De-Brainrot Vacations / “去脑雾化”假期

Brain Fog / 脑雾

My brain is not the same as it was a few years ago. When I started working as a Software Engineer, everything was novel and mentally demanding. I notably remember how during my first professional months I’d come back home and just go straight to bed due to the mental exhaustion of learning so much stuff and trying to solve software engineering problems that were mostly alien to me at that point in my career.

我的大脑已经不再是几年前的样子了。当我刚开始做软件工程师时，一切都是新鲜且需要高强度用脑的。我清楚地记得，在职业生涯的最初几个月里，我回到家就只想倒头大睡，因为学习新知识以及解决那些对我当时而言完全陌生的软件工程问题，实在太耗费心力了。

But now, I’m on the opposite end. Nothing is that novel anymore, and solving day to day problems, more than requiring mental exhaustion, mostly require spending some time at them. Add to that the usage of AI. While I know I’m way more productive than during those first months, my thoughts are getting slower, less profound, lazier.

但现在，情况恰恰相反。一切都不再新鲜，解决日常问题不再需要耗尽心力，更多时候只是需要花点时间去处理。再加上人工智能的使用，虽然我知道自己比刚入行时高效得多，但我的思维却变得迟缓、浅薄且懒惰了。

Plus, dopamine is available at just a tap on my phone. There’s a ton of content in shorts that interest me and require little to no investment on my end, both time and effort-wise. Add to that videogames, comics/manga, TV shows, etc, and I literally just can’t get bored anymore.

此外，只需在手机上轻轻一点，多巴胺便唾手可得。短视频里有海量让我感兴趣的内容，且几乎不需要我投入任何时间和精力。再加上电子游戏、漫画、电视剧等等，我简直再也无法感到“无聊”了。

Reading / 阅读

One key metric for me is the amount of books I (don’t) read. Before I entered university, I used to devour books before going to sleep. Then, during university I was reading 1200+ pages per week for my History undergrad courses. When I started programming as a hobby I added online documentation, and Computer Science/Software Engineering books to the mix. But then, when I started my first job as a Software Engineer I was way too tired for reading. I spent a hefty amount of time reading during my dayjob, but it was mostly documentation.

衡量我状态的一个关键指标是我阅读（或没读）的书籍数量。上大学前，我习惯在睡前如饥似渴地阅读。大学期间，为了历史学本科课程，我每周要阅读超过 1200 页的内容。当我开始把编程作为爱好时，阅读清单里又增加了在线文档和计算机科学/软件工程书籍。但后来，当我开始第一份软件工程师工作时，我实在太累了，根本读不进书。虽然我在工作中花大量时间阅读，但那大多是技术文档。

About 8 years have passed, and I’m afraid I haven’t read that much since then. I still love reading, but as I mentioned, there’s an overabundance of distractions that I’ve fallen into that aren’t that compatible with books, specially doomscrolling before sleeping.

大约 8 年过去了，恐怕从那以后我就没怎么读过书了。我依然热爱阅读，但正如我所提到的，我陷入了过多的干扰之中，这些干扰与阅读并不兼容，尤其是睡前的“末日刷屏”（doomscrolling）。

De-Brainrotting during my vacations / 假期中的“去脑雾化”

Over the last year I’ve tried to introduce new habits to avoid brainrot and keep my brain sharper: handwriting (both for pleasure and planning), making sideprojects, and writing in this blog. And while I’ve found some improvement, I still find my thinking and learning skills far away from what they were 8 years ago.

过去一年里，我尝试引入一些新习惯来避免大脑退化并保持思维敏锐：手写（为了乐趣和规划）、做副业项目以及写博客。虽然我发现了一些改善，但我的思维和学习能力距离 8 年前的水平依然相去甚远。

So for these vacations I wanted something different for my brain. We spent them visiting family in the country-side and celebrating my wife’s birthday on one weekend and my mother-in-law’s birthday the next one. This was the perfect opportunity to slow down and double down on new habits I wanted to grow.

因此，在这个假期，我想给大脑换种节奏。我们去乡下探望了家人，一个周末庆祝了我妻子的生日，下一个周末庆祝了我岳母的生日。这是一个放慢脚步、强化我想培养的新习惯的绝佳机会。

These were slow vacations. I spent a lot of time in nature with my dog (I even saw a bunch of horses fighting vultures that were trying to eat the placenta of a newly born foal), socializing with family while drinking mate, and playing board games, football, and roblox (yes, roblox) with my nephews.

