Take something you don’t like and try to like it

While I enjoy (and crave) the waves (of time) that make my brain obsess over things which bring me immense joy to the point I neglect essentials (food and water), what follows is a hard learned crash where I have no energy (or dopamine) left to give to anything!

Similar for my approach (although I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD). This is how I learned electronics enough to manage becoming a certified electrical engineer without ever officially studying anything even remotely like it. I was in the exam with people who did this professionally for half of their lives. This is also how I learned anything I ever did as a freelancer, including sound mixing for movies, VFX work, color grading, programming: I was curious about it, I was young, had time and just followed my interest. It is still how I learn new things, only now all the knowledge from other domains helps me doing it even faster.

The trick is to play judo instead of karate with your own drive. Instead of trying to stop your urge and force yourself to do the boring stuff, it can work to take your energy and just slightly redirect it to where you want to go and where it makes sense for you to go. Maybe you have the urge to play a video game and can redirect it to reading a book like homo ludens instead, or maybe you redirect it towards making a game? Even if you never finished it you learned something.

Strange question: Could you obsess mainly over time management / optimisation and fix all of this?

HAH! I have been happily using your grinder for a decade (When I clicked on your link, Amazon tells me I bought it on July 30, 2015). Last week, I realized it is just way too worn down to be useful. I see no reason why I wont buy the same one again.

Pro tip: stick your drill/electric screwdriver to it and now you have a $200 motorized grinder. Been doing that for a decade. I use the same drill to roast my own beans in a homemade "wobble disk" roaster (look it up on youtube, if you care). I also use the drill with a whisk, and many other things.

I am a calm coffee (espresso) snob.

I love the basic, and I love the fine.

Believe it or not, expensive grinders (~$500 range) create an unbelievable difference.

But they’re a luxury :)

Lance Hedrick (popular coffee YouTuber) demonstrates time and time again that cheap machines and setups can rival even the most expensive end-game setups.

I used that Hario grinder for years but eventually the clear base part broke. I continued using it by grinding directly into the AeroPress but it was pretty annoying. I finally upgraded to a KINGrinder K6 and it’s amazing how much better it is. It grinds way, way faster.

Coffee is an example, but there are plenty of others:

There's a pretty basic problem that a coffee grinder is a motor, the actual grinding surfaces, and the tubes that connect where the beans come from and grounds go to. Maybe add a scale and a little bit of electronics, but still, what does a $1000 grinder have that a $200 doesn't?

Indeed you have to get a lot of things precisely right to get a desired grind particle size distribution and that takes science and study and precision but the end product is still only a few simple parts that meet a specification. The problem is volume and just charging large amounts of money because that's how you attract customers in the "quality" space where having very good taste for quality is itself quite hard.

Coffee grinders are ripe for disruption with a low cost high quality product, but in order to pay for the engineering time to make one you have to have confidence in pretty high volume so picking a price point is hard.

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Everything is a distraction from a distraction from a distraction. -Kierkegaard

> I wish I could will myself into one obsession or another.

I understand. Not sure if you’re in the same boat, but for me, it’s a combination of age, energy, time, and becoming jaded. I used to spend late night hours poking at new things to learn about new hobbies and the like. The older I get, the less time and energy I’m willing to excerpt. This has been great for my getting back to reading books, but it’s been a sinkhole for self-learning and new skill development. The dopamine is lacking.

While I'm savvy enough to keep my madness to myself (most of the time), that's pretty much what's happening in my brain!

Not OP, but I was also replying and had thoughts along a similar vein.

I'm 44 and have had countless hobbies over my adolescent and adult lives. Some I've taken up multiple times, some I've visited multiple variations on a core idea (e.g. aquariums/planted tanks/dwarf shrimp tanks). I've learned (and subseqeuntly forgotten) a tremendous amount, and spent an unholy amount of money. Most things have not stayed with me.

Miniature painting is one thing that I think might last me the rest of my life.

I think it boils down to a few factors:

- miniatures aren't alive; I don't need to care for them, so the worst that can happen is I break or scratch something. This keeps my anxiety/concern/guilt largely out of the equation.

- the feedback cycles are fairly short; I know almost immediately if a paint stroke was good or bad, if my brush is too wet or too dry, etc. A single project is normally just a couple of hours, and then it's done and I can view it as a completed whole.

- the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around and compare to work done before and after and see progression and evolution over time. Also, if you're prone to collecting things, just keeping the product on the shelf next to other things becomes an ongoing source of reward.

- if I absolutely fubar something, I can buy or print a new mini for a couple bucks or throw it in some Simple Green overnight and brush the old paint off. Most of the time I can just paint over the issue.

