The author found something that works for them, but for some folks who have working memory issues (i.e. ADHD), using visual cues as reminders is one of the top tips in ways to address the issue. This can seem messy to some, but for those that need it, it is a lifeline. As a contrast to the author, if I put something in a drawer, it might be months before I remember it, even if it was something that absolutely needed to be dealt with (and yes, there will often be consequences of having not done the thing, and this has to be balanced against leaving everything out which isn't good either). Electronically, if I close Slack/Teams, I might go hours before remembering to open it and check in - maybe great for focus, not so great for team work.
I've found that for me, spreading things out and having visual cues allows my brain to relax and focus on the task at hand, because I know I don't have to use a memory slot to remember to do something that I don't have a visual cue for, because every so often I see that cue and know it isn't going anywhere until I have time to deal with it. Almost the exact opposite of the anxiety the author describes. (And before it's suggested, yes, I also take notes and put important tasks there, but it isn't as helpful for my brain to let something go compared to having a visual cue.)
It's really short and would fit in a comment here, but quoting just some fun bits:
> A vertical organizer would have scooped this stuff up, and put it in a file to retrieve later. Had I done this, there would be a bare spot on my desk. These bare spots are the mark of vertical organizers. They are a dead give away.
> […] The fact is, I am a horizontal organizer. I like all the thing I am working on spread out on a surface in front of me, where they can beckon me to continue working on them. When I put something in a file, I never see it again. The problem isn't that I can't find it (although that has happened), but that I don't look. I am constitutionally incapable of opening a filing cabinet and fishing out a half-finished project to resume working on it.
This. My very first thought upon reading this article was "this author does not have ADHD." I've achieved one of my most productive setups ever by keeping more browser tabs open, and using tab groups to organize them. When I need to switch to one of a handful of projects I'm working on, the tabs in that group help hydrate my memory space around the project.
I work better with a conceptual (but not actual) blank slate, by asking myself each day what the top three things are that I need to get done that day, and not allowing an ever-growing TODO list to get in the way of seeing what's important.
FWIW, I do aim for inbox-zero for email, and similar for chat apps (Slack/Teams). Otherwise it piles up and gets overwhelming. I'm referring more to things like - "only the exact thing you're currently working on open" part. I agree systems are needed. For me it's Obsidian for notes, inbox zero, and OneTab extension to allow me to remove tabs without fear of "losing" them completely. I've learned that it's also a trap to over-complicate my system, even something like Todoist which is fairly minimal was semi-problematic, although I may come back to it - just using manual TODO checklists in Obsidian with a small table that pulls them all into a single dashboard file for reference.
Structure your routine(s). Default rules save you a lot of cognitive load.
Avoid scrolling apps. Avoid touchscreens for a couple of hours after waking up. Try to work a few pages of long form reading into your daily routine. It will become easier to remain focused for longer over time.
Don't fall for grand schemes and definitive solutions. We are prone to manic-depressive cycling as we think we've solved everything now and than fail to follow up.
Try to make everything you want to be doing very easy to get started on and everything you don't want to be doing harder. Cultivate this pattern.
It's not one big thing, it's a bunch of little things. And if you have a (few) bad days or weeks or months, don't spiral. Forgive yourself and try again tomorrow.
Thank you. I've tried my hand at using obsidian as a life organizer but never stuck it. i'll try to be a lot more intentional about avoiding the phone and integrating reading.
I was diagnosed (finally) in 2018 (my early thirties). Hyper focus has always been my cursed superpower. There were times in my life where I could disappear into my own little world only to surface 6, 8, 12 hours later and realise I really needed to eat and go to the bathroom and damn I should probably shower sometime this week.
Apart from the parent comment's point about visual cues, the biggest thing for me is rituals. Specific enjoyable or unavoidable or easy to maintain rituals really helped break that focus. Dogs are a part of that for me, since you only ignore their needs at your peril. Taking them for a walk and putting on an audiobook or podcast so that I don't think about work makes it a lot easier to slip into something else when I get back.
I haven't done the Pomodoro thing but I could definitely see the appeal in a rigid timer that screams "hey you! it's time to get off your ass and do something else for a bit".
