Colin Wright's Blog, page 13

Flaws

The stock market, if you learn about it and look very closely, makes little sense.

There are good intentions behind it, and in the abstract it’s a decent means of getting resources where they need to be while incentivizing economic productivity and participation.

But the incentives at play are often misaligned, the mechanisms by which it’s managed and balanced are off-kilter, and the agglomeration of finicky, ultra-specific and arcane rules and regulations have made the whole, ponderous be...

It’ll Do

I have a lot of very flawed systems and tools that I use on a daily basis.

My calendar, for instance, serves as both a to-do list and schedule of events. It’s fine for both purposes, but not great at either.

My note-taking setup, likewise, is not sophisticated or optimized for the tasks I throw at it. It’s basically a stack of digital paper that syncs to the cloud and allows me to jot stuff down, and I use for lists and notes and even podcast episode scripts, before then copying and pastin...

Limited Capacity

Sometimes, in some rare cases, I live up to my every expectation of myself; but almost always I fall short.

This isn’t a self-criticism, it’s a reality. And it’s one that I’ve learned to accept in the same way I accept that sometimes I would like to eat absolutely everything on a restaurant menu, but I know, much to my chagrin, that I cannot. I also know that if I did somehow manage to live up to those expansive ambitions, I’d probably regret it.

This more rational assessment of my true ph...

Taking A Moment

I forced myself to take ten minutes to think about difficult things, this morning.

On a typical day, I set aside twenty minutes for quiet, undistracted thinking. I let my mind wander and do nothing at all, usually staring at a wall or closing my eyes, occasionally turning on some kind of white noise or natural soundscape, but generally just working with whatever’s already in the aural environment.

The point of this habit, generally, is to allow my mind to untangle itself, to give underlying worrie...

Filter Failure

Distorted, mistaken, or outright false information is as common as oxygen in our modern, interconnected communication ecosystem.

It should be no surprise, then, that we inhale so much of it.

This is true no matter who you are, what your level of education or social status, how intelligent you seem to be, or how deep your knowledge-reserves. Misinformation experts succumb to misinformation, and in-the-know people do ignorant things under the influence of seeming facts that, upon closer inspection, ...

Next

Many ambitions require periods of soil-tilling and seed-planting if we want to make them a reality.

Consistent habits can help us realize outcomes that outweigh the total aggregated inputs: our small, daily efforts transmogrify into more than the sum of their components so that 1 + 1 = 3 (or 4, or 5).

In some cases, though, the goal and the practices that help us pursue that goal may be very different in shape, focus, and function.

Learning about business fundamentals, for instance, may require a d...

Plague-Adjusted

When catching up with friends and family, of late, I’ve found myself asking how they’re doing in plague-adjusted terms, rather than in an absolute sense.

I think this is only fair because, for many of us, this has not been a spectacular year—for many reasons—and the wild, disruptive variables associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have been at the core of many wellness-barometer adjustments downward.

I also think this is a healthy way of perceiving things because although I have certain default exp...

Weird Stuff Only

As you learn about a topic or achieve proficiency with a skill, it can become intimidating to utilize that skill or learn more about that topic.

I was an art student when I arrived at university, and spent my first year doing typical arty-things: drawing, painting, sculpting, photographing.

I segued into a dual-emphasis degree in graphic design and illustration my second year, which required some different focuses, but still necessitated quite a lot of drawing, composing, color theory, and the lik...

Irritate & Inspire

I’m a big believer in the value of maintaining a beginner’s mindset.

This concept can mean different things to different people, but to me, being a beginner means the unabashed embrace of the unknown, the frustration of things you can see but not grasp, the ability to ask questions without social penalty, and a general sense of unlimited potential.

As we learn and grow, and in some cases achieve some kind of credibility or even prestige as knowledgable, capable people, we become less inclined to s...

Mental Real Estate

There’s a decent amount of evidence that geolocation—where we are any any given moment, physically—influences our state of mind.

Our location in space can also stimulate our capacity to remember things. This effect is so potent that many champion memorizers utilize some variation of the “memory palace” technique, which typically involves walking through an imaginary version of a familiar space, placing the things they need to remember within that explorable context as if they were physical object...