State Transitions

Pomodoro 1. 8:30 - 8:55. Github: go to the site, read about what they offer, sign up, upload the files in my python_work directory… Hah! I got so far as reading and signing up. I suspect bad estimations of how long things will take play a key role in procrastination… so this is useful. Orientation takes time: it’s not wasted time, it’s necessary time. And now I will take a walk. (The new walk rule is that I walk at least twice a day. No rule on how far. It could be to the end of the driveway and back, I don’t care. Once I’m out the door I will actually walk, because I like walking. But walking is like showering -- an activity I like very much, but it involves a… what? … a state transition?... that something in me resists mightily. So I need to reduce the friction as much as possible.

In Middlemarch, George Eliot praises the parson Farebrother for going out to speak with an errant parishioner despite the fact that it entails putting his boots back on: I've always thought that was a keen moral observation. You can see the same resistance to state transitions in children, who generally love baths, furiously objecting to taking them. Once in, they'll be perfectly happy. It's the transition they're resisting, not the activity. I can make the walking easier by dressing for it well before I'm actually going to do it. Much easier to get myself out the door if I already have my boots on.

Pomodoro 2. 9:50 - 10:15. Do the github hello world tutorial. Yikes! Github is huge: I was imagining something much leaner. A person could wander around there for weeks. But anyway, I’ve gotten what I first wanted: a transfer and version-control site. (And yes, this took two full pomodoros, and no, I wasn’t wasting time.) Uploaded task.py.

Pomodoro 3. 4th chapter Stars.

Pomodoro 4. 8:15 - 8:45. Python Crash Course: got so far as creating an empty screen with pygame; created it as a project, and checked it in, like an actual programmer :-)