Drew Yates

Distraction is the obesity of modern life.
—The Andrew D Yates COD Science Institute

As a stock photo of a woman, you can trust both my authoritative expertise and my empathetic intuition.

• Your Cogitative Abilities May Be At Risk!
• The Quad-Think Model^tm
• Your Personal Thought Profile^tm
  • “Why” Thinker — The Zealot
  • “Sci” Thinker — The Vacuum
  • “We” Thinker — The Sheep
  • “See” Thinker — The Telescope
• Improve Your Cognitive Health Today!

Your Cogitative Abilities May Be At Risk!

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed? Stressed? Will you be billing your company? If yes, you may suffer from Cognitive Overload Disorder (COD), a debilitating psychological disease that afflicts over 100 million Americans. But amid the danger, amid the unscrupulous charlatans who pray on this human cognitive weakness in this increasingly complex world —there is hope.

You may be a victim of “Junk Food Information”. Like the junk food that makes us unhealthy, Junk Food Information makes us feel better and more confident in the short-term… without actually improving our long-term empirical understanding. That is, Junk Food Information makes us feel “full,” but we aren’t getting the “nutrients” that our minds need to grow. And just like real junk food, Junk Food Information is cheap, heavily marketed, and everywhere…. and it’s getting worse.

But together, we can realize our true potential.

Thanks to the latest clinically-proven procurement strategies in COD Science, The Andrew D Yates COD Science Institute now presents: The Quad-Think Model^tm: a coordinated matrix of cognitive habits specially designed to reveal your Personal Thought Profile^tm. By subscribing to The Quad-Think Model^tm patented COD Science lifestyle system, you can improve your mental health by utilizing invaluable cognitive abilities otherwise wasted on “Junk Food Information.”

In COD Science, no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true. An individual discovers for himself that The Quad-Think Model^tm works by personally applying its principles and observing or experiencing results. This is COD Science. We report, you decide.

Take the next step in your Cognitive Evolution. Join us at the The Andrew D Yates COD Science Institute The Quad-Think Model^tm seminar series, exclusive media club, and cognitive support network. Your struggle with information overload ends today.

The Quad-Think Model^tm

Your Personal Thought Profile^tm

Using The Quad-Think Model^tm above, identify your Personal Thought Profile^tm. Then, read below to learn more about your natural cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Then, try the self-help exercise to begin your journey to cognitive enlightenment!

The “Why” Thinker: (W)holistic (I)ntrovert

Your ability to create abstract mental models helps you grasp the big picture and fuels your craving for meaning.

Junk Food Thinker: The Zealot

A Why Thinker’s quest for greater meaning makes this otherwise perceptive, spiritual individual The Zealot: susceptible to irrelevant anecdotal evidence (freely interpreted to mean whatever is convenient) and dogmatic fallacies of “right” and “wrong.” The Zealot craves belief-reaffirmation. To squelch the void of doubt, The Zealot will obsessively consume emotionally-charged propaganda laden with unjustified claims —sometimes even as a daily devotional. Of course, while Zealots relish attacking others, they are always wrong at a higher level: they lack the introspection to doubt themselves.

Self-help Exercise: How could you be wrong? Convince me.

The “Sci” Thinker: (S)equntial (I)ntrovert

Your superior memory, analytic skills, and attention to detail helps you exhaustively absorb facts, data, and information at rates that exhaust others.

Junk Food Thinker: The Vacuum

Internet usage has grown 208.7% since 2000, and The Vacuum is a Sci Thinker who is addicted to consuming information for the sake of consuming information. Current events, tech news, sports statistics, forum discussion, social networks, blogs, email, cultural trivia… The Vacuum voraciously consumes these streams of low-quality, low-relevance information… even at the expense of their own well-being. Why do websites include a clock and market statistics? Are all emails urgent enough to answer in real time? Could you be carelessly satiating your human need to feel aware of your environment without the introspection to realize how little your empirical understanding accumulates? How many hours did you spend surfing the Internet last week? How much of what you read do you remember right now? Would you consider consuming a exhaustive, real-time information about your information consumption to reduce your information consumption?

