Enforcing that every change is described as an action lets us have a clear understanding of what’s going on in the app. If something changed, we know why it changed. Actions are like breadcrumbs of what has happened.
This is basically the whole idea of Redux. Note that we haven’t used any Redux APIs. It comes with a few utilities to facilitate this pattern, but the main idea is that you describe how your state is updated over time in response to action objects, and 90% of the code you write is just plain JavaScript, with no use of Redux itself, its APIs, or any magic.
This ensures that neither the views nor the network callbacks will ever write directly to the state. Instead, they express an intent to transform the state. Because all changes are centralized and happen one by one in a strict order, there are no subtle race conditions to watch out for. As actions are just plain objects, they can be logged, serialized, stored, and later replayed for debugging or testing purposes.
We confuse the fact that change requires effort with the myth that success is unlikely. The evidence actually suggests that change is hard much in the same way that it’s hard to finish a marathon or learn a new language. Of course it requires effort. But the fact that it requires effort doesn’t negate the fact that the majority of people who commit to it will eventually succeed.
And there will come a day when you would give everything you have left to have what you have right now.
The two discovered that due to the brain’s circuitry, humans are constantly switching between two states of awareness: being either task-positive (actively focusing on a task at hand) or task-negative (wandering or daydreaming). “Seesawing” too rapidly between these two networks can leave your brain feeling “dizzy” and unable to commit to either state. And when are you most likely to be in this confused in-between? When you’re on social media or surfing the web.
PANS is thought to be an inflammatory condition that results when an infection or some other invasive trigger spurs the body to turn on itself and attack structures in the brain. For years, scientists had focused on a single infection — group A streptococcal disease — that produced antibodies that attacked the part of the forebrain involved in forming habits, resulting in OCD. Today, the paradigm has widened into a much bigger idea that expands our understanding of psychiatric disease: A whole host of infections and other unknown triggers lead to the production of antibodies and immune cells that can cross into the brain. Depending on where these immune responses land and which brain structures they block, erode or destroy, a range of psychiatric ills can result. In one person, it could be OCD; in the next, it could be hyperactivity and inattention, anxiety, restricted eating, even hallucinations or autistic behavior.
The truth—for this parent and so many others—is this: Her child has sacrificed her natural curiosity and love of learning at the altar of achievement, and it’s our fault.
From her first day of school, we pointed her toward that altar and trained her to measure her progress by means of points, scores, and awards. We taught Marianna that her potential is tied to her intellect, and that her intellect is more important than her character. We taught her to come home proudly bearing As, championship trophies, and college acceptances, and we inadvertently taught her that we don’t really care how she obtains them. We taught her to protect her academic and extracurricular perfection at all costs and that it’s better to quit when things get challenging rather than risk marring that perfect record. Above all else, we taught her to fear failure. That fear is what has destroyed her love of learning.
Marianna is so concerned with pleasing her parents that the love she used to feel for learning has been crowded out by her craving for their validation.
However, Marianna does not get praised for the diligence and effort she puts into sticking with a hard math problem or a convoluted scientific inquiry. If that answer at the end of the page is wrong, or if she arrives at a dead end in her research, she has failed—no matter what she has learned from her struggle. And contrary to what she may believe, in these more difficult situations she is learning. She learns to be creative in her problem-solving. She learns diligence. She learns self-control and perseverance. But because she is scared to death of failing, she has started to take fewer intellectual risks
Is that what we want? Kids who get straight As but hate learning? Kids who achieve academically, but are too afraid to take leaps into the unknown?
With a little luck, they will look back on their childhood and thank us; not just for our unwavering love, but for our willingness to put their long-term developmental and emotional needs before their short-term happiness. For our willingness to let their lives be just a little bit harder today so they will know how to face hardship tomorrow.
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