one of the hacks i always suggest for social anxiety is fixing status to a middle or lower value. socially anxious people, are always assessing their status and that puts lot of stress, in addition to anxiety. assuming a fixed but middle or lower status gives some stability and reduces the stress part. it at least frees part of your brain and you can focus on what is going on around you.
Tech people need to know when to struggle on their own vs when to ask for help. Some people struggle a lot on their own, while some people dont struggle at all and ask for help on the first hint of hurdle. Both approaches have +-. A wholesome engineer does both.
Riding bicycle - as a skill is awkward and fascinating. It was established at very old times and so has remained. Imagine bicycles were invented today, its a product that nobody would buy. It takes lot of learning, falling, injuries, and for a lay person it looks awkward and risky.
If we generalize this, we are missing out on some skills, which are awkward but which our bodies and nervous system can learn? but perhaps we are not trying to learn thinking its risky?
I think there is also a hidden cost of this, which is, the filtering that the brain needs to do prevents you from seeing other opportunities. We have X amount of time and attention and these things fill that up.
For example, when it comes to improving personality/body language, there are lot of tools in theater/acting that can be useful. Mainstream media never talks about these opportunities. I came to know about these very late, accidentally.
Power saving on lab setups when nobody is using them. they have google calendar for booking. so a daemon looks calendar every hour, if no booking, turns off outlets (the power supplies are remotely controllable over telnet).
this reminds me, there is a principle from the book - the courage to be disliked. its about task seperation. basically you do your task and let others do their task. you dont let others meddle in your tasks and you dont meddle in tasks of others. For a singer for example, the singer's task is to sing well, focus on improving their voice, style, learn voice related skills and improve them. The critic has the task to love/hate the singing, comment, praise, do marketing (good or bad). The singer shouldnt manipulate what the critic does, its the critic's task.
i think this applies to all art/expression. this manupulation pandemic and image management of today's world is making artists slaves of critics.
I think addiction is about meaning. Addiction activities are always meaningful activities. May not be pleasurable activities but always meaningful. To quit a meaningful activity, you need to replace with another meaningful activity. like exercise, help someone, do something good..whatever is meaningful to you.
I have tried going back to incandescent for the spectrum part. The main issue I faced was the number of light bulbs required to get sufficient enough lighting. At least the incandescents we get in my area, mostly werent bright enough.
The suggestion about low lighting in the article, I recently read that reading in low light is associated with myopia/nearsightedness in children so there is that angle too.
My kids are mostly in bed by the time this matters to me, at least in the winter months. And I'd like to think they get plenty of lighting during the day, as we kick them outside for some period of time every day, regardless of weather (bundle up in the winter).
We have a well windowed house (just not in the OS sense), so it's rather bright in there - when the sun is up. And I don' think LEDs matter when the sun is up. I think they do matter after the sun is down, when I'm careful about light.
So if you've got some studies arguing that "bright light indoors, after the sun has gone down, is important to children," please - link them so I can read them.
