Category Archives: productivity

Things I Learned In 2013

With the close of the year, here is a not nearly complete list of the things I learned this past year:

  • If you decide to do something, you can do anything. All you need is to get past that comma.

  • The first part of your life is spent finding out who you want to be. The second part of your life is spent finding out who you really are.

  • You do not discover the future. You create it with the actions you take today.

  • The fanciness of your process only reveals your resistance to the dirtiness of the work.

  • If you find yourself unusually productive in one area of life, ask yourself what tasks you are avoiding in the others.

  • "Work, without love, is slavery." — Mother Teresa

  • The secret to making kids that travel well is to start them traveling young and keep them doing so.

  • Schlag is a Viennese term for homemade whipped cream that is seeing a certain renaissance as of late (in order to differentiate it from the canned stuff).

  • We don’t buy things, we buy into things.

  • One should strive to use all things until their usefulness is no more.

  • I’m not sure I will ever be as emotionally fulfilled by digital technology as I am by a good pen and a nice blank page of paper. Nor will it hold, for me, the same feeling of possibility.

  • Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that seem like a solution to a particular problem but cause so many new problems it is effectively useless.

  • So much of modern tech is beginning to feel like Chindōgu to me.

  • Sometimes, you have to come up with the completely crazy idea that could never work to get to the slightly less crazy one that will.

  • It’s worse than we could ever imagine.

  • One of the most dangerous ideas in a free society is one in which we believe that rights are granted, not guaranteed.

  • Fight fear, with facts.

  • “Fear is just excitement without breath.” –Fritz Perls

  • Most of what we call truth is merely consensus.

  • Unlike other trees whose roots are deep and thick, California Coastal Redwoods, some of the tallest of trees, are thin and wide. They stand tall by binding their roots with others near and far.

  • The first approximation of others is ourselves.

  • How much better “how to” posts/sites would be if they led with “what for”.

  • "Why?" would be good as well.

  • The GORUCK Challenge taught me more about myself in 13 hours than I learned this entire year. Especially the first item in this post.

Random Notes and Recent Thoughts #2

I’m suffering from a horrible cold virus. My third or fourth in as many weeks (I’ve lost count). My thinking, during such times, is both hazy and exausting. Therefore, please accept some of these brief and imperfect ideas that warrant more expounding than I have the energy for right now.

  • We all write our own eulogies. We write them with the way we live in each moment. By our acts of kindness or the things we do that delight others. Those things that make an impression on those closest to us. For, if we were to pass tomorrow, it is these things they will stand in front of others to share and remember.

  • Those that claim to have no choice always do. What they don’t have is a choice they want. And those that are doing something they don’t want because they feel they have no choice have, in fact, chosen.

  • There is no such thing as good debt. No matter how many financial advisors will tell you otherwise. I wish I had learned this before the age of 35. For instance, believing that a mortgage that was less than the value of the home was an investment — "good debt". Or, that a student loan is somehow good debt because it sets you up for the possibility of higher pay or a better career (when the first 10-20 years of said job is spent paying back that debt). Does no one do the math and figure out the only ones making money from this equation are the people that write the paychecks and the people who service the debt? I think if the past several years have revealed anything it is this fundemental fact and the lies that prop it up.

  • On every task list should exist the following: One thing that makes your life better. One thing that makes the life of someone else better.

  • The more complex your tool, the more likely it is to fail you in some way eventually. And, said failure likelihood will scale in parallel to the added complexity. And, because one’s expectations for said tool also scale in the same parallel, the disappointment from the failure is compounded.

  • People who love what they do for a living don’t ever dream of retirement — early or otherwise. Why wait to start the life you want when you can build it now? And, those that call bullshit on this are either a) happy and don’t want others to be so they can feel even more superior or b) as unhappy as the rest and looking for people to share in their sorrow. The truth is that you build the life you wish to have by the choices you make and, if you build a life that makes you happy, you can do it until you die.

  • This guy gets up and does the work he loves every morning. So, your excuses are invalid.

On catching up…

…I largely won’t be while I’m traveling. It’s called a vacation for a reason. I will be driving for hours most days and enjoying my time with family and friends when I’m not.

Reading back through my ious streams will not occur. Feeds will be marked as read without further reflection. Tweets and posts happening anytime in the past will be ignored. If I do take the time to look at things it will be with an eye on what is happening in the present.

I have found that the important things always have a way of finding their way to me if needed. That the things I truly care about I will take the time to seek out. The rest can be safely ignored. (This is also true while not on vacation. I simply give into thinking otherwise too easily as my time allows for it.)