Decisions →

Published January 16, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 16

If you want to achieve a goal you’ve set, the most crucial part is to DECIDE to manifest it. It doesn’t matter if you feel it’s outside your control to do so. It doesn’t matter if you can’t yet see how you’ll get from A to B. Most of those resources will come online AFTER you’ve made the decision, not before.

~ Steve Pavlina, from Cause-Effect vs. Intention-Manifestation

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Reaching my goals does NOT happen simply by my wishing for it. However, making a decision and visualizing the goal DOES get me on my way there. The more I believe, the more I push the boundaries, the more I explore while reaching for the vision, and the harder I work… the luckier I get.

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The ideal day →

Published January 15, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 15  ·  

The ideal day is not one which is completely fixed — neither fixed-the-same every day, nor fixed-the-same week after week. The ideal day is one in which I know my goals at various levels– daily, weekly, yearly. etc.. A day where I feel no worry about making progress, because I know I’m making progress. A day where I am presented with challenges I feel that I have chosen. A day where I get to work on things which are interesting to me, and useful to others. A day where surprises are interesting and add value, (as opposed to causing me to react by feeling stress, panic and existential crises.)

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The King complex →

Published January 14, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 14  ·  

That’s the reason it’s difficult for many individuals to leave the internet — even for as little as a few hours in the evening, over a weekend, or on vacation. In short, the internet makes us feel like kings. It is the ultimate concierge.

~ Blake Snow, from Why the King Complex Makes the Internet So Hard to Put Down

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I’ve read a lot about how parts of the Internet are designed to hold your attention, how social media services are designed to beaddicting, and how using “game” theories can get everyone to want to interact more, and how all of that leads to a slippery slope. But this idea—thinking of how the Internet caters to your every whim, and why you then drool all over it to get more of that—this is a new twist I’d not seen before.

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Monarch →

Published January 13, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 13

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Prosperity →

Published January 12, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 12  ·  

Notice a subtle point here: Seneca isn’t saying that prosperity is not worth pursuing. It is, after all, a preferred indifferent. But it is preferred only insofar it doesn’t get in the way of conducting a virtuous life, as one gets the sense Lucilius was worrying about insofar his own pursuits were concerned. Which is why his friend reminds him that he is under no obligation at all to live in the fast lane.

~ Massimo Pigliucci, from Seneca to Lucilius

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Just yesterday, for the first time ever, I considered removing the rear-view mirror from the Jeep. (Instead, I twisted it upwards to view the roof.) Since the Jeep is slow and old, as am I, there is ALWAYS someone tail-gating me. I’ve narrowly avoided accidents, where watching the tail-gater behind me distracted me from the road ahead. I’m so much in the “slow lane”, I am literally being run over. Where, really, are you going?

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How many programmers does it take… →

Published January 11, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 11

Having to do everything turned out to be a real benefit later on, I was comfortable with such diverse things as communicating with customers, designing UI, identifying and tracking plans, architecture, and other non-programming tasks. With today’s roles unless you are in a startup environment (sometimes not even there) as a programmer you rarely get to do anything but write code. People even joke about programmers doing other things like designing.

~ Andrew Wulf from, How Many People Does It Take To Write Software

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I certainly didn’t do anywhere near everything. (Notably, it doesn’t seem I got very good at communicating via the years of my early experience.) But I agree with the general sentiment. It’s all the peripheral stuff that I had to sort out, figure out, build, do, etc. which I think turned out to be the keys to my later — dare I say it — “success”.

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The Great Depression was an energy crisis →

Published January 10, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 10

When I put together a chart of per capita energy consumption since 1820 for a post back in 2012, there was a strange “flat spot” in the period between 1920 and 1940. When we look at the underlying data, we see that coal production was starting to decline in some of the major coal producing parts of the world at that time. From the point of view of people living at the time, the situation might have looked very much like peak energy consumption, at least on a per capita basis.

~ Gail Tverberg from, The Depression of the 1930s Was an Energy Crisis

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One of my rules-of-thumb is to thoroughly read everything written my Gail Tverberg.

Years ago, I found a web site called The Oil Drum which was a collecton of superlative thinkers all writing about things related to petroleum. Actually, it still IS a superlative collection, because they’ve left it up as-is to be an archive.

