Betterment

Data is everywhere, but turning it into information isn’t free. It takes focus, effort, consultation and time. More information is only useful if it helps you make a decision. Knowing the tem…

Well, not everyone. Just most people. When you do something that everyone else is doing, you’re likely to get what everyone else is getting. But in almost every population, “everyone&#8…

Many knowledge-economy employees say that the main cause of dissatisfaction at work is lack of agency. Lack of control over our time and our decisions and our output is demeaning. It turns people i…

On this Q&A with Adam Savage, he answers a few questions with answers that really resonated with me. First, he was asked if he shares his project ideas with family and friends. His very sincere…

If you’ve been following AoM long enough, you know I like philosophy. I’ve written about philosophy on the site and talked to lots of philosophers on the podcast.  Philosophy isn’t some esoteric practice for me. It’s practical. I turn to philosophy to figure out how to live a good and meaningful life.  But it’s also […]

When we’re close to an answer, there are two easy paths–name it, right now, and move on. Or avoid the answer and the responsibility that comes with it and stall. The best path is the th…

When writing Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway titled one of its sections “Pursuit as Happiness.” The heading, a riff on the Declaration of Independence’s celebration of “the pursuit of happiness,” not only well described Hemingway’s feeling about the safari he undertook which the book recounts, but his entire life’s philosophy.  Hemingway was ever in […]

Aristotle referred to humans as the “state-building animal.” Other names our species has proposed for itself, in various writings: Homo absconditus: “man the inscrutable” Homo adorans: “worshipping man” Homo aestheticus: “aesthetic man” Homo amans: “loving man” Homo animalis: “man with a soul” Homo avarus: “man the greedy” Homo creator: “creator man” Homo demens: “mad man” (the only creature with irrational delusions) Homo discens: “learning man” Homo domesticus: “domestic man” (because he builds his environment) Homo duplex: “double man” (because of his animal and social tendencies) Homo economicus: “economic man” Homo educandus: “to be educated” (we require education to reach maturity)...

Tips on how to comfort someone who’s sad, so you can help them in their time of need and be a better son, friend, and husband/boyfriend.

I love teaching myself new subjects. I have been doing it for the past 15 years, ever since I was 11. Having said that, I am a big believer in frameworks. Over the years, I have been working on a framework for learning a new subject: GAMP. Using this framework

If 2% of a population takes coordinated action, it makes a difference. If 5% do, it can change everything. This simple math also means that most people rarely do anything. Perhaps they don’t …

Some situations seem to call for an opponent. It might be our personality, the structure of the engagement or the way we’ve been taught to behave, but having an enemy seems to focus individua…

Nobody you know speaks more slowly than I do. Please don't refute that — I have no way to record my voice here and even if I could, it might

If you care about a creative practice, my guess is that you’ve already seen Peter Jackson’s new Beatles movie. If not, go check it out. It’s a miracle that the movie exists at all…

Create your next MLA bibliography using these simple guidelines. There are also visual examples to help!

Use callouts

The personal knowledge management application Obsidian has a built in templating system that allows you to insert boiler plate text into an Obsidian note. While it is entirely functional, the Obsidian community is full of talented developers, and through its plugin architecture, a templating plugin surfaced that provided considerably more functionality than the core plugin. I recently posted about one of the more advanced uses for this plugin, and was contacted by one of my readers to note that I had not actually explained how to use templating. In this post, I’m going to attempt to address that omission.

In this video, we show 6 useful templates for Obsidian and how I use each of them. I also show how to use date/title snippets and some example notes.

How I use Obsidian to track my day-to-day.

The essence of baroque art and craft is its complexity. Difficult to create, overloaded with ornamentation, filled with grandeur and color and surprise, the focus is on the effort expended. And tha…

It’s thrilling. Nothing held in reserve. All in, leaving nothing behind. It’s easy to get hooked on this. And it’s easy to never experience it. The internet has made each path mor…

Of the short stories Jack London penned, “In a Far Country” is my favorite.  The story follows two characters London calls “The Incapables” who travel to the savage and unforgiving Alaskan North searching for gold and adventure.  The men make a very poor go of things: they bicker, shirk chores, hoard food, take pleasure in […]

People believe that slow and deliberative thinking is inherently superior to fast and intuitive thinking. The truth is more complicated.

A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing that creates an interconnected web of thought. Its emphasis is on connection and not mere collection of ideas.

A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing that creates an interconnected web of thought. Its emphasis is on connection and not mere collection of ideas.

I first reported on my DIY Peloton back in 2018 after using it for a year. 4 years later I thought I might finally have broken the bike, but I was wrong. Aside from replacing my cycling shoes, the …

Most of all, we’re experts in our own narrative, our feelings, our lived experience. No one has had that but us, and while it might be unexamined or instinctive, we’re the experts. Expe…

Why would someone buy a share of stock for $945? One reason might be that they think they can sell it tomorrow for $950. A more common reason is that someone bought it an hour ago for $940. Of cour…