November 16, 2022

Lists for weekly review

My first contact with GTD was through 43folders nearly two decades ago, and I haven’t looked back since. A few things did change since then. One adjustment was procedural, going from the DIY planner, [Note: I hope this is the right link. Far from being an eternal archive, the web churns at the speed of internet startups. ] through hipster PDA and Things to, ultimately, OmniFocus. [Note: And through the magic of personal blogs I know that the 7-year anniversary of my OmniFocus run is coming up. Tempus fugit. ] The bigger change was to the arguably most important part of GTD, the weekly review, onto which I added three lists that I glance at weekly and read and update at least quarterly. These are:

  • The root commitment document, as suggested by Cal Newport.
  • Privileged principles, described by Russ Roberts in his book Wild Problems.
  • Favorite problems, which Tiago Forte mentions in his otherwise forgettable Building a Second Brain.

The root commitment document requires little elaboration as Newport himself gave clear instructions on what it was and how to go about making one. I view it as a contract with myself on which routines I should follow and how much flexibility I have in executing them. Through lockdowns and job changes it went from 1000 to 250 to fewer than 200 words now. Brevity matters. [Note: Wrote he, in the third paragraph of what was supposed to be a 280-character post. ]

Privileged principles I use as simple heuristics, a hierarchical list of priorities phrased as “I am the kind of person who…” never picks their nose, let’s say, as a pure hypothetical. They do come in handy in those moments of distraction when ambient noise is high and willpower is low. At a higher level — and this is how Roberts intended them to work — having principles you value above others works wonders to reason through seemingly difficult choices.

Favorite problems I intuitively figured out by myself, but formalizing them was an improvement. Whereas privileged principles are what is top of mind when making decisions, favorite problems are top of mind when reading books and articles, watching lectures, etc, especially when those are not tied to a specific project. [Note: Although, really, if a project you are working on isn’t tied to a favorite problem of yours, why are you doing it at all? ] There are many reasons why a paper on, let’s say, differences in T-cell development between mice, rats, and humans, may be interesting to someone, but your attention may be focused on different parts depending on your interests. Are you reading about a phase 3 clinical trial in atrial fibrillation because you are an electrophysiologist, a general cardiologist, a patient with a-fib, or a researcher interested in clinical trials in general? And if you are a lawyer, why are you reading it at all? Reasons for reading are not always clear, and if anything, knowing what your favorite problems are helps tremendously with triage.

So these are the three lists that aren’t necessarily part of GTD — heck, the first one may not even be a list at all — but which through trial and error I ended up integrating in my weekly review. I’m sure there are many more.

🎙️ Two recent episodes of EconTalk reminded me why it was the best podcast around:

☕️ After a few decades of making coffee with various techniques (including a dual boiler ECM Synchronika) I realized that:

November 15, 2022

Misfortune without delight

An interesting task popped up on my to-do list this morning. [Note: Not important for the story, but some may recognize that this is OmniFocus. I’ve been using it with great success for more than a decade and cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone who has to juggle between work, family, and — and this is what tipped me to using it but probably won’t apply to you — the massive amounts of paperwork needed for US immigration. ]

Crypto task

It was one year ago yesterday, then, that during a buisiness trip to California, over drinks and appetizers, I was subjected to an hour-long tirade about the evils of fiat currency and the brilliance of digital gold that is bitcoin, and why would I want to miss out on the future of finance?

This was from two friends, both half a decade or so younger than me, who hadn’t previously met but quickly found common ground in their love of decentralized finance and Tesla stock.

I held my ground and tried to explain — as well as I could after a few beers — that I wasn’t much of a gambler, and that even if I was I would rather have gambled somewhere that has free drinks and livelier entertainment. I told them to read the Incerto. One of them had the books but hadn’t gotten around to reading them, and disliked Taleb on principle. We agreed to disagree, and parted ways with this task dictated on my phone.

And here we are today.

Bitcoin 1-year chart November 2021–November 2022

They are both fine, or so I’ve been told, because they sold everything at just the right time. My task is therefore complete, although I didn’t have to wait a full year to check it off. The value then, after all, was the same as it is now, which is to say exactly zero.

It is remarkable how quickly the new Verge homepage became my go-to for tech information. Nilay Patel’s introductory article from two months ago was prescient.

David Simon on Twitter:

The worst and most cancerous campaigns on the internet are not to be outreasoned or debated. Doing so grants credibility where none should exist. And Twitter has never truly come to terms with the asymmetrical dynamic.

Dangerous thing, asymmetry is.

After a 10-month hiatus I am reactivating my linkblog account on Radio3, one of Dave Winers’ many great projects. It has cross-posting to Micro.blog which Just Works™️. Happy days.

November 14, 2022

In the late 1700s, America’s founding fathers had a fight over the best treatment for yellow fever, then sweeping though Philadelphia. Republicans preferred bloodletting and purges; Federalists took a more conservative approach.

If it’s any consolation, the country survived.

Still standing! And even more impressive in person.

The “new” museum, 3 years old now, is also wonderful and worth a repeat visit to Liberty Island.

Don't go there, it's a tourist trap

And most times, it is! It doesn’t take an advanced degree in hospitality studies to figure out that most things in the family vacation gauntlet that is Pigeon Forge, Tennesse [Note: For the uninitiated, Pigeon Forge is the closest neighbor of Gatlinburg, the gateway to the Smokey Mountains. This website helpfully lists all the “attractions” available to those who would rather not hike, most of which line both sides of the highway you need to take to get to the Smokies. It is — especially to my European eyes — quite the sight. ] are, indeed, tourist traps — empty flashes of light and puffs of smoke meant to relieve you of some expendable income.

But in that most lies the trouble. For a decade now we’ve driven past a gigantic banner in the Shenandoah valley advertising the Luray caverns as if they were the eight Wonder of the World. And for a decade or so I avoided going because it was clearly a tourist trap. Only, it clearly wasn’t.

So I’ll tell you a secret: we did end up going to one of the “attractions” in Pigeon Forge that’s a mini-resort of it’s own call The Island and that too was charming in a fake lego-land sort of way. Dollywood is there too, and we will go some time soon.

Between everything that’s within walking distance in D.C. and driving distance up and down the East Cost — being loose with the definition of the coast as I will count the Smokies in there too — even if 99% of attractions are pure tourist traps, the 1% can fill a lifetime.

Two caveat: first, maybe your Tourist Trap Radar is better calibrated than my own, as my frugal-by-necessity parents instilled in me the sense that anything that charges money is a tourist trap. We saw many a historic landmark — from the outside, of course — in my childhood.

Second, it may occasionally happen that you pay for something and then, as you step through the entrance, get a sinking feeling that there is no there there and that the place is indeed a tourist trap. But so what! You can’t be a good surgeon unless you’ve occasionally taken out a healthy appendix, and you can’t be sure you’ve seen everything that’s good unless you’ve occasionally visited a clunker.

I sense this advice applies to more than just general surgery and vacationing.