Zerebria

Here’s a story about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. A few summers ago, I was spending some days with my family at the beach. One morning, I went to the balcony and found certain relative of mine, not very intelligent, who was (more…)

The best way to organize documents is alphabetically. 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 feel terrible. My throat is spiked with thorns, I have this intermittent pain in my articulations, I’m cold, I’m hot. A few minutes ago, I went into the shower before removing my soaked sheets, after a night of what only very generously could be named as “sleep”. I remember a moment after the shower, when I (more…)

Say you love David Allen… (O.K., say what you want). Long and steep is the road from messy to productive, but gratifications are spread like sweet fruits all along the way. It is not about upgrading; it about growing. Once you get  it, Allen’s Getting Things Done system is a very tight tool to use; as he himself states in “Making it all work”, with a delicious lack of false humility, (more…)

The issue rose in a recent conversation with a close relative of mine: “philosophy is not necessary for life”, said the relative, in a somewhat disdainful tone.

It is important to notice that, in the context of this conversation, the word “philosophy” was indeed used (more…)

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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…)

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…)

…”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…)

Abbreviations: a discipline itself

A very common mistake in my note taking was (and still sometimes is) that I unconsciously intended to be “understandable” to others. There always seemed to be a sort of imaginary reader (more…)