8 months of Mystical Silicon

What have I been writing about?

It’s been a little over eight months since I started writing this newsletter. Last week I wrote my summary of Tyler Cowen's approach to leading an intellectually fulfilling life and it was by far my most popular post yet. As a result, almost half of you reading this post are new. Welcome!

Despite having a moderate Twitter following, when I first started writing the newsletter I only had a handful of readers: it was my mom, father-in-law and a few close friends. My newsletter has grown over the months so I thought I would use this post as an opportunity to step back and see what I’ve been writing.

In total I’ve written 38 posts and I push myself to write once a week. The way I decide the topic is I find something I’m actively thinking about and force myself to expand on it. I have a backlog of ideas and notes that accrue over time, but I’m much more motivated to write if it’s something I can’t stop thinking about... Some weeks this has been more mindfulness-focused. Other weeks it’s been something at work, a book I’m reading, or a specific new habit I’m trying to build.

When I bucket my posts there are clearly some themes coming through: as expected I am writing about mindfulness a fair bit but most of my posts (and also my more popular posts) have actually been about work & daily habits - it seems that those areas are resonating most...

The other insight from the categorization is that concentration, meditation and mindfulness tend to bleed into all the other topics. The themes form a Venn diagram with the main categories being: Concentration, mindfulness & meditation; Longevity and long-term thinking; Beauty; Daily habits; Work habits; and Memorization.

Below the fold I’ve bucketed most of my posts into these categories since most of them are by definition new to most of you (since there are more newsletter subscribers now than readers when I first wrote them). The posts with asterisks are those that were most popular in case that’s a proxy you’d like to use :) If any look interesting to you, click and learn more!

POSTS SEPTEMBER-MAY BY THEME

ON CONCENTRATION, MEDITATION & MINDFULNESS

• Taming the elephant: Stop & Focus*

• On monotasking*

• An awareness of things: “Mono no aware”*

• On concentration & warehousing

• On Mindful Eating

• On Mindfulness Breaks

• A few minutes from Tyler Cowen's interview with Chuck Klosterman*

• Reflections on “Everything everywhere all at once”

ON DAILY HABITS

• On not drinking alcohol*

• Embracing Deep Work*

• On morning routines, habit cues & remembering*

• Mental time zones: Why information speed matters*

• Keeping track of your days: Building a daily journal habit

• Three Forms of Walking

• Micro-exercising throughout the day*

ON WORK HABITS

• On making progress*

• On Right Livelihood & Values*

• Why I like Myers Briggs (with dynomight's expansions)*

• On Reading Faster

• On lists & checkboxes

• Expanding conceptions of the possible

• On making ancillary decision: make a decision and then make the decision better

• On asking questions & tools for thinking

ON LONGEVITY & LONG-TERM THINKING

• On mushrooms, bardos and impermanence*

• Thinking long-term*

• Longevity everywhere around me

• What would you change if you were to live another 100 years?

ON BEAUTY

• "The Discovery of Slowness"

• On word painting, pattern languages and finding beauty

• On Christopher Alexander’s "Nature of Order"

  • Part I - On Degrees of "Life"

  • Part II - On centers & the “15 fundamental properties”

ON MEMORIZATION

• #1 - On the importance of memorization

• #2 - On building a memory habit

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It’s been a real joy writing these posts every week. The process forces me to recenter and become less reactive to the daily back-and-forth around me.

Thank you so much for reading!

🙏🏼🌸⛩