Exile Lifestyle

One of my grand ambitions when I was younger was to build a lifestyle that would allow me to just sit around and read all day, if I wanted to do so. I still experience a small thrill when I…

As a general rule, if there’s something vital you need to get done, it helps to shift it forward to the morning. Everyone’s circadian rhythm is different and our rhythms change over the course of our lives (on average nudging…

My car—a beige 2007 Prius I bought several years ago, and which I intend to keep driving until it’s dead (over 150,000 miles and still ticking along)—doesn’t cause me trouble most of the time. The other day, though, the little…

Working the way I work is sub-optimal by many standards. Over the years, I’ve figured out all sorts of ways to do my work more efficiently, but sometimes pull back from those approaches because the “enhanced” methods diminish my experience…

When our lifestyle variables remain the same or roughly the same for long enough, it’s a simple matter (bordering on the inevitable, for some of us at least) to fall into what I like to call the “everlasting present.” This…

I’m generally skeptical about claims of silver bullet solutions to complex problems. Biological matters—our bodies aging, our brains not always functioning as optimally as we’d prefer—are foggy, multifaceted issues. Social matters, likewise, are muddled at best, and anyone who claims…

I’ve spent maybe too much time over the past several years thinking about society’s assumed, “normal” stages of life. This is partly (I suspect) because I’ve taken a somewhat unusual path (relative to what we might think of as the…

When I find myself endlessly (and purposelessly) ruminating, worrying, or otherwise spiraling in a negative direction, maybe half the time I can pull myself from that psychological eddy by reframing how I’m thinking about the project, relationship, approach, outcome, or…

A flurry of new organization-, optimization-, communication-, and consolidation-focused tools have been announced and released over the past few years. Some are slightly upgraded versions of earlier options (a somewhat better calendar, a project organizer with a more complex or…

One of the better decisions I’ve made over the past decade or so is allowing myself to say “I don’t know” and “I don’t have an informed opinion about that” more often. Giving oneself permission to admit ignorance isn’t easy…