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Obisidan Workflow

This is my first personal order for Obsidian with some actual rules and not improvising everything.

I've read Kepano's way and this other guy I think both are useful in some way but I' sticking closer to Kepano. Not copying as he has a lots of templates with structured information in the YAML as he seems to create a lot of lists and rankings. Currently I'm using Obsidian a lot for technical notes, daily notes, paper annotation but also some listing as books I've read, movies, etc. It's a mix and I'm not sure I know what info to put for everything that is not a book, or game. Like, notes from some technical topic I can put the area or the author but there is no ranking.

Also, I like folders and he hates them. I'll do the following.

  • Have folders by general topic to order the notes (book, movies, companies I work for, projects). Notes will be written where they belong the most. For general technical topics (such as Xgboost, I might create a data science or technical folder with all there. I'll put reasonable tags, many notes in different folders might share tags)
  • Notes across folders might share useful information. Maybe I have some deployment technical note on a company that could apply for another project, or even I'll want to find it without remembering where I applied it, so, I'll also add tags so I can see everything together using dataview
  • I'll try to add relevant information usable by dataview in some cases, such as Author for books, or technical notes.
  • I'll have a [[tags]] folder with relevant tags with queries from dataview so I can have stuff organized.
  • I'll keep tags in english for technical stuff but for books, series, etc where is more natural to remember in spanish (I'm from Argentina) and won't be shared probably I'll ues them in spanish (such as "policial", "novela", etc which are words that I never use in english).

Taking notes is life changing.

I constantly feel that my memory is failing me more and more even for things that I put effort of retaining.
Why is a more complex topic, I'm not sure, some medical condition? chronical bad sleep? nothing wrong just this is it and everyone has this poor memory?

The feeling is like when you read some code you wrote few weeks/months ago and you can't remember anything nor why you did it this way. Well, that but for a lot of stuff.

Despite the cause I've decided to help myself and stop thinking "I will remember this, it's super important" and I began taking notes regularly. This helped me in a huge way for personal topics but also for work and technical subjects.

It helps in two ways:

1) Writing helps memorizing things, you are going through it again and you need to organize a bit your ideas to put them on paper.
2) I have a place to rest on where I can find information I should have memorized.

I started doing it randomly for everyday things, like things I want to buy for the house, places I would like to visit, places I've gone.
This Christmas I'm also writing the gifts I gave, and what I received. I hate the feeling of someone telling me "Hey, this is the shirt you gave me!" and I'm speechless for a second and it's obvious I don't remember, or to avoid giving twice the same gift.
I'm expanding these notes as I encounter situations where I regret the status of my memory.

But taking notes is also huge for me in terms of Work and research.

Some examples:

  • Daily notes on what I've done in my full time job (YYYY-MM-DD). I can always come back if someone asks, sometimes I put some briefs about decisions made on meetings. Specially useful for Mondays where I forget what I did/talked on Friday.
  • Notes on how I did something that I did for the first time. In my job or in my side businesses, including decisions, commands, installation processes. I find myself coming back to these really often and I think this saves my huge amounts of time, stress and frustration. It's surprising how I forget THE command I've been running twice a day for some deployment test if I have to come back to that topic two weeks later. Something that seems impossible to forget at some point just vanishes. Also, super useful for my side business where I setup something once (DB, platform, server, whatever) and I need to revisit how I did it or what resource I followed in case I have to do it again.
  • Studying. I'm also taking side notes on books and papers that I later write down in the form of more structured texts. What I understood about papers, doubts, summaries. As usual, while reading I feel I understand but then if I need to revisit the paper without notes it feels like I need to re read it. Many times I read my notes and I feel surprised as I don't remembered a lot of contents, is like the note was given to me by someone else.

Motivation

It's a tough topic because everyone has a different perception and it's hard to share emotions but I feel what I call motivation really has an impact on me. Sometimes is a silent impact, I'm talking now about lack ok motivation, noticeable only when it comes back.
You don't know what you don't know. You don't know how much energy and willingness to do things you should have if you never realized it.

My biggest adulthood lack of motivation came from jobs. I can't complain, I work in software/Machine learning, good salaries, remote work if desired, etc, but still, a day to day that is not fulfilling has devastating effects. Even more, probably fully remote work post pandemic plays a role in this despite I think the net effect is positive as I can't value enough the commute time regained.

The difference between being motivated to do something and being indifferent is the largest gap possible. If you truly desire something and work for it the odds of succeding increase exponentially.