Diagnostics: Can you voluntarily reduce your information consumption? Have you tried?

The “We” Thinker: (W)holistic (E)xtrovert

Others appreciate your superior abilities to build successful teams and empathize with all personalities.

Junk Food Thinker: The Sheep

Us “We Thinkers” in particular need to feel connected with other people. Unfortunately, sometimes our own failure to really know ourselves makes us The Sheep. It’s not that us Sheep try to think as we’re told, it’s just that we’re just a little too insecure about feeling left out. So sometimes us Sheep merely believe whatever we can be convinced that others believe. How else could mass-advertising be so effective? It’s not like we even know who those happy-ad-people are, let alone why they’re happy! (But we buy their brand anyways.) Even worse, sometimes we can be tricked into feeling socially connected when we’re really not. Isn’t that the appeal of sitcoms and realty TV? How much do you know about the lives of celebrities? What is the name of Britney Spear’s husband? In fact, we think that you could be all alone amid a daily broadcast of fictional relationships, but that you’re too frightened by the guilt of lonely failure to realize it. Wouldn’t that be terrible?

Diagnostics: Do you have opinions that you hesitate to express to your peers?

The “See” Thinker: (S)equential (E)xtrovert

You are an expert, and people admire your judgment, knowledge, and authority.

Junk Food Thinker: The Telescope

Collaborative evidence seems to be so readily available when you want to find it, no? A See Thinker with “expertise blinders” becomes the irrelevant Telescope. People secretly disrespect The Telescope, though they rarely admit it openly. Could you be a hack and not know it? A true scholar today would know that a true scholar in the past studied astrology. Were experts then any less prestigious now? Yet, today astrology is considered to be a froofy pseudo-science of no substance. As intellectual, ask yourself this: wouldn’t it be a remarkable coincidence if ours was the first era to get everything right? Maybe prestige and titles don’t guarantee relevance… will people laugh at you in the future?

Diagnostics: What is your procedure for falsifying your theories?

Improve Your Cognitive Health Today!

The time for success is now, and we can help. To learn more about your Personal Thought Profile^tm, The Quad-Think Model^tm, and how your cognitive gifts may make your vulnerable to the dangers of “Junk Food Information,” attend one of our free introductory seminars in a major city near you. We offer an extensive body of media including books, audio CDs, our expert-renown lecture series, and exclusive consulting services —all provided to help you educate yourself about the dangers of subversive information-over-consumption, to increase your confidence, and to make more money.

Contact our Cognitive Leadership Success Consultants today!

Can somebody explain to me why Ayn Rand is such a popular author? I read “Anthem” in high school and I remember that I wrote in my book report that “Anthem was only tolerable because it was short. This book sucks, and it’s most memorable theme is that it sucked shortly, and so this book report didn’t take me too long to write.” —I didn’t say exactly that, but I do remember specifically stating verbatim “this book sucked, but thankfully, it only sucked shortly” and that I got an A.

In Silicon Valley, Ayn Rand is quite popular. So despite my misgivings, I tried reading Atlas Shrugged.

Listen, I get the virtues of capitalism. I get it. OK? I agree. Hooray for capitalism and useful productivity; boos for bullshit. Got it. What I don’t agree with is a thousand-page Potemkin village that exists solely to expound some pseudo-religious “school of thought” called “Objectivism” —complete with fellatious cover reviews and an insert invitation to join some Rand/Objectivism club. Yet, this entire (very round-about) attack on incestuous thinking is itself a novel promoting exactly that sort incestuous thinking. Nice.

This is why Objectivism is for worthless nerds.

Sidenote: I did like the third chapter in “Atlas Shrugged” that introduces Rearden and describes his relationship with his “family.” If this book could have been edited down to just a few chapters like this, it would have been enormously better.

Also, Dagny isn’t much of a character. Somebody told me that she knew a guy who idolized Dagny and dreamed of dating a women just like her. Oh, so he wants to date a rich girl with the emotional maturity of a child and an incapacity for critical thinking skills beyond brute, linear analytics… but who is still pretty hot? Charming. Why not just buy an Xbox?

