Blog

Reset Expectations to Overcome Creative Blocks

A short video on getting past creative blocks by resetting your expectations, using a kind of reading most writers avoid.

Resolution - How To Be Interested in Anything

Every writing project has boring stretches, from thesis literature reviews to the middle of a novel. How to find something interesting in anything.

Resolving Freedom vs Constraint

Easy to start a project, hard to stick with it? Resolve the tension between freedom and constraint: constraint in the present, freedom in the future.

The Input/Output Ratio

Reading several books a month but "no time" to write? Why perfectionists love passive input, and how to shift your ratio toward output.

Use Perfectionism to Achieve Flow

What if perfectionism isn't a weakness but a misused strength? A way to work with it, finish work you're proud of, and find flow.

Writer’s block? 6 things to try to get unstuck

Struggling to start writing, or to keep going? Six things to try to get unstuck, from reading bad work to setting the bar at "the words exist".

A Lesson from Quantum Mechanics on Constraints & Creativity

Why I can't throw out my old physics assignments, and what quantum mechanics taught me about how constraints fuel creativity.

Deliberate Practice in Creative Pursuits

Writing a lot isn't enough to get better. The simple deliberate-practice drill I now use for fiction, built from other writers' short stories.

Making Project-based Practice Work

Project-based practice improves every part of your craft at once, but gives you too few repetitions. It turns out I was framing the trade-off wrong.

Sketching with Words

Painters sketch before they paint, but writers start at the beginning and hope to reach the end. How to sketch your writing first, and why it works.

How do you start writing your thesis?

Most PhD students put off starting their thesis because they don't know where or how to begin. Why you should start today, even without results, and how.

What if instead of projects, you used questions to guide you?

My PhD died the minute it stopped being a question and became a project. Why open questions, not projects, keep curiosity and motivation alive.

Your Supercomputer Mind

Working with supercomputers during my physics PhD gave me a new model for my own mind: one that solves problems without my thinking about them.

Gingko and the "5 Why's" Technique

Stuck putting out fires? Root cause analysis (the "5 Whys") uncovers the deeper reasons behind a problem. Here's how to do it in a tree, with a real example.

How to Make Better Decisions

Productivity comes down to deciding what you want and what to do about it. Why our brains get decisions wrong, and how to make better ones.

Lessons from Living Without Time

My PhD was done, yet the extra time never came. What I learned from months of waiting to have the time to do things.

Mindset: From "To Do" to "Could Do"

With hundreds of things you could be doing at any moment, how do you choose? Turning a "to do" list into a "could do" list beats analysis paralysis.

The Lies I Tell Myself

One small lie broke my 123-day writing streak, and my daily habits lost their power. What happened, and what I learned about honesty with yourself.

Trust Thyself

My morning ritual of reading Emerson's "Self-Reliance", and how it brought me closer to a life of tranquility and creative flow.

Two (silly) Techniques for Lasting Change

Resolutions fail because your subconscious resists change. Two simple (some would say silly) techniques that make new habits stick.

Why I take a week off every 7th

When things feel out of control, we fill the time with more busyness. Why I block out Thursday mornings to think, and take every 7th week off.

Marketing: Ramjets vs Signals

The sales funnel shapes how we think about marketing, and can make us hesitate to market at all. A different model: signals that draw people in.

The Pump and the Generator

Productivity and wealth are means to an end: freedom to do only what you love. Why "work" is a relic of the industrial age, and the mental models to change.

The Wealth of The Future

Am I wise or foolish about money? An argument in favor of wealth: money is a way to travel into the future.

We Restrain Ourselves

Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" and the false belief that worth is fixed and scarce, so that one person's gain is another's loss. How that belief holds us back.