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Brain Training
One day last week I drank too much tea too late in the day. Instead of going to bed at my normal 1:30-2am time, I went to bed after 3am. The next morning I woke up around eleven, feeling a bit slothful for sleeping in. Usually I make some nice green tea in the morning,…
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Real Escape, and What I Learned From It
Real Escape is a Japanese phenomenon, which is generally enough to get me in the door. Through my Japanese teacher I met one of the creators a few months back, and he described a real life puzzle game that sounded like a ton of fun. I was invited to go to their Doctor Mad event…
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Looking at Extremes
As I wrote in What Lasts, classical music performances are an excellent place for me to think and tune out distractions. In addition to the suggestion that ideas are the durable commodity of our time, during that cello concert, I had another thought that was interesting to me. Matthew is a twenty year old, and…
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Some Thoughts on Procrastination
When I was in high school and I had a week to do a paper, I would put it off. Not until two days before it was due, not until the night before it was due, and not even until the morning it was due. During the period before it was due, I would whip…
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Practicing Your Craft
I remembering reading in some book– maybe it was Mastery by George Leonard— that experienced doctors generally aren’t better than brand new doctors. The implication, the book explained, was that practice by itself wasn’t enough for improvement. To actually get better, you need a specific type of practice: the kind of practice where you’re actually…
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Planning Your day like Sebastian Marshall
I bought Sebastian Marshall‘s book, Ikigai, when it first came out. His is one of very few blogs that I read regularly, so I had high expectations for the book. And, hey… even if it’s not great, I like supporting people I respect. As soon as I bought the book, I read the first chapter.…
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Why I Took Four Violin Lessons and then Quit
I’m not enough of a productivity champion that I can work for 14 hours straight with no breaks at all. Sometimes I”ll find myself pressed up against some extra tricky problem, and even after taking shots at it from various angles, I can’t quite push through. In times like those, it helps to take a…
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Having Enough and Wanting More
I have everything I could possibly need. I have a really cool house-on-wheels, enough good food to keep me healthy and full, great friends and family, enough money to travel around a bit, computer, etc. By any reasonable definition, I have enough. Yet I want more. The background of my computer is a Piper Malibu,…
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What Lasts
Classical music concerts are one of my favorite places to think. It sounds weird, but classical music provides just enough stimulation to keep me from becoming distracted, but not enough stimulation to impact my thinking processes. I love being able to drift from absorbing and enjoying the music to going deep in thought without really…
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Live Longer by Riding a Motorcycle (sort of)
When I tell people I ride a motorcycle, they’re either really excited (because they ride too), or horrified that I would take such careless risks with my life. Just how dangerous is motorcycle riding, though? Before I bought my first bike I did some research and came to the conclusion: not very. Let’s look at…