This isn’t finished, edited, or formatted, but I’m publishing (in accordance with the One Day Early rule)because I’d really like to finish this and it’s been languishing. Nothing like a little public push to get things done…

(or: how to sell ideas without scruples)
(or: how to please people by creating an illusion of complete understanding so they can stop thinking and continue to believe whatever they want)

Distraction is the obesity of modern life. —me

1. Arbitrary Enumeration

3 Types of Intelligence, 5 Major Food Groups, Top 4 Warning Signs

Enumerating categories redirects the premise of understanding from the topic itself to the sum of its categories. If there are 4 Top Warning Signs, and you understand all four, then can’t you now justify your complete understanding of the threat? After all, which category did you not understand? If you feel that a category is missing or incomplete, let’s discuss your feelings —and then we can justify your complete understanding of the threat.

2. Illusions of scientific authority

graphs, grids, equations, statistics, models, systems

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed?

You may suffer from Cognitive Overload Disorder (COD).

But there is hope.

Thanks to the latest clinically-proven procurements in COD Science, The Andrew D Yates COD Science Institute now presents Quad-Think Model^tm: a coordinated matrix of cognitive habits specially designed to help you better understand your natural informational strengths and weaknesses by identifying your Personal Thought Profile^(tm). Using the Quad-Think Model^tm, you can improve your mental health by freeing invaluable cognitive abilities wasted consuming “Junk Food Information” that merely leads to an illusion of confidence about your world, not empirical understanding.

The Quad-Think Model(tm)

Your Personal Thought Profile^tm

The “Why” Thinker: (W)holistic (I)ntrovert

Your ability to create abstract mental models helps you grasp the big picture and fuels your craving for meaning.

Junk Food Thinker: The Zealot

A Why Thinker’s quest for a greater understanding make this otherwise visionary individual susceptible to treacherous romantic language and dogmatic fallacies of “right” and “wrong.” The Zealot craves belief-reaffirmation and will greedily consume emotionally-charged information laden with unjustified absolutes like “always” and “of course.” Of course, while Zealots relish attacking the wrong beliefs of others, they are always wrong at a higher level since they lack the introspection to doubt themselves.

Diagnostic: When was the last time you were wrong about something important?

The “Sci” Thinker: (S)equntial (I)ntrovert

Your superior memory, analytic skills, and attention to detail helps you exhaustively absorb facts, data, and information at rates that would exhaust others.

Junk Food Thinker: The Vacuum

Internet usage has grown 208.7% since 2000, and The Vacuum is a Sci Thinker who is addicted to consuming information for the sake of consuming information. Current events, tech news, sports statistics, forum discussion, social networks, blogs, email, cultural trivia… The Vacuum voraciously consumes these streams of low-quality, low-relevance information… even at the expense of their own well-being. Why do websites include a clock and market statistics? Are all emails urgent enough to answer in real time? Could you be carelessly satiating your human need to feel aware of your environment without the introspection to realize how little your empirical understanding accumulates? How many hours did you spend surfing the Internet last week? How much of what you read do you remember right now? Would you consider consuming a exhaustive, real-time information about your information consumption to reduce your information consumption?

Diagnostics: Could you go an entire day without any media? Have you tried?

The “We” Thinker: (W)holistic (E)xtrovert

Your value to others are your superior abilities to build successful teams and empathize with all people.

Junk Food Thinker: The Sheep

Us “We Thinkers” in particular need to feel connected with other people. Unfortunately, sometimes our own failure to really know ourselves makes us The Sheep. It’s not that us Sheep try to think as we’re told, it’s just that we’re just a little too insecure about feeling left out. So sometimes Sheep merely believe whatever they can be convinced that others believe. How else could stock photos of happy people so effective in advertising? It’s not like we even know who those people are, let alone why they’re happy! Even worse, sometimes we can be tricked into feeling socially connected when they really are not. Isn’t that the appeal of sitcoms and realty TV? How much do you know about the lives of celebrities? What is the name of Britney Spear’s husband? In fact, we think that you could be all alone amid a daily broadcast of fictional relationships with people you don’t really know, but that you’re too frightened by the guilt of failure to realize it. Wouldn’t that be terrible?

