Category: NoneTech.非技术

“I’m always busy” is priority-management bankruptcy

I’m pretty “busy”, most of time. And I know that’s my bankruptcy on priority-management. I didn’t use term “time-management” but “priority-management” because I know “it’s complicated”.

Common excuses are funny 🙂

“it’s complicated” means you can’t explain it briefly. Which is a problem on understanding the essential of a topic. Which is a problem of yourself, not the topic.

“priority management” means:

• You don’t know what’s the more important, and what can wait
• You don’t know where you should invest your time to
• You have trouble on your emotion balance. You are frustrated about what you are doing or facing, but you don’t know how to solve it with good feeling.
• The reasoning of “meaning of life” for yourself is not align with what it’s going to happen
• You feel bad most of time, and feel “keep busy” can solve it

OK, then it’s obviously you are facing a “bankruptcy”! Wow, that’s sad, frustrated, ruin your tomorrow!

Hold on! Is that real? When you reasoning of “meaning of life” you know “tomorrow may never come”, so can you stand on your feet and make a sound decision? Can you? Can you? Can you? Yes, you can. You can control your thought, you can control your body, you can control yourself before a bankruptcy. But not after a bankruptcy. So avoid use the excuse as the sole-reason to support your decision. Make a real logical decision based on your “reasoning of meaning of life”.

Then, stick with it. Live with imperfections, and live with your frustration of coming bankruptcy. Keep reasoning on “what’s the meaning of life, in the context of yourself (including what you love, a.k.a. family)”. That’s the only tunnel to get yourself out of “I’m fucking busy”.

I love the quote “Break the cycle Morty, rise above, focus on science”

Tomorrow will normally come until your last day 🙂 Keep going and break the loop of “being busy without meaning”.

BTW, I’m awakening, I will blog more and think more frequently.

A post shared by Tian Yue (@diamondtin) on Apr 19, 2017 at 6:50pm PDT

I frequently having problems having conversation with some individuals. Because someone prefer frequent none-value-driven argument, someone prefer complains all the time, someone are neglect diversity of opinions. It’s a frustration! And the expression I put here is negative, which is affect by my bias and emotional feelings.

If I fight back, and use the same techniques to drop my frustration bomb, then the conversation won’t have a happy ending. So, just slow it down a little bit. Deep breath, and let the negative feeling go away.

• If this problem fundamentally touches the core value of your job or life, then you can either give a brief and mild statement but not looking back. Or you can live with the different opinions, and give it an appreciation and it normally end the argument.
• If it hits details, and both of you lost the big picture. Then you should lead the topic back to it’s trunk. Don’t hesitate to pat the peer with white lie, you will find a better resolution after you have agreement on the big decision.
• Tic-tac no more. When someone drops frustration bomb, your anger is not a weapon but a pressure. Deep breath, and forget about the topic but trying to find positive elements of argument peer. Then praises, maybe have a break and take a drink together. Put problem-solving aside, and find some shared value first.
• Avoid trigger chain react actions. Don’t put your other frustrations onto current frustration. You may lost control if pressure overlaps.
• Think about good things, always look at bright side of life. Personally I like to argue by writing things down which avoid gathering heats in verbal argument (stronger voice wins stupidity).
• And maybe writing things down helps too 🙂 That’s what I’m doing.

Spotify is my first music streaming service, and I love it’s social feature back to 5 years ago. I was in China back then, and I need to use VPN to access Spotify. I remember it had no free-tier at that time, but paying $4.99 is already affordable.

At 2014, I start using Rdio. And it’s great, from any perspective. I sticked to it’s web tier for a while. And good friend who worked in Rdio invited me to his “family”, and then I can use Rdio’s premium service for free. That last another year. After that I continue my Rdio subscription and using the $9.99 tier because it supports me using the offline feature for my wife.

And then Apple Music debuts. I remember it has long trial, and then I switch to apple music so my wife can use the Rdio subscription on her phone. She start using Rdio frequently, and I was always kicking off while listening.

Apple Music is not great, quite disappointed. Rdio close it’s door at end of 2015. Then I start a premium-trial (3 months, it’s very generous) on Spotify again, I registered a new US account. Actually I’m not very happy about Spotify, but after losing Rdio I have not much choice. Because my wife switched to Spotify after Rdio died too. So I was kicked off from Spotify frequently then. The alternative I found is getting a subscription in apple music China, it’s cheaper ¥9.99/mo. And the Apple Music China have good availability of Mandarin pops, which my wife and me enjoy sometime. This is not a very satisfied state, we are OK with the service, but have no love for long relationship.

