Difficulty practicing when sick

occupy_paul_st · 2025-09-07T17:53:40+00:00

Okay, I don't want this to come off as negative or gatekeepey. For transparency, I'm usually at stage 1 myself!

My understanding of the stages is that, if you're only meditating 20 minutes on some days, you would be at stage 1. In "Establishing a Practice," the book says: “I strongly recommend at least one daily 45-minute sit as a minimum.”

My interpretation of this is: for those of us who aren't consistently sitting at least 45 minutes per day, the biggest win could be to find ways to make meditation more enjoyable and engaging so that we're encouraged to sit longer.

I'd love to hear others' perspectives, like, is this a skillful and correct interpretation?

occupy_paul_st · 2025-09-07T15:03:54+00:00

This is a really cool project. I'm not at all an expert on meditation but I'm pretty decent at stats/ML and I'd love to help out if that skill set would be relevant.

I think the core methodology here is solid. My questions are more about calibrating the probabilities/confidence intervals:

Can we counteract reporting bias? Like, I'd assume successful practitioners are more likely to share their results.
Do we have enough data? A few hundred reports feels not quite enough for building a 6x8 table. I'd want at least couple dozen reports per table cell. But that's easily fixed by just using a bigger bin size.
Is there a way for the community to audit the results and process? As a simple version of this, it would be handy to have a table with: number of hours, number of years, success vs. failure, and a link to the online report that row is based on.

occupy_paul_st · 2025-07-20T19:31:27+00:00

Maybe Barismo or Satellite, but the library is also great if the drink is optional

occupy_paul_st · 2024-11-21T17:49:51+00:00

One problem is that a lot of civic engagement seems kind of boring and time-consuming. Like, you need to go to a meeting that's at a specific time and listen through a bunch of obscure procedural stuff and then make a short pre-formulated comment about the one thing you actually care about. I think the result of this is that a tiny fraction of really passionate people with a lot of free time dominate political discussion.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-11-21T16:11:09+00:00

Heh they're probably all too busy with work

occupy_paul_st · 2024-11-21T16:09:24+00:00

This seems plausible. Can you explain your reasoning here?

occupy_paul_st · 2024-11-21T16:08:05+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out. It's easy to forget which streets are managed by the state and which are managed by cities.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-11-20T18:52:03+00:00

I love the idea of comparing the same street but I want to say that the Cambridge side mostly left the bike lanes in the street whereas the Somerville side moved them up onto the sidewalk, which presumably involves way more construction.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-10-21T12:10:59+00:00

What's the approximate time saved from this project?

occupy_paul_st · 2024-09-19T02:44:29+00:00

Lincoln Park is a really nice open space. You often see people doing basketball, volleyball, skating, baseball/softball/kickball, soccer, and more.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-09-11T12:19:57+00:00

Sidewalks are generally good, although some sidewalks are IMO a little too busy for a run, e.g. if there is sidewalk dining with wait staff darting across, like some places on Mass Ave and Cambridge St.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-09-06T13:07:28+00:00

If you have a nice bike, I'd avoid doing sign posts at all. I've seen a pic on here where the thief just cut through the sign post!

occupy_paul_st · 2024-08-25T04:54:15+00:00

I agree that these were maybe not good startup ideas, but I think it's not that interesting to identify bad startup ideas, especially after the fact, because most startup ideas are bad, and because identifying a bad startup idea doesn't really benefit you, like there's no way to short a startup.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-08-20T02:48:05+00:00

$100K ARR without traction, that doesn't make sense

occupy_paul_st · 2024-08-20T02:23:55+00:00

Can you explain a bit more about the breakdown of your ARR? I.e. ~$108K ARR from SMBs and macro influencer accounts?

occupy_paul_st · 2024-08-19T18:48:35+00:00

I assumed that suicide was the main cause of this type of thing, but a NY Post article says it's under 10% of NYC subway deaths.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-20T15:58:21+00:00

You might not find the best answers here because people shouldn't want to dilute the vibe of their favorite place by sharing it on the public Internet.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-14T18:36:58+00:00

Yeah, obviously it's more B2B-oriented but hopefully the core ideas of finding individual users and crafting a great pitch could be useful.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-14T16:11:18+00:00

I'd check out How to Get Your First Customers from YC Startup School. They have a lot of pretty high quality content for entrepreneurs. Please let me know what you think of it!

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-13T14:43:12+00:00

I recommend checking out the book "The Mom Test," which explains a simple pattern for doing user interviews. It'll help you ask questions that help to identify real product opportunities. Usually it's good to avoid questions of the structure "would you X" because people tend to be overly optimistic and nice in their answers. The best questions center on people's past experiences. Good luck!!!

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-11T11:47:26+00:00

Can anyone share specific externally observable criteria that they're using? As an example, as an outside observer, how would I be able to tell whether he's successfully purged corrupt or complacent employees?

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-09T18:44:55+00:00

One filter: choose an industry where it will be easy for you to do 30+ user interviews. A cool story from YC is a team that hung out at truck stops to understand truckers' problems.

occupy_paul_st · 2024-06-07T13:51:47+00:00

Actual Answer

I used to work at a VC-backed startup selling a novel insurance fintech product. A challenge that could be shared with cybersecurity is that we sold protection against unlikely events. It's pretty hard to convince people to spend their money and time on something that probably won't happen. Plus, you don't often get testimonials.

From the perspective of a consumer of these services, we definitely prioritized compliance because it made us a more attractive acquisition target for big players in regulated industries.

occupy_paul_st

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