- paint, brushes, a wet palette, minis, airbrush, etc all add up, but you can have an amazing setup for under a thousand bucks, and you can transcend the realm of mortals for $2K. The ongoing costs after that are manageable unless you're into Warhammer. You can get started and do some really fun and cool things with a $50 starter kit.

So there's some higher-dimension graph with effort, frustration, reward, feedback latency, etc, and for me at least painting miniatures tends to sit in a happy area.

I've eaten all sorts of strange and exotic things... but most seafood, I simply... cannot.

Most of it smells like it is rotting to me and the taste is overpowering[0]. Trust me, I've tried countless times. Something that my wife will insist has no or little seafood in will taste like I am eating the entire ocean.

People would tell me "Oh you don't know what you are missing out on!" so I would try to get myself to eat it again. I've now learned that the only thing I am missing out on is suffering - I don't like seafood. I'm ok with this.

[0]I have occassionally managed if it's exceptionally mild or watered down, but even then there is usually a sense that something taste a bit "odd" while not being wholly unpaletable.

Also, most people can't express "this food is triggering a minor allergy, enough to make me uncomfortable but not recognize it".

Travel far and outside of comfort zone changes person, any person, for good. Prophet Mohammed is quoted roughly saying: "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled".

There are non-trivial amount of people who discovered this on their own, got properly addicted and basically live in their western jobs to be able to afford as much travel ie in remote parts of south east Asia as possible. Some skipped that western job part altogether. I recently spent few weeks in remote parts of northern Sulawesi and the only westerners I kept meeting were of this bunch, with exactly same travel bug.

The problem is as you describe - you can't explain all this and much more to folks who stayed home or some variant of that. You can show photos and videos, tell stories but what that experience changed within you, thats your journey only.

Personally, this is by far the best way to spend money (plus gym membership).

I agree completely. Understanding the level of control you really have over yourself is key to unlock so many good things.

One thing that people don't know very well is that kids' taste experience is different and for some this is stronger than others. The actual flavor sense is different or much more intense and this dulls with age.

I still can't eat fresh tomato and it isn't a matter of being picky or having preferences, it is very obvious that I can taste something in tomatoes that other people just can't and to me that taste is "poison".

I mean from a different perspective, western animation has similar tropes / issues; it's just that you grew up with it. I couldn't stand Pokemon, but in hindsight that was an anime too, just with Dutch dubs.

Anyway, just keep in mind most anime is aimed at children/teenagers, if you watch it with that in mind or think of English voice acting and vocalizations in western animation, some of these things make more sense.

I do too,kind of, but I don't like the atmosphere / air in planes; too dry, smelly, too warm and too cold at the same time, there's just something environmentally "wrong" in planes. Maybe that's just a matter of getting used to it though.

A lot of tonic water brands have been adding more sugar, which might also explain changing preferences.

> Radio Paradise's web radio channels

Thanks for the tip!

> Counterpoint, understanding alone isn't enough either if you don't have an affinity.

It's not a counterpoint, as I never said that understanding something meant that you would like it.

I just said that it's worth trying to understand before concluding that we dislike something.

My point there being that it may be possible to find interesting parts in things we dislike.

Of course it is mainly from the architecture. When a person who is mentally base sees something which is impressive and beautiful, they are filled with resentment and hate. Even more if it was constructed by people from the past which he thinks he is supposed to be much superior to.

As I said, it's fine to dislike something. I was just saying that it's worth trying to understand first: you may still dislike something that you understand of course.

> but to be honest my opinion of this kind of dismissal of different people liking different things with a fairly condescending "you have simply not understood it" is not much better.

You haven't put too much effort into trying to understand my opinion, have you? :-)

Same here. Churches often have incredible architecture, art and acoustics. I really enjoy visiting them when there is no religious service. And I've been to some fabulous organ concerts at churches.

I wanted to say the exact opposite meaning the same. Going to a church or cathedral to see it, cool down or warm up is nice but I dislike the church of scientology, england and probably bunch of other churches

Feel the same about hospitals

Yep, Free Jazz does that :-). And it's okay not to like it. But I find it great that you tried!

I didn't say that it's impossible to dislike something you understand, though.

Beer pick up truggs girls love my country gobless

How to know that an article about licorice is from the US: they include the "black" qualifier. As if there were any other kind! To me (Swedish) the normal/expected qualifier is "sweet" (yes please) or "salty" (oh yes indeed thank you very much).

The concept of "red licorice" [1] is simply ... foreign. :) It's also fun and interesting as a word/food, since it focuses on the texture of a food and re-uses the word, even though the word is tightly coupled to the flavor.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquorice_(confectionery)#Red_...

My rule is that if other human beings eat something for pleasure (and not out of desperation, a dare, or to show off), then I should at least try it a few times as long as I don’t have ethical qualms about it.