Diagnostics: Do you have opinions that you hesitate to express to your peers?

The “See” Thinker: (S)equential (E)xtrovert

You are an expert, and people admire your judgment, authority, and knowledge.

Junk Food Thinker: The Telescope

Collaborative evidence seems to be so readily available when you want to find it, no? A See Thinker blinded by expertise becomes the irrelevant Telescope. People secretly disrespect The Telescope, though they rarely will openly admit it. Could you be a hack and not know it? A true scholar today would know that a true scholar in the past studied subjects like astrology. Were experts then any less prestigious now? Yet, today astrology is considered to be a froofy pseudo-science of no substance. As intellectual, ask yourself this: wouldn’t it be a remarkable coincidence if ours was the first era to get everything right? Maybe prestige and titles don’t guarantee relevance… will people laugh at you in the future?

Diagnostics: What is your procedure for falsifying your theories?

3. Understanding by Understanding

natural, success, inappropriate, fat, too, knowledge, “hedging language”

What does natural mean? Or sometimes inappropriate? What’s knowledge, really? How much is too much? Is that person rather fat? You certainly feel like you understand these things, and though you may have a hard time explaining them exactly, you know what they mean when you see them. After all, don’t successful people naturally know that too much knowledge can sometimes be inappropriate?

4. Mix the Unknowable with the Mundane

Astrology, Tech news, lop-sided metaphors

5. Questions posed to manipulate your insecurities into an implicit answer

6. Flattery

But you already knew this.

7. Irrelevant personal anecdotes

All of this poetry is found elsewhere on this site (category: poetry)

I Fear the Funnyman

——
I fear the funnyman
what does he have to lose?
His spears the cheers and jeers of peers
into backs or turn and pale
in fights he gores you deeper.

How to fight the funnyman
our thoughts propel his arms.
His strikes you feel we all must know
His losses make him a man
Your losses make you The Man.

The Classroom

——
I know where all the poets are.
Who is the boy on your right
counting points in angles?
How deep is that girl
sunk in product?
Do they know
They are
Here.

Do

——
Eye pry to play
the pain away
Four three less one
my job is

Mathematical Hallucinations

——
How do people think?

I’m in the habit of half-sleeping. I’m not tired, and naps last minutes. But minds crave fancy, so I dream it.

Some thoughts are so suspect. But mistakes have yet to matter. Forgotten dreams lie lost like real. I note confusion, briefly.

It’s like the past, a clear night sky. You think to look, and you’re somewhere. Constellations shimmer, blaze, and churn. Meaning. You think to look again, but you’re nowhere. Only sky. Where were you?

And so the past.

Most memories feel so small —trees over planes. At a root, up one splays per each decision. Else I see but forks on sky and hardly think to search for trees when branches fade to silhouette. It’s dark. Were they there?

Smaller trees are straight and tall. I understand them. Lazily, I trace my tree from root to sky and back to me.

But larger trees are wicked and gnarly, tangly and sprawling. I see these trees and smell the mud. Where am I? I trudge closer. Maybe they were smaller than I thought.

And so I flow from now to then in dark Ohio haze.

Last Bit of Scat

——
I am dirt
blowing through physical foundations
saltpeter and the sand
sulfur and the soil
silicon
halcyon
who am I
36

The best way to get something done is to do something else.

The last week, I’ve been voraciously updating my technical skills in Emacs, Linux, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. Why? Because I’m supposed to be pounding out a “test project” called “drinkwitheme.com.” It’s a widget for your social network profile that lets people “buy you a drink” and leave you a message. I liked the idea initially because it would be easy to build and a good way to practice processing financial transactions online.

So over this past couple weeks, I shut down almost everything else and did “technology.” Now, all my tools are configured and my skills are sufficiently updated. So did I start work on my project?

