What Colour is my Sandbox?
What colour is my sandbox?
A sandbox is a simplified environment that helps you get work/learning done. They are most necessary for someone like me who has the distractibility associated with having ADHD.
In thinking about sandboxes I conceived of the idea that sandboxes can be categorised into colours.
In computer hacking, hackers can be categorised into white hat (the good guys), grey hat and black hat (the baddies!).
It turns out these can map beautifully onto my sandbox idea.
Note that what might be considered a white sandbox for one might not be for another. And that some sandboxes can change colour depending on how you use it.
Examples of my white sandboxes include:
- Wiggly Spanish which my custom Spanish audio phrase web-book
- Anki - The memorisation software.
- Dreaming Spanish - An app which has thousands of Spanish Language videos graded easy, intermediate and advanced.
- Ella verbs - A app/website for drilling Spanish verb congregations.
- Improvise for Real’s material on Sing the Numbers which is interval singing
- Putting on Nirvana’s Nevermind Album, grabbing my flute and jamming. This is literally the context where I first learn to jam-to that specific album.
(I am still experimenting around how to create and sustain sandboxes outside a purely tech environment like the last item in this list.)
Examples of my grey sandboxes
- LLMs like ChatGPT - can totally be useful useful but onemorepromptitis is a problem.
My black sandboxes
- Youtube
The tech industry unfortunately with its havesting of attention to advertise to you and infinite scroll dynamics struggles to build white sandboxes.
It is totally possible to use Youtube and Facebook for doing research and contacting mates respectively which can briefly shunt them into grey sandbox territory for me.
A key question which can be asked regarding especially other designed sandboxes is:
Am I the user or the used?
Additional sandbox categorisations
Meta-sandboxes
The most meta of my sandboxes is my Not-Degree which is my 10 year free-range degrees worth of effort in terms of hours.
I Track hours using Python scripts on my computer and on my phone.
Another meta sandbox I have is a user on my Mac that I only use for Spanish Practice.
I can spend time within the other Spanish based sandboxes here, or do free-range study using books on learning Spanish.
Gateway sandboxes
These are great when you have low energy of are suffering with what I see is the challenge of Role Impermanence.
This challenge is the seemingly ADHD related experience of feeling like versions of you like “I am a musican” or I am a coder" go off-line because you haven’t done much activity related to them lately.
What sandboxes are open right now?
is a great diagnostic. It helps figure out where the Command Resistance is, and is related to a more general form of the question which I call the yoda question:
Where is the command resistance not?
(BTW When you are having trouble getting started it might be that you just need rest and to not be pushing forward!)
If you’re in better shape with more Command Juice more Sandboxes will be available…
Or you might be able to manage time in a Gateway Sandbox.
For me and my Spanish Language practice Dreaming Spanish is my Gateway sandbox as it is very easy to load the app and listen to some interesting spanish context.
(Note that Dreaming Spanish is really just a skin for Youtube that counts hours engaged-using an infinite play dynamic that is so aligned with my desire to learn spanish it still counts as a white sandbox for me.)
For music I have two Gateway Sandboxes. My jamming to Nivana’s Nevermind album with my flute Sandbox and my Sing aloud to Improvise for Real’s Sing the Numbers interval melody singing.