{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "Adam Keys is Linking", "icon": "https://micro.blog/therealadam/avatar.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://short.therealadam.com/", "feed_url": "https://short.therealadam.com/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/03/13/collective-flow.html", "title": "Collective flow", "content_html": "
Dave Rupert, Play at work:
\n\n\nI’ve talked about this before in the context of prototyping and play and how we worked at Paravel. It’s a lot like playing baseball; each member of the team showing up to practice, volleying work (in screenshots, short videos, or demos), pushing changes, communicating thoughts and challenges in the moment outside the confines of slotted meeting times. Me and my coworkers, having a catch.
\n
Several years ago, when I was doing improv, I was rehearsing for a musical, of all things. At the same time we were getting started with table reads and gel’ing as a cast, two other shows were rehearsing in the same theater. One show was about to open, very much having their thing dialed in. Another cast was somewhere in the middle, having figured out what they were about but still trying to get the execution just right. Everywhere in the theatre, there was creation and exploration energy and it was one of the most awesome things I’ve done. This despite not liking musical theater much!
\nI don’t like the idea of “return to office” and I don’t think you could make it work anyway. The social momentum that kept a critical mass of people in one office has been broken, you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube.
\nThat said, I have yet to feel that same energy in remote work that I did in a local theatre on rehearsal night while various groups were making something together, in the moment, and iterating on it as quickly as they could share a glance or read through a scene.
\nI bet some teams have figured out how to feel this way in remote/async setups. But, it feels like most are still running the old in-person playbook that we learned, and sometimes thrived with, over the past years and decades of our careers.
\n", "date_published": "2024-03-13T07:42:53-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/03/13/collective-flow.html", "tags": ["Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/02/28/you-learn-faster.html", "title": "You learn faster by falling down", "content_html": "Julia Galef, The Scout Mindset:
\n\n\nThe “self-belief” model of motivation assumes that if you acknowledge the possibility of failure, then you’ll be too demoralized or afraid to take risks. In that model, people who believe that failure is unthinkable are the ones who try the hardest to succeed. Yet in practice, things often seem to work the other way around—accepting the possibility of failure in advance is liberating. It makes you bold, not timid. It’s what gives you the courage to take the risks required to achieve something big.
\n
One of the most impactful ways I’ve adapted my thinking over the years, if only modestly successfully, has been to fear failure less and accept small downsides more easily. There’s way more world out there for those willing to trip or even fall now and then.
\n", "date_published": "2024-02-28T12:30:00-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/02/28/you-learn-faster.html", "tags": ["Commonplace"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/02/24/use-fewer-algorithmic.html", "title": "Use fewer algorithmic feeds, mostly search-based", "content_html": "Rob Walker via Austin Kleon, More search, less feed:
\n\n\nI’ve been thinking a lot about the search box versus the feed,” he said. “Let’s take Twitter. When I open it, everybody wants me to think about something.
\n
A Ponzi ecosystem of hustle, reality distortion and projection, outright misinformation and propaganda. Plus, folks who just want to tell you the world is miserable. On the other hand, some funny takes and the occasional wholesome content. As goes social media, so goes humanity.
\nThat bit of (attempted) gallows humor aside, the linked article has a good angle: search for more information and do actual research rather than letting algorithmic-people filter it towards you. Caveat: this may have been more useful when that post was written in 2019 than it is in the reality of junky internet search that is 2024.
\nReminder: think your own thoughts.
\n", "date_published": "2024-02-24T13:50:51-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/02/24/use-fewer-algorithmic.html" }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/02/14/masters-of-the.html", "title": "Masters of the space between notes", "content_html": "Virtuosity and speed are nice, in music and life. But you leave some space between the notes or slow things way down? Make some space in between the music for the music to happen? Now you’re cooking something good. For example:
\nRelated: the funk is the notes you don’t play.
\n", "date_published": "2024-02-14T12:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/02/14/masters-of-the.html", "tags": ["Music"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/02/02/i-love-a.html", "title": "I love a good shower-thought", "content_html": "Regarding Leó Szilárd, a theoretical physicist who first conceived of the possibilities of nuclear chain reactions, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons:
\n\n\nThe bath was down the hall. “I remember that I went into my bath…around nine o’clock in the morning. There is no place as good to think as a bathtub. I would just soak there and think, and around twelve o’clock the maid would knock and say, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Then I usually got out and made a few notes, dictated a few memoranda.”
