The 365 Commitment is a simple formula that I use to keep my life on track. This has ended up being a daily writing that I produce each day during my latest personal transformation.
You can read the daily blog or sign up for the daily update. This blog is about motivation, inspiration and encouragement to make and keep life changing commitments.
This article explores the practical necessity of a concept of God, regardless of personal belief in a literal deity. It argues that humans need a higher, fixed point of reference to establish values, prevent self-serving rationalizations, and guide their aspirations beyond immediate desires and worldly pursuits.
This article explores the idea that while small, consistent actions are powerful, they don’t automatically compound into significant results. It emphasizes that mindful repetition, reflection, and adjusting the process are crucial to ensure habits remain effective and aligned with their original purpose.
The author shares two anecdotes—an AI system stuck in a loop and a sprinkler system with a hidden leak—to illustrate the critical need for supervision, even in automated processes. The core message is that automation reduces mental load but doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to monitor systems and routines to ensure they continue to serve their intended purpose and don’t cause unforeseen harm.
This article explores the pervasive human experience of guilt, drawing parallels between psychological insights, religious practices, and anecdotal evidence. It highlights the importance of taking action—whether through restitution, apology, or confession—to alleviate the burden of guilt, citing examples like visitors returning stolen items to Petrified Forest National Park and personal reflections on unresolved past actions.
The widespread use of AI writing assistants is leading to a concerning ‘voice flattening’ in personal identity, as AI-assisted rewriting reduces linguistic diversity. This can make our words and thinking generic, blurring the essence of our personal identity. The author recommends using AI deliberately to maintain one’s unique voice.
The author describes how social media algorithms create ‘bubbles’ based on user preferences and engagement. They challenge readers to deliberately change the signals they feed to these platforms to alter their online experience. The author shares a personal experiment of immersing themselves in baseball content to escape the political bubble and observe the impact on their feeds and perception of the world.
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This article explores how our memory of experiences is not always accurate, drawing on research by Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman. It highlights that people tend to remember peak moments and happy endings more vividly than the duration of discomfort, influencing their overall perception of an event.
An ultra-marathon runner shares a technique used during a 50-mile race: focusing on pain to manage it. This practice is supported by a new study indicating that voluntary attention to physical discomfort can regulate the body’s inflammatory response.
The author discusses the negative impact of social media, drawing parallels between its addictive nature and strong narcotics. They highlight a personal decision to limit their children’s access to social media and reference a study on hair pulling that suggests boredom, not stress, is a primary driver of habitual behaviors. This leads to a reflection on the common excuse of “relieving stress” for doomscrolling, proposing that boredom might be the real underlying cause.
This piece explores the essence of the blues, moving beyond technical definitions to delve into its emotional and structural complexities. It suggests that the blues isn’t about resolving tension but rather providing a space for it to exist and be expressed, making personal struggles communal through its unique language of ambiguity and contradiction.
This article explores the idea that finding a partner, or any new relationship, is fundamentally a probability problem influenced by one’s environment. It suggests that by changing the environments we inhabit, we can increase the number and variety of people we meet, foster repeated exposure for deeper connections, and create new ‘weak ties’ that expand our social universe, ultimately leading to more opportunities for meaningful relationships.
The author explores the reasons why people might hesitate to reveal certain aspects of themselves, using their love for opera as an example. They differentiate between privacy and concealment, arguing that while privacy is a healthy boundary, concealment stems from a fear of judgment and can be a burden. The piece concludes by advocating for the freedom found in being less concerned with labels and more comfortable with revealing one’s true complexity.
The author recounts his frustrating experience with home automation after Google abandoned its Nest architecture, leading him to build his own system. He highlights the significant time and effort required for maintenance and the eventual abandonment of his automation efforts due to the high ‘economic life’ cost. However, with the advent of AI, the cost and effort of automation have decreased, making it more feasible and renewing his interest in deploying future automations.
This article explores the concept that speed often leads to success in various fields, from business to technology and sports. It argues that systems capable of rapid action, feedback, and adjustment tend to outperform those focused on avoiding errors. The author highlights the importance of fast feedback loops, citing John Boyd’s OODA loop and its application in AI systems. The piece also discusses the speed-accuracy tradeoff, noting that while speed can lead to more mistakes, these are often recoverable, and the compounding effect of rapid learning ultimately drives better results.
This article explores the contrast between iterative and linear thinking, highlighting their respective strengths and weaknesses. It argues that while iterative thinking is beneficial in many fields, it can sometimes be an excuse for insufficient upfront planning, and proposes a hybrid approach for more robust decision-making.