Navigating through Precondition

(Anecdotes for dealing with self-imposed mental blocks)

• If you have a mental block about something, try to find a counterexample where that thing is better than your way of doing things. If you take pride in being logical, a counterexample should be enough.

• Don’t constrain yourself within the vision of the authors when the ideas themselves aren’t even real. Disrespect isn’t bad if kept limited to ideas and opinions and not people.

• Skills are often transferable. Things you pick up doing something uninspiring might help you to be better and push you towards your eventual goal. So, if faced with a mental block which involves WHY BOTHER—think about the skills you might end up learning or polishing along the way.

• Things don’t have to be sequential unless a hard prerequisite—they are organised in DAGs. You can start at multiple nodes at once serving different parts of the brain. Understanding why generalised matrix inverse works has NOTHING to do with understanding how attention works.

• You’ll have to revisit the stuff anyway for reasons I’ve mentioned elsewhere. It’s okay if you do multiple passes through things. Leaves your brain the opportunity to ASK QUESTIONS—which is of paramount importance to begin every scientific quest.