Why I Stopped Ricing, For Now
Long story short, it’s way too time-consuming.
I recently stopped ricing for the most part. Other than maintaining certain aspects of my system like program updates from applications like Neovim and yabai or writing some scripts that made life easier, there hasn’t been any significant development. There are a few reasons for doing this. The most prominent reason was because ricing is very time-consuming. Other than it being a time sink, I became more satisfied with my current environment and developed alternative interests in fields like machine learning.
Too Time-Consuming
During the past few years, I have spent a lot of time customizing and researching different styles, particularly on Reddit. I still occasionally go on it to see mesmerizing designs and configurations.
However, in the end, ricing takes a tremendously long time to do. Whether looking through the documentation or looking at other people’s configs for inspiration, it took a lot of work to create something I liked (partly due to my perfectionist mentality). In my opinion, this is by far the biggest factor. Especially since I’m still early in my career, developing more employable skills is more advantageous.
Even though ricing is very time-consuming, I definitely could squeeze out time for it. Yet, I don’t. There comes a point where ricing, although enjoyable, doesn’t provide any other benefit. I was just procrastinating.
Satisfied
From the long hours I spent ricing, I had come to a configuration that I enjoyed and a system that I could spend ungodly amounts of time at without a sweat. The colors, the keystrokes, and the style, everything was to my liking. I was satisfied. I had satiated my urge to keep creating candy for my eyes. Furthermore, at least for me, there is usually a time when I get bored of doing an activity (aka. burnout). This happened to me. I started ricing over quarantine and it was extremely fulfilling, but now it just isn’t. I don’t have the drive to keep going anymore. I was satisfied with what I had done.
New Interests
While for some time, I was deeply engaged with ricing, I have developed new interests. My interests aren’t in UI/UX design but rather in more technical and math-heavy fields. Whether it be in machine learning or expanding my theoretical computer science knowledge, there were more interesting things that caught my eye.
Also, I mentioned this before and I will again, the skills I learned from ricing, though useful, could not compare to dedicated practice and projects for specific interests like web development and machine learning.
Future Plans
I don’t plan on quitting ricing completely, but it will definitely have to wait. There are many more things that are not only more challenging and satisfying but also more productive. Whether it be creating a machine learning project to get a job or just talking with friends, sitting at a computer and trying to make my system look pretty wasn’t as beneficial.
From my experience, I only recommend ricing while it's enjoyable or until there are diminishing returns on how productive you are. Because more likely than not, ricing is just a way to procrastinate.
For my current system, see my GitHub.