On this day

July 21st

Back in my day

July 21

I think I’m doing better work than ever, and it is getting noticed, it just doesn’t tip the needle anymore. I’m not suffering for traffic, but “new” traffic is definitely coming from unusual and unpredictable places that are nearly impossible to capitalize on.

~ Brett Terpstra, from Back in my day…

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The root of the problem is simply that the pendulum swings. Back in my day (me saying that, although the “day” is the same as Terpstra’s) it took a bit of technical chops to really be using the internet. Those with the chops, also tended to build things; not necessarily build from scratch, but at least use the tools others built from scratch to build things. The big thing we all built was the Web. Today, people don’t much use the Web, and precious few still build the Web.

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Mind your attention

July 21, 2023

I’m sold on the idea that mindfulness is the key which unlocks everything else. I get chuffed when something grabs my attention. I’m fine with noticing; It’s good that I notice emergency vehicles. But realizing I’ve blown the last 5 minutes doom-scrolling in Instagram? Not cool.

There’s a reason for this. Our experiences in the digital realm are usually very novel—and this novelty leads to the release of dopamine in our brain. Dopamine doesn’t lead us to feel happy and satisfied in and of itself—it leads us to feel as though pleasure is right around the corner, so it keeps us wanting more. The more novel an app, the more we get hooked—we feel a constant rush and keep using the app until we remember to stop. (Here’s looking at you, TikTok.)

~ Chris Bailey from, 5 lessons I learned switching to a flip phone for a month – Chris Bailey

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This is a longer than usual article from Bailey and it’s stuffed full of insight. One item of note is he frequently gets very intentional about testing things to their logical conclusion. This article comes from him trying to live his life without a smart phone. His conclusion (and I agree) is that smart phones are awesome. Unfortunately, there’s some bad opportunities mixed in too. (Ocean and surfing, yay! Sharks, not so much.) Want to see how addicted you are to your phone? Try this.

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Priorities

July 21, 2022

Lack of time is lack of priorities. If I’m “busy,” it is because I’ve made choices that put me in that position, so I’ve forbidden myself to reply to, “how are you?” with “busy.” I have no right to complain. Instead, if I’m too busy, it’s a cue to reexamine my systems and rules.

~ Tim Ferriss

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Reasons and persons

July 21, 2022

You’ve probably heard this scenario before. It originally comes from Derek Parfit’s 1984 book Reasons and Persons, where he actually answers the question. (Though you may not like the answer.) To answer it, he has to go though a set of even weirder scenarios. Here’s most of them, edited aggressively.

~ “Dynomight” from, Reasons and Persons: The case against the self

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This article turns a number of complicated thought experiments into a disorienting dash through a hall of mirrors. I’ve not read Parfit’s book, but I’ve encountered these sorts of thought experiments before. On one hand I’m drawn to thinking about them because I feel I should be able to have some foundational, (although not necessarily simple,) principles that I can use to answer them. Which is a working definition of, “I want to be rational.” Until I start really digging into the experiments and things get really complicated. Why, it’s as if being a limited-in-resources mind forced to interact with in an intractably complex world, may not be something with a clear, correct, let alone singular, solution.

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No too hot. Not too cold.

July 21, 2021

Self-motivated, self-starting individuals are incredibly motivated to find their weaknesses. It’s not far-fetched to say that some of us actually seek to make ourselves perfect — rational, calculating beings making the right type of decisions at just the right times. But we’ve learned from Star Trek; we don’t look to eliminate emotion either and turn ourselves into Mr. Spock. We want just the right amount of emotion in our lives.

~ Shane Parrish from, Tiny Gains. Massive Results.

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Here’s the two-pronged approach which has been working for me:

First, I remind myself to resist my innate urge to make things worse. Don’t add energy to emotions themselves, nor to things which cause emotions. Emotions are real. We are emotional beings. Emotions get their due. And no more. If things are going badly: relax, they won’t last. If things are going well: relax, they won’t last.

Second, I take note of—literally in my journal—things which cause me to be emotional. It turns out that sometimes I can simply eliminate chronic causes. My goal isn’t to remove all the causes; That’d be a stoopid plan. But sometimes a pain in my foot is simply caused by a stone in my shoe, and is easily removed.

Those could be summarized as, “reminding myself, and taking note.” Those two things are always possible, and always easy. The hard part is remembering to do them. But if I simply—as in: gently, and with self-kindness—do those two things when I do remember, they slowly become habitual. I can’t say I even understand what, “…just right,” would be. But I know for sure what, “just right,” is not.

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The faculty of choice

July 21, 2020

What else does the eye do, when it is opened, than see? But whether we ought to look upon somebody’s wife, and in what manner, what tells us that? The faculty of choice. Whether we ought to believe, or to disbelieve, what is said; or whether, if we do believe, we ought to be moved by it or not; what tells us that? Is it not the faculty of choice?

~ Epictetus

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Serenity

July 21, 2019

The most prominent quality of this state of presence is the quiet that comes over the outside world. You can still hear the city noise and traffic, but the loudest thing has gone silent, which is your normal mental commentary.

~ David Cain from How to stop your mind from talking all the time

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Sometimes I manage to bring myself to the present moment.

Sometimes a feeling of serenity appears.

Sometimes I notice I’m staring at the horizon with a benevolent feeling suffusing my existence.

It happens too rarely.

Each time it does, in the subsequent moments—as I’m dragged down from that brief enlightenment by my personal zombie horde of thoughts—I’m left only with a echo…

MEMENTO MORI

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Metabolic advantage

July 21, 2015

(Part 6 of 14 in series, John Briffa's "A Good Look at Good Health")

The idea that a particular diet might have weight loss benefits that cannot be predicted utterly by the calories contained in that diet is often referred to as ‘metabolic advantage’. I’ve found it to be a vexed topic, with commentators on it belonging to one of two camps. On the one hand we have those that believe ‘a calorie is a calorie’, and that the form that calories come in have not bearing on their impact on weight. On the other hand, we have those who maintain that the form calories come in can influence body weight in a way that is independent of the number of those calories, or who are least open to the idea that his can be true. Just to be clear, I am in the latter camp.

~ John Briffa from, «http://www.drbriffa.com/2009/10/19/is-there-such-as-thing-as-a-metabolic-advantage/»

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