Issue 022 - Procrastination and Perfectionism
This image was generated by DALL.E3. Lately, I've been fond of these abstract pieces.
This weekly open-source journal records weekly insights and observations, focusing on front-end development, AI, indie development, open-source tools, etc. Published every Saturday/weekend. You're welcome to contribute and invited to follow/subscribe -- fav0.com
>> Topics to Discuss
Procrastination and the Fear of Not Being Good Enough
This is a trending topic recently discussed on Hacker News. Here are some selected comments:
The self holds such a high opinion of itself that it can only do great work. This makes it incapable of doing anything at all. It's a way to avoid failure because failure would shatter the beautiful idea of oneself.
I recently realized while gaming that I default to looking up guides. Before I even try out the game, I'm already following someone else's idea of best practices. Taking the less optimal path is scary, even in a game without real-world consequences. I might consider this next time.
There's no past memory to distract you from experiencing the present.
Everyone usually has a perceived "advantage" that makes them feel special, unique, and superior in some way. The nerd looks at the athlete and says, "They're athletic, but I'm the smart one." The blue-collar worker looks at the rich and says, "They have money, but I know hard work and principles." Everyone has some inner psychological defense explaining why those outperforming them aren't really "better" because, hey, we're the main characters!
I feel like I'm always deceiving myself—steering myself to become who I want to be. -> We become what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be.
I think deep down, the feeling of contentment—not necessarily happiness—is what we are all pursuing. Many designs of modern life are to cultivate a sense of dissatisfaction. Advertising and social media are obvious examples. These things are best avoided. Even things that provide convenience can interfere with contentment because they prevent you from doing things that bring a sense of fulfillment.
I believe the key is to aim for a small enough goal so as not to feel overwhelming. A new app or blog post feels so heavy in the moment that my body and mind will do everything possible to avoid it (procrastination).
My techniques for overcoming procrastination are:
Allowing myself to do a terrible job. Procrastinating "just a little." Always asking myself, "What's the smallest thing I can do right now?" and then doing it.
Recognize that anxiety is a physical phenomenon, therefore it needs to be addressed physically. That means: breathing techniques, exercise, etc.
Perfectionism is a problem that many of us have, and it stops us from failing enough times to perfection ourselves.
"The loudest voice comes from tranquility." - Zhuangzi
"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." - Albert Einstein
"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. It's as simple as that." - Stephen King
In other words, unplugging, making time to read, and allowing yourself to be bored are great ways to spark creativity.
>> Must Read
2025 China Holiday Notice
The notice regarding the arrangement of some holidays in 2025 is out:
How should you arrange your vacation? Here's a website to extend your vacation.
The tool detects your country via your IP and uses the default government-mandated leave days from Wikipedia; the algorithm prioritizes filling the shortest gaps. It optimizes the distribution of vacations throughout the year to create the most extended continuous vacations. For calculations, it considers all holidays that are 3 days or longer, including 3-day weekends that happen by lucky coincidence due to public holidays. It's a bit optimistic but embodies the spirit of maximizing time off.
Web Locks API
The Web Locks API allows scripts running in one tab or worker to asynchronously acquire a lock, hold it while work is being performed, and then release it. While holding a lock, other scripts on the same origin cannot acquire the same lock, which allows web applications running in multiple tabs or workers to coordinate work and resource utilization.
Tencent AI Search
AI search relies on two parts: the information source and the model itself. Tencent's approach includes:
- Information sources include articles from public accounts.
- The model uses Hunyuan.
More
>> Useful Tools
Shadcn Form Builder
A low-code platform based on Shadcn for building forms, enabling the creation of corresponding code through simple drag-and-drop. The project is also open-source.
Number Animation Component
A nice number animation effect component compatible with React, Vue, and Svelte frameworks. It's easy to use: <NumberFlow :value="123" />.
Create Music by Simple Drawing - draw.audio
Create your own unique music by drawing blocks of different positions and colors, and using various playback sequences. It's quite interesting!
Subtitle Cutting, Translation, Alignment, and Even Dubbing - VideoLingo
VideoLingo is a one-stop tool for video translation and localization dubbing, capable of generating high-quality subtitles at Netflix level with one click, bypassing stiff machine translations, avoiding multi-line subtitles, and adding high-quality cloned voiceovers to enable knowledge sharing across language barriers.
Key Features and Functions:
- 🎥 Download videos from Youtube links using yt-dlp
- 🎙️ Perform word-level timeline subtitle recognition using WhisperX
- 📝 Segment subtitles based on sentence meaning using NLP and GPT
- 📚 Summarize and extract a term knowledge base with context-coherent translation using GPT
- 🔄 Three-step direct translation, reflection, and free translation, comparable to subtitle group refined translation
- ✅ Ensure no double-line subtitles according to Netflix standards for single-line length checks
- 🗣️ Align cloned dubbing using methods like FishTTS
- 🚀 One-click deployment in streamlit with detailed operation logs supporting interruption and progress recovery at any time
Advantages over similar projects: Absolutely no multi-line subtitles, the best translation quality, seamless dubbing experience
CF-based Short Link Platform
A simple/fast/secure link shortener with analytics, running 100% on Cloudflare.
- URL Shortening: Compress your URLs to the minimum length.
- Analytics: Monitor link analytics and gather valuable statistics.
- Serverless: Deploy without traditional servers.
- Customizable Short Links: Supports personalized short links.
- AI Slug: Generates phrases using artificial intelligence.
- Link Expiration: Set expiration dates for your links.
Free Open Source Logo Generator
More
- 1500+ Free HTML Templates
- mdBook - Create Books with Markdown in Rust
- Agent for Conversations on Twitter and Discord
>> Interesting Finds
AI Coding Prompt Revealed a Real Avatar Info
A netizen asked Cursor to generate a component with an avatar placeholder, and AI suggested a random GitHub user avatar, which turned out to be Evan You's avatar.
| Coding Prompt | Avatar |
|---|---|
 |  |
Origin of the Chinese Character Radical "犭"?
>> Worth Reading
The Algorithms We Develop Software By
Some interesting insights include:
- Write all code twice: Rewriting a solution took only 25% of the time of the initial implementation, with much better results. Thus, you could get about 2x higher quality code for 1.25x the time, which is often a good deal for projects needing long-term maintenance.
- Quantity has a quality all its own: You only need about 5000 lines of perfect code to see all the major patterns once. The other 95000 lines are repetition, there to reshape your neurons.
Your Standing Desk Might Be as Bad as Sitting All Day
Standing for more than two hours a day, with risk increasing by 11% for every additional half hour, is bad news for retail workers and the standing desk industry.
Sitting isn't much better: Sitting for more than 10 hours a day increases the risk of circulatory disease by 26% for each additional hour.
200 Project Ideas
Independent developers lacking project inspiration can take a look at this.
Aside from this article, there's a related recent post on V2EX about project ideas - Are there products you would pay for but haven't found or aren't satisfied with?
Node.js Backend Framework Comparison
Carving Space
Whenever I join a team, regardless of what the job description says, I always end up in the gap between design and engineering. This has always been where I love to work. It's the space I proactively seek out, even if no one asks me to do it. Front-end work (I may never stop referencing this post) is always overlooked but never specifically hired for to address. Even when its absence is glaringly obvious. It often involves accessibility design, UI design, some basic UX consultancy, and, of course, actual UI development; you know, writing HTML, CSS, and JS.