The cognitive costs of context-switching are all about the brain work of choosing to ignore certain elements of your environment to focus on different ones. It's like having to go through everything in your field of view and review it for relevance whenever you change tasks without changing location. An immersive environment—be it for reading, writing, watching movies, making music—could reduce...
Diary 03
When it comes to prioritization, I'm rigidly hierarchical. Family always comes first, and that means writing must sometimes take a backseat. Reading is much easier to do when balancing those responsibilities, and that's the other thing I've been doing this past month.
On Knowing Everything
I used to think that a childhood spent reading books, an adolescence spent watching movies, and an undergraduate education spent discussing great works of philosophy and literature meant I had a pretty robust "hypothetical simulator" kicking around inside my brain. It took taking a job at Apple fixing computers for me to start to understand that everything I thought I knew was wrong. That's the...
Diary 02
I realize now how suspenseful it may have been to end a diary entry with, “I just tested positive for COVID-19,” and not follow it up with any kind of reassurance later. For that, I apologize. COVID hit the Hayes household and although it was disruptive and unpleasant, no one suffered any serious symptoms, and we’ve all made full recoveries. A month has gone by—a month in which...
Slaying the Obsidian Dragon
Trying to be productive, efficient, and organized is an Achilles’ Heel like no other—it suckers you into endless procrastination in the pursuit of a method to end procrastination once and for all, creating a vicious cycle of identifying a system for getting things done, implementing it to the best of your ability, then discovering a different potentially better system that requires you to...
Diary 01
If there's one thing I've learned from the past several weeks of travel, reading, and family visits, it's that my diary will quickly swell to an unmanageable size if I don't relieve the pressure a little more regularly.
Coping with Solastalgia
This post is for the majority of people who agree that climate change is real, it's affected by human activity, and they want to do something about it. Included are real solutions that range from individual lifestyle changes and systemic changes to a comprehensive plan to reverse global warming.
In Search of a Foundation
In one year, my son will be old enough to start kindergarten, and I will have to decide what to do with myself. I could get a job, go back to school, double down on writing, or just curl into a ball and cry about how we're all doomed. What should I do?
Writing and Reflecting in Obsidian — Writing Fiction
This is part 5 of a series about how I write and reflect using Obsidian, an extensible digital note-taking interface with some surprising and unexpectedly useful features. This post reviews the process I use to turn my ideas into prose for both short- and long-form fiction.
Writing and Reflecting in Obsidian — Fiction Planning and Incubation
This is part 3 of a series about how I write and reflect using Obsidian, an extensible digital note-taking interface with some surprising and unexpectedly useful features. This post reviews my workflow for collecting and acting upon story ideas, turning premises into polished prose.