Year: 2019

  • Gear Post 2020

    Gear Post 2020

    Merry Christmas! As seems to be my pattern lately I keep pushing the gear post later and later. Sorry about that! It happens because I get excited about gear and always end up testing a bunch of things right near the end. One thing I’m very excited about this year is that I was able…

  • Quality

    Quality

    It’s very easy to idealize and cherry pick from the past, but it feels like quality used to be a metric that people cared about, and now it feels more like a buzzword that is used for marketers to use for products that generally aren’t of very high quality. That strategy seems to have worked,…

  • Consistency is Key

    Consistency is Key

    You would think that the people who are most into advanced productivity ideas and systems would be the most productive people who, having mastered the basics, are looking for ways to eke out even more performance. In my experience, though, the people looking for “five weird productivity hacks” are usually the ones who think they’re…

  • Why Drink Tea?

    Why Drink Tea?

    I’ve been writing out my yearly blog posts and as I’ve gotten near the end I’ve realized that I haven’t written anything about tea this year. It seems almost inconceivable that a year could pass by without my shilling for the tea industry at large. In thinking about that, I started to think about why…

  • Gratitude 2019

    Gratitude 2019

    Every year I struggle to write my gratitude post a little bit, not because I can’t think of anything I’m grateful for, but because there are so many things that it’s hard to focus. This year, just for fun, I’m going to try to highlight some smaller things in my life that I’m grateful for.…

  • Some Thoughts on Marriage

    Some Thoughts on Marriage

    When I asked for blog topics before writing this annual batch, I got a lot of great suggestions with almost no overlap at all. The one exception? Everyone wanted to know what I think about marriage. I think that this comes from my history as a pickup artist, and a perceived incompatibility with the two.…

  • My Biggest Regret

    My Biggest Regret

    Almost twenty years ago I was a professional gambler and I ended up getting a little bit sloppy with my procedures, which resulted in casinos catching me and confiscating all of my money. I only paid taxes when I removed money from casinos, so I kept most of it in them, which meant that my…

  • Should You Focus on Strengths or Weaknesses?

    Should You Focus on Strengths or Weaknesses?

    I saw an interesting debate on Twitter recently between two guys who were debating whather it was better to focus on one’s strengths and leverage them for results, or whether it was better to shore up weaknesses and become more well rounded. The conversation caught my attention because it really is a common situation people…

  • Monthly Reports

    Monthly Reports

    A few years ago I started writing a monthly report to a few friends sharing my progress on CruiseSheet. My primary motivations for doing so were that these friends were interested and asking about it anyway, and I felt that they might hold me accountable or offer me some good advice along the way. Those…

  • Las Vegas Update

    Las Vegas Update

    Four years or so ago I bought a small condo in Las Vegas. I did it almost entirely because it seemed like a great deal and because I visited Vegas sometimes, and not at all because I intended on moving to Las Vegas. Since then, things have escalated. I now live in Las Vegas full…