Things I've realized that affect my motivation:

  • Sleep. I have regular issues sleeping. Usually after 2 days of bad sleep my brain doesn't work anymore. I work poorly, I get anxious because I can't get anything done nor I can think properly. I sleep bad again and so on. Disaster.
  • Anxiety. It's related to sleep but not always. Feeling I can't do something or that I don't understand some topic or how to solve a problem, makes me anxious and after a while I want to quit. I trust I can understand or solve complex machine learning topics but usually not having a clear North is really stressful. If only I could have someone guiding a bit, everything looks better. Not knowing if you are on the right path and you have a short time to figure out something is horrible. For instance, we need to solve X problem. You ask a few days for research, you accumulate papers or blogposts, but sometimes none is exactly your solution, and then all have something different, and then you don't know what to read and all are long pieces of text, and they mention other topics you don't know. I feel anxious just by writing this, but one needs to make peace with the fact that you can't have a phD in every topic to solve. Maybe in none if you are just in industry and you are responsible for multiple projects, and things will be done suboptimally probably. But it's hard to really accept it and on top of that, is you have a boss or some coleague asking for this, the stress is twice as big, at least for me. Fear of disappointing. Maybe that's another whole note.
  • Daily meetings. Daily standup or just status meetings are terrible for me. I feel the pressure to explain myself every day, to tell someone else what did I do for 8 hours and sometimes, when motivations it's at a low level, is not that much, or maybe I am just researching without having grasped full understanding so it seems unfruitful, and this goes back to anxiety. Every day feeling the need to have something meaningful to share. Currently I don't have daily meetings, I have some freedom to work and then put up to speed my manager. I feel more free and funny enough, I feel that I do more progress on a daily basis this way.
  • Social media. You can see unrealistic success stories all day long that feel like someone found the way to live in a 5 minute revelation and minimum effort. All fake, all lies but you can quickly fall in that trap of feeling less than others. You just have to compare yourself with previous you, not others that are even probably fake. On top of that, when you realize all the time you get back you feel like your days are longer and you can fight the anxiety better. At some point I realized this and when I automatically reached my phone, which happened really often, to open Twitter, I would hit my wrist (without hurting!) and took a deep breath, then drop the phone. You get back 5/10 minutes of time you would use in social media, and that accumulates fast.

I've quit because of this, because of not being happy, because of being stressed every morning by lack of progress. Maybe I wasn't up to the task, maybe if you know exactly what you are doing you can move forward steadily without worrynig about this but I'm sure there was another time in a project where I felt all this lack of motivation and it was not because of "skill issue" but because of continuous urgency. Every morning I could (or maybe not, you don't know until you check your phone) with some urgent message of modifying something because yadda yadda the client. Sometimes it made sense, others.. not so much, and that feeling of being alert and thinking about slack messages all the time was awful, you can't focus, you can't feel you are working in peace in something.

Consequence

Eventually I quit all that and started learning about how to set up a job board, reading , drinking coffee, I took a 6 month sabbatical, at least, industry sabbatical, but I would spend time in the computer learning, working in the job board, etc. But I was free and owner of my own time, no one expecting anything. If I wanted to do nothing and just play with my dog all afternoon, there was no daily standup the next morning to dread. I could enjoy things without worrying.

Unfortunately in those six months I didn't make a fortune nor won the jackpot so I went back to industry but without ruhsing. I looked for jobs that at least, before joining, made me want to join. Maybe because of the area, maybe because of the technology and in some case, maybe because it seemed chill. I had my share of rejections and processes that went nowhere but I ended up in a startup with a really enjoyable day to day structure. I'm really grateful about it, I have a couple of meetings per weeks and that's it. I can do things at my own pace (given some realistic timelines), I can share ideas with my manager but I don't need to impress anyone on a daily basis. You could think that I'm chilling but not, I work hard, I learn a lot of stuff and I put the best of me because I feel comfortable and grateful to how my manager handles the startup.

Conclusions

  • Fix your sleep. Try everything and don't give up for too much time. You can try:
    • Magnesium
    • Having dinner earlier
    • Start relaxing one hour before (lights down, no screens, reading a bit, etc). This is the most unrealistic for me, can be done once, not regularly if you are anxious.
    • Drink some relaxing tea.
    • Legal drugs (alprazolam or similar, check with doctor.)
    • Nose strips
    • Meditate

You need to find what's the main cause but if it's only "being anxious", start trying stuff, at least you will feel doing something about it.

  • If you can afford it, change your job, take a sabbatical, take some time and look for what you really want.

Reflections on quitting my ML job

As I'm starting my sabbatical journey I am reading some posts of Jason Liu since he seems to have a career similar to something I would like to if I got into ML and LLM riding the hype wave. Furthermore I find his writing pleasant and his content could be useful even as a solopreneur.

One of my goals for this period of time is to write more. To take more notes since I struggle memorizing without them (or even with them but at least I can read a summary later) and I want to actually do more. More of everything, less thinking about and more actual doing. From shipping products, to really learning and that includes writing.

