-
My Daily Meals
A few people asked what I eat every day. I think that what I eat is of minor interest, but maybe the reasoning behind it might be more valuable. First the what. My friend Dick Talens suggested that I do intermittent fasting, which means that I eat during only an eight hour period each day.…
-
Stimulation and How I Learned to Love Dishwashing
When I bought a house ten years ago, I also bought place settings for six and silverware for twelve. Then I developed a minor fascination with bone China and bought settings for eight. I probably had four dozen glasses. About once a month or so, all of these dishes would be piled up in and…
-
Goodbye 2012
I’m sitting by a crackling fire at my aunt and uncle’s house in New Jersey and we’re just a couple hours into the new year, which means that it’s a perfect time to review the year and look forward. If I were to title my year, I’d call it the year I got serious. Something…
-
Being Your Own Boss
Standards are an interesting thing. They don’t dictate exact performance, but they do sketch out a ballpark. If you expect yourself to read a book a week, you may not actually do that, but you’ll probably read a book most weeks. If a boss tells you to have something done one month from now, you’ll…
-
Three Speeds of Self Improvement
Yesterday I got a good question from a reader. His email was too long to paste in full, but the gist of the question was that he was trying to do a lot of self improvement stuff at once, and his attention seemed to be too spread to really made a big impact in any…
-
On Bullshit
If you’ve been reading for a while, you may have noticed that I almost never swear. I tend to think that there’s a more accurate way than swearing to express anything, but today I couldn’t think of a more fitting word. What is bullshit? Well, it’s watching TV. It’s browsing the internet mindlessly. It’s partying.…
-
Consistency is the Hard Part
The one thing I consistently fail to account for when planning trips, especially shorter ones, is the disruption it will cause to my routine. For over a hundred days in a row, I wrote a blog post every day, did a Chinese lesson, worked on SETT, and a few other things for which I hold…
-
The First Distraction
Right now I’m waiting to start a video interview. I called in early, but my friend who is doing the interview wasn’t ready, so I’ve got five or ten minutes to kill before we get started. My first inclination was to catch up on email. I only had a couple to write, so I finished…
-
Gear Post 2012: Zen Edition
Okay, okay, okay… I’ll write the gear post before the year’s over! One of the things that keeps me from writing all year is that it never really feels like the stuff in my pack has changed all that much. I switch one item at a time, never thinking I have much to write about.…
-
No Middle
When I talk about working like a maniac for 10-14 hours a day, I sometimes get criticized for working too hard. I need to relax or enjoy life more, people say. When I read this, I assume that I’ve done a poor job explaining how I feel about work or how I actually construct my…
