Colin Wright's Blog, page 4

Places to Put Things

When I think about work, I sometimes visualize a collection of little boxes in which I can put things.

This is true of paid work—the projects that help me make rent and buy groceries—but also the sort of work I do alongside that, which is maybe just for fun, maybe meant to help me grow in some fashion, maybe something experimental and boundary-expanding, and maybe something that will someday evolve into a money-making venture.

I suspect I reflexively reach for this metaphor because I often...

What I’ve Got

It can be useful to embrace your limitations when you feel stuck, uninspired, or unable to make any progress on some task or undertaking.

Sometimes you’re missing what feels like a vital component or data-point, and the slow-down is related to that lack of a fundamental tool or possibly necessary information.

Sometimes the array of options you face is so sprawling and varied that homing in on the ideal next-step feels overwhelming or impossible.

Sometimes the weight of the task—its bulk...

Energetic Expenditures

There are countless ways we might visualize our portfolio of intrinsic resources, but one metaphor I find to be useful is that of electrical production and expenditure.

You can produce electricity in all sorts of ways, ranging from the burning of coal to the harnessing of photons (using solar panels) to the tapping of wind and water and other sorts of environmental movement using turbines of various shapes and sizes.

You can then spend this accumulated energy in all sorts of ways and on al...

Notes On Speaking

I’ve been speaking professionally (in the sense of standing up in front of groups of people and talking for a while, for money) since 2009 (though it didn’t become a real-deal part of my career until a few years after that), and I’d like to share some things I’ve learned in that time, having since given hundreds of talks to groups of five and crowds of 5,000, at schools, conferences, libraries, and everything in between.

First, a lot of people are curious about how the speaking world works, i...

The Spark

Recent data almost universally suggest we’re in the midst of a loneliness epidemic.

Folks are spending less time with friends and acquaintances, more time wishing they were hanging out with other people, and are benefitting from fewer of the warm feelings we tend to associate with meaningful (and even casual) human contact.

I suspect this isn’t just the consequence of pandemic-era isolation: we’re being tossed about by a cyclone of novel technologies and communication mores that arguably f...

Weighing Maybes

I’m in the process of figuring out “formats” for some experimentation I’m doing in the video world.

In publishing or production, your format is a bit like a template you use for whatever it is you’re making.

So the format for my One Sentence News email is three news items, each briefly summarized and contextualized, followed by some kind of image and a number (each also concisely explained), with a “trust click” link to something interesting at the bottom. The podcast format for OSN is an ...

Fumbling and Juggling

I turn 38 this weekend, and as tends to be the case every year I’ve been wrangling over whether to instill the day with additional meaning (beyond the accolade of having survived another orbit around the sun).

My inclination is to shape my life so that there are plenty of peaks and valleys, but to also invest in both practical and philosophical salves for most of what life might throw at me (slowly accumulated savings and a AAA membership, but also a “go with the flow” default stance and a re...

Microgrid Thinking

In the world of energy transmission and utility, a “microgrid” is an electrical grid that operates like a typical grid, but is smaller and more modular.

When we talk about electrical grids, we’re talking about all the energy generation elements (power plants, solar arrays, etc), the cables and related infrastructure that gets energy from where it’s produced to where it’s ultimately consumed, and the stuff in between that moderates the strength of energy transmission in various ways (amplifyin...

Enriching Exposure

One of my grand ambitions when I was younger was to build a lifestyle that would allow me to just sit around and read all day, if I wanted to do so.

I still experience a small thrill when I realize, today, I can generally set things aside and hunker down with a book until I’m ready to reascend to the surface of life.

There are tradeoffs associated with re-delegating hours to that sort of undertaking—engaging with someone else’s words, thoughts, stories, and ideas for extended periods of ti...

Front-Loading

As a general rule, if there’s something vital you need to get done, it helps to shift it forward to the morning.

Everyone’s circadian rhythm is different and our rhythms change over the course of our lives (on average nudging us from night owls into early birds as we age), but the benefits of front-loading tasks are derived more from the ease of establishing habits and rhythms soon after waking up than the morning always being the most energetically opportune time to accomplish things.

By ...