Comment by swgeek 6 days ago
I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year: learn full-stack, practice vibe coding, basics of graphics programming (update to the latest ways)
I understand that means master of none, but this is a play around year for me. In theory AI should make it easier to try new things, we shall see about how it works in practice.
Good point, but I don't think they are mutually exclusive spread out over a year, only if I try to do them all at once.
This month my focus is on full-stack, and I don't move on to the next project until I get the basics right on that.
> it is best to pick one thing from the "many trades" and master only it before beginning another
Exactly this thanks, but my aim is only "get comfortable", not "master"
> I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
This. My control of my focus has been reduced to the point of disability at times (seriously worrying, when in middle age)
> Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year
But this, honestly, is at odds with it. It will be difficult to do these two things at once (source: trust me bro, but no really do trust me).
Rather I would suggest a strategy, if you want to learn lots of things: ask yourself, what small set of goals are all those things in service of? What could you gain if they all pointed mostly in one direction, and how will you keep a slow, low-level, long term focus on that direction?
(I am writing this comment to myself, as you can probably tell.)
I must develop (re-develop) planning skills, because my management of time is poor and my management of my direction in life non-existent. I have a broad set of underdeveloped talents that point to me being able to do a lot more stuff for more people if I wasted less time and just steered them in a couple of directions that will have slow-growing benefits.
Apart from progressing some life challenges, what I would like to do is design one complete physical prototype every two months, to move my brain away from everyday web development and towards something that helps people again.
I have CAD and 3D printing skills, I am learning what I would need to get work CNC milled, I have just enough awareness of embedded computing possibilities and I have a couple of interests that can be used to drive product ideas forward or at least provide a personal context for learning.
Probably photography, initially; I have already made some things and used them for my own photography work, and I have ideas for more. The goal would be Tindie-type sales or at least to get tools into the hands of like-minded friends.
I have spent the last year really developing my "CAD thinking" and now it is time to just make things, completely enough that they could be sold at a sort of boutique scale.
No courses on the 3D printing side really — I think I did go through one of the Prusa ones after getting enough free "meters" on Printables but I don't remember it telling me much I hadn't already learned. There is a blog post that has been posted here before that really covers almost everything important about design for 3D printing:
https://blog.rahix.de/design-for-3d-printing/
I really just ADHD'd the hell out of it, I suspect [0], and absorbed everything I read. I was in financial difficulty and things were expensive so it took me a couple of years to get me from "I'd like a 3D printer" to "this 3D printer is affordable but viable and even if I never learn design there are plenty of tools I can make with it that will save me money".
In that time I read everything I could about what I'd need to learn, convinced myself that I was not so clumsy and inept I couldn't maintain a printer. These days printers don't need so much mechanical knowledge to get started.
On the CAD side of things, I learned a bit of OpenSCAD, found it basically helpful to make one simple thing but also frustrating and disappointing, joined really useful non-public Facebook groups where people were working on similar things, decided to get properly into FreeCAD, and dug in with the Mango Jelly Solutions videos on Youtube (which actually are now organised into a course structure, but weren't really then).
The thing that motivated me mostly was having simple real things I wanted to make for a project I was working on (though my brain being what it is, I still haven't got round to that exact project...)
If you have a need for a thing you would like, and you're able to break it down into simpler projects, particularly if they are things you might find useful along the way, it's not very difficult to find the motivation to learn these two things.
The positive feedback loop is so strong, and 3D printing is such a concrete way to learn CAD and design because you get to hold your design so quickly: I designed this thing in CAD, I printed this thing, wow it works but I could improve this, I need to learn this new thing in CAD, I printed it, it works but… etc.
Pretty soon you find yourself staring at some real world object on your desk and modelling it in CAD for fun.
The really interesting thing is when you begin to understand that the design of things is fundamentally influenced by the tooling used to make them. When you grasp how 3D printing and injection moulding differ, for example, and start designing your own items with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of 3D printing, rather than just to look like an existing plastic part which was moulded, then you're really getting there.
[0] hilariously I am still not formally diagnosed. Though I'm pretty sure I could be diagnosed just based on these two comments.
Thanks so much. Going through some of these motions... installed OpenSCAD, made something basic which was easy. But I found out that making something more complex forces you to invent your own layout system. Last month I looked on Udemy and did part of Mango Jelly's course. It's a good one, I actually found out later that he has a bunch of stuff on YouTube.
I'm still reading the rest of this and your other comment, thanks so much. Inspirational.
So they can get access to medication that may help improve their life?
> I want to, no, need to improve my ability to focus on the task at hand.
> Other than that near-universal constant, I want to try being a bit of a jack of many trades this year: learn full-stack, practice vibe coding, basics of graphics programming (update to the latest ways)
Therein lies the problem.
To want to "focus on the task at hand" and then express the desire to "try being a bit of a jack of many trades" is a mutually exclusive goal set.
If you want to improve focusing skills, then it is best to pick one thing from the "many trades" and master only it before beginning another. If the "ability to focus on the task at hand" is not really all that important in the grander scheme of things and topically bouncing around is where you find happiness, then I humbly suggest to not beat yourself up about focusing on "the task at hand."
Either is an equally valid choice which none need judge, since it is your own after all.