Doing hard things is what drives the human brain. Challenge. This is also what keeps us in the so called flow state. The state in which you’re being your best self. In which you produce as much as possibly can, both in terms of quality and in terms of quantity.

You get better at doing the hard things through experience but also through voluntary discomfort, and this is where the stoics come in. Back in the days of Ancient Rome, stoics would put themselves voluntarily through discomfort, both physical and mental in order to strengthen their minds and bodies. This was because they believed that in order to have a good and meaningful life, you would need to overcome your insatiability and dive into deep, hard work. In todays standards this discomfort would equivalate to climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator, walking to the office instead of taking the car or even disabling coding assistants in your IDE.

How to implement voluntary discomfort as a dev

  • when tasks are assigned, try and get the ones that you have absolutely no idea what they mean - these are best for growth - if they exist, otherwise default to most difficult
  • when there needs to be something done in a different project / with a different tech stack and you’re asked if you can do it, just do it
  • from time to time, learn and do the thing instead of using a thing that does the thing, or using a thing that uses the thing that does the thing, or… you got the point
  • if you program outside of your working hours, use something different than what you use at work (unless you need to ship fast and this would make you much slower)

Minimalism

Your ability to go deep and hard into problems is highly impacted by the ease of use of your tools and the amount of distractions in your environment. Romans were adepts of minimalism to allow them to focus on the important problems in life (well, that was until they started throwing parties where they would fill themselves with food and drink, tickle their throats with goose feathers to throw everything up, get back to eating and drinking and repeat this until they got bored).

The moral of the story is you should aim to have such tools as to allow yourself to focus on the difficult things. Once decided on them, you should focus on learning them by heart, master them. When you’re searching files visually on the directory overview in vscode you’re doing something wrong. Now, I’m not going to tell you what to use, but you should use Linux, i3, tmux and vim for the absolute least overhead and most minimal set of screwdrivers. Or, if you want to use ed, like the rockstars from ancient times, I can only bow to that. Also, eat and drink in moderation (because it ain’t that easy to come by goose feathers nowadays, unless you’re living in rural areas, in which case you’re fine, knock yourself out).

Why LLMs might not be that good for your health

The stair problem: you deliver pizza to the door in a big city. You have the choice of taking the elevator or climbing the stairs. What do you choose? If you take the elevator you will get to the twentieth floor faster than getting the stairs, but is that really better? It depends. You are of course, delivering it much faster, at least in the short term. Your competitor might be way slower in the beginning months, but he will catch up because doing the hard thing will shape him. And when there’s a new block in town that hasn’t got it’s elevator set up yet, will you honour orders to any of the people living there? What about your health? your competitor will be fit and in great shape while you’d get to become a potato. Don’t become a potato!

The rally driver & co-driver problem: In order to drive real fast on difficult tracks whilst minimizing chances of crashing there has to be a strong relationship based on trust between the driver and co driver. Also, the co-drivers instructions must be as clear and precise as possible. Will you get on the wheel if your co-driver is hallucinating from too much LSD?

To be clear, I’m not saying that LLMs aren’t a useful tool, I’m just advocating for moderation and constant exposure to voluntary discomfort that would keep us in shape. Not to forget also that Microsoft is behind almost all of this. Everyone knows me and my homies sincerely, truly like Microsoft.

Proper environment

Apart from the minimalist tools, the voluntary discomfort and a sincere dedication to hard work, the environment is a big part of who we are, how we make decissions and most likely a clear indication of who we will be in the future. This, like many things in life, is predetermined. You don’t get to choose it. You kind of do a force landing into existence and hope to land in a decent spot. Myself, I was lucky enough to land in such a spot and for that I am grateful. I am grateful for having a supporting family, great friends that I can count on, a highly skilled team at work and inspiring figures (Prime).

Ok, enough writing. Back to feasting.