How much structured ‘fun time’ do you think established or upcoming AI researchers regularly allocate, and how does this
affect their happiness/productivity balance?
I find Plato’s view on the correspondence between the soul and the state helpful as a heuristic. That is, a “heavy hand” like pomodoro feels to me like a totalitarian regime. I instead prefer to govern as a kind of benevolent feudal monarch mediating between quarreling nobles. I find it is helpful to burn willpower on establishing good habits as an investment. I can learn to brush my teeth every day, and similarly I can learn to go to a coffeeshop/library/etc. to work every day. Once a good routine is established, you don’t have to burn willpower on it anymore.
Time spent purely on fun is not really wasted. Not only is it good for morale, and not only are you making parts of yourself happy, which is important, but also our brains are weird and often do useful processing when you seemingly aren’t doing anything productive at all. Morale is your hit points.
Flitting around between different things when studying is natural. I find it more efficient to go with that tendency than to fight it. Having a hard time studying on your own is natural.
School rank is not so important if you are self-propelling. Just find good people to learn from. The internet makes it easier.
Getting into programming and research early is very good.
I find Plato’s view on the correspondence between the soul and the state helpful as a heuristic. That is, a “heavy hand” like pomodoro feels to me like a totalitarian regime. I instead prefer to govern as a kind of benevolent feudal monarch mediating between quarreling nobles. I find it is helpful to burn willpower on establishing good habits as an investment. I can learn to brush my teeth every day, and similarly I can learn to go to a coffeeshop/library/etc. to work every day. Once a good routine is established, you don’t have to burn willpower on it anymore.
Time spent purely on fun is not really wasted. Not only is it good for morale, and not only are you making parts of yourself happy, which is important, but also our brains are weird and often do useful processing when you seemingly aren’t doing anything productive at all. Morale is your hit points.
Flitting around between different things when studying is natural. I find it more efficient to go with that tendency than to fight it. Having a hard time studying on your own is natural.
School rank is not so important if you are self-propelling. Just find good people to learn from. The internet makes it easier.
Getting into programming and research early is very good.
Be nice to yourself :).