On Christmas 2023 I was given an Anker charger. By March 2024 it stopped working…

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Or GMB or any other mobility-oriented practice!

To err on the side of caution, maybe mark this as NSFW?

Hey! I’m also dealing with that right now!

I’ll tell you a bit about my journey:

TL;DR

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) have been fundamental for me. The single best resource for ACT is A Liberated Mind. Scrum has been my sharpest tool to get stuff done when the pressure comes up. Getting Things Done and Bullet Journaling are both good productivity/organization systems. Procrastination.com has good stuff too (although its theory of motivation is a cartoon of reality). Essentialism and The One Thing suck, with the exception of The One Thing’s focusing question and the idea that not everything is equal (Pareto principle and structural analysis). Tiny Habits and APA’s Procrastination are beautiful little books! The ACT Map, the Matrix (especially if using the “survival-vitality” horizontal axis), and The Choice Point are all incredibly powerful to become aware of a reality you live in and change it. Value Stream Mapping is something I want to test, so that I can see what are the sources of value in my life and prioritize those. At the same time, I’m worried that Value Stream Mapping is overkill… any suggestions?

The tools

At first, I thought I didn’t have the right tools and systems, so I learned Procrastination.com, Getting Things Done (GTD), and Bullet Journaling. All three have good interfaces. I define “interface” here as the things you touch and do to say that you’re ‘doing GTD’ or ‘doing Bullet Journaling’. Ultimately, I stuck to Getting Things Done because it was much more comprehensive than Procrastination.con and because I cannot rely on a physical journal (I could easily lose my stuff at my job). However, my roommate’s brother, who recently went on a similar journey of self-management of sorts, decided to get organized after he decided to get medicated for ADHD and settled on Bullet Journaling. He swears by it.

Now, my problem with GTD was exactly what you’re describing: my Someday/Maybe list got insanely large. This problem seems to be addressed in Bullet Journaling by the process of “migration”, so Bullet Journaling could be a quick and easy solution for you and I. However, not only do I want to make GTD work for me, but I also believe there could be a third path, one that teaches me how to prioritize well regardless of whether I use GTD or Bullet Journaling.

Essentialism… ugh…

I looked online to see if other people had my “massive Someday/Maybe list in GTD” problem and someone mentioned that, every year, they re-read GTD and Essentialism. I was like “alright, let’s give it a shot”.

Essentialism was a surprisingly lukewarm experience. On the one hand, I agree with lots of what the book says, but it has an awful theory of human motivation behind it and an awful interface. To understand how awful Essentialism’s theory of motivation is, you can read about Behavior Analysis in the context of contextual behaviorism or functional contextualism. Heck, even learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy shows that! You can also go about this by reading Tiny Habits and understanding the Fogg Behavior Model; there are many ways of seeing how ignorant and awful Essentialism’s theory of motivation is.

Just to give you an example, Essentialism tells the story of a company that didn’t hire an otherwise amazing candidate because, at the end of their ‘building interview’ they didn’t orderly put away the building tools in the toolbox… Imagine being an amazing builder and you’re told “you’re not a good fit” just because someone ignorantly and presumptuously interpreted something contextual and specific as fundamental about your values or worldview! Appalling! Ignorant! So incredibly frustrating! Does this company not understand continuous improvement? Does this company not understand how behavior works and how to change it? If we adopt the same fixed mindset as them, we can come up with ignorant questions too: can you really trust a company with building complex structures if they cannot improve how one worker stores their tools— can you trust them with improving anything at all? Will they adapt and improve when something tough comes up? Or will they be all like “Oh, no. Sorry. We only ever work in perfect conditions”? And, apparently, this company’s ignorance and presumption is a wonderful example of essentialism (at least that’s what the Essentialism author says)… Gross… Ugh… I hated that…

Another example is how he talks about Learned Helplessness. Sure, someone who disengages from the job could have learned helplessness, but someone who is a manic overachiever? The author should actually read Learned Optimism and see how Seligman equates Learned Helplessness with depression. For Seligman, Learned Helplessness is depression, and it is accompanied with a lack of desire to even try. Once again, behavioral contextualism, the Theory of Constructed Emotion, or the Fogg Behavior Model make it all clear.