Well, no. Instead, after reading Aaron’s Everything Good is Bad For You, I began to feel a bit guilty about building something that I, personally, have ambiguous to negative feelings about (the target market for drinkwithme was Myspace whores. I hate Myspace.) Worse, it was boring. So I registered Novelbite.com and made some plans to build a site where books would be published in small, blog-sized increments to an RSS feed. I even spoke with the local used bookstore and exchanged emails with the staff. Wouldn’t it be cool to know what technology books were selling best in the heart of Silicon Valley? (hint: you can’t even buy Ruby books here, they move so fast.)

And so did I start working on that? No, instead suddenly I had a string of social engagements. Gym with Joe (drop out, owns successful website) on Thursday. Cafe with Matt (ex-M$ PhD startup founder) on Friday, lunch with Tonya (bookstore girl) on Sunday. Cafe with Christina (Ruby on Rails and designer) on Monday. Meeting with Ian and Ward (contracting job) on Tuesday. Jeez.

And then, because Matt recommended it, after starting to read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I decided that I wanted to build a massively parallel network of programmable, customizable “pets” in a virtual world in which you could place a small square of it in your social network profile, call it myprofilepet.com (I own this domain), and use it to create a virtual micropayments market that would evolve into Glaukai Microtransactions like how Ruby on Rails was created to build Basecamp. Further, I would write this parallel network using Erlang, thus rebranding and promoting the language in the meantime at lang-lang.org (I also own this domain) like how Ruby does (ruby-lang.org).

So that’s what I started working on, right?

No, instead I started writing a new essay that I’m really pleased with (I’ll post it soon), I revised my old poetry and submitted it to the New Yorker (why not?), and I thought of a really good novel that I’ll probably never write (let’s be honest.)

I do really want to start working on that Erlang MyProfilePet project, though. It’s nagging at me. For some reason, it seems like sometimes simple tasks you don’t care about are so much harder than ambitious ones that you’re passionate about. It seems like money isn’t enough of a motivation to act without the social pressure of a traditional workplace… or severe financial insecurities.

Besides, look at that empty gap in my menu. That’s where new work is supposed to go!

About The Magic Sparkles Way

The Magic Sparkle Way (Better Known As (BKA) its Three Letter Acronymn (TLA) MSW) is dedicated to wasting your productive time messing around with your computer tools because they are never quite configured exactly the way you like. Magic Sparkles can only be evoked by mystical strings of command line options, obscure software libraries with names that, when said out-loud, summon a variety of minor demons (try it!), and tweaking various hidden configuration files involving exhausting spiritual quests (google).

The archetypal pop-culture example of The Magic Sparkle Way in practice is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It’s practiced by bitter, unshaven men who are duped into solving puzzles in the dark for greedy assholes to find the Solution to Everything, which always looks exactly as it shouldn’t, but never is chosen over the trap that looks exactly as it should, and even though you know better, you never quite earn the fame and fortune that you deserve because some new problem now demands your immediate attention.

Real Example!

The Magic Sparkles Way: How to get Emacs for Ubuntu with minimal suckage and lots of obnoxious configuration

Details from Emacs Wiki

You just can’t keep the fingers out of the Magic Sparkles, huh? You’re too linux/poor/old for a Mac? W32 editors are too “PHP” for the likes of your technical prowess? Emacs may be for you.

Experts agree that anti-aliasing is essential for pleasurable computing experience and above-average sexual performance. Yet poor Emacs, like a cockney flower girl with upper class aspirations, can’t seem to shake its filthy neckbeard breeding without substantial intervention.

I’m assuming that you have laughed away Ubuntu’s silly pretenses of “Normal People” (yah, no codecs, how am I supposed to watch porn and listen to emo?) and that you have already installed the basic prerequisite build tools. If not… slow down there, pipsqueak. We can’t be throwing fireballs all around all willy-nilly if we can’t quite get down magic missile. Go hit the Google.

