-
Island Adventure 2, Part 1: Total Disaster
As I write this, I am hunched over my laptop, which is held at an awkward angle because of the steering wheel in front of me. Carpal tunnel syndrome is imminent. Out of the window to my left, if it wasn’t so foggy and dark, I’d be able to see our island. This island trip…
-
Sometimes It’s Better Not to Know
I’m sitting in the Kansas City terminal, waiting for my next flight. The barbecue restaurant there serves shockingly large portions, which, combined with waking up early today, has me feeling sleepy. I should work, I think. My eyes are half closed, though, and I can’t imagine thinking through tough problems like the one waiting for…
-
Dread and Uncertainty Cause Us to Overestimate How Long Things Take
I’m on a late flight back from Vegas, I didn’t get enough sleep, and I’m exhausted. I hadn’t done my German tape for the day yet, so I put my headphones in, propped my head against the window, closed my eyes, and did it. I’m sure my neighbor, if she could hear my stilted German…
-
Trying Valve’s Virtual Reality, and Why It Will Change Everything
Thanks to my friend Brian, I recently had the opportunity to try out Valve’s new work on virtual reality. Only a couple hundred or so people have had the chance to try it so far, and most of them are people within the video game industry. I went in thinking that it would be a…
-
When Is Your Lowest Priority Task Your Most Important?
You know that feeling when you’re having a great day, but you forget exactly why it’s so great? There’s that feeling that something really good happened earlier, and its glow is being carried forward, even though you maybe don’t have the original positive event in the front of your mind. I had that feeling today…
-
Filling Your Glass and Fighting Hedonic Adaptation
There’s a concept called hedonic adaptation, which says that we quickly adjust to any increased level of comfort or luxury and cease to appreciate it. Anything good that happens to us becomes our new normal, and we look higher up the ladder, not realizing that we’ll quickly adjust to those rungs as well. The trick,…
-
Not Being a Robot
One of my overarching goals in how I present myself is to be consistent. Although the relationships I have with my family, friends, acquaintances, and random people on the internet is always going to be different, I try to be the same person with all of those groups. I think authenticity is important, and this…
-
The Experience the Other Person Wants to Have
I know that I’m more self centered than I should be. It’s something I work on, not by instructing myself to be less self centered, which is too foggy a command to actually obey, but through specifically defined efforts. One of the more useful ones I’ve come up with is to stop and think about…
-
Making Rules for Yourself
I don’t notice that I have a million rules for myself until someone hears about one, asks if I have others, and the conversation lasts for hours. I know that even with all of the discipline I’ve built over the years, I’m still susceptible to making impulsive decisions in the moment, so I make rules…
-
Why I’ll Be Writing Every Day For Two Years
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been telling everybody that you write a blog post every single day!” Sebastian just learned that I fell off of my writing-every-single-day habit, and became outraged. One thing led to another, and before you know it, we’d shaken hands and a bet was made. Both of us will be writing…
