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Category: Productivity

Book Review: Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler

Published by Bobby Lin on June 22, 2022

Book Link: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Impossible-Peak-Performance-Primer/dp/0062977539

Flow Triggers

  • Intrinsic Drivers (Curiosity, Passions and Purpose [Massively Transformative Purposes])
  • Autonomy (Freedom to do)
  • Mastery (Challenge-Skills improvement)

Curiosity

  • List down 25 items that you are curious about. For example, you will spend your free time on researching a topic or problem, read a book on a subject, attending a lecture, watching a youtube video and keeping track of the topic in news or social media like Twitter.
  • Make sure that the listed items are specific enough so that your brain can look for patterns. If the topic is too broad (e.g. Application Security), then it will be hard to discover what exactly you want to explore.
  • Hunt for the curiosities intersections. Discover the overlapping areas between the different items that you have listed.
  • Curiosity by itself is not enough to trigger any motivation. You need to stack one curiosity on top on another. The more you stack, the more powerful the list of stacked curiosities will be to motivate you to research and learn more.
  • Whenever you recognize a new pattern between what you are curious about, your brain reward you with Dopamine.
    • Helps you to focus on the task
    • Detect more patterns by improving signal-to-noise ratio
    • Makes us feel good about doing an activity.
    • Enhance our memory on a specific subject.
  • Spend time on these intersections. Allocate 20 to 30 minutes daily on listening to podcasts, watching videos, reading articles, books, lectures, doing practical projects related to any aspects of the intersections.
    • For example, if you are interested in how solving Leetcode problems can help to improve your programming skills. You might try to read a few pages on a Data Structure and Algorithm (DSA) topics. Then try to solve 1 related question to the topic that you are reading. Or you might read a specific book on the programming language such as Fluent Python and see how you can write better code.
  • Engage in these curiosities everyday. This will allow your brain to adapt and process the new information in the new subject slowly. This method is similar to “incubation” stage where your brain is joining the old information with the new information to form more patterns. Let our brain naturally make these connections without forcing our brain to make any discoveries.
  • Pay attention to these two things while you are engaging in your curiosities:
    • History of the subject. If you note down the historical details of the subject, your brain will create a narrative that help you to snitch the details into a coherent story that you can remember easily without effortful memorization.
    • Technical Language. There are precise definitions for jargons in the field that you need to understand in order to make better connections between what you are exploring. To communicate and understand the subject better, you need to note down the jargons definitions. The experts in the field use the jargons to explain something precisely.
  • Go Public. Before going public, make sure you spend time playing around the intersections of your curiosities. At least have some unique perspectives and ideas before going to public (online forum, book clubs, meetups etc.)

Purposes

  • Write down your massively transformative purpose (MTPs). The purpose (reason why the work is done) that is large and audacious, and bring significant change to an industry, community or to the planet.
  • Look for areas where your core passions intersect with the MTPs. You want to look for the overlap between passion and purpose.

Personal Notes:

Although the book presented like an algorithmic process for triggering flow that help to accomplish the daily tasks, the process is not so linear. You might not know what are your MTP (massively transformative purposes) while reading the book. This discovery of your MTP might take time and explorations of your curiosity.

How do you even have 25 list of items that you are curious about? It can be things that you learn from books, online courses, youtube videos, internet forums, social media or from friends etc. Everytime you consume the information, take note of what you are curious about and the questions that you want to ask further on a specific area.

Notes on Finding Evasive Bugs (by James Kettle)

Published by Bobby Lin on May 28, 2022

Highly recommend security researchers to watch this. The talk focuses more toward improving your methodology and mindset:

  1. Don’t look for defences; Start with the attacks first.
  2. Look for unfashionable flaws.
  3. Your understanding of a vulnerability concept may be corrupted. Don’t reply on internet searches to learn. Learn from the original sources.
  4. Recognise the fear from the new or unknown (Technique sounds cool but…)
  5. Recognise that you might think that something is an implausible idea. Don’t just try something and then give out if it does not work. Instead do this: Explain why the idea will not work unless condition X exists. Try the obvious to make sure that it is obviously secured.
  6. Invisible Chainlinks give you advantages. They can be related to a particular context, application specific knowledge, inconvenient. For example, param miner works well if you have the application specific knowledge.

Automation

  • Use automation to scan for clues about the application.
  • Scan to learn
    • Test Hypothesis
    • Ask question and iterate
  • When enumerating, focus on specific things rather than broad information to reduce noise.
    • Make asking questions cheap.
    • Develop your own framework.

Notes on Learning from Huberman

Published by Bobby Lin on August 1, 2021
https://unsplash.com/photos/3b2tADGAWnU

How do we trigger neuroplasticity?

  • High Focus
  • High Alertness

Self-assessment

  • Monitor your alertness rhythm (Do you tend to be more alert in the morning or evening?)
  • When trying a productivity technique, you need to evaluate if it increases your autonomic arousal level.

High Alert state

  • You do not need music for focusing
  • Good for performing linear implementation of work (where you already know what you are going to do)

Low Alert state

  • Some music can help with increasing alertness
  • Good for performing some creative brainstorming and implementation of creative ideas
  • Deep Rest for 30 mins in the late afternoon (when you are feeling less alert)
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEw5BkK9K9A&t=15s

Useful Heuristics

  • Get sunlight during the first 30 mins of the day
  • Delay caffeine intake for 2 hours after waking
  • Hydrates yourself after waking up and throughout the day
  • Exercise early in the day can help with High alertness and activate the tendency for action.
  • Avoid light exposure between 10pm to 4 am (use Dim light).

Diet

  • Fasting in the morning.
  • First meal at middle of day
    • Eat as little carbs as possible as it makes us feel sleepy
    • More protein and salad
  • Evening meal
    • More carbs (as it helps with sleep later)
    • Some protein