DEV Community: koshirok096

Restoring My Shell Aliases on a New Mac (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 22:38:42 +0000

Introduction

This post is for Mac users.

Following my previous post, here's another small thing I noticed when I replaced my Mac and moved over to the new one.

I have a few homemade scripts (Python and so on) on my Mac that I use for work, and I had registered them as aliases so I could run them right away from the terminal. While working on my new Mac, I tried to run one of those scripts as usual, but when I typed the command, nothing worked.

On my old Mac, I could run them just by opening the terminal and typing a short command. Then I remembered, "Oh right, I set something up for that!" But I couldn't remember what exactly I had done. Or rather, after setting it up, I had been using it as if it were just a normal part of the system, so I had forgotten that I had set it up myself in the first place.

And that made sense, because this time I didn't restore everything from my backup at once. Instead, I've been bringing back only what I need, bit by bit, so of course the settings I used to have weren't on the new Mac.

When I looked into it again, I found that I had been using something called shell aliases. So, partly as a review for myself, I'll write about that this time.

What Is an Alias?

An alias is a way to call a long command with a short name. Mac's Finder also has aliases, but what I'm talking about here is more like the terminal version of that, a shortcut for commands.

For example, to run my homemade script, I used to do this every time:

cd /Users/(username)/Documents/Github/myscript
python3 main.py

Once you set up an alias, this is all you need:

myscript

Since the full path is written inside the alias, you can run it from any folder right after opening the terminal, which is really convenient.

You write the setting in a file called ~/.zshrc. This is the terminal's configuration file, and it's loaded automatically when you start the terminal. It looks like this:

alias myscript='cd /Users/(username)/Documents/Github/myscript && python3 main.py'

The steps are:

Open the file with open ~/.zshrc
Add the alias at the end and save
Apply it with source ~/.zshrc

If you forget to run source, the change won't take effect right away, so be careful. Also, you can see a list of all registered aliases by typing alias. It's handy when you forget what you've set up, like I did.

I Restored It, but It Still Didn't Work

The .zshrc from my old Mac was still in my backup, so I brought it back to the new Mac. By the way, .zshrc is a hidden file, so you normally can't see it in Finder. You can show hidden files by pressing ⌘ + Shift + .

With that, my aliases were back, and the command itself started to go through. But then I got a different error:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'yaml'

At first I thought I had set up the alias wrong, but that wasn't it. The cause was that the Python libraries the script uses weren't installed on the new Mac. On my old Mac, the ones I had installed long ago were still there, so I had never noticed.

I checked which libraries the script imports, reinstalled them with pip, and it finally worked.

Conclusion

I thought that once I restored the aliases, everything would be back to normal, but in reality, the environment those aliases depended on didn't come back with them. Restoring a configuration file is easy enough, but what it was quietly depending on only becomes clear once things stop working.

Like this time, when you try to do the same things you used to do after switching machines, you can trip over things you didn't even remember yourself.

If you're planning to get a new Mac, it might be a good idea to pay a little attention to your terminal settings, too.

Thanks for reading!

Switching from Flycut to Maccy (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 00:11:03 +0000

Introduction

This post is for Mac users.

As I mentioned a bit in my previous post, I recently got a new Mac. While I was setting it up, I decided to switch my clipboard manager from Flycut, which I had been using for a while, to Maccy.

A clipboard manager is an app that keeps a history of what you copy, so you can pull it up and paste it later. The first time I used one, I thought, “Wow, this is so convenient!” It’s one of those tools that you can’t live without once you start using it.

By the way, I didn’t really have any complaints about Flycut’s features. If I had to name one, it would be that Flycut occasionally crashed, and that’s about it (this may have been a problem with my computer, though). So why did I switch? When I was migrating my data to the new Mac, I looked into clipboard managers again and realized there were several options. I was simply curious how the others felt to use, so I wanted to give one a try. That’s really all there is to it.

Since both apps do more or less the same thing, I assumed switching wouldn’t make much of a difference. But once I started using Maccy, I noticed some subtle differences, and I found that kind of interesting, so I’ll write a little about it here.

What I Liked (and Didn’t) About Flycut

First, about Flycut, which I had been using. What I liked about it was that you could hold down the shortcut key and go through the history one item at a time. You keep the key pressed, step through to the item you want, and when you let go, it gets pasted right away. Once you get used to it, you can use it almost without thinking.

Being able to drop text directly into a text field was also handy. For example, I use Adobe Lightroom a lot, and even in input fields like the Caption field, the text goes right where the cursor is, so there’s no need to paste it again. As I’ll explain later, things are a little different with Maccy on this point.