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Music in human evolution? Aposematism?! →

Published January 9, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 9

… the goal of aposematism is to advertise that, as a piece of prey, you are decidedly unprofitable for the predator. If a predator can easily recognize you (and other members of your species), and remembers getting burned during past encounters, it will quickly learn to stop attacking you in the first place.

~ Kevin Simler from, Music in Human Evolution

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Long [long!] ago humans stood up (makes us easy to see),
moved into the open grasslands (makes us really easy to see),
lost our claws/protective-thick-skin/fangs (makes us soft and easy to kill),
did NOT have tools other than rocks we could pick up (makes us unable to defend ourselves),
started singing ON THE GROUND (makes us easy to hear and find, NO OTHER ANIMAL DOES THIS),

… and then we took over the planet.

AND we are the only animal that uses RHYTHM,
ALSO, all humans dance (ever have the urge to tap your foot or more your head to music?)…
Wait, also, why do we always — every society, every religion, every military — ALWAYS retrieve/prepare/handle/bury our dead?

APOSEMATISM !

Intrigued? Click that link… I’m a simple person, with a small brain, and I’m easily amused. This article. BLEW. MY. MIND.

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The cure for boredom →

Published January 8, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 8  ·  

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

~ Dorothy Parker

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Rats? Moloch? →

Published January 7, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 7  ·  

Like the rats, who gradually lose all values except sheer competition, so companies in an economic environment of sufficiently intense competition are forced to abandon all values except optimizing-for-profit or else be outcompeted by companies that optimized for profit better and so can sell the same service at a lower price.

From a god’s-eye-view, we can contrive a friendly industry where every company pays its workers a living wage. From within the system, there’s no way to enact it.

~ Scott Alexander, from Meditations on Moloch

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I confess to having had only the slightest awareness of Moloch in the biblical or general senses. So just skimming the WikiPedia article and then taking the time to read this piece from Slate Star Codex was like discovering a new window on the world from my mind-palace.

Moloch.

This is the problem. (With everything.) Individually, everyone acts according to their interests and beliefs. The result? …look at the world around you.

How could one go about changing the world? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

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Suffering →

Published January 6, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 6  ·  

Krishnamurti has this definition of suffering that I really like, “Suffering is that moment when you see reality exactly as it is. When you can no longer run away from it, when you can no longer deny it.”

~ Naval Ravikant, from Naval Ravikant — The Person I Call Most for Startup Advice (#97)

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I don’t know anything about Krishnamurti. But I know a good statement that cuts right through all the day-to-day bullshit; That right there is one.

I’ll save you some digging: Naval is quoting Jiddu Krishnamurti, apparently from The Book of Life: Daily Meditations.

…also, go listen to this entire podcast. It’s insanely long at 2+ hours, but Naval is a real down-to-Earth guy with a lot of useful advice on how to live.

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Intersection of three lines →

Published January 5, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 5  ·  

The three lines cross in that intersection, and you’re like, “Okay, I think I know where I am.” In the case of your “why,” one great intersection is saying, “Hey, what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail? What would be the things that I would just love to be doing in my life if I could not fail? Unfortunately, somewhere along the line between high school, college, and maybe even before high school, kids stopped dreaming up crazy ideas, and they start thinking, “Okay, well, this is what society expects.”

~ Alden Mills, from Podcast #130: Become Unstoppable With Alden Mills

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1. What would I do if I couldn’t fail?
2. Whose lifestyle would I like to follow?
3. What am I passionate about, and in what can I find purpose?

The answers to these questions will not tell me what to do, nor how to live my life. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what to do and how to live, (and I hope I will always be working on that.) But these three questions are an excellent triplet of tools for picking at the bigger picture.

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Gratitude →

Published January 4, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 4

I am left with one thing: my ordinary, present self who is as empty-handed as he was the day before diagnosis — no better equipped for the ensuing battles of life, no better shielded from pain he will yet face. And it is not just heroic pain. It is the hurt of parking tickets, the ache of commuting, the grief of deadening routine — small pains to which I was immune while they were eclipsed by cancer. But that moon has since passed.

~ Philip Garrity, from Gratitude: In Sickness and Health

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Persistence →

Published January 3, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 3

If you’re growing at all as a human being, then you’re going to be a different person each year than you were the previous year. And if you consciously pursue personal development, then the changes will often be dramatic and rapid. You can’t guarantee that the goals you set today will still be ones you’ll want to achieve a year from now.

