

Meditations - bqe
http://blog.seancassidy.me/meditations.html

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codyb
This reminds me a lot of Dale Carnegie's "How to Stop Worrying and Start
Living".

In the first chapter he talks about how successful people often sit once or
twice a week and write down the mistakes they made in order that they might
make them less in the future.

The one that stuck with me the most of course was Benjamin Franklin's "Fool
Things I've Done" which he wrote into _every night_.

Of course the book that helped me quit smoking, Alan Carr's phenomenal
(albeit, (car salesman with rust proof undercoating to sell)-esque) reminded
me of Carnegie's book as well.

The moral of the story for me? I need to reread Carnegie's book! Added
Meditations to my cart though. I buy almost every book I read about that
sounds cool. Working my way through them one by one!

Maybe I'll start a fool things I've done as well.

~~~
hluska
A friend and I were just talking about Alan Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking.
When I read the book, I started sticking reminders to my bathroom mirror so
that every morning, the first thing I would see was, "Yippee, I'm a non
smoker" or one of my other affirmations.

My favourite part of the book is that it convinces you to think about smoking.
When I failed to quit, I'd always do the "don't think about smoking" dance.
Needless to say, that always failed. Since the book, I've tried to focus more
on my flaws. It hasn't worked in all ways, though I'm still trying.

~~~
cycojesus
If I may diverge from the main topic but to your point. I'd venture to say
that the act of putting reminders and thinking about smoking is the reason you
failed.

I stopped smoking with the same book but the it worked (as I understand it
now) is that it breaks down every excuses you gave yourself to smoke while it
actually encourages you to keep smoking while reading. At the end of the book
you just have no reason left to smoke. What happened for me when I closed the
book is that I just continued my life as if I was not a smoker, never actually
thinking about it. No withdrawal of any kind but I didn't remind myself that I
used to be a smoker, never. I know it but it's not something I think about

~~~
hluska
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The book and the reminders are why I actually
quit smoking after over a decade of a pack a day. During all my failed
attempts to quit I tried to use willpower combined with trying not to think
about smoking.

Giving myself permission to think about smoking was a huge factor in actually
quitting. "Don't think about the colour black" is a great way to fail...:)

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nikkisnow
I've been reading "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by
William B. Irvine and Marcus Aurelius is one of the 4 eminent Stoics featured
in that book. His "Meditations" is referred to often. I've found the
philosophy behind Stoicism to be very helpful in my day job coding and at
managing a team. One of the most useful practices is knowing the difference
between what you can control, what you have no control over at all, and those
things that you have some but not complete control (i.e. I can play to the
best of my ability in a tennis match but the outcome is not really up to me).
It's incredible to think that Marcus was sick (with an ulcer, more than
likely), his wife probably cheated on him, out of 14 children, only 6
survived, and he was emperor! And yet, when he died, their was a public
outcry.

So, after reading "A Guide to the Good Life" and now that I've read your
article, I'm definitely inclined to pick up "Meditations" for my next read.
Thanks for the insights!

~~~
redmaverick
_It 's incredible to think that Marcus was sick (with an ulcer, more than
likely), his wife probably cheated on him, out of 14 children, only 6
survived, and he was emperor!_

It is incredible that someone with such wealth and power could remain deeply
rational and humble. Gregory Hays translation is the best of the lot. If you
are going through stressful and trying times, I would recommend reading any
one page out of meditations. It will give you solace when life seems to be a
battle against enormous odds.

The Enchiridion by Epictetus is very good. If you like Meditations, you would
love this too.

~~~
nikkisnow
_It is incredible that someone with such wealth and power could remain deeply
rational and humble._

This is so true. And, from what I gather from the "A Guide..." book, Marcus
wasn't much a fan of people (although, that may just be the interpretation of
Irvine), which I think speaks to his great character to be loved by so many in
spite of that.

Epictetus was another great Stoic philosopher, having been born a slave and
yet live a "good" life (not even sure that needs quotes around good). That's
another book to the "To Read" list; thank you!

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gavinpc
> Beware expiration times

I'll never get bitten by this again, but alas the advice comes too late.

TLDR, I left a _hardcoded_ beta expiration date in a product that was
submitted to NMCI for certification (it's a DoD thing, they ended up taking
nine months to approve the new version of a product that's been in use for 20
years). I know, I should be shot, but hey, I was the only developer, I had
nine months to port the entire application to a new platform (64-bit thing),
and we'd just had a baby.

Silver lining, I could not find any way to work around it, even as an
administrator with knowledge of the source code (other than changing the
system date). We managed to sneak in a new build somehow, but they had to
"restart the testing process" (and what that is I still don't know).