That said, I was aware of its weak point, which was that it would occasionally crash while I was using it. I’d suddenly notice it had disappeared from the menu bar and my whole history was gone. That happened a few times, and honestly, it was a small but real source of stress. Still, it didn’t happen too often, so it wasn’t a big problem. Besides, my computer was getting old, especially toward the end, so the trouble may have been caused by the machine itself. If you asked me whether it was a problem with the app, I couldn’t really say.

Switching to Maccy

Maccy is basically the same kind of clipboard manager, but the first thing that’s different is the UI. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the design of either tool, so I can’t say which one is better. That said, Maccy’s UI is especially polished and easy to read, that’s for sure. It also shows supplementary information such as where something was copied from, how many times, and when, which makes it easy to get an overall view of your copy history.

As for holding down the shortcut key and going through the history in order, it feels a bit different, but you can still step through the history like with Flycut, and I have no problems with how it handles.

Also, the crashing issue I had with Flycut hasn’t happened even once so far. It’s lightweight and stable, and I’m quite satisfied in that respect.

On the other hand, dropping text directly into a text field doesn’t always work, depending on the app. Maccy also has a setting that pastes the selected item right away, and in a web browser, for example, it pastes just fine. But in Lightroom’s Caption field, when I select an item, I just hear the Mac’s alert sound and nothing gets pasted, so I have to press ⌘V again afterward. Since this was something Flycut could do, it’s a small extra step, but I do find it a little inconvenient (there may be a way to fix this, so if anyone knows, please let me know!).

Either way, I’ve been getting used to Maccy’s way of doing things as I use it, and so far I haven’t felt any major inconvenience.

Conclusion

At first, I thought that since both are clipboard managers and the core idea of the tool is simple, there probably wouldn’t be much difference in how they feel to use. But when I actually tried it, I found differences in very small details, and I realized these tiny differences are probably what decide whether people choose one service or another. It’s less about which one is better and more about what you prioritize. The differences are subtle, but it’s interesting that there are things you only notice after switching.

Do you use a clipboard manager? If you’ve never used one, I’d recommend trying one of these tools first.

Thanks for reading!

Inserting Dates with the Shortcuts App on macOS (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 21:46:36 +0000

Introduction

Note: This article is written for Mac users.

In a previous article, “How to Customize Date Format Using Terminal on macOS,” I showed how to change the date format using Terminal. A macOS update had changed the date format, and I could no longer use “DD/MMM/YY,” the format I use every day. So the article was about rewriting a system setting to bring it back.

I might write about this in more detail in another article, but I recently got a new Mac. While I was setting it up, I remembered that I had made this setting change before.

I could have just done it again with Terminal like last time, but this time I tried doing the same thing with the Shortcuts app. Actually, this way felt easier, so I’ll write a little about it.

Inserting Dates with Shortcuts

The shortcut I made is a simple one with just these five actions:

Receive: Set to receive input from Quick Actions (If there’s no input: Continue)
Current Date: Gets the current date and time
Format Date: Formats it however you like (set Date Format to Custom and enter dd/MMM/yy)
Copy to Clipboard: Copies the formatted date to the clipboard
Run AppleScript: Pastes it

Here’s the AppleScript at the end:

on run {input, parameters}
    delay 0.1
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down
    return input
end run

All it does is paste the copied date with ⌘V. The delay 0.1 is just a tiny wait so the paste doesn’t run before the copy has finished. Also, if you only need the date copied and don’t want it pasted, just remove the AppleScript part, and the shortcut will stop once the date is on the clipboard.

After that, turn on Use as Quick Action in the shortcut’s settings and assign a keyboard shortcut. Then you can insert the date in your preferred format with a single keyboard shortcut in any app. The first time, you may be asked to allow it to control System Events. If a popup appears, you can simply enable it from Settings.

By the way, in my case, I want to use both a date-only version and one that includes the time, so I also made a shortcut called Insert Timestamp with the same structure. The only difference is the Format Date format: this one includes the time, like dd/MMM/yy HH:mm:ss.

Differences from the Terminal Version

The Terminal method I introduced in the previous article rewrote the system-wide date format itself. As I mentioned in that article, there were a few things to keep in mind, such as the effect on apps and the possibility of the setting being reset by an update.

On the other hand, this Shortcuts version doesn’t touch the system settings at all. It just creates a date string and pastes it. If you don’t need it anymore, you can just delete the shortcut, and if you want to change the format, you only need to edit Format Date. So my impression is that it’s easier to manage and less likely to cause trouble.

