifties are Taylor Swift Fans, Red Devils are Manchester United Fans, and bookworm just read a lot of books.

There is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. But, there is nothing great about it either.

Consumption takes zero effort. Everybody is doing it. After all, it’s hard to live without consuming.

Even if you don’t want to consume a lot, you will be decieved into it. Consumer Capitalism traps us into over-consuming. Fast fashion, fast food, fast entertainment; the economy thrives with consumption.

We are taught that happiness is based on consumption. As soon as we buy that car, own that house, or have that body, we will be happy. Yet, the consumption never ends.

No matter how much we consume, it doesn’t move us or the world towards a better tomorrow.

Instead of consumption, happiness is found in the quest of production: building, creating, making. Solving problems. If we skip straight to having everything, to maximum consumption, we miss out on the satisfaction that comes from the path of struggle we would have to endure to get there.

Creativity breaks the consumption cycle.

Creating is a mindset. A challenge that requires effort but is worthwhile and rewarding.

So don’t just consume. Create.

Essential Intent – One Decision that Eliminates a Thousand

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This post reflects on the book Essentialism: Disciplined Pursuit of the Less. So far we have discussed the following:

What is Essentialism?
Finding the vital few by:
- Creating space for thinking.
- Embracing Trade-offs during prioritization.

Today, we will look at another tool to help us find the vital few: Essential Intent. It’s a decision-making tool that brings more clarity to our vision.

What is Essential Intent?

When we perform a task, we always have a reason behind it. Doing chores leads to a cleaner house, work brings money to pay bills, and you exercise for better health. There are benefits to gain, otherwise, why bother with them?

Any activity you do can be done in many ways. For example, is it better to run or lift when you exercise? How about playing tennis to socialize in parallel? You can even start a YouTube channel to become a fitness influencer.

When people are unclear about their reasons for doing something, they get tangled in non-essential work. Similar to spending hours making YouTube videos when you should be working out instead.

That’s where the essential intent comes in. For every project that matters to you, ask yourself: “What is the most important reason for this task?”.

Essential Intent is the most important reason for a task. As long as the essential intent is fulfilled, the task can be considered successful.

Once you find the essential intent of a project, it becomes easier to make decisions related to it. It’s like deciding to become a doctor instead of a lawyer.

One strategic choice eliminates a universe of other options and maps a course for the next five, ten, or even twenty years of your life.

Essential Intent for Everything

Essential Intent is hidden in everything we do. With practice, you should be able to find and utilize it for normal activities.

For example, what’s your essential intent when going on a vacation? Sightseeing or relaxing? If it’s relaxing, then get back to your hotel earlier to wind down rather than spending every single minute out until exhaustion. Or maybe it’s relaxing on day 1, but sightseeing on day 2.

There are no hard fast rules, but just don’t overdo it. Things are good only in moderation. Seek essential intent for things that matter. Don’t get stuck finding essential intent for taking a shower or sleeping.

Use it when your project has started creating more work for you. Find the essential intent of the project and use it to eliminate the non-essential work.

How I am Using It

I have thought about the following areas and found essential intent for:

Blogging: Write more.
Traveling: Rest via mindfulness.
Morning Routine: Escape the bedroom.

Sorry if they sound a bit cryptic. I plan to write more about them, but not in this post. I will update this post when I am done writing details about them.

Don’t Avoid Trade-offs – Embrace Them

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This post is my reflection on the book Essentialism: Disciplined Pursuit of the Less. I have already discussed:

What is Essentialism?
Finding the vital few by creating space for thinking.

As a follow-up to the series, let’s look into some tools that can help us “think” better.

Finding the essential means figuring out what’s more important in a pool of items. A form of prioritization basically. One way to prioritize between two items is to think about their trade-offs.

That’s our first tool for thinking better: Trade-off.

Non-Essentialists Run Away from Trade-offs

Our lives are full of trade-offs. Unfortunately, we often get tempted to deny its reality. After all, by definition, a trade-off involves two things that we desire.

Do you want more pay or more holidays? 🤔

A non-essentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, “How can I do both?”. Please don’t. Every time you avoid trade-offs, you let in trivial things in your life.

We can try to avoid the reality of trade-offs, but we can’t escape them.

Essentialists Celebrate Trade-offs

You must embrace trade-offs to become an essentialist. An Essentialist makes trade-offs deliberately. They ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating questions, “Which problem do I want?”.

For essentialists, trade-offs are an inherent part of life. An opportunity to cut off the non-essential and go big in one direction.

Instead of thinking: “What do I have to give up?”, ask yourself, “What do I want to go big on”?

An essentialist stays vigilant to pick up every opportunity for trade-offs. They stop every time they catch themselves thinking: I can do both.

There is always a Sacrifice

Is it ever possible to do both? Yes. Sometimes.

In rare cases, both things can be essential. But you must make sure that you have prioritized them honestly. And even when you have rationalized your decision to do them both, ask yourself, what did you sacrifice?

There is always a sacrifice.

By choosing to do them both, perhaps you increase your chances of promotion at work, but at the cost of more stress and lower work-life balance. This is fine, as long as it is an intentional choice.

Without clarity and deep thinking behind each choice, you won’t be able to practice Essentialism properly. Just like any other skill, you have to master it by practicing.

Don’t get too hung up on Trade-off

Remember, it’s just one of the tools for finding the essentials. Don’t get too hung up on it.

You don’t have to make the perfect decision at every trade-off you face in life. As long as you don’t run away, it’s progress in the right direction.

How to Create Space for Thinking and Why?

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.

~ Pablo Picasso

In the last post, we discussed Essentialism: distinguishing the vital few (essentials) from the trivial many and then acting on them. In this post, we will discuss how to find the essentials.

Finding the Vital Few

Thinking is the only way to distinguish the vital few from the trivial many. We need to think about our intentions and goals. What do we want to achieve? What are the criteria and trade-offs for success?

These questions are hard and your mind may say: “Why bother thinking so much? You are being lazy. Let’s just do them all!”.

Don’t. Every time you catch yourself thinking “I can do them both”, stop yourself. Doing them both is often inefficient. Save yourself the hassle and focus on the less-but-better items instead.

Instead of making a millimeter of progress in a million directions, generate tremendous momentum towards accomplishing truly vital things.

The Power of Thinking

I think, therefore I am.

– René Descartes

When Newton was asked how he discovered the law of universal gravitation, he replied: “By thinking on it continually”. He worked in almost solitary confinement for two years to write “Principia Mathematica” which changed the world.

Bill Gates has a “Think Week” every 6 months. He spends the week reading and focusing on the big picture. He has been practicing this since 1980, even during the peak season of Microsoft’s expansion.

If you “think” about it, you will realize:

Thinking is the only way to integrate information with knowledge (things that you understand).
Thinking is the only way to generate new ideas from knowledge.

What comes to you externally has already been told. That which is vital, which is unique, is already within you.

– Silence by Erling Kagge

We have most of the solutions to our problems within us. We just need to listen to ourselves.

Deliberately Creating Space for Thinking

We need to create space for thinking, similar to Bill Gates and Newton. But I am not talking about thinking opportunities that you get by chance. I am talking about dedicated time slots that you allocate intentionally.

Creating Space for Thinking – Deliberately setting aside distraction-free time in a distraction-free space to do absolutely nothing other than think.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you allocated time to think? Are you deliberate about it or just relying on luck? Are you perhaps too busy to think? 🤔

If you are “too busy” to think, then you must pause and think whether you are busy with the essentials or just the trivial. Eliminate the non-essentials. That will free up your time.

I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one.

– Mahatma Gandhi

Don’t be busy. Prioritize, and never be too busy to think.

Implementation Idea

Each person will have their own strategy for thinking. Here is how I do it.

First, I defined what counts as “thinking”. Being lost in your thoughts is one way. There is more:

Writing (not editing) for my blog.
Journaling
A short reading cycle where I quickly finish reading an article and spend more time contemplating what I just read. A long reading session doesn’t count.
Digital Gardening. I take notes of things I learn. When I integrate information with my knowledge, I count that as thinking.

Next, I needed a particular time slot. To maximize my chances, and keep things flexible, I created 3 slot candidates:

In the morning after waking up.
In the evening right after work.
In the night before sleeping.

I try to think in at least one of the slots. With multiple thinking activities and time slots, I think for at least an hour on most days. If I miss a planned slot, no worries, I can push the event to the next available slot.

I mark these slots on my calendar. See my post on: Calendar Should Reflect Your Values. I usually color code thinking time with Yellow color.

I monitor how much I am “thinking” on my calendar and try to maximize it. If I don’t have enough yellow colors on my calendar, I review what’s wrong and adjust.

What’s next?

Creating the thinking space is the first step toward finding the essentials. The book has provided some ideas about what to think in that space. I will write a follow-up post to discuss that.

For now, just focus on thinking deliberately.

A Simple Definition of Essentialism

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

~ Lin Yutang

I recently finished the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It was a quick read and took only 3 weeks (unlike Range which took 3 months). I loved the book, especially cause it aligned with my understanding that life is short and you can’t do everything. Essentialism showed me that even within the things I can do, there is scope to prioritize things further.

The first lesson I learned from the book is its definition: What is Essentialism?

Essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less but better.

Let’s drill down the definition a bit more. The definition sounds fancy and nice, but doesn’t make a lot of sense without understanding the fundamental principle of Essentialism philosophy:

Practically Everything is Unimportant.

There is no hard evidence for this. It’s a subjective matter that you need to observe for yourself. It’s like the Pareto Principle: 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes (the “vital few”).

Based on the principle, the world is a sea of trivial things, where the vital few (essentials) are hidden. The essential is less but better.

We must prioritize finding the essentials, otherwise, we will always stay busy dealing with the trivial things. There is no point in searching if we don’t act on them. So once found, we must ignore trivial things and act on the essentials deliberately.

Combining everything above, here is my interpretation of the previous definition:

Finding the vital few (essential) in the sea of trivial things, and then Acting on them, is Essentialism.

That’s it for today. In the next post, I will discuss how to find the vital few.

Beware of Endowment Effect

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

An object feels more valuable when you own it, compared to when you don’t.

Surprisingly, research has found this true even if you owned the object for just a few minutes. That’s the Endowment Effect.

Multiple theories explain why it happens, but none are completely foolproof. “Loss Aversion” made some sense to me, but you can check Wikipedia for the complete list.

Regardless of why this happens, once you are aware of it, you will notice this is happening all around us all the time.

Obvious Example: Utilized for Sales Tactics

Sellers encourage psychological ownership of items so that we value them more.

The car dealership offers a test drive and the jewelry shop lets you try it on. While it’s a valid way to get a feel for a new item, it has the added benefit of making you feel ownership of it.

Another great example is “Free Returns”. Once you have the object in your hand at home, you are more likely to keep it, even if it doesn’t suit your needs properly.

Endowment Effect Beyond Physical Objects

A sense of ownership is a power thing.

It’s not just physical objects that we can own. We can “own” opinions, ideas, problems, solutions, and abstract concepts.

At work, we are encouraged to “own” the problem. Think of the project as “yours” to deliver. “Your” project is more important than “others”.
The effect can be extended to “belonging” and “identity”.
- A person may feel more attachment to their local football club than if he was born in another place.
- A person may identify as a Taylor Swift fan and that identity “ownership” will impact them when buying concert tickets.
An opportunity we have now feels much more valuable than one that isn’t here yet.

I am stretching it a bit, but you get the idea.

How to avoid the Endowment effect?

Endowment Effect tends to skew our judgment of an item’s true value. When handling a tradeoff, you don’t want to overvalue or undervalue your options. To make accurate decisions, you need to factor in the Endowment Effect.

How?

Avoid Endowment Effect by pretending you don’t own the item yet.

Ask yourself:

“If I didn’t own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?”
“If I didn’t have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice to obtain it?”
“If I wasn’t already involved in this project, how hard would I work to get on it?”

Try to get a clear picture of the item’s true worth and then make a decision.

Nuffield 360 Health Assessment Review

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We recently booked a Nuffield 360 Health Assessment for a family member. Thought I would jot down our experience if you plan to book one for yourself.

Before the appointment

A few weeks before the appointment, we received a kit for a stool test. It came with detailed instructions on collecting stool into the tube and posting it to their address. It was pretty straightforward.

We received the result before our appointment date. A letter came in and it basically just said:

“I am writing to inform you that your Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) sample has been analysed and the test results show that there is no requirement for further investigation at this time.”

So a big nothing burger, which is good when it comes to health reports.

On the day

We drove to our nearby Nuffield Health Center where the examination happened. It happens in two stages: the Collection Stage and the Consultation Stage.

In the first hour, they focus on collecting metrics:

Blood and Urine Sample
Physical Measurement: height, weight, waist, BMI, body fat percentage.
Heart-Related: Blood Pressure and ECG.
Flexibility measurement: squat, single leg toe touch, clutching your hand behind your back.
Stress Measurement: they measure heart rate while you take deep breaths.

We mostly got basic advice at this stage: do more yoga, exercise, drink more water, etc.

In the second hour, we met a Senior GP for consultation. The doctor, however, was unable to prescribe any medication as part of this assessment.

This was a checkup for preventive care, not a diagnosis.

He went through all the metrics collected in the first phase, including blood and urine tests. He also did some basic physical examination of eye, ear and throat.

Based on the result, we got some advice on how to reduce cholesterol level and high blood pressure. While we didn’t get any prescription, we got instruction to meet with a GP and tell them we needed medication for cholesterol and blood pressure.

Post Appointment

At about 2 weeks mark, we got our report as email. The report contained details of:

Doctor Summary
Body Composition: BMI, Waist Circumference, Body Fat %
Blood Pressure, Electrocardiogram ECG, Cardiovascular Risk Score (QRISK®3)
Urine Test and Blood Test
Posture and Movement Health (HA1)

Out of all the tests, I think the most significant tests for us were ECG, Urine Test and Blood test. We got our most of important information from these three tests. The rest were less interesting for our particular patient.

Istanbul Is No Longer A Cheap Travel Destination

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Our first visit to Istanbul back in September 2019 was a magical experience. The first time we saw Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque at night, it gave us an “Arabian Night” feeling.

We soon realized another fact: It was very cheap compared to the UK. With an exchange rate of 1 GPP = 7 Turkish Lira back then:

The hotel room was only 20 GBP per night.
Lentil soup was only 8 TL (~1 GBP).
Sehzade Kebap, a popular cheap kebab restaurant, was only 26 TL (3 GBP).
Ticket prices for attractions were low, e.g. Topkapi Palace cost only 95 TL (13 GBP).

Compared to traveling to any other country in Europe, it was at least 60-70% cheaper. Since then, we have recommended friends visit Istanbul, especially as a low-cost unique travel destination.

Unfortunately, things have changed now.

Current Status in 2024

We noticed the prices were significantly higher on our latest Istanbul Trip. With 1 GBP = ~40 TL:

Many items (guided tours, entry tickets) are priced in Euros now.
Attractions have higher ticket prices. Topkapi Palace now costs 1700 TL (40 GBP) compared to 95 TL (13 GBP).
Many free places from the past now require tickets. E.g. Hagia Sophia.
Lentil soup was now 160-200 TL (5GBP). That’s almost a 500% increase in price.
Sehzada kebab was 360 TL (9 GBP). Increased by 3 times.

On average, everything has increased in price by 3 to 5 times in GBP making Istanbul almost as expensive as London.

Istanbul is still a very nice place to visit. It’s just not cheap anymore.

How I Conquered My Worry of Sleep Deprivation

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

While I don’t go to bed at a particular time, I always aim to get 8 hours of sleep. On rare occasions, I am forced to sleep less than that which often makes me very anxious. Especially if I know I have a busy schedule the next day.

Worry of Sleep Deprivation: Anxiety that sleeping less than ideal amount will result in feeling very tired next day.

On my recent trip to Cappadocia, I had to wake up at 3 AM to catch an early flight. That meant spending a whole day of guided tours on only 5 hours of sleep. I kept worrying: “How will I enjoy the trip if I feel sleep-deprived all day?”

Digging a bit deeper

At some point, I asked myself: “What evidence do I have for this worry? If it’s just tiredness, can I not tackle it in some other way?”

This was a shift in perspective. Instead of just worrying, I decided to dig deep to figure out why I was feeling worried and how can I fix it. Suddenly, instead of worrying, I was excited!

I got a simple idea to collect evidence:

Experiment: Just note how I feel throughout the day when I am sleep-deprived.

No need to speculate! I can make a data-driven decision. And I had the perfect opportunity to try it out on my vacation.

Experiment for Impact of Sleep Deprivation

I ran a successful experiment during the Cappadocia trip. Here are the facts:

I only slept for 5 hours. I woke up at 3 AM and surprisingly felt quite refreshed.
I had Coffee at the airport. I wasn’t tired, but this was a proactive action to help me stay awake.
I took two naps throughout the day: 1 in the car while driving to Cappadocia and 1 in the evening once returning to the hotel.