\n— Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb
\n
Shower thoughts, bath thoughts, lawn mowing thoughts. Great minds think alike, i.e., in similar repose.
\n", "date_published": "2024-02-02T11:30:00-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/02/02/i-love-a.html", "tags": ["Commonplace"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/23/the-funk-is.html", "title": "The funk is in the notes you don’t play", "content_html": "Funk is unique amongst musical genres, in my perspective, due to the importance of the notes you don’t play. The space between notes, and not “shredding” every possible moment, is important in all genres. But I find that the funkiest stuff gets that way from missing expected notes and shifting expected notes to moments where they shouldn’t be.
\n\n\nFunk was a rhythmic system of tension and release over time, but also simultaneous tension between some players exercising maximum restraint and others exhibiting maximum expressiveness. Most of all, funk was a science of subverted expectations, syncopation taken to its ultimate destination. With funk, things weren’t always where you thought they’d be.
\n– Dan Charnas, Dilla Time
\n
Digital Underground, Rhymin’ on the funk. Recommended.
\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-01-23T08:14:27-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/23/the-funk-is.html", "tags": ["Music"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/21/the-lfg-called.html", "title": "The LFG called life", "content_html": "Funk not only moves, it can re-move, you dig?
\n– George Clinton, P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)
\n
LFG: looking for game. An ad-hoc scheme, often forum-esque, where strangers looking to play an online game that lacks matchmaking find each other and coordinate starting a game.
\n\n\nNo matter how famous they get, the forward-thinking artists of today aren’t just looking for fans or passive consumers of their work, they’re looking for potential collaborators, or co-conspirators. These artists acknowledge that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that the experience of art is always a two-way street, incomplete without feedback. These artists hang out online and answer questions. They ask for reading recommendations. They chat with fans about the stuff they love.
\n– Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!
\n
This is how I found so many of my online pals and past/future collaborators. The wonder of blogs, “web 2.0”, and then Twitter. We were out there posting, finding tribes, and, occasionally teammates.
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-21T12:04:39-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/21/the-lfg-called.html", "tags": ["Commonplace"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/18/you-have-more.html", "title": "You have more writing material than you think", "content_html": "Jim Nielsen, Blogging and Composting:
\n\n\nBut as a byproduct of whatever you’re building you undoubtedly learned, observed, or cursed at something along the way.
\nAnd if you blog, you can make good use of that experience!
\n
Show up (almost) every day, stack some drafts. Write down what you learned or what surprised you or what amazed you. Sooner than you know it, you’ve got a thing going. Maybe even a thesis or long-running schtick. Works for any kind of writing, not just blogs. 📈
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-18T10:32:11-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/18/you-have-more.html", "tags": ["Commonplace"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/13/weekend-in-portland.html", "title": "Weekend in Portland", "content_html": "Day two: breakfast, books, public transit! Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (surprise guest: Maya Rudolph!) put on an excellent show. (Not pictured: very, very cold.)
\n\nGrits ’n Gravy. Enjoyed.
\n\nPowell’s Books. Enjoyed, transacted.
\n\nThe light rail line back to our Airbnb. It’s nice to get around sans car now and then!
\n\nDinner plates say what we meant to say at Bottle and Kitchen.
\n\nSeeing lady comics at a concert hall, not a bad way to spend a night out of town.
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-13T18:34:51-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/13/weekend-in-portland.html", "tags": ["Travel"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/12/weekend-in-portland.html", "title": "Weekend in Portland", "content_html": "Day one, travel day. Air travel is fine. Green carpets are green. It’s cold and dreary, as expected. There may be snow. We persevere.
\n\n\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-01-12T17:29:10-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/12/weekend-in-portland.html", "tags": ["Travel"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/07/the-status-quo.html", "title": "The status quo", "content_html": "\n\nMost fascinating game there is, keeping things from staying the way they are.\n– Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
\n
The status quo is a hell of a thing. Path dependence makes this a challenging game.
\nThe biggest challenge you could take on in life: change it for even the slightest better. A virtuous challenge too, in an Aristotelian virtues sense?
