Betterment

Particularly when it comes to the future. And perhaps about the past. More often than not, we find ourselves in situations where we don’t know. Where we can’t know. That’s a given…

The Journey Not the Destination. Focus on what you can control, and move past the narrow focus on outcomes.

Human beings never reveal all of our emotions. We don’t simply blurt out the first thing that pops into our head in a meeting, or insult someone upon meeting them. We’re able to give pe…

Perhaps you only acknowledge and focus on problems where you know and are comfortable with the appropriate response. Denying the existence of the other ones is easier than dealing with them. Or it …

The things we do each day, every day, often arrive without intent. By the time we realize that they’re now habits, these random behaviors have already become part of how we define ourselves a…

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founders of 37signals, advocate for taking extended breaks from work, as outlined in their book "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work." While this practice is relatively common in many parts of the world, it's less common in North America.In this...

Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” imagines a time in which the government enforces the absolute physical and mental equality of all citizens. The beautiful must wear masks. The most graceful dancers are saddled with weights. The strong have bags of birdshot padlocked around their necks. And the intelligent — like George Bergeron — are […]

Has life been feeling flat?  Do you not get the same pleasure from activities you once enjoyed?  Is it feeling harder to get motivated to do things? Are you unhappy with a habit like constantly checking your smartphone or watching porn? Do you want to kick an addiction to alcohol or tobacco? If you answered […]

There are things we avoid looking at too closely. If we looked, really saw what was happening, we’d have to change our minds, admit we were mistaken, refactor our priorities or take action. I…

In many of my posts I share solutions to technical challenges I have come across. In this post there is certainly an element of that, but it is building on some earlier work and is perhaps more about sharing a real view of what I use day to day, as a way of providing a bit of insight or inspiration into how you may be able to employ something similar. Specifically, in this post I am going to share some details of my “general” meeting template in Obsidian. Oh, and that’s “general meeting” template as in a generic template for a general, run of the mill, ad hoc meeting, not a general meeting as in governance (e.g. AGM, EGM).

It’s tempting for a creator. To make a pop hit, a song or a book or a meme that becomes a popular idea and part of the culture. In our lifetimes, it’s become possible to imagine that yo…

Hustle harder. Run more ads. Spam people. Interrupt. Make the logo bigger. Post again. Post again. Add more blurbs. Push the press release to irrelevant people. Do one more ad. Use AI to create fau…

There’s a famous Cherokee myth about good and evil. As it goes.. An old man was teaching his grandson about life. “There’s a battle going on inside every

As we continue to face difficult choices and work to make things better, it’s quite likely that the alternatives being presented aren’t ideal or even appealing. Many organizations and c…

Let's talk about workflows. If you are a white collar worker, chances are that you spend most of your day creating or editing digital files. Whether you are a programmer, sysadmin, accountant, salesman or a CEO, you will be spending considerable part of your day messing with data, grouped as some sort of logical entity: a document, spreadsheet, source code, etc.. Different people have different strategies and approaches for this sort of work. For example,

After 2022, it’s hard to tell for sure. And going forward, public life is going to be even more rumor-driven than it is now. Any video, any voiceover, any photograph–we can’t be s…

Could we change our minds? When was the last time new information caused you to walk away from an idea you were confident in? It gets harder and harder to do, and more and more important.

Obsidian is an amazing tool for developer and developer advocates. You can use it as a second brain, for content creation, and more.

Need a better note-taking app? Learn how Obsidian notes can turn your plain text files into a rich, sophisticated network of linked thoughts.

The secret to boosting your coding skills in just a few minutes a day.

Perhaps your wedding package includes a cake. It’s paid for, better eat it. Even if you’re allergic to wheat. Perhaps the amusement park includes as many rides as you like, even if you&…

Tim Urban has a new book, What’s Our Problem?, whose main thesis is that our minds have two modes, and high and a low mind. The high mind more seeks truth, while the low mind more seeks loyalty via confirming sacred beliefs. The high mind thinks like a scientist, especially in an “idea lab”. It realizes that it might be wrong, avoids bias or idea attachment, is open to stumbling and backtracking, and systematically collects hypotheses and data to carefully compare the two.

Rejection, not acceptance, defines writing life.

We often use words like “beautiful” or “stunning” or “perfect” when we actually mean “popular” or “pleasant.” Every day is beautiful in i…

They say leaders eat last. While this is slowly becoming a pithy, overused catchphrase, it’s also a powerful maxim that reminds leaders of their primary

While Drafts is my ever present information capture app, Obsidian is the destination for a large amount of that information as I build the content into cross-referenced, meaningful notes. Much like Drafts, Obsidian has a framework through which people can develop plug in solutions (literally “plugins” - core and community), which in many ways mimics Drafts’ actions. While some of my own work on Drafts actions has yielded libraries and reusable actions that others can build into workflows, the nature of some of the amazing plugins in Obsidian takes things further and uses plugins to open portals to allow you to interact directly with the underlying Obsidian API. As a result you can build some quite useful commands without having to build your own plugin. In this post I am going to share the construction of some simple ‘path-based’ command examples to illustrate how you can take advantage of this.

How do people lose their spouse, their faith, their grip on their values, goals, and dreams? It doesn’t happen all at once. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through tiny shifts: a steady accumulation of daily, imperceptible deviations from one’s set course. A little more attention is given to one thing than another. A frame […]