Overall, I had a great day. I didn’t feel tired thanks to coffee and opportunistic naps.

Conclusion: With napping opportunities, it is possible to enjoy the day with slight sleep deprivation.

It’s all about planning

I no longer worry about the sleep deprivation. I now have data to prove that one-off sleep deprivation isn’t enough to derail my day. With proper planning, I can mitigate the risk of tiredness quite effectively.

If I know an upcoming event will result in sleep deprivation, I will just plan some naps or coffee breaks to deal with it. This sounds simple, but I didn’t plan for these in the past. I tried to stay awake as much as possible to stay productive.

Now that I am aware and planning for it, I am more inclined to rest during short breaks than fiddle with my phone. The real lesson however is:

Always validate your assumptions about your worries. It might not be as bad as you think.

Different Journaling Methods That Didn’t Work For Me

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have tried Journaling in multiple ways, hoping to make it a regular habit. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to maintain one for more than a year. Here is a short overview of what I have tried and why it didn’t work for me.

Bullet Journal

A fancy way of writing on pen and paper. YouTube has plenty of tutorials on this ig you are interested.

Here are the pros and cons I felt when using this method:

Pros
- Calming: I write whenever I feel stressed. It helps me focus on one problem at a time.
Cons (most of these are my fault rather than being a problem with BuJo itself)
- Overwhelming: You can do a lot of things with BuJo: To-do tracking, short-term planning, and long-term planning. I burnt out trying to do too much.
- Availability: I often didn’t find my BuJo near me when I needed it. Even when I had it, I couldn’t write if there were no tables around me.
- Verbose: I just wrote too much which made it harder to review later.

I used BuJo for around 2 years, on and off. At some point, I realized I never read my old journals. So what was the point of writing them? Perhaps if I summarized my journal entries, I would be more likely to review them? With that in mind, I moved on to A6 journals.

A6 Journal

I simplified my method more by switching to an A6 diary. Since it’s just a quarter of A4 sized diary, I had to write less to fit my day in it.

Pros
- Easy to Carry: A6 diary fits in your pocket.
- Short Format: Instead of writing the whole detail, I started writing only short summaries of events or thoughts. This made it easier to review later.
Cons
- Inconvenient: Carrying an additional object all the time is a burden.
- Table: Still needed a table to write.

Somehow, I still didn’t read my old entries and I kept missing writing on it regularly. It wasn’t convenient enough.

Shift to Digital – Daylio App

Since I switched to short-form journaling, it became easier to type on my phone. So I started journaling on my phone in an app called Daylio.

Pros
- Availability: I always have my phone around. It’s easier to carry.
- No Table Required: I can write while standing if needed.
Cons
- Phone only: I couldn’t write more on it even if I wanted to. It’s hard to type too much on the phone after all.

Final Thoughts: Something is still missing

Shifting to digital has helped but I am still not reflecting on my notes enough.

What’s the point of journaling if I don’t reflect on what I have written?

I know that the act of writing itself has many benefits, but if that’s all I want, it would be simpler to just write on a page and then throw it away.

I have a new approach, which seems to be working for me at the moment, hence it’s not on the list above. I will write up a separate post for it. I just wanted to recap my old methods first otherwise the new method wouldn’t make sense.

Avoid Explaining Events in Chronological Order

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Typically, nobody cares about the order of events.

Explaining in chronological order is lazy communication. It puts the burden of filtering important information on the listener/reader.

It’s more effective for the explainer to highlight the important points since they understand the complete picture.

When you don’t adhere to chronological order, you can:

Re-organize related events together to create a more seamless story.
Edit ruthlessly to eliminate non-essential events.

You can note down chronological events separately for the interested folks if needed. For everyone else, avoid explaining events in chronological order. Put in some effort to make your message more concise.

Reference: How to be more concise by Wes Kao.

Chrome Extensions I use to Enhance Google Calendar

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have recently started using Google Calendar more. I am trying to color-code it to reflect my values.

While it’s going great, I am starting to see some of its shortcomings. Luckily, I am not the only one who has noticed the missing features. The kind souls of the internet have already created many Chrome Extensions to alleviate some of the pain points of Google Calendar.

I have personally started using the following two Google Calendar Extensions:

Google Calendar Quick Duplicate: I can’t believe Google Calendar doesn’t have this feature already. I often need to duplicate my events and Google Calendar requires multiple clicks for it. This solves that problem by having an icon on the event that automates the clicks for duplicating the event. Then I can just drag the new event to its correct time.
Hide Morning in Calendar: I don’t have too many events between midnight and 6 AM so I would rather hide them instead of scrolling through them.

There are still a few more features I would have loved to see. For example, an extension that extracted all my color-coded events and showed me insights regarding which color of event occurred most this week. That would be nice. More numbers about me!

Anyways, Color Coded Google Calendar + these two extensions are good enough for what I am trying to do at the moment. Probably it was good enough without the extensions too, but they made things more convenient.

Calendar Should Reflect Your Values

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Our life is made up of time. How we spend our time dictates how we spend our life.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could visualize how we are spending our life? Maintaining a Calendar is a great tool for such a visualization.

We typically use Calendar just to track upcoming events or meetings at work. But it has the potential to be so much more.

Instead of just tracking upcoming events, if you also track how you plan to spend a particular time block, then that becomes an Intention. Later, if you keep the calendar synced with reality by deleting or modifying the event based on what actually happened, it becomes a Journal.

Finally, if you Color Code Your Calendar, it also provides a quick Measurement of how you have spent your week.

Then you can ask yourself: “Am I spending time in doing things I truly value?“

Are you spending time with your family? Have you given time to your partner this week? Did you work on your side project? Did you exercise?

Your Calendar should reflect the values you want to see in your life.

If you are not intentionally spending your time, then how exactly are you spending them? Are you living a reactive life? Is that what you want?

Remember, if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

How I Color Code My Personal Calendar

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Color Coding Calendar simply means assigning different colors to your events according to pre-defined rules.

Some people assign different colors to indicate different priorities. Some assign colors for energy level. Everyone has their own method. Here is one I found on LinkedIn.

The definition can be anything you want. The main point is you have some definition and then use it consistently. Once you do, the colors will provide a visual summary of your week.

How I Color Code My Personal Calendar

I have decided to use color to define the type of task. I use Google Calendar and it has a limited set of colors. I use the following colors:

Default Calendar Color: These are actual events, e.g. movies, concerts, friends’ birthday parties, any event involving someone else, etc.
Tomato: Time for family and partner, e.g. date night.
Grape: Time spent doing activities for general survival, e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner, chores.
Flamingo: One of the important tasks that require focus, e.g. planning a vacation, filing tax returns. If it doesn’t need focus, it’s probably just a chore.
Sage: Time spent working to earn money. It’s a chunk of 8 hours. I have a separate work calendar with its own color code definition.
Graphite: Commute time. I exclusively use it to mark time spent commuting to the office.
Banana: Time spent working on my goals/values, e.g. hobbies, blogging, reading, writing, etc. This is what I try to maximize on my calendar.

A total of 7 colors are being used at the moment. Sage and Graphite are used for one exclusive activity so I play with the 5 other colors most of the time.

Don’t use too many colors. Simple system work better than fancy ones.

What About The Gaps? What Do They Mean?

The gaps mostly mean free time without any particular intention. I typically do more survival tasks during those phases, rest, react to events, etc.

I don’t try to eliminate every gap on my calendar. Trying to schedule/plan every action is tedious. It’s fine to leave gaps to indicate “miscellaneous”.

Just make sure your life is not full of miscellaneous blocks.

Final Thoughts – Keeping It Simple

Color coding is a very cool concept. It’s really nice to see how I have spent my time at the end of the week. Trying to maintain it is a burden so I try to keep the number of colors and activities I track to the minimum.

For example, I don’t try to track the Grape color too much. I have some recurring events and it’s fine if those are inaccurate. The Tomato color and Banana color is important to me so I try to track them as accurately as possible.

If at any point you notice that you are struggling to keep your calendar synced with your life, it’s an indication that you are trying to track too much. Pause and re-evaluate what matters to you the most and simplify.

8 Reasons Why “Ivy Lee Method” Is So Effective

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The story goes as follows: Schwab, a businessman that Thomas Edison referred to as “Master Hustler“, invited Ivy Lee, a Productivity Consultant, to his company to help increase efficiency. Ivy Lee requested 15 minutes with each of the executives and for payment, he asked for whatever Schwab felt was appropriate once he saw the result.

3 months later, Scwab wrote a check of $25,000$ in 1918, which stands to $400,000$ in 2015 after inflation.

What did Ivy Lee teach the executives in the 15 minutes? 🤔

The Ivy Lee Method

The method says:

At the end of each day, determine what 6 important tasks you want to achieve the next day.
Prioritize them according to their true importance.
The next day, focus on completing the first task and only then move on to the second task.
Any unfinished tasks get punted to the next day’s list if they are still important enough.

Simple, right? How can such a simple method be so effective?

8 Reasons Why Ivy Lee Method Is So Effective

While the Ivy Lee Method looks simple at the surface, if you look deeper you will notice that it combines multiple other productivity tips we already know about. Assuming you carry it out in its ideal form as stated above, you will notice:

Simplicity: It’s simple to understand. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. Execution will require discipline like anything else.
Prioritization: It is a prioritization technique. When you write down 6 tasks, you prioritize them over everything not written down.
Intentional: You are not prioritizing dynamically as the tasks come to you. You are prioritizing ahead of time. By prioritizing for tomorrow instead of today, you avoid being swept up by new emails and chats first thing in the morning.
Eat the Frog: It’s a variant of the “Eat the Frog” technique. You are forced to start with the most important task of your day.
Focus: Forces you to single-task. Multi-tasking is a myth.
Routine: Forces you to have an end-of-day routine. This can later be combined with other forms of reflection if required.
Removes Friction to Start: Since you know your top priority when you start your day, you can quickly get started instead of getting trapped doing busy work.
Limit: 6 is an arbitrary number in the method. It could have been any other number. The main goal was to limit your tasks to a finite option. Otherwise, you will have a long winding to-do list with items rotting for months.

I ❤️ the fact that Ivy Lee Method managed to condense so many other productivity techniques neatly into one method.

How to implement

You can implement it in many ways since it’s a simple technique. The simplest would be pen and paper. Just write down your 6 priorities for the next day on a paper and cross them off as you finish them. Rinse and repeat every day after work.

I didn’t opt for pen and paper since I work at two different places: Office and WFH. I decided to use Obsidian which is synced between my workstations. If I stick to it for multiple quarters, I may look to automate things more.

As usual, please remember this method is a guideline. To make it work, you will need to adapt it to fit your situation without bending the fundamentals too much.

For example, a common question asked:

Question: What do I do if something urgent/unexpected comes to my plate? 😱

Answer: Try to ignore the new task till the end of the day. Keep on focusing on your list. If it’s too pressing (think about this carefully first), deal with it and try to get back to your list ASAP.

Final Thoughts

It has been exactly 2 days since I have tried this method. It’s working alright and I have indeed managed to make solid progress at my primary projects. Whether or not it’s worth half a million dollars is yet to be seen.

My emails are piling up from doing such focused work though. I am not feeling too guilty since I am making progress on important things. I added “Check Email” as a priority for the next day since I am starting to feel stressed after ignoring it for 2 days.

I will give it a try for a while longer and let you know how things go. I urge you to give it a go too. Let me know in the comment if you notice anything difference in your workflow.

4 Lessons I Learned from Range by David Epstein

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I finally managed to finish reading Range. Took me around 3 months. The book was packed with thought-provoking ideas. I ended up writing multiple blog posts on some of the topics covered by it. This book is definitely in my top 3 best non-fiction books I ever read.

If this was the old me, I would have tried creating a summary capturing every idea from the book but failed to revise the notes ever again cause it would be big and boring. Equipped with my new strategy: One Chapter == One Action, I created a note highlighting the specific lessons I can/should implement.

I am now filtering the lessons I learned from Range and summarising them as answers to questions. That’s what I felt reading this book: it answered many questions I had in my mind.

Here are the 4 questions the books helped me find answers for.

Is It Too Late To Start?

In a world where so many young prodigies get highlighted in the media, it can easily feel like we are already late to the party. How can we be great at something if we didn’t start it when we were 5 years old?

But the reality is, late bloomers or late specialists are more common than the media portrays. That is because the world is a wicked environment and its problems can’t be solved with simple repeated deliberate practice.

Head start provides advantage in kind environments, but in wicked environments, it’s never too late to start.

Is It OK To Switch Career?

After spending 5 years at Medical School, does it really make sense to give up your career as a Doctor and become something else? The Sunken Cost Fallacy keeps us attached to goals we have committed to already. However, the goal we set years ago might not be relevant anymore. People change with experience, so maybe there is a better fit for you.

The book talks about trying out different domains to “flirt with your possible self”. You won’t know what you like until you try it. And once you do find something you like, it’s better to switch than be scared and stick to your established life.

Switchers are winners. You switch for better match quality.

Can I Be Successful Without Finding My Purpose?

I already published a post about this based on the lesson learned from the book: Long-Term Goal Setting Could Be Premature Optimisation. The answer is Yes.

Successful people often don’t start with a purpose in mind. A lot of innovation happens without knowing what the end result would be. These people tend to focus on short-term plans that will bring them to the next best promising situation and then pivot again using that as a launching point.

In absence of long term plan, just make short term plans to reach next best promising situation and pivot from there.

Can I Be Successful Without Being An Specialist In A Domain?

The biggest lesson I derived from the book was understanding the importance of Generalists.

People have different tendencies in how they want to learn and solve problems. Some people like going deep and some people like learning broadly. Most of the time, people are a mix. And everyone is important!

While specialists can solve problems in a domain with their deep knowledge, sometimes they get stuck since they lack cross-domain knowledge. That’s where the generalists come in. They combine knowledge across domains (often using analogies) to solve problems. This is called lateral thinking.

Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology – a strategy for generalist.

So it’s absolutely fine to be a Generalist. You can innovate by combining cross-domain knowledge, while specialists will innovate by breaking through the limits of their domain.

Final Thoughts

These are the lessons that resonated with me the most. When you read the book, you might pick up other ideas. I highly recommend reading the book if you are a reader.

Personally, this book has given me a boost in confidence. These questions made me hesitate to start something new or take risks. But now I have answers to all of the questions/doubts below:

What’s the point? You are too late anyway.
- I am not. The kind of things I want to do fall under a wicked environment most of the time.
Are you sure you want to do this? Is this your purpose? Are you fine doing this for the rest of your life?
- This is not my purpose, but often it’s something new that will help me learn new things which will bring me to the next promising situation.
You are just becoming a “Jack of All Trades, Master of None“!
- The real saying goes “Jack of All Trades, Master of None, but often better than Master of One“

Basically, don’t be too uptight about trying new things in life. Try it even if it feels pointless.

Will It Matter a Year from Now?

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I use this technique for Stress Management / Embarrassment Management. Whenever I notice I am stressed due to a recent embarrassing event (e.g. mispronouncing a word during a presentation/meeting), I ask myself, Will it matter a year from now?

Almost always the answer is “No“. I won’t even remember the event a year later. Nobody around me will remember it. Everyone will forget. So why bother worrying about it?

If it will matter a year from now, then I should worry. Otherwise, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Delay App Launch by 10 Seconds for Intentional Phone Usage

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In the previous post “Disable Push Notification on Phone“, we discussed how turning off notifications helps to be more intentional about phone usage. By turning off notifications, we invert the control. Instead of letting the app lure us into using the app, we use the app when we intend to.

While turning off notifications has helped lower my phone usage, I recently noticed that I am still lured into doom-scrolling due to my muscle memory. I reflexively open time-eating apps when performing non-related tasks on my phone. For example, when commuting I would take out my phone to check how many stops are remaining and after checking it I would quickly end up opening my email or Reddit just to “see” what’s happening.

This doesn’t stop with one app. I sequentially check up on Messenger, Reddit, and other apps on my phone. I am unaware that I am stuck in a “checking loop“. Even if I get aware and stop at some point, I might get back into the loop the next time I open my phone.

If one of the apps I am checking up on happens to be a social media (I use Reddit), I am also at risk of getting caught up in doom-scrolling.

How do we defend ourselves from our muscle memory?

How to Break the Cycle – Delay App Launch

Currently, the app switch is seamless. I can hop from one app to another without being aware of it. We need to add friction to bring back awareness about it.

One way would be to introduce a gap between each app switch so that we can focus on our intention for switching. A 10-second delay would be good enough to break the flow and think, “Do I really need to check this app at this moment“?

I use an Android phone, and luckily, there are plenty of apps on Android that can introduce such gaps. I found the iChooseTo app, which is completely free and does exactly this.

I use the app to introduce delays to app-launch for apps I tend to open reflexively. Those would be Gmail, Reddit, and Mastodon. The result has been great! I have already noticed a reduction in my usage.

What if I need to open an app urgently?