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-07T11:55:59-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/07/the-status-quo.html", "tags": ["Commonplace"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/02/software-makes-you.html", "title": "Software makes you more productive, otherwise it’s (weird) art", "content_html": "Rands in Repose, Seven Steps to Fixing Stalled To-Do Tasks:
\n\n\nThe never-ending question you must ask regarding whatever productivity system you’ve built is, “Does this system make you more productive?”
\n
The purpose of all this software is to get stuff done (make things), not to fiddle and shuffle tasks around! (This goes for individuals and teams, FWIW)
\n", "date_published": "2024-01-02T17:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2024/01/02/software-makes-you.html", "tags": ["Commonplace"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2024/01/01/by-the-bullets.html", "title": "2023 by the bullets", "content_html": "I have an elaborate, perhaps baroque, setup of journals, notes, tasks, highlights, read-it-laters, feeds, and canvases-for-thinking. I consider it a crucial, and very idiosyncratic, piece of “knowledge worker infrastructure”. Furthermore, I don’t think I could handle a lot of the work and projects that I do, to the extent that I do, without it.
\nBut, I hope that constructing such a scheme, and doing all the time intensive background research and tinkering, is not something everyone would have to expend effort on to think better and more clearly.
\nMy hunch here is that the software bundled with iOS/iPadOS/macOS is very close to allowing folks who just want to remember and brainstorm get started immediately. Currently, a couple of elements are missing. This means you have to hit the third-party ecosystem escape hatch and consider a daunting variety of applications, workflows, and identity/quasi-religions.
\nHerein, a wishlist of system-level capabilities that would make macOS an even better “bicycle for the mind”.
\nIn any old macOS app, I want to highlight text (mostly) with any pointer (mouse, stylus, finger) on any device (laptop, tablet, phone) and capture/promote text. I may want to add my commentary or notes too. Afterward, I should be able to search for this in Spotlight, at the least. Even better if the whole document/page/file/etc. the text came from is indexed, so I can find highlights despite imperfect memory.
\nmacOS already extracts contacts and events from plain text. Faces are identified in photos. Why not make text excerpts/highlights/passages a first-class thing in the system’s information architecture?
\nI want to identify key ideas, concepts, people, and other nouns, so I can hyperlink between them and navigate them in something like the Finder.
\nThis verbs-and-nouns concept was key to AppleScript. I’ve read that it was part of the conceptual bedrock of NeXTStep, but I haven’t found more than a few passing sentences on that.
\nWhy not carry that idea forward or rediscover it on macOS? Some folks want to do more than scroll, post, and transact.
\nNotes and Journal, along with Finder and Spotlight, seem very close to checking all the boxes here. 🤷🏻♂️I don’t use those apps, so I’m wildly speculating here. Out over my skis, as they say. That said, this is so close to the core of what you really need to do next-level, thinking-augmented-by-computers.
\nEven though I use very particular apps, I feel like Apple has the right foundations here. A journal app for capturing ideas, reflections, and life as it happens. A notes app for putting structure and organization around the ideas that emerge from those moments. Tie it together with search to resurface and rediscover those journals and notes.
\nA fellow can dream, right?
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-28T11:27:37-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/12/28/lowkey-toolsforthought.html", "tags": ["Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/12/18/ia-writer-and.html", "title": "iA Writer and AI", "content_html": "\n\n\nWriting is not about getting letters on a page. It’s not about getting done with text. It’s finding a clear and simple expression for what we feel, mean, and want to express. Writing is thinking with letters. Usually we do this alone. With AI, you write in dialogue. It comes with a chat-interface, after all. So, don’t just write commands, talk to it.
\n
iA Writer’s integration is the first use of LLMs I’ve seen that I’d consider original. They didn’t slap on a chat interface where one wasn’t needed. It’s not autocomplete-but-smarter.
\nInstead, they show authorship/origin of text as either human or machine-generated. As you edit out the AI machine’s writing, the text visually and literally becomes more your own creation. You engage in dialog with the machine and use that to improve your thinking. The machine doesn’t think for you. Bravo!
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-18T13:30:00-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/12/18/ia-writer-and.html", "tags": ["Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/12/17/celebrate-the-van.html", "title": "Celebrate the van Beethoven guy", "content_html": "It’s Ludwig van Beethoven’s birthday. Here are a few ways to celebrate the old piano-biter:
\nPreviously: Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 7 and 8 are top-tier, Beethoven’s symphonies visualized.