~~~
mkohlmyr
A staring contest.

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carsongross
Great list. Especially:

 _Convincing others is delicate work - Start with the most important point
only. Once they begin to see that the current situation might not be perfect,
introduce more ideas slowly. Act unemotionally. Allow them to think through
the idea on their own. Watch 12 Angry Men again._

Obvious now that I read it, but until I did I hadn't thought about it that
way.

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foxylad
Akin to "Analyze theories before acting on them", my first rule of debugging
is "There is always a reason - understand it completely".

A large part of my judgement of fellow programmers depends on whether they are
satisfied by fixing the symptom, or insist on understanding exactly what was
going on to cause it.

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taitischia
Henry Miller wrote a great list of commandments for his working day back in
the 30s: [http://www.listsofnote.com/2012/01/henry-
millers-11-commandm...](http://www.listsofnote.com/2012/01/henry-
millers-11-commandments.html)

I've always found his structure far more useful than the usual 'list of maxims
to follow every day' style most self-guides become.

His just seems more reflexive to his emotions. Like every day is a struggle
against his natural state of being and this is how he keeps the scales in
balance.

He talks more about his working day here too:
[http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4597/the-art-of-
fic...](http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4597/the-art-of-fiction-
no-28-henry-miller)

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malkia
\- Avoid "unrevertable" changes if you can: * Don't submit (commit) code that
can't be easily reverted - e.g. don't introduce code that if ran dozen or more
times on production systems, then reverting it would require other files to be
reverted/recreated/rewritten from scratch apart from itself. (Someone decides
to go from XML->JSON, or JSON->XML, or one scripting language to another -
that is a very drastic change, because people would've picked on the new
system, and few weeks later if it turns out it's not working, not only you
have to go back to the original state, you have to rewrite whatever was
changed into the scripting/etc. files back into the old one - and sometimes
that's not straightforward).

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mhartl
A quick heads-up for those who think (as I once did) that it might be cool to
learn Latin just to read the _Meditations_ without translation: its original
title is _Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν_ (i.e., Marcus Aurelius wrote the _Meditations_ in
Greek).

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andre
Read Meditations for free here:
[http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html)

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jljljl
I love the idea of doing this.

I wonder if publishing them somewhere public is also a good idea, as a sort of
reminder to stay humble and admit your own faults and lessons learned.

~~~
gry
Thoughtback [[https://thoughtback.com/](https://thoughtback.com/)] is an
incredible web app / app for this. I don't think provides a public mechanism.

Simply, I enter an idea and in return, I'm immediately given one I posted
before, reinforcing the idea.

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razibog
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is also available under public domain and
available here:
[http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html)

~~~
devindotcom
It's good to check a few translations. Some didn't resonate with me in the way
they phrased things or their word choice. Same with any classic - stop by a
used book store and read the same paragraph a couple times in different
translations and see which works for you.

~~~
markbao
The translation that my friends have recommended is the Hays translation,
which seems to be a good one from my reading.

~~~
devindotcom
For the record, my favorite is Robert Graves'.

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jjbohn
I've recently been reading meditations (and carrying it around in my bag
always at the ready). Very good book and I highly recommend writing your own
meditations as well.

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lizzard
I always like to think he wrote these things to help himself bootstrap out of
what looked like some very strong painful feelings.

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hyp0
[http://www.reddit.com/r/stoicism](http://www.reddit.com/r/stoicism)

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insensible
There are a lot of comments here about other books, but to me this article
itself has a great book inside it.

