One type of vicious circle is when you can’t do X unless you first do Y, but in order to do Y, you have to first do X. Which is impossible. And yet anyone who figures out a way to do X is bootstrapping. Which is admirable. On a computer, the process of booting is […]
Dilemmas usually defined as when you have to decide between two impossible choices. Mine are almost always between “I can’t do this” and “I must do this.” Some options: Avoid the situation (and thus cognitive dissonance related to it), but incur a heavy personal cost of lost or damaged trust and relationships. Ghosting. Tell the
That grid that has “urgent” along one axis and “important” along the other axis (the Eisenhower Principle) is driven by fear. It takes an overwhelming mass of all the things and turns them into “yes, but these two things are the only ones you actually need to panic about today.” The problem is, what do you do
The Eisenhower Principle: a simple system for an anxiety attack Read More »
Most of us don’t have conscious end-goals for our lives. We don’t have principles that we can state. We don’t know ourselves all that well. Sometimes we think we have these things and we don’t: the things we deeply, truly believe in are often beyond our grasp. So maybe starting off with long-term planning as
Marketing: how much effort does this technique take; how durable is the effect of the technique; what is the impact of the technique? Three axes for a graph: effort, durability, impact. A book review is high effort, high durability, high impact. A single tweet is low effort, low durability, low impact. A well-coordinated social media
I’m used to defining the story of a life. Not with each character I create, but with each book. There’s one main character; the entire book becomes a kind of exoskeleton for the character within. The other characters are reactions, motifs, variations, opinions–all of them filtered and refiltered through the main character’s perspective. If I
This morning was a pretty serious anxiety attack (for me; I didn’t have to go to the hospital or anything). I got to the point where I could journal, then started working away at the knot of it, pulling out one thread at a time. Now, I’m still anxious–but I’m not locked up and frozen.
I’ve been working with some people (Shannon Lawrence, Veronica Calisto, Pete Aldin, and Melissa Locy) to put together a panel on plot twists for Denver ComicCon, at the end of June. My line in the sand: if it’s gonna be an epic, major, unforgettable plot twist…you have to give the reader a key to it
Having a busy, hyperactive mind often shows up in my journaling as a hint that there’s something big on my mind behind all the rest of the stuff. When I can’t finish a sentence–when I not only can’t finish a sentence but have to start midway through the next sentence–when I’m writing so quickly that
Note: I’m a GenX-er. So I got the following spam the other day: I WILL REPORT YOU. YOU PIECE OF SHIT… Hey, Stop stalking me and my friend or I will report you. You piece of shit, cock-sucker douche. I do not know why you are doing this! You slept together once, only once. It
