April 2010
1 post
1 tag
Focusing, Shuffling
I’m doing a bit of work to get things better organized around here. I have the both fortunate and unfortunate affliction of having far too many interests—the harm in this is that if I blog about what’s on my mind, there’s no way anyone else will actually want to follow along.
From here on, this blog is going to focus on lifehacking, location-independence, and entrepreneurism. ...
February 2010
1 post
January 2010
5 posts
3 tags
2010 Plan & Goals
Yeah, sure, New Year’s resolutions, fine. Well I sort of missed it, so I gave myself until the end of January to plot my year.
I generally wanted to embrace the S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) goal-setting concept where possible and practical, so what’s below is divided into the discrete, check-it-off-when-done tasks, and the more abstract goals...
1 tag
2009, A Year in Review
When I sat down to write this I was convinced that 2009 was a fairly crappy year. I feel like I spent about half the year blocked by circumstance from doing the things I really wanted to do. But after compiling a list of how I actually spent my time I realize that while it wasn’t everything I hoped it could be it, it was still pretty freaking cool.
Here’s a list of some of the more...
1 tag
Lifehacking, Expanded
(Photo: left-hand)
My friend Richard recently commented to me how curious it is that people alive today know little more about how to be human than the people who came before us. It’s an interesting point. Sure, we have an increased understanding of the physical world, but there’s no state-of-the-art for how to conduct our daily activities. Collectively, we don’t seem to be...
Live for the Stories
(Photo: nattu)
The only thing actually real is the now, and human lives are
exceedingly short. One day we’ll look back on our past activities to
see how we’ve lived our lives and garner if we’ve spent them well or
ill. In that moment, all past life is compressed to nothing more than
a narrative, the more interesting events reduced to chapters or
mentions and the less...
1 tag
How to Find the Motivation to do Big Things
A little over a month ago I released an iPhone application called Raconteur. And while It may not be especially groundbreaking, it was a hugely important for me because it’s one of the few things I’ve ever finished. On my own, with no external requirements, and no one driving me, I finished it.
Oh, I start things. I have 58 unpublished blog drafts (probably a dozen more on paper)...
December 2009
1 post
4 tags
Perfectionism: The Engineer's Bane
(Photo: Paul Mannix)
I’ve tried blogging many times, but my forays into online writing always grind
to a halt. The explanation for this is partly psychological and partly
technological: I latch onto minor dislikes I have with blogging tools/platforms
and I can’t overcome them because of my perfectionist nature. I’d rather leave
the blogging ‘problem’ unsolved than...
June 2008
1 post
2 tags
My Favorite Internet Resources for Learning...
Sacha Chua posted a nice list of resources for learning the Japanese language on her blog (I’ve been reading her blog for a while and didn’t even know she studied Japanese), which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post about a new Japanese (and other foreign language learning) site that I’m completely hooked on:
Lang-8 is a language exchange social networking site. ...
November 2007
1 post
2 tags
Humans: Pattern Matching Machines?
I have a personal maxim (or apothegm, to use a word I just learned) which states, “two isn’t a pattern, and three barely is”. My purpose for reminding myself of this message is the quell the natural human tendency to assume there is an underlying pattern to something when there really isn’t enough evidence to assume so.
Consider an event with two possible outcomes...
April 2007
1 post
1 tag
Mr., Ms., and Mrs.
I think that if I were a woman, married or unmarried, I would choose to call myself Ms.. Consider the fact that a woman’s title—a part of her name—is expected to change when she gets married. A person’s name is an integral part of her/his identity; essentially our culture tells us that a woman’s identity changes when she gets married.
Contrast this with the fact that men are...
March 2006
2 posts
2 tags
Minor Progress Through Explicit Application of...
I’m in a phase where everything I do must have a reason.
That may sound obvious—of course everything should have a reason, right? But there are many little questions in life where we generally feel that the exact solution chosen doesn’t make enough difference to even consider choosing one approach over any of the others. In many cases this may be the proper approach, but in other...
1 tag
The Personal Aesthetic
I propose that we enter a new term into our vocabularies: “the personal aesthetic.”
Observations on human behavior have lead me to the conclusion that every human being has a built-in aesthetic evaluation system. This system is applied to nearly everything in life, creating non-random personal preferences from this seemingly random base. The components of the personal aesthetic are...