I bought an Echo not long after it’s debut. And Echo is pretty interesting device. My daughter really love teasing it, and keep calling it “Alexia” which Alexa don’t understand. But Echo is very very dumb working with Prime Music. Because Prime Music ask user adding playlist to their library before they can play them. So you need to remember the playlist’s name, which is a hard work. The result is awkward, I have very narrow selection of playlist, and Echo have hard time to satisfied the family’s music need. We do use Echo integration with Spotify sometimes, but it’s just like a network speaker, it doesn’t smart enough to have conversation with human. So the integration is kind of useless.

Amazon released Prime Streaming Music couple of days ago. It’s only $3.99/mo for Prime customer who own an Echo. And then I start the trial. And then I can tell that my daughters love it. My elder daughter will tell Alex “Play elmo song from Sesame street”, and then they will start squiggly and laughing. And I can tell Alex playing music by artist name, which is more natural than telling it a accurate playlist name which is in my library.

So I cancel my Spotify Premium again. And I don’t think I will look back. “I switch to some other streaming platform” is not even an reason to leave Spotify, it’s asking this question when you cancel your subscription. I think that’s funny. When the wave of smart device coming to home, Spotify should show a more aggressive attitude on integration. But maybe that’s not a choice for Spotify, they don’t have a choice.

BTW, after iOS 10 upgrade. The apple music China’s subscription become awkward. Because you can’t login to Apple Music from different account than your primary iCloud account. Apple’s policy on cloud integration is stupid, it’s own implementation suck and it’s not open for other player. This locked a device to use same iCloud account for all. And then I start using Apple Music on an android device, which is funny. But that music streaming device is optional. I use iTunes on my Mac which still allow different apple store account.

There’s a bigger problem sitting behind all of this. Premium hardware manufacture want to control the eco-system, which is a software/developer platform. Amazon is leading the home smart assistant market, google is joining the game by google home. Apple’s siri is dumb, otherwise it should work with Sonos and creating a smart home assistant already. Spotify is an embarrassing, it’s a developer and have multiple platforms to support. And Spotify has an mediocre user experience, I think they know but can’t change the status quo. So I think Spotify may lost it’s leading position in next 5 years. Google Music becomes interesting here. Because any rich company can join the game and throw money into this money pit. Music label will get more revenue they lost from pirate copies. I think Music label will issue more contract with those rich company then, exclusive contract will be rarer. But how to make your music playlist portable is a headache. Cloud data portability is only based on good will, not shared interests.  And user will suffer from this if they are early adopter and willing to move (which is complex and time-expensive).

There’s 1 solution. Build some playlist in your head. And bet on AI based human-computer conversation interface. So you can bring your favorites to anywhere. Or maybe build a software which speaks your playlist out to Echo/Google home. That’s a dumb idea :-). Let’s see, I already pre-ordered google home. And I’m looking for more premium experience from google, like what they did in Pixel phone. But Amazon play the game differently, they bundle more and more values into their prime account which sticks user very well. I’m sure some user prefer quality first, others cares value/price ratio. I want to see how much quality difference between them, and then I will buy my music streaming service on that platform.

现在问题已经解决了，回想起来这个过程是很有趣的。我反复研究了各种帖子，企图找到它低效的问题。但是最终也没有高效的解决这个问题。

解决的最好方法是我做了两个事情，当然后来证明并行的使用两种解决方法浪费了钱。不过并行解决没有浪费时间，只是浪费了一些钱。

• 给 Baratza 的客服写信，描述我遇到的问题，寻求帮助。
• 购买了更高效的上磨芯（网上推荐的一个升级，相当于升级到 Virtusoso 的磨芯），下磨芯的塑料配件（Ring burr holder）。

客服第二天就回复了，告诉我应该是 Ring Burr 的问题，推荐我买一个 Ring Burr。我之前自己检测的时候看 Ring Burr 很新以为它是最不可能有问题的。结果这就是反直觉的地方。我将信将疑的又定了一个 Ring Burr。

