Saturday, May 25, 2024
Joy..................
Joy for the human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, distain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Recommended.......................
. . . relieve yourself of the need to forge a masterpiece. Progress is what matters. Not perfection.
. . . the focus required to get better is simply not compatible with busyness.
"A little quality work every day will produce more and more satisfying results than frantic work piled up on top of frantic work."
Obsession, she pointed out, can be paralyzing. Quality matters, but if it becomes everything, you may never finish.
Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.
without effort.................
To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
-attributed to Bertrand Russell
Friday, May 24, 2024
tipping point.....................
In knowledge work, when you agree to a new commitment, be it a minor task or a large project, it brings with it a certain amount of ongoing administrative overhead: back and forth email threads need to gather information, for example, or meetings scheduled to synchronize your collaborators. This overhead tax activates as soon as you take on a new responsibility. . . . As your workload increases, however, the overhead tax you're paying will eventually pass a tipping point, beyond which logistical efforts will devour so much of your schedule that you cannot complete old tasks fast enough to keep up with the new.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
transform.....................
. . . we shouldn't underestimate the ability of our surroundings to transform our cognitive reality.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
wildly.............................
. . . humans are wildly optimistic when we estimate how much time is needed to complete cognitive efforts.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
unceasing intensity.................
Working with unceasing intensity is artificial and unsustainable. . . . A more natural, slower, and varied pace to work is the foundation of true productivity in the long term.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
breathing room and respect.......
Slow productivity emphatically rejects the performative rewards of unwavering urgency. There will always be more work to do. You should give your efforts the breathing room and respect required to make them part of a life well lived, not an obstacle to it.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity; The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
administrative kudzu................
We've established that overload is not fundamental to knowledge work. It's instead largely a side effect of the crude ways in which we self-manage our work volume. We further established that toiling at maximum capacity greatly reduces the rate at which we accomplish useful things, as it chokes our schedule in administrative kudzu and splinters our attention into fragments too small to support original thinking.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Sunday, May 19, 2024
no nirvana-like un-change...................
How do we know that change is accelerating? There is, after all, no absolute way to measure change. In the awesome complexity of the universe, even within any given society, a virtually infinite number of steams of change occur simultaneously. All "things"—from the tiniest virus to the greatest galaxy—are, in reality, not things at all, but processes. There is no static point, no nirvana-like un-change, against which to measure change.
-Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
pointing......................
Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.
-Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
chiefly..............................
To be rich you don't need to make more money; you chiefly need to better manage the money already flowing through your hands.
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