I won't speak for what "blockchain" can or will become, but you might see the hype more clearly by considering the ideology inherent in asking specifically for the "proper application." You imply that you or someone in a position you understand might "apply blockchain" to a "problem," as you commonly understand it.

I see "blockchain" more as a movement, which completely evades "application" in the common sense. People building these technologies, and organizations around them, live in a separate world that makes little reference to the broader world of which most of us are a part. They start with distinct priors, which rule out most existing solutions on the grounds that they demand political centralization (see: https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...).

You can summarize this ideology as: 'if there's a sysadmin, the system is broken.'

It may very well be the case that they are creating a new world that will be marginalized and outcompeted by incumbent systems and organizations, but that's how I understand what's 'actually going on'.

For longer articles I want to read eventually but know I won't get to for a long time, I use the "Save this page" feature of Inoreader[2].

Since I've started using Inoreader, I haven't gone back to any of these articles, but I'm ok with this – I tend to review the cache every 6-months to a year when I happen to have uninterrupted free time (like between jobs or on vacation). Previously I had Are.na channels called "To Read 1", "To Read 2", and so on.

[1] https://are.na

[2] https://www.inoreader.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16180078

Points: 19

# Comments: 2

Per-UX, I've found Skype very difficult to use since the last major redesign a few(?) years ago. I'm not sure if the update made it worse. I feel generally confused just the same.

I keep a bullet journal, which is mainly for journaling and long-term planning.

Some days I write a list of tasks on a piece of paper.

I put events with a definite time in my calendar (add with Fantastical, review with Calendar app, Week Cal + Fantastical on iPhone, Calendars 5 on iPad).

I put "someday" tasks and tasks that have a definite due date in Things on Mac and iOS (the new version is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used). The new Things also integrates calendar events into the "Today" view, which is quite useful. But I don't look at it every day.

Previously I used "2do" with "smart lists" corresponding to a priority matrix ("important urgent", "important not urgent", "not important urgent", "not important not urgent.") It was a bit too complicated and I switched to Things when the new version came out a couple months ago.

I also used to have a daily checklist in 2do, but after it became habit, I found I didn't need it anymore. I highly recommend a daily checklist for anyone recovering from burn-out, depression, or similar.

I've just switched to doing high-level planning in a "Master Plan" document in Quip. It's already quite detailed and covers most aspect of my life.

Otherwise lately I organize my days into 3 or 4 timed 1-2 hour focused work "zones", with as much ceremony as time affords, to the point of making special drinks, listening to specific music depending on the theme, and lighting candles.

I'm also experimenting with 3 10-minute open-ended thinking periods per day, for which I have alarms set in my phone.

The latter two habits have been very effective. I'd tried Pomodoro in the past, but I find that ceremony is important.

That sounds pretty exotic, but the major insight from the past 10 years of trying things is that finding the one right system is a fool's errand. Trying many different systems – the simpler the better – and letting them evolve naturally works best for me.

On Knuth, C, and Haskell: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12741430

On npm and In Praise of Idleness: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209300

On revenue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11307264

On cranks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931403

On "Great Men": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10166372

On the vastness of space: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9937353

Advice from a doctor: https://www.are.na/block/324266

A+ dig at pg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140065

A+ troll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7229519

I had the issue where I was suddenly following everyone again on one occasion (years ago), but since I've unfollowed everyone again, I haven't had any issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgGU8Vy3xoc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLIi_ZMBfQs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d38xbAFnCSQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hamT4XESYG0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQWCUXNsUyQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY-9cGBdxNw&list=PL8kGLx6Th4...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM251rMyfUg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oBl0xq16G0

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942989

> In June 2015, the FCC reclassified the ISP's as common carriers. Tada, the FTC rules no longer apply. So the FCC regulated them with roughly the same set of rules. Now they've undone this.

—

'I push his head back' and 'I drop it in water and it floats,' though very dissimilar sentences in English, are similar in Shawnee. The point of view of linguistic relativity changes Mr. Everyman's dictum: Instead of saying "Sentences are unlike because they tell about unlike facts," he now reasons: "Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them."

We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.

From this fact proceeds what I have called the "linguistic relativity principle," which means, in informal terms, that users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world.

Concepts of "time" and "matter" are not given in substantially the same form by experience to all men but depend upon the nature of the language or languages through the use of which they have been developed.