第一次定的配件三天后就到了，换上以后果真没有解决问题。 一周以后第二批配件到了（因为碰巧遇到了周末，所以发货晚了一些），换上新的 Ring Burr 问题马上解决了。换到最细的刻度 1，两勺咖啡磨完需要 10 秒。之前一勺咖啡在刻度 12 就会造成堵塞。所以问题得到了完美的解决。

现在是半年以后了，试是证明修完以后 Encore 回到了完美的工作状态。完全没有问题了，也不需要那么频繁的清洗了。

所以解决认知偏见，还有实际行动起来成了解决这个问题的关键。我为啥之前就没有去做呢？

推荐一下李笑来的 重生(七年就是一辈子)，还有 YC创业课（CS183B）学习笔记。

这是我在知乎更新的一个回答。

2015 年 10 月我休假会北京，去了北京的几家精酿，包括大跃在东直门的店。不做太多细节对比，我目前的见识来看大跃现在依然是北京最好的啤酒吧。那么大跃哪里做的很好呢？

• 大跃做的是一个 Gastropub，而不是一个卖酒的商店或者俱乐部。以前我们三里屯有『天堂』，那里卖酒也可以喝。但是那种模式的发展方式是瓶装酒的天堂，本质上只是一个买东西的地方。旧金山的 City Beer Store 是这样的例子，当然人家也是很牛的。北京的牛啤堂就有点这个意思，主要是瓶装酒，吃的东西比较凑合。大跃的环境和食物明显要好不少，然你感觉在个很好的朋友聚会的场所，有会吃的人选择的食物。好的啤酒吧必须有好吃的东西匹配，老板最好是个吃货（Foodie）。肯能因为成本的问题，北京的精酿酒吧基本没有好吃的…… 所以大跃和树餐吧这样的就鹤立鸡群了。
• 自酿啤酒的风格丰富。大跃的酒单有超过十五种风格的啤酒。常见的风格如：IPA, Double IPA, Red ale, Stout, Pale ale, Bitter, Wheat ale, Lager, Triple, Sour 都有了。
• 有 Beer flight，就是小杯啤酒拼一条儿（四杯）。这种方式两个人很容易横扫全部啤酒，增加品酒乐趣。
• 人气。大跃的聚会气氛热烈，厕所繁忙。而且 Gastropub 的厕所是一个非常非常重要的地方，大跃的厕所很有设计感。这样的细节对喝酒尿尿的体验很重要！
• 卖 Growler 装的啤酒。虽然他们只有四款啤酒按照这种方式卖，但是还是很过瘾的。好的 Gastropub 一定要做到酒好也可以带回家喝。这样有家庭有孩子的人可以下班经过买一 Growler 的啤酒拿回家喝，或者和朋友聚会的时候带上。这真是我心爱的买酒方式，比买瓶装啤酒有面子多了。看朋友的时候随身带上这么一瓶太有面子了！
• 音乐，吵闹的音乐。偏吵的音乐其实保证了酒吧里面聊天的隐私，离你很近才可以听到对方在说什么。我个人可能是条件反射，反正我习惯在吵闹的酒吧品尝 on tap 的啤酒。那些稀少的瓶装酒我喜欢在家里欣赏。

我买了这个 Baratta Encore 有一年多了。这是一个咖啡豆研磨机，这属于带磨芯的研磨机 Burr Grinder。我对它研磨的质量很满意，一般做 AeroPress 的时候我会用 8 那档，相当于 Espresso 骗粗水平。

但是有个问题困扰我，那就是它经常堵住。所以需要经常清理，这本身不是太大问题。但是这咖啡磨清理一次大概要花费 10 分钟吧，这比准备咖啡的时间还长。我仔细观察了一下，一般出现堵是这样发生的：豆子快要磨完的时候我没有关闭机器继续磨最后一点豆子，然后机器就堵了。

今天我发现这是由于我的使用方式造成的。我每次一般用 AeroPress 的勺子呈上一勺放在磨里面研磨。每次我都希望完全磨掉豆子所以下次没有残粉，就不用清洁了。可是这样造成一个问题，因为最后的一点豆子没有其它豆子在上面用重力压着，所以研磨速度会很慢。如果正要研磨又比较细就容易产生非常细的粉，他们容易卡在研磨机的出粉口。这样下次就堵住了。