\n", "date_published": "2023-12-17T16:00:00-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/12/17/celebrate-the-van.html", "tags": ["Music"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/11/26/everythings-a-draft.html", "title": "Everything’s a draft", "content_html": "\n\nPublish pretty much everything you write because you can’t predict what is going to be popular. There is a lower bar for quality, but barring dishonesty and literally unreadable prose, everything else should go out somewhere. Incompleteness is no excuse. Publish the first part now and the other parts later.
\n– Kent Beck, Publish Everything
\n
Get the idea out there, especially if it feels like there’s depth to explore but you can’t full traverse it in the moment. And, reduce friction to sharing the promising drafts!
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-26T13:01:14-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/11/26/everythings-a-draft.html", "tags": ["Commonplace","Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/11/23/listening-november.html", "title": "Listening, November 2023", "content_html": "Andre 3000, New Blue Sun – come for the over-the-top song titles, stay for what sounds to me like an ambient and (astral?) jazz album.
\nEarth, Wind, and Fire, “Serpentine Fire” – this is the Certified Jam of the Month™ in our household. It is literally made of slap (bass).
\nReturn to Forever – been listening to a lot of jazz-fusion lately. If Weather Report isn’t your thing, give The Mothership Returns a try.
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-23T13:38:11-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/11/23/listening-november.html", "tags": ["Music"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/11/17/you-cant-read.html", "title": "You can’t read the whole internet, so put your energy into something that matters to you", "content_html": "Oliver Burkeman, Treat your to-read pile like a river:
\n\n\nTo return to information overload: this means treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don’t feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library – and not because there aren’t an overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all.
\nI like to think of it as the productivity technique to beat all productivity techniques: finally internalizing the implications of the fact that what’s genuinely impossible – the clue is in the name! – cannot actually be done.
\n
You cannot actually read, process, and comment upon the whole internet, or even your little corner of interesting discourse. But, you can click “Mark All As Read” and move on. River-of-news style timelines automate marking items unread instead of automating bringing you the good stuff. Reeder and NewsBlur have options for it. I bet others do too. Reclaim your attention!
\n\n\nUnfortunately, most advice on productivity and time management takes the needle-in-a-haystack approach instead. It’s about becoming more efficient and organised, or better at prioritising, with the implied promise that you might thereby eliminate or disregard enough of life’s unimportant nonsense to make time for the meaningful stuff. To stretch a metaphor: it’s about reducing the size of the haystack, to make it easier to focus on the needle.
\nThere’s definitely a role for such techniques; but in the end, the only way to deal with a too-many-needles problem is to confront the fact that it’s insoluble – that you definitely won’t be fitting everything in.
\nIt’s not a question of rearranging your to-do list so as to make space for all your “big rocks”, but of accepting that there are simply too many rocks to fit in the jar. You have to take a stab at deciding what matters most, among your various creative passions/life goals/responsibilities – and then do that, while acknowledging that you’ll inevitably be neglecting many other things that matter too.
\n
I’m guilty here! All the best in task management, getting things done, note-taking, journal writing, and even saying no won’t get the work done. I have to take the gift of clarity and focus generated by all these routines, and do that “big rock” important thing. I have to find peace with the trade-off of doing one thing instead of all the other exciting things.
\nOr, maybe generative AIs will provide Walt Disney-like agency to direct and sustain diverse projects outside my expertise with Imagineering-quality output. Wouldn’t it be nice!
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-17T13:52:03-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/11/17/you-cant-read.html", "tags": ["Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/11/16/smaller-barriers-to.html", "title": "Smaller barriers to entry, bigger possibilities", "content_html": "James Somer, A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft | The New Yorker:
\n\n\n\nIn chess, which for decades now has been dominated by A.I., a player’s only hope is pairing up with a bot. Such half-human, half-A.I. teams, known as centaurs, might still be able to beat the best humans and the best A.I. engines working alone. Programming has not yet gone the way of chess. But the centaurs have arrived. GPT-4 on its own is, for the moment, a worse programmer than I am. Ben is much worse. But Ben plus GPT-4 is a dangerous thing.
