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If I'm going to believe anything, I'd need a longitudinal study of about 5 years.

I find 5 years to be a good hallmark to see whether something had an actual strong impact in my own life (e.g. regarding reading self-help books such as Search Inside Yourself [1] or Steve Pavlina's blog post on how to rock at university [2] -- sorry for being slightly off-topic but these two things changed my life).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Ach...

[2] https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/10-tips-for-colleg...

⬐ btbuildem

Bit of a Catch-22 problem, don't you think?

⬐ mettamage

How? You experiment on something for 5 years and then report. In my case of reading books: you read books and 5 years later you know what stuck and reread it in order to get the full wisdom out of it. It helped that I studied for 8 years and reflected on these kind of things every year.

⬐ sideshowb

Because without some shorter term studies you might struggle to get enough employers on board for a sufficiently powered long term one.

⬐ mettamage

Good point. In my prior comments, I wasn't really looking at the pragmatic side of organizing studies.

⬐ WhompingWindows

Where did Steve Pavlina go to school? Not sure if some of those triaging strategies would have worked at U Chicago...

⬐ mettamage

It definitely worked wonders for me (VU University Amsterdam), definitely during my psychology bachelor.

I experienced the following conditions.

> In every student’s schedule, some classes are critical while others are almost trivial.

True, the most funny ones were social psychology and e-business, common sense almost helped you to pass the course.

> For some classes attendance was necessary, but for others it didn’t make much difference.

True for me as well, reading the book within 30 minutes would save 75 minutes of time since the class would take 105 minutes.

> I could simply get the notes from another student if needed, or I could learn the material from the textbook.

We had a notes Facebook group and there was a Dutch startup dedicated to summaries.

> If it wasn’t necessary for me to attend a particular class (based on my goals for that class)

Having a good goal is tantamount if your goal is to learn everything possible, then triaging becomes almost impossible. If your goal is to just get by with the lowest grade possible, then triaging is a must.

> If I felt an assignment was lame, pointless, or unnecessarily tedious, and if it wouldn’t have too negative an impact on my grade, I would actually decline to do it.

I did this with my thesis, for example (again psychology). I could check for normality and do all the right statistical things, but it would only get me 5% extra points. So I assumed normality and everything else needed for multiple linear regression, tested nothing and reported the results.

> Maybe I’d estimate it would take me 20 hours to do an A job but only 10 hours to do a B job.

Heh, I did this so many times. I had side jobs, a girlfriend, friends and other activities that I could spend my time on.

> I often thought in this Machiavellian fashion back then, and often to my surprise I found that my B-quality papers would come back with As anyway.

Oh yes, one time I even published a paper that I rushed through as a homework exercise, because my synthesis of using psychology, neuroscience and game studies for a game studies paper was apparently unparalleled for a master student (the field simply doesn't have many people, so you easily shine). Think about that, I rush a paper writing it in 20 hours and it gets published and nominated for best paper award. Before those 20 hours, I knew nothing of the topic.

Triaging was a lot harder for my computer science programs though, it simply has less bullshit, contained more moving parts and has therefore been intellectually tougher. In that sense, if you triage a lot, it is some indication that your university program isn't of high quality, unfortunately (there are quite a bit of exceptions).

That google guy who wrote the book disagrees:

https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Ach...

p.s. book is worth read IMO.

This is very good book teaching about mediation in a geeks way: https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Ach...

Highly recommended.

Asking a book to change one's life within the course of a year seems like a tall order.

That said I recommend Chade-Meng Tan's 'Search Inside Yourself'[0].

Chade-Meng Tan began his career at Google as software engineer and later transitioned to teach a course – that this book describes – on emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and self-awareness. Allegedly, the course was quite popular at Google. I highly recommend the book.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi...

I really recommend you read this book http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi...

Written by a google engineer for other engineers. TLDR: practicing meditation gives you the ability to react to stress and anxiety before it blows up.

I found the OP very interesting because they are essentially trying to delivery some of the benefits of mindful practices via a technical means.

I've tried quite a few things and the most useful thing for me has been https://www.headspace.com/ . It's "daily" guided meditation (that after not too long is barely guided). The narrator's voice is really good, not too hippie, very calming. Everything is pleasant and well-designed.

This was also pretty good, if you'd rather read a book: http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi...

⬐ geekam

Edit: Do you pay for headspace or just use their 10 minute? I just signed up.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I just bought this book.

First comment on NH ever for me - because I really think meditation can be the answer to your problem. I read this book about a year ago - Search Inside Yourself (http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi...). I started practicing meditation - maybe a couple of times a week only and more whenever i am stressed out. It has helped me deal with all kinds of stress and i am more focused then ever before.

This book was written by one of early Google engineers who has learned meditation and created a class that he has taught to thousands of Google employees. Unlike much of other writing or classes on meditation this one is written in plain language and cites lots of neuro research. It is not even that long.

So go read first half of this book, practice it for 3 months and then reevaluate.

⬐ wallflower

> First comment on NH ever for me

Welcome to HN! I lurked for years before I posted. Even though I am less 'active' now because of various projects, I still use HN as a filter for what might be of interest.