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A mini essay (aka atomic essay) is a short text of prose, usually around 300-600 words long. It is focused on a single topic and attempts to introduce an interesting subject to the reader by presenting an extract of author’s learning, observations and insights, purposefully compressed into a dense form, blending everything into a coherent structure, artictulated with a clear and organized…
This is a now page. To learn more about The Now Page Movement, head to https://nownownow.com/about or/and read Derek Sivers’ article The /now page movement What am I doing? Currently I’m between jobs. That means I have more time to finish some side-projects that have been waiting for their time. That being said, I’m also revisiting basics of programming again, although I have been in…
Writers often write about the effectiveness of writing routines. Some swear by specific word count: 1000 words per day. Others believe in setting aside a specific time-block in a day, and writing during that scheduled time, regardless of the word output. Many, if not most, advise writing in the mornings when the mind is fresh and distracting elements have not woken up yet. This is common sense…
At first glance, the debate between nominalists and realists is a distant topic, irrelevant in everyday life. It feels like a mere quibbling over details among scholars. Realists believe in the existence of universals or abstract concepts. For example, in realism, the concept of “redness” exists independently of any specific red object. Nominalists, on the other hand, argue against the…
A few years back, I bought myself a new Apple Watch. I wanted to be more mindful of my health and fitness. I hoped it will help with productivity. Instead, it added another layer of responsibility , one more thing I had to take care of. The watch was useful: it tracked my daily steps, and sleeping patterns. I didn’t have to take out my phone to check out a notification. But it had one huge…
This is an essay I wrote in 2010 I recently realized that I haven’t properly read a book for weeks. I stopped as if struck and wondered, what has happened to that great love I once felt for books? I could sit undisturbed at a desk or in bed for hours, turning pages, oblivious to anyone or anything. But now… as soon as I open a book, within fifteen minutes a question arises: I wonder…
Look at the worry lines on his forehead. He has placed his head in his hands and is thinking! He tries to recall the name of that famous person, which seems to be on the tip of his tongue. But he can’t. Repeatedly, waves of recognition run through his body – yes, I know, I already feel how this name shakes me by the shoulders and cries: “My name is… !!!”.
Every time I sit down to write (or do anything creative for that matter) I feel this deep sense of confusion, desperation, and bewilderment. I know what I want to write, but not how to write it down. Ideas, facts, stories, and arguments float around in my mind, all raising their hands and demanding attention. I write one, two, three drafts. These look promising on the day I wrote them. On the next…
This is a list of book notes from other authors and bloggers that I have came across and found useful. Here are my book notes. Derek Sivers book notes https://sive.rs/book Nat Eliason book notes https://nateliason.com/notes Joel Spolsky’s Reading List https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/11/22/reading-list-fog-creek-software-management-training-program/ Lex Friedman’s Reading List that…
I love reading lists. Whenever I find one, I feel like dropping everything I’m doing, and dedicating my whole life to reading the books on the list. But there is one problem with reading lists: the randomness. First, let’s go back to the beginning of the 2023 for a moment. Lex Fridman, podcaster, machine learning scientist, and a twitter personality, published his reading list for the upcoming…
Let me ask you this: Are the people who are enthusiastic about Stoic philosophy (including me) already stoics? I mean, are they stoics even before they have read a single line from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus — or even Ryan Holiday? Is it possible to be a stoic without actually learning about Stoicism? And are some people attracted to stoics precisely because they already have a stoic…
On Counting Words Software engineers often talk about the old days when managers measured the productivity of a programmer by the number of lines of code they wrote. More lines of code meant more productivity. LOC(lines of code) measurement was also a way to prove to the client that actual work had been done. His money was well spent. Programmers tried not to disappoint the managers — and solved…
I decided to write a non-fiction book on the topic problem-solving. The fact is that I have read too much and produced too little. Deciding to write a book is also related to my recent idea of [ Topicical Reading: Instead of Reading Lists ]({{ ref . “topical-reading-instead-of-reading-lists” }}). I will be publishing this post next week. Stay tuned. Back to writing a book. Here is the…
Here is what I think about writer’s block . It is a made up concept. It doesn’t exist. We blame writer’s block because we don’t understand what is holding us back from writing. We don’t understand why it’s so hard to write down what we want to say. “If writer’s block doesn’t exist, why can’t I write then?” you might ask. “I sit down and want to write, but nothing comes out, I feel miserable.”
I started to read seriously in my early teens. I wanted to read stories and learn about the world, but I couldn’t read fast enough. I was eager to read every book I could get my hands on. I spent my summer vacations in the countryside at my grandmother’s house. She had a large collection of books. I was browsing the shelves, selecting one book after another. I kept asking my grandmother:…
This is one of my favorite books on writing. The Fieldstone Method defined Writing is like building a fieldstone wall. Instead of searching for a perfect stone, go into the field and gather a bunch of stones, and then put them into the piles. Now you have plenty of stones to pick from, you will not be blocked by the lack of ideas. The fieldstone wall is like a writing project, and stones are like…
NB , when referring to page numbers I will use following format: (p.,123), meaning I’m citing from page 123 of How to Write a Thesis. What is a thesis? In Umberto Eco’s words, thesis, dissertation, is a “manuscript, usually 100 to 400 pages in length, in which the student addresses a particular problem in his chosen field.”(p.,2). Because it is a original research, one must “discover”, say…
NB. This was originally a research paper I wrote for a class, I repurposed it into a post. One of the first papers I wrote using Analog Zettelkasten method. Introduction Numerous articles, books, and research papers have demonstrated the positive effects of flow experience. But, as mentioned by the father of flow theory, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the flow state can sometimes lead to negative…
The Inversion mental model — thinking about the opposite of what you want — is a powerful tool. In an attempt to learn more about mental models, I decided to write this article in an opposite way. What should you do to be a great procrastinator. I procrastinated a lot when writing this article. Believe it or not, but procrastination is not easy. You have to work hard to find new and novel ways to…
Things I want to say about writing Learning to write requires consistency. You can’t learn if you write only once a week. Commit to writing, like you commit when you jump out of an airplane. Prepare to write like a long-distance thru-hiker before venturing out into the wild, or you might come back When you show up at a dentist office, everything is already set up for you. The place is clean, and…