In what scenario would you need to open an app urgently? What can be so urgent that even 10 10-second delay is critical?

I couldn’t find any such scenario. However, If you have a critical use case for a particular app, skip adding delay. Guard everything else. Also, let me know in the comment what the app/use case was for you. I am curious to see what could be so critical.

Final Thoughts

The delay is working great for me. I am using my phone less than before. Whenever I open an app unintentionally, I can correct myself easily.

I wish the app also showed some stats on how many times it intercepted me and how many times I closed the app versus waiting 10 seconds to open it. I just like numbers.

Track File Change Dates on Obsidian

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have recently started building a Digital Garden on Obsidian. I like the analogy of ideas being equal to seeds and then tending them until they grow into something bigger: 🌱 -> 🌿 -> 🌳

To imitate the growth phases automatically, I need to track when a file was created and how many times it has been edited.

I found a plugin on Obsidian (Update Time on Edit) that keeps track of the created date and modified date as a frontmatter. It however only keeps track of the last modified time.

I found another plugin that allows you to generate frontmatter for a file using Javascript: Obsidian Frontmatter Generator. I was able to tweak it to track file change dates.

So here is how I used the plugin to keep track of every edit I make to each file.

{
    edits: (() => {
        // Fetch list of edit dates. If not set yet, use empty array.
        currentEdits = file.properties?.edits || []

        // Clone the existing edit list into a new array. The plugin
        // can't detect changes made to existing list.
        result = [...currentEdits]

        // Fetch today's date and get rid of timestamp
        // I am only intersted in the date, not time.
        today = new Date().toDateString()

        // Insert the date in edit list if it's absent
        length = currentEdits.length
        if (length == 0 || currentEdits[length - 1] != today) {
            result.push(today)
        }
        return result
    })(),
}

And that’s it. Any time you edit the file, the date should be appended to the frontmatter if it’s not on the list.

I track the file growth in my Digital Garden using this method. You can use it however you want.

Maybe I will try to wrap it up into a plugin as a pointless project?

How to Enable Obsidian Vimrc Support

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

As a Vim user, I try to enable Vim mode wherever possible to improve my productivity. Obsidian is no different. Now that I am trying to separate writing from editing, I have started using obsidian even more. So it got me thinking, how can I synchronize my obsidian keymappings with my vim keybindings even more? 🤔

Turns out there is a plugin for that 🎉. Just install obsidian-vimrc-support and create a .obsidian.vimrc file at the root of your project and you’re good to go. We can just configure keybindings from that file like we do with our vim/neovim.

Well, except for some edge cases.

Edge Cases to be careful about

Vim wouldn’t be Vim if things just worked out of the box and we wouldn’t be Vim users if we gave up just because things are not working.

Here are the things I did (without asking too many questions) to make things work:

I tried naming it obsidian.vimrc without the dot in the front, but it didn’t work. So name it .obsidian.vimrc.
I wanted to use <Space> as the leader key but mapleader doesn’t work. So I used <Space> directly in keybindings instead of <leader>.
- Make sure to **unmap** <Space> first or it won’t work in keybindings.
Due to a bug, nmap <key> <cmd> works only when <cmd> is a single word 🤦‍♂. You get around it by first mapping the <cmd> against a exmap and then using the exmap with nmap. See below.

exmap anyNameYouWant obcommand app:go-back
nmap <C-o> :anyNameYouWant

**obcommand** stands for obsidian commands. If you type :obcommand on obsidian, it prints all the possible obcommand in the console log (press Ctrl + Shift + i). You can also find it here: obcommand list.
I couldn’t make <Shift> work together with <Ctrl> for some reason.
To bind a particular key combination ensure it’s not already bound to something else on Obsidian. Find them in settings and unbind them from there first.

My basic configuration for Obsidian Vimrc

I have started with a few basic configurations. Key binds for:

Navigating back and forward between files using <C-o> and <C-i>.
Searching files using <Space>sf
Toggling left sidebar with <C-n>

Here is how it looks. It’s not much but now that I have the basic setup, it will continue growing. In the meantime, hopefully, the plugin will be able to sort out its quirks.

" set leader
unmap <Space>

" Have j and k navigate visual lines rather than logical ones
nmap j gj
nmap k gk
" I like using H and L for beginning/end of line
nmap H ^
nmap L $

" Yank to system clipboard
set clipboard=unnamed

" Go back and forward with Ctrl+O and Ctrl+I
" (make sure to remove default Obsidian shortcuts for these to work)
exmap back obcommand app:go-back
nmap <C-o> :back
exmap forward obcommand app:go-forward
nmap <C-i> :forward

" Search file
exmap searchFile obcommand global-search:open
nmap <Space>sf :searchFile

" Toggle left side bar
exmap toggleLeftSideBar obcommand app:toggle-left-sidebar
exmap revealFile obcommand file-explorer:reveal-active-file
nmap <C-n> :toggleLeftSideBar
nmap <Space>gf :revealFile

Don’t Write to Publish – Separate Writing from Editing

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have been blogging consistently for 3 months, publishing one article every other day. I expected writing would be “easier” by now, but it still takes me 3 hours to write 500 words. I wonder if I am doing something wrong? 🤔

I found this great article on how to turn writing into a habit: writinghabit.com. One of its points struck a chord with me.

Write, don’t publish: The main reason you have writer’s block is because you’re writing with publishing in mind. Forget about publishing and write for the sake of writing. Most of your words should be going into the bin. Otherwise, you’re spending too much energy editing while you write.

This was my eureka point. My writing is slow because I write AND edit at the same time!

Current inefficient status

I write directly on WordPress which has lots of distractions baked in. As I write, I am also juggling:

Better Grammar: I use Grammarly to help point out my mistakes. While it’s helpful, I now realize that it’s one of the biggest sources of distraction in my writing flow. It keeps showing me errors as I write and my brain isn’t trained to ignore them. So I keep on getting rid of the red/yellow lines shown by it breaking my flow.
Better Structure: I also organize my blog post into sections while I write. Whenever the paragraph starts to become too big, I start getting stressed. Instead of focusing on writing, I start looking for ways to break up the wall of text with new sub-headings or photos from the net.
Better SEO: I link my text with external and internal links. I am also thinking about the featured image at the back of my mind.

A lot is going on. No wonder it takes me a long time to write!

Reduce distraction by punting editing out of writing

Writing should be all about getting our thoughts down from our minds. Getting the words flowing. We shouldn’t worry too much about the structure, grammar, or conciseness. It should be fun and stress-free.

We don’t feel stressed when talking to ourselves, so why should writing be any different? The stress comes from editing. So punt it out to a later stage. Don’t let the stress of editing kill the joy of writing.

There’s even a physical explanation for why editing kills your writing momentum. While writing is additive, editing is reductive. They are opposing forces. It’s painful to see the words you spent so much energy and willpower to produce get deleted.

writinghabit.com

So punt all distractions to the editing phase. Don’t bold, highlight, link, or structure (too much) while writing. Do them in the editing phase.

Two phases to publishing

Publishing is scary! When we write to publish, we get worried about the quality. Our brain gets afraid: “You are going to publish this junk?”. It wants to be perfect in front of its audience. The perfection will result in lots of back and forth in your writing.

So let’s change our perspective a bit.

Don’t write to publish. Write to edit and then edit to publish.

Don’t write for publishing. That promotes perfection since the piece would be for end-user consumption. Write for the Editing phase. This shifts the perspective that the piece is a draft. It takes away the burden of being perfect allowing you to write more. The bar for writing standards should be low.

Once the draft is ready, you edit it for publishing. You set the bar high at this stage. Be ruthless with your editing. Trim out all the fluffs to make it as concise as possible.

Final Thoughts – How I plan to write from now on

I am hoping this change of perspective will help me write more and write better. Writing should be fun, not stressful. Let’s make writing fun again by punting all the stressful jobs to the editing phase.

There are many ways to implement the idea above. My initial plan of action is:

Stop writing on WordPress editor directly for writing. I will use WordPress editor during my editing phase, not for writing.
Write on Obsidian. It’s less distracting than WordPress + I already use it for note-taking for my second brain.
Write early drafts of blog posts on Obsidian, pile them up first, and then pull one out for editing and publishing when needed.

Also, this has the added benefit of not publishing everything I write. Some thoughts and pieces can just live in my Obsidian’s second brain. I can now write for myself too, not just for the world.

Upgrading NeoVim Config with Kickstart.nvim

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I was exploring how to configure NeoVim for React/TypeScript development and came across AstroNvim. Its beauty blew my mind 🤯!

These are known as NeoVim frameworks. There are more in the market: e.g. NvChad. I don’t remember seeing so many frameworks when I started using NeoVim 3 years ago. I am still using basic init.vim to configure basic plugins, and they don’t look as awesome as these frameworks.

UI of AstroNvim. Isn’t it beautiful?

UI of AstroNvim. Isn’t it beautiful?

It’s time I upgraded my NeoVim configs to stay updated.

AstroNvim vs Kickstart

While AstroNvim looks super cool, I don’t prefer its hands-off approach to configuration. I like to know what is inside my config files, and why. So I found an alternative: Kickstart.

Kickstart.nvim: A launch point for your personal nvim configuration

The author of Kickstart.nvim claims it’s not a framework; it’s a basic configuration to use as a starting point. Even with the basic configuration, it looked far more aesthetic than my current config.

Here is a 30-minute video explaining everything about Kickstart.nvim by the author himself. If you don’t have the time, just watch the first 3 minutes for a quick introduction.

What I like about Kickstart.nvim

Here are why I like Kickstart:

Well-commented config files: It only has a single [init.lua](https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim/blob/master/init.lua) file, with plenty of comments.
Lua-based config files
- I used init.vim before. In comparison, using Vim API through Lua felt cleaner.
- I had to learn Lua separately, but it wasn’t a big deal. All programming languages are the same with few differences. A basic understanding is enough to get things done.
Automatic Plugin Manager Installation
- If you don’t have a plugin manager, it downloads [lazy.nvim](https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim) for you automatically. Before, I had to configure plugin-manager separately from install-script. This simplified my install script.
- Lazy.nvim seems more modern than vim.plug.
Helps you master key binds: I tend to forget about the useful key binds I have. Kickstart uses WhichKey to help you remember your Neovim keymaps by showing available keybindings in a popup as you type.
Telescope for Fuzzy Finding: I used fzf.vim before. Telescope is much more aesthetic.
Pre-configured LSP with Mason support
- Ok, I haven’t figured this out completely yet. I have a vague sense of how LSP works. I used YouCompleteMe before to get autocompletion for C/C++, but Java/Kotlin never worked properly.
- I am hoping to master it this time. I will write up a new post if I manage to get this working. For now, I am keeping the basic settings Kickstart has provided.
- If you need to install any additional package for LSP, the Mason plugin takes care of it. Again, I have no clue how this works yet.

Migrating to Kickstart from my Old Config

My old config didn’t have many customizations, so migration didn’t take long. I first backed up my old config before switching to Kickstart and then filled in the gaps I noticed. Here are the additional things I added to Kickstart:

[christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator](https://github.com/christoomey/vim-tmux-navigator): I always use NeoVim inside Tmux. This plugin helps me navigate in and out of NeoVim to different panes around me.
[nvim-neo-tree/neo-tree.nvim](https://github.com/nvim-neo-tree/neo-tree.nvim): Kickstart didn’t come with any file navigator plugin so I added NeoTree.
Switched the theme to Catppuccin.

Conclusion: I love it

My configuration is much more organized than before. There are still some parts of the configuration I don’t understand, but overall I love it! ❤️

Some next steps I have in mind:

Understand the LSP configurations more and configure Java/Kotlin/Python servers.
Check out what configuration AstroNvim is using and port the ones I like into my configuration.

Make More Pointless Things

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I recently saw the following YouTube video: Make More Pointless Things and it has been living rent-free in my mind for the last week. Please have a look if you have 10 minutes to spare. It’s quite interesting and fun. This post won’t make a lot of sense without watching the video.

What’s New About The Message?

We probably already know the message behind “Make More Pointless Things”. It’s basically active learning by building stuff. It’s nothing new.

While the message isn’t new, Steve Gardner’s implementation of the principle felt refreshing to me.

Typically we ask people to make clones of existing projects for learning, like clones of Twitter/Facebook/Flappy Bird. Meanwhile, he encouraged pointless things that won’t have cloning tutorials on YouTube.

The underlying message is that you can learn by building anything, not just clones of existing projects. Don’t let the utility of the project stop you from doing it. If it’s fun, go for it. Curiosity FTW.

Make Small Things Without Product Value

I love how the pointless things Steve made were small and specific: a stick drawer or a burning flame. Nothing huge or meaningful like a distributed system or social media, and he still learned plenty of stuff.

I had fun ideas for projects many times before but didn’t pursue them cause I couldn’t see any product value. The ones with product value seemed big and intimidating, so I never bothered starting them cause I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish them. It was my loss in the end since I didn’t build anything and hence didn’t learn anything either.

This video is a reminder that it’s fine to build small fun projects for learning and exploring. While a product-oriented mindset is good when starting a new business or start-up, it shouldn’t stop you from learning.

Don’t let product-oriented mindset stop you from learning.

If you aim at nothing, you will hit every time

The video had many examples of Steve’s pointless projects: stick drawer, curly wave drawer, zig-zag drawer, and flame. He built them for fun and to learn and in the end, noticed they had similarities that could be packaged into a library. He didn’t start the journey to create an SVG library, but somehow that’s what he wandered into.

That’s the beauty of pointless projects. We don’t know what it will lead to.

I always complain that I don’t have any great ideas for the product/start-up/business. Well duh! That’s because I haven’t been building anything! Building lots of small projects increases your range in multiple topics. Then eventually you can innovate by combining what you have learned with lateral thinking.

This also has the benefit that eventually when you think of a great product idea, you will have enough knowledge to prototype it quickly rather than get intimidated by it.

Conclusion: Make More Pointless Things

I would like to start building more things. I love learning new things after all. I have let “What’s the point?” hold me back for a long time. Let’s not do that going forward. It’s a depressing way of living: finding a product value for every idea.

I already have some ideas: having a ball bounce in a box (I am curious how image drawing works) or figuring out which restaurants I visited the most in the last year (I know the Google Timeline shows the data but it’s sorted chronologically instead of frequency of visit).

I am also trying to be practical. I don’t have infinite time so I won’t be able to build every random idea I get. I will have to prioritize somehow. Small and fun gets more priority than big and boring.

I will obviously keep you all posted about my adventures. If I managed to build anything interesting, expect a blog post. If you were inspired to build something pointless after watching the video, let me know in the comments.

Let’s make more pointless things ✊!!

4 Reasons for Interleaving Actionable and Non-Actionable Books

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

There are two kinds of books:

Actionable Books: Books that create action items. Completing the action items improves your life. These are typically non-fiction books, but sometimes fiction books can also have lessons to be learned.
Non-Actionable Books: Books that do not create action items. These are mostly fiction books and occasional non-fiction books that are purely informative (for example, an atlas book).

It is best to interleave actionable books with non-actionable books.

This provides you more time to digest and implement the lessons learned from actionable books.
This prevents you from getting overwhelmed with too many action items at the same time.
- Also, don’t try to extract too many action items from a book. For simplicity, you could try One Chapter == One Action.
It also prevents getting bored from reading the same type of book for a stretch.
Slow learning combined with suffering (Desirable Difficulty) is apparently better for the retention of knowledge.

Simple Note-Taking Tip: One Chapter == One Action

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I like reading non-fiction books and taking notes on them. The ultimate goal is to learn and implement lessons learned from the book. I may not be able to implement all the lessons learned from the book immediately, so it’s important to have notes that summarize the lessons from the book briefly.

However, my current note-taking strategy hasn’t been working well for me. Two reasons I can think of:

Good books have many lessons/information worthy of being noted down. It takes a long time to write them.
I don’t read my notes since they are so big.

What’s the point of reading non-fiction books if I don’t implement any lessons from them?

What’s the point of taking notes if I don’t read them?

I am delusional for thinking I will understand and implement every lesson in a book. I keep on trying to do just that and fail miserably. Is there a better way?

Simplify Note Taking Even More

I came across this idea while reading Axel’s post: One Chapter == One Action. When I read it, I immediately knew this was what I needed. Simplification of my note-taking process.

I don’t really need to extract every lesson from a book. Impelementing even one idea per book would be life-changing. To give myself more options, condensing every chapter of the book into one lesson/action should be good enough.

Note-taking will no longer be overwhelming. After reading a chapter, I can mull over what action I want to take to improve my life (if any) and note that down. With smaller condensed notes, I will be more likely to go through them.

Conclusion: How Am I Applying This?

Please note that just because I said “One Chapter == One Action”, it doesn’t mean you must condense a chapter into exactly one action. Always be flexible with ideas. If a chapter is good, it can definitely have multiple actions forked from it.

What I am trying to do is extract at least one action and then not worry about things too much. If I miss some actions/lessons, that’s fine.

