There’s a concept in search algorithms that makes a good analogy for life. As analogy, imagine a large forested area with small hills and depressions in it. You have the task of finding the highest point in this area. … Continue reading Using Randomness as a Tool

10,000 hours is famously (and likely wrongly) quoted as the number of hours of deliberate practice one needs to achieve mastery in a skill. I was curious today, so I put together some calculations of how many hours I’ve put … Continue reading Hours to Mastery

A dot on a graph with no context is often fairly useless unless you have already established a sense of context. A good example from my last job: if I tell someone that they used 200 kWhs last month, for … Continue reading Drawing Lines, Not Dots

Dating has long been a subject I’ve avoided on my blog. First, because I tend to want to write things about dating when I’m feeling frustrated with it and I don’t want all that logged in the public record. Second, … Continue reading Black Boxes and Filling in the Blanks — Early Dating and Compatibility

I drew this diagram on my whiteboard several months ago to explain to a friend why eating a Standard American Diet (SAD) and trying to fix it with supplements is foolish. The SAD is the column on the right, achieving, … Continue reading Premature Optimization and the 95/40 Rule

I’m a big fan of checking off boxes. There’s something satisfying about marching my way through a series of checkboxes and knowing I’m accomplishing some larger task. If you don’t already, I highly recommend using to-do lists as part of your daily routine of getting things done. (As a side note, the book Getting Things Done is great for how to organize these and generally how to be someone who gets shit done. If you’re already pretty good at this, I recommend just reading this summary of GTD.) However, I noticed recently that I’ve been running into problems that I couldn’t seem … Continue reading Venturing Into the Unknown and Getting Things Done There

I have often wondered why I don’t feel the same pull towards activities that I’ve noticed in others. Have you ever met someone that you were convinced couldn’t survive without partaking in a hobby of theirs? (be it music, dancing, … Continue reading The Cost of Continuation

As far as I’m concerned, anyone who believes that they have full, conscious control over their decisions is either hopelessly naïve or lacking in self-observation faculties. While we have conscious thought and the ability to make some decisions, research has … Continue reading Harvesting the Unconscious and Hacking Your Brain