Latest blog posts:
This post is about tribalism in contemporary Western culture, and specifically it’s about the invisible assortment of people who have self-selected out of it. What these people gave up in tribal coordination, they gained in greater freedom to determine their own values and lives. The result is a fresher, more dynamic arena of human activity. I’ve spent a lot of time in some of these quiet cultures, and I want to tell you about them. Continue reading
There’s a world of difference between wanting to do something and wanting to have done something. What’s dangerous is when we conflate the two. It’s a form of deception (usually self-deception), and it sets us up for failure and frustration in our efforts. Continue reading
I want to look a category of weird mental tricks that we sometimes play on ourselves—you may be familiar with them individually, but when considered together they reveal a pattern that I think deserves more discussion. Continue reading
This post is about a certain kind of procrastination; I call it “over-managing.” It’s when you know what you should be working on at a given time, but instead of doing the work, you continue to deliberate over big-picture / planning decisions. As productive individuals, we have to be good Managers, but we also need to be able to call the plan “good enough” and be the Employee. Continue reading
I put this together to talk about meta-skills: the broad skills that help all generalists manage and balance their particular skills and interests. In my own life, the reason I got interested in productivity and time management and the like was because I was a generalist, and I needed to get good at juggling everything. So this page covers what I’ve learned so far, and I’m sure I’ll add to it in the future. Continue reading
I wrote this short series to talk about a weird thing in the modern world: there are a few areas where pretty much everybody needs to be knowledgeable. Each individual now bears some responsibilities, fully, which in past generations were shared or outsourced. Since we each need to have these few areas covered, on top of whatever else we’re doing in our lives, we’re all necessary generalists. Continue reading
This is a crosspost from True Generalist. This post goes deeper into why I made that site, what being a generalist means to me, and why the present time and place is an ideal environment for generalists. Continue reading
I’m very excited to announce a brand-new project that I’ve been working on for the better part of last year. It’s a website called True Generalist (truegeneralist.com), and it’s all about giving generalists the resources they need to excel at everything they do. Continue reading
At this time of year, everyone either writes a “How to set and keep your New Year’s resolution” article, or a “Why you shouldn’t set a New Year’s resolution” article. This is the latter. Continue reading
I’ve been noticing that a recurring theme in my writing here is balance between opposites. I’ve written about balancing consumption vs. production in your life, and recently about balancing systems vs. goals for achieving what you desire. And I can think of a few more that I haven’t written about yet, that I’d like to touch on. It could become a pain to try to keep so many balances in mind, but I thought if I could arrange most of it hierarchically, that would be much cleaner. Continue reading
Last year I wrote about setting personal goals. One bit of feedback I got went something like, “Goal setting is a bad mindset, you should use systems instead.” I’ve heard that idea before, with a few different justifications. I do have some thoughts, and experience, on using systems to build skills or manage productivity, and I realized I should write on that too in order to make the goal-setting content more complete. Continue reading
A couple years ago, I noticed that I’d been holding onto a mindset that was counterproductive, and I’ve often seen this mindset in some of the online communities I spend time in. I like talking with people who believe in the truth-seeking power of good-faith disagreements, but some of these kinds of people have a tendency to overestimate the value of argument, which causes them to engage in conversations they shouldn’t. And I think I have good heuristics for avoiding that without giving up on rational disagreements entirely. Continue reading
Figuring out which strangers to trust on the Internet is a challenging problem, but potentially a very rewarding one. Ideally you’re interacting with transparent, accountable people who may even be experts in their fields, who may have tons of invaluable wisdom and knowledge to share—if only you trust them. I’m weighing in on this because I have reason to believe I’m particularly good at solving this problem. Continue reading
On paper, the Internet looks like something that would drastically change humanity for the better. But, while capable of delivering just about any information that our greatest aspirations could demand, it is mostly delivering information perfectly tuned to our lowest aspirations. The Good Internet is the subset of the Internet that actually makes your life better. It is hidden in plain sight. Continue reading
Denial of Death is the 1973 summation of anthropologist Ernest Becker’s life’s work studying human nature, building upon the work of the great psychologists of the 20th Century. It basically aims to be a grand unifying theory of psychology, and against all odds it kind of succeeds. Continue reading
