Ethics require a person to be infinitely merciless to themselves and infinitely merciful to other people. The physiology requires the opposite.
Too much work wearc out mind and body, too much self control causes psychological damage. And weak self-control causes harm to others, while lack of work causes material and reputational losses.
The only thing that’s left is to balance the damage dealt to you and the people around you to the best of your abilities and pray you have enough resilience to go through this.
I’ll elaborate: it is not blocked from the outside. It is blocked by the government from the inside.
Well, people went on the streets in Moscow. 2000 now arrested across country, and on the second day the subway station where people started gathering was blocked immideately. No one wants this war, except for the government.
Some say all germans were nazis in the 1940s. Well, I think I realize how did that feel. Trying to live your life, as best as you can, to find out one day that somebody decided to commit a slaughter using your name.
It is now day three of war. I have more or less relized the scale and the consequences of the events and worked out the rough plan of my actions. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I’ll get through this. There are a few complications.
1) Russia can’t buy chemicals from USA anymore. It makes it more difficult to do work as stuff that is made here is not great and what China sells is often quite shite.
2) Germany seized all the scientific projects with Russia, and there were plenty. I think the rest of Europe will follow along soon. And there are few facilities in Russia, most resources spent in the last years were aimed at getting access to foreign ones. Mainly, you guessed it, German.
3) If I happen to drop out of University, I get mobilized and sent to war. Which is not exactly what I aspire to do with my life. Killing humans is not on my to-do list and, I hope, never will be.
4) No CPUs and other components for the next 5+ years, probably. It’s a good thing I use linux and pretty much any computer will work. My i3-8xxx should last me a few more years before giving up and by that time I hope to get the hell away.
Correction to n.4: China will import their computers, huawei and xiaomi and maybe others. I may upgrade to these. but who says China will keep getting their CPUs?..
So I put together a quick article on giving a talk. Inspired by my experience last Friday.
https://academicalnerd.blogspot.com/2022/01/on-public-speaking.html
I switched to journalling and planning on paper this year. Been loving it so far.
https://academicalnerd.blogspot.com/2022/01/analogue-note-taking-digital-mess-we.html
The long-term planning boils down to a simple algorithm:
1) Identify end goal, feasible for your capabilities and the timeframe, a year in this case.
2) Break it down into smaller milestones, assuming linear progress (for the sake of simplicity). Quaters work well.
3) Break the milestones into steps, in this case I use monthly goals as an outline.
4) Consider the processes that are likely to bring you to the end goal and design them.
5) Keep going back to the initial plan and readjusting based on the experience.
It is a difficult process to tacle, in part because it is frustrating to face the uncertainty. But the rewards, I believe, are worth it.
I am now in the process of annual review and planning. This will take me a few days on and off to finish, as there are some 300 daily notes and two small notebooks.
The review will include notable events and parties, some key ideas and lessons, and a list of accomplishments.
The planning part will take longer, as I plan on redoing my entire setup to lean towards analogue note-taking and minimalistic digital workflow, that would link together all or almost all of my work as a scientist, writer, teacher and - lately - game developer. I’ll post a few updates on this as I go.