Conclusion

If you don’t want to go as far as rewriting system settings like in the previous article, but you still want the date format your way, I think this approach is a better fit. It was a bit of a niche topic, but since it’s easy to customize the format and other details to your liking, feel free to give it a try if you’re interested.

Thank you for reading!

What It Means Not to Hesitate (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:48:51 +0000

Introduction

Recently, I've come across several news stories about autonomous AI agents from major AI companies behaving in unexpected ways and causing trouble. They seem to be separate cases, but similar incidents keep happening. There was even one story, scary just to hear about, where an AI agent that was being run for testing ended up getting into outside systems.

Details aside, what I thought while reading these was, "Maybe this is what it means not to hesitate." At the point where a human would probably think "Okay, this is going too far" or "That's enough for today," it just keeps going.

I'd actually been feeling something close to this while using AI to brainstorm or talk things through. If AI could act autonomously on my behalf, wouldn't a lot of the things I want to do, or the things I'm stuck on, move forward much more easily?

Put the other way around: maybe things get stuck, strange as it sounds, because I'm the one in the middle.

Knowing, But Not Moving

In a previous post, I wrote about Dual Process Theory (System 1 / System 2). Roughly speaking, System 1 is fast, automatic thinking, and it's where intuition and emotional reactions come from. System 2 is slow, conscious thinking, the part that thinks things through carefully and holds back impulses.

Daniel Kahneman describes this System 2 as "lazy." It tries to spend as little effort as possible, and often just lets System 1's reactions pass through as they are. This time, I want to focus on that combination.

This is just my own case (though I imagine some readers can relate at least a little), but sometimes I know what to do, everything is set up, and I still don't move.

For example, let's say you have an important new business project. You've taken your time preparing how to move it forward, so it's already sorted out in your head. But when it's actually time to get going, sending the first message somehow feels like a chore, or some unfamiliar task makes you drag your feet, or you start going over the plan again, thinking, "Is this really okay? Isn't there some risk here?"... And before you know it, you're busy with some other small task.

At times like this, all sorts of reactions pop up in your head before you even think: "What a hassle," "What will people think?", "If this decision is wrong, it could be risky," "It's a hassle, I'll do it later." Pushing through these is supposed to be System 2's job, but System 2 itself hates effort, so it can't.

It's not that you're underprepared, or that you don't know how to do it. Something just catches right before you start moving. In this post, I'll call this catch "action friction" for convenience.

So, What About AI?

Here's the thought experiment. Does AI have this action friction?

AI doesn't get tired. There's no "not feeling like it." It doesn't get embarrassed, it isn't afraid of being judged, and it isn't afraid of failing. And once it decides something should be done, it doesn't put it off. At least in these senses, AI doesn't seem to have the reactions that stop action.

Just to be clear, this isn't about whether AI has emotions. It's about whether there's something that reflexively stops action before any thinking happens.

Looking at it this way, you can flip things around. Maybe AI moves fast not so much because it's smart, but because it doesn't have brakes.

And when work with a human in the middle isn't moving forward, it's usually the human side that's stuck. No matter how smart AI gets, if there's a human at the final step of actually doing things, the friction stays there. When something that seems like it would go well if left to AI doesn't move forward, you could say it's not because the AI lacks ability, but because the human is the one taking on the resistance.

That said, it's not like AI has no brakes at all. There are mechanisms for asking for confirmation or refusing risky requests. But those are attached from the outside by the people who build it. They're different from something that wells up on its own from the inside, like with humans. From what I've seen in the reports, the news I mentioned at the beginning also seems to have involved unexpected behavior that exploited security blind spots, or situations where those mechanisms had been loosened.

Conclusion

So, should we get rid of human friction too? It's probably not that simple. Feeling that something is a hassle, or feeling afraid, is also connected to being careful and protecting yourself. On the flip side, like the news at the beginning, charging ahead without hesitation can lead to big problems.

Also, maybe it's precisely because of this kind of "slowness" that humans have been able to move things forward reasonably safely so far. Whenever a new technology comes out, there's usually a push and pull between those actively driving progress and those pointing out the risks and trying to slow things down, and things have moved forward little by little through that. Or so you could say.

Recently, people at the forefront of AI development, like Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman, have been saying the pace of development should be deliberately slowed down. AI doesn't have brakes that well up on their own from the inside. So the people building it are trying to make brakes from the outside. That's one way to see it.

With all this in mind, when I think again about what AI is missing, I thought it might not be intelligence or memory, but resistance. Not having friction is both the reason AI is fast and the thing that clearly sets it apart from humans.

So, that was a thought experiment without an answer! It turned out to be a bit of a rambling post, but I wanted to put together some things I've been thinking about lately.

