Oliver Sacks on saving humanity:

I think we have to preserve the human scale — in life, in building, in architecture, in technology. The human scale doesn’t mean we can’t have grand visions of the universe, it doesn’t preclude the development of physics and cosmology, but it does mean one shouldn’t be an anonymous person — an anonymous non-person, one of a thousand non-people — in a skyscraper.

Henry Miller, concluding Tropic of Cancer:

Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.

The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself

Fans of the Blade Runner film know well that this gritty sci-fi noir is based on Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (which, like many adaptations, differs in significant ways from the source novel). I never knew, though, why it was called “Blade Runner” (although that was the title of Rick Deckard’s job, in the movie). The film’s name was cribbed from another novel for which no one less than William S. Burroughs had adapted to a screenplay:

No film was produced from the Burroughs treatment, but Hampton Fancher, a screenwriter for a film based on Philip K. Dick‘s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), had a copy. He suggested “Blade Runner”, as preferable to the earlier working titles “Android” and “Dangerous Days”, for the Dick adaptation.[3] In the film, released as Blade Runner in 1982, the term is never explained, and the plot has no connection to the Nourse and Burroughs stories.

The Bladerunner

One of OmniFocus’s best features is its structuring of a weekly review. OmniFocus basically makes a to-do list of your to-do list, and presents your projects to you for review, which you then tick off as done. This review is saved as metadata, so you can keep yourself accountable about reviewing your open loops.

I would argue that, besides capturing your commitments, the most important part of effectively using GTD is reviewing, weekly, your open loops: projects, tasks, calendar items, and notes.

So using Todoist requires you to create your own review, set a reminder, and dedicate time to doing so. There’s no GUI prompt as there is in OmniFocus. (You can, however, use one of Todoists’s templates.)

 

Todoist’s Weekly Review Template

There’s no reason you can’t just work your way down your projects list, and of course your inbox, as part of your weekly review. But I didn’t want to do that. So I created two filters:

My Weekly Review Filters

These filters show me what would be the equivalent of what OmniFocus would categorize as “active” (as opposed to deferred), and grouped by Home and Work projects.¹ (I otherwise create future projects as a subjproject under a project called “Future.”) Within these two projects, I use filters to show me available tasks, grouped by project. On one scrollable screen.

^{Home Weekly Review}    

 

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¹I’m jumping the gun a bit here, but I essentially created two projects: Home and Work, and then create specific projects under each area. This is because Todoist doesn’t (yet) support separating projects with a higher-level filing option (like areas of responsibility).

The Pete Plan alternates steady-state distance rowing with two different kinds of intervals. Just when you think you’re stuck on one mode, you find something like the Pete Plan.

Also: this morning’s 5k took me 20:25.8. Almost intermediate for a 45 y/o.

The Pete Plan

There are many articles on the Eisenhower Matrix, but here’s a handy infographic from Asana:

I’m trying out Todoist’s rather fixed priority setting thus:

Priority 1 = Important and Urgent (or what I call “Do it”)

Priority 2 = Important but Not Urgent (or what I call “Plan it”

Priority 3 = Not Important but Urgent

Priority 4 = I should probably either prioritize or junk these tasks

GTD has you avoid prioritizing tasks, but I never found a large body of tasks, even properly organized into projects and contexts, deferred or active, to be useful for getting through a day. I can’t say for sure that this scheme will work, but I do find myself working off of Todoist’s Today filter and then my “Do It” and “Plan It” filters each day.

Do It filter syntax:

    @important & @urgent | @Today | Today | p1

Plan It filter syntax:

    @important & !@urgent | P2

FDA Approves Drug to Fight Alzheimer’s:

Leqembi targets and reduces amyloid beta plaque in the brain, which slows progression of the disease. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid has previously said it would pay for the drug — at a cost of $26,500 per year — upon full authorization.  

Q&A: What to know about new Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi

Another great video from School of Life, philosopher Alain de Botton’s explainer for existence, examines self-esteem.

Where does self-esteem come from? His answers are surprising:

• Self-esteem has almost nothing to do with your particular achievements (“verifiable benchmarks,” as he calls them)
• How you compare to your same-sex parent has a lot to do with it: have you achieved more or less than mom or dad?
• How you compare to your age-peers has a lot to do with it: how are the people with whom you were educated, are about your age, and who live near you?
• What kind of love did you receive as a child? Was love conditional on achievement? Do you consistently pine for parental approval?

The degree of relativity is fascinating in this analysis: a person who is- by all conventional indications-successful, might feel less self esteem than a person who is monetarily poor but who is more well off than his father. And having attended college with a Bill Gates or Elon Musk doesn’t predispose you to healthy levels.

Self-esteem is a “prize of psychology,” not a fruit of something we achieve in the economy.

