Anti-patterns

An "anti-pattern" is a solution that looks like a good idea at first, feels familiar or convenient, but consistently causes more problems than it solves.

It's worth spending some time to identify anti-patterns in your life. Because once you find one, you might be on the verge of making a major breakthrough that could really meaningfully improve your life. I've written recently about when you are using AI and think that the answer to learning is to have AI give you an answer instead of struggling on your own. When you goal is to learn, the anti-pattern is giving yourself the answers too easily. A good teacher knows this is an anti-pattern and real learning always includes struggle. But it's so easy to fall into the anti-pattern of undermining your own learning. It's so convenient to give your mind an out by just looking at the answer. Doing this repeatedly also causes more problems than it solves.

So how do you solve an anti-pattern? Unfortunately, not easily. But it has to start with recognition. Once you recognize the anti-pattern and label it. You can start to see solutions that might be painful at first but can unwind the negative behavior. Once I realized what I was doing with AI undermining my education. I turned off my auto-complete. And I asked for explicit exercises that I would bang my head against without using AI to give me the answers. I started to take pride in when I could achieve exercises without using Google to search for questions. And without asking AI for answers. And there is a line there too. Because in the course of an exercise there might be a different problem unrelated to your learning. And perhaps that might be worth using a google search or asking AI. But you gotta be disciplined about what you are doing. You have to be ruthless about identifying the goal you and making sure your behavior is going to lead to the end goal.

Another anti-pattern that I observed is the anti-pattern of using command tab to switch between applications. Why is that an anti-pattern? Well, it's certainly familiar and seemingly convenient. It's something that seems like such a good idea. But think about it for a moment. When you start to switch between a handful of applications, how many times do you find yourself hitting command+tab like 15 times to get to the application that you used a few days ago? If you really knew how often you are ineffeciently using command+tab, you'd start to realize how the pattern could be greatly improved upon. And yes, getting to a better place would be hard. Especially because using command+tab just grows to be second nature.

So what's the answer?

A few years ago, i decided to map my most used applications to a specific keyboard shortcut. I hold a custom modifier and press a single key and what happens is that a specific application opens if it's not already running OR if it's already running then it comes to the foreground and gains focus. Pressing that same key again automatically hides the same application.

So a simple thought exercise.

Say you want are browsing the internet and you want to go to your terminal, what do you do?

Most people will just start command+tabbing.

That is not what I do.

super+y

What if you are on Slack and realize you need to open your browser? Command+tabbing? Nope.

super+j (Browser is such a regular application, I use one of the best keys for that application. Right on the homerow of the keyboard.)

If you want to really breakthrough, you disable command+tab altogether. That can help jumpstart the change in your behavior.

And so now that it's been a few years where am I at with the anti-pattern? Well. Honestly, I still sometimes use command+tab (i currently have it allowed). But when I just use my system to go directly without command+tab, it's honestly so much better. You can fly around where you want to be. It's so much more intentional.

When you are on the other side looking back at an anti-pattern you have a much different perspective. You realize how much better things could have been if you'd addressed the pattern much earlier. And you also see other people and wish you could help them. But it's always hard. Because remember, it wouldn't be an anti-pattern if it wasn't seeminly convenient. Or wasn't easy at first.

After you find your first anti-pattern and overcome it you might be surprised that you are now more open minded that there could be other anti-pattern's in your life. If something so sacred as command+tab is an anti-pattern, then what else could be? How much of our interactions with our phone, social media, or even our daily routine could you think about as an anti-pattern? Starts to be scary (and exciting) to look around and challenge everything.

But remember, anti-patterns aren't bad just because they are convenient. Many great things are actually convenient and NOT an anti-pattern. It actually has to be something that causes more problems than it solves after repeated instances. It will be hard to see initially, but if you knew you were going to do it 1 million times you could then realize that it's worth doing things the right way. It turns into an anti-pattern when you extrapolate beyond initial ease and see that not only will it eventually be better to behave differently, but that you are for sure going to get where it's worth doing things right.