(alt: How To Break A Bad Habit And Replace It With A Slightly Better Habit, Neurodivergent Style)
1 : figure out what you like about the thing. what are the short term benefits to making that choice over others? in what contexts do you engage in that behavior?
ie. one of the biggest draws for me with regards to ramen is that (1) it’s easy to make and can be made in a microwave (2) it’s satisfying and tastes good
2 : figure out other alternatives that provide similar benefits or results that require about the same level of energy and are at a similar level of difficulty
ie. there are frozen noodles from costco called yakisoba that are equally satisfying and equally easy to make, but also have the added benefits of (1) not being ramen (2) being a lot easier to add veggies and proteins to
3: figure out how to make that specific habit less appealing and harder to do.
key phrase: “why would i do that when i can just as (if not more) easily do this other thing?”
ie. my uncle and i made a bet. if i can make it through 2017 without eating ramen or any instant noodles, he’ll pay me some money. if i fail, i’ll pay him some money. the cost (both the actual and the opportunity cost) of eating ramen is enough to deter me from doing so when i have similarly satisfying alternatives (from step #2)
4: when you get cravings, it helps to: remove yourself from the situation (if you can), remind yourself the reasons you’re avoiding the bad habit, think of short term consequences that come with engaging in this habit, and if all that doesn’t work, distract yourself and do something similarly satisfying in a different way
ie. i’ll leave the kitchen if someone else is having ramen, i’ll remind myself that i’m trying to avoid ramen because it makes me feel weird and kinda bloated after eating it and i’m trying to eat slightly better, i’ll think about the money i’ll lose if i eat ramen and lose the bet, and if that doesn’t work, i’ll have a savory snack or something
5: commit to a certain time period so that quitting said habit doesn’t seem nebulous and infinite and overwhelming. by the time you get to that end point, it’s a lot easier to continue avoiding said bad habit.
ie. i don’t know that a full year is a very reasonable starting point for most other habit quits but having the promise of “i can have ramen again when the year is over if i still want to” was helpful. and now that i’m more than seven months in, i don’t really feel like i want ramen all that often anymore.
anyways, that’s everything i’ve learned from the past seven months while avoiding ramen. i hope this is helpful to some of you !! feel free to reblog and add your own tips !! oh, and keep your eyes peeled, i’ll be posting strategies on getting into better habits in the future !! hope you all have a nice day !! 💕💕
There’s no one way to start writing a book. For some people, it’s enough to just jump in and start writing to see where the story takes them. If you’re not too keen on that idea, then here is oneprocess (as in, not theonlyprocess) that might help you move beyond your concept.
Concept ≠ Plot
Many writers mistake concept for plot, but they’re actually two very different things. A world where everyone grows up with superpowers is a concept; the plot is what you decide to write about within that concept - the specific characters and what happens to those characters; who your antagonist is and what conflict arises when that antagonist goes after what they want. All of these things contribute to your plot.
So first, define what it is you actually have at this particular point. Do you just have a concept? If so, you’ll need to take the necessary steps to develop that concept into a plot.
Concept >>> Plot
If you’ve decided that all you really have is a concept, then how do you take it and turn it into a plot? You brainstorm. All brainstorming really amounts to is expanding your ideas. All you’re doing is asking questions about the concept and delving deep into the answers.
The most simplistic way to start this process, especially if you’re struggling, is to ask one of two questions (or both, if applicable). These two questions: What could go wrong? What could go right?
Going back to my example about a world where everyone grows up with superpowers. If I were to ask the question “what could go wrong,” I’d end up with a whole list of possibilities.
The powers suddenly disappear
People start abusing their powers
Someone figures out how to steal powers
A hierarchy of strong vs. weak powers develops, creating superiority/inferiority dynamics
Someone is born without a superpower
There are many more possibilities I didn’t even think of here, but any one (or more) of these could become a plot. Choose one that sounds interesting, and then ask yourself “and then what?”
Say I choose: Someone figures out how to steal powers. Then what does that person do? Do they recruit people to do the dirty work for them? Do they work alone? Do they hoard these powers and barter them for other goods? Do they attempt to enslave people? Do they attempt to take control of institutions? What do they do?
Your goal is to take your ideas and turn them into actions taken by characters. People doing things. And each piece you add will usually lead into another. If you went with the idea that this character is stealing powers and essentially selling them for other goods, you’d have to ask yourself follow-up questions. First, who are they selling to? Why would anyone buy a new superpower if they already have one? What uses would they have for additional ones? What is the key demographic that this person is trying to reach? Secondly, what are they selling them in exchange for? Money? Favors? Souls? What is this character getting in return?
Now that you’ve examined potential actions that the character takes, you’ve also exposed potential new characters.
