Look straight at the perfectionism →

Published 11 Hours Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 24  ·  ,

Ask yourself what perfect looks like. What are the specific elements? What’s on the checklist?

Procrustes will never have an answer to this question, but always a response along the lines of “I’ll know it when I see it.” That’s not good enough. He has no idea what perfection means! He’s exposed. He cannot meet his own standards. He’s in his bed. You know what to do. Grab your creative tools and get to work.

~ Boston Blake, from Perfectionism

I’ve long agreed with the sentiment that “I’ll know it when I see it” is bullshit. I’ve long thought that was because if one doesn’t know “what it should look like” then one doesn’t actually understand whatever it is we’re talking about judging. My thinking was focused on identifying whether or not I (or whomever) was capable of judging.

But this insight from Blake got me thinking about a more fundamental layer of judgement: If I (or whomever) is not capable of judging (as evidenced by espoused sheep dip like “I’ll know it when I see it”) then I shouldn’t even be involved in the judging. Which is also a powerful way to banish my own internal critic.

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Between transitions →

Published 1 Day Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 24

Each transition might be random, but what goes on between transitions is far from it: it’s all designed to interest you, to be pleasant or “nice” in some way, and sometimes even to become addictive.

~ Marco Giancotti, from Presenting Visual Koans

Just an interesting dive into what happens when you give your brain more opportunities to make connections among ideas.

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The Practice of Sitting With Your Thinking →

Published 2 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 22  ·  

Reflection is fuzzier than the other practices. It’s something I didn’t realize I needed until I was already doing it.

Find a comfortable spot. Your favorite chair, a quiet cafe, outside with a cup of tea. Somewhere you can settle in and read without rushing.

Start by writing on today’s page: “Reflecting.” Just a note that this is what you’re doing.

Then work backwards through recent pages. Look at yesterday, the day before, the week before. The most recent pages often have thoughts you started but didn’t finish, questions you wrote down and forgot about, patterns you didn’t notice day-to-day.

What you’ll notice:

How much you’ve accomplished. You can actually see it. The progress is visible in a way it rarely is when everything stays in your head.

What you’re stuck on. Things you keep writing about but not resolving. Problems that keep coming up.

Patterns in your thinking. The kinds of ideas you’re having. Topics that keep pulling your attention.

Ideas waiting to be connected. Sometimes you’ll see three separate entries that are actually related, and a new idea emerges.

Most people don’t have a record of their actual thinking. The notebook gives you something rare: evidence of what you’ve actually been working through.

Reflection is how you learn from that evidence.

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This is part of a series about Hand-Write. Think Better.—a method for people who feel overwhelmed to start simply writing more on paper. Get the book →

The act of creation →

Published 9 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 15  ·  

Because what makes anyone’s work worth having isn’t the ability to recognise quality in what already exists – it’s what they generate themselves. How their mind moves. What they reach for before anyone else knows it’s there. The idea that forms before it becomes a thing anyone can judge. That’s what’s always been of value. But it’s something we rarely, if ever, examine.

~ Zoe Scaman, from The Whetstone

This would also be what would be of value from a cogitant. It’s not “how” the trick is done, it’s the effect… the outcome that matters.

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Fasting →

Published 16 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 8  ·  

A Six-Part Series and Getting Started

Fasting – 2026-04-08Download

This collection brings together a six-part series exploring the science of fasting alongside a practical guide to getting started with 16:8 intermittent fasting.

The series begins by questioning long-held assumptions about meal timing and examines what actually happens in the body during a fast — from the metabolic switch to fat burning, through autophagy and cellular repair, to hormonal changes, immune renewal, and the neurological effects that fasting practitioners often report as mental clarity. Each installment weighs the research honestly, distinguishing strong evidence from speculation and noting where the science is still
catching up to the claims.

The final piece shifts from understanding to doing, offering a stepped approach to building a 16-hour fasting practice, drawing on personal experience rather than theory.

I’ve been doing 16:8 intermittent fasting for years and recently started 48-hour fasts — dropping about three pounds each fast, gaining one or two back, and trending steadily downward. I wanted to understand what the research actually says about what I’m doing to myself, so I worked with Claude (Anthropic’s AI) to produce this series. I set the structure, chose the topics, pushed back on claims that felt hand-wavy, and guided the editorial tone. Claude did the writing and research synthesis. My curiosity driving Claude’s research and prose.

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Plant Now, Harvest Later →

Published 16 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 8  ·  

You don’t realize you need an idea garden until you’re using one.

Most people have good ideas throughout the day but don’t capture them because they know those ideas could grow into big projects—and they’re not ready to commit to that right now.

The notebook lets you plant those seeds without committing to anything.

When you write something and think “oh, that’s a good idea”—that’s your signal. Write it down. Sometimes just a few words is enough. Mark it with a star in the margin and flag it with a sticky note.

Now when your notebook is closed, you can see where your ideas are parked.

Eventually, one of three things happens:

You do it. Remove the flag, mark it done with a page reference to where you executed it.

You decide against it. Strike it out, note why.

You forget about it. The flag sits there for months. That’s fine. When you notice it later, you can decide then.

You’re separating “having an idea” from “committing to an idea.” You can capture everything without feeling overwhelmed by everything. The ideas are there when you’re ready for them, marked and findable, but not demanding immediate action.

