Re: making a success from being a brilliant bipolar

Jeffery Zhang <jz87@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

1. The most important characteristic you need to acquire is
self-discipline. There is no substitute for this. Get used to
finishing things off properly. Don't go on to a new project
until you've finished off the old one. Don't always continually
flit from one thing to the next. Find at least one thing that
interests you and become an expert in it.

I've recognized this problem from my summer research project. I
seriously need discipline. That's why I decided to postpone going to
grad school for my PhD to work for 2 years first. I need some time to
figure this one out. Do you think a school environment where you
always take 3-4 classes a semester and therefore are juggling 3-4
projects simultaneously is bad for focus? I was thinking that maybe a
work environment where I just work on 1 project will help me with
focus. I hope it will help me develop new mental habits. Part of the
problem is that I work best in short bursts. I can really focus and
work hard for 2-3 days or up to a week but then I need some down time.
I can't just work on one thing constantly. Do you know any good ways
to not be tempted to start new projects on my down time from what I'm
doing currently?

I think you will definitely need lots of self discipline to complete
the Phd. One of the things I noticed when doing mine was that unlike
undergraduate work, it doesn't end after a semester and you have to
push yourself for (usually) 3 to 4 years. This is very hard and then
at the end, you have the hardest part of all, writing the whole thing
up.

Don't even consider doing a Phd unless you have a topic which intrests
you and has some scope for original work. At the beginning, lots of
your time will involve research and getting to know the field,
partially to be certain your work will be original. Make sure you get
the right supervisor and try to get as many articles published before
you submit as you can - this allows your peers to determine if what
you are doing is really original and provides a good sanity check.

I actually never completed my Phd. A little over half way through, I
had some unfortunate luck which resulted in me losing my sight. By the
time I had re-trained myself and acquired the necessary living skills
and learnt how to work with screen readers etc, over two years had
passed. In comp. Sci, this can represent a lifetime. Significant parts
of my original work was not only no longer original, aspects of what I
was doing were now being incorporated into languages like Java (my
research area was in autonomous mobile agents, executable conceptual
graphs and techniques for programs to save state, serialise its
objects, transfer the object to a remote system and start re-excuting
etc). I started again, but to be honest, had lost momentum and was
already in a job which paid more than I would get after around 10 more
years of study and post-doctoral work. Although I had a research
council scholarship that was quite generous, it didn't compare to what
I was already earning, so basically I just gave up.

2. This also goes for emotional self-discipline. Learn techniques
for coping with the down phase. Moping is not one. Walk,
cycle, jog, do tai chi. Whatever it takes. Try to avoid
medication if possible.

I usually just rant and complain to people how much X sucks. I'd call
up friends at 4AM in the morning and be like this university sucks,
why didn't they teach us X freshman year? I think I also have a
problem with seeing flaws in things. Every programming language I use
I get frustrated because there is something that isn't quite right.
This leads to a lot of jumping between programming languages.

Settle on something early and stick with it despite its flaws. The
world is a flawed imperfect place and you have to learn to live with
it. I think part of being really creative and intelligent is knowing
how to work with the imperfect - anyone can achieve wonders with the
perfect tool in the perfect envrionment. Only the truely talented can
achieve wonders with imperfect tools in an imperfect environment.


3. Find a nice squeeze (i.e. female). Someone who believes in
you and has common sense. They do exist still. They
can act as a counterbalance to your swings. Avoid femininists
who lecture you and give you a hard time. You can do that for
yourself. If you're American don't be afraid to look outside
your own culture for the right woman.
Note BBMs are not necessarily male; but testosterone is the
Tabasco sauce of the human hormones - it hots up extremes
of all kinds.
Another relationship with a BBM can work and can be
inspirational - or lead to a lot of broken plates. Find what
works for you.

I have thus far only met one person who I can connect to on the I want
to create stuff level, and it's another guy and he transferred out to
an art school. I can't even talk to my friends about this stuff, it
just blows over them. They think I'm some sort of robot because I'm
always doing stuff that seems like work to them. I don't understand
how getting drunk, doing stupid things, and random hookups are fun.

Don't discount them! Experiences are fun, the catch is to get the
balance right. You can be amazed at the things that can occur and the
thoughts which can come about after a drunken, passionate
discussion/argument. A friend of mine actually developed an amazing
code cracking system based on simulated annealing from a discussion in
a pub with a physics student. I'd say many of my more creative ideas
actually occured to me when I wasn't even thinking about problems or
computers and programming. Don't forget there is a difference between
being a little drunk and so drunk you can't walk. Ideas often come
from the weirdest places and often don't happen from disciplined hard
thinking. Creativity often follows from letting your mind just go
where it wants to and letting the subconscious have a little more freedom.

I don't know if it's just people like me are naturally rare or our
culture just brow beat them into conforming and pretend to be someone
they're not. The joy of creating things and solving hard problems
can't easily be glamorized on TV, because it's a deeply personal
experience. In some sense it's like a religious experience. But in my
opinion it's also the most satisfying kind of experience. This is what
leads to fulfillment. It seems to me that the kind of experiences that
pop culture promotes are the shallow, unfulfilling kind. It's like
drinking salt water to quench thirst, your thirst is never quenched,
you just want more and more. All it leads to is more and more
consumption, but never fulfillment.

Be careful of being too judgmental or narrow of thought. The pop
culture has created some pretty amazing things - you may not like them
all or may not be able to see the value, but its important to
recognise there can be something to be learned from them, even if its
just how things could be done better or what not to do. I feel its
better to reject things after you have tried to understand them rather
than reject them simply because they don't fit with your
tastes/desires/understanding. Its important to be open to new ideas
and thoughts.


Tim

--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
.

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