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> There's an engineer mindset that tools can solve any and every problem, but do they?

No. These people just spend more time fiddling with their computers instead of doing the parts of life that it supposedly frees them up to enjoy. It's IoT lightswitch automations all over again. There's no reason anyone would ever need to calculate their smoothie according to their Strava data and the positions of the planets on that day. It makes far more sense to spend more time knowing your body and learning to treat it well than trying to create an app that will do it for you.

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My running joke for the past couple years has been "there's nothing a software developer hates more than computer science". But I guess there was one too many words in that sentence!
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As someone fiddling with computers trying to solve "every problem," the only actual solution for me is making tools to assist with being aware of the state of your body. Overly simple example, but give someone a heartrate monitor for the first time and they won't be able to guess their current bpm all that accurately. If they pay a little attention to it for a month, you'll get much more closer guesses for instantaneous rate. If it becomes easier to be aware of your current state, you get a more accurate model, and can start to predict basic cycles etc. Eventually, without the tools.
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I am wildly, drastically healthier today than I was when I started this in April. This is something I should have been tracking and measuring a long time ago.
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i get what you're saying. but i still feel it necessary to say you sound like a twat.
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I've had a personal health dashboard tracking my metrics for the past four years. Yes I am quantifiably healthier than I was.
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You've climbed a certain mountain, and you're strolling around the summit on flat ground.

You're looking down on the people at the bottom or middle of the mountain, struggling up hill to reach the peak, and wondering "why are they going through all this effort? Why don't they just stroll around on flat ground like I am?".

They're still building the systems that you already have in place. It's far easier to use a system you already have than to build one from scratch. Maybe not with physical or academic health for you, but I'm sure there's some areas of life that you're lacking in that could use improvements. If you can't think of any, I can give you a hint: empathy. If you try to work on it, you might have to do things like set reminders to call friends on their birthdays, or just to check in. You might have to force yourself outside to chat with that neighbor that you don't exactly like and find some common ground. You might have to set a goal of volunteering a certain amount of time at a homeless shelter, and track those hours.

Meanwhile, there are people who already have buffed up their empathy their entire life, and do all these things(and more) naturally.

Should they look at you and wonder why empathy is so hard for you, and tell you your efforts to consciously improve this part of your life is a waste, since they were able to achieve higher levels of empathy without doing any of those things ?

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> They're still building the systems that you already have in place.

Bull. They're doing highly sophisticated procrastination. I'll never become a great photographer by vibe coding the perfect tool for my workflow that selects, ranks and edits the 100 photos I took this week, or one that tells me where to stand and when to click the shutter. I have to be out shooting thousands of photos every week and laboring over the editing myself. You get good at what you do, and if you're spending your time making these one-off disposable apps instead of doing the thing they ostensibly support, a few years from now that's what you're going to be better at.

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What if by using custom software I’m not pissed off by my tasks anymore, or no longer surveilled while doing them?

What if I just like making my own stuff?

Surely that’s plenty.

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