My perspective has shifted: Instead of trying to extract every lesson from a chapter, I now try to extract only one.

Generalists vs Specialists: Which one is better?

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Neither. Both are equally important.

But how is that possible? Shouldn’t a specialist on a topic be better than a generalist? Yes. Specialists will be better than generalists if we focus on one topic.

But in real life, we solve problems, which may or may not be bound to a particular topic. Even if it did, its solution may or may not be bound to the same topic.

To solve a problem, we need help from both Generalists and Specialists.

Generalists vs Specialists: How do they contribute?

Specialists contribute to solving the problem by focusing on the bleeding edge of the topic they are experts on. They understand everything related to the topic and continue pushing its boundaries. If the solution exists in their domain, they will find it.

But what if the solution lies outside of the topic in question? That’s where Generalists come in. Generalists have broad knowledge of multiple disciplines. They find solutions by connecting them with lateral thinking.

Generalists vs Specialists? Which one should I pursue?

That’s a personal preference. Ideally, you should be a hybrid of both, a T-shaped person. Someone with broad knowledge of multiple fields (the top bar of T) and in-depth knowledge of at least one field (the vertical bar of T). The depth and breadth will vary based on your capacity.

Thanks to the ease of knowledge distribution, the demand for specialists has decreased over the last few decades. In the past, every institution used to have its own home-grown specialists to drive their business. But now, specialists tend to share their work over the Internet, so many institutions can get by without having their own specialists reinvent the wheel.

Conclusion: Which one am I?

I believe I lean towards Generalists. Before understanding the above (thank you Range for helping me understand the importance of Generalists), I thought specialists were superior and regretted that I didn’t specialize in anything important. No matter how good of a generalist I am, ultimately, I would be stuck unless I consulted with specialists, right?

I now understand that connecting the dots isn’t easy either and specialists might get stuck if the solution is outside their domain. To successfully solve a problem, both parties need to work together.

Specializing in a topic is not the only way to progress in a career. Being a Generalist is a perfectly valid alternative route.

Finding Values: What will be said in your Eulogy?

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

There are many techniques for finding values (just Google and you will find plenty). Out of all of them, I found this technique to be especially effective for me.

The technique is simple:

Imagine you have died and people have gathered to remember you. Someone close to you is giving a speech about you. What would they say?

This technique is as good as your imagination. Think about the following questions deeply:

What would the person say if you died right now?
- This highlights your current state.
What if you died later. What would you like to hear about yourself?
- Think about all the potential relationships you care about. Were you a good partner/parent/friend/child?
- In your imagination, was something missing?
Are you happy with what is being said? Would you like to change anything?

Thinking and answering the above questions might help you find what you care about. Use that information to understand your values. It’s an exercise for self-discovery. Once you learn about your values, it will be easier to set goals since you will have a “why” driving behind them.

Don’t be too disheartened if the exercise doesn’t help. Self-discovery takes time. If you were looking for values to set up long-term goals or purposes, here is what you can do until you find them.

Redirect Author Page to About Page on Personal Blogs

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Since this is a personal blog, WordPress’s default author archive doesn’t make sense. /author/forthright48 just shows posts I wrote, which is everything. Instead of this redundant archive, it would make more sense to redirect Author page to About page.

Setting up the redirection was simple thanks to the Redirections plugin. Or, if you have an SEO plugin (e.g. Yoast or Rank Math), check if they provide similar support. They all have similar UI.

Once activated, simply add your source and target URL and it will set a 301 redirection.

UI for Redirection plugin showing source and target fields

UI for Redirection plugin showing source and target fields

Be careful when setting up 301 Redirect

The plugin creates 301 redirects by default. 301 Redirection is for links that have “Moved Permanently“. Browsers tend to cache such redirects to reduce page loading time. So if you create a 301 redirect and the user visits that link once, then changing that redirection won’t affect the cache user’s browser until the user deletes their cached data!

I have been initially redirecting my author page to my home page. When I added the redirection to my About page, I noticed it only worked in Incognito mode on Chrome. My normal browser had cached the old redirect.

So it’s best practice to always create a 307 – Temporary Redirect first and change to 301 only when you are 100% sure. Otherwise, you could get stuck with bad redirection on a subset of your users. Click on the ⚙ icon to see advanced fields on the plugin and change the redirect.

Are there other use cases for redirecting URLs?

There are many. For example, I noticed that a post of mine had a spelling mistake in its URL. That’s embarrassing. So I updated it and added a 301 redirect from the old to the new URL.

Read the following article from Backlinko: Redirects 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Setup & Best Practices. It covers the basics and more.

Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology

Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Technology changes fast. What was relevant 5 years ago is no longer in fashion today. This brings the question to mind:

Do we have to stay updated with bleeding edge tech to stay relevant in this age?

Keeping up with new tech is one possible way of coping. Chapter 9: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology from Range provides another approach.

Alternative to Race Against Cutting-Edge Tech

Instead of trying to keep up with the new tech, we could also fall back on existing technology that has lost its luster. Existing technologies are cheap, battle-tested, and won’t change rapidly soon (making it easier to build knowledge and hire experts).

This strategy was used by Nintendo back in the 1970s. While competitors focused on color displays, Nintendo focused on providing gameplay on a watch! An engineer at Nintendo got this idea when he noticed someone fiddling with their pocket calculator on a train.

But just sticking to old tech won’t be enough to beat the cutting edge. You also need innovation. That’s where lateral thinking comes in. You need Range to connect old ideas from multiple disciplines to create something new.

Conclusion: Impact on Perception

Frankly, when I picked up the book Range, I didn’t expect it to have so many nuggets of wisdom. It’s answering so many questions I didn’t even know I had in mind!

I don’t spend time on trends in technology. It always made me feel a bit worried. A sinking feeling that I might become obsolete in 10 years. But trying to keep up with the latest tech just seemed so stressful. I know some people love doing that, but not me.

I am feeling less worried now. It’s good to have alternatives in life and I feel like I now have another arsenal in my toolbox. While learning something, I no longer have to worry if it’s new or old, cause both have value.

Given the above, I would rather learn things that I find interesting, which may or may not be cutting-edge than solely focus on new stuff.

Whether to learn new or old tech is a personal choice. I am sure some people love exploring the unknown and pioneering the latest techs. We need both kinds of people in this world. It’s good to have a book that highlights these points so nicely with examples!

Hidden-Until-Solved Problem

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever felt that something is wrong but you can’t figure out exactly what it is? You try your best to figure out the reason behind the nagging feeling to no avail, until later in the day you somehow stumble upon the solution and then realize the problem! That’s a hidden-until-solved problem!

Hidden-Until-Solved Problem: A problem that is hidden to you until you discover the solution to it first!

Is this a thing with everyone or am I just talking nonsense here 🤣?

How I discovered Hidden-Until-Solved problem

I only became aware of such a feeling/problem a few months ago. I was feeling very anxious one day and couldn’t figure out why. Things just didn’t feel right. I spent a long time trying to figure out why I was feeling weird, until giving up thinking perhaps I was just tired.

Later that night, while driving home, I started planning what to do tomorrow at work. I was working on an ambiguous project back then and didn’t have a concrete idea about the current state of the ongoing project. Due to various challenges, I just couldn’t envision the end of it. For a brief second, I got overwhelmed by all the uncertainties of the project. But I kept on thinking until I found the following solution:

When dealing with ambiguous tasks where you can’t see the end, just focus on taking the next baby step. While the end is unclear, the next step is often obvious. Focus on making small progress every day and that should be enough to keep your doubts in check.

The moment I figured this out, a breath of relief went over my body. Suddenly I started to feel very relaxed; completely different than what I had been feeling all evening. That’s when I connected the dots: I was stressed due to the ambiguous nature of my work projects.

My subconscious brain had been stressing about this all evening and I had no clue. It was only when I solved the problem that I realized it was the problem that had been nagging me all day.

Do you have a better name?

The problem was obvious once I had the solution. Since the solution made me feel better, it’s safe to assume the problem the solution solved was bothering me. I just didn’t know what the problem was. Hence, I named it the “Hidden-Until-Solved” problem.

I like to name ideas. It makes the abstract idea feel a bit more concrete. Easier to explain and talk about it with others. If you have faced similar problems or have a better name for this, feel free to chime in in the comments.

Discipline is Key to Success, but Not to Massive Success

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I recently saw the video by Mark Manson: How to Get Ahead of 99% of People (Starting Today). It answered a question I always had in my mind. They say “Discipline is key to success” (doom-scrolling, over-sleeping, and lack of exercise aren’t making us rich, are they?), but is there a linear relationship between discipline and success? Will being more disciplined result in me becoming more successful? 🤔

Seems like the answer is no. Discipline helps but there is a limit to what it can be done with it. It can take you ahead of a lot of people, but if you want to get ahead of 99% of the people, it’s going to take something more.

Here is the video if you want to watch it, otherwise there is a TLDR below it:

TLDR – Contrarian Idea is Key to Massive Success

Discipline is not sufficient to get ahead of 99.99% people of in the world. It might be sufficient to get ahead of 80% (a magic number that I pulled from thin air) of people.
- He uses himself as an example. He is successful but doesn’t wake up at 5 AM. But then again, you don’t have to wake up early to be disciplined.
What you need is a contrarian idea: an idea that is against the normal trend.
- Example: Nicolaus Copernicus proposed Sun was at the center, not Earth. That was a contrarian idea back then.
- Example: Successful stock investors are contrarians since they manage to buy low and sell high. When they buy cheap stocks, those stocks are cheap because everyone is selling thinking the stock will fall. Meanwhile, they are buying it cause they believe the stock will rise.
- Example: SpaceX is trying to make rocket transport cheaper. Before SpaceX, it was assumed rockets couldn’t be re-used.
Anybody can have a contrarian idea. The hard part is being right about it.
- Example: Some people believe the Earth is flat.
- Example: Any kind of conspiracy theory.
Even when you are right, unless you put in the effort to pursue the idea, you won’t be able to reap the benefits it will provide.
- So hardwork is also key to success. So many keys! 🔑

Does that mean we can’t be successful without a contrarian idea?

No. You can still be successful, but probably not at the scale of being ahead of 99.99% of people in the world.

There are other ways to be massively successful, but none that are easy. For example, Messi’s success in Football doesn’t come from a contrarian idea. It comes from talent and discipline.

All massively successful people are disciplined, but not all disciplined people are massively successful.

“Discipline is key to success” still holds true since it makes it easier to pursue your goals, but if you want to be the cream of the crop in terms of success, developing a contrarian idea will give you a better chance.

Conclusion

If you ask me, maybe happiness is key to success. If you are happy, then you are successful. (Please don’t ask me what’s the key to be happy 🤣)

Smart Caps Lock: Remap Caps Lock to Escape AND Control

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

As a Vim user, I hit the Escape key to switch to normal mode. The Escape key is unfortunately located at the top left corner, so hitting it requires lifting your hand from the keyboard, which is non-ideal. So I converted the Caps-Lock key to the Escape AND Control key following this guide: Remap Caps Lock.

Now, when I press my Caps Lock key, it acts as the Escape key and if I press and hold my Caps Lock key, it acts like the Ctrl key 🤯.

If you think about it, this makes perfect sense!

Caps Lock: There is no need for the Caps-Lock key in this modern age. NOBODY WRITES IN ALL CAPS ANYMORE, unless they need to shout. For the occasional capitalization need, we use the Shift key.
Escape: You always use the Escape key by pressing it once. There is no need to hold it in a pressed state.
Control: The Ctrl key is always used by pressing and holding it, while another key is pressed together with it. There is no use case for a single tap.

All of this above is combined into one single key: the Smart Caps Lock key 🎊.

Commands to Remap Caps Lock on Linux

On Linux, it’s as simple as:

# Install XCAPE: A Linux utility to configure modifier keys to act as other keys
# when pressed and released on their own.
sudo apt-get install xcape

# make CapsLock behave like Ctrl:
setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps

# make short-pressed Ctrl behave like Escape:
xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape'

Add the commands to your auto-start config to remap Caps Lock when you connect to your X session. I use X11 so I updated my .xinitrc file.

What about Mac and Windows?

The guide has instructions for remapping Caps Lock on Mac and Windows too. It didn’t seem as simple as Linux though. Or maybe I am just more used to Linux.

Conclusion

IMO, it’s a game-changing hack. It should be useful for non-vim users too (probably). Remapping Caps Lock should save you significant time since you won’t need to lift your hand to hit the Escape key anymore. Well, at least that’s what I like to believe, but maybe that borders on being delusional.

Attention Management Tip: Disable Push Notifications on Phone

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Life is full of distractions. There is so much noise now that “attention” has become a resource for us that we must “use” carefully. One trick I use to regain control over my focus is to turn off push notifications on my phone for non-essential apps. I have disabled notifications from:

Social Media Apps: I don’t need to know when someone likes my post/comment in real-time. When I am free, I open the apps and check notifications manually.
Email App: Email is an asynchronous communication method anyway. If something is urgent, it won’t come via email. Checking email once a day is plenty.
Instant Message apps: Instant messaging probably needs to be instant. But even then, do you really need to allow all 500 of your messenger friends to be able to distract you whenever they feel like it? Just mute every group/person that pings you.
- Fine to make some exceptions here (e.g. I don’t mute my wife).
- What if someone needs to contact you urgently? They will just call you directly 🙂

Stop letting spammy apps decide when you check your phone. Make your own conscious decision.

I try to be very selective about which apps send me push notifications on my phone. And it’s not even that hard to manage. Whenever I get distracted by a notification, I pause to think if I want to allow that notification to distract me again. If the answer is no, I just turn it off.

Life is much more peaceful without your phone constantly stealing your focus. Hope this helps you with attention management. Best of luck.

Importance of Separate Domain and Hosting Provider

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

My blog was down for 6 days between 18-23 July 2024. Bangladesh was facing an internet shutdown due to protests at the time. My hosting provider Doze Host, a Bangladeshi company, had their data center in Dhaka impacted. Since I didn’t use a separate domain and hosting provider, I lost access to both when they became unresponsive.

I learned two lessons about hosting with this experience:

Don’t manage both your domain and web hosting using the same provider. If the provider becomes unresponsive you lose both of them. By splitting them away, you can at least salvage one of them.
Domain management is more important if you are already backing up your blog regularly. If web hosting becomes unavailable, as long as you have control over your DNS management, you can simply redirect your domain to a new web hosting. Just migrate your blog using the existing backup.

I have switched to using Porkbun as my new provider. The transfer is still in progress but it should be completed soon.

Long-Term Goal Setting Could Be Premature Optimisation

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I always thought successful people were visionary. That they already have their long-term goal sorted out. It makes sense right? It’s much easier to reach your destination if you know where it is. So if I didn’t work towards my long-term goal (or “purpose”), am I even doing goal-setting right?

But think of the other way for a second. Who would charter the unknown territories if everyone knew their long-term goals? Life has lots of unknowns. The industry/technology is changing so fast! Surely I can’t hold on to a vision I had as a kid? The founder of Y-combinator worked on lots of jobs that didn’t exist 10 years ago. I bet he didn’t “plan” to work on such jobs.

Bill Gates created Microsoft, but what was he doing before he got the idea for an Operating System? Same for Mark Zuckerberg. What was he doing before he founded Facebook?

What comes before you find your long-term goal? 🤔

How do we plan if there are no long-term goals? What do we do when we haven’t found a big purpose in life?

What to do when a long term goal is missing?

I got this idea from the book: Range-Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. When you don’t have a long term vision, don’t just sit around waiting for it. Prepare!

You prepare by making short-term goals/plans. You identify what will lead to a “promising situation” soon and work towards it. Once you reach that point, you make another short-term plan to move to a new “promising situation”. You keep on doing this until you hit the Jackpot.

Instead of working backward from a goal, work forward from promising situations. 📈

There is no “magical purpose” that will just land on your lap. You need to take action to prepare and reach the most promising state you can achieve.

This approach provides you lots of flexibility. Instead of pursuing a faraway long-term goal that may or may not be ideal for you, you break it down into smaller goals and each stage allows you to pivot in any direction that provides you with an advantage.

Conclusion

If you have already found your long-term goal, then there is nothing wrong with pursuing that. This post is for people who haven’t found their purpose yet and worry they are wasting their lives pursuing short-term stints.

I like to think of the short-term goal stage as the preparation stage. One day a big opportunity will come that can become my long-term goal and I will be prepared!

Have you found your long-term goals/purpose or are you still searching?

How to Submit a Sitemap on Google Search Console

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Turns out Google hasn’t managed to index my website (🥹), even though it has been more than 6 months since I started blogging! I guess the fact that there are literally 0 external links on the internet that point towards my blog hasn’t helped. I need to get Google’s attention differently.