\n
\n\nI think AI assisted programming is going to shave a lot of the frustration off learning to code, which I hope brings many more people into the fold
\n
We’ve entered the age of AI-powered coding, writing, speaking, and painting centaurs.
\nIf we play our cards right, we will lower barriers to entry and raise the ceiling of possibility to new levels. If more people can create in mediums that are considered specializations now, that might open allow experts to go deeper in their specialization or branch out into areas that were inaccessible without compromising their specialization.
\nThe idea of a dilettante, a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge, might become acute or obsolete. We might end up with a new level of “yuck that looks some amateurish and generated”. Or we might end up with reviews like “the artist deftly combines generated and hand-drawn sketches with procedurally generated music modeled on their own previous album I Play Pianos, By Hand, Like Duke Did”.
\nOf course, we’ve heard this story before and famed economist Keynes is (infamous?) for predicting mechanical automation would all have us exploring our favorite hobbies at this point. So, we gotta play our cards right.
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-16T10:40:04-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/11/16/smaller-barriers-to.html", "tags": ["Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/11/01/saying-no-is.html", "title": "Saying No is the first step", "content_html": "Ryan Holiday, 35 and 34, 36 Lessons on the Way to 36 Years Old:
\n\n\nAs part of that, I made the difficult decision to call my publisher to push my next book a year or so. This was a massive clearance on my schedule—several hours a day did not have to be spent researching and writing on a project. Yet it was remarkable how little my life changed. Because tasks expand to fill the space, because it is so easy to say yes to other things. Less demands vigilance and discipline, perhaps even more effort than actually doing stuff.
\n
The reward for saying no feels like saying yes to a more important thing. But you still need decision discipline after that first “no”.
\nWhenever I’ve heard things like “the key to serene focus and productivity is saying no more often”, it often seems like saying “no, thanks” on projects and potential work is the top of the hill. Like it’s all downhill to doing great work from there. Say no, they say, puts you on easy street to writing the great American novel/album/YouTube channel/large language model.
\nAlas, saying no is not one weird trick for exercising all of your decision-making and discipline in one crucial moment. Making great stuff requires many small moments of saying no. Say no to looking up that frivolous fact. Say no to the pull of social media. Say no to taking a day off your habit of making great stuff. Say no to that Oreo cookie. ☹️
\n", "date_published": "2023-11-01T07:49:09-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/11/01/saying-no-is.html", "tags": ["Creativity"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/10/24/the-point-of.html", "content_html": "The point of a commonplace notebook is not to generate immediate enlightenment. Writing a quote or idea now is the tip of the iceberg. The real insight comes when reviewing commonplace notes later and the dots start to connect themselves. That’s when the galaxy brain kicks in and the magic happens.
\n", "date_published": "2023-10-24T10:28:08-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/10/24/the-point-of.html" }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/10/24/my-promise-to.html", "content_html": "My promise to you, and the world: I will never call anything a “rig”. No matter how much people want to read about it, or how many hours I invest in it. Even if it is a car or musical equipment or an RV or something that is literally “a rig”. No matter how rigged up it is, I will find a way to dance around the word. Do unto others as they would do unto you, as they say.
\n", "date_published": "2023-10-24T07:19:14-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/10/24/my-promise-to.html" }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/10/13/the-pace-youre.html", "title": "The pace you’re reading is the right pace for you to read", "content_html": "Ted Gioia, My Lifetime Reading Plan:
\n\n\nIT’S OKAY TO READ SLOWLY
\nI tell myself that, because I am not a fast reader.
\n
By his accounts, Gioia is a prolific and thorough reader. And yet, a self-proclaimed non-speed-reader.
\nYou don’t have to read super-fast if you’re always reading whatever is right for you at the moment. Doubly so if you’re deeply/actively reading, searching for understanding or assimilating ideas into your own mental arena.
\nOnce more for the slow readers, like myself, in the back: it’s fine, just keep reading!
\n", "date_published": "2023-10-13T10:12:02-05:00", "url": "https://short.therealadam.com/2023/10/13/the-pace-youre.html", "tags": ["Reading"] }, { "id": "http://therealadam.micro.blog/2023/10/02/aristotles-ethical-means.html", "content_html": "Aristotle’s ethical means of virtue and vice but for creative work:
\n