2026-09-30

# Hobby wishlist 2026-09

Disclaimer
 - personal
 - target audience - strictly myself

This will be a live log, updated in real time. Will not contain historical data

## List

Next 1-3 weeks
 - Continue learning more
   - [None]
 - Do minimum intro and stop
   - Ham radio - Get license and stop
   - Salsa - Stop for some weeks

Later possibly never
 - Attend first class
   - Shooting (#)
   - Drone pilot, or writing drone software
   - BJJ or other martial art
   - Running
   - Infantry combat training (which is a superset of shooting, running and a bunch of other skills)
   - Victorian flower language - learn basics
 - Learn more
   - Mandarin language classes - join in-person to retain motivation
   - Swimming - improve form
   - Driving - practice more to refresh memory
   - Chess - play more tournaments for fun
   - Drums - Attend more open mic events for fun
   - Massage - Learn basics
   - Meditation - Attend 10 day retreat

(#) indicates I am more excited to eventually shift this to the "next 1-3 weeks" list

## Heuristics endorsed

 - In accordance with the heuristic "think about next week or next century, don't think about anything in between", I will only maintain two lists - one for stuff I can do in the "next 1-3 weeks", and one for "later possibly never".
 - Basic heuristic I still endorse - "Either learn hobbies with good gender ratio, or learn skills (not hobbies) for combat. Nothing else seems worth learning." For everything else, do the bare minimum and then stop, just refresh your memory every few months or something. Learning muscle memory-based hobbies takes a certain minimum amount of time, and ASI may be less than 5 years away, so use your time efficiently.

## Messy notes

2026-09-26

 - Stop learning salsa for some weeks. Notice what effect (if any) this has on your mood. Then take a call on whether to resume learning or not.
 - The bottleneck as usual is Actually Caring. If I Actually Cared, I could easily devote enough Attention to it, I could figure out a time-efficient method of learning, and so on. The actual bottleneck is I don't care enough and I am half-assing it.
 - Vice versa, getting genuinely interested in hobbies is very dangerous to my actual life goal. Notice below how many weeks of time you have lost learning drums and ham radio and whatnot. If you Actually Care, maybe losing this much time can be considered an option. But otherwise, just, don't.

P.S.
 - Drone pilot is way more important than shooting. And even within that, writing AI-based drone software is way more important than piloting drones yourself. However, writing drone software is again something you can't do over a weekend, it is something you have to obsess over for months if you want to get good.


2026-09-17

 - Rant - I fucking hate hobbies. I am far too competitive and obsessive a person to do some hobby on autopilot on a weekend. I hate how much time I have lost this months learning more-or-less useless skills (morse code, drums).
 - Making mistake is fine. **What is important is to learn from the mistake and not repeat it.** Do not have hobbies in future. Even one or two hobbies is possibly too many. **Maybe the ideal number of hobbies for me is zero? Unsure**
 - I will attend atleast one shooting class and attempt to pilot a drone 1-2 times. But beyond that, I am now not very excited to learn even these skills at this point. Even for these skills, my guess is I will by default either not learn at all, or I will become so obsessed with them with that I will lose time I had to otherwise devote to my number one plan (learn hacking - smart contract security).


2026-09-09

 - Update - I am leaning more towards learning skills for combat tbh, as opposed to joining hobbies just because of good gender ratio. I wanna find someone who is attracted to me for the things I actually respect and like, not things I am doing just for the sake of attracting women.
 - What I actually seem to want as of today is plan A - cyberwar, plan B - actual war. I have given up on psywar. Spending 5-6 days per week on cyberwar and 1-2 days per week preparing for actual war sounds fine actually, atleast in theory.

2026-09-09

 - Learning morse code (for ham radio) is exactly the same as learning mandarin lol
   - Listening is the important skill to start with (not speaking, reading or writing)
   - Krashen's input hypothesis matters. Start with a smaller vocabulary for initial listening exercises, then progressively expand it.
   - Mandarin has almost no grammar so vocabulary is the main thing to learn.
   - Only difference is ham radio has like 42 symbols to recognise, whereas mandarin has 5-10k words.
 - It also sucks in the exact same way that learning mandarin did.
   - It requires intense focus and is yet boring as hell.
   - Do not ruin your off days or off time doing this. Do this during work days only. Absolute worst case we are again taking 1-2 weeks off from work just to learn this skill.


2026-09-06

 - Massage class is kinda fun in its own way. It is work but it also a bit fun. It is not difficult at all, just needs practice with instructor to guide you on the form.
 - Unfortunately I need a more unblocked calendar to learn it properly. Will need atleast 2 months of practise assuming I devote entire weekend (2 full days per week).
 - Since I am a servant of Moloch, I want to atleast consider learning to shoot and learning mandarin first. Next week I will attend a shooting class.

2026-09-04

 - What I actually want to write is "get video recording then fuck off." Bhaavnain samhjo
 - In future, try to not have more than 3, ideally 2, items on your "next 1-3 weeks" list. Your hobbies should **not** be the "top idea on your mind" to the point where they derail you from work. Being derailed from work was painful for me.
 - You want to eventually reach a routine that runs on autpilot ideally. Right now you are experimenting a bit.