Anyway, I know this is a rant, but I really want to be clear about the problems in Essentialism.

The One Thing

After that lukewarm experience, I went on and read The One Thing, which seemed like a book with a better interface. Unfortunately, this book also had a terrible theory of human motivation regarding willpower and other topics (again, understanding contextual behaviorism, the Fogg Behavior Model, or the Theory of Constructed Emotion makes it clear). At least the book was good at One Thing ™️©️®️, and that is the focusing question: "What is the one thing I can do such that, by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” By understanding that not everything is equal (you can get at this idea through the Pareto Principle or structural analysis), you can learn to prioritize the things that most matter!

Tiny Habits

So, I now had the focusing question under my belt. I then made small detour in Tiny Habits land. What a wonderful little book. Please read it. It might seem as if it doesn’t directly address your question, but it has taught me that I can be strategic about how to achieve any goal, including how to prioritize my list. It has made me more relaxed, because I know what matters and what doesn’t really matter. What matters are my high-impact behaviors; those I want to make habitual. The rest doesn’t matter as much, at least for now.

Value Stream Mapping

As of now, I am playing with the idea of using something like Value Stream Mapping/Management for different areas of my life: work, studies, relationships, family, physical health, leisure, etc. My aim is to see how the things that I do in my life contribute to my values or not. The Value Stream begins and ends with me. I have lots of values in my life, and I want to see how my projects/products/stuff-I-do contribute (or not!) to my values. My hope is that I will be able to prioritize the things that are most valuable in my life!

ACT Tools

Just so you know, there’s also the ACT Map, as described in A Liberated Mind. It’s comprehensive, but I have struggled to prioritize stuff within the ACT Map itself, because I write so much in it! There’s also the ACT Matrix (especially if it’s modified into the “survival-vitality” horizontal axis), which I love to use for context-specific problems or situations that I want to evaluate. There’s also The Choice Point, which also helps for context-specific problems or situations, but emphasizes behavior more than internal experiences. I should make a shoutout to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Combined with prioritization and a bit of reframing, it has been the single largest source of well-being for me in a long time.

APA’s Procrastination book

Also, there’s this beautiful little book Procrastination, published by the APA. I have just started reading it and it has been amazing so far! Even if you don’t consider a book about procrastination something that you need, it could help with fundamentally changing your stance towards to-dos! As John Hattie in Visible Learning (The Sequel) shows, our fundamental beliefs are perhaps more important than the specific strategies that we use.

WOOP and Coherence Therapy

There’s something I need to mention here! If you read Gabriele Oettingen’s book on positive thinking, you’ll learn how to do WOOP! WOOP is incredibly powerful to align your motivation vectors. It’s a dangerous tool, because you could unconsciously conclude that you can’t do stuff that you can actually do and therefore disengage (it’s important to understand things like the Theory of Constructed Emotion to see how this is possible, as well as Tiny Habits, Visible Learning, and Scrum to see how to iteratively and progressively do things that are hard). Conversely, your motivation vectors could align towards doing the thing, and you’ll be unstoppable.

In my view, WOOP exploits memory reconsolidation, which I learned from in Coherence Therapy. If I’m right, this explains why WOOP is sometimes not as effective: you need to assure that you exploit the memory reconsolidation mechanism.

Scrum

Oh, and before I end! When I need to just get my shit together quickly, I basically do Scrum: I make a quick post-it backlog, prioritize it, and start whacking. If I the list is too large, I do Fibonacci point estimation. I dislike how ad hoc this “when in doubt, Scrum” approach is, because it is not strategic at all. The backlog is built in the moment, with no long term plan. It’s just to complete the tasks right in front of me. But it works. Time and time again. I have had so many coworkers and friends telling me they were pleasantly surprised by my approach to work, which, again, is basically Scrum.

Conclusion

While it may seem that I have read lots and have my shit together, it’s a constant struggle! If someone has something that could help me prioritize in such a way that I connect what I value with what I do, please let me know! Maybe Value Stream Mapping is too overkill for this, but it seems comprehensive enough…

Ultimately, yeah. The article points out that the way they want to do it is with unique designs, carbon neutrality, and transparency in the production chain.

