Vision 2022

Nice Things

• Social Justice
  • What is a social justice warrior? Develop the 3rd term.
• Creating something I'm proud of.
• Meeting people I like.

Dream Job?

What does the dream job look like?

Spending my high-mental-effort hours each day building something I am proud of that makes the world better.

Second Place Job?

Second place, which thing would you give up; pride in what you create or making the world better?

I think it's easier to give up on pride in what I build, if I had to pick, but I think there's a balance there. I think compensation is what tips it in favor of keeping pride but not making the world better.

What About Meeting People I Like?

Is there a place for fitting "Meeting people I like" in there?

I think not. I think I can meet people I like in non-career ways more optimally. But that's no reason to ignore the possibility. If its out there, sure, it's a bonus. Amazon gave me that, but it was just too much pain to justify the upside.

How many hours?

• Dedicated hours: 4 x 4 per week.
• Mix some months of 20 hour weeks with some months off.
• 20 hours per week is a pretty hard limit.

How much compensation?

• $80,000 seems like a good target
• 4 x 4 x 50 = 800 billable hours
• Each $100/hr = $80,000/yr

Consider these options:

• 16 hours/wk at $100 = 16 x 50 x $100 = $80,000
  • I would have a hard time doing this, unless it was pretty satisfying as well.
• 8 hours/wk at $200 = 8 x 50 x $200 = $80,000
• 4 hours/wk at $400 = 4 x 50 x $400 = $80,000
  • I think this would be fairly comfortable up to 25 hours a week, even if it wasn't a perfectly satisfying fit.

• $300 x 4 hours/wk = $60,000
• $300 x 20 hours/wk = $300,000

Start at $300/hr. If I get employed more than 20 hours a week consistently, bump the price up. If I get less than 4 hours consistently, bump the price down.

Balance

This is a set of goals, not a prescription.

• 4 Hours Health & Fitness (cardio, weightlifting, healthy eating, etc)
• 4 Hours Focused Work
• 4 Hours Social Development
• 8 Hours Sleep
• 4 Hours Self Care
  • This is a catch-all category that means, "For the rest of the time each day, when not doing one of the development activities, be good to your long-term self. Focus on your accomplishments and the strength you have shown in managing your shortfalls."

Some activities fit in more than one category. That's nice, because it builds in some flexibility.

Authenticity

One of my highest priorities is to be my authentic self. I believe that a primary cause of my distress is failing to embrace my core values, boxing in my authentic self to facilitate traditional productivity. There are pros and cons to that choice, and there are good reasons to do it on occasion. This is not my time for that.

Proposed Principal: Embrace Productive Distraction

When I become distracted by something, as just now when I was distracted from WebCal / WebDAV / iCal server research by pulling statistics on global carbon sources and sinks, I tend to castigate myself for going off-track. I want to explore stopping that (by which I mean stopping the castigation, not the behavior).

How can I embrace productive distraction? If what I am being distracted by is both productive and more interesting than what I was doing, how can I maximize the benefit of the distraction and minimize the cost, so that I can be more authentic about my desire to learn all the things?

Maximizing The Benefit

The key to maximizing the benefit is making it easy to quickly satisfy the knowledge craving that drives the distraction. This wiki is an example of a good repository for quick notes, at least to the extent that I keep it groomed and put things in places where they will naturally be recovered when next I dive on the topic.

Minimizing The Cost

RETURN from GOSUB

The key to a good subroutine is the return from the GOSUB call. I have to be able to pop back off the stack with my previous state as fully intact as possible. This will have different mechanisms depending on context: In the shop, it means I should keep my tools and materials somewhat organized, so I can return to a workspace that has a clear intent. When doing information ecosystem development, that means having notes on where I was at all times, so I can GOSUB on a moment's notice and RETURN to find good breadcrumbs.

Unproductive Distraction

Beware of unproductive distractions, such as playing video games. Some amount of recreation time is healthy, at some level the cost outweighs the benefit. The world is not lacking in productive things to learn about; focus distraction time on productive tangents.

IE: Keep good notes, maintain an organized workspace, avoid unproductive distraction.

AI

Fusion: https://suli.pppl.gov/2023/course/

Can Do

• Prediction
• Similarity / Correlation / Clustering / Classification
• Imitation

For Fusion

• Sub-second experiment run time.
• Sensors are wild-assed guesses, maybe? - environment is incredibly chaotic compared to the sensitivity of the sensors, I'm guessing?
• How many control parameters does a magnetic confinement unit have?

Needs

• Lots of example cases.
• Number of examples needed is O(m*n or m^n) where m is the number of features and n is the number of targets.
• Number of examples needed is inverse to the quality and cleanliness of the examples.