The Element of Irreducible Rascality

This is one of my favorite phrases coined by Alan Watts, who I’ve been immersing myself in over the last few months.

The idea of the element of irreducible rascality is that there is no perfect system. There’s no ultimate stability in…

The Wiggle Theory

I love it when I arrive at the BART station just as a train pulls up, and there are SEATS! I take it as a good omen for the day, in the sense that the omen is part of the day, and it was good.

Intentionally Unoptimized

I love the Quantified Self movement, am a product manager for Twitter Analytics, love OKRs, and tend to frame everything in terms of metrics and data.

At the same time, I’m a huge skeptic of data-driven culture, fitness trackers, A/B testing, and the…

What Sparks Joy?

Like many people I read Marie Kondo’s book about the life-changing magic of tidying up. And like many people my house isn’t really that much tidier. But the part of the book that has really stuck with me is the activity of holding each of your possessions, waking it up from the deep sleep of…

“ — Written on BART”

I don’t have much time to write publicly anymore. I do still write privately on 750words.com fairly often. Even after 5+ years, private free-writing is still one of my favorite activities. However, for better or worse, my thoughts don’t feel fully real to me unless I have some public…

Particle Thinking vs Wave Thinking

Hello! 👋

When I was at the DMV this morning I had a moment of frustration when I realized that I didn’t have the right paperwork with me. I was quickly brushed away because I had misinterpreted the difference between a new application and a…

A couple other thoughts on this:

“What sparks joy?” is a phrase that sounds sort of awkward and self-indulgent. I keep trying to re-phrase it in words that are more consistent with my word aesthetic. However, I can’t just replace it with “what makes me happy?” or “what’s fucking awesome?” because I think there’s something…