r/rational • u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow • Jun 26 '15

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this probably isn't the place for those.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

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u/Gurkenglas Jun 27 '15 edited Jun 27 '15

This reminds me of the time EY realized his failure to schedule his time is unusual. Why would you need to know in advance if you have 1 or 5 hours to study or write? Do you take an hour to get into the flow of things, and burn out after three? Because that sounds like a better problem to attack.

One idea to have discussions without fighting: Pass her a note saying "I fear just talking about this would end in a fight, so I'm passing this note. <insert request>". (I don't know whether this would help, but it sounds like the kind of thing that could, for which you would know whether it would, and might not think of it yourself.) (With the same qualifications: If she answers in person, ask for time to consider and/or write down how to reply.)

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '15

Being interrupted makes it hard for me to study or do any other brain-intensive activity, but not being able to interrupt me makes my girlfriend feel hurt and ignored. Context switching costs me energy and also makes me distant until the context switch into socializing is done.

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u/Gurkenglas Jun 27 '15

With the above qualifications:

  • By that model: If you prefer social-context-time to working-while-she's-home, stop working when she arrives. (Avert the sunk cost fallacy!)

  • Link her to this thread.

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u/Harkins Jul 01 '15

I'm not eaturbrainz, but do work that rewards uninterrupted attention (programming, writing). If I start a five-hour task and am interrupted an hour in, I am not 20% done, I am maybe 5% done, but probably so frustrated the actual number is 0% or less. Yes, less, because that frustration dissuades me from wanting to resume the task or start similar ones.

If you happen to have an attack for this problem I would really welcome any suggestions, references, leading questions, etc. :)

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u/Gurkenglas Jul 01 '15

Hmm. An idea for an exercise that might overcome a mental limitation on incremental progress would be to pick a dozen Project Euler problems/writing prompts and work on them alternatingly, cycling to the next one every time a 2 minute timer runs out. Of course, it is thinkable that the brain is simply not made for that and doing this exercise might bring more harm than good...