How to play
Every day: In the morning, scroll down to Review Every Day Every month: On the 1st of every month, scroll down to Review Every Month Every year: On your birthday, scroll down to Review Every Year Review Every Day
Things I’d like to have primed in my brain every morning. This is stuff currently churning in the front of my brain, which probably has high turnover but which also has a good chance of getting somewhere new.
Cultivate quality time: With myself, with other people, and with my interests. Look at what's uneasy: Don't avoid the unresolved, unwanted, conflicted things that would benefit from attention. Eat mostly plants. Exercise regularly. Think decades, not days. Review/update this list Review Every Month
Things I’d like to check in on the 1st of every month.
Review the Lexicon Review the Beliefs Review the Personal Canon Write a new Monthly Report and share Review/update this list Review Every Year
Things I've learned and want to remind myself of every year on my birthday (January 14).
Review my Monthly Reports from the year Review my Yearly Reports Write a new Yearly Review and share Review/update this list Lexicon
Codex Vitae
This is an idea coined by Robin Sloan in his book Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. The idea is that you write a book, the Codex Vitae or Book of Life, that represents everything you have learned in your life. And it gets stored and read by a privileged few upon your death. Expanding a bit further on it, I think this is a great way of thinking about self-expression. Our lives are filled with a desire to know the universe, and to be known. To leave a dent. This is just my English-major-y way of representing the dent in the form of a text, because words are pretty great. Maybe one day we'll be able to download our brains into a computer and that would more directly represent our full body of knowledge from life.
Quality Time
My own Codex Vitae's first chapter could possibly be about quality time and its role as the primary ends (and means) for a life well lived. I see 3 kinds of quality time that we should seek out. The first is quality time with our own selves. Know thyself, and in the process find our deep interests and find people that we can connect deeply with. The second is quality time with those interests, and the third is quality time with those people we can connect deeply with. They each feed into each other, you can't really connect deeply with others until you know yourself sufficiently well. And often times interests are strengthened by having people you can connect with and share with. It seems pretty ungameable to me. Seek quality time with yourself, your interests, and others and you will not regret anything on your death bed.
Optionality
Or, as Nassim Nicolas Taleb calls it: antifragility. I like the word optionality because it seems more neutral, almost boring even, and yet it is probably one of the most simple and powerful ideas that I’ve ever encountered. The easiest way to describe it is the degree to which your eggs are in different baskets. The more baskets, and the more eggs, and the more evenly distributed those eggs are in those baskets, the higher the optionality. The beauty of optionality is that it has both protective and self-strengthening qualities. Say that you have 12 eggs in 1 basket. If something happens to that basket, all of your eggs are doomed (low optionality). On the other hand, say that you have 12 eggs in 6 baskets (2 in each). If something happens to one of the baskets, you still have 10 eggs (higher optionality). Now imagine that you have 12 eggs in 12 baskets, and every time one of the baskets is destroyed, one of the other eggs hatches and creates 2 new eggs and you get 2 new baskets. Now, say that all of the eggs are different colors, and that there are monsters that prefer certain colors of eggs for breakfast. As the monsters wake up every morning and have breakfast, the type of eggs that they like will become more rare. There will be more eggs left from colors that they don’t like. In a way, the set of eggs will become stronger (less likely to be eaten). This is how high optionality works. The final twist is that in order for this to really work, it has to have some level of randomness involved… because what if the monster also adapts over time and begins to prefer new colors of eggs… in order for the set of eggs to be safe from complete elimination, there should be enough variation in the colors that some eggs won’t get eaten… and that those eggs will hatch and grow and the population of future eggs will represent eggs that are less appetizing to monster. Optionality is the key to natural selection and evolution. It’s also the key to idea generation, investment strategy, product management, and many other things. Qualities of high optionality things include:
A variety of options that aren’t connected to one another. For example, if you have 3 green eggs in 3 baskets and a green-egg eating monster comes, you’re going to lose all of your eggs even though they were in different baskets. Same if you own 3 different houses that are all on the same block and it gets hit by a flood, or 3 different emerging tech stocks when the equity markets dry up. True variety would imply that a disaster of any kind won’t take out all of your options… at least 1 must survive and it needs to be a strong one that has traits that led to its survival. Another word to describe this is that the options must be diversified. There should be relatively quick feedback loops. The period of time between “something bad happens” and “the population shifts to favor the stronger options” should be short. If 10 bad things happen before the population adapts, the optionality is lower than if it only takes 1 or 2 bad things to adapt. The adaptations must have some element of randomness. In other words, variety must not decrease over time, even if the environment becomes predictable. Eventually the environment will change in a new way, and then the variety will need to be sufficient to survive an unexpected change. If a green-egg eating monster turns into a red-egg eating monster, there should be some non-red eggs, and maybe even some green eggs, around. This makes logical sense, but in practice it seems counter-intuitive to build systems with high optionality. We tend to build systems that converge on a single design over time (see monocultures) because they are predictable and efficient in a given environment. But environments change, and without the ability to predict how those changes will happen ahead of time, optionality is required even in the safest of environments.
Soloverse
Soloverse: This is the least-fully-formed idea of the bunch and something that I’m sure will shift over time. The universe is this giant space/time environment that we are all a part of. The soloverse is our mental model of the universe that our brain uses to think about the universe and everything in it. It turns out, we can’t really think about the universe directly (it’s way too big), we can only think about our mental model of the universe as it exists in our soloverse.
I first came across this idea last year and found some interesting explorations of the idea referenced by the word umwelt, which is German for “environment” or “surroundings” and pronounced oom-velt. I just made up the term soloverse because it’s easier for me to think of it as a private universe in our minds.
A few thoughts about soloverses:
The soloverse is our local cache of the universe. When we’re babies, our caches are not very primed, and we are forced to take in the full firehose of the universe… unsorted, uncategorized, raw. It’s overwhelming. Our brains are designed to start building this soloverse almost immediately in order to gain some foothold on the raw craziness of all the information coming in. The soloverse is built up from basic building blocks like light and dark, smells, sounds, and eventually patterns (mom, hungry, cold, soft), and then eventually concepts (blanket, food) and meanings (safe, scared, good, bad). What we think of as the universe is actually our soloverse. From these basic building blocks we create beliefs and build simulations that allow us to predict future occurrences (if I cry, mom will come to me). At some point we arrive at a concept of our own selves and other people. “The concept of a person is arguably the most important interface ever developed.”?—?Kevin Smokler The soloverse contains gods and archetypes. Some of our most powerful beliefs and traditional characters (God, the hero, the devil, the wizard, the fairy godmother) all exist only in our soloverses. Unicorns, dragons, Santa, astrology, luck, fairness, truth, good and evil, beginning middle and end, physics, etc are all shadows of the structure that our soloverse is running on (our brains, and the pattern matching hierarchies that they are built from) and most likely absent from the universe that they are attempting to model. This quirk is actually really fascinating to explore. The soloverse is the most powerful tool we have. The model of the universe that we each have is highly personal, and idiosyncratic to the experiences we’ve had. There are also large portions of which there is probably lots of overlap (common sense, myths, popular culture, things we learn in school, etc). An unhealthy soloverse could lead to poor/misinformed decision-making. An unhealthy soloverse could be responsible for cruelty, prejudice, hatred, wars, and all kinds of other unfortunate things. What could we do to help ourselves and each other have healthier soloverses? Could we address this issue directly and have an impact?
Beliefs
On the purpose of life
We don't have a purpose given to us, but we are allowed to make one up My meta-purpose is to enjoy quality time (with myself, with others, and with my interests) The best strategy to increase quality time: weaken the circumstances that hinder quality time, and strengthen the circumstances that encourage quality time He who dies having experienced the most quality time wins On personal conduct
I must strive to know what I really believe I must not dilly-dally I must be my word I must have good intentions I must admit to being the maker of my own meaning I must not feel sorry for myself I must have a vision that I'm are striving for I must tie creativity and experimentation with survival I must stake my reputation on my better self I must be comfortable with the consequences of being who I am I must make my own advice and take it I must manage my stress, health, and clarity I must study my mistakes I must retry things I don’t like every once in a while I must go slow, work hard, and avoid shortcuts I must cultivate quality time with myself, and with my interests I must face things that make me uncomfortable
Frequently remembering we will die increases the quality of our life
On Health
We can change our behavior and habits (it requires a lot of energy) Consistently eating well and exercising is the only way to be sustainably healthy
On Technology
Computers will be building better computers than humans by 2050 (the Singularity) Technology will eventually disrupt all other human-created institutions (politics, religion, identity, economics)
On Politics & The Economy
Most jobs lost between 2008-2012 aren't going to come back, new ones have to be created from scratch (or not) In the future, working will be more thoroughly decoupled from having the means to live (see disability trends as proxy for this)
On Biases
We tend to favor the beautiful We tend to see what we expect to see We tend to attribute too much credit to success (and under-credit luck)
On Love
Soulmates exist Love at first sight happens
Meta
We have very little control over what we believe in Some of my beliefs will be proven wrong I'm willing to be convinced that my beliefs are wrong Making and maintaining this list is useful and fun (you should do it too)
Personal Canon
Articles I need to read
The Technology - Paul Buchheit Neurons Gone Wild - Kevin Simler When We Build - Wilson Miner We Aren't the World - Ethan Watters The Elephants - Nick Crocker Touching the Wild - Kathy Sierra The Crossroads of Should and Must - Elle Luna Welcome to the Future Nauseous - Venkatesh Rao UX and the Civilizing Process - Kevin Simler Navigating Stuckness - Jonathan Harris Stock and Flow - Robin Sloan WWIC - Paul Ford Top of Mind - Paul Graham Fish - Robin Sloan
Books to read
Waking Up - Sam Harris Creativity, Inc - Ed Catmull The Fifth Discipline - Peter M. Senge Antifragile - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman Strangers To Ourselves - Timothy D. Wilson Deutsch
57 is great: How I track my life: Tracking quality of life with Reporter Live Like a Hydra: Thoughts on how to get stronger when things are chaotic.
Monthly Reports 2015:
January 12th 2015:
Summary:
Weight:
Outcome of previous goal: Fail on the Do pushups 2 or more days per week.
New goal: Do pushups on 2 or more days (low bars ftw)
August 12th 2015:
Summary: Really need to work on this more often.
Weight: 202
Outcome of previous goal: Fail on the Do pushups 2 or more days per week.
New goal: Do pushups on 2 or more days (low bars ftw)