Mike on Sat Oct 08 2016 – 0 CommentsWhat is the value of the natural world? The question seems unanswerable on the face of it – without fresh water, fertile soil, mineral deposits, solar energy, and adequate sinks for waste, no one would be around to do the valuing – but attempting to answer unanswerable questions is often revealing and worthwhile.
Mike on Thu May 19 2016 – 0 CommentsWe’ll start with a puzzle: why is software slow? And why does the same device seem to get slower and slower as it ages?
Mike on Thu Aug 20 2015 – 0 CommentsEvery so often, one is lucky enough to stumble into a new, untapped source of good ideas and alternative ways of thinking. Steps to An Ecology of Mind, a collection of essays by Gregory Bateson, is a just such a repository of careful thought....
Mike on Mon Jun 22 2015 – 0 CommentsSo I’ve been reading through the archives of Mark Manson’s blog lately. Something I’ve noticed, a theme he repeats frequently, is the idea that you should take responsibility for your own emotions and no one else’s.
Mike on Wed May 13 2015 – 0 CommentsThink back to a book that had a big impact on you. Maybe it changed the way you look at your life or the world. Maybe it changed how you approach your relationships.
Mike on Thu Feb 26 2015 – 0 CommentsThe accomplished and iconoclastic architect Christopher Alexander wrote Notes in 1964. For a 51-year-old book about efficient search through arbitrary design space it’s held up surprisingly well, despite some idiosyncrasies...
Mike on Sat Sep 06 2014 – 0 CommentsWell that didn't last long. A few months ago I was pretty excited to switch from WordPress to Octopress. Now I'm rolling my own site with Harp.
Mike on Sun Dec 29 2013 – 0 CommentsYou may have noticed that resolutions are hard to keep. If you're like me, you greet each new year with hopeful visions of a new self—and come Spring your day-to-day life has derailed your best intentions.
Mike on Wed Dec 18 2013 – 0 Comments“And if not now, when?”
This is a rhetorical question, of course, because frequently the best answer to “when?” is “now.” And if you think of yourself as a consortium of extremely similar deciders, your personal decisions become amenable to the analysis of game theory.
Mike on Mon Sep 30 2013 – 0 CommentsRewards are powerful motivators and we should use every tool available to us in the quest to become better versions of ourselves. So how about rewarding yourself for going to the gym? After a good workout it's tempting to indulge yourself with a rich meal or an ice cream sandwich.
Mike on Thu Sep 26 2013 – 0 CommentsLast Thursday I wrote about taking advantage of the peak-end rule to make it easier to do more of the things you want to be doing, like going to the gym. There's another way to think of yourself as being made of different selves, and it leads to the very useful technique of setting policies and sticking to them.
Mike on Tue Sep 24 2013 – 0 CommentsI often have trouble getting myself to do the things that I'd like to be doing, like going to the gym or meditating regularly. Recently I ran across a big idea that helped me understand why this is true, and also provided a few hints that allowed me to improve the situation.
Mike on Tue Jan 29 2013 – 0 CommentsI write software for a living, and I am becoming more and more convinced that my job will soon – in a few years or a few decades – be outsourced.