Reading his post and starting now my journey, a real action would be to take notes about his post, which I found useful, at least some bits of it. Not taking notes would be less writing, less doing, less memorizing.

Choosing

Right now, I feel more at this point

"This despair arises from the realization of one's absolute freedom and the responsibility for creating one's own essence and purpose."

Lately, last few years probably, I have started to realize that quote. We can go a long way by following the usual paths, at least usual to our surroundings. In my case, without major distress that turns everything upside down, it was high school, university, get a job, get married, retire. At least, that's something I (many?) thought as given, a fate that if didn't screw it, it would happen automatically.

And as I was applied and I did good in school, I got the first 3 steps quite easily. I never really thought of going out of that path and saw the ones doing so as outliers or with greater safety nets to fail. In some cases it could be true, in others it was probably me being short sighted, I guess it was not my fault but just lack of adult life.

As years go by, I start questioning the meaning of what I'm doing. Is my job meaningful? Does it create value or help anyone? Corporate world feels like a charade. Despite I was working in analytics and studying and building ML models, I couldn't see if that was worth the effort and time. Once you go past the hype of learning models and cool tech bits, looking over that it feels empty. I changed jobs. Still the same, I was dreading in boredom and rat race. Needing to "impress" people or feeling that I need to be there for work 9-5 each day without feeling motivated was awful. I quit after a few months willing to take some time off. What am I doing? I have no purpose and my day to day means nothing. I like seeing my friends and family, traveling, etc but the regular life has a lot more things and time to fill. I can't make this for 30 more years.

Fortunately, tech and ML pays high salaries so I felt safe. I could take some time off, I can always look for other job, etc. But the feeling of "I need to do something different" was there. I started looking for other opportunities, looking for purpose in jobs, looking for motivation. I was in despair as I understood that I needed to do my own way and no one was doing it for me.

Ironically, I took another job quit quickly because it paid much more and I could just try it, maybe I was just in the wrong place. Seemed to work better, it was less of a charade, I had more time for crafting and working, I got some motivation back as I felt at least more comfortable daily. Not that I had purpose really but working was at least with less pressure. The time zone differences helped because I didn't feel like 9 hours a day I was supposed to be there, with someone 1 click away of sending a slack message to me. I stayed two years. Earning good money compared to my spending, saving and "happy". Eventually everything started to decay, the job was less free, the business request were more urgent and I quickly lost motivation and started to fall in despair again. What am I doing? Who cares about this parquet file with funny numbers?

I quit, this time for good. Despair again, realization, I need to find something for myself, or try at least. I fear for its complexity, I fear if I can do it, if I can make a living in another way. I'm taking some time to rest but I know eventually I will need to figure things out. On my own, making my own way, and I see how no one will do it for me.

As a side note, finding purpose, finding your way, etc was also a thing when I thought about romantic relationships. Finding someone that you really care about and that cares about you is not easy at all and it doesn't happen magically as I thought as a kid. I am not going to expand about it here but it was another topic that made me realize about our own fate and efforts.

Side side note, retirement is another one. I don't see my national retirement plan as something you can live off. I see my family, that luckily does well but despite that nothing is granted and we can support the elder in my family because our own safety net. A younger me didn't know that but as my twenties went by I started to see a lot more of adult/real life. Eye opening period of my life.

How to be lucky

"Okay, I'm focused on getting X, but let's not forget to read the headlines."

High Agency and be the plumber

Reminder to myself, focus on bringing solutions and not the shiny new tool. I think I'm good at high agency or at being responsible and wanting to finish what I commit to.
I need to work on focusing on which solution am I bringing. Finding the right niche and actually bringing value. In my case with sportsjobs.online, not just throwing things into it, but making it clear what I am providing. For other topics related to ML and LLM I need to decide what I'll focus on this time coming in.

Impostor Syndrome I'm the classical example of not trusting myself and thinking stuff like this.

but at the end of the day, you must just think I have shit taste and that you've somehow tricked me into thinking you're good when you're an impostor? Right?

I need to stop with that. Quitting now I had plenty of nice words for every colleague, including the desire from managers that I stay or I come back if I get bored of not having a job. Of course, as I write that, I think in the back of my mind of exceptions and that technical colleagues were less effusive as my managers and etc. but all of that is probably not true. I'm going against all evidence and just guessing and making things in my head.

How to Be Good at Many Things Consistency. Every one says this. I need to do it the right way now that I'll have the time. No excuses.

Do things, practice, keep going for it. Everything will be easier and quicker.

And I need to be grateful for what I have and how lucky I am to be able to get a sabbatical time to try to change the path I'm going.