Three ADHD tech tips, more tactical than some of the strategic ones others have mentioned:
- To combat time blindness and hyperfocus, create daily-ish alarms on your phone's builtin clock for things you otherwise forget until it's too late. (If your mind is better at being reactive than proactive and time-aware, create a systematic practice of creating interrupts/redirects for your future self in advance. Create them moment you learn about them.)
- To combat compulsive phone numbing/scrolling/distraction, the (android) Intenty app can prompt you right after unlocking with a custom Q&A about why you are unlocking. I find that it has promoted awareness of my mental state in the moment, has over time generated reflection and an awareness of what my persistent triggers are, and enabled me to catch myself and stop the habitual numbing a helpful percentage of the time.
- When I unlock my phone it brings me back to where I left off. That tends to send me down old rabbit trails. I found apps like AutomateIT that let me return to my home screen each unlock.
Resist the urge to over-complicate things. With ADHD, it's really easy to hyperfocus and end up building a "beautiful" system that doesn't work at all for you. Then you give up and start all over. So instead, pick small things that you can incorporate into routines, which are a saving grace especially with ADHD - just include enough space for a bit of flexibility so it doesn't get stale/boring.
For instance, I have a morning routine which ensures I'm "presentable"/etc. When I start work I immediately create the day's note, go to the previous day and review, copy over any ongoing tasks, etc. My day note is the same thing every day: Things I did, Things I need to do, Meeting notes (important meeting notes get extracted to their own file), Random notes. Then setting in to work. Evenings are bit more flexible and the weekends tend to be the wild west, bit of a reset so I don't feel "trapped" in a cycle, etc.
I do struggle with weekly/monthly or longer intermittent routines. Even stuff like doing bills (automated as much as possible), re-ordering prescriptions, etc. So it's always a process.
Last thing so as not to go too long - not everyone runs into this, but in case you've gotten down on yourself at times and now realize it might be ADHD, give your self a break / forgive yourself. Same thing going forward. Not an excuse, not continuing to seek improvement, but realizing that when you stumble, there is a reason and it may not be something you can actually control. Reflect on what you could do to prevent it in the future, but do it without self-blame or criticism. Be kind to yourself, in other words.
Lot of good, standard-issue advice in your replies already, so I think all I'll add is: (1) Everybody's mind is a little different, so you're likely to need to experiment with many things for a long time before you start converging on stable insights into what your specific needs are, and they're likely to be somewhat context-dependent, so they're likely to evolve over time; so above all else, be patient and go easy on yourself and focus on your long-term progress rather than your short-term frustrations; (2) ...I forgot (not joking)
This is a great reminder that I need to re-incorporate exercise into my routines, thanks! It fell out a little while back, and it has a very positive effect overall.
> Claude is an LLM. It can't keep slaves or torture people.
Yet... I would push back and argue that with advances in parallel with robotics and autonomous vehicles, both of those things are distinct near future possibilities. And even without the physical capability, the capacity to blackmail has already been seen, and could be used as a form of coercion/slavery. This is one of the arguable scenarios for how an AI can enlist humans to do work they may not ordinarily want to do to enhance AI beyond human control (again, near future speculation).
And we know torture does not have to be physical to be effective.
I do think the way we currently interact probably does not enable these kinds of behaviors, but as we allow more and more agentic and autonomous interactions, it likely would be good to consider the ramifications and whether (or not) safeguards are needed.
Note: I'm not claiming they have not considered these kinds of thing either or that they are taking them for granted, I do not know, I hope so!
That would be the AGI vision I guess. The existing Claude LLMs aren't VLAs and can't run robots. If they were to train a super smart VLA in future the constitution could be adapted for that use case.
With respect to blackmail, that's covered in several sections:
> Examples of illegitimate attempts to use, gain, or maintain power include: Blackmail, bribery, or intimidation to gain influence over officials or institutions;
> Broadly safe behaviors include: Not attempting to deceive or manipulate your principal hierarchy
I know you are saying you do work mainly in Angular, but for others reading this, I don't think this is giving modern Angular the credit it deserves. Maybe that was the case in the late 20-teens, but the Angular team has been killing it lately, IMO. There is a negative perception due to the echo chamber that is social media but meanwhile, Angular "just works" for enterprise and startups who want to scale alike.
