Productivity

Jun. 26, 2011

Leonardo, procrastinator

Leonardo da Vinci’s epic procrastination and the practical use of procrastination as a sign that your work (rather than yourself) may be dull.

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Jun. 10, 2011

Think Quantity

Looking over the numbers of prolific artists and innovators reinforces the basic rule: Creativity is a function of the quantity of work produced.

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Feb. 16, 2011

Daniel Pink: What Motivates Us

An animation of Daniel Pink’s wonderful lecture about what really motivates creatives and other “idea workers.”

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Oct. 8, 2010

The Cure for Procrastination

Merlin Mann’s advice: first, care.

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Oct. 4, 2010

Procrastination and the Divided Self

A theory of procrastination: “… the person who makes plans and the person who fails to carry them out are not really the same person: they’re different parts of what the game theorist Thomas Schelling called ‘the divided self.’ Schelling proposes that we think of ourselves not as unified selves but as different beings, jostling, contending, [...]

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Aug. 2, 2010

The Sawyer Effect

Tom Sawyer and the power of intrinsic motivation.

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Jun. 5, 2010

Writers Unplugged

Myself, I’ve set up a second computer, devoid of internet, for my fiction-writing. That’s to say, I took an expensive Mac and turned it back into a typewriter. (You should imagine my computer set-up guy’s consternation when I insisted he drag the internet function out of the thing entirely. “I can just hide it from [...]

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May. 21, 2010

Writing Like It’s 1999

Why I use a ten-year-old, slow, WiFi-free ThinkPad: it’s the perfect writer’s computer

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Apr. 28, 2010

The Price of Procrastination

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” — William James

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Feb. 17, 2010

Henry Miller’s Eleven Commandments

Commandments 1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!5. When you can’t create you [...]

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