Self-Esteem

Rowing Level has a great section of their site for seeing how your rowing performance compares to others, as generally or specifically as you like. I can’t vouch for the validity of the data, but I am in the novice range for both the 7500 and 10k rows I’ve been favoring as of late:

Novice, for Rowing Level, is someone who has been rowing for “at least” six months, which is true for me currently and includes the time I spent rowing back in 2015-16. That first jag lasted from March 2015 through January 2016, but I was at most rowing every other day then, and it eventually tapered off to nothing when I decided to start lifting weights.

Another thing about my first stab: I was good about keeping data, but I didn’t use it to progress and didn’t vary my workouts ( I mostly did steady state of either 5000k or 30 mins). This go-round, especially recently, finds me scrutinizing my stats and increasing my goals. I started simply, following Apple Fitness + workouts. A new rower with a PM5 has changed my data game a bit and it’s exciting… and motivating.

I’ve sucked in the neighborhood of 50 pounds off of my frame. And I’m excited to row. Every day.

“Each of us is inevitable. Each of us is limitless.” – Walt Whitman

It’s a question as old as therapy itself, and one insurance adjusters are keen to answer. I have always thought that most studies come up with about a 50% success rate… similar to a placebo.

The most significant difference in patient outcomes, Wampold says, almost always lies in the skills of the therapist, rather than the techniques they rely on. Hundreds of studies have shown that the strength of the patient-therapist bond — a patient’s sense of safety and alignment with the therapist on how to reach defined goals — is a powerful predictor of how likely that patient is to experience results from therapy. But what distinguishes the therapists most likely to forge those bonds is not intuitive. Wampold says that some of the attributes that would seem most salient — a therapist’s agreeability, years of training, years of experience — do not correlate at all with effectiveness of care.

Maybe it’s the relationship that matters, not the discipline.

Does Therapy Really Work? Let’s Unpack That.

Hugh Jackman, who is to Wolverine what Robert Downey Jr is to Tony Stark, prefers rowing to keep fit:

“There’s a reason the rower’s usually empty at the gym—because it’s difficult,” he said. “And a lot of people want to say it and feel they’ve worked out, and they want to get a sweat, but they don’t necessarily… And the rowing machine—I think if you add in some chest work, some pushups, that’s everything you need to keep fit, healthy, strong… It’s such a good building exercise for deadlifts and all these core movements, compound movements, getting your scapula—everything sort of in the right place—and your breathing and relaxing your neck, you know, at the same time as doing it.”

I scrubbed up to the section of the Tim Ferriss podcast to listen to where Jackman dishes on rowing. He said that all you need is 7 minutes, four times a week. But then he said something like “shoot for 2000.” I thought at first that that’s a pretty light bit of rowing for someone in good shape. But then I realized maybe he’s talking about getting 2k in 7 minutes, which would be a pretty impressive split time of 1:45. That makes a bit more sense.

Hugh Jackman Just Shared Some of His Best Workout and Training Advice With Tim Ferriss.

Jared Andrukanis, quoted from Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography in Vanity Fair:

He put a lot of everything in that basket–he shoveled his work life, his personal life, he shoveled his persona into his relationship, and that is a recipe for fucking disaster, no matter who you are.

“That basket” being his relationship with Asia Argento, for whom he appeared to be limerent right up to his tragic end.

“I Knew It Was Doomed; I Knew Someone Was Doomed”: Inside Anthony Bourdain’s All-Consuming Relationship

Alia Wong, writing for The Atlantic:

One easy fix: a little bell-schedule rejiggering so that middle-schoolers can fuel their growing appetites when their bodies need it. Cruz’s school, Oyster-Adams, decided to implement a 20-minute snack break at 10:45 a.m. so the district’s existing lunchtime for the school (which also serves younger grades on another part of campus) wouldn’t leave her with hangry tweens. Another change: Middle-school classrooms should budget for air conditioning—tween bodies do not smell or feel good when it’s stuffy inside. Of course, the structural changes that benefit one community of preteens may not make sense in another.

Would that it were so easy.

Why Is Middle School So Hard for So Many People?

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We spend our lives trying to anchor our transience in some illusion of permanence and stability. We lay plans, we make vows, we backbone the flow of uncertainty with habits and routines that lull us with the comforting dream of predictability and control, only to find ourselves again and again bent at the knees with surrender to forces and events vastly larger than us. In those moments, kneeling in a pool of the unknown, the heart breaks open and allows life — life itself, not the simulacrum of life that comes from control — to rush in.

Maria Popova, reviewing Tina Davidson’s Let Your Heart Be Broken

 

I was surprised to learn that, like iA Writer, OneNote can create a new note using brackets (aka wikilinks). It’s a handy shortcut that can save you some time and clicks. Here’s how it works:

• Type two square brackets [[ ]] anywhere on your page.

• Inside the brackets, type the title of your new note. For example, [[My Shopping List]].

• Press Enter or click outside the brackets.

• Voila! You have created a new note with the title you typed. You can see it in your notebook list on the left.

 

(This shortcut works in OneNote for Windows 10, OneNote 2016, and OneNote Online. You can also use it to link to existing notes by typing their titles inside the brackets.)