". . . when defensive expenditures, be they ever so small, become the rule and a habit, they entail an extraordinary and entirely superfluous impoverishment. Our great expenses are composed of the most frequent small ones. Warding off, not letting things come close, involves an expenditure -- let nobody deceive himself about this -- energy wasted ( Read more... )

"DJing seemed to be all about doing something fresh -- whatever you do, twist it . . ."
-- Eric San

Seeing Kid Koala last night at Lee's Palace made for an interesting contrast to my most recent excuse for grumbling. Watching this stocky Asian guy with mop hair sweat bullets as he worked four turntables for nearly two hours was something to behold ( Read more... )

In view of your manner
of spending your days
I hope you may learn,
before ending them,
that the effort you spend
on defending your ways
could better be spent
on amending them.

-- Piet Hein

I'd like to amend this post in a small but important way: no list one has to work with should extend past seven items, not nine, because shit happens and you need those last two registers empty in order to avoid buffer overflow in emergencies.

I've been slow to appreciate just how valuable the hours from 6 - 11am are. They exert a disproportionate influence over my estimation of how good the day was -- if those first few hours have gone superbly I can handle bad turns later in the day way, way more constructively than I otherwise would. With this in mind I've prudently declared them a no ( Read more... )

Cory Doctorow has some writing advice (via patrissimo). Most of it is good, and the first point about having a "short, regular work schedule" echoes this earlier post, though I push the logic a little further than he does and am not so hung up on regularity. But I wanted to pluck out the two that, for my money, were the most important because they struck me ( Read more... )

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. I've been waiting for a clear expression of this truth, and while this particular one might not be ideal it does the trick well enough. "Try" is a word you use to retroactively denote a failure, and has no business interjecting itself into deliberations on future action. The only reason for it to be there is to pad your ( Read more... )

My first exposure to Sid's lab was extremely sobering, in the sense that it triple-underscored the extent to which I still need to get my shit together. The environment there could be roughly described as "intimidatingly efficient". The people seem friendly -- it's just that I can't help but suspect that half of them are on speed. Which is kind of ( Read more... )

The best hacks are often simple. I've started using Gmail as my to-do list: sending myself items as they occur to me in the subject line of blank e-mails and archiving them when I've completed them. Like hooking a generator up to a rat's exercise wheel, this harnesses my obsessive drive to keep my inbox empty into the service of keeping me from ( Read more... )

Bryan Caplan suggests an idea that's worked for me pretty well when I've used it: if you find yourself indulging in cheap junk too often, spoil yourself on the really good stuff instead so that your expectations will increase and you'll be more reluctant to settle for the inferior good in the future. I suspect this generalizes broadly, and I'm ( Read more... )