所以解决方法就是把豆子都放在那个漏斗里面，用多少磨多少就好了。如果想要一倍完美咖啡的时候先清洁一下机器好了……

用 AeroPress 很久了，它是我默认的咖啡烹调方式。我一般使用倒装法 – Inverted。因为我的胃对咖啡因敏感，所以我这一年多都用的是 Decaf 的豆子，目前最喜欢的是 Blue Bottle Decaf Noir，每次我都去 WholeFoods 那里找货架最里面的一包，大部分时候可以买到一周内烘焙的新鲜豆子。

每天冲来冲去，很开心。

之前的 AeroPress 滤芯用光了，新定的一包滤芯感觉很厚实（AeroPress 的滤芯其实质量不太稳定）。铺在 AeroPress 的那个有网眼的过滤碗上是平整的，但是淋水以后会膨胀。膨胀的滤片经常有皱褶，每次用手抚平但是也不完美。最近咖啡总是从过滤碗侧面流出来。所以我想干脆不给滤片淋水好了，结果发现这样滤碗的漏水问题果真完美的解决了。现在要比平常花多几倍的力气去压取咖啡，不过出来的咖啡口感很不错。

也许一门技术用久了就变得僵化了，忘记没门技术都有提升的可能了。观察一下这小小的问题，解决一点小小的问题。然后就又过了一天。

有些味道简单，但是令人感动。

在聚宝源，香脆的芝麻烧饼配涮出来的茼蒿。香脆的烧饼是芝麻酱，烤过的芝麻还有香脆的面饼的味道，可能还有些椒盐，他本身当然是制作繁复的小吃。香脆的芝麻烧饼是口感和味觉的融合。茼蒿（阔叶的那种蒿子，不是那种细杆的蒿子秆）在已经融化了羊肉的脂肪和鲜味的火锅汤里面涮过，注意火候不能太大。两三只茼蒿放到嘴里，软烂的羊肉脂肪的膻味被茼蒿清爽的味道镇住，有些烫烫的，这时候咬上一口上好的芝麻烧饼。那烤芝麻的香味，还有脆脆的口感与还留有一点脆劲的茼蒿在嘴中爆炸开，充满幸福的感觉。茼蒿的清香味道和厚重的芝麻香味遥相呼应，和谐的融合成一个新的体验。

在家中，黄瓜、芝麻菜、布里奶酪和一个意大利风格的葵花籽面包。黄瓜是用来腌黄瓜的那个品种，黄瓜的味道很重，外皮厚，粗粗傻傻的。布里就是普通的 double cream 的，切厚片放在外面布满葵花籽的意大利面包上，入烤箱烘一下，让布里开始融化。把黄瓜铺在布里上面，撒上涂匀橄榄油的芝麻菜，夹上面包。入口给你奶酪的奶油一样的口感，黄瓜的清新，葵花籽的坚果香味，面包则提供基础的口感，他们融合成一个新的体验。这个味觉的主力其实是黄瓜和布里，如果简化它只是把略微融化的布里和黄瓜片放在一起也会提供那种感动的体验。

说来对工作环境和工作方式的关注是因为相信他们可以改进工作效率。但是有的时候我也觉得这无非就是无尽的物欲而已，难以自拔。站立办公桌这个东西，投入可大可小。对于我来说，我希望的是培养自己的一种仪式感（Ritual）。仪式感这个东西对我来说是很有用的一个心里工具。我一直尝试对自己进行心理暗示，很多时候它是一个有用的工具，尤其是使用在积极的场景。而具有仪式感的生活实践大都是有一个积极的初衷的。以后我还会陆续的记录我生活中的一些仪式。

站立办公桌在湾区这里非常流行，经过三藩大街上那些玻璃窗里开放的办公室你就能看到很多站着办公的潮人码农。关于站立办公优劣的文章轻易可以搜到一大把，我其实完全不在意那些文章所说。这其实也是个有趣的细节，估计大家都看到微信上面那些看似很合逻辑的科普文章吧？其实大部分时候，你应该尝试解读坐着的意图，而应该忽略他们那些逻辑。因为语言逻辑是有悖论的，完全可以用合逻辑的方式灌输一个谬误给你。在这个问题上我不相信逻辑和确定性，我相信直觉（但是你要优化自己的直觉，保持初心，而不是一味碰壁），我相信不确定性。我的直觉告诉我，站立办公应该不会让我减肥，也不会让我变得强壮或者更健康。但是站着办公应该可以帮助我进入 flow，并且减少长时间拖沓的工作（因为我会累）。长话短说，这几个月下来我的使用感受和我的预期一致。当然这也可以解释为心里暗示，我的偏见影响了我的判断。但是我不太在乎确定性 ^__^。

