productive

Napoleon Hill is the most famous conman you’ve probably never heard of. Born into poverty in rural Virginia at the end of the 19th century, Hill went on to write one of the most successful self-help books of the 20th century: Think and Grow Rich. In fact, he helped invent the genre. But it’s the untold story of Hill’s…

How often should you succeed at a task, to maximize learning? I review research suggesting the answer is close to 85%.

A while back I wrote about What 80% Comprehension Feels Like, and I quoted the English examples used in Marcos Benevides’ excellent presentation which simulate 80% comprehension in English by including made-up English-like vocabulary words. I’ve been thinking about that presentation a lot, both about the impact of such a demonstration, as well as about how it could be accomplished in Chinese. I ended up... Read More

You may have noticed it's practically impossible to contact me. I did that on purpose so I can spend my time how I want to spend it. I don't really use email and I have my private message inboxes on every platform closed. And they have been like that for

Brittle systems are weak. Short-term wins feel like a demonstration of will by those that seek to be strong. But the only run is the long run. When we embrace flexible, renewable and diverse approa…

Earlier this week, the writer John McPhee turned 91. One of the nice things about McPhee's birthday, in addition to it providing an occasion to celebrate his incomparable output, is that it usually leads to one of my favorite writerly quotes spreading around the internet. By any reasonable standard, McPhee is productive. He's published 29

Earlier today, June Huh, a 39-year-old Princeton professor, was awarded the 2022 Fields Medal, one of the highest possible honors in mathematics, for his breakthrough work on geometric combinatorics. As described in a recent profile of Huh, published in Quanta Magazine (and sent to me by several alert readers), Huh's path to academic mathematics was

In my previous essay, I wrote about how novelist Jack Carr rented a rustic cabin to help focus his attention on completing his latest James Reece thriller. This talk of writing retreats got me thinking again about what's arguably my favorite example from this particular genre of aspirational day dreaming: Wendell Berry's "camp" on the

Interesting perspective sharing on what I read as really being addicted to the feed, or the new. We love the little reward we get from discovering a new video, a new post, a new whatever. Tarun sounds like they are pretty deep, but any of us that randomly pull out our phone and “pull to refresh” a feed are experiencing a very similar thing.

Taking note of everything that you care about

13 votes and 9 comments so far on Reddit

Good overview of Getting Things Done. I’ve been a practitioner of GTD for over a decade now. I consider it a life skill, something that I will focus on and improve on over many years. What GTD gives you—when understood and implemented properly—is a foolproof system for keeping track of what you need to do, should do, or should consider to do. When your system and your trust in your system is in place, your subconsciousness will stop keeping track of all the things you need to do and stop constantly reminding you. This reduces stress and frees up precious brain time to more productive thinking—maybe it even saves real time so that you have more time for ballet lessons, painting classes, and roller-blading. I like that this highlights the true benefit of GTD. It is not a productivity system to allow you to do even more, although you may be able to. It is intended to allow you to be in the moment, focus on the things in front of you, knowing that your trusted system has you covered. That you can forget about other things and it will be there when you need it.

At the end of the day, stop somewhere fun — so it’s easier to get started tomorrow

​ ​ ​ Against good habits This week, because I like a challenge, or perhaps just because I’m an annoying contrarian, I’d like to try to persuade you that cultivating good habits...

Imagine… Last night, lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my nightclothes. In an instant, everything was vaporised. Laptop? Cinders. Phone? Ashes. Home server? A sm…

Incorporate a weekly review in your schedule this semester and really get things done.

Last week I stumbled across the book Annotation, written by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia. As the title suggests, the book is all about the history and practices of annotating texts. And probably be…

Halfway through last year, I found myself overwhelmed by my schedule. There were simply too many things to do and not enough time. As we bookworms tend to do, I set out to find books that would teach me to wrangle my schedule.

Daily notes as a frictionless default input for personal knowledge management systems

Not long ago, I watched Aziz Ansari's new Netflix special, Nightclub Comedian. I was pleasantly surprised when, early in the show, Ansari demonstrates his commitment to escaping tech-driven distraction by showing off his Nokia 2720 flip phone (see above). Soon after the special was released, Ansari elaborated on his personal brand of digital minimalism in

​ ​ ​ Welcome back to The Imperfectionist, and my apologies for the brief unplanned hiatus! (Sending out an email to say I wouldn't be sending an email seemed pointless and anno...

My Schedule Should Be Terrible... I should have an overwhelming, Malox-guzzling, stress-saturated schedule. Here's why: I'm a graduate student in a demanding program. I'm working on several research papers while also attempting to nail down some key ideas for my dissertation. I'm TA'ing and taking courses. I maintain this blog. I'm a staff writer for

Last week, Twitter accepted Elon Musk's acquisition bid. The media response was intense. For a few days, it was seemingly the biggest story in the world: every news outlet rushed out multiple takes; commentators fretted and gloated; CNN, for a while, even posted live updates on the deal on their homepage. As I argue in

If you view knowledge for its utility, you will never fully appreciate it.

A question to help you avoid accepting invitations you’ll later regret.