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Hack On Self: Quest System Basics

February 7, 2025 by 1 Comment

Whenever I play an RPG, whether it’s Fallout or Cyberpunk 2077, I complete every single quest available to me. The quests grab my attention in an unprecedented way – doesn’t hurt that there’s rewards and progression markers attached. Of course, these systems are meticulously designed to grab attention, making sure you can enjoy the entirety of the game’s content.

Does quest progression in an RPG tangibly impact my life? No. Do they have control over my attention? Yes, for sure. My day-to-day existence is the opposite – my real-life decisions impact me significantly, and yet, keeping attention on them is a struggle. Puzzling, disturbing – and curious. I feel like I’ll never forgive myself if I ignore this problem any longer.

So, I wrote a simple quest system prototype. As usual, it worked, it failed, and it taught me things. Here’s how I did it.

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Hack On Self: Headphone Friend

December 4, 2024 by 3 Comments

In the last two articles, I talked about two systems relying on audio notifications. The first one is the Alt-Tab annihilator system – a system making use of my window monitoring code to angrily beep at me when I’m getting distracted. The other is the crash prevention system – a small script that helps me avoid an annoying failure mode where I run out of energy before getting myself comfortable for it.

I’ve been appreciating these two systems quite a bit – not only are they at my fingertips, they’re also pretty effective. To this day, I currently use these two systems to help me stay focused as I hack on my own projects or write articles, and they are definitely a mainstay in my self-hacking arsenal.

There is a particular thing I’ve noticed – audio notifications help a fair bit in a way that phone or desktop notifications never would, and, now I have a framework to produce them – in a way that calls for a purpose-tailored device. It’s just wireless headphones, Pi-powered, connected through WiFi, and a library to produce sounds on my computer, but it turns out I can squeeze out a lot out of this simple combination.

Here’s a pocketable device I’ve developed, using off-the-shelf hardware – an audio receiver/transmitter with extra IO, paired to my laptop. And, here’s how I make use of this device’s capabilities to the fullest.

Audio Output

In the “producing sound out of a Pi” article, I’ve mentioned USB-C 3.5mm soundcards. You can use them with a USB-C host port, and you don’t even need any sort of resistors for that – the soundcard doesn’t try and detect state of the CC pin, and why would it, anyway? Get VBUS, GND, D+, and D-, and you got yourself an audio card with high quality output.

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Hack On Self: The Un-Crash Alarm

November 22, 2024 by 52 Comments

Ever get home, tired after work, sit down on a couch, and spend an hour or two sitting down without even managing to change into your home clothes? It’s a seriously unpleasant in-between state – almost comfortable, but you know you’re not really at rest, likely hungry, and even your phone battery is likely about to die. This kind of tiredness can get self-reinforcing real quick – especially if you’re too tired to cook food, or you’re stuck in an uncomfortable position. It’s like the inverse of the marshmallow test – instead of a desire, you’re dealing with lack thereof.

I’ve been dealing with this problem a lot within the last two years’ time. Day to day, I could lose hours to this kind of tiredness. It gets worse when I’m sick, and, it’s gotten worse on average after a few bouts of COVID. It’s not just tiredness, either – distractability and tiredness go hand in hand, and they play into each other, too.

My conclusion, so far, was pretty simple. When I’m tired, delayed but proper rest is way better than “resting” in a half-alert state, even if that takes effort I might not have yet. So, it’s important that I can get up, even if I’m already in a “crashed” position. Sure, I could use tricks like “do not sit down until I’m ready to rest”, but that only works sometimes – other times, the tiredness is too much to handle.

Audio files and sound playback library in hand, negative reinforcement methods fresh in my mind, I went and cooked together a very simple solution. Continue reading “Hack On Self: The Un-Crash Alarm” →

Hack On Self: The Alt-Tab Annihilator

October 7, 2024 by 43 Comments

Last time, I told you about a simple script I made to collect data about my laptop activity, talked about why collecting data about yourself is a moral imperative, and shared the upgraded script with you alongside my plans for it. Today, I will show you a problem I’ve been tackling, with help of this script and the data it gives, and I also would love to hear your advice on a particular high-level problem I’m facing.

Today’s problem is as old as time – I often can’t focus on tasks I badly need done, even ones I want done for myself. This has been a consistent problem in my life, closing off opportunities, getting me to inadvertently betray my friends and family, hurting my health and well-being, reinforcing a certain sort of learned helplessness, and likely reinforcing itself as it goes, too.

It’s deeply disturbing to sit down fully intending to work on a project, then notice no progress on it hours later, and come to a gut-wrenching realization you’ve had hundreds of such days before – I think this screws with you, on a fundamental level. Over the years, I’ve been squeezing out lessons from this failure mode, making observations, trying out all sorts of advice, in search of a solution.

Join me today in non-invasive brain augmentation and reprogramming, as I continue trying to turn my life around – this time, with help of my laptop, a computer that I already spend a ton of time interfacing with. Ever notice that starting work on a task  is often the hardest part of it? It’s the same for me, and I decided to hack away at it.

Staying On Track

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