Finally, when it comes to your own self-opinion, try to have some ironic distance from it. Make yourself aware of its existence and how it operates within you. Come to terms with the fact that you are not as free and autonomous as you like to believe. You do conform to the opinions of the groups you belong to; You do buy products because of subliminal influence; You can be manipulated. Realize as well that you are not as good as the idealized image of your self-opinion.
Sometimes, our heads won’t stop thinking about something. Our thoughts will spin around and around, not willing to let go, obsessing. It might be about another person, a big event coming up, or about ourselves. It might be overthinking a decision, big or small.
I read this the other day after its being queued for ages. It was eerily apropos of a really bad mood that I was in. Except I read it just after I had deployed Babauta’s “face the fear” strategy that he describes. It definitely works. And for some reason, Yoda’s admonishment that, “named your fear must be, before banish it you can,” sprung to mind.
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. […] Clichés are detrimental in so far as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface. And if this matters, it is because the way we speak is ultimately linked to the way we feel, because how we describe the world must at some level reflect how we first experience it.
This is awesome cover-to-cover. About midway, this turns into a masterclass on “doing the work”. If you like—or haven’t yet seen—the movie Miles Ahead, about Miles Davis, this gets into that in the later 1/3.
How do we navigate the balance between starting, sustaining, and stopping creative or personal endeavors?
The conversation examines the tension between perfectionism and the courage to share unfinished work.
It’s such a shame to have all these [things] on the shelves in the back of our minds or folders in our computers, all these things that we’ve kept back because they’re not perfect, or because we think they might not be right— We never know who will be changed by the things we make.
~ Robbie Swale (22:35)
The discussion covers challenges in managing creative processes and personal goals, focusing on a mission to appear on 100 podcasts. The complexities of handling output from such a challenge and the importance of deciding when to stop or persist are examined. This is tied to the broader question of balancing effort with strategic decisions in any endeavor.
Another key topic is overcoming perfectionism and fear of sharing creative work. Using quotes from poets and authors, the conversation emphasizes the importance of releasing work even if it feels incomplete. The necessity of starting projects and creating habits that reduce resistance to action is also highlighted. Tools like activation energy adjustments and reminders are presented as practical aids for staying focused and intentional.
Takeaways
Importance of starting — Even the hardest creative projects begin with the first step.
Navigating perfectionism — Releasing work imperfectly can still provide value to others.
Concept of “above or below the line” — A framework for self-awareness and decision-making.
Activation energy — Raising or lowering activation energy to influence habits effectively.
Sharing work — Withholding creativity can deprive others of valuable insights.
Practical tools for reflection — Using reminders and notifications to stay mindful.
The value of abandoning over-polishing — Deciding when a project is “good enough” to share.
That’s the thing about aggregation: one can understand how it works, and yet be powerless to resist its incentives. It seems foolhardy to think that this might be true for economics and not true for ideas, even — especially! — if we are sure they are correct.
Sometimes I read things on the Internet and I want to throw my keyboard (my title is a reference to 1980s console games where one might get furious, and rage-quit by throwing the game’s controller.) Partly, my urge to rage-quit is from exasperation that Thompson keeps cranking out these great articles (and his podcasts Dithering and Exponent and this other thing he did that is awesome but you wouldn’t understand because I can’t explain it well) while I’m over here plinking away writing snarky blog posts when I should be earning a living.
But also because of the point of the article which is found in my pull-quote of the entire final paragraph.
False ideas which gain currency can easily be recognized by the loud fanfare with which they are accompanied. Real truth does not need any other embellishments.
That’s not because Rudin did a bad job. It’s because there ain’t no way to re-write mathematical analysis as a “list”. When you do write a list, you are promising that you’ve figured out a way to cover the subject in that way without losing essential detail. Provided that you deliver on that promise, it’s a powerful thing.
This article makes several (while the article is a list, it’s unnumbered and I’m too lazy to count, you should just be happy I sometimes check my speling) magnificent points about what lists have going for them. There’s a lot. The only problem with lists (generally, on the Internet, These Days™) is that spammers and search–engine–optimizing mouth-breathers have published an insane amount of crap, in list format. It turns out that if you publish great content as a list it’s even better than long–form prose. It turns out that it looks like chapters, sections and sub-sections!
I recently learned a lot about proper use of the three different types of dashes: hyphen (-), en-dash (–), and em-dash (—). Their relative lengths are pretty clear when you see a family portrait like that previous sentence. It turns out that: Compound words, like en-dash and mouth-breathers, are assembled using hyphens. Compound adjectives, like search–engine–optimizing, are assembled with en-dashes. You can use em-dashes—that’s a hyphen in there—to insert gently–parenthetical commentary.
A case can be made—here, I’m making a case—that my weekly email is my way of turning my blog into a list which makes it easier to… oh, just go read the article.