30 Days of Writing, Day 23: Physical and Mental Junk Food

• Draft

Over the past few months I’ve been eating the same few nutritious meals. I’m very lucky to live near a store that sells salads for $2. As such I can live most days getting my vegetables.

There are some days where I deviate from the norm, though. At some point in the day I break down and buy a bag of chips. I consume and binge those chips. I feel good while eating those chips. And for the rest of the day, I regret eating those chips and I become less productive than usual.

Over the past year, I’ve been auditing my mental consumption of things. Over the years I’ve seen trends to productive days, not-so-productive days, and whatever.

So my goal is to get better at most things, including programming. The best sources for me have been this:

• /r/programming, /r/ruby, /r/webdev, any of the programming subreddits.
• StackOverflow/answering and reading questions.
• Personal blogs of good programmers and good product managers, etc.
• Blog aggregates: Medium, Hackernoon, dev.to.

Podcasts:

• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Tom Bilyeu
• Chase Jarvis
• Y-Combinator
• Hanselminutes
• Indie Hackers

Entertainment

• Bill Burr. My favorite comedian. He’s extremely self-aware about things. When I get depressed I just listen to an old Bill Burr special to start laughing. I’ve bing watched his appearances on Conan quite a few times. I also have this weird job of working as a stand-up comedian.
• KPop. It’s wholesome, lol. I’m fascinated with the craft that allows them to make this product. You look for the best singers and dancers when they are children, make them really pretty, combine them with the best songwriters, add a human element to them with variety shows, and profit. It’s really really smart. I really have an affinity for Taeyeon of Girls Generation and Choa of AOA. I think I relate with them since we’re nearly the same age and I also feel depression from time to time.
• The Boston Celtics/Brad Stevens. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Brad Stevens actually read Carol Dweck’s Mindset book. I’ve been a Celtics fan for the past ten years since their 2008 championship but this year has been special. I love the intelligence of Jaylen Brown, the heart of Marcus Smart, the humility of Kyrie Irving, the down-to-earth nature of Jayson Tatum, and the leadership of Al Horford. Hopefully they win next year.