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This is part of a series about Hand-Write. Think Better.—a method for using paper to think more clearly. Get the book →

Time-Restricted Eating as an Adjunct to Radiotherapy and Androgen Deprivation Therapy in Prostate Cancer →

Published 18 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 6  ·  

Clinical Evidence Brief
Current state of evidence — preclinical, clinical, and investigational
Prepared March 2026

Proposed mechanisms

The biological rationale for combining dietary restriction with radiotherapy centers on the differential stress response.[1] Under conditions of nutrient deprivation, normal cells activate conserved protective pathways — reducing metabolic activity, upregulating stress resistance, and entering a quiescent state. Cancer cells, whose oncogenic mutations constitutively activate RAS, AKT, and mTOR signaling, are largely unable to make this shift; they remain metabolically active and, as a consequence, more vulnerable to radiation-induced damage. Concurrently, normal tissue is relatively protected — a divergence that forms the basis for combining fasting with radiotherapy.

The interaction between dietary restriction and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) works through different mechanisms that depend on the class of ADT used, as described below. Separately, dietary restriction may also help counteract the metabolic side effects of ADT itself.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) — typically a 16:8 fasting-to-eating window — is among the more clinically feasible implementations of dietary restriction during active treatment, avoiding the weight loss and nutritional risk associated with sustained caloric restriction.[2] Transitioning from typical Western eating patterns to a sustained 16:8 window requires deliberate on-ramping; the author has written separately on a structured approach to this transition.[3]

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Getting started with 16-hour fasting →

Published 24 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Mar 31  ·  

This post is about ways to incrementally change when you are eating, to shift yourself from how you are eating today, to a particular time-pattern of fasting called 16:8 (pronounced “sixteen eight”.) 16:8 means every day you have a 16-hour fast (the “not eating” window,) and then an 8-hour eating window.

I’m going to start by assuming you already want to begin fasting. I’ve written more generally about fasting if you’d prefer to start with WHY you might want to try being more intentional about when you choose to eat.

Putting yourself into “intentional” mode

You SHOULD discuss your fasting with your primary care physician. Ask them what you should be aware of, or how it may affect you—they know the specifics of your body. You will discover they actually know all about fasting and diet. If you are proactively engaged in your own welfare, your physician will be happy to be a font of useful information.

For example: My primary care doctor is well aware of the beneficial effects of diet, exercise and fasting on my cholesterol markers. They are also convinced that my lifestyle changes will not be able to sufficiently improve those markers quickly enough. Thus, our discussions and my choices continue.

(And—yikes!—if your physician isn’t helpful, knowledgeable, and open to discussion, you should find a better physician.)

Fasting is about WHEN you eat

Fasting is easy to understand: It’s about WHEN you eat. Whether we use the word fasting, intermittent fasting (IF), or time restricted eating (TRE), we’re simply referring to when you eat versus when you don’t eat.

Fasting—here, and whenever I talk about it—is not about depriving yourself, nor about starvation or suffering. It is SIMPLY being intentional about WHEN you CHOOSE to eat.

I know, I know… 16 hours without eating probably sounds like a crazy-long time to not eat. But as I said at the top, I’m assuming you are motivated to try this.

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Closing the Loop →

Published 30 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Mar 25  ·  

One of the most valuable things a notebook does is help you close open loops—those things you said you’d figure out and then never quite did.

You know the ones. Questions you need to answer. Decisions you keep avoiding. Things that pop into your head at 2am because your brain won’t let them go.

Here’s a simple system: When you write something that needs follow-up, mark it in the margin with a double-line arrow pointing at the text. Put a small sticky note flag there too.

Now when your notebook is closed, you can see these flags poking out. Open to any flag and you’re right back at that open loop, with the full page of context.

When you’ve decided or done the thing:

  1. Remove the sticky note
  2. Strike through the arrow
  3. Write the date
  4. Add a page reference to where you recorded the resolution

Both pages now reference each other. The loop is closed. You have a record of both the question and the answer.

This is where the notebook earns its keep. You’ve been thinking about questions for days or weeks, but you haven’t had to hold all of it in your head simultaneously.

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This is part of a series about Hand-Write. Think Better.—a method for people who feel overwhelmed to start simply writing more on paper. Get the book →

Regrets →

Published March 21  ·  All posts on Mar 21

Do I have a lot of regrets? Yes.

And they’re all stories that involve other people. Like, in hindsight I think: *facepalm* How did I think that was the right choice?!

For example:

Nearly 20 years ago, I rented a jack hammer to break up the concrete sidewalk right against one side of our house (not along a street, but between us and the neighbor.)

You should make jack hammer sounds here. Now make more. And yet more. For like an hour.

It was pretty flippin’ hot too, and eventually one of my neighbors— from across the street— diagonally across the street, someone who I knew by sight but hadn’t really talked to— a guy named Ron— appeared around my corner with a classic, red and white Igloo carry-cooler with a bunch of cold Budweiser in it.

I stopped long enough to exchange a few words.

But for some damn reason, I didn’t stop long. I didn’t dismiss his beer exactly (it isn’t a brand I’d choose)— but I didn’t drink one. I didn’t really even stop to talk. I certainly didn’t make him feel welcome. I said something like, “I need to finish this.”

And— no surprise— we never talked much— heck, I’m not sure we ever spoke after that.

He died years ago.

Just about every time I walk along the side of my house (there’s a paver-stone path there now) I regret not taking five. farking. minutes. to talk to a fellow human being, who went to the trouble to bring over cold beer on a hot day.

How did I think that was the right choice?!

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