这是一个缓慢的假期。我花了很多时间带着狗在大自然中漫步（我甚至看到一群马在驱赶试图吃掉刚出生小马胎盘的秃鹫），和家人喝着马黛茶聊天，还和侄子们一起玩桌游、踢足球，甚至玩了 Roblox（没错，就是 Roblox）。

Books / 书籍

For this vacation I took two books with me: Mary Beard’s SPQR to reminisce on my time during university, and Francisco Claro’s “De Newton a Einstein y algo más” to scratch my itch about knowing a bit more about physics. Both heavily recommended.

假期里我带了两本书：玛丽·比尔德（Mary Beard）的《SPQR》（古罗马史）来重温大学时光，以及弗朗西斯科·克拉罗（Francisco Claro）的《从牛顿到爱因斯坦及其他》（De Newton a Einstein y algo más）来满足我对物理学知识的渴望。两本书都强烈推荐。

I had so much fun reading them that I finished them during the first of my two weeks there, so I had to buy new books: a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories, and Atomic Habits. Those were much faster to read for me so I finished them early on the second week. Surprisingly for me during that week I also found a new hobby that I wasn’t expecting to be so keen on.

阅读过程非常有趣，我在两周假期的第一周就读完了它们，于是不得不买了新书：F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的短篇小说集和《原子习惯》。这些书读起来快得多，我在第二周初就读完了。令我惊讶的是，那周我还发现了一个我没预料到会如此热衷的新爱好。

Maths and Physics as a hobby / 数学与物理作为爱好

I had so much fun reading the mathematical proofs and explanations in “De Newton a Einstein y algo más” that I was left wanting more (or “algo más”). So I started going through Stewart’s Calculus: Early Trascendentals. I noticed my algebra and trigonometry was quite lacking, so I went through the books appendix on trigonometry, and their site’s resources on algebra.

阅读《从牛顿到爱因斯坦及其他》中的数学证明和解释让我乐在其中，以至于我意犹未尽（或者说想要“更多”）。于是我开始研读斯图尔特的《微积分：早期的超越函数》。我发现自己的代数和三角学基础相当薄弱，于是我翻阅了书后的三角学附录，并利用了他们网站上的代数资源。

Going through a maths textbook on my laptop or phone was a subpar experience, so I researched other web-native alternatives and landed on Paul’s Notes and Active Calculus. And to scratch my itch on physics I’m going through a textbook called University Physics. So far I haven’t found a web-native alternative but so far so good.

在笔记本电脑或手机上看数学教材体验很差，所以我研究了其他原生网页版的替代方案，最终找到了 Paul’s Notes 和 Active Calculus。为了满足我对物理学的兴趣，我正在研读一本名为《大学物理》的教材。目前我还没找到它的原生网页版替代品，但进展还算顺利。

I spent the rest of my vacations working on my pre-calculus knowledge and doing maths/physics exercises.

假期剩下的时间里，我都在巩固微积分预备知识，并做数学和物理练习题。

For me this feels when I started programming as a hobby. Just learning for the sake of learning and having fun in the process. I have to admit that the remote possibility of being able to find a job in software engineering was also a motivation for learning programming, so this time it’s also different. I’m not sure how this could affect my career, specially with AI, everything career-related in Software Engineering and Data Engineering is way fuzzier than it used to be 8 years ago. So I feel like I cannot plan much ahead.

对我来说，这种感觉就像我刚开始把编程当作爱好时一样。纯粹为了学习而学习，并享受其中的乐趣。我必须承认，当时学习编程还有一个动力是希望能找到一份软件工程的工作，所以这次的情况有所不同。我不确定这会如何影响我的职业生涯，特别是在人工智能时代，软件工程和数据工程领域的一切都比 8 年前模糊得多。所以我感觉自己无法做太长远的规划。

For now my goal is to some day being able to fully understand advanced physics concepts, and even be able to read new papers on some field I’d discover on this physics hobby.

目前我的目标是有一天能完全理解高等物理概念，甚至能阅读我在这个物理爱好中发现的某个领域的新论文。

Did it work? / 有效吗？

I don’t know. But I’m having fun and I’ve noticed I’m less intellectually lazy during my day-to-day activities.

我不知道。但我乐在其中，而且我注意到自己在日常活动中不再那么“智力懒惰”了。