The algorithms¹ blessed me with this video last week, and I find myself coming back to it when I'm doing deep work.

I also am enjoying his Rammstein version, and I am eagerly looking forward to checking out the Linkin Park and Avenged Sevenfold ones soon.

If I could play the piano, this is absolutely the kind of stuff I would want to play.

I thought this was a really interesting article as I start to blog more and aspire to share more of my thoughts online.

This section of the article is something I’ve been considering myself:

To avoid being overloaded with feedback, or risk posting an opinion that may not age well, Adedeji is instead rethinking how she approaches sharing opinions online. “I’ve gone from being able to produce maybe two essays a month to now maybe once every three months I’ll come up with something, because I’m actively having to deconstruct what I think and think about why that’s my opinion,” she says.

Honestly, I don’t see this as a problem. When your social status gets higher, it means your opinion actually starts to matter.

And since your voice matters and you’ll be looked to as a leader, it’s really important to be confident and researched in your opinion. I might argue it’s an imperative.

Longer form, well researched articles are a net positive for our discourse. Those can only be done when you take your time and do that deep work.

Of course, people should be entitled to hot takes. It was interesting to read that “a post from 10 years ago functionally looks the same as a post from today” quote in here.

It does stink that there isn’t an instinctual design to help us remember which tweets are dated.

If you watch a home movie on VHS, it has an inherent feeling that it comes from the past. A newspaper clipping evokes a similar feeling.

But unlike tracking lines and yellowing paper, there’s nothing ephemeral or decaying about the presentation of a tweet that would serve as a visual cue to show that something is slightly out of date.¹

In all the texts, emails, and Slack messages I’ve sent in my life, I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve apologized for my delay. But looking back, I can say that only once did I truly mean it: I was a full four months late in responding to a long and thoughtful email I had received from a reader. But here in this public forum, I would like to retract all of my other previous apologies. I am not sorry for my delay, and I don’t expect you to be either.

I’ve been getting better about not apologizing for delays in my messages, but after reading this post (and especially after reading the last paragraph I shared above), I’m going to stop apologizing for delays altogether.

We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.

The first emphasis in Make Fewer Things Matter is “make.” Things don’t stop mattering on their own. You don’t just ignore them. You do something to make them not matter.

The next emphasis is “fewer.” Some things will still matter, but you reduce the number of them. Make a big list of things you think are important. Look at each item and look for ways to make it not matter.

After you go through everything and you try to make them not matter, you’re left with a few things that truly matter.

A lot of the articles and videos I've come across lately are about being productive at work and how to really get work done.

I read an article by Michael "Rands" Lopp about setting aside one hour a day to just sit in silence and create something.

It meshed up very well with this video by Jason Fried, who hypothesizes that work operates in cycles, much like sleep.

In order to achieve "a good night's sleep," you have to go through several stages of sleep. If you're interrupted, you have to start back at the beginning.

So it is with work.

God knows I'm guilty of spending 12 minutes on a project, only to hop over to Facebook and see that, once again, nothing has changed.

I'm going to issue myself a personal challenge. I want to see if, for the next week, I can spend 30 minutes a day with my cell phone turned off, my email client closed, and my social media sites logged out.

For 30 minutes, I will do nothing but edit or program. I will ignore all others (sorry Shannon) and fully immerse myself in a given task.

I'm sure there's no such thing as a "paleo diet" for working, but I bet this is a good first step in that direction.