Reading Time: < 1 min It’s often easier said than done, but the more you can make your operating system irrelevant, the better. This came up while I was listening to a recent episode of the Cortex podcast, and the hosts were lamenting a problem in getting something to work between a Mac and a Windows machine. Their system relied […]
Productivity
Pareto Principle
Reading Time: 2 min This is another mental model that you’ve likely heard of before — the Pareto Principle, often known as the “80/20 rule”, where 20% of the effort can produce 80% of the results. A great example in my life is my big reading shortcut using Blinkist. I can “finish” a book in 20% of the time, […]
Checklists
Reading Time: < 1 min Of all of the mental models on the list, this one might be the most familiar and one that you’ve used the most often. How often have you used checklists in your life? More importantly, how often have you ignored using a checklist (like running to the grocery store “for a few things”) and ended […]
You don’t have the ability to waste my time
Reading Time: 2 min There are perhaps some circumstances where the title of this post is wrong, but 99% of time-wasting is either something that you’re doing to yourself, or something that you shouldn’t be willing to put up with. In the book “The Go-Giver“, Joe is concerned that he might be wasting Pindar’s time, but Pindar assures him […]
Pushing for “always” to achieve “usually”
Reading Time: 2 min About a year ago, I mentioned a friend that was able to work out 3x weekly, which is something I struggle with. If I aim to work out three times in a week, it quickly slips to maybe once or twice. Instead, I plan to work out every day, and that filters down to “most […]
The promotion of problems
Reading Time: < 1 min We all have a list of problems that we’re working through, often put together on some kind of to-do list. It’s great to check things off the list, but it often seems like checking one thing off leads to putting something else on it. You’re not wrong. In the book “The Personal MBA“, author Josh […]
Organize your world’s information
Reading Time: 2 min Part of Google’s original mission statement was to “organize the world’s information”. While they’re imperfect, I think they’ve done far more toward that goal than any other company in history. You can search for almost anything from “the world’s information” and they’ll find it for you. While Google is great at organizing the world’s information, […]
Write notes with propositional titles
Reading Time: < 1 min As I’m digging further into the Obsidian tool, I’ve also been taking a closer look at how I assemble my notes. I came across a fantastic article from Nick Seitz that dug into a lot of the first steps one might take with Obsidian, and it included the push to use “propositional titles”. In short, […]
Moving from Roam Research to Obsidian
Reading Time: 3 min Over the past few weeks, I’ve been moving my primary notes database from Roam Research to Obsidian. It’s a move I’ve long known I was going to make, but I’ve been waiting for Obsidian to add a few more features to help me get there. They added them, and now I’ve moved. It’s similar to […]
What does “done” look like?
Reading Time: < 1 min With most things that we work on, there is some end goal in sight. Publish the website. Mow the grass. Run a marathon. In some cases, though, there isn’t a “done” to be found. This blog is a great example of that, in that I have no end goal in mind. In most cases, though, […]