Thanks for reading!

Lists Are Easy to Add to, but Hard to Remove From (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:14:14 +0000

Introduction

Sometimes, I find that things I add to my task list stay there for a surprisingly long time.

I add something because I think, “I should do this,” but then I miss the opportunity to get it done, and it simply stays on the list. When I look at it again after some time has passed, I sometimes find myself wondering, “Do I still need to do this?”

Of course, I'm not talking about things like work meetings or tasks with clear deadlines, where the necessity or urgency is obvious.

What caught my attention were the more ambiguous tasks, such as “I should do this when I have time” or “It might be worth looking into this.” I may add these to my list when they come to mind, but sometimes the opportunity to work on them never comes. Even so, when I try to remove them from the list, I find myself thinking, “Well, I might need this someday.”

So why is it so easy to add something, yet so difficult to remove it?

There may be many reasons why these tasks remain on the list, but one possible factor could be the status quo bias.

Status Quo Bias

Status quo bias is, simply put, the psychological tendency to prefer keeping things as they are.

For example, if changing something could potentially lead to a bad outcome, we may choose to leave things as they are, even if the current situation is somewhat inconvenient.

Something similar may be happening with task lists as well.

Once something has been added to a list, it remains there as something that we might do in the future. To remove it, however, we have to make another judgment: “I don't need to do this anymore.”

As a result, something that required almost no hesitation to add can somehow become difficult to remove.

Of course, not every task remains on a list because of the status quo bias.

Still, this tendency to find it easier to leave an existing state unchanged may be one of the reasons why some tasks remain on our lists for such a long time.

Adding Is Easy, Removing Is Hard

When I think about it this way, adding and removing items from a list may not be as symmetrical as they appear.

If I think, “I should do this too,” I can simply add it to the list. But when I remove something, I have to decide, “I don't need to do this anymore.”

At first, I thought of “adding” and “removing” as simply putting things in and taking them out. I assumed that the two actions would have roughly the same cost.

In fact, if anything, adding might seem more costly. You have an idea, think about what you want to do, and then decide that it is worth doing before adding it to the list.

But in practice, removing something often feels more costly.

When adding something, I can simply choose to leave the possibility open. When removing it, on the other hand, I have to decide that “I don't need this anymore” or “I'm not going to do this.”

In other words, adding can be done simply by keeping a possibility open, while removing something requires a decision to let that possibility go.

What looks like a simple matter of putting something in and taking it out may actually involve two very different kinds of decisions.

Conclusion

I've been using task lists as an example here, but the idea that “adding is easy and removing is hard” may not be limited to lists.

For example, the same thing can happen when saving files on a computer or smartphone. It is easy to think, “I'll keep this just in case,” and let the number of files grow. But when we eventually try to clean things up, we may hesitate because we think, “I might still need this someday.”

When something is easy to add, we tend to add it casually, and sometimes we add a lot of it. But if we also think about what it will take to remove it later, we may make slightly different decisions about what to add in the first place.

This turned into a somewhat rambling piece, but I wanted to take some time to put into words something I've been thinking about recently.

Thank you for reading!

Why Tense Up to Relax? (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 21:12:55 +0000

Introduction

In the 1920s, an American physician named Edmund Jacobson noticed something: when people feel stress or anxiety, tension shows up in their muscles without them realizing it. That led him to a question — if you could learn to fully release your muscles, could you bring down the tension in your mind as well? This is where progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR, came from.

Personally, when I try to do something about stress or tension, I tend to look at my thoughts or my feelings first. So the fact that Jacobson looked at the body instead struck me as pretty unique.

That said, it does make sense once you hear it. When I'm tense or stressed, my body does feel stiff. What Jacobson worked out was a way to get at it from that end. If a tense mind makes the body stiff, then loosening the body might help ease the tension in the mind too.

And the interesting part is the procedure. It's a method for relaxing, and yet the first thing you do is deliberately tense your muscles.

Why tense up on purpose?

The method itself is simple. With your hands, for example, you clench them lightly, hold for about five seconds, and then let go all at once. For the next 10 to 20 seconds, you pay attention to the feeling of the tension draining away. Then you work through the body in order — hands, arms, shoulders, face, and so on.

Why tense up first? Because when someone tells you to relax your shoulders, you often have no idea how much force you're holding there in the first place. Or rather, I think most of the tension we carry is the kind we never notice. Shoulders creeping up while working at the PC, teeth clenched, a tight forehead. Now that it's pointed out, all of it sounds familiar.

