Bruce Keener’s Lifestream

My friend committed suicide. He was a brilliant programmer, and he had everything going for him. He was very successful.

I'm crushed because I know I could have helped if only he had given me a chance. He never did.

We in the programming world aren't always the most emotionally balanced. I know of three others who took their lives in the programming world. I've hinted at this before on my Bipolar Lisp Programmer post. To compound matters, our society has been moving away from personal interaction and responsibility for decades, leading to a culture that is toxic.

As if life weren't already too short, some of our friends end it even earlier because of their despair from the negative side of life. Indeed, as the linked article points out, many suicides are by people who have a technical background. But, there are many suicides of people who have no interest in things technical.

A little after I graduated from high school, 42 years ago, I found out that a former girlfriend had committed suicide. