Thoughts by human, co-written by AI

Maturity is to stop acting from excitement. Notice when you are about to act from getting excited, and take a measured deliberate action instead of reaction to dopamine surge. Be able to capture the thoughts when the dopamine surge happens, understand what and why, memorize or document and act deliberatley and consciously instead of letting subconscious to run wild and free all the time. Dopamine surge is good, its a signal, a signal worth saving, but its not a signal to overpower and take over the entire system control panel. Pause and register the signal. Deliberately come back to the signals and reignite the dopamine surge when the time and space is right for it. Dopamine surge will repeat and be even better when the time is right and you are able to captivate it guilt free, when the time is wrong the guilt hinders the dopamine surge so chemically speaking you are doing yourself disfavor when letting it roam free. So do yourself a favor, allow yourself to delve into dopamine surge.

@GitHub lets write a gkoreli.com Essay article on this. I like this practical rule: A practical rule follows:

**SURGE → CAPTURE → RETURN → REVISIT → CHOOSE.**

i want to position this article from two perspectives, one is selfless general advice that you can learn and take away from the article without knowing me or trusting me or believing that i have credibility in this topics or not but you believe the concepts and articles enough that you reading the article can establish the credibility, and rest of the 50% of the article will be my opinions, and my takes, the mistakes I surface and I believe you might be surfacing to as well. You can ask me questions as well, i will go for a quick walk and try to answer all the questions for ten minutes and yap about anything to make this even more valuable, general advice, and also make it potentially even more personal and bring the reader into the unresolved tension, what i have experienced and how i can grow/learn and how i can help others grow, and you can edit article to make it even more valuable/better. The best example to get an idea of what i am talking about, what kinda article i want to write is: [**Bot Detection Without JavaScript: What My Blog Measured**](https://gkoreli.com/how-i-separate-readers-from-bots-without-javascript)**.** Like it starts with a tutorial like concept and title, bot detection without javascript, it teaches people how to do bot detection without javascript, then half of the article is also to establish the credibility and provide even more value, what my blog measured, these are all my personal beliefs, opinions, experiments and what not. This the kind of articles i want to write, like even if you don't know me and don't trust me its okay, you can still read the article and the credibility of Goga's voice and credibility of me is established within the article itself. It serves two reason, i establish credibility with my own lessons, experiments and my experiences and also you learn to get to know me, who i am, how i think, what i built and so on. Its a win-win, you see the credibility within the article, you don't just blindly trust what i am saying, you can see the proof and the evidence right there and secondly, you get to understand what i am building, how i think and what i believe, and how i am helping you. This is the kind of content i love, i provide the value and i give you the reasons to believe me, to get to know me and give you the reasons to follow me/ subscribe to my blog publication and slowly this way i can build the audience and readership. Please capture this verbatim prompt somewhere. This is a point where we shift the mental model how we write articles. I want to update agents.md and skills as well. Lets give this entire thing a name. Please capture this prompt verbatim for historical reasons and apply to the article as well. Then from this perspective ask me several questions and I will go for a walk to provide a braindump via dictation.

So, how is this title searchable and come-acrossable? Like, that was part of my idea. I like this title better, but it's still, like, you have to think about how can someone come across this title and, like, what kind of value does it provide? Why straight from the title as well. So now let me try to answer questions, like, tell me about one actual detour that had a visible cost. Like, for example, lots of times in the evening, or on my personal projects, I want to dedicate time to my personal projects, like a couple hours a day. However, I have nine-to-five work, then I come back home, it's 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., and I want to have eat dinner, rest, recover, I don't know, watch a movie, scroll Twitter, like all of that, recover. But I also want to spend some time working, and it's maybe like 9-10 p.m., and then I spend like an hour, hour and a half, or two hours, like, working, writing engineering blogs, working on my open source projects. Well, it's like 11-12 p.m. now, and it's like 11-12 a.m., it's midnight, and then even my sleep deteriorates, because now I'm going to bed really late, and melatonin production doesn't work, and then I have Oura Ring, which checks my sleep, and I can tell in the morning that I didn't sleep really well because of the last night. So lots of ideas, like work-related, like even when I'm in the shower, like come to me, when I'm late in the evening, like kind of like the second energy kicks in, and all of a sudden instead of like the dopamine surge comes, and instead of like prioritizing what I know is the best for me, like I much rather go to bed right now and have a better sleep and perform better at work and everywhere else in my life than just, like, spend this, like, one or one and a half hours late in the evening where my mind is not functioning creatively. It's just like it's still me, but, like, it's not the most efficient and most productive time. Or, like, anywhere during the work. Sometimes, like, some project ideas, some ideas come to my mind while I'm in the middle of the work, or I'm grabbing coffee, and all of a sudden I might get detoured for, like, half an hour, one hour. There was this one time where I was in the middle of the work and some kind of, like, came- video idea came to my mind, and I spent, like, a couple hours just, like, working on it because I had this, like, surge of dopamine. And most of the times, like, even when I'm doing the work, let's say, like I could have, like, some issue that interests me, search my... and I have all of a sudden this dopamine surge. But, like, I have to finish some kind of documentation that's, like due to be submitted, and then I don't have time to, like, work on this, like, full issue that I think is cool and worth the time. So now give me the strongest example where following the excitement immediately was worth it. Like lots of times, I, yeah, part of the reason why I'm doing this is because, like, back in the day, like lots of times, lots of ideas would come to my mind, but I would try to remember it, or I would try to, I don't know, like maybe even, like, write something down in my iPhone notes, but I would forget them, and then another week I would be trying to, like, remember, like, oh, what happened? Like, what was I trying to, like, work on the next day? And, like, I didn't, like, spend enough time to record something, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes, is still, like, a valuable, like, significant amount of time that if you're doing something important and you switch and detour, you're gonna forget and lose. Even if you spend 10-15-5 minutes documenting some idea that came to your mind all of a sudden, you're gonna detour enough, like, significantly, so you forget the main thing. So what I'm saying after all is that whenever I'm capturing my ideas in the moment, and whenever I'm detouring, and whenever I, like, switch, at least I remember, at least I explore this idea fully, at least I respect this idea in my brain and my ideas fully, that I save and I explore. And the thing with the idea coming to your mind is not just the idea, it's just opportunity exploration of opportunities, like breadth first search and depth first search. Like I go down in the rabbit holes of, like breadth and depth of this idea, like potential opportunities, and, like, I go and fully explore, and it takes a lot of time. So if I just, like, save and note down just the main idea, then in the moment I feel this surge of, like, all these different branches and continuations of this idea come to my mind, and it's always a hands-on, very time-consuming process. But if I just note jots down some kind of, like, title, oh, like this idea of, like, agentic UI framework came to my mind. Yeah, this note, like, it doesn't help me remember the energy, and it doesn't help me reignite the energy and the dopamine surge that I had in the moment, and this dopamine surge helps me a lot because it's what drives my explorations. So if I save the title or save the idea, I'm not saving the dopamine surge and all this energy with it. So always, when I follow the excitement, it's always really helpful because the excitement and the ideas come with this surge of energy, and it takes over and feeds into the further explorations. And, like, if I just, like, save something and write it down and try to remember in a week or even the next day, this energy disappears. I get bored of it. I don't even want to explore this idea anymore. I don't even come to check notes. Matter of fact, like, I used to have the ideas I written down my dad. I don't think I ever came back to, like, revisit them, because the next day they don't seem as exciting anymore. Maybe I didn't go... So that's why, like, I started, like, writing down those ideas in the notes, but then I realized, like, it's useless. Like, I'm not even checking on them. I'm not even, like, looking at them. So, like, what's the point? Like either I chase the excitement, go with the excitement, go with the flow, and, like, lose my primary objectives and goals and get detoured and then chase the excitement and have this surge of energy and then, like, follow through my ideas, exploration and all of that, or I forget them. Like, there is no way for me to reignite this dopamine surge in the moment that I'm having, like, this, like, kind of, like a breakthrough of an idea I'm having all of a sudden, it's, like, really hard to reignite.

Like, don't get me wrong. Dopamine surge is great. Like, it's a good thing to have. It gives you, like, lots of energy to, like follow through the ideas, come up with alternative branches of your ideas and explore them one by one and, like, go through. And all this, like, energy makes everything so much better. The problem is different. When this dopamine surge happens, it's really hard to control everything else. Like, let's say, sometimes even the fact that, like, some of these ideas, like you have to explore, like you have to diligently explore not only the good sides of it, but, like, the bad sides and the positives and negatives, like you have to consider all the aspects. And sometimes you are so excited about the idea that you forget, like, all the aspects of it. But this is, like, small thing in the grand scheme of things. Like, what I want to tell you about more is that I've had this kind of conversation in the past. The fact that, let's say, I've had this conversation in the past that saving things in the notes doesn't help me make the ideas because you save the notes, but you don't save the energy. So what do you do? And I remember answer to that was to, like spend maybe, like, ten minutes till I fully, like, formed the idea. And, like, let's say even, like, this kind of conversation have this kind of, like, saved narrative, saved transcription of, like, my ideas, like fully formed and, like spoken into something. So maybe it's better that way to, like fully dump what's in my brain onto the paper, so that I still ride the wave of the energy, but at the same time it doesn't cost me, like, hours, but it only costs me, like, ten minutes. But the thing is, like, the ideas that come to my brain are still, like, very, like hands-on experiences. Like they require experimentation. Like I need to run a test and verify this idea into the actual, like, write code and, like, create this project and look up, like, lots of articles, see what other people are talking about it, and, like, find, like, cross-references and cross-files, and, like, it requires, like lots of, like, hands-on approach. So it's kind of, like, really hard to, like note down things without all of that. I'm gonna, like I need to, like, kind of, like poke my brain. I need to further delve into the experimental of this idea. So overall, the point here is that dopamine surge is not bad. That's not the takeaway from this article and from this blog. Don't believe that, like this me realizing that dopamine surge, like, detours me from my primary objectives and my ambitions of my life. That's not what I'm trying to say. Because dopamine surge is actually good. Dopamine is a very good source of energy. It's just really hard to capture this. You can capture ideas, but you cannot capture this in a jar and open it up again all of a sudden, like, when tomorrow morning. Like, I don't know what's the solution to this. However, I can guarantee the solution is not what I've been doing. At least I know, like, whatever I've tried in the past is not the best solution. Like there must be something better. And you know what could be something better? The things that I haven't been doing. The things that I haven't fully tried. Planning is one of them. What I realize talking with my girlfriend partially is that she plans lots of things ahead of time, and I feel like that gives her, like, this peace of mind that doesn't allow the dopamine surge to take over, and she kind of, like, follows through. And however, in a case, I sense the possibility that sometimes this dopamine surge comes into the picture and I have to let go of these opportunities. However, I feel like when you're living your life very spontaneously, like these dopamine surges happen to you a lot more. However, if you live your life much more planned, much more organized way, you can allow this dopamine surge to happen, but, like, they even, like, consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously come to you whenever you allow it. So let's say you have a planned time for the planned, like dopamine surge allowance time, or planned time for experimentation and working on your ideas, like this, today. Now this is me, like, thinking out loud. I'm not necessarily sure this is the case, but, like, I have a feeling that, like, planning definitely helps with sticking to your plans. Like even mentally planning your day ahead of time, or even mentally preparing that these are the things that I'm gonna do. This is what planning people do. They mentally plan things, even if they don't write things down. They mentally plan things in their mind. They mentally plan, like, now it's 5 p.m. I go back home. I'm gonna spend one hour here. I'm gonna spend another hour here. I'm gonna make cook dinner. It's gonna take me, let's say, 30 to 40 minutes and eat dinner another 20 minutes, like then clean up the dishes 20 minutes. I'm gonna watch a TV show maybe another 30 or 40 minutes. So I'm gonna already spend, like, couple hours. Then I'm gonna study for an hour, hour and a half, or I have a downtime for another half an hour. I'm gonna shower, start getting ready, preparing for the bed. Entire day is gone. But as soon as I set home, set back home, it's 5 p.m., 5:30 p.m. I already made this. Let's say they already made this, like, planning, mental planning in their mind. Maybe, like, not even fully knowing that this is what they're doing, because this is so organic and so native to them that they don't even think this is something that they're doing. But in my mind, I never do that. I just, like, come back home. I see that I feel that I'm hungry. I have to cook. And then I see that, let's say, how the kitchen is dirty. I need to clean it. Then I need to rest because I feel, let's say, I don't know, I want to rest after eating the dinner. I want to rest, maybe even, like, watch a TV show. What should I watch? I turn it on. Then I remember I used to, like, watch something from a day or day before, or last time I watched something. I just turn it on, finish whatever TV show. I'm resting, scrolling. Then suddenly some idea comes to mind. I remember that I have to continue, like, writing something. Like ideas are like kind of like the plans, kind of like one at a time. And by the time I, like, I need to, like, go shower and whatever, like, it's just one thing at a time. They come, and, like, by the bedtime, like, I might be, like, mess up my sleep because I spent too much time on the computer, because I was working on my product. So, I was working on my project, and when I'm working on a project, in my mind, it's so significant and so important, for me to work on my, like, hobby projects, open source projects, on my engineering blog, and all of that, that I don't even feel the guilt that I'm, like, messing up my sleep. Like, it pretty much, like, overrides all the other aspects of my, let's say, importancies, or, like, high-important things that I have to do. Let's say even, like, making sure that I don't mess up my sleep, and, like making sure, let's say, like, I go to bed on time. Like, there is, like, lots of, like, you know, like important, high-priority, like, things that you're, like, following in your life, like, let's say particular habits, like spend time, spend social time, working out, being healthy, like your primary work, your, like different, different, different, like, let's say open source projects is one of them, my engineering blog, and they're equally important as my, let's say content creation, let's say I make, like, TikTok content. There's lots of things that are important, but, like, as soon as I'm working on this, let's say, hobby projects and my engineering blog, which I think I want this to be the most important aspect of my life, my open source projects and my engineering blog. I want to create, like, genuine value, and I want it to be important to people, and I want to have audience. And this is, like, what I want to be down the line, like two or three years, like, be known for my engineering blogs and provide value to people and be recognized for it and have audience and following for all of it. And it's so important to me that it can take over and hijack the, let's say my sleep is getting messed up. But I know that sleep is the most important thing aspect in my life. But, like in my mind, I don't feel guilty or I don't feel any certain type of way anymore about it, because I was working on an important thing. So it's like productive hijack of my other aspects of my life, even though there are certain primary goals, that in the moment they are much more important, that the thing that I'm pursuing, like the thing that I'm pursuing, is important to me as a person and as a whole, but maybe it's not as important in the second, in this, like active moment right now. Maybe the sleep is much more important, because in the grand scheme of things, in three years down the line, maybe maintaining the consistency in sleep and losing, like, one hour here and there and not working on my personal project will be much more important, even benefiting these projects and my open source contributions and my engineering blog much more. Like maybe having the consistency of the sleep will be much more valuable to allow me and enable me to work on them and work on them with, like, the clear mind, with much more effective mind the next day. So, but in the moment, I don't think all of this. I don't feel all of this. I just feel the surge and this dopamine surge that I want to, let's say, utilize and spend on my engineering blog, for example, and hijack my sleep and mess up my sleep schedule and the circadian rhythm and delve into this dopamine surge. Like, it's not that, like, I'm scrolling TikTok and, like, I'm brain rotting, or, like, I'm wasting my life away and all of a sudden I'm compromising my life. No. The point that I'm making here is that I'm doing something very meaningful to me and very valuable, and the dopamine surge is, like, taking over my other aspects of my life. Like, some people might have the issue where, like, their main issue is that, yeah, they are doomscrolling on TikTok or Instagram. No, that's not my problem. But it doesn't... Like, the fact that you're doomscrolling or doing productive work either can cause dopamine surge, and either can hijack your primary objectives of the moment. Like, that's my point, and it's really easy to avoid the guilt. Like, with productive work, it's far easier. Like, in my mind I'm thinking, like, this is very important to me as a person. Like, it's okay that I mess up my sleep for two hours, and then I have to recover for three, four days to recover and recoup those two hours. But productivity is an explanation. Productivity is an excuse to mess up my life. It's, like, what happens, and, like, I don't even feel the guilt, like, I should be in bed right now. Like, I don't know. I want to relate this as a point where I'm, like, why, why it is really hard, and why people, like not only me, like you, lots of people will face this difficulty. Like, you might get rid of the doomscrolling and become a productive person, but then productivity becomes your doomscrolling, your brain popcorn. Like, you need to be much more deliberate. I need to be much more deliberate. As a result, I feel like I'm not the only one that faces this kind of problems. And I don't know, like this is my unresolved tension. This is still what I'm facing, and I'm, like, brain dumping and thinking a lot over here, so that, like one day I'll be able to solve this problem and help other people solve this kind of problems and be much more deliberate, like capture the dopamine energy, still save it, still enable yourself to have that surge and have that energy to ride the wave and explore your ideas, and all of a sudden don't hijack your primary objectives and still be able to be productive, still be able to not mess up your sleep. Like, why can't I be able to do both? I want to be able to work on my projects, be who I am, and still don't hijack my sleep. Like I want to be able to achieve both. I want to be a meaningful person in my open source engineering world, and I want to, like, build things. But, like, right now, like, the only way that I'm capable to do so is whenever this dopamine surge hits, and I could be running and I could be having social time, and then I feel guilty. Like, I want to capture this energy in the times where my mind allows me to capture my energy and I don't feel guilty of hijacking my primary objectives of my life. And I don't hijack my sleep. I don't hijack my primary work. I don't compromise on anything. Let's say I have deliberate time, and I deliberately allow myself to put down this, like, dopamine surge and my energies onto the paper and onto the open world and build the articles. This is what I want. Like, why is it so hard for me? Like, I still don't know the full solution, but I feel like it has to do with planning, deliberate, like mental planning of, like, free top allow, like this is the time slot to allow the dopamine surge. Let's say I will allocate a plan and a time for having a time to capture and have dopamine surge. Like, this is what I'm going to try, but I don't know. This is still unresolved tension. Like this might gonna work, might not work. But, like what I'm trying to say is that I'm not trying to get rid of dopamine surge. I want to keep it, but I want to keep it in a way that I'm deliberately able to control it. I want to not allow dopamine surge to hijack my life, but I still want to capture my dopamine surge. I still want to ride the wave and the energy. So this article and this story will definitely have a continuation, because this is what I'm going to try out, deliberate slot to allow myself to capture dopamine surge and energy, and we'll see how it goes. This is still unresolved tension, but, like knowing all of this might help lots of people. So this is already really useful for lots of people.

I like this article, please make this ready to be published and merge the cr in @GitHub