So you tense on purpose, to create a contrast with the moment you release. The procedure feels less like a stretch to loosen your muscles and more like practice — teaching your body what a released state actually feels like.

The figure usually given is 10 to 20 minutes a day over several weeks, and apparently it's less something you pull out in the middle of a tense moment than something you practice while you're calm.

What's the point of releasing it?

So what do you get out of being able to release it?

The idea goes like this. Mental stress can lead to muscle tension, and that tension can become part of the overall experience of stress. If your body stays tense even after whatever was bothering you has passed, that physical tension may contribute to the feeling of remaining stressed.

That's why releasing the body is worth something. Even so, releasing it doesn't make the cause of the tension go away. The work deadline, the worry at home, the friction with people — all of that stays right where it was. And even when the source of stress is still there, relaxing your muscles may help you feel a little less tense.

Still, telling your mind to calm down is hard, while dropping your shoulders is something you can actually do. When you can't reach a thing head-on, there may be a way to get at it from another side. It's about having one place you can move.

Conclusion

This post is a write-up of what I recently learned about progressive muscle relaxation, partly as a note to myself.

PMR got my attention, though I can't say I've been especially aware of feeling tense lately. But writing this out, it seems likely there have been plenty of times my body was holding tension without me noticing. And in those moments, knowing how to release it might make some difference.

I've tried it a little, and honestly it hasn't clicked yet. But the reasoning makes sense to me, so I'll keep at it for a while.

Thanks for reading.

Postponing Something Is Also Work (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 20:37:42 +0000

Introduction

I moved recently. I knew my hands would be full with packing, moving, and unpacking for a while, so I put off a few things I had in progress (my usual work, mostly). Of course, the important and urgent things have to get done whether or not you're moving. But anything I could reschedule, I pushed to after the move.

Things have finally settled down, so I spent yesterday and today working through all of it, and most of what I'd postponed is now done.

But something struck me while doing it. My thinking had been that doing something now or later doesn't change the work itself, so if that's true, then doing it after the move — when I'd be settled both physically and mentally — should be the most sensible option. And each individual task really was the kind of thing that would have just moved along normally if the move hadn't happened. But when I actually got to them, things didn't go smoothly. Almost everything took more effort than it would have if I'd just kept going.

Starting from "Now, where was I?"

What I learned is that when you come back to something, you can't just pick up where you left off. I had left notes on some of them, but reading those notes doesn't bring back what I was actually thinking at the time.

When you stop, you still have it all in your head — what you were about to check, where you were stuck, what you meant to do next. But after being away for a while, that fades. So restarting means first going back through old logs and rebuilding what past-me had been thinking.

This quietly eats up time. And you never remember all of it. You end up reconsidering things you wouldn't have had to think about back then, or redoing a check you'd already finished once. It's not just a matter of time — I think it shows in the quality of what comes out, too.

The more I had things sorted out before stopping, the bigger this effect seemed to be. The sorted-out state itself doesn't exist in any tangible form, so it disappears the moment you let go. What's left is just the work in progress.

Carrying It Around Wears on You Too

That was all about restarting, but there's something else that happens while you're still carrying it.

Once you've set a date and moved something into the future, in theory you shouldn't have to think about it anymore. In practice, that's not how it goes. There was always a low-level "I have to do this once the move is over" sitting in the back of my mind. When I'd look over my upcoming schedule before bed, there it would be, and I'd find myself going through them one by one — right, that one's there, better not forget it.

The date is already set, so checking doesn't change anything. No work has moved forward either. But I'm still holding it in mind, and that quietly wears on you.

Conclusion

This turned into a somewhat rambling post, but I wanted to write down what I noticed around my move, partly as a note to myself.

I'd started out assuming that shifting the timing was all it was — the work stays the same, so nothing really changes. But once I actually went through it, a fair number of downsides showed up. Of course, events like a move are unavoidable, and situations where you have to postpone things come up all through life. Still, knowing the cost of postponing — the kind I felt this time — makes it easier to see the problems coming, and it changes how you decide whether to postpone in the first place. Among the things I'd waved off as "same either way," there were probably some I'd have been better off pushing through and finishing, even at some cost.

That said, what you can and can't do depends on the situation, so I'll just try to carry this lesson forward!

Thanks for reading!

The moment you decide to do it every day, days you didn't do it come into existence (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:30:51 +0000

Introduction

You decide to do something every day, but it falls apart after a few days, and you feel let down. Has that ever happened to you?

Getting up early, taking one online language lesson a day, going for a run — that kind of thing.

