I'm afraid most tech people need to get out more. The job is hard, side projects are fun and you need to leetcode in your spare time to get a job. However its very easy to be boring. People benefit from making non-tech friends, play sports, travel, read novels, learn about spirituality, make music, build furniture but I dont see a lot of that happening. I'm a corporate cog and its my biggest regret.
These excerpts from the The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb resonated with me and I think it applies here.
“You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.”
“They are born, then put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box to sit in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes, Euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes.”
Make it easy to start, just try doing nothing for a while, it’s uncomfortable at first but the reset comes soon enough and is quite rewarding.
The bed of procrustes as a whole is also quite thought provoking and I would recommend checking it out.
It's a great book for a quick thought provocation (I keep it on my bedside table) but think it might be kind of bizarre to someone who hasn't read much else of Taleb's writing, idiosyncrasies and all.
walking, hiking, and road tripping are my favorite things to do (walk daily, "hike" (just long walk since I live in flat Houston) weekly, and roadtrip monthly). And the entire time, I sit in silence just THINKING.
Sometimes I record my thoughts out loud. But for the most time, I just use it as a way to keep my mind churning. Sometimes I come up with new side projects, or a design for a new piece of furniture, or just wonder on certain things (friends/family, state of the world, the guy that coughed on me at the restaurant).
> "hike" (just long walk since I live in flat Houston)
I've been calling it "urban hiking" and everyone thinks I'm joking. But why drive all the way to the wilderness to do a hike, when I can just walk out the door?
I love this. I will now call it "urban hiking," as well. It was still more fitting when I lived in NYC to call it hiking since there is at least hills and grass and trees.
If you’re getting lost in thoughts unrelated to operating a motorcycle you need to take a break. That’s a sign you’re about to make a mistake. I think the OP’s point is your mind gets in to a flow of watching the road, feeling the bike, observing the landscape, etc.
Same. It's shocking how visibly my social circle shrinks as my ability to make new friendships also diminishes. I don't know if it's a part of getting in to my mid-30s (and all my friends now making families, moving away) or the pandemic, or both, but I find myself increasingly with no one to talk to.
As a 20-something year old, trying to make friends with people that you don't know is an incredibly frustrating experience because there's a good chance that the group you're trying to join were friends since childhood. No matter who you meet at this age, it seems that there is always a group they're a part of that you need to get acceptance with before you can call it a "friendship".
This isn't to say it's straight up impossible to make individual friends or join a friend group, but attempting to make friends but being treated in a lukewarm way by their clique goes a LONG way to reinforce avoidant behavior, even without an explicit rejection. Sitting in my room and learning math is far more enjoyable than that, so that's what I'll end up doing.
Once I move away from the place all of my childhood friends are, I have no idea what's going to happen.
For some, being a corporate cog has allowed them to do more. Since the added security of cog life usually provides a cushion especially in the tech sector.