~ Steve Pavlina from, Self-Discipline

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I am noticing the confirmation bias effect often. In the last year (or so) I’ve been paying more attention to goals– what is a good goal? how to set a goal? how to plan to reach a goal? The more I work on the skill(s) related to goals, the more I’m find I’m tripping over more and more writing such as the above. I’m willing to bet the writing isn’t happening more frequently (notice the year in the URL above).

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

~ Robert Frost, from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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California →

Published January 2, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 2

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Simplicity in 2018 →

Published January 1, 2018  ·  All posts on Jan 1  ·  ,

Paring down one’s possessions and schedule are go-to ways to seek simplicity because they are outward, accessible, concrete actions that produce fairly immediate results. Their weakness, when practiced as their own ends, however, is that they lack a set of overarching criteria for how they should be carried out, as well as intrinsic motivation for following them through.

Practicing outward moves towards simplification, without this set of criteria, is like placing spokes in a wheel, without connecting them to a hub.

Simplicity needs a heart, and its center must be this: having a clear purpose.

~ Brett McKay, from The Spiritual Disciplines: Simplicity

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Throughout 2017 I’ve been slowly paring down. Fewer physical things sure, but also changing out some things and hobbies and projects and people. Can I eliminate one? Can I replace two of something with a simpler one?

I’m a “systems” person. I get things done via the observe, orient, decide, and act loop. For 2018 I’ve no delusions of rewiring my brain and kicking all my systems and processes to the curb.

I’ve realized, (far too recently,) that I need to take more time to “zoom out” and to take the time to consider how the really big things in my life fit together. Do they fit together? What if some really big component of who I am — even if it’s a great, fine thing — doesn’t fit with the rest of everything? What should I change; everything else, or that one great, fine thing?

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I do love to spend the indoor, chilly, winter season thinking about the big picture — and now, perhaps a bit more of the really big picture.

Goodbye 2017! I will look back on you fondly.

MEMENTO MORI

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Erwan LeCorre →

Published December 31, 2017  ·  All posts on Dec 31

We need to empower human nature; to rewild it.

~ Erwan Le Corre from, Finding Purpose and Rites of Passage – Erwan Le Corre #56

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In episode , “Finding Purpose and Rites of Passage,” Daniel interviews Erwan LeCorre, the founder of the increasingly popular MoveNat system. It’s a great interview as it gives Erwan sufficient time and space to expand on his ideas. Too many podcast interviews are just “plug pieces” for books, but this interview is completely different. Erwan and Daniel have an inspiring, long, and wandering (in a good way) discussion that will give you some insight into Erwan’s way of thinking.

…and I’ll mention tangentially, that if you read CinéParkour and Breaking the Jump thoroughly, there are also a precious few breadcrumbs to be found there too.

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Living Stoically →

Published December 30, 2017  ·  All posts on Dec 30  ·  

William B. Irvine on Living Stoically

This podcast episode, from the superlative Philosophy Bites podcast, is a great, brief introduction to Stoicism.

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§14 – Precommit →

Published December 28, 2017  ·  All posts on Dec 28  ·  

This entry is part 26 of 37 in the series Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault

The devil is in the details?

On one hand pre-committment gives you the power of hindsight; the power of having a higher view point– the executive-level view. You can sort out all the nuances and make an objective decision. But the downside is that you’re intentionally surrendering the ability to make flexible, quick decisions down the road when your day-to-day passions might lead off in a new direction.

Do I want to be sacrificing following my passions?

I’ve attempted — sometimes even “done” :) — big projects where I’ve invested a lot of time up-front thinking, planning, and then started off on the journey. But later, in the midst of the journey, I started to have doubts. Not small, nagging doubts, but well-founded, objective doubts. When that happens I’m faced with letting go of the sunk cost of the prep work that went into the pre-committment. I start thinking, “Look at all this planning I did. Look at how far I’ve come! This doubt must be unfounded.” And suddenly all my pre-commitment is working against me. Granted, the original intention of the pre-committment is to make it easier to achieve my goals, but it can pile on sunk costs, or worse, pile on guilt, which never serves me.

In the end, it seems I simply have to know myself: These days, a 30 day challenge is something I can probably do, but 100 days will probably become a drag.

The devil really is in the details.

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What I might be →

Published December 27, 2017  ·  All posts on Dec 27  ·  

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

~ Lao Tzu

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