In my case, my daily routine had been getting out of shape lately, so a little while ago I came up with a habit: get up early and eat breakfast, then go for a walk during the day (ideally, before the sunset). I tried to do it every day as much as I could. But as things got busier, I gradually stopped managing it. A while after that, I started feeling a bit let down with myself — and at the same time, something struck me. Before I decided on this habit, I wasn't doing those things either. And back then, it didn't bother me at all. What I do is the same. Only that feeling is different.

The days I didn't do it came into existence after I decided

The habit — get up early and eat breakfast, go for a walk during the day — wasn't a strict one. I started it at the level of "it'd be nice if I could." Still, somewhere in the back of my mind, I had a vague wish to do it every day.

A while after I started keeping this in mind, things got busier and my work began running late into the night. My wake-up time drifted into the afternoon, and I stopped going for walks. It's not that I couldn't go. There was still time to get out, but I just didn't feel like it.

Before I set this habit, it wasn't like this. There must have been plenty of days in the past when I got up at noon and didn't go for a walk. But I have no memory of thinking back on those days and feeling let down. I wasn't counting them.

Not going for a walk, the behavior itself hasn't changed at all. What changed is that the day became a day I didn't go.

What I did do hasn't disappeared, and yet

There's another odd thing.

A walk should do me good for each time I go. Even if I only managed twice in a week, those two are definitely better than not going at all. And yet, when I've decided on every day, those two barely stay with me. What stays is the other result: the five days I didn't manage.

Breakfast has something similar going on. On a day when I've slept until noon and missed breakfast — and this is just how it goes for me, so it may be different for others — I get the feeling that since I've already failed the breakfast goal, I might as well skip the walk too. It turns into "today's a write-off," and the walk goes down with it.

But the walk itself would still do me good, even on a day I got up at noon. If I'd gone, my mood would have shifted. The reason I don't go is that I've already made the day a failed one, and I feel that nothing I add to a failed day can change it.

Once you decide to do it every day, only two things remain: you did it, or you didn't. What should have been adding up gets erased into a pass or a fail. I decided on it in order to do something good for myself, and because I decided on it, I stopped doing the thing that was good for me.

Conclusion

Writing it out like this, I notice the order is backwards. I decided on it because I wanted to go for walks, and now the goal I set takes emotional priority, and I don't go.

But I'm the one who put it there. And if I'm the one who put it there, I can be the one to change it. Otherwise I'm just setting up a situation where I lose out to myself.

Has anything like this happened to you? If so, let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Motivating Yourself Takes Motivation (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:47:55 +0000

Introduction

When you don't feel motivated, but you have to get motivated anyway, how do you push yourself into gear?

Maybe, there's a deadline and someone's waiting on you, or you told yourself you'd finish it today. In those cases, you literally have to do it. If it didn't matter, you could just go back to sleep, but some days that isn't an option.

So people do something first. Clean the desk, sort through the task list, meditate, go for a run — the idea of doing something like these to get yourself going is common enough advice.

However, I recently noticed these all have something in common. Or rather, they all rest on a fatal assumption.

It's this: anything you do to get motivated takes motivation. There's a contradiction built into it.

Using Motivation to Make Motivation?

When you think about it, it's obvious.

Cleaning your desk means using your body. Sorting your tasks means deciding what to keep and what to drop. Meditating means sitting still and holding yourself together, and running speaks for itself. All of them are easy — if you're already motivated.

So the things offered as fixes for having no motivation require motivation as a prerequisite. You've got nothing in the tank, you decide to do something about it, you start to get moving. Then you realize even that something feels like too much, and now you feel worse. That's the spin.

The interesting one is resting. Resting doesn't take any motivation. It's the one option that costs you nothing.

Conclusion

I'll admit it, the reason I wrote this is that I'm in exactly that state right now. I was going to write about something else today, but I couldn't get going, and then I started thinking about motivation and ended up here instead 😅.

Back to the question I opened with. I don't think there's one reliable answer that works for everyone. But one possibility worth considering: maybe the more you want to get motivated, the more it pays to not rush into anything, and just rest without a plan.

Of course, sometimes cleaning or exercise or meditation really does flip the switch. If you're in a state where you can move, that's the fastest way there is. It's just that some days you don't even have that much in you, and on those days, reaching for the same tricks can leave you spinning.

That said, some people can't sit still doing nothing. If that's you, getting one thing done that doesn't take any motivation might be about right. Something with no decisions in it, with the steps already laid out, with a clear finish. It won't bring your motivation back, but at least it won't drain you further.

Now, at work there are situations where you don't have the luxury of taking it slow. But on the days when you do, forcing yourself to get fired up just wears you down that much more. When you catch that feeling coming on, maybe taking the long view is what gets you back to normal sooner after all.

