Nori Parelius wrote a thoughtful article about taking notes, managing slip-boxes and “working with knowledge” in general. It matches my experience fiddling with various methods: what should be a playful exploration of ideas can easily become laborious bookkeeping. *Caveat scriptor!(ᔥZettelkasten)

I have updated my now page. The last update was in March so let’s call this my Quarterly-ish update.

I have tons of free time, as is evidenced by (a) that I’m spending a half hour writing this blog post and (b) that I spent a couple hours earlier this week reading Atlas’s book, for no other reason than I felt like it. And this wasn’t even the only pleasure book I read over the Thanksgiving weekend. But I’m also in a continual time debt, a veritable treadmill of time commitments. I’m in the middle of writing 5 books and a few dozen research articles, and I keep taking on new projects. No way I can do all of these! But, as with Atlas and his finances, somehow I keep going.

Andrew Gelman describes my life, basically.

Don’t feel obliged from Oliver Burkeman is on my list of things to occasionally re-read. High school was the right time for me to hear this advice from one of his Guardian editors: “if you can’t do something, saying no right away usually makes it much easier for everyone."

A few changes to my iPhone setup, courtesy of a YouTube video which is itself c/o r/dumbphones:

1. Dumbify, which is exquisite.
2. SocialFocus is quite good as well.
3. Only Tot remains in the dock, and thank goodness it has a grayscale icon.
4. Goodbye, silicone case — I’ve gone case-less.

So far so good.

It was time for my quarterly now page update. Ludus longus, vita brevis.

I have a rarely-updated list of articles I look at once a week, and randomly pick one to re-read. This week it was time for the first one on the list, which is Paul Graham’s Life is Short. I have obviously been ignoring it, likely because of its position, because I haven’t been following the sage advice:

The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it. Back when life was more precarious, people used to be aware of death to a degree that would now seem a bit morbid. I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t seem the right answer to be constantly reminding oneself of the grim reaper hovering at everyone’s shoulder. Perhaps a better solution is to look at the problem from the other end. Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Don’t wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother. You don’t need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn’t wait. Just don’t wait.

In 2023 there was an exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci’s sketches in D.C., three blocks away from me. But I didn’t see it, because one thing or other kept getting in the way until the very last day, which was so packed with meetings that the work ended after the last admission time.

Lesson learned, right? Well, no, because just recently there was another big show close by (I won’t tell how close lest I allow your, reader, to triangulate my home address). This time we did go, only to balk at the overly long lines and go see something else at the National Art Gallery (incidentally, a work of Leonardo’s). Which was good! But then picking the time when we wouldn’t need to wait was impossible, and we never got to see that exhibit either.

So yes don’t wait, and also when you read and re-read an essay try to at least remember the highlights. This is a memo to self not advice, but could serve as one.

A thought for the year, from the aforementioned Prof. Taleb:

Likewise, I don’t read letters and emails longer than a postcard. Writing must have some solemnity. Reading and writing, in the past, were the province of the sacred.

From How I Write, to which I have linked before. Good essays much like good books are worth re-rereading.

For all the hate X gets, you can still find nuggets of good information, Nassim Taleb and the Taleb-adjacent being a prime example. Here is one such post, from Juani Villarejo, shown here in its entirety for those who would rather not go to X to see the original:

Parkinson’s law says that work expands to fill the available time.

Jevons’s paradox states that every increased efficiency, will raise demand rather than decrease it.

And there is a work asymmetry:
Probably there are many more things you dislike doing than things you like.

Conclusion: If you allocate time to work, all the time will be filled with tasks to do.

If you make your work more efficient, your time will be filled with more tasks (demands increases).

But by the asymmetry, tasks you dislike doing have more chance to appear than tasks you like.

So when you make your work more efficient your time will always tend to be filled with more tasks you dislike doing.

Corollary: Never ever efficientize (sic!) the things you like doing. Take all the time and enjoy them slowly. They also serve as a defense wall against the things you dislike.

The links and emphasis are mine. For all its pretenses to the contrary X is still a horrible platform for anything longer than 300 or so characters and does not allow for hyperlinks.

Updated the now page for the first time in two months, with a list of board and dice games we played this week. It is more than I’ve played since, well, this time last year!