Mastery
30 April, 2019
5 minute read
What am I working on?
Considering this week is the start of finals, I’m pretty busy going over everything from neuroscience to data structures and algorithms. It’s weird to almost be done with junior year. Time has really flown these past few years, and I’m grateful for every one of them. People always tell you how college is this defining moment in your life where you really figure out who you are and where you’re going. I think the reality is no matter your age, we’re all constantly doing just that. Too much? Been reading too much philosophy? Probably😜.
Other than finishing up schoolwork this past week, I was able to get user sign-up/sign-in set up for PlayRight. You can check out the code for that here. I ran into some trouble deciding on whether or not to use the AWS Amplify higher-order component withAuthenticator. Basically it abstracts away a lot of the authentication logic on your end so you can get to developing the core features of your app. I think this is a really cool part of Amplify, but from what I briefly read - customization can be limited. I ended up just importing Auth into my screens and using signIn(), signUp(), and confirmSignUp() to work with things from scratch. If I go that route, I’ll have to set up everything on my own which could be a cool learning experience, but will take up some time I could be spending developing other features. I plan to read up on it and see if I can pass my own screen components to it. Then I need to create basic screens for ForgotPassword and MFA. If I can get that working then authentication is essentially done, and I’ll start working with user data and the Spotify API. Outside of PlayRight development, I’ve been continuing to go over stuff for my internship and learning more about getting a content infrastructure set up with Gatsby for fun.
Neat finds from online…
- “Learning to Learn” by Richard Hamming is a great lecture on acquiring meaning in life through the work you choose to pursue and how you choose to pursue it. For me, this lecture is one of those things you come across and can’t help but think how ironic it was that you came across it when you did. Keeping in mind this lecture was NOT at all for a philosophy course, Hamming goes on to mention some of the greatest Greek philosophers and ends his lecture quoting Socrates on the value of introspection, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
- How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind – from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist provides an excellent perspective and analysis on how our day to day choices might just not be our own.
What am I reading?
This past week I finished Donald Robertson’s How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. It was an awesome read which combined history and philosophy with modern-day psychology. I plan to write a review or at least provide my reading notes from these books in a longer post. I might create a separate page on my site just for that so keep an eye out! Ostinato rigore or “relentless rigor” was the motto of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest masters in history. I learned this from Robert Greene’s Mastery which is all about breaking down what made historical (and contemporary) figures like da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and Mozart masters at their craft and how we can embody the same qualities. You can learn more about Mastery from Greene’s talk at Google. It’s all I’ve been reading since finishing Robertson’s book, but I plan to circle back around to finish other books of mine like A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
“Some 2,600 years ago the ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote,”Become who you are by learning who you are." What he meant is the following: You are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate. It is who you are to the core. Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become–an individual, a Master." (Greene 29)
Quote I’m digging…
“The pleasant life is not the sum total of its pleasant moments. Somehow or other it’s added up very, very differently. The Good Life is not the life of pleasure from moment to moment and you know it. In fact you are well aware that you cannot get up in the morning and say,”I shall be happy today" and make it work. The Good Life has to be snuck up upon. And I’m saying with an opinion of myself and many other books. The way to do that is to take yourself on hand and manage yourself to be the person you wish to be to achieve the goals you wish, and be more articulate than just idle drifting like a drunken sailor." ~ Richard Hamming