Posts by ZZZ

  • Mental health / rant thread

    Yes. US and BR suffer from the overmedication and two categories stand out: depression and adhd. I think that the third would be related to losing weight. To make matters worse there are many more bad mental health professionals than good ones.

    I was watching some specialists in narcissism, borderline and such and it's incredible how many disorders are misunderstood. Very few have the means and the knowledge to treat them.

  • What have you read lately?

    Quote from ThunderKeil

    14 hours ago, ThunderKeil said: am I allowed to stop after 3 pages, or was this a trap to call me a quitter for not finishing it

    He said to not bother about the rest of the book because it's uninteresting, but if you don't read the first pages you are missing the experience of having to face a very hard text.

  • What have you read lately?

    I'm reading "Small treatise of the great virtues". Finished the first chapter and going to finish the second. Boy, it's hard. Maybe not as hard as Kant, but it's paying off. I'm learning new vocabulary.

    There is a famous teacher here that recorded a class he gave where he talked about "having the guts" to read Kant. He dared everyone to pick up "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" and read the first three pages. He warned "the first paragraph is going to cause you some bad feelings. Don't let Kant laugh at you! Read it again and again and again. You have to have the guts to understand it". I never knew this teacher but I'm getting it by reading something about virtues. The previous book, about procrastination, is paying off too. I must have read some paragraphs of this book about virtues about 10x until I finally grasped it.

    Years ago I'd be frustrated by the difficulty of reading and just drop it. Now it's different, I'm concentrating on one page at a time or one paragraph at a time. It's working and preventing me from procrastinating.

  • What have you read lately?

    Solving the procrastination puzzle.

    I delayed and delayed, procrastinated, reading this book for years. I finally read it. Everything it teaches makes sense. I mean, I do everything this book describes. It's the same thing that the psychiatrist that I follow explained. Deep down it's about negative emotions and how we handle them. There are many illusions that we cast on ourselves that ultimately make we delay this, delay that, postpone in a never ending cycle of pain and suffering. It's all created inside your own mind and knowing what decisions you subconsciously make is the beginning of a process of enlightenment.

  • What's going on with your life?

    I was watching a psychiatrist talking about why we delay and postpone important things. It's all related to emotions and feelings down the road.

    So I read the book "Ego is the enemy" and came to realize why I was able to read it without struggling to concentrate. Because I read it slowly. I never forced myself to read it all in one go.

    Have you ever heard about "Divide and conquer"? Pretty sure everyone has. Why not use it in everyday life? You have an article of ten pages to read. Most of the time you delay reading it, you are doing it because reading is hard or the text's content is hard to grasp. Divide it, set a goal of spending 2 minutes reading ONE PAGE. Then read the next. Depending on the case you might want to subdivide the task in "READ HALF A PAGE" and then take your time to think about it.

    Why is game development a complex process? Because it has so many pieces that you need to spread out the tasks in multiple areas at the same time. Everyone is doing a smaller task with the ultimate goal of completing the whole product.

    I remember years ago when I was failing to complete any maps. What made me complete maps was that I began to make lists of tasks such as texture, pillars, water, lights, so on. Years and years later and I still have similar issues and they all relate to the lack of direction. I need to have a clear direction before I start a map. I can relate to a teacher who once told me that during her bachelor in astrophysics she had to make a plan to concentrate on what subjects she would take per semester without being overloaded.

  • What have you read lately?

    Finished 90% of Ego is the enemy.

    One thing I started to notice. It tells many cases of success and failures and how ego is always there. However, this book does not tell you why ego is there. It tells the consequences, but not the causes. It also does not tell you how to control your own ego.

  • What have you read lately?

    So I read half of this book "Ego is the enemy".

    I can't stop noticing that this book is talking about the core issue of almost every mental disorder. Specially the case of personality disorders. Ego is the main issue of narcissistic personality disorder. Everything about it is about ego.

    About real life, this book has a lot of examples that tell you not how to be successful. Rather, what is required to be successful. All the discussion in it can be applied to families, companies, admission exams, politics, everything. Some parts of it resonate quite well with the lessons that I've learned with Mark Rosewater in his talk about mistakes made while making Magic.

    I have a feeling that almost everything that I read in this book I have already read elsewhere. If you ever read about athletes, great leaders and stories of successful companies, most if not all ideas in this book are not new.