Post image for Anki Deck: Oblique Strategies

I’ve added an experimental deck to my Anki Decks page called Oblique Strategies.

This deck is based on the Oblique Strategies decks of physical cards first created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1975.

The cards contain aphorisms to help with breaking creative blocks and encourage thinking differently, such as “ask your body,” “retrace your steps,” and “turn it upside down.”

I first heard of them in Dan Pink’s book Drive where he recommends using the Oblique Strategies cards as one of his “nine strategies for awakening motivation in individuals.”  [click here to keep reading…]

Post image for So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport – Review & Summary

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” –Steve Martin

Review

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport (2012) is about working right, rather than finding the right work. To achieve true work satisfaction you should learn to love what you do, not do what you think you love.

Find rare and valuable skills that you are good at, or could be good at, and excel at them using a craftsman mindset. Then, use the leverage obtained from this to obtain more control over your working life. Lastly, explore the edges of your field to find a motivating mission, a unifying goal in your career.

Doing this will help you fulfill the three key ingredients to an ideal working life: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. [click here to keep reading…]

Post image for The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman – Review & Summary

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman is a book about rapid skill acquisition: the art and practice of obtaining new skills as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The core idea is that, with a bit of strategy, you can learn just about any skills to a sufficient level with around 20 hours (and often less) of concentrated, focused effort.

Who cares about becoming a world-class expert in one thing? Learning a dozen different skills to a satisfying level is where it’s at!

The first three chapters lay out the key ideas in the book, such as the difference between learning and practicing. The two key “lists” are The Ten Principles of Rapid Skill Acquisition and The Ten Principles of Effective Learning.

These chapters are motivating. Josh gets you pumped up about learning new skills and really sells how easy it can be if you’re just a little bit strategic about it.

He also lays out an extremely simple and easy-to-use method of ensuring your skill acquisition endeavors are as effective as possible.

The next six chapters are “example” chapters where Josh runs through six different skills he taught himself in under 20 hours—yoga, programming, touch typing, Go, ukelele, and windsurfing—using the principles and ideas outlined at the beginning of the book.

These chapters are useful for illustrating exactly what using his framework can look like. I ended up skimming through most of them—and Josh encourages readers to do so—since I either didn’t find the skill particularly interesting or because I didn’t feel I was getting much from the explanations and anecdotes.

The key ideas of the book are extremely easy to get your head around, and hardly need a slew of examples to illustrate. The example chapters, I think, are mainly useful as motivation to go out and learn the skills you want to learn. You would find them very useful if you prefer having concrete examples of using his framework and checklists.

Overall, I’m completely on-board with Josh’s sell of efficient and effective rapid skill acquisition. I think the book could have been a third the length and I’d still have got most of what I need out of it, but that’s partly because I don’t get as much value out of long detailed examples as some other people seem to. If nothing else, the book succeeds in further motivating me to be strategic about my life and learn lots of cool skills.  [click here to keep reading…]

This post is part of a series on the idea of clarity: what it is, why I want it, and how I’m developing it.

“Contentment comes not so much from great wealth as from few wants.” –Epictetus

How many people could tell you the exact number of things they own? Probably none. A best-guess answer is likely to be something vague like “too many things” or “not enough things.”

As of writing this I own exactly 187 things, so now you know at least one person with a specific answer.

Where did that number come from? I made a list of all my tangible possessions, and strive to:

  1. Keep the list as short as possible—my current target is 99 tangibles.
  2. Make sure ever item “counts”—that it’s high-quality, long-lasting, useful, and effective—basically, valuable.
  3. Keep it up to date.

It wasn’t always this way, but now I like owning as few things as necessary and try to have a good reason for everything I own. I get immense satisfaction from doing this. More than I would have guessed.

Wait, Why Keep a List and Why Keep it Small?

For starters, I like knowing what I own. I enjoy that general sense of awareness of my possessions. But there’s more to it than that:

  • I want a general awareness of all my tangible possessions.
  • I want to build awareness of the resources I have at my disposal.
  • Less possessions generally means less maintenance costs.
  • I enjoy being as “light” and mobile as possible (right now I could move to the other side of the world with 24h notice if I had to).
  • Keeping the list small forces me to eliminate the unimportant and be smart about what I buy.
  • The more I own the harder it is to stay organized and the harder it is to find things.
  • The less I own, the less that can be stolen (this is mostly a joke).
  • Keeping track of possessions can be a source of anxiety or stress; less things will hopefully reduce this.
  • Less things = less mental clutter.
  • I want to build a better appreciation of the things I do have.
  • Have more money to spend on experiences rather than things.

Hence my list.

What to Do

If you’re interested in doing something similar, here’s how I go about it:

1. Set the target.

For starters, decide how much stuff you want to own. How “light” do you want to be? What do you want your “rules” to be? (E.g., I don’t count my books in my total.) Set a target number of possessions (mine is 99).

2. Define priorities.

How much do you care about mobility? For me, it’s a lot. Can you have too little? Too much? Certainly. Are you going focus on reducing clothing, electronics, or random possessions? How important is having high-quality possessions that last longer and work better, versus cheaper items?

3. Process.

Once in a while (I aim for once a year) consciously go through all your possessions and eliminate what you don’t want or need. Systematically go through everything you own and ask: Why do I have this? What is it for? Is it redundant? Can I buy one one better item to replace these ten crummier items? Could someone else make better use of this?

4. Purge.

For every item, there are only three options: (1) keep it, (2) give it to someone else (sell or donate), and (3) trash it.

5. Optimize.

Chances are, there’s huge room for improving the value of what you own.

Throw out all your crummy socks and buy a dozen of the same pair so you never have to worry about matching the correct socks together. Buy an optimal wardrobe that covers all situations and seasons without buying 20 black shirts. Throw out all your crummy pens and buy a few good ones you like to use. Get rid of that old computer equipment you haven’t used in year and never will use.

Do this in small steps if necessary, such as one room or area at a time. In fact, if this all sounds like too much work, maybe try reducing/improving the tangibles in a single area of your life, e.g. your office, and see if you like it.

More Resources

Some other lists and resources that partly inspired this post:

Final words of wisdom:

“Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch.” —Austin Powers

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