Author: Craig Constantine

So many paths

June 28, 2022

In early January, I started regular co-working sessions with a friend, Sumana Harihareswara. She read that post from 2013 about wanting to write more, and emailed me to see if I wanted to form an accountability team to work on our writing together. She’s making progress on her book, and I’m writing more here: we’ve been able to get a lot more done together than trying to work solo and power through.

~ Jacob Kaplan-Moss from, Coworking With a Friend to Write More – Jacob Kaplan-Moss

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There are many paths to the top of Mt Getting Stuff Done. If you find yourself currently off the beaten path, this article is a nice trail map. It mentions cadence in the sense of “don’t break the chain” or “routine is your friend.” I want to talk about a recent epiphany I’ve had about a different way to look at cadence.

There are several things I’m currently doing which require ongoing, incremental effort. And for a long time, each of them to varying degrees, just wasn’t getting done to my satisfaction. I had repeatedly set goals, blocked out time, etc. Recently—unrelated to my points here about cadence—I’ve been making superlative progress on these things. (Because, reasons.) And I find that now I can see the cadence is much faster than it needs to be to reach my long-term goal. When these things weren’t getting done at all, I had an idea of the amount of work that was required to make meaningful progress. Now I can see that I can actually slow down. I’ve known, for these projects, just a teeny-tiny amount of work, would work. But I didn’t really believe it, until I had a cadence, and truly apprehended how teeny-tiny I could actually scale my efforts and still make meaningful progress.

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Oblivion

June 27, 2022

So begins her obsession with dominating the mind by dominating the body, which would follow her throughout her life in various guises — running, karate, yoga, cycling, skiing — always ambivalent and self-conscious, until it finally resolves into a glimpse of the larger truth beneath the mechanics of illusory perfectibility: that we exert ourselves so violently on keeping the package of the body intact in order to keep it from spilling its immaterial contents — the soul, the self — into oblivion.

~ Maria Popova from, The Secret to Superhuman Strength: Alison Bechdel’s Illustrated Meditation on the Life of the Body, the Death of the Self, and Our Search for Meaning – The Marginalian

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Ah yes, “oblivion.” Good stuff. Popova is referring to a graphic artist, and midway through the article is an exquisite cartoon example; the author drawing, figuratively and literally, a metaphor for life involving a hill and a bicycle. Reading that cartoon brought to mind my beloved practice of meditating on death. (Try this explanation.) Closely related I often call to mind the impermanence of things. Sometimes I mix the two, thinking…

This is my last sip from this [my favorite, morning coffee] mug. (Knowing it will one day be broken.)

This [regularly scheduled weekly] conversation with this person is our last one. (Imagining when priorities change and we’re no longer working together.)

This conversation I’m recording for a podcast is my last one. (Because I will die.)

This dinner with this person [my mom, my spouse, etc] is my last one. (Because one of us will die first.)

The goal is not to be morbid and depressed; The goal is to maintain a realistic perspective to enable wringing the absolute maximum enjoyment and appreciation from every single waking moment.

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Upper bounds

June 26, 2022

If we play our cards right, we could live hundreds of thousands of years more. In fact, there’s not much stopping us living millions of years. The typical species lives about a million years. Our 200,000 years so far would put us about in our adolescence, just old enough to be getting ourselves in trouble, but not wise enough to have thought through how we should act.

~ Toby Ord from, We Have the Power to Destroy Ourselves Without the Wisdom to Ensure That We Don’t | Edge.org

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I find it beneficial to have my perspectives stretched. This article walks through scales of time in a delightful manner. It pauses to ask questions, and to point out people who did certain things at precise points in our history. There are countless opportunities to shift perspective. For example: I’ve been alive for 1/100 of recorded human history. And recorded history is only 3/100 of the age of our species. The aggregate progress of humanity is simply the sum of our individual efforts, and my life represents 1/100,000,000,000 of humanity so far. Stretched perspectives indeed.

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Discontent

June 25, 2022

This is discontent, but it is not the discontent of pessimism. It is noble discontent which is the secret of progress. Only the pusillanimous are content. Heart’s desires are divine discontents. Only the unsatisfied do things. The satisfied do nothing. Unsatisfaction is the stimulus to achievement. Satisfaction is destruction and leads down to the chamber of death.

