This article is less about specifically running 100 mile-races and more about doing something that requires self-control; and the claim is that doing so will make anyone a more successful person.
> ”Bill Gates spent thousands of hours learning to program”
Here's the full quote: "Bill Gates spent thousands of hours learning how to program computers—but he only had that opportunity because he had the good fortune of having parents who supported his education."
I think you're in violent agreement that 10,000 hours isn't sufficient.
> There is virtually zero use for this capability [running 100 mile races]
That's a major point of the article, given it's discussion of the spillover effect: "The bottom line: Practice self-control in one area of your life, and you can apply it in other parts, too."
It's nice that practicing willpower improves willpower, even across activities.
But that doesn't suggest that's the best way to do it generally, or that running in particular is an effective or efficient way to do it.
Look, I get it. I run and it takes time so there's pressure to justify it.
But I don't see why the basic truth isn't enough: he enjoys it and it staves off his feelings of impending mortality. (In this case, I suspect he may also be trying to monetize it, but who knows.)
I'm not so sure that's true... the example he gave about the non-dominant hand users being able to suppress their anger was questionable.
Plus, a whole slew of writers say that willpower is an expendable resource.. resist the cookie in the morning, and you will be less likely to resist a candy bar in the afternoon..
> Seems like way too much work for an attacker to try to figure out.
I dunno, seems like way more work to come up with, maintain, and actually use the generator. Seems easier to just click a bunch in my vault to generate and copy, although I guess you're protected from vault-theft?
Given your example, I had already figured out all the way up to ies/otto are probably foreign numbers (more specifically, otto looks like 8 and 16 looks like double of 8) before even seeing that you just gave the answer away.
Of these, 1: Chose the project you want to contribute to (and 1.5: Choose the issue to work on) and 9: Follow up are the hard ones. Both are primarily social problems.
For 1, it's mostly about knowing yourself. What projects interest you, and where can you contribute?
For 9, it's convincing the owners that your contribution is a net positive. Start with 2: Check out how to contribute, and proactively reach out so your pull request doesn't come out of the blue.
Oh, and be willing to put your ego aside -- it can be tough to defend your work, particularly if you're a new (and thus haven't built up trust) contributor. It gets easier, both as the project learns to trust you and as you learn the work within their practices.
So actually, I was thinking about #1 the other day as well. When you go to GitHub.com, they now have /explore and /showcases. But, even if you find something interesting (say https://github.com/showcases/open-journalism), it isn't clear that any of those projects are suitable for contribution. Not everyone uses a CONTRIBUTING.md, but even more so, I think many of the showcased projects on GitHub fall into the "Free to make a copy of" not open to contribution.
So I keep coming back to what has been said elsewhere: the best way seems to be to find a bug in something you use, realize it's open source and go from there. That's unfortunately not a great way to mobilize the masses of people that could contribute, but don't have a particular project in mind (think GSoC).
What I'm saying is that my eyes simply scan the words while I think of other things. There's no comprehension there, I'm just losing my place in the text.
If you're hourly, of course it's a different thing.
But if you're salaried, it's an arms race. Employees willing to work extra hours get more done (or at worst, only appear to get more done), and thus will get the rewards and promotions.
I actually experienced the opposite. The employees who went to heroic efforts to work long hours and “get things done” were often the ones who did the worst work that had to be cleaned up by someone else later. The people who came in on time and left on time tended to be more methodical and their shit just worked.