Anyways, you’ll want to be sure that install “libncurses5-dev” first, or the emacs will fizzle when you try to run it in the terminal (option -nw). (note: all the cool kids run in root. I’ll be assuming you’re cool, too, and running in root —like how all the cool kids are)


sudo su
apt-get install libncurses5-dev


Next, navigate to a decent place to save source code. I personally prefer the following because I prefer obscure three-letter abbreviations for short, simple words like “user” and “source”, yet “local” is spelled-out to prevent any logical pattern that might facilitate understanding:


cd /usr/local/src


Now you need to download the source code (or “magic spell”). I could tell you what this command means, but I would have to flay your eyes with burning strips of human flesh, and frankly, I’m already missing breakfast to write this. You’ll just have to trust this works even if you don’t already know how:


cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/emacs co -r emacs-unicode-2 emacs


After a brief string of summonings, the Terrible Secrets of Emacs now reside in your working directory. I’m going to purposely leave out a minor step in this walkthru just to be sure that nobody accidentally performs any magic that they’re not quite ready to handle yet. It’s a tired cliche, and it always ends in disaster.

Next, you need to attune the Secret of Emacs to your system:


./configure --with-gtk --enable-font-backend --with-xft


You are now ready to build… can you weather the Screaming Sins of a Thousand Compiles? Be Strong…


make bootstrap
make
make install


Whew! Are you still here? Try this:


emacs --enable-font-backend --font "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-11" &
emacs -nw


Eh? Magic Sparkles? Yes yes? I hope so. If not, you’re probably a bad person, and God is punishing you. A Google onst thou! Atone for your Demons of Stupid!

Now, if you’re like me, you get rather tired of saying “emacs –enable-font-backend –font “Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-11.” Fortunately, the magic of Bash makes it obscure and difficult to create shortcuts! Add these lines to your “/etc/bash.bashrc” file:


alias e='emacs --enable-font-backend --font "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-11"'
alias se='sudo emacs --enable-font-backend --font "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono-11"'
alias fu='You, sir, are a degenerate human being, quite simian, really, and I strongly suspect ill-breeding and degenerate influences'
alias sfu='You, sir, are a degenerate human being, quite simian, really, and I strongly suspect ill-breeding and degenerate influences ...Seriously.'


And there you have it. Now go forth, and may a many Magic Sparkle be cast upon thou .emacs and *nix boxen!

Note: Please fill my comments about more Magic Sparkles and how my Magic Sparkles are not quite so Shiny nor Sparkly, nor do hardly any Magic Faeries dance about my Magic Sparkles in such a way that you find agreeable. After all, this is the Magic Sparkle Way.

nXML mode and the subsequent nXHTML mode for emacs are godsends. It makes web development in emacs feel natural and clean —very zen.

One problem: nXHTML doesn’t know about embedded Ruby (<% and %>). My beautiful emacs-ruby-rails setup was marred by this unfortunate detail… until now.

Marshall Vandegrift has a patch for nXML mode for emacs that makes all those nasty red underlines melt away. Thanks, Marshall! Maybe this patch will be incorporated into future versions of the derivative nXHTML mode?? (hint hint )

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been struggling to break time-wasting habits and increase my productivity. Since some of you have mentioned that you would like to know what I’ve been doing:

• No video games. I already knew this, but I can’t have any video games in the house, or I’ll play them obsessively. A couple of weeks ago, I reinstalled Warcraft 3 to play a friend in LAN. Afterwards, I easily burned an entire week playing. Yes, I can now probably kick my friend’s ass in 1v1, but is it worth it? No.
• Keep a sleep schedule. I like waking up at noon and going to bed at 4am, but the important part is that I always try to plan for about 8 or 9 hours of sleep, regardless of bedtime. Frankly, I can barely function doing anything that demands quiet and concentration with less than 8 hours of sleep. Sometimes I’ll oversleep and get 10 to 12. It’s better than undersleeping, though. Not absorbing that boring technical text for 14 tired hours is worth much less than a good cognitive pickup for 10 rested ones. Plus, I always get cool or insightful dreams when I oversleep.
• Avoid caffeine and sugar. I’ve done some experiments, and while the pickup from soda and Redbull is nice, usually it’s wasted by not being able to concentrate. Unless I’m many urgent, menial tasks, the boost is worthless. Worse, the crash afterwards will end my day. Further, I’ve noticed that after a week of drinking a lot of caffeine (like 2 Redbulls per day, plus tea and some soda), that I will need to sleep some ridiculous amount that weekend. This suggests that the caffeine is making my sleep low-quality and causing me to incur a sleep debt. Not good. I’m still fighting this habit, but I’m gradually replacing all soda and energy drinks with tea and tap water.
• End websurfing. I have a bad habit of obsessively checking the same websites while working for no reason. The worst are websites like Reddit and Digg, which can spawn fluff-surfing that lasts all day. It’s not as bad as television, but it’s close. Other websites include a few webcomics, blogs, and message boards. I used to have these sites blocked on my router behind a very long password, but eventually I got into the habit of typing the password and bypassing that several times a day. (Yes, I’m a mess.) Now, I have these sites blocked behind a “key-mashed” password, meaning I randomly typed a password that I could never remember. To visit these sites, I would have to physically reconfigure my entire network. So far, it’s been working.

  To prevent new obsessive-compulsive behavior, I’ve installed FoxFilter for Firefox. Sites behind this block require a little work-around, but are still accessible without rewarding the compulsion to pound out the URL without thinking. Gmail, for instance, is behind this block.

• Destroy old, dead work. Often, I feel like I can’t work on a new big project because I either feel like I have to work on something that I’ve already started, or because I feel that somehow my archive of past work makes starting new work not urgent. I’ve since decided that old work kept for “keepsake” is a mental burden that should be relieved. This is also why I’ve decided to aggressively adopt Linux and Ruby when I could have started my new projects right away with PHP and Windows. To me, knowing PHP and Windows was a burden because it prevented me from learning new, better ideas. Further, this is why I’ve deleted the Fizbang and IdiotStartup site. I don’t want the past cluttering my mind.
• Information Diet. This is related to “end websurfing,” but I try to avoid needlessly consuming junk information and surround myself with only quality information. For me, this goes beyond not watching trash TV (I won the TV war by accident by being a poor student unable to afford TV… ha!). I try to ignore almost all disjoint, sensationalist facts. My attitude is that if it’s worth knowing, that I can read about it in a few years. I still consume information, but much less, so I pay more attention to the information that I do consume, and I’m much more demanding about quality. For instance, I loathe social websites of all sorts. They are endless pits of urgent trash information. I also strongly dislike Yahoo because I feel that they betray their responsibility to be arbiters of information. Fortunately, Google picks up the slack. I rarely feel like Google is unfairly stealing my attention with trash. To satiate my information-cravings, I leave books all over my apartment. When I have a craving, I end it with a chapter of history or science, not with “Top %d %s of %s!!”
• Keep good health. Eat healthy, exercise, avoid junk food, etc. I snack all day on bananas, apples, baby carrots, and spinach. I’m really lazy when it comes to food, so I just make eating healthy less work than eating unhealthy. That means leaving bags of good food like carrot sticks on my desk (I eat every meal at my desk.) Another accident: I left my microwave in Ohio when I moved, and now I don’t own one. I only use hot tap water, a toaster, and a foreman grill. That means I eat a lot of grilled chicken breast, toast, canned soup, and tea. Yah, I have a stove and an oven, but I’m too lazy to use them. I’m also too lazy to eat out much because I have to walk all the way downtown, and I hate paying for delivery. This laziness, plus good grocery shopping habits, have done wonders for my diet. Oh, and I ride my bike and walk everywhere, everyday. And… I always take my vitamins… just in case
• Work late at night. At night, I don’t feel compelled to “do that one errand” and procrastinate… because all the stores are closed. This helps me keep large blocks of quiet work time so that I can concentrate. The exception is the Mountain View Safeway grocery store, which is open 24/7. I like to shop in the middle of the night as a break between big block of thinking time.
• Be anti-social. This sounds bad… but I usually purposely neglect my friends and avoid social activity. Otherwise, I’ll get into the habit of “being social” and no meaningful work get done. This is especially true for my more laid-back friends. I don’t feel too bad, though. I know my ambitious friends do the same to me, and I know that my unambitious friends like me best in small, rare doses. Also, this is what I’ve chosen to do, and since it’s my conscious decision, I assume full responsibility for it.
• Use good tools. Even the simple knowledge that you’ve bothered to find and learn good tools makes you eager to actually use them productively. I’ve noticed the small cognitive difference since I’ve switched definitively to Linux from Cygwin/Windows.
• No work music. The music itself may not be too distracting, especially for more menial work. The problem is that I tend to fiddle with the music player and flip through songs while working. This hurts my focus.
• Know what you won’t do. I’ve promised myself that I would not return to school and that I would not seek employment. I’ve been sabotaging myself in case I change my mind in weakness later (likely). You know a good way to inspire focus? The realization of how fucked you will be if you don’t focus.
• Find mentors. You don’t have to know each other. Merely learn about people who achieve like how you would like to achieve. Since they can do it, you can do it, too, right? That’s what you should think. I also feel a bit of envy or competitiveness. That energy helps, too. But then, if I were a Jedi, I would totally be that broody, dark, anti-hero Jedi that actually saves everyone and makes the world much better but is still considered evil and is therefore uncredited and unwelcome by the goody good Jedis because they are wusses and they suck anyways. All the ladies (and probably a few men, let’s be honest) would swoon over me and want to change me, but they can’t, because I’m awesome and distant and powerful but awesome and unchangeable.

Ok, I think it’s getting late.

I stumbled on the Loudthinking blog by chance today while researching Ruby on Rails. It’s the personal blog of David Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails itself. He’s 27.

I’ve always been curious about who super stars like David were like when they were my age. But David has blog archives all the way back to July 2001. I had to look. Here’s what I discovered:

David lives in Denmark, and he begins attending college for free at 21 (at least, he mentions not paying tuition, unlike Americans, thanks to Denmark’s high taxes.) He begins writing to challenge his own thinking after realizing that his parents, like most people, never escape their preconceived identities. He seems to hack about in shareware for Windows XP, getting more and more interested with open source and forcing himself to learn VIM. For the next few months, he writes about tech news and introspection, later revealing that around his birthday in November, he had been fired from his mundane dev job. His dabbling in freelance connects him with Jason Fried of 37signals, and they begin working together.

Fast-forward two years: It’s 2004, and Basecamp has launched, the first Ruby on Rails application. David reveals that Rails was his first Ruby project, that Basecamp was written in 4 months, and that he’s still studying as a student.

And now it’s 2007.

I wonder if I ever do anything great, that people will come back and read about me? David’s blog reminds me a lot of my friend Paul Betts’ blog: tech reviews interspersed with deep personal introspection. (Sorry Paul, no pressure to make the next Ruby on Rails or anything )

I wonder who I’ll be when I’m 25? I wonder if I will create something great in my twenties like David has? Reading his blog, he seemed to be like any regular gifted techy guy who got a little lucky and worked hard on the right big project.

I still need to type out this Rails shopping cart tutorial…

I found this link from the 37 Signals blog. Absolutely hilarious.

This reminds me of King Philip of Macedonia (father to Alexander the Great) from the “33 Strategies of War.” We hear a lot about Alexander, but how did he come to lead a united Greece? His father Philip united Greece in this way: in victory, rather than further humiliating opponents, he overwhelmed them with generous and even “flattering” settlements. Meanwhile, his enemies now placated, he took what he wanted behind their backs despite negotiated settlements. His enemies again humiliated, Philip would merely use his now extended power to grant even further conciliation. Fearing annihilation but granted honors, even his most bitter enemies celebrated his name. After all, Philip was now The King. He could grant what the people wanted. People like people who can give them what they want.

Negotiate while advancing.