Summary of the week.
Another poor week in terms of productivity. I was anxious about this a lot of the time. One of the major affects this week was Andy Matuschak on the Lunar podcast and active reading. I realise now that active reading is the only form of reading. Also the notion that not doing space repetition practice is just very costly in the long run. I’m interested to see if I can apply this to my history reading, or a big book like War by Azar Gat. There is a mental baggage that gets taken away when you don’t have to worry about wrote memorization.
I found it hard, especially earlier this week to focus on my project work. It felt like I was getting nothing done. When I honed in on the uncertainty aspects, that currently fascinate me, it helped a bit. I’m also reminded of Adam Tooze’s advice to just convince yourself that you love it.
Hopefully the this week I will once again hop on the Anki train, getting better at writing notes etc.
Some ideas from the week
- I found that really thoughtfully reading text, after AM, was super helpful. It’s difficult, I can only manage about an hour, but I think I had some insights that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The idea of throwing questions into Anki is cool too, they don’t even have to be ‘complete’ they can evolve. But its establishing this base of knowledge to be updated.
- Having insights can be a product of whats in your working memory at any one time.
goals for week
It might be nice to incorporate a daily practice for probability problem solving, just choose the next problem in a textbook, spend 15 min and can carry it over.
- Monday: Time on presentation, basic results and what we can say with confidence.
- Tuesday: Some time on the ‘writing sample’ systems thinking and the Grid.
- Wednesday: Dinner for Fiona (hopefully some research in the morning).
- Going with the asado chicken
- Pinto beans.
- Maybe some kidney bean, sweetcorn (rice mix).
- Pico de gallo, an avocado sauce.
- Salsa of some sort
- tortillas
- Courgettes, peppers, onions.
- Lemon-pistachio.
- Cheese.
- lettuce
- Thursday: ‘writing sample’ and some probability (an hour, no more) if i’ve time.
- Friday: Probability study
It seems to me, with Taleb’s work, you put a stochastic process at the center. Everything is reasoning around such a process.
Stomach a bit upset today, not too sure why.