~ Jack London

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More light

June 25, 2022

There’s also a long list of advertisers who rely on this confusion to abdicate their ethical responsibility in terms of their money winding up in the pockets of bottom-dwelling grifters and bigots. The murkiness makes it easier to pretend it’s not happening, and it’s this accountability gap the group hopes to target

~ Karl Bode from, Nonprofit Takes Aim At Fox News By Demystifying Ad Exchanges | Techdirt

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Caution: Depending on your viewpoint, that article will make you cheer, or will enrage you. What I want to focus on is, “murkiness” and I want to split a fine hair.

I believe there’s visibility, (in the sense that it is clear who is accountable for some speech [advertising is speech],) anonymity, and murkiness which obscures the dichotomy of visibility versus anonymity. My position is that murkiness is never a positive thing. The knowledge that something is being said with accountability, (who said it is clear,) versus with anonymity is critical for one to be able to evaluate some speech for oneself. That knowledge is removed when there’s murkiness.

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Wait wat?

June 24, 2022

Since around 2009, methamphetamines have been made with phenylacetone (P2P). Is there a chemical different causing schizophrenia?

~ “Dynomight” from, The main thing about P2P meth is that there’s so much of it

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As I was reading those two sentences, my world was just fine… until that very last word. I was ready for death, overdose, addiction, and there are probably a dozen more words that I don’t expect would fit there, but which wouldn’t make me go, “wait wat?” So i started reading…

I quickly realized this article is basically the science behind Breaking Bad. There’s also an enormous amount of “this is not good” information in there. For example, an apparently exponential-function graph of deaths is never a good thing. There’s also a bit of industrial chemistry, and a large scale sewerage treatment plant data collection . . . well, it’s worth the read.

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Gömböc

June 23, 2022

So in a nutshell, Gömböc is cool, Hungarians are proud of it greatly. So naturally, they made a 4.5-ton statue replica of the shape.

~ Atlas Obscura from, Gömböc – Atlas Obscura

I could probably write a blog post about other interesting math-related puzzles and shapes that come from Hungary… or about the number of Hungarian mathematicians… but instead, I’ll just point you towards this particularly interesting thing.

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Incomplete with Janne Laurila

June 22, 2022

Incomplete with Janne Laurila

How does movement influence personal change and adaptability in life?

Movement evolves from a tool for improvement to a means of adapting to life’s challenges.

I think that when I started doing Parkour, the movement was a kind of like— it was constant exploration. […] But as more time has gone, I started to feel that that change isn’t just trying to improve. [It’s] more to adapt on how you can perform? Or how would— How do you see a challenge? Or how do you process a challenge?

~ Janne Laurila (1:47)

The conversation explores how movement intertwines with personal growth, adaptability, and energy management. Starting with parkour as a way of improvement, Janne shares his journey of evolving to see movement as a tool for adaptation rather than mere enhancement. Factors such as physical energy, time management, and life changes, like raising children, shape his relationship with movement.

Living in Finland adds layers to this experience, with long periods of light and dark influencing mood and activity. Balancing responsibilities as a parent, entrepreneur, and student while managing ADHD highlights the challenges of maintaining schedules and finding moments of recharge. The conversation concludes with reflections on compassion, curiosity, and the acceptance of being incomplete as guiding principles.

Takeaways

Change and movement — How parkour shifts from improvement-focused to adaptation-oriented.

Energy and time management — Balancing energy and available time in a demanding schedule.

Impact of light cycles — Navigating the challenges of extreme light and darkness in Finland.

ADHD and scheduling — The difficulty of adhering to schedules despite careful planning.

Family integration — Using Pokémon Go as a way to bond with children and stay active.

Self-compassion — Recognizing the importance of being kind to oneself amid life’s chaos.

Continuous growth — Embracing curiosity and the idea of being incomplete as motivations.

Resources

Daniel Vitalis — A podcaster discussing movement as nutrition.

Pokémon Go — A mobile game blending outdoor exploration with technology.

Art du Déplacement — Referenced as a movement practice.

Kurt Vonnegut — Quoted for mindfulness in appreciating simple moments.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Because enough people know

June 22, 2022

there are enough users who understand how it is supposed to work. They expect to be able to listen to any podcast anywhere they want. Most probably don’t understand why they have this ability, about the history and technology design that made it possible, but they understand that they have the ability. And it doesn’t have to be all of them or even most of them, just enough of them, whatever that means. And for right now, at the end of 2021, there are enough. Podcasting has always been and remains an open platform. I can’t say it will be for the future, but so far so good.