People they’re stealing from
People they’re bargaining with
People that try to police these crimes
People that try to copy this character’s process
At the beginning of this section, I talked about using “what could go right” as another optional jumping off point. This is a good path to follow if your concept is already really negative. For a concept where someone is killing people for some pointed reason, you might ask “what could go right” and explore ideas where the killer is caught and brought to justice.
The point of all this is to think about change as a means of taking your idea from concept to plot. A concept is static - it doesn’t move, evolve, or change. By developing a plot, you’re forcing the concept to be challenged in some way. If you think about it that way, you’ll be able to formulate conflicts, and the people that orchestrate and fight against those conflicts.
On that note, I think we’re ready to move onto the third piece of my graphic above.
Plot = Character Actions and Consequences
At this point, you have sketches for characters. You’ve got this nameless, faceless person that is stealing the powers, and all these other nameless, faceless people that I listed above. In essence, we have character concepts. And just like we turned our initial concept into a plot, we have to turn these character concepts into actual characters.
The basics are the easiest way to start. You figure out their name, their gender identity, their age, their appearance, some brief backstory and personality traits. I personally prefer the simplest questionnaire that I put together back in the early days because it hits on the poignant pieces of a character without overwhelming you with 100s of questions.
Now that you’ve given your character concepts names and faces and potential behaviors, you start to consider how one character’s view of the world inspires them to take certain actions, and you then think about how those actions affect your entire story.
We already kind of talked about the motives of the power thief in our example, but definitely delve deep here. On the surface, this character seems bad - stealing from people and then selling what they steal. But depending on what it is they’re getting in return, could we not argue that this character is a supernatural Robin Hood? Maybe instead of selling, they’re giving, and maybe the characters they’re stealing powers from are people that abuse and misuse their powers. Character motives can take a plot and turn it on its head, forcing you to reconceptualize everything. And that’s okay! That’s part of the process.
But separate from that idea, if we have a character concept of someone whose powers were stolen, and after developing their basic backstory, we discover that person’s name is Rose, and she has an especially close relationship with her brother. So when her powers are stolen, how does this affect her life? Was she using her powers to keep her brother alive and protected? What she using them to keep a roof over their heads? Was she using them as part of her job, as a means of providing? What happens to her life when her powers are stolen? And what will Rose do about it? Whatever Rose does will impact the story. If she does nothing to get her powers back, how does she solve her problems and does that make for a good story? If she does decide to act, then you’ve moved onto a new plot point to dive deeper into.
My point is, character concepts come from plots, but characters themselves often create plot, as their decisions and mistakes and successes create new outcomes. So if I could modify my original flow chart:
Before you develop something, you conceptualize it. You have a concept, then you make it a plot. You have concepts for characters, then you make them characters. And those characters end up driving your plot, to the point that this happens:
Plot inspires character. Character inspires plot. And it just keeps going around and around and around. Breaking it down into these pieces helps organize the process, but developing a story is rarely this neat and tidy. You’ll get ideas that don’t make sense, ideas that aren’t cohesive, characters you don’t need, characters that piss you off, problems you can’t solve, or plot points you’ve committed to that you no longer like…it will be messy. But it’s your mess, and the more you work on developing your own process, the more it’ll make sense to you. And it’ll become easier to know how to go about fixing it when something’s not right.
Have fun with this process! It’s supposed to be fun. When the pieces start to become clearer, you’re able to put them together in a rough outline. And once you have a rough outline, you can start writing, and really see it take shape.
{16.2.17} some stationery loots i got recently!!! (⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎) most of them were on sale so i’m rly rly happy about my purchases aahh!!! (and i finally got more brush pens HEHE)
Melonee Wise is the CEO of a very new startup, Fetch Robotics, that is building autonomous mobile manipulators for things like warehouse and ecommerce operations. Fetch is not her first startup – she launched Unbounded Robotics in 2013. Fetch also draws on Wise’s experience as Manager of Robot Development at Willow Garage, building the world’s most sophisticated personal robot. Wise’s background also includes building Battlebots and the low cost open source Turtlebots for research and hobby robotics.
“For the past 14 years I have been designing, building, and programming robotic hardware. As part of past projects, I have had the opportunity to develop algorithms, libraries, and hardware for an autonomous boat, autonomous car, personal robot platforms, battlebots, and several low cost platforms. From this experience, I have gained a broad understanding of robotic technologies and have experience developing complex robotic systems.”
Erin Rapacki is Director of Marketing at Suitable Technologies.Suitable Technologies is a spinoff of Willow Garage, making telepresence devices. Suitable prefer not to call them robots because it distracts people from how useful they are. Rapacki previously worked at Industrial Perception Inc., Adept Technology and Anybots, building robots. She has built on her mechanical and industrial engineering background to become a product ‘storyteller’.
“I care about fantastic products; so I specialize in market research, writing product requirements documents, leading product launches, and defining emerging customer segments. My strength is the ability to analyze customer processes to discover new value propositions for the latest robotic technology, and communicate the associated technical requirements to engineering teams.”
