-
Twice, Then Stop
On our Japan trip this year, lots of people took turns sharing their skills with others. Sebastian gave an awesome talk on Sengoku Japan (AT Osaka Castle, no less), Nick Gray gave one of his signature tours at Tokyo National Museum, and Brian and Leo led a meditation session at the Kinezuka tea farm in…
-
Have Less Acquaintances, More Friends
For the past year or so I’ve made an effort not to socialize. Sounds weird, but I figured that the only way I could really see just how much I could focus on SETT would be to cut out everything, even things that seemed somewhat important. If really good friends invited me to something that…
-
Things Shouldn’t Always Work
Last night as I brushed my teeth, I had a great idea for a new logo for SETT– maybe I could contort the ends of the S in such that the negative space would create two speech bubbles, I thought. I had just shut my computer down for the night, so I had to wait…
-
The Basics
A long time ago I read about how Michael Jordan practiced. Despite being creative on the court, almost all of his practice was the basics. Free throws, three pointers, dribbling. I figured that if it was good enough for MJ, it was good enough for me, and so I’ve always tried to focus on the…
-
Frozen Ponds
When I was a kid, I used to play on frozen ponds. It’s one of those things that I’m now amazed I was allowed to do, which causes me to worry that I’ll be an overbearing parent. The small ponds weren’t really scary, because they’d freeze all the way through quickly. The big ponds were…
-
Birth of a Habit
I always write about habits after they’re done, but I thought that it would be interesting to write about one before it starts, to get really specific about the actual process of creating a new habit. For my entire life, I’ve been messy. Battles were waged over my unwillingness to keep my room tidy as…
-
The Smallest Interval
It’s scary making large sweeping promises, even if they’re to yourself. There’s something about long time horizons that churn our stomachs a little bit. If I asked you to give up sugar for the rest of your life, could you do it? Just thinking about it might make you uncomfortable. I almost never eat sugar…
-
Two Years
They say that we overestimate what we can do in the short term, and underestimate what we can do in the long term. As someone who’s had his share of overstuffed todo lists, I believe that this is true. You might find it to be useful to think two years in advance. There’s some magic…
-
The Bernal Heights Piano Incident(s)
Christophe was moving his office and had to get rid of a piano. But one does not simply get rid of a piano. He and Todd concocted a plan to bring it to a public place so that it could be enjoyed by many. Locations were kicked around and Bernal Heights, an amazing park in…
-
Switching to Linux
I was eating in Chipotle, browsing Hacker News on my phone when I read some outdated article about how the NSA may or may not have backdoor access to some cryptographic function of Windows. Considering that the NSA’s interest in my computer is probably around zero, and that I don’t even use windows cryptography, this…