Here is how new blogs are supposed to help search engines find them (The plan doesn’t include sitting around for 6 months):

Register for Google Search Console (GSC). It’s a website that allows you to monitor your site’s presence in Google Search results.
Verify your website with GSC. I had trouble verifying my full domain, so I just verified the domain with a specific prefix: “https://samiulsblog.com”.
- I had already integrated with Google Analytics before, so GSC quickly verified that I owned the domain.
Now, you have two options:
- Wait for the web crawlers to do their work.
- Or submit a sitemap (an XML file listing all your posts, images, and pages). I chose to do this.
  - I already use the Yoast SEO Plugin that generates the sitemap for me at /sitemap_index.xml. I just submitted the link to GSC.

Hopefully, this will help with discovery. Let’s wait for 6 more months and see what happens.

“Sleep as Android” – Smart Alarm App to Wake Up on Time

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Waking up on time is not easy. You can set an alarm, but it’s a matter of seconds for your muscle memory to snooze it. At one point, I used to set multiple alarms to ease me back to awake. It worked, but I ended up annoying my wife.

I now use the “Sleep as Android” app. It has many features, but the two I find most useful are:

CAPTCHA: You scan a QR code/Barcode to stop the alarm. You can decide what code to use. I use the barcode of a facewash in my toilet. That forces me to get out of bed and walk. Getting out of bed is the biggest challenge and this completes it easily.
Smart Wake Up: Instead of the alarm going off at exactly the time I have asked, it goes off within a 15-minute range I have set. The app can figure out what stage of sleep I am at and ring the alarm when I am at the lightest stage. This prevents feeling groggy after waking up.

Thanks to the app (and the fact that I run to the QR code to avoid waking up my wife), I wake up on time consistently. I don’t try to wake up early though. Just 8 hours after the time I go to sleep.

How to Update Firmware on Linux/Ubuntu from Command Line

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I recently bought a Dell WD19TBS Thunderbolt Docking Station when setting up my Dual Monitor + Dual Laptop Desk. When looking at reviews online about it, I noticed people mentioning that you need to update its firmware so that it creates less fan noise. I initially thought upgrading hardware firmware would be a hassle on Linux/Ubuntu, but it’s pretty simple!

All you need to do is run the following commands:

sudo apt install fwupd   # In case you don't have the command installed already
sudo fwupdmgr refresh    # Update metadata from remote server
sudo fwupdmgr update     # This installs the latest firmware updates

fwupdmgr stands for firmware-update-manager (probably).

And that’s it. I could update my Dell WD19TBS Thunderbolt Docking Station with the above commands. Not just the docking station, I think I had a few other hardware that got updated automatically. Give it a try on your Linux, and who knows, maybe you will find some outdated firmware getting updated too.

Special thanks to this question on AskUbuntu for pointing me in the right direction.

Desk Accessory: Lightbar to Reduce Glare and Eye Strain

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

After setting up a Dual Monitor on my desk, I no longer have space to keep a lamp on my desk. I took this opportunity to buy a Lightbar. According to YouTube, this is supposed to be very helpful in reducing glare and eye strain.

Lightbars can go up as high as 150 GBP (BenQ Screenbar Halo) and have fancy features like remote control, auto-dimming, etc. I wasn’t sure how much I would like it, so I opted for a cheap one (36 GBP) with good reviews on Amazon: Quntis.

Lightbar on top of my left monitor

Lightbar on top of my left monitor

It’s pretty good! It’s bright enough to lighten up my surroundings just enough. I can read a book comfortably if I place it on my desk. As you can see in the photo, there is no place to place a lamp at all, so this is very handy.

Blogging Progress Report #2 – 2024 Q2

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It has been 6 months since I created this blog. Time for an update on what has changed. This time, I will provide updates in two sections. One section states what I am using and another states how much traffic my blog gets.

⚠️ Please Note: This post compares everything against my initial setup from 2024 Jan.

Blog Report

Blogging Platform: WordPress. No change.
Web Hosting: Doze Host.
Host Koala started to feel a bit slow so I switched out. I used DozeHost cause I am familiar with it from my previous blog (forthright48.com).
Domain: Doze Host. No change.
Theme: Astra Free.
Plugins
- ❌ Removed
  - Emoji Toolbar: Removed. I configured an emoji picker instead.
- Admin Panel, Editor, and Post Enhancements
  - WP Dark Mode: I use it to enable dark mode on the WordPress admin site.
  - Classic Editor: Block-based editor lags a lot. I find the classic to be much more smoother.
  - Enlighter – Customizable Syntax Highlighter: This is to show highlighted code blocks.
  - Reading Time WP: To show quick hints on how long it will take to read the post.
  - Simple Custom CSS and JS: To highlight inline codes more nicely.
- SEO, Analytics, and Subscription
  - Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights: To monitor how much traffic my blog gets.
  - MailPoet: To provide email subscriptions as an option to my loyal readers. I currently have 5 subscribers 🎉. Have you subscribed yet?
  - Yoast SEO: Plugin to make my posts more SEO-friendly. Also helps generate the sitemap for my blog.
  - CookieYes | GDPR Cookie Consent: Needed to satisfy GDPR law in Europe.
- Core Functionality and Security
  - Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection: To combat against spam messages. I got 2 spam messages so far and no real comments 😞.
  - wpDiscuz: In case someday real users want to leave comments on my blog, I am prepared.
  - WPS Hide Login: This makes hackers’ lives harder by moving the login page to a custom link.
  - WPS Limit Login: Limits the attempts to log in. Prevents brute force attack.
  - UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore: I regularly back up my whole blog to my Google Drive using this plugin. Also helped out during the migration of the blog.
  - Broken Link Checker: Sends email whenever it finds broken links on my blog.

Analytics Report

I messed up my SEO game a bit. I thought Google would automatically find and index my blog posts but that didn’t happen. So for 6 months, I had 0 traffic to my blog (other than me). I recently submitted the sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC) and promoted my blog on social media. I managed to get 33 users to my site.

Google Analytics Dashboard for the Last 3 Months

Google Analytics Dashboard for the Last 3 Months

Conclusion

While the numbers look miserable, I don’t mind it. I have been having fun!

My current goal 🎯 is to promote my blog to 1000 new users. This will take time and effort, but the challenge is part of the fun!

Migrating WordPress Site to New Host using UpdraftPlus Plugin

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I noticed a significant amount of lag recently while writing blog posts. I guessed it’s probably due to my website host (5$ per year from HostKoala). I wasn’t sure if I would be regular with blogging, so I opted to use something cheap originally.

With new themes and plugins, I guess it was getting too much for it to handle? So I decided to migrate to a new hosting site. My previous blog ran fine on DozeHost, so I switched to that.

I was worried about migration since I wasn’t sure how much of a pain it would be. Surprisingly, it was smooth sailing thanks to UpdraftPlus. Here is how it went:

On your old website
- Install the plugin.
- Connect it to a remote storage site. My UpdraftPlus was connected to my Google Drive back when I started using it for regular backups.
- Create a manual backup of everything: Database, Plugin, Theme. Select all the options.
On your new website
- Install the plugin.
- Connect it to the same remote storage site.
- Scan for existing backups.
- Restore the backup.

It’s as simple as that.

Atomic Discipline – How to be disciplined without waking up at 5 AM

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

When someone asks me if I am Disciplined, I always judge myself overall in all areas of life and answer, “No”. That’s what I used to think about myself.

I tried waking up in the past and managed to do it for a few months, but life eventually turned for the worst and I stopped. Just goes on to prove that I am, in fact, not disciplined, right?

Wrong. I am disciplined, even though I don’t wake up at 5 AM. I am just disciplined at certain parts of my life and flexible for the rest.

It’s only recently that I realized I don’t have to be “Disciplined” in all areas of my life. I am not trying to be 100% disciplined, a machine that can stick to the plan no matter what. I am just a mere mortal, trying to improve some parts of my life.

This is called “Atomic Discipline”.

Atomic Discipline: Discipline in a specific part of life. Everything else remains flexible.

– Samiul 😎

Examples of Atomic Discipline

Atomic Discipline is a shift in perspective. With this concept at my hand, if anyone asks if I am disciplined, I will answer: “That depends on which area of life we are talking about”. I am not disciplined with exercise, but I am disciplined with:

Finances: I use YNAB to track all my expenses and monitor each category.
Phone Usage: I have disabled my phone notifications and intentionally added app launch delays that I respect.
Blogging: It takes discipline and planning to continue publishing a post on every even date for more than 4 months.

For those of us who are struggling to be more disciplined in life, breaking down life into smaller parts and applying discipline in isolation is more effective. Give it a try or just think for a bit to see if perhaps you are already disciplined in certain parts of your life.

Micro-Blogging FTW

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last few months, I have managed to write regularly. I started with a particular blogging style and evolved it by reducing elements that generated stress for me.

I went from writing traditional blog posts to writing small posts every day to writing small posts every other day.

It has been almost a month since I decided to switch to writing every other day and I have been loving it. I however haven’t been writing any “epic posts” at all. That stressed me since my blog landed on epic posts and micro-posts were just supposed to be staging ground building toward it.

So I have now changed the landing page to micro-posts. Epic posts are just the exception, not the norm. And I won’t be differentiating them. When I write them, they will be just like any other post, probably longer.

Basically, I am now comfortable with writing smaller posts. I am a micro-blogger now.

When there is no purpose for jumping out of bed

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I was talking with my friends about how I feel I no longer have a purpose to jump out of bed in the morning. Even if I wake up early, I put myself back to sleep thinking “What’s the point”?

I initially thought that finding a purpose would resolve the issue. But it’s not easy/simple to find purpose in life. Maybe I will find it someday, but what do I do till then?

I still haven’t found a good answer yet, but for now, I am sticking with an idea I saw in this video.

We wake up early on days without purpose to stay prepared for the day we find it.

A bit hopeful, but I will take it. I don’t have a better alternative currently.

Update: It turns out that Long-term goals are actually overrated. Either that or sour grapes 🥲.

Angry Crab Shack – Unique Seafood Restaurant in London

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have had seafood/crab/lobsters before, but never in such a messy way as Angry Crab Shack. Love the way they just put a paper on the table, knowing you will have to spill onto it. You also get an apron and gloves so that you can get hands-on with it.

Here is a TikTok video to show what to expect:

@foodguidelondon

Central Londons first and only seafood boil sit down restaurant – Angry Crab London #SEAFOODBOILLONDON #angrycrablondon #placestovisit @angrycrabshacklondon

♬ original sound – Brandiece 🐝

Meta Quest 3 First Impression – Incredible for Aerobic Exercise

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The other day I tried Meta Quest 2 at my friend’s house. I was blown away by the immersiveness of the VR and the amount of aerobic exercise I got by just playing Beat Sabers ⚔️ for 20 minutes. I immediately ordered a Meta Quest 3 for myself.

It has been a week since I had the Meta Quest 3. I played Beat Sabers every day for an hour and finished the campaign mode. According to my Fitbit, I have burned ~600 kcal in each session. My heart rate has climbed 180+ ❤️‍🔥on occasions. It has been an incredible workout.

I have struggled to maintain motivation for regular exercise in the past. Perhaps VR Gaming is what I needed? Let’s see how long it’s able to hold my interest. Meanwhile, here is my referral code if you already want to buy one for yourself.

How to Adjust Chrome UI Font Size on X11

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I use Xft.dpi: 144 in my .Xresources file to make UI fonts bigger, but that doesn’t work for Chrome. UI font appears very small for Chrome. This is a known issue and there are quite a few solved questions on StackOverflow about this, for example, this one.

The solution boils down to:

We need to launch Chrome with a custom flag: /usr/bin/google-chrome --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=1.5.
- You need to use whatever scale factor you want for your system. It’s 1.5 for me since I use 144 (96 * 1.5).
For people who use launchers to launch Chrome, you will have to update the launcher too.
- This can be done by copying the file /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop and then updating every single Exec command inside the file to the command we saw in step #1.

And that’s it. Chrome should have the same UI font size as your system. If not, try rebooting your device.

Custom CSS for Highlighting Inline Code in WordPress

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I use the Enlighter plugin as Syntax Highlighter for blocks of code. It however doesn’t support the formatting of inline codes.

I couldn’t find any suitable plugin that supports inline code (didn’t search that much tbh), so I opted to just add custom CSS.

I couldn’t find an easy way to customize my theme with custom CSS, so I opted to use a plugin to inject it for me: Simple Custom CSS and JS.

Using the plugin, I injected the following CSS:

code {  
    padding: .25em .5em;
    font-size: 85%;
    background: #f9f9f9;  
    color: #bf616a;  
    border-radius: 3px;
}

Now, my inline code blocks look like this. Looks much better now IMO.

Huel: My First Impression of Powder, Bar and Ready-to-drink Bottles

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I decided to try Huel for the first time. It’s a meal replacement drink that is convenient and healthy. It’s supposed to be a convenience, not a total replacement for all your meals.

Here is what I tried and what I thought:

Huel Powder: I tried the banana-flavored powder mixed with water. It doesn’t taste great at all. Had a difficult time finishing it. Almost made me lose faith in the product.
Huel Nutrition Bar: Snack bars of 4 different flavors. They were incredible! ❤️ Tasted very good. I have unhealthy snacking habits and I tend to overeat snacks. I can completely replace all my unhealthy snacks with this easily.
- Nutrition bars are game-changing. I can see lots of use cases for them. For example, I don’t have to make and carry sandwiches for hikes. I can just carry a few bars instead, which should be enough to get me through!
Huel Ready-to-Drink: 400 kcal drink of different flavors. Some of the flavors were really good! Some are not that great.
- While the Huel powder didn’t taste good, it’s most likely due to my recipe (all I did was add water). Huel Ready-to-drink proves that Huel Powder can be made into a tasty drink. I just need to find good recipes (remember that the recipe must be simple and convenient, otherwise I can just cook instead).

Overall, Huel has great potential to be part of your healthy diet 👍

I am working out how to effectively integrate it with my diet. I recommend giving it a try if you have been thinking about it. Here is my referral link if you need a 15 GBP discount.

Trigger autorandr on Laptop Lid Open/Close

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In the previous post on autorandr I mentioned how it didn’t respond to the Laptop lid open/close event. It’s a known issue, and a discussion is ongoing on Github: “Be aware of lid state“.

The latest autorandr is supposed to have a fix for it, but it didn’t work for me. I found another solution from that thread instead.

On a high level, the solution is:

autorandr can detect the right configuration with lid open/close, it just can’t switch to it automatically since lid close/event is not an external display plug/unplug event.
We simply need to hook into the lid open/close event and manually trigger the switch command: autorandr --change.
This can be done using acpi on Linux. See the instructions below.

Executing Script on Lid Open/Close Event

Let’s create the script first. Create a file at the following location /etc/acpi/autorandr.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/autorandr --batch --change

Make sure you provide executable permission to the script by running sudo chmod +x autorandr.sh, or else it won’t work.

Next, we create a lid open/close event signal and hook the script with it. Create a file at the location /etc/api/events/lid-switch:

event=button/lid LID (open|close)
action=/etc/acpi/autorandr.sh

With this, closing/opening the lid should automatically trigger autorandr for setting your saved profile.

autorandr: How to Automatically Configure Displays based on Connected Devices

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

After I bought a new monitor, the first pain point I saw with my setup was how I had to open up arandr for reconfiguration every time I plugged/unplugged the monitors.

Surely there has to be an easier way? A way where the system detects new display has been added/removed and runs some pre-configured script to set them up as I like.

Turns out autorandr is just the tool I was looking for. Simply connect all your display devices, configure them using arandr, and then save the configuration using autorandr. From then on, anytime you add/remove displays, if the connected devices match with the saved profile, that configuration will be applied.

Quick tutorial:

# Installation
sudo apt install autorandr

# View current connected devices
autorandr --fingerprint

# Configure your current connected devices using arandr
# Then save the configuration as a profile
autorandr --save some-profile-name

Some profiles I created:

laptop: Just my laptop screen without any monitors connected to it.
laptop-lid-up-two-monitor: My laptop with its lid open and two monitors connected.
laptop-lid-down-two-monitor: My laptop with its lid down and two monitors connected.

This is when I faced a new problem. While autorandr can detect any external displays being plugged/unplugged with the system, it doesn’t detect lid up/down as a display plug/unplug event. So the transition from lid-up to lid-down profile doesn’t get triggered.

Like I said before, solving a problem just leads to more problems🤦‍♂️. Let’s discuss this in a follow-up post.

Desk Setup Upgrade: Dual Monitor + Dual Laptop Setup

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have once again started work on improving my desk setup. In my last attempt, I upgraded from a random small bare-bone table to Ikea Fredde and bought a new Framework laptop that you have to assemble yourself. While I have been ricing the Linux on the laptop, the desk has been ignored.

Considering I now have two laptops and just a single monitor, I have decided to upgrade to a Dual Monitor + Dual Laptop setup. The vision 🔭 is to connect the two monitors to a single laptop with its lid down and seamlessly swap between two laptops. One laptop is for work and the other for personal use.