Katherine Scott is the CoFounder and Software Lead at Tempo Automation. Tempo Automation is a desktop pick-and-place robot that automates surface mount assembly and speeds up the electronics prototyping or small batch manufacture process. Scott was previously a cofounder at Sight Machines, and computer vision engineer at Essess and Cybernet Systems Corp. Along the way Scott developed a large part of SimpleCV Python library, and a number of innovative software prototypes in the fields of computer vision, graphics, augmented reality and robotics.
Steffi Paepcke is the CoFounder and Lead UX Designer at OSRF, the Open Source Robotics Foundation, which was created to support the development and distribution of open source source software for robotics research, education and product development. Paepcke previously worked at Intuit and Willow Garage and draws on a background in psychology and human-computer or human-robot interaction.
“Managing user expectations of personal robots becomes particularly challenging when the end-user just wants to know what the robot can do, and neither understands nor cares about its technical specifications. … we found that erring on the side of setting expectations lower rather than higher led to less disappointment and more positive appraisals of the robot’s competence.”
Dale Bergman is the Research Coordinator at Intuitive Surgical, one of the largest and most successful robotics companies in the world. Bergman was previously research coordinator and clinical research manager at companies like Hansen Medical, Acuson and Siemens Medical, transferring her experience with ultrasound and other medical devices into more sophisticated robotics systems. Bergman is a great example of expert knowledge in other domains intersecting with robotics.
Robotics is much more than just engineering. Robotics includes computer science, mech eng, electrical eng, control systems, user interface, human-robot interaction, psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, biomechanics, industrial design and product management. Applied robotics (ie. robots working alongside people in the real world) also requires caring about what people are going to need robots for.
As Rodney Brooks, the founder of iRobot and Rethink Robotics, says, “Robotics isn’t a technology problem any more. It’s a business model problem.”
Business model problems require people with more than engineering skills. This requires customer development thinking and domain knowledge of areas outside of robotics. To generalize, these are things that women do really well. And yet to date, robotics has remained rather … masculine.
This needs to change for lots of reasons. First, because robotics needs better business models in order to make positive change in the world. And also pragmatically, because there just aren’t enough roboticists out there. Robotics is a rapidly growing area, and the combinations of skills and holistic thinking that develop when you work in robotics are also in demand in other employment areas. We have a skills shortage in robotics that is only getting worse.
So we decided to do something about it. Silicon Valley Robotics is the non-profit organization supporting the innovation and commercialization of robotics technology in the Bay Area. The first panel event in our new Influencer series is celebrating the achievements of women in robotics with these five fantastic speakers. SVR Influencer Series: Women in Robotics – is Silicon Valley a challenge or opportunity?
The event will be at IDEO SF on Wednesday April 29 from 7pm to 9pm. We have extra tickets available if you’re a woman interested in getting involved in robotics.
And I’m the moderator of the evening, which is apt, because I’m also a woman in robotics, and my background is in communications, technology and the sociology of science. Or what I like to call ‘human-robot culture’.
Anonymous said: Hi Corrina! Im a CS major, I rly like tech & code & math, but Im not naturally good at it. Ive only gotten As & Bs in math, but its a challenge. I like it, but Im afraid that Ill always be inferior to my CS peers who get it easier. Should I even try?
The question you’re asking is basically: “Should I do something when I’m not the best at it?” And the answer is “Yes, of course you should!!!” Just as you shouldn’t stop, e.g., drawing just because you’ll never be a van Gogh.
I mean, sure, it’s nice to be one of the best at the things you do, but the most important thing is that you want to do what you’re doing. Are you having fun learning about compsci? Are you proud when you learn a new thing, get that explanation, understand the new algorithm? Then, please, keep on doing it! You’re not doing it to impress other people, you’re doing it to impress yourself.
One of the things that kinda baffled me when I went on job interviews was that everybody seemed really impressed by my just-a-little-above-average grades. They thought I was a really good student. They had no idea what other people there were in my year, those people that work on 3-5 open source projects in their free time while I was off… knitting and watching Star Trek. And how could they? It’s not like they were there with me. People can’t judge you in comparison to your peers once you leave uni because there’s nowhere on your diploma that says “50/100″. Forget your peers. (I know it’s hard, I’m competitive as hell but it’s not getting you (or me) anywhere.)
And look at those grades! Those are really good grades. No one will know how hard you struggled for them so they won’t be able to judge you. Just keep on doing your best and that is enough.
One last point: Even if you’re not a programming genius, what you do can still matter! You might not work at NASA and send rockets to outer space, but someone has to write the software that controls car stereos, someone has to make cute little games that brighten people’s days, someone has to make sites like Tumblr where you can meet awesome people. You don’t have to be a genius to make a difference. You just have to try.
