Self-improvement

Weekly Expenditure Adventure: Week 3

(Updated to include bills paid on Wednesday.) Saturday $41.84 Fence posts for garden Sunday $37.60 Gas, groceries, and a passport photo Monday $8.39 Dinner at a Chinese restaurant Tuesday $39.30 Gas and food at a farmer’s market Wednesday $1,200.99 Fruit and vegetables, mortgage bill, power bill, iPhone bill Thursday $12.75 Lunch and dinner Friday $46.55 […]

Weekly Expenditure Adventure: Week 2

Friday feels like a good day to record and analyze my expenditures from the past week, though perhaps I should wait until later in the day. Ah well. Here, I lay my soul (and wallet) bare: Saturday $74.50 Role-playing books and taxi rides at GenCon Sunday $77.73 Includes $50 for airport parking Monday $32.37 Groceries […]

Weekly Expenditure Adventure: Week 1

I’m trying to live within my means. This blog post is the first record of how much money I’m spending each week. I only started recording my purchases on Wednesday of last week, but even so, here are my purchases: Wednesday $40.00 Thursday $88.75 Friday $70.00 Saturday $74.50 Total $273.25 This is due mainly to […]

Humans Don’t Grow In The Dark

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about throughput. I think we all understand the concept: how much stuff can be forced through a particular channel at once. Humans have throughput limits, too. I currently have a stack of books teetering next to the leather chair in my studio. This stack has towered over 2 feet […]

All I Ask Is A Tall Ship

This will inevitably post to my blog several days after I actually write it, as I’m writing this in a hotel room in California at Anime Expo, and I refuse to spend $13 a day for the privilege of posting to my blog (and otherwise accessing the vast reaches of the internet). I’m tired, but […]

Midway Through a Media Fast

I’m almost halfway into my spring Media Fast. No TV, movies, DVDs, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, or music. I don’t take this too seriously. I’ll check out a blog article if someone insists, and I listen to certain music at work that puts me in the proper working mood. But I’ve already gleaned 3 insights: […]

All at once, I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils

Why no updates here in a week? I’ve been sick. And I’ve been busy—always a dangerous combination. This coincides with a lot of recent thoughts about, um, my life. My productivity system has lain essentially undisturbed for a week. This has led to thoughts about the source of productivity, and its importance. This, in turn, […]

How (Not) To Focus

Don’t give your brain too much credit. I posted about this recently on the Getting Things Done forum: the Dangers of the Projects List. A little background: A GTD user manages work through a couple of different lists, that track work on several different levels: larger Roles in life, specific Projects identified with actual end […]

The Benefits of Focusing On Today

This may seem like a simple, obvious topic. But the important things usually are. I’ve stopped worrying about later in the week. Oh, I’ll put down reminders and mark my calendar. But I don’t think about it. I focus on today. What can I get done today? Because that’s all I’ve got. I don’t even […]

Eliminating unnecessary things

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about eliminating unnecessary things. This comes partly because it’s about time for me to Freecycle a few things (Freecycle being a local group of folks that email the group when they have something to give away). And I’ve been wondering, how much do I really need? Now, that itself […]

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