The current iteration of this is in Roam.
This is a place for me to store statements of my long-term goals, GTD horizons, and affirmations of my beliefs and values. Inspired by Buster Benson and his Codex Vitae.
Treat all people as works in progress. Respect their capacity for growth and aid their pursuit of excellence however I may.
Recognize that there are many frameworks for understanding the world. Remember the strong possibility that you are wrong and be pluralistic with respect to philosophical lenses.
Balance my ideals and aspirations for what could be against working appropriately within the bounds of what is.
Work with the grain of people and the world to build a better future.
Choose the longer-term and build structures to make the right choice easy and obvious.
Solve more problems than I create and clean up more messes than I make. What I do now creates the initial conditions for those who follow. Act so as to preserve their options.
Reflect regularly on these values to reinforce them as a lived practice.
Consciousness is immanent in the mind and body. There is no separate "soul-stuff" transcendent from the material universe. Our ongoing sense of personal identity is a continually-enacted process, arising from continuity of memory, intentions, and the simulation of a self-model.
Human life has no cosmic, unambiguous purpose: we have the opportunity and responsibility to find and make that choice on our own, between ourselves. However, meaning and choice are constrained by our physical and social environment. The skills we learn and the communities of practice we inhabit shape the possible sources of meaning available to us.
I think "do what you love" is useless advice when it comes to making a living. I'd recommend looking at what the world needs, thinking about what you have to offer, and working hard to build a skillset so that you can fill that void.
-- Austin Kleon
Humans are the products of evolution, inhabiting an environment that is far from any kind of equilibrium. Our instincts are optimized for propagation of genes and no more: for sustainable happiness in life, do not take your impulses as truth. Instead, be mindful of how small choices accumulate over the long term.
1.01^365 = 37.8
0.99^365 = 0.03
Satisfaction comes from fulfilling our responsibility to others, from learning new things, from challenging ourselves, and only marginally from experiencing pleasure.
The arrow of time is real. Although microscopic dynamics are time-reversible, all observable systems (and certainly the universe as a whole) are at the thermodynamic limit, where the second law of thermodynamics applies. The laws of physics may be deterministic, but the future is not determined. See César Hidalgo's Why Information Grows for a clear summary of the relevant physics and Ilya Prigogine's The End of Certainty for a more detailed argument.
In general, any conclusion derived by extrapolating microscopic dynamics to macroscopic situation should be questioned. Everything in the real world is situated in some context that likely violates the assumptions of simple models.
We must often gain experiential knowledge of a theoretical system's virtues before we can develop our full understanding. We find and embrace strategies that help us achieve equanimity and construct the discourse to explain those strategies after the fact. Even a fully developed philosophical/spiritual theory has to be taught and learned via spiritual exercises (See Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life for an extended version of this argument, relating to Platonic Christian theology and the Stoics). Before we can believe, we must act. The experiential knowledge that produces motivation often fades within days, unless reinforced by ritual and practice.
There is no one true scientific method or other perfectly reliable, reusable path to determining what is true. All epistemic disciplines are domain-specific cultural artifacts whose effectiveness has to be demonstrated in practice and subject to revision. Still, some epistemic disciplines work better than others and there is value in comparing notes across domains.
Action precedes motivation.
The self is not sharply bounded by the skin: mind is embodied in its environment (See Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind). When I speak to another human, we become a distributed cognitive network through the sensory connections (sight, sound, smell) between our nervous systems.
In I Am A Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter proposes that consciousness is our "simulation of self". When I interact with other people, I am training their own simulations of me. When we interact, they react in response to both what I do and their own expectations of what I would do. We are co-created in the feedback loops of these interactions. With that in mind, what version of my consciousness do I want to distribute throughout the world: the angry moments, the unkind moments? Or patience, playfulness, the extension of grace?
Our actions and the way we speak bequeaths a way of seeing unto our children.
Long-term satisfaction in life depends at least partly on discovering what your values are and trying to live in conformity with those values. But remember that there is no true, eternal, stable self. You and your values are path-dependent and dynamic. Choose your path well.
Exercise will help me maintain my physical health and support a high quality of life as I age.
Exercise improves my mood. Consistent exercise is critical to keeping depression at bay.
Exercise supports better mental clarity. I have greater focus, I'm better at problem solving, and I'm better at making creative connections when I exercise.
I am not necessarily high-activity by inclination, but I need high activity to feel like me.
Maintaining a journal provides me a daily opportunity to shift my perspective and help me evaluate whether I am living a life guided by reason and justice.
Writing down summaries of what I read and my response to that reading will help me retain what I’ve learned better and think more logically.
Most of the problems in life are not new. I have access to most of the collected wisdom and ideas of nearly three millennia of written history, which can serve to enrich my life and guide me towards flourishing.
Novels are one of the most effective methods ever invented to challenge perspectives and stretch the mind.