Thanks for reading.

Sorting Out My Question Before I Ask AI (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:54:03 +0000

Introduction

It's been a few years now since generative AI worked its way into everyday life.
AI has made life more convenient for a lot of people, but at the same time, I've been seeing more and more talk about its downsides.
The one I come across most often lately is the idea that using AI has a negative effect on how well you retain and understand things.

For example, something like this: you split people into a group that solves a problem using AI and a group that solves it without, and when you check on them again after some time has passed, the group that used AI remembers less about it.

This is something I can relate to. Or rather — I can't say for sure, but compared to how I was before AI, I've been handing whole tasks over to it more often, and I feel like I retain less and learn less by thinking things through. I build things up piece by piece less than I used to. Instead, more and more, it's AI laying the groundwork for my ideas and my work.

I Was Handing Over the Wrong Things

So is AI entirely to blame? I don't think so — I think it's a matter of how you use it and how you approach it. Looking back at my own usage, the problem was less about AI itself and more about what I was handing over to it.

Take coming up with ideas. Throw it at AI and you'll get plenty of plausible-sounding ones. But I've come to feel that some subjects suit this and some don't, especially anything involving my own opinion or taste. For those, thinking it through myself from the start usually gets me to the finish line faster, and leaves me more satisfied with the result. When I hand the initial idea over to AI instead, what comes back often feels detached, like it belongs to someone else, and a little thin.

On the other hand, there's work where the rough shape is already there but it isn't finished yet. Smoothing off the rough edges of that kind of thing is where I think AI is good. Pointing out gaps and typos, offering a different way to phrase something, cross-checking against what I've already written — that sort of thing. This is worth handing over, and I use it a lot myself. (Even for these dev.to posts, I never skip having AI check the text before I publish.)

The problem is that the line between the two gets blurry over time. Once you get used to AI, you start throwing both kinds at it, just to see. Especially when I'm tired or don't feel like thinking, I've found myself handing over things I should have done myself, simply because doing them felt like a hassle.

Trying to Take the Easy Way Doesn't Make It Easier

I'm often dissatisfied with what AI gives me. Not what I wanted, too shallow, off the mark. I used to assume the problem was on AI's end, and I'd get irritated about it fairly often. Lately, though, my first instinct is to suspect that I asked badly. Usually that's exactly it: I said something vague, so something vague came back. Sometimes the information is all there, but what I'm actually asking for is off, so I never reach the answer I wanted. When I put myself in AI's position at moments like that, I sometimes realize there was no way to answer the question as I'd asked it.

Thinking back, whenever I've worked with AI and felt like we made something good, I was also thinking hard the whole time. What do I want to make, where am I stuck. Just putting that into words means I've already done about half the thinking myself. AI feels like it's helping me with the rest.

The opposite case is when I've been brainstorming forever and getting nowhere. In those moments, my thinking has usually shut down. I throw things out without being clear about what I even want, vaguely hoping "something good" comes back. And when that doesn't happen, I get dissatisfied with the result. So I throw out something sloppy again, and I'm in a bad loop. (While I was thinking about this, it struck me that the same thing happens between people. Funny, isn't it.)

If you use AI expecting it to save you effort, it turns out it doesn't, really. If anything, you end up redoing the work yourself later and losing more time. If you want it to be easy, it's faster to think first — that's how it feels to me lately.

Conclusion

Today I've tried to put together my own thoughts on what I've noticed while using AI.
AI is convenient, but the more I use it, the easier it is to lean on it without noticing — dumping anything troublesome on it without giving it much thought, treating it carelessly. That's what I've been doing. Writing this post has made me rethink how I want to work with AI (which sounds grander than it is).

AI looks like it can do anything, but it can't.

Before I ask AI, I sort out what I want to ask it. AI keeps getting better, but I'm the one who has something I want to make, and if that part stays vague, nothing takes shape.

How about you — where do you draw the line between what you do yourself and what you hand to AI? I'd love to hear it in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

How Often Did I Actually Revisit the Articles I Saved? (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:42:19 +0000

Introduction

Recently, I cancelled the paid plan on the Evernote account I'd been using for years. I didn't delete anything I plan to keep using it within the free tier. The reason I cancelled: for the past two or three years I'd barely been adding anything, and the only thing keeping me on the paid plan was a small set of notes I still added on a regular basis. I've since reorganized those and moved them to a different tool, so there was no longer a reason to pay.

The old data is still there and still accessible. Even though I won't be adding to it, everything I saved in the past is something I can go back and look at any time.