我的配置就是 IKEA 的那套经典穷人配置。唯一不同的是我用了加厚的桌面，我指的是作为底座的那个桌子，因为那个桌面更加厚实和沉重，质感更好。显示器我用的是 Seiki 的穷人 39 寸 4K TV，这个在 Hacker News 上讨论曾经很热。显示器就是公司配的 15 Retina MBP（公司会给你配顶配的，如果想换机器那就换个工作好了，当然公司也会毫不犹豫的满足你的需求的），用 HDMI 1.4 接到 TV 上面。因为 HDMI 1.4 的限制，在 3840 x 2160 的分辨率下只有 30Hz 刷新率。这个刷新率在使用 Logitech 的轨迹球的时候感觉不那么明显，但是使用 Apple Trackpad 的时候会比较明显。肯能是手指的移动让大脑更饥渴的看到鼠标指针的反馈吧（我试图在扭曲你的想法？）。在滚动网页的时候页面的顿挫感也很明显，解决方法就是减少页面滚动，反正显示器大了一页的内容会多很多。减少滚动对阅读来说其实是有积极影响的，这个我推荐大家尝试一下，即使没有很大的显示器，在 iPad 或者手机上也可以实践。键盘是 Apple 的蓝牙键盘，因为它的尺寸配合 Trackpad 感觉更舒适，否则 Trackpad 需要放在更远的右侧。Trackpad 属于我的个人习惯，我觉得它比鼠标和轨迹球都更舒适，对各种手势的支持也绝好。

在使用的过程中，我觉得后背和脖子会感觉舒服很多。但是腰（背部靠下的位置）还有腿部会比较紧张，时间长了它们都很疲劳。我的痛觉大概在 3 – 5 小时的站立以后会达到高峰，我一般就会停止站立。这的确有效的减少了我连续伏案工作的时间。因为腿部的肌肉酸痛和脖子不太一样，腿部的酸痛来的比较线性。也即是说腿部的紧张是慢慢加剧的，而脖子则是几个小时后或者第二天才显现出来，那个时候已经产生了明显的疲劳伤害（落枕）。肩膀和胳膊没有太多的疲劳感，但是 IKEA 这个穷人装备的手托的稳定性没有直接伏案工作好，但是这不是个严重的减分。39 寸的 4k TV 对于我来说像素密度有点太大，Apple 的操作系统目前不支持在这个廉价的 4k TV 开启 @2x （retina）模式。我倾向于把字体调大，然后可以让双眼离显示器远一些。如果你是字体或者像素癖患者一定会相当的不满意，我也的确费了一些时间适应。但是由于它渲染的并不够细腻，所以我也很少在它上面娱乐。做大部分需要进入 Flow 的工作来说，这个显示器已经足够我用了。当然，要不是在黎明前出手入了这个 4K TV 我一定会选择支持 60Hz 的 28 寸 4K monitor，那个感觉会让我更满意一些。软件上，我觉得 Divvy 是必须有的工具，因为更大的分辨率也就是更大的桌面需要很好的 layout 管理工具。Divvy 是第一个这样的工具，我习惯它也喜欢它，它很好的解决了窗口摆放问题，一个快捷键就可以把窗口布局做好。除此之外没有什么了。

周末和每晚睡前的私人时间使用这个配置的时间很短，完全不会有啥疲劳问题。在家办公的时候，完全专心的工作时间基本上可以控制在 3 小时和 5 小时这个范围内（可以早上 3 小时，下午 4 小时）。这样办公心里感觉很满足，因为思想的集中，和身体的疲劳时钟可以配合在一起。身体敏感度的提高其实可以帮助我集中精神，进入 flow，在这点上是一举多得的。我个人认为这是一个非常有趣的仪式。双脚稍微分开站立在显示器前面，脑袋平视可以到达显示器中线稍微靠上面的位置。小臂和身体可以垂直，手腕在敲打键盘和 Trackpad 的时候没有弯曲。也许这些自我描述是心里的意思满足感开始的地方，就和打坐一样帮助你联系物理感受和心理的一个状态。

如果你还完全没有站立办公过，那我推荐你试试。