Re: Making sure I'm not checking email (or doing other things) too often

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

>>> The problem: I hit U (mu4e-update-mail-and-index)
>>> way too often. I want Emacs to help me fight this
>>> unproductive habit.
>>
>> The solution: every time you do it - I assume you
>> hit the final `u' with your right index finger -
>> instantly slap your right hand as hard as you can
>> with your left hand. The only time you will not
>> punish yourself this way is when you peace and
>> quiet and with no rush to it beforehand thinks
>> "yes, now is the time to check the mail!" - and
>> then you do it.
>
> Not funny.

But it works.

If you want an "Emacs" solution you can simply assign
a much *longer* shortcut, like three strikes and
perhaps involving the functions keys or something as
un-ergonomic.

The first time you strike it (without wanting to) it
will take some additional time compared to 'U', so
half thru the sequence (or so) you'll be able to stop.

The next time you do it you will remember (your brain
will at some level) that the previous time you did
stop. So this time you will stop not half thru the
sequence but 1/3 in.

And so on until you do not even initiate the hand
movement to do it. At that time there is only the
thought left, which will disappear exactly the
same way.

This is actually not that different from the
"slapping" solution. It is all about associating with
some thing else - pain, or "incompleteness" of the
action - here, they fill the same spot.

> engineers are cooler than pure mathematicians in one
> respect: they (sometimes) come up with solutions -
> sometimes ugly, sometimes stupid - to /real world
> problems/. Hard to beat that.

Indeed. For example:

    http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/pics/door.jpg

But, what engineers and mathematicians do or do not do
*in general* I'd be damned to say. Specifically, when
mathematicians do Lisp they are more engineers than
mathematicians, save for if the Lisp has some
application to math or DP-ish computation, in which
case they are a bit of both.

And this is how it should be! It it like the NHL
playoff. To win it, goal scorers have to check and
checkers have to score goals...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573