To achieve this, I bought:

🖥️ Dell P2723D 27-inch QHD Monitor
- This matches my existing 27-inch Dell Monitor. I wanted to buy the exact existing model but it’s too outdated.
⚡Dell WD19TBS Thunderbolt Docking Station 180W Power Supply
- I need a docking station to connect all my peripherals. That way, I can swap everything between laptops by just swapping the docking station.
- With a 180W power supply, it can easily charge my bulky work laptop.

I wish I could say the journey with Docking Station has been smooth, but unfortunately, I use x-session so I have to configure everything manually. With two monitors and a docking station, I now have new problems like:

The system doesn’t know how to order the new displays. Which one is on the left and which is on the right? (Fixed using autorandr)
What should the system do when the lid is down while connected to two monitors? (Fixed using autorandr)
My work laptop doesn’t authorize Thunderbolt docking stations by default.
How do I update the firmware of the Docking Station?
With two monitors, I don’t have space for my desk lamp. I need a lightbar now.
When I close the lid on my laptop, it suddenly makes the chrome font size small on the monitors. Weird right? (Fixed by creating custom lid open/close event).

All of the above problems have been solved. I just had to spend a lot of time. Each fix, however, led to more new problems. Feels like an eternal cycle. Well, at least I have more topics to write about now 🤷‍♂️.

arandr: GUI tool for Display Configuration

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

A useful tool to configure the resolution and orientation of your display/monitors. Much easier to configure than using the xrandr directly from CLI.

Install it using sudo apt install arandr.

If you have a fixed number of monitors and don’t change configuration often, you can manually configure them once using arandr and save the config on disk. Then simply reload that configuration on startup from your xinit.rc.

PAM Configuration to Unlock i3lock with fingerprint

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

My laptop has a fingerprint sensor. Making it work with i3lock however, requires additional work. We need to configure the PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module).

Put the following config in /etc/pam.d/i3lock:

#
# PAM configuration file for the i3lock screen locker. By default, it includes
# the 'login' configuration file (see /etc/pam.d/login)
#

auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass likeauth nullok
auth sufficient pam_fprintd.so timeout=10
auth include login

Here is what happens:

It first tries to unlock using a password.
If not, it returns to scanning the fingerprint with a timeout of 10 seconds.

With this config, there is no way for PAM to efficiently know when to scan for fingerprint. So you have to first press enter before scanning your fingerprint. It’s not optimal, but it gets the job done.

Lofi Hip Hop – Chilled/Relaxing Music without Lyrics

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

When working, I find music with lyrics distracting. Without music, background noises can distract. So the best option is to get music without lyrics.

I was passing my days by somehow listening to raindrops or piano music until one day I learned about the “Lofi Hip Hop” genre. Life hasn’t been the same ever since then.

Plenty of playlists on YouTube feature Lofi Hip Hop music. For example, @LofiGirl is pretty popular. Here is one of my favorites:

More than productivity, this music relaxes me a lot. Amazing stress reducer.

Why My Previous Attempt at PPV Failed

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This is my second time starting the Pillars, Pipelines, and Vaults (PPV) system for organizing my life. So, if PPV is such a great tool for planning, why did I stop using it? What went wrong?

The system ended up “Suffering from Success”. It was running so well that I tried to offload every aspect of my life: weight, finances, groceries, recipes, diaries, thoughts, notes, etc.

With so many things being tracked, I couldn’t see the forest for trees. I burned out from inserting every piece of data I could think of. It became a chore which I began to resent.

I am wiser now. I now prioritize my goals since life is too short to do everything. My main intention is to track my long-term goals in PPV. Anything not related to long-term goals is not tracked at all. I let them happen organically in life.

Goal Management System: Pillars, Pipelines, Vaults (PPV)

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We have many systems to track our work-related goals, but not many for organizing our life goals. I think the hardest part of organizing life goals is to figure them out.

Once you have figured them out, how do ensure you are systemically working towards them?

One system that I found useful is PPV (Pillars, Pipelines, and Vaults). It’s a system developed by August Bradley and published on his YouTube channel. Here is the complete playlist with 52 videos explaining how he built the system using Notion.

It’s quite an elaborate system. If you want, you can do everything using this system. I had replicated the system fully and tried following the letter, but then burned out after two months. It’s hard to be so organized. I am giving it another try now, but only focusing on the higher level Goal Setting and Projects without the lower level task-tracking pressure. Let’s see how it goes.

Hayfever Treatment: Antihistamine Tablets and Nasal Sprays

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Summer is here, along with my misery of hay fever. It’s my second year fighting against pollen and I just wanted to mention that antihistamines alone might not be enough to win the battle.

You should take Antihistamine and Nasal spray together (as per my pharmacist).

Wish I knew this a week ago. I am now taking Allevia (Fexofenadine) 120g tablet once per day and Beconase (Beclomethasone) nasal spray twice a day. Seems to be doing wonders. I can finally breathe now.

Kotlin in Action – Learning Kotlin the Slow Way

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

You can learn Kotlin by reading its documentation and getting started quickly, or take your time and read a book. I prefer books. I like the story aspect of books.

Of all the books I have read, I especially like “Kotlin in Action”.

It’s written by the authors of Kotlin, so they probably know what they are talking about. They also explain the “why” behind some of Kotlin’s features, making reading more interesting.

The first edition doesn’t have chapters on Co-routines since it didn’t exist when the book was written. The latest edition has chapters on co-routines. I have yet to read the Second Edition.

Categorizing Stakeholders of Your Project into the Stakeholders Matrix

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes projects have multiple stakeholders, each with their own agendas and requirements. Sometimes, I am even scared to engage new stakeholders due to fears of getting slapped with more requirements!

But, no matter how scared, I must engage and keep them engaged until the end of the project. This still raises questions like:

Do I engage them now or later? How do I prioritize?
How do I keep them updated? Can’t really put everyone in a chat room and post updates regularly. Do they even want updates?

As usual, there is no clear answer to such questions. But we do have frameworks to help us create some structure in the ambiguity. One framework suggests creating a 2×2 matrix: Influence vs Interest.

Image source

Image source

Once you categorize your stakeholders into these 4 buckets, simply devise mechanisms to send them updates. Each bucket should receive updates in a different cadence. For example:

<table><tbody><tr><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Influence/Interest</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">High</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Low</td></tr><tr><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">High</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">– Doesn’t need regular updates, but any update that either meets their needs or goes against them should be propagated to them.<br><br>= You probably need their approval before signing off on the project.</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">– Small chat room with all key players in one place.<br><br>– Regular Meetings or Direct Chat.<br><br>– This quadrant will be happy to get updates so don’t be shy to send them updates.</td></tr><tr><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Low</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">Fine to not track this separately.</td><td class="has-text-align-left" data-align="left">– Send them major updates.<br><br>– Irregular FYI updates.</td></tr></tbody></table>

This is just a guide, not an algorithm. Feel free to change it to suit your needs.

Writing Simple Python CLI using Click

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Python Click package enables you to create CLI tools easily. With this, you can focus on core logic while Click does the flag parsing and validations.

Creating a command is as simple as:

import click

@click.command() # Creates a click command
@click.option(   # Check out click's documentation to see all the options
    "--input",
    required=True,
    help = "Some input that you must provide",
)
def cli(input):  # The options becomes parameters to the method
    # You can now use input to do something
    print(f'Hello {input}')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Name of this method doesn't matter. Command name is derived from
    # the file name.
    cli()

Click has good documentation. Have a look.

Merge PDF Files on Linux

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

PDF merging use cases tend to pop up every now and then. For example, when applying for a UK Visitor VISA application for my family, I have to merge lots of files such as payslips and bank statements. Since they are sensitive documents, it doesn’t feel right to use 3rd-party online tools here. So I like to do it locally using Linux tools.

Linux has a command line tool to merge pdf files. It’s as simple as:

pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf output.pdf

Bank statements are sometimes encrypted and you will have to decrypt them first. That can be done by:

qpdf --decrypt "in.pdf" --replace-input

That’s it. With these two commands, I locally merge PDFs securely on my device.

Pseudoephedrine: A behind-the-counter Decongestant that actually works!

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I usually have a stockpile of cold medicine at home since I am prone to catching one. The one you can buy from the shelf has a decongestant called “Phenylephrine”. It usually comes combined with painkillers and caffeine. A great combination to tackle all the cold symptoms. If you try to buy from online, this is what you will get.

Another decongestant is available in the market, “Pseudoephedrine”, but you won’t find it on the shelf. You will find it behind the counter of the Pharmacy and need to consult with the Pharmacist to get one. They will sell you only one box at a time.

What’s the difference? Phenylephrine doesn’t work while there is some evidence of Pseudoephedrine working. Anecdotally, I have tried both and can confirm Pseudoephedrine worked quickly. Phenylephrine, on the other hand, took a few days at which point it’s ambiguous if the medicine or my natural immune system did the work.

Why do we have a medicine on the shelf that doesn’t work? What’s the history here? I skimmed through some articles to understand what’s happening and here is my (probably inaccurate) TLDR of the situation:

Pseudoephedrine used to be the default decongestant. Then some people started to use it to make drugs (meth) so the government took it off the shelf to behind the counter and limited its sales. This however meant lower profits for pharmaceutical companies, so they created an alternative chemical and somehow passed the FDA’s testing. Due to bureaucracy, it took years to prove the ineffectiveness and only recently the FDA started looking into it.

So now you know. Next time, buy Pseudoephedrine from the Pharmacy if you have a blocked nose. All the big brands have this already. They are just behind the counter.

Asking for help at different SWE levels

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In one of my previous posts, I wrote about an analogy on how interaction with design docs evolves as you grow as a Software Engineer. I recently noticed a similar evolution regarding seeking help at work.

How you ask for help evolves as you grow into your career:

An L3 (Junior Engineer) can ask for help directly (initially).
- There are many things you don’t know. Nobody will blame you for asking about small stuff initially. “Initially” is the keyword here since people will soon get impatient if you ask about the same stuff.
- The projects you work on are simple so people can often help you quickly without spending significant time.
An L4 (Mid Level Engineer) needs to be more independent.
- Your projects are more difficult than an L3, so when you get blocked, it requires more effort from the team to unblock you.
- Independence is critical at this level. You need to develop skills for investigation and debugging.
- If you still can’t unblock yourself, do your due diligence before bringing the issue to the team’s attention. This is a good opportunity to spin out a quick one-pager to provide context on the blocker and list what you have tried.
An L5 (Senior Engineer) needs to be independent and scalable.
- This is a bit tricky now. While you investigate blockers yourself you need to be mindful about your time.
- Since you will be working on more ambiguous problems and unknown areas, trying to become an expert in every area won’t scale.
- For every blocker, you need to judge if it’s better to debug it yourself or if it’s better to use your relationship with another expert to ask for their guidance/hints.

All of the above happens naturally. As an L4, my scope was small and I always had time to debug my blockers. I was encouraged to become an expert in the areas I was assigned.

As I grew towards L5, I was assigned a bigger scope and sometimes multiple projects. If I debugged a blocker too deeply, I would have missed up on deliverables. So I had no choice but to ask for help from other experts to expedite my project.

[Fermi Problem] How many liters of water are in the World?

Tue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

After learning about the Fermi Problem, I decided to try solving one myself. The problems tend to be extreme and mind-boggling in nature and after searching for a while I found something that seemed more docile. Unlike the number of windows in New York City, surely there is an accurate answer to this question, hence I can cross-check my work afterward.

Before you continue reading more, try solving the problem yourself first. It’s actually quite fun!

First Attempt: Deriving from Earth’s Weight

I knew this would be wrong since the ground has a higher density than water. But I did the math anyway since I was curious about the weight of the Earth.

I know that 70% of Earth’s surface is water.
Let’s assume that ratio extends to the weight too.
I Googled⚠️ the mass of the Earth since I obviously don’t know it. It’s around 5.972 * 10^24 kg. Since we are approximating stuff anyway, let’s just say it’s 6 * 10^24 kg.
Using #2, 70% of Earth’s mass = 4.2 * 10^24 kg.
1 liter of water has a mass of 1 kg.
Using #5, we reach 4 * 10^24 liters.

This is wrong since the solid part of Earth weighs more than the water. But some of the points above are true: #1, #2, and #5. Let’s see if we can reach a better approximation using another method.

Second Attempt: Measuring the volume of the ocean

For the second attempt, I decided to focus on the surface area. If we can calculate the surface area of water and just multiply it by the average depth, we will have an accurate volume of water.

I have no clue about how much is the surface area of Earth. So I Googled ⚠️ it. The radius of Earth is 6400 km.
Next, I needed the average depth of the ocean. I am ignoring the rest of the water, such as lakes, rivers, and ponds since they will be negligible compared to oceans. I Googled ⚠️ this too. The average depth is 3.6 km (or 4 km to simplify).
For a second, imagine 100% of Earth’s surface is covered with water. We can get the volume using the formula V = 4/3 * pi * (6400^3 – 6396^3). That’s around 1.85 * 10^9 km^3.
Only 70% of Earth’s surface is water so we multiply #3 by 0.7 to get 1.29 ^ 10^9 km^3.
We need to convert the volume to liter. 1 liter is actually 0.001 m^3. If you convert #4 to liter, that becomes 10^21.

This answer is 1000 times smaller than our first attempt. The real answer is 1.23391 * 10^21, which is close to our estimation!

Conclusion

It’s hard to solve Fermi’s problem if you don’t know some basic information about the domain. In this problem, I think knowing Earth’s radius and the ocean’s average depth was crucial.

Then again, perhaps I could have guessed those basic facts too? I could have used the perimeter formula (2*pi*r) to get a perimeter value and used the speed time formula to see how long it takes a car driving at 60 km/h speed to cross that distance. Wasn’t there a book titled Around the World in 80 Days? I could have used that time to see for what radius it takes 80 days.

This is much more fun than I expected. Next time I will try to avoid Googling for basic facts as much as possible.

What is a Fermi Problem?

Sun, 26 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Remember the weird questions they used to ask in interviews like how many windows are there in New York or how many golf balls can you fit in a bus? Turns out they have a name for such problems: Fermi Problem.

The name comes from a Physicist Enrico Fermi who used to make back-of-the-envelope calculations for such estimation problems. The goal of the problem is not to find the exact answer but to use critical thinking and approximation to reach an answer. The how matters more than the what here.

The best book I read on productivity – Four Thousand Weeks

Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Before I read this book, I dreamed of visiting every European country, learning the Ukulele, writing a blog, moving to US/Japan/Switzerland, start hobbies such as running, rock climbing, hiking, cooking, painting, journaling, etc.

I always thought the only thing stopping me was my productivity skills. I could do everything on my to-do list if I had more discipline and better to-do list management skills. I just needed the right tools. That’s what all the other productivity books promised me: a better way to manage my to-do list.

This book opened my eyes to the reality: my to-do list is too big and it’s impossible to finish them all. There isn’t enough time. There isn’t enough life. We only have 4000 weeks and I have used up over 1600 weeks already!

Life feels long but when you view it as a calendar (like here) it feels so short! And that’s the truth. Life is short and we can’t do everything we want to do in life. We have to be intentional and selective. We have to prioritize⭐.

What I Learned from 1500+ Miles Road Trip to Scottish Highland

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Back from the 1500+ miles Scotland trip. Here are my thoughts:

I was worried about getting back problems from the long drive, but managed to avoid the worst by fixing my seating posture.
NC500 is beautiful! We only did part of it (Applecross to Ullapool) but were thoroughly impressed with what we saw in the small part.
- We will be going back to complete the route sometime in the future.
- It may be more efficient to fly to Inverness and rent a car rather than drive from London.
It’s safe to Skip Peak District and Lake District if you plan to visit the Scottish Highlands.
- Scotland has over 31000 lakes. You will see plenty of lakes even if you don’t plan to visit a lake.
- Peak District had a scenic route called Snake Pass, but the Scottish Highlands have similar scenic routes, e.g. Bealach Na Ba (though it’s much more treacherous).
There is something very peaceful about the highland valleys.
- I felt much more relaxed driving between mountains with flat lands covering the gap between the road and the mountains.
- Is there a specific name for such a view?
- The coastal views were beautiful too but I felt more at peace in the highlands. Perhaps it’s just a personal preference?
- I have a feeling I will love the NC500 route!
Very low light pollution in the Scottish Highlands. Perfect for star gazing.
- Unfortunately, it was very cloudy on the day we were staying at a hotel in a Bortle 2 area.
No matter the weather, it’s beautiful.
- Google predicted it would be rainy during our trip and I was worried the views wouldn’t be beautiful without the sun. I was wrong.
- Rain or shine, it looked beautiful. The view is different in different weathers.

Carry Energy Drink in the Car to Combat against Driving Fatigue

Mon, 20 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

What do you do when you feel tired/sleepy/😪 during driving? Some options I have used in the past:

Pulled over to take a nap 🛏️
Took a coffee break ☕
Played road games with passengers 🎲

Frankly, #1 doesn’t really work. It’s hard to take a nap in the car. Not to mention, the moment you pull over, you no longer feel sleepy 😠. #2 depends on where the next service station is. There might not be one any time soon. And if you are driving alone or all of the passengers are asleep, you can’t play games mentioned in #3.

