July 13, 2021

How to get nothing done

life emacs tip

Here are my pro-tips how to successfully get nothing done.

Require purposes 🔗

It is always important to find a valid purpose for all actions before execution.

This is normally the easiest way to get nothing done. Human needs 2,000-3,000 kcal energy per day and reasonable warm shelter during the winter. Everything else is less important and difficult to justify.

Don’t start before everything is clear 🔗

And, by everything I really mean everything in life.

Iterative behaviour introduces risk of something done wrong. It’s shameful to introduce anything incomplete or imperfect. ❌

Often people start by implementing the happy path. That is not recommended because then edge cases may not be handled in the most optimal and elegant way. Thus, all edge and corner cases should be identified before anything is done.

If you have something unclear in your life, it’s wise to postpone task implementation. Otherwise, unwanted thoughts may disturb you and cause imperfection.

Keep everything in head 🔗

You may be tempted to write things down or draw diagrams. It is not recommended because it is not optimal.

Brain is like a high performance computer with fast RAM. Brain keeps constantly refreshing memories to minimize data loss. If data is written down, it is also extracted from the main memory.

Everything must be scalable 🔗

Do nothing manually. You never know when you have to replicate that task to 1,000 machines.

The safest way is to implement everything with Ansible and scripts.

Prefer LIFO over FIFO 🔗

When you get new tasks, use LIFO algorithm to process them. I.e., give the highest priority to the newest task. That makes possible you to be agile and flexible.

Prefer depth-first over breadth-first 🔗

Often task execution is combination of research, learning, and execution. You could use eager breadth-first algorithm to get things done, but it is not good in long run.

The depth-first style enables you develop yourself, and be sustainable and ethical.

Example task:

Write a hello world shell script.

Good depth-first approach

  1. Question if your primary programming editor is the best one
    1. What is editor’s history, how future-proof it is?
    2. Consider ethical aspects
    3. Consider editor’s technical implementation and code quality
  2. Do research about IDEs and text editors
  3. Test different software products
  4. End up to Emacs
  5. Configure Emacs
    1. Test different configuration frameworks, like Spacemacs and Doom
    2. Learn Emacs and Emacs Lisp
      1. An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp
      2. GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
    3. Do your own configuration
  6. Follow Emacs development
    1. Join mailing lists
    2. Participate to EmacsConf
    3. Start donate to Emacs people
  7. Compile Emacs dev branch to get new fancy features
  8. Participate to Emacs development

As you see, task was successfully forgotten. ✅

P.S. In 2017 I had some task in my mind. Today I am married to Emacs (love-hate relationship), and can’t remember the original task.