Zerebria

I have blogged several times about the virtues of admiration, and the greatness of being a polymath, so I thought it would be nice to show that I practice what I preach by introducing here some of my heroes. (more…)

The problem

GTD fan as I am, I usually put a strong brain effort at the planning stage of a project, so I can later enter ‘executive mode’, following my self-instructions in a Robocop-like manner. Working like that guarantees (more…)

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The best way to organize documents is alphabetically.211221230 But when the stuff to classify is more voluminous or heterogeneous, the task usually becomes harder. One thing that I had some struggle with was stationery. (more…)

I’ll admit it: everything I do, I do it for my fiction. I honor writing as the art with the biggest powers, when considering its effects, and the degree of intimacy, elevation and sometimes “possession” it grants (writing, in its finest hour, becomes invisible, the words stop being “black boxes” with a meaning inside and become something similar to music). (more…)

I have a retarded mind: I very often go through the best ideas in books and posts without noticing them right away. They usually become some sort of “seed” in my head and take 3, 4 days to fully grow, without me having the least intention to do anything about them. And then one day, as a flower that opens after a delicate nurture, I say: “wow”, and do something about it.

Writing the successes of the day was one of those great ideas. Simple, non-coded, very little time-consuming, it pays off in a way that is almost scary. (more…)

“There is nothing wrong with me. In fact, I’m a very good boy. I do all the math. I separate color and white clothes before laundry. I can tell when a traffic light is red, a floor slippery or a person angry, thus increasing my owner’s probability of survival. And man, do I enjoy all of it! (more…)

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In ‘Getting Things Done‘ David Allen affirms that the size of projects does not matter (for those who are not familiar with the GTD methodology, Allen defines “project” as any desired result that requires more than one simple action-i.e. a “pack” of actions with a defined purpose), and in terms of logic, he is right. Everything in his book is rigorously logic. But it makes me think of certain (more…)

While any moment is good to start, personal journaling has always been a classical example of new year resolution. And a very healthy one: it increases your awareness and allows you to squeeze to the most the juice of every moment. Furthermore: in an age where time plays and fools us so badly, I have come to think that journaling (more…)

In his classic work ‘De Bono’s Thinking Course‘, the master of creative thinking Edward de Bono (of the ‘Six Thinking Hats‘ fame) exposes a series of techniques to improve reasoning, as a sort of exhaustive “thought gym”. One of his exercises consists in (more…)

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…”but I used to have a calendar!”

Don’t worry: you still do. It is just that it is not going to be that populated anymore. Allen’s methodology reduces its using to:

a) events with a fixed date (dentist, birthday, deadline set by somebody else) (more…)