On a recent road trip, I learned about a 4th option: Red Bull (or any other energy drink). They alleviate sleepiness and tiredness more effectively than coffee due to high caffeine and sugar levels. Since they are canned, you can easily carry them in the car as an emergency energy boost.

Micro Blogging Every Other Day

Sat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It has been around 2 weeks since I started writing atomic posts. I have been trying to write one post daily to make writing more regular. It’s far easier to write atomic posts than epic posts, but still tough to pull off daily writing. I can’t write nonsense after all!

I can pull off something decent in 30-40 minutes, but it feels rushed occasionally. I could write better if I had a bit more time. Sometimes it even feels stressful!

Perhaps slowing down the cadence a bit will be helpful here. Instead of aiming to write one post daily, I could write one every other day.

I have been able to schedule my posts and get ahead by 4-5 days at one point with a daily cadence. The lead disappeared once I got busy with the 1500-mile road trip. The lead would have lasted longer If I had scheduled the posts for every other day.

I will aim to write/schedule posts for even-numbered dates. My goal would be to create a healthy lead and maintain it. Let’s see how this approach pans out.

Ideal Driving Position to Avoid Back Pain

Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

My friend, upon hearing about my upcoming 1500+ miles long road trip, suggested I reassess my driving position to avoid back pain. Apparently, he had recently done a long road trip and found online that your thigh should be making more than 90 degrees with your upper body.

My current position had less than 90 degrees. My seat was too close to the steering wheel, shaping me like N. I took his advice and looked into this in more detail since I suffer from back pain after just driving 3-4 hours sometimes.

Here is what I did exactly based on advice from this article:

Seat height: Your hips should be higher than your knees. This ensures you don’t have less than 90 degrees between your thigh and upper body. Just raise your seat until this is achieved. I raised my seat to the highest level possible.
Seat Forward/Backward: First push your seat all the way back. Then bring it forward until you can touch the pedals. Then bring it slightly forward until there is a slight bend at your knees when pressing the pedal.
Steering Wheel: Adjust your steering wheel such that there is a slight bend at your elbow.
Seat backrest: If the seat is too upright, you will get neck pains from looking at the road below (remember, your seating height is higher now). So lean back a bit so that you are not looking down at the road too much.

I have driven 750 miles in 3 days so far into my trip and haven’t had much back pain yet. The change in seating posture seems to be helping!

The Way of The Road – Motorway Services

Wed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

While planning my 1500+ mile Isle of Skye road trip, I stumbled upon this gold nugget: a map showing all the motorway services in the UK.

This has been a game-changer in planning routes. For some reason, Google maps can’t find motorway services normally. It keeps showing me fuel stations if I search for “service stations”. So I had to find service stations on the spot while driving.

With the map above, I can now plan a route on Google My Maps and import the motorway services information into it to see which ones fall over my route. I can then select the ones that divide the route into equal chunks.

1500+ Miles Road Trip to the Isle of Skye

Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have some relatives visiting me who want to see Scotland. So I prepared the following road trip route for them: Google Map Route. It was my first time creating a custom map using Google Maps. It’s nice to see the route visually like this.

It’s going to be my first time driving 1000+ miles. I hope my poor back will be able to endure this torture. There better be some good scenic views in Scotland to make it worth all the pain!

It’s a 6-day circular trip from London. Here is a rough summary:

Day 1: London to Lake District
- Stop by at Peak District, Ladybower Reservoir, Derwent Dam View Point, and Snake Pass.
Day 2: Lake District to Fort William
- Stop by Loch Lomond and activities around it.
Day 3: Fort William to the Isle of Sky
- Stop by Eilean Donan Castle, Port Tree, and Lealt Falls, and circle around the island.
Day 4: Isle of Skye to Inverness
- Stop by at Falls Of Measach and Loch Ness.
Day 5: Inverness to New Castle upon Tyne
- Stop by Edinburgh
Day 6: New Castle upon Tyne to London

Fragile Base Class Problem

Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In OOP, the “Fragile Base Class Problem” is where modifying the base class can potentially break the sub-class.

Imagine a base class with two public methods A and B. Is it safe to refactor such that A now calls B? There is no way to know. A sub-class could have already overridden B to call A and the refactoring will result in an infinite recursion in the sub-class.

The fact that the base class has to worry about how a sub-class could modify its non-final method is the fragileness of the “Fragile Base Class Problem”. The problem is only related to non-final methods. Final methods cannot be overridden so the base class can always rely on its implementation.

Some ways to mitigate:

Don’t allow inheritance. Make the class final. If there is no sub-class, there is no risk of breakage.
If inheritance is allowed, avoid coupling between non-final methods. Treat every non-final method as a potential hazard.
Document it properly to guide users on creating a sub-class for the base class safely.

Kind vs Wicked Learning Environments

Sun, 12 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Kind learning environments are areas where you can find repetitive patterns and build up experience in detecting such patterns. The feedback loop is short in these environments, allowing you to correct the course faster.

Chess, Tennis, Golf, and many other sports are kind environments. They operate by a fixed set of rules where experience and deliberate practice can make you an expert.

On the opposite spectrum, we have wicked environments. There is no pattern in such environments, some information is hidden, and relying on experience can derail you toward the wrong solution. The feedback loop is slow, often taking many years to see the result of your actions.

Real-world problems tend to be wicked. For example, dealing with climate change, poverty, hunger, large-scale conflicts, and wars.

Learning Kotlin – Starting with “Kotlin in Action”

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I am trying to learn Kotlin for work. While it’s possible to just pick up the syntax when implementing a project, it becomes cumbersome when reading other codebases or reviewing code for others. Can’t keep asking basic questions to the code author all the time.

Maybe it will be possible to become decent by skimming through all the articles and documentation, but I probably need to be better than decent. Definitely going to take more than 20 hours.

The best way, for me, is to get started with a book. After searching for a good book over the internet/Reddit, I started with Kotlin in Action. The book is written by the Kotlin language authors so they know what they are talking about.

More than learning the “what” of Kotlin, the book also explains “why” Kotlin has been designed in the current manner. The authors are good storytellers so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

10000-hour rule vs 20-hour rule

Fri, 10 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The 10k hours rule states that it takes 10k hours to become a master at a skill.

If you are talented, perhaps it will take less time than that. But that’s just a ballpark figure. Not all hours are equal though. The hours should be spent on “deliberate practice” for best results.

But that’s for Olympic-level/world champion-level expertise. What if I want to be just “decent” at a skill? How many hours do I need?

Surprisingly, you only need around 20 hours of deliberate practice for that. There is a whole book on this topic: The First 20 Hours – How to learn anything fast.

Learning a skill has diminishing returns. So while you can become decent in just 20 hours, it takes far longer to become a master. But hey, if you plan things right, you can quickly become a jack of many trades!

Polgar Experiment: How to Create Genius

Thu, 09 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Laszlo Polgar is a father who raised his three daughters to be chess prodigies on purpose! He ran an experiment where he tried to establish that genius people are made, not born!

This article describes the experiment in more detail. To summarize:

Hard work: You obviously need effort since you are trying to create genius, not rely on talent, not just from the three Polgar sisters, but from the father too who coached them.
Deliberate Practice: It’s similar to the effort mentioned in #1 but more refined. Deliberate practice is about being conscious about how labor is invested behind the craft. Measuring and tracking your progress and being intentional about improvement.
Specialization: Focus on one thing. It’s easier to be a genius at one thing than multiple things.
Head start: The earlier you start the bigger the advantage you get from deliberate practice.

While the Polgar experiment has been successful at creating chess genius, it’s unclear if such results can be pulled off at any domain. It’s nonetheless an interesting experiment!

Obsidian: Backup files using Google Drive

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I like to maintain my information/second brain on Obsidian. It stores the files locally as markdown files. I, however, need to access my second brain from multiple devices, including my personal laptop, Pixelbook (Chromebook), phone, and work laptop.

Obsidian has a cloud sync feature, but that requires 4 USD/month to enable. I am not a big fan of recurring expenses. I like one-off payments more.

So I decided to sync using Google Drive instead. I put all my Obsidian files and directories inside the Google Drive directory called “Obsidian” and then:

Pixelbook: It can access my Google Drive by default since that’s how Chromebooks work.
Personal Laptop: I use Linux on my laptop and there is no native client for Google Drive on Linux. I bought a one-time license to InSync for 30 GBP.
Android: I use the Autosync app. It provides a free service if you are syncing only one directory.
Work laptop: I share my obsidian root directory with my work profile and then an internal tool at the office syncs Google Drive files to the Linux Filesystem on my work laptop.

With the above 4 tools, I have a generic solution to my original problem. I can keep Google Drive files across multiple devices, including Obsidian files.

What if you forget something when driving from UK to Europe?

Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In my previous post, I outlined what’s legally required to visit Europe with your car. Now a question often pops up, what happens if you forget something?

On my first trip, I prepared well in advance and didn’t forget anything. My second trip was a bit rushed and I had the confidence of doing it once before, so I ended up forgetting the physical copy of my V5C en route to LeShuttle.

I briefly considered going back but then remembered that on my first trip, only my passport and VISA were checked. Unless you get into an accident, you can probably get away with a few missing stuff here and there.

I am not recommending that you ignore legal requirements btw. Just stating the reality that it’s not as rigorous as it should be. It makes sense though. If the police decided to check all cars for every requirement, it wouldn’t scale.

What’s needed to Drive to Europe from UK

Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I had to prepare a lot for the first time I drove to Europe from the UK. With so many different laws and regulations, it’s a bit overwhelming. There are already lots of guidelines on what’s needed. For example, RAC has a comprehensive checklist.

Here is my checklist and comment about it:

Basic stuff: Passport, Driving Licence, and V5C for proving car ownership.
You need a bunch of additional things in your car trunk. Needed by law.
- Reflective jackets, warning triangles, headlamp beam deflectors, UK car sticker, and first aid kit.
- You can buy all of these from Amazon.
Vehicle insurance
- Most UK insurance already has 3rd-Party coverage for Europe.
- Sometimes you can call your insurance to upgrade it to Full Coverage for a fee or free.
European Breakdown Cover
- If you already have a UK breakdown cover, check if that covers you for Europe.
- If not, you can buy a temporary one online. I bought a single trip coverage from AA for 3 days for just 25 GBP.
Register to enter low-emission zones
- Entering low-emission zones without registering your car will result in a hefty fine. Ensure you have registered with the respective city you plan to visit. This article has more details.

That’s it. This should be enough to get to the other side of the English Channel.

LeShuttle: Folkestone to Calais

Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We recently used LeShuttle for our UK to Luxemburg road trip and I wanted to highlight some of the differences I saw compared to taking a ferry.

Upon arriving you check-in at an kiosk that prints a token for our car.
You then drive to a service station to wait for your call. You have Burger King, Starbucks and other vendor providing service. There is a huge screen showing your approximate calling time.
Once called, you drive towards the immigration line.
Then you drive to another place where you wait to board.
Finally, you get on a train which takes you to Calais via a tunnel under the English Channel.

Overall, the whole thing felt more technologically advanced then the ferry. The service station where we waited for our call relaxed the experience. On Ferry, we had to stay in our car all the time, no matter how big the immigration line was. Here, they managed to stagger that efficiently.

Using Git filters to remove debug code

Sat, 04 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

One of the strategies I like to use for debugging is printing logs. Once debugging is done, removing all the debug logs is a big hassle. If I am not careful, I could accidentally commit and upload the logs for review! The embarrassment! And what if I am not done with debugging and need to upload the code to share with team cause I am stuck?

After going through the struggles mentioned above few times, I started to think if there was any way to make git ignore my debug logs. Turns out there is! 🎉

You use git filters to achieve this. The purpose of git filter is to simply clean your code from sensitive information, but I will hack it and remove all my logs.

You can create a new filter by adding the following to your git config file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/config:

[filter "removesamiullog"]
  clean = sed '/SAMIUL/d'

And then turn on the filters for all files you are interested in at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/attributes:

*.java filter=removesamiullog

Once you add the above configurations, anytime you add or commit files, git will run the custom filter on the files. The sed command finds any line in the file with string “SAMIUL” and deletes it.

So none of these lines will get added to git:

Log.d("SAMIUL", "This will get deleted by git");
foo(); // SAMIUL

This allows me to add debug logs without worrying about them getting leaked into the git. Saves a lot of time too.

Backup your 2FA tokens in the Authy App

Fri, 03 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

📢 This is a friendly reminder to back up your 2FA tokens in the Authy app and store the decrypt key somewhere safe.

Today Nabile (my wife) dropped her phone resulting in a complete display malfunction. While the loss of the device was saddening, we were more worried about getting access to all the important apps installed on the device. Mainly the banking apps that require 2FA and Authy which contained all the 2FA tokens.

While Authy backs up the token online, they keep it encrypted on their server and you need a decrypt key to use it on a new device. You must store the decrypt key somewhere safe yourself. If you lose the decrypt key, there is no way to decrypt the tokens. Authy can’t help here. See their post explaining how encryption/decryption works.

Luckily, Nabila had the decrypt key so we were able to get access to all the 2FA tokens. I didn’t and this was a awakening call that accidents can happen anytime so best to store the backup/decrypt key somewhere safe now or regret it later.

Thought I would remind you all too about it. Don’t procastinate.

How I got started with “The Mouseless Development Environment”

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It was the pandemic days. Time when people were locked up in houses and had plenty of free time in their hands. That’s when I came across a hackernews article promoting the book: Building Your Mouseless Development Environment.

It sounded like a cool concept. Something to keep myself busy with until we were allowed outside again. I was hooked the moment I saw the table of contents: arch linux + zsh + i3wm + tmux + neovim. It sounded really fancy!

But I didn’t have any device where I could install arch though. I only had work laptop and I can’t install arch on that. But that didn’t stop me! I took this opportunity to build myself a PC from scratch!

It was fun! I built myself a PC from scratch (bought everything piece by piece from amazon and assembled it myself by following instructions from youtube). Then I installed arch on it and configured a mouseless development environment on it.

What did I learn?

I learned a lot of things from that project, a lot of which I have now forgotten. I won’t be able to build a PC from scratch again. Same for installing Arch Linux. The PC that I built and installed Arch on is collecting dust in my attic.

But I did pick up some new tricks from the book that I now use everyday at my work device:

I have learned how to organize all my configs into a neat structure called dotfiles. I use them to keep all my configs synced between work laptop and personal laptop.
Learned about i3wm, tmux and zsh in more depth.
Started dabbling into unix-ricing.
Most notably, I finally got the hang of (neo)vim!

If you use a shell in your day to day development, then I highly reccomend giving this book a read.

How different SWE Levels Interact with Design Docs

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This is just an analogy, not a fact. Just something I observed over the years as I grew from an Entry Level Software Engineer (L3) to a Senior Software Engineer (L5) at Google.

How you interact with a design document evolves as you grow into your career.

As an L3, you implement the design doc.
- Your main work is implementation, not the design itself.
As an L4, you write design docs (or part of it if the scope is too big).
- A project usually corresponds to a single doc.
- You might have to implement it yourself to deliver it end-to-end.
As an L5, you write more design docs and planning docs.
- You write multiple docs for a single project. You then need a separate doc (this could be the planning doc) that connects them all together.
- The planning doc helps track all the moving parts. This helps when leads ask you about project status.
- You need to delegate the part of the project (single design doc worth of work) to others and help in delivery.

This analogy can probably be stretched more. For example, at L6, maybe you write a requirement doc to justify “what” should be worked on. I can’t really say yet since I haven’t reached that level.

Setting up regular backup using Updraft Plus

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I got an email from my hosting provider saying they will be doing system maintenance and that I should back up my blog just in case. Well, that’s news from 3-4 months ago. I have been planning some kind of regular backup system since then.

There are many options in WordPress. I decide to use a plugin: Updraft Plus.

It was a simple matter. I simply installed the plugin, connected my Google Drive account as the remote storage from the settings, and scheduled a weekly cadence for the backup job.

Hopefully, that should take care of backup🤞.

Microblogging: Ignore SEO to write more

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Another benefit of microblogging is that I don’t have to worry about SEO. I can if I want to, but it’s such a bother. To have proper SEO for a post, I have to:

Find a featured image
Figure out a keyword, and ensure it’s sprinkled everywhere in the post.
Populate the meta description.
Add links: both outbound and internal.
Have a minimum of 300 words in the text.

It eats away a lot of time! Time which I would rather write instead. Sometimes SEO can end up taking more time than writing the micro-post itself!

With atomic/micro-posts, it’s such a small amount of content that it’s not worth it to spend time on SEO. When I eventually combine them to create an epic post, it will justify the effort for SEO.