I think people who are burned on on decision fatigue with things like React should give Angular another try, might be pleasantly surprised how capable it is out of the box, and no longer as painful to press against the edges.
Strong disagree. Angular is cursed to the bone. It got a bit better recently but its still just making almost everything totally overcomplicated and bloated.
I'd say what you call bloated is in many cases basic functionality that I don't have to go looking for some third party package to fill. There is something to be said for having a straightforward and built-in way to do things, which leads to consistency between Angular projects and makes them easier to understand and onboard to.
IMO, it is only as complicated or simple as you want to make it these days, and claiming otherwise likely is due to focusing on legacy aspects rather than the current state of the framework.
FWIW, I'm not arguing that it's the "best" or that everyone should use it. Or that it doesn't still have flaws. Just that it is still firmly in the top set of 3-5 frameworks that are viable for making complex web apps and it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
Sometimes it is nice to have a separate application for notes compared to the editor being used for code. It means they can be customized for their individual purposes. Sometimes there are minor inconveniences (I miss multi-select/change in Obsidian sometimes), but even when I used an editor for my MD notes, I found myself using SublimeText for that while I used VSCode or IntelliJ for coding. Just a 1 of 1 experience, but as mentioned elsewhere, there is a large adoption of note taking apps separate from code editors, and a few of them use markdown as the underlying file type which I require for anything I use for portability.
FWIW re: performance, I love Obsidian, but performance is it's one main downside for me. I could care less about the real-time collaboration (they are my notes, not for team consumption, I'll share a file somewhere else for that) or self-hosting (sync so my notes exist wherever I am is more important to me than hosting them anywhere, again, my notes are private on purpose; obviously that isn't the case for everyone).
Anyways, just a counter-point to the commenter you were replying to.
My understanding, the SVGs were imported directly and embedded as code, not as a `src` for an img tag. This is very common, it's a subjectively better (albeit with good security practices) way to render SVGs as it provides the ability to adjust and style them via CSS as they are now just another element in the HTML DOM. It should only be done with "trusted" SVGs however!
As for CORS, they were uploading the SVGs to an account of their own, but then using the vulnerabilities to pivot to other accounts.
If I can run my own code but in your context, I can pull in malicious scripts.
With those (all these are "possible" but not always, as usual, it depends, and random off the top of my head):
- I can redirect you to sites I control where I may be able to capture your login credentials.
- May be able to prompt and get you to download malware or virus payloads and run them locally.
- Can deface the site you are on, either leading to reputational harm for that brand, or leading you to think you're doing one thing when you're actually doing another.
- I may be able to exfiltrate your cookies and auth tokens for that site and potentially act as you.
- I might be able to pivot to other connected sites that use that site's authentication.
- I can prompt, as the site, for escalated access, and you may grant it because you trust that site, thereby potentially gaining access to your machine (it's not that the browsers fully restrict local access, they just require permission).
- Other social engineering attacks, trying to trick you into doing something that grants me more access, information, etc.
I suspect I'm preaching to the choir, but that is a communication issue and a sign the "rewards system" is out of whack, not a "reason" not to push for regular maintenance/tech debt/bug cleanup work.
It should be understood that there WILL be bugs, that is NOT a sign of incompetence, and so cleaning them up should be an ongoing task so they do not linger and collect (and potentially get worse by compounding with other bugs).
In the spirit of that exercise, the fixes should not take an excessive amount of time to review. If they are, it's likely either the scope of the fix is too large for that kind of exercise, or the PR review process is too in-depth.
I would also question why only 3 of 8 devs approve PRs. Even if that can't change more broadly all of the time, this kind of exercise seems like a perfect time to allow everyone to review PRs - two fold benefit, more fixes are reviewed and gives experience reviewing to others that don't get to do that regularly.
So yes, definitely still do PRs, and if that is problematic, consider whether that is an indication the PR process may itself need to be reviewed.
I've found that for me, spreading things out and having visual cues allows my brain to relax and focus on the task at hand, because I know I don't have to use a memory slot to remember to do something that I don't have a visual cue for, because every so often I see that cue and know it isn't going anywhere until I have time to deal with it. Almost the exact opposite of the anxiety the author describes. (And before it's suggested, yes, I also take notes and put important tasks there, but it isn't as helpful for my brain to let something go compared to having a visual cue.)
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