~ Dave Winer from, Why podcasting isn’t dominated

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I like Winer’s point that the web (websites, web browser, blogs—not asocial media platforms) and podcasting are not dominated by any one large company. He’s pointing out that we’ve two examples of things not centrally controlled—two examples of success (so far, things could always change.) And therefore it’s quite possible that we could build something else, another new media format, which is also free, open, and not centrally controlled.

But I don’t like that Winer has glossed over the fact that podcasting only appears to be open, (in the way that the web is open.) Podcasting appears to be open, and isn’t yet dominated by one large company, because the podcast creators individually go to great lengths to make their shows available everywhere. There are multiple large companies trying to leverage the listeners against the creators. I’ve given up on trying to lead podcasting to be open, the way the web is open; I simply hope that someone else sees what I see and that I live to see podcasting grow to be a first-class, truly open, platform, (the way the web is.)

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Temperature matters

June 21, 2022

The other evidence we have is animals who live in the cold have higher metabolic rates, higher activity levels, yet higher body fat and body mass than those that live in the warmth. This suggests that fluctuations in body fat may be tied to changes in temperature exposure, and not just to protect us from famine. The bottom line is temperature matters.

~ Brad Pilon from, Does Temperature Affect Weight Loss? – Brad Pilon’s ‘Eat Blog Eat’

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My pull-quote is from the very end of Pilon’s article. Overall it lays out a delightful overview of the main systems that regulate our body composition. I love this last point—the part I’ve quoted—because it has nothing to do with humans; It’s a nice “and the same thing seems to be true for other mammals” that provides a great reality check on the models he’s presented in the article.

Pilon is the author who made things clear and simple enough for me to try intentionally manipulating the window of time each day when I stuff food in my face. Being intentional about that greatly increased my awareness of subtle signals from my body. At 8:30am, when I’m day-dreaming of blueberry pancakes, am I actually hungry or am I simply having a craving for carbohydrates? And when I wake up at 1am with a massive cramp in my left calf… I should probably have remembered to take my magnesium supplement before bed, and I better eat a banana first thing in the morning.

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Thought and action

June 20, 2022

Please remember I am talking about the world as it is. The men who act without thinking, and the men who both think and act, are the ones who mould the world. The man who thinks and does not act never moulds the world. He may think that he does—but that, too, is only a thought, the thought of a deedless, actionless thinker.

~ Jack London

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Rescuing life from productivity

June 20, 2022

And so we get to the crux of our human predicament — the underbelly of our anxiety about every unanswered email, every unfinished project, and every unbegun dream: Our capacities are limited, our time is finite, and we have no control over how it will unfold or when it will run out. Beyond the lucky fact of being born, life is one great sweep of uncertainty, bookended by the only other lucky certainty we have. It is hardly any wonder that the sweep is dusted with so much worry and we respond with so much obsessive planning, compulsive productivity, and other touching illusions of control.

~ Maria Popova from, Escaping the Trap of Efficiency: The Counterintuitive Antidote to the Time-Anxiety That Haunts and Hampers Our Search for Meaning – The Marginalian

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For years I’ve been finding myself judging my day, each evening as I go to sleep. I lie down, and try as I might, my thoughts go beyond simply reviewing. I tried to stop doing the judging part, to no avail.

There’s a Steve Jobs quote about asking himself a question each morning, and that’s great, (but not something I do.) I realized that I’m asking myself that question at the end of each day after closing my eyes to beckon sleep:

If that was the last day of my life, am I satisfied with what I did?

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Otherwise life feels empty

June 19, 2022

So I make it really simple. I’d say art is: â€śThat which you have no choice but to do, because your soul demands it”.

Yes, it’s a fairly flawed definition. But it illustrates something that most people don’t get about artists or entrepreneurs. We do it, because if we don’t, life feels empty. The downside being, it doesn’t exactly come with an easy life.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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The only rule

June 19, 2022

What I learned from reading about writing…

~ “Dynomight” from, What I learned from reading about writing

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This was a fun read and is mostly not the usual titles one sees suggested to read on writing. Among many things, I am a writer. I enjoy learning what appears—in others’ view—to be the right way to do things. The more I read, write, and read on writing, the more I’m convinced it’s just like any other mastery practice: The only rule is that there really are no real rules. Understand the best, accepted practices, (often labeled “rules” to get the newbies to start in the correct direction,) and then later move on to do whatever you please.

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