Kindness and empathy require patience. Meditation is the surest way I know to train deliberately for patience.
I am not my thoughts. My thoughts are sensations, like sights and sounds that I observe. When I see something or hear something, I don't immediately identify that sight or sound as "me". The same should be true of my thoughts.
Who is the "I" that would even identify with thoughts?
Organize your thoughts on a topic, in a shape that you can retrace and build upon. Make your study tangible.
Progress towards a large goals happens in small steps forward: track the thousand slogging steps towards your goal to cement who you are becoming.
The practice of doodling and drawing out ideas -- even if just writing stylized text -- improves your memory and delight in learning.
When we are in a long-term frame of mind (more than one week out), it is easy to set parameters for what we should do, but short-term incentives can often override and undermine those long-term ideals. Use contracts and other commitment devices to lock oneself into good ideas (see Beeminder).
Internalizing successes and progress can be difficult. Continue to challenge yourself, but give yourself genuine rewards to celebrate your successes. Write down why you earned the reward - whether it is a cocktail, watching a movie, or buying yourself a fancy notebook (See Lara Hogan's Donut Manifesto).
These are pitfalls and experiential truths that are easy to lose sight of without regular consideration.
- Alcohol - fancy cocktails and craft beer - is not a prerequisite to the good life. It can be enjoyed occasionally, but at best will be a fleeting pleasure. At worst, alcohol makes concentration and good judgement difficult and will tend to undermine progress towards a deeper life.
- Attachment to your house is proportional to energy invested into it. If the house is treated as an abstract shell, it will be an encumbrance. If tended and considered, it will be a joy and pleasure for your family.
- Frugality is a virtue, but it is not a virtue to be stingy when spending money can help you live truer to your values.
- It can be powerful to have high expectations for myself, but I must be careful to not apply those same expectations to other people. With others, strive to accept their limitations and interests.
Admirable tendencies I see in my friends & family, from which I would love to learn.
- Andy: An insistence on finding what is adequate in a category and refusing to explore further. Consider his resistance to the hedonic treadmill with respect to coffee. This is satisficing as a mode of resistance to consumerist culture.
This is a collection of articles, books, and otherwise that have influenced me, in ways conscious or otherwise.
Intended to help me develop clarity of purpose in the midst of an overwhelming volume of interests.
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Peter Adeney. "The Practical Benefits of Outrageous Optimism".
Although I read Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism first, the Mr. Money Mustache treatment of the subject (and his writing in general) has done far more to help me get my attention directed towards the things that I can change in my life -- and also helped me understand that I can embrace my own skills and success without giving up on my moral beliefs and desire to see a more just world. -
Seneca. Letters from a Stoic
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Francis Edward Su. "The Lessons of Grace in Teaching"
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Venkatesh Rao. "A Calculus of Grit"
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Manuel DeLanda. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History
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James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State
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Buster Benson. "1 Metric Kiloslog"
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Buster Benson. "Like Like a Hydra"
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James Somers. "Speed Matters"
This article connected things I have known to be true at the team level back to my individual habits. Namely, in a queueing system, decrease latency to increase throughput. Having slack and available capacity is a precondition for doing interesting work. So work - and finish - fast! -
Cal Newport. "Knowledge Workers are Bad at Working"
Professionals in several disciplines have cultures of systematic improvement, but software developers (and many other knowledge workers) put far too much of their effort into email instead of deep work that grows their skill set. -
Dorian Taylor. "Toward a Theory of Design as Computation"
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John Gruber. "Untitled Document Syndrome"
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David Heinemeier Hanson. "Reconsider"
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Cal Newport. "Getting Started is Overrated"
Cal Newport counters the advice "just get started", referencing the dangers of survivorship bias. Getting started is a necessary but not sufficient condition for completing a pursuit successfully. Frequent starting also runs the risk of diluting your effort in other pursuits.If you translate every burst of enthusiasm into action, you're going to waste time. More dangerous, you're going to hobble your chances of succeeding in any pursuit, as the constant influx of new activity prevents you from achieving a Steve Martin-style diligence.
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Cal Newport. "Do Goals Prevent Success?"
Cal Newport introduces the idea of effectuation (coined by Saras Sarasvathy) as a candidate explanation for the disproportionate impact some people have in their fields. Effectuative thinking is a planning mode that focuses on (a) navigating from strengths and (b) avoiding risks with unbounded or large downsides (smells like optionality / anti-fragility) in order to allow goals to develop emergently - as opposed to top-down goal-first planning. -
Charles Mann. "How to Talk About Climate Change so People Will Listen"
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Nate Soares. Replacing Guilt. A series of blog posts on how guilt and shame are toxic motivational forces, plus strategies for replacing them with more effective, intrinsic motivation.
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Douglas Hofstadter. I Am A Strange Loop
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Samuel R. Delaney. Empire Star