I agree that we shouldn’t jump immediately to AI-enhancing it all. However, this survey is riddled with problems, from selection bias to external validity. Heck, even internal validity is a problem here! How does the survey account for social desirability bias, sunk cost fallacy, and anchoring bias? I’m so sorry if this sounds brutal or unfair, but I just hope to see less validity threats. I think I’d be less frustrated if the title could be something like “TechPowerUp survey shows 84% of 22,000 respondents don’t want AI-enhanced hardware”.

I remember reading that class is/was/has been one of the largest predictors of relationships lasting long.

I MISSED THE EQUIVALENT OF PLACE IN LEMMY? Does anyone have context?

Ah! You’re getting at something interesting in human psychology: the existence of knowledge (‘knowing’) versus being able to use that knowledge across situations (‘transfer’). Do you know the phases of learning, sometimes simplified as superficial (knowing-that), deep (knowing-how), and transfer (knowing-with)? If you do, how does that apply to this situation? If you don’t, I linked to a video but I’m happy to explain it 😊

Thanks for the tl;dw!

Thanks for your reply. It’s down to earth, compared to my speculation 😅 . I checked the DKIM signature (as well as the rest of the header) and it appears to be a genuine Microsoft message. Now, as to the old account theory, it might not be true, because I tried logging into Microsoft and was told there was no account associated with my email address. I suppose this also reduces the probability of the confused/mistyped address, since that person would’ve gotten the same ‘No account associated with this email address’ message.

That is why I lean toward the spearfishing campaign. Of course, I could be missing something and I just haven’t noticed…

Dead Cells! Made by a worker cooperative 🥳

I agree that avoiding Microsoft is a good measure. However, my fear was that someone had successfully hacked my email or had somehow set up a Microsoft account ‘on my behalf’. If someone opened a Microsoft account with my email and impersonated me, I wouldn’t be able to safely ignore the emails 🥲 But I get and agree with the broader point that we should stay away from Microsoft!

Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.

This approach embodies the Agile value of ‘working product over comprehensive documentation’ - or in our case, ‘playable game over polished components’. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we’re able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.

Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we’re developing software or board games. It’s about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.

I appreciate your candor about not wanting to speak on topics outside your expertise. That’s commendable. I wonder if we can still talk with the understanding that we may not know it all. I truly believe curiosity is able to sidestep many of the problems related with ignorance.

You’re right to be cautious about appeals to authority. My intention wasn’t to suggest NASA’s use of Agile validates it universally, but rather to counter the OP comic’s implication that Agile is inherently incapable of achieving significant goals like space exploration.

Regarding Agile-like practices in earlier NASA projects, you’re correct that concrete evidence is limited. However, we can analyze their approaches through the lens of Agile principles. Scrum, for instance, aims to foster characteristics found in high-performing teams: clear goals, information saturation, rapid feedback loops, adaptability to changing requirements, and effective collaboration. These elements aren’t exclusive to Scrum or even to modern Agile methodologies. The key is recognizing that effective project management often naturally gravitates towards these principles, whether formally adopting Agile or not.

It’s an interesting area for further research: have complex engineering projects historically incorporated elements we now associate with Agile? If so, how?

Your skepticism is valuable in pushing for a more nuanced understanding of project management across different domains.

You’ve got a good point. I wonder if this an example of a trade-off between convenience and security. If you’re logging in and you get an MFA prompt, a Yubikey has to be physically searched, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass only have to be clicked. A Yubikey can only hold a limited amount of accounts, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass could hold many more. Of course, a Yubikey could be used as MFA for Bitwarden or Proton Pass, but that would create a single point of failure and reduce factor separation (which I think is your original point).

While I posted a Bitwarden or Proton Pass recommendation of sorts, I genuinely wonder if it’s advisable to not use MFA at all if the factors will not be separated. Or, perhaps, the best security solution is the one you’ll actually use. I guess the answer is the good ol’ “What’s your security model?”

These are not local solutions, but are cross-platform and open source: Bitwarden or Proton Pass.

It’s a set of apps that help you sync files between devices. It does so without relying on a centralized server, which is a curse (because you need the devices to be on and online) and a blessing (because it can be fast and private). I use it every day. It’s great!