With that, I have managed to remove one more obstacle from writing 🎉

Reducing noise for readers when micro-blogging

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

As mentioned in the previous post, from now on I will be writing more frequently but in smaller sizes. This makes me worried about spamming my readers. Well, I don’t really have any readers at the moment (0 comments on the blog so far, and the small amount of traffic I have gotten are either me or web crawlers) but it does not hurt to prepare ahead. Always think of the worst case!

I want to hide my microblogs by default to avoid spamming my casual readers, On my home page, I only want to show the proper self-contained epic-posts. The microblog posts should be displayed separately on another page.

Creating Micro Blog

Separating the microblog posts was simple. I just tagged the atomic posts with #micro-post tag and created a new page called “Micro Blog” that shows all the posts tagged with #micro-post. You can see the page in the navigation bar and here: /micro-blog.

Filtering Micro Posts from Home

There is no way to filter the micro-post from the rest of the posts on the home page. So I had to tag all non-micro posts with #epic-post tag. Once that was done, I created a new page called “Home” and configured WordPress to use the static page instead of the latest posts in home. You can configure that from Settings > Reading > Your homepage displays.

But it messes up the theme. I had to manually sync the look of the new “Home” page I created with the theme. Basically, had to prepare a new template for the page that looked the same as before.

Conclusion

With the above, I have the micro-blog somewhat separated from the main blog. Let’s see how this structure evolves over time.

Zettelkasten Blogging: Atomic posts building towards the bigger picture

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It has been a while since I last wrote a proper post. I have a lot of draft posts that are just waiting for more information until it becomes a self-contained unit. Unfortunately, I have gotten busy or moved on from that particular topic, so those never landed.

I have things I want to write about but I get overwhelmed getting it perfect and useful. Is it even worth writing about if I have not covered all the angles? Of course, it is, yet I can’t convince my mind.

So I will attempt something different this time. Instead of trying to write a single self-contained post, I can try writing smaller “atomic” micro-blog posts. Eventually, when I have enough posts, I can combine them into a bigger proper post.

This form of an atomic blog post/note-taking is similar to Zettelkasten. WordPress might not be suitable for managing such a network of posts, but it’s worth a shot. I want to write 5x more while writing 5x less.

I don’t want to jinx it, but maybe I can challenge myself to write one post daily in a smaller format now? 🤔 … or I will wait until I can pull this off for 10 days first.

Brightness Control on i3wm

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

i3 being very barebone, you need to configure brightness control yourself. This is a recurring theme when dealing with i3wm.

It’s a hassle the first time when you are configuring these things, but once you get used to it, it’s not that difficult. But that’s applicable to everything in life. Nothing is difficult once you get used to it.

Bind script to brightness keys on i3wm

In the simplest term, you just need to bind your brightness-up key on your laptop to a script that actually brightens it up. Just add something like following to your ~/.config/i3/config:

set $brightness_script $HOME/.config/scripts/brightness.py
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec --no-startup-id $brightness_script -
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec --no-startup-id $brightness_script +

This binds brightness_script with the keys. The script obviously doesn’t exist and you would have to write it yourself.

Brightness Script

While it can be a bash script, I have recently decided to start using Python for all my scripting needs. I want a scripting language where string comparison is intuitive and I don’t have to worry about things not working just because I didn’t put a space between operators and etc.

The bash script needs to handle two sub-commands: “+” and “-“. One increases the brightness and the other decreases it. I use the following script:

#!/usr/bin/python3

import ShellCommand
import subprocess
import sys
import os

MIN=0   #%
MAX=100 #%
STEP=5
STATUS_PATH=os.path.expanduser("/tmp/mysession/brightness")

def getScreens():
    # xrandr -q | grep ' connected' | cut -d ' ' -f1
    output = ShellCommand.runShellCommand("xrandr -q")
    return [ line.split()[0] for line in output.split("\n") if " connected" in line ]

def getCurrentBrightness():
    #curBr=$(xrandr --verbose | grep Brightness: | head -n 1 | awk '{print $2}')
    output = ShellCommand.runShellCommand("xrandr --verbose")
    brightness = [ line.split()[1] for line in output.split("\n") if "Brightness:" in line ][0]
    if brightness == "1.0":
        return 100
    return int(float(brightness) * 100)

def setCurrentBrightness(brightness: int):
    brightness_float = float(brightness) / 100
    for screen in getScreens():
        subprocess.run(["xrandr", "--output", screen, "--brightness", str(brightness_float)])

def writeToFile(val):
    # Output the value in a file so that status.conf picks it up for display
    f = open(STATUS_PATH, "w")
    f.write(str(val))
    f.close()

def sendNotification(val):
    ShellCommand.runShellCommand(f"notify-send 'Brightness {val}' -h string:x-canonical-private-synchronous:brightness_percentage --app-name System")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    arg = sys.argv[1]
    match arg:
        case "+":
            val = getCurrentBrightness() + STEP
            if (val > 100):
                val = 100
        case "-":
            val = getCurrentBrightness() - STEP
            if (val < 0):
                val = 0
        case "w":
            val = getCurrentBrightness()
        case _:
            exit

    setCurrentBrightness(val)
    writeToFile(val)
    sendNotification(val)

Here is what the script does:

It supports three sub-commands:
- “+” to increase brightness.
- “-” to decrease it.
- “w” to just write the brightness level to a file.
  - This is useful to execute when device boots for the first time to ensure the brightness level file exists for i3status. See below for more details.
For all sub-commands it writes the brightness level to a file. This will be later used to update our i3status to show what is the current brightness level.
It gets and sets the brightness level using xrandr command.
ShellCommand is just a helper library I wrote to run the shell commands. It’s not a actual library.
The script also sends a notification to indicate the brightness has changed.

Updating i3status bar

As for updating the i3status bar, just add this to your config:

read_file brightness {
    format = "B: %content"
    path = "/tmp/mysession/brightness"
}

i3status can read value from a file and just display its content. This is pretty useful. With this technique you can show anything you want on your status bar.

In case you notice that your status bar is not updating when you increase or decrease brightness, you may need to forcefully refresh your i3status bar. You can do that by simply updating your bind commands to:

set $i3refresh killall -SIGUSR1 i3status
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec --no-startup-id $brightness_script + && $i3refresh

Conclusion

With this, you should have a proper brightness control on i3wm. Hopefully this also gives you idea on how to bind any script with any keys on i3wm.

Now that I think of it, my previous post on Configuring screenshots on i3wm follows similar pattern as this. Write a script and just bind it to a key. Check it out if you need more inspiration.

Emoji Picker using Rofi 😎

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I love using emojis 🤩. They help express different kinds of emotions in text. It also makes the text a bit less boring than usual.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to insert emojis in the WordPress editor by typing “:” and emoji names. It doesn’t support emoji selectors like that 😢.

Turns out other Operating Systems like Windows 🪟 and Mac 🍎 have their own native emoji selectors. My Linux setup didn’t come with one pre-configured obviously.

After a quick research, I found out that it’s not that difficult to configure an emoji picker on i3wm. There are plenty of emoji-picker libraries you can install that just works out of the box. You just need to bind a key to invoke the tool.

rofi-emoji

I decided to give rofi-emoji a try. Here is the link to its GitHub repo: https://github.com/Mange/rofi-emoji. I use Ubuntu and there is no official repository support for this package. I had to clone the library and build it from scratch. The instructions are there in the README file.

Once you have the package installed (don’t forget to install rofi), simply bind some key to invoke the emoji picker.

I added the following line in my i3 config ~/.config/i3/config to bind MOD+Period with the emoji picker:

bindsym $mod+period exec --no-startup-id rofi -modi emoji -show emoji

With that, I can now invoke an emoji picker anywhere in my system 🎉. By default, it inserts the emoji at the cursor if possible, and copies the emoji to the clipboard. Good defaults.

Emoji Picker on Rofi with Dracula theme

Emoji Picker on Rofi with Dracula theme

So far this has been a useful customization. I found that the Dracula theme 🧛 for Rofi looks quite nice with the picker so I opted to use that. It’s easy to use different themes with rofi. I simply updated the command to:

rofi -modi emoji -show emoji -theme-str '@theme "dracula.rasi"'

Conclusion

Now that I can insert emojis in text easily, I tried inserting it in text files on the terminal, but my urxvt failed to render it properly 😤. I need to fix font issues on my system. The problems are never-ending.

Oh well. Until next time,

Samiul

Configuration for Screenshot on i3wm

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I use i3wm and it doesn’t have a screenshot configured by default. Found a tutorial recently that gave me ideas on how to have better screenshot shortcuts (see here). I have modified the configuration from that tutorial with some additional features.

Overview

Here are the shortcuts I now have for taking screenshot on i3wm:

Feature	Shortcut
Full Screen	`PrtScr`
Selection	`Shift + PrtScr`
Active Window	`Mod + PrtScr`

Shortcuts for better Screenshot

Shortcuts for better Screenshot

I have also configured it with the following features:

Store the screenshots in ~/Pictures directory.
Copy the screenshot to the clipboard for ease of sharing.
Screenshots are accompanied by a sound effect.
Show a notification with an action to delete it.

Let’s start off with basic implementation of the configuration and we will then add more features to it as we go along.

Packages Required

# maim: to take sreenshots
# xdotool: to figure out active window id
# xclip: to manage clipboard
sudo apt install maim xdotool xclip

Once you have these packages, you can run the following commands to take screenshots:

# Full Screenshot
maim $FILE_PATH

# Select the rectangle on screen for Screenshot
maim --select $FILE_PATH

# Screenshot of current active window
maim --window $(xdotool getactivewindow) $FILE_PATH

Check out the man pages for maim and xdotool if you are curious how they work.

Create a Script for taking Screenshot

We can directly bind the commands from above with the PrtScrn key for a minimal setup, but if we want more features like sound and notification, it’s better to not clutter i3 config. A separate script will make things easier to maintain.

Let’s wrap the above commands into a script. I like to store i3-related scripts together with my i3 configs, so I created a file at ~/.config/i3/scripts/screenshot.sh.

#!/bin/sh

# Use the current timestamp as the unique filename of the screenshot.
FILE_PATH="/home/$USER/Pictures/screenshot-$(date -u +'%Y%m%d-%H%M%SZ').png"

main() {
    case $1 in
        full) maim --format=png $FILE_PATH ;;
        select) maim --select $FILE_PATH ;;
        window) maim --window $(xdotool getactivewindow) $FILE_PATH
    esac
}

main "$@"

With this script, we can now pass any of {full, select, window} string as a parameter and our script will handle the rest. Later we can add more commands to run before and after taking screenshots.

Keybinding Configuration for i3

Let’s bind our script with PrtScrn key before we add more features to it. Add the following lines at ~/.config/i3/config:

# Set a custom variable to invoke our script. Makes it easy to refer.
set $i3screenshot sh $HOME/.config/i3/scripts/screenshot.sh

bindsym Print exec --no-startup-id $i3screenshot full
bindsym Shift+Print exec --no-startup-id $i3screenshot select
bindsym $mod+Print exec --no-startup-id $i3screenshot window

Try taking some screenshots now. You will find that screenshots have been captured silently at ~/Pictures directory.

Add Shutter Sound Effect

Without a sound effect, you might feel clueless about whether or not a screenshot has been captured and end up pressing the button multiple times. Let’s add the sound effect to remove the confusion.

Just add the following line at the beginning of the screenshot.sh:

# Play shutter sound to indicate a screenshot has been taken.
paplay /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/camera-shutter.oga

Copy the Screenshot to Clipboard

Often times, we want to share the screenshot we have taken with others. It’s handy to have it on clipboard so that we can just paste it on chat.

maim actually captures the image as a stream and supports piping of the output. So we can easily pipe it into our clipboard.

I decided to do both: capture the screenshot in a file AND copy it to my clipboard. Just update the maim commands in the script as follows:

# Example for updating full screenshot. Update others similarly.
maim --format=png | tee "$FILE_PATH" | xclip -selection clipboard -t image/png

[Optional] Actionable Notification that Deletes the Screenshot Using Dunst

Sometimes I end up taking the wrong kind of screenshot, so I configured a notification which I can interact with to delete the screenshot just taken.

I use Dunst for notification management, so I added this block of code to screenshot.sh and called it after the screenshot has been captured:

send_notification() {
    ACTION=$(dunstify --action="delete,Delete Screenshot" "Screenshot" "Stored at $filename")
    case "$ACTION" in
        "delete")
            rm "$FILE_PATH"
            dunstify "Screenshot" "Deleted $filename"
            ;;
        "2")
            # handle_dismiss
            ;;
    esac
}

Conclusion

I now have a decent flow for taking screenshot on i3wm. It was pretty fun considering I got to explore Dunst notification system a bit more here. I didn’t know it was possible to interact with the notifications via actions like this.

Until next time.

Samiul

Initial Setup of My Blog

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Hi readers 👋.

Today I will be writing about my current blog setup. It’s very bare-bones at the moment, but even then, I had to make a bunch of decisions to set it up. Noting them down would be helpful for other new starters + myself if I ever start another blog in the future.

Here is a brief overview of how the blog is currently configured:

Blogging Platform: WordPress

I initially considered Ghost due to its sleek look and simplicity but then decided against it due to its membership model structure. Plus, in the long run, it seemed far less customizable than WordPress.

For example, I want to make sure I don’t have any broken links on my blog and there is no plugin for that on Ghost. There is one on WordPress.
Web Hosting: Host Koala

This is a brand-new blog with zero readers at the moment. Who knows if I will even be writing here in one month or so. Until I become regular at blogging and have more confidence in myself for being disciplined with this, I would rather not spend too much money.

With that in mind, I found HostKoala has a 5$/year plan which was cheap enough for experimentation. Will switch to a better service if required in the future.
- HostKoala has good documentation on setting up SSL, DNS, domain, and WordPress on their sites.
- Make sure to use the correct PHP version. I used 8 initially and emojis didn’t work. I had to downgrade to 7.4 to make emojis work again.
Domain: Doze Host

This is a Bangladeshi company. I use them for my domain and web hosting of forthright48.com. I needed a domain to configure HostKoala’s VPS, so I just bought it from them.

I could have bought the domain for cheaper from somewhere else but didn’t want to research/investigate a new provider again. Plus the difference was of 2-3 GBP only.
Theme: Twenty Twenty Two

This is one of the free themes WordPress provides. Looks simple and minimalistic, just the way I like.
Plugins

I haven’t configured many plugins yet. Just a few to make writing blogs a bit more bearable. I will be installing more in the future.
- WP Dark Mode: To enable dark mode 🌚 for the editor and website. Otherwise, it’s too bright to work.
- Emoji Toolbar: I like using emojis. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good emoji picker configured on my laptop yet. Until that’s configured, the plugin will stick around.

That’s it. I didn’t bother configuring more stuff until I had more posts. I guess the next thing I would need to configure would be metrics so that I can measure how the blog is performing.

Until next time,

Samiul

Hello World!

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Hi! 👋 I am Samiul. I am a software engineer at Google and live in London, UK. Welcome to my blog! 🎉

As a person from the tech industry, thought I would start off with our usual mandatory “Hello World” exercise. Very unimaginative I know, but at least I was able to avoid a hard problem.

Anyway, while I am a Software Engineer by trade, I am hoping to write about more varied topics. I want to avoid getting trapped in one particular niche if possible, unlike my old blog forthright48.com. If anyone is interested in Number Theory or Competitive Programming, feel free to check it out.

While it’s going to be a niche-less blog, I am not going to write about everything in the universe. Here is what I plan to write about this year (subject to change):

Blogging 📃

It turns out that blogging itself is a pretty interesting hobby. I want to write about the process itself.

What server am I using? What plugins and tools? How many views and subscribers am I getting? Am I killing it or not yet?

Wish we had information like this for more blogs out there. Maybe this will become a trend?
Linux 💻

A few years ago, during the Pandemic, I picked up this book called: “Building Your Mouseless Development Environment”. It was my gateway into customizing Linux. I now use Neovim and i3 like the cool kids 😎.

Does it increase my productivity? Maybe. Does it make things cooler? Definitely. Do I spend hours customizing my configuration to save a few seconds? Of course!
Book Reviews & Notes 📚

I like to read. Consider it my hobby. Whether or not I read is a different matter though.

I highlight all my non-fiction books and sometimes, I turn those highlights into notes. I promise to integrate the lessons I learn into my life, but frankly, I forget them after a while and never re-read them. Such a shame!

If I upload them online, maybe someone will find them useful?
And many more… 🔭

I am a curious person by nature. My hobbies keep on changing. At the moment, I am interested in Astronomy. I have picked up a telescope and managed to see Jupiter and Orion Nebula so far. Will I write about astronomy? Maybe.

Then there is also journaling, cooking, gaming, and a bunch of more things I do. You know, life. Expect some sprinkles of life here and there.

Oh, and then there is work. Surely I have picked up some gold nuggets about careers by now?

Oh wow, I am overpromising here so much. I am probably backing myself in a corner for sure. Definitely not adhering to the “Under-promise but Over-deliver” mantra!

Until next time,

Samiul