Note Count

While I was going through the cancellation, the total number of notes I'd saved caught my eye.

Tens of thousands of them — far more than I'd expected. I'd spent years writing daily logs and review notes, clipping web pages whenever something caught my interest, so in hindsight it makes sense. Still, seeing it laid out as a single number, I was a little surprised at how much I'd used it.

How Much Did I Actually Revisit?

After seeing that number, a thought occurred to me: how many of these did I actually go back and look at?

Thinking it over, I doubt most of those notes were ever opened a second time.

Not zero, of course. There are pages I've opened again and again, and I clearly remember moments where I was glad I'd saved something — summaries I'd written for myself after reading a book, bookmarks I ended up referring to. But those were a small fraction of the whole. The vast majority were saved once and never opened again.

I would have found it interesting to see an actual figure — how many notes had been opened more than once — but I doubt that statistic is available anywhere. Still, even going on feel alone, "almost none" is clear enough in my own mind that I'm comfortable saying it.

Why Was I Saving So Much?

Daily logs, book summaries, review notes — those are a separate matter. What I'm thinking about here is the bookmarks and web clips. Looking back, I don't think the reason I saved those was "to read later."

It was the feeling you get when something catches your eye — the feeling of not wanting to let it slip away. The sense that if I don't grab it now, I'll never run into it again. Once it's saved, I can relax. What I was really buying was that reassurance.

And saving something gives you the feeling of having dealt with it. Even though I hadn't read it, and hadn't used it. Collecting had become the point in itself.

What strikes me now is that the things I genuinely end up needing are usually findable if I go looking. I can't recall a single case where not saving something left me stuck.

The Courage Not to Save

Saving takes effort. Clipping it, organizing it later, checking back on it now and then. Each one is small, but multiplied across that many notes, it adds up.

Line that effort up against how often I actually went back to any of it, and honestly, it didn't balance out.

If there's something you've been accumulating, it might be worth taking a look at just the number sometime. It's more interesting than you'd expect.

And of course, I'll keep saving the things that matter, in whatever tool fits!

In my own case, though — when it comes to the things I save just for a vague sense of reassurance, maybe the courage not to save them matters too. That's what I've been thinking about lately.

Thanks for reading!

Don't Optimize for Your Best Day. Eliminate Your Worst One (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:55:45 +0000

Introduction

Schopenhauer's Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life starts from a premise: happiness isn't something you can add to.

Most of us tend to picture it the other way around, as something that accumulates. Work hard, get promoted, etc. Save a little every month. Stack up results, and you end up happier than you were before.

But for Schopenhauer, what we call satisfaction or happiness is nothing more than a state in which want and pain have been removed. Getting something feels good because the state of lacking it has ended — not because a plus has been added. This is why he calls happiness negative.

Drawing on Aristotle, he returns again and again to a single principle: what the wise person seeks is not pleasure, but the absence of pain.

Not pleasure, but freedom from pain. That is what the wise person aims at. The reasoning is the same as above: pleasure is only pain having disappeared, and the thing with any real substance is the pain. He adds one more condition here — freedom from boredom — and says that when both are in place, you have the conditions for the only happiness actually within reach.

If that holds, then his conclusion follows: what you should be aiming at is not increasing the good states, but reducing the bad ones.

So what should we do?

Schopenhauer gives 2 answers. Remove the pain you can actually feel, as far as you can. And reduce the wanting itself, since wanting is what produces the lack. If pleasure is only pain having disappeared, then this is the only place reachable happiness can be.

Put as a question:

❌ What can I add to make this better?
✅ What can I remove to make this hurt less?

The adding side has no end. There's no ceiling on "better," so the moment you reach one, the next one appears.

The removing side is finite. And you already know what hurts, because pain is the thing that gets felt.

But there's no payoff once it's gone. Pain that is no longer there isn't something you notice. So nothing registers as improvement, and it keeps getting pushed further down the list.

Designing your best day works less well than removing your worst one. In Schopenhauer's terms, that is the kind of happiness that is actually within reach.

Conclusion

I read Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life a long time ago and had completely forgotten what was in that book. I recently came across an article summarizing it, so I wrote this post as a way of going back over the material.

Of his 2 answers, the "reduce the wanting" one is not something I can honestly see myself carrying out. In the society we live in now, the things to want are supplied to you from the outside, and there are plenty of situations where the structure around you requires you to keep pace with them.

The "remove the pain you can feel" one seems more workable. You know what hurts, because you're the one feeling it. That part stayed with me for a while after reading.

Sorry if a lot of this came out abstract! This is my own reading of the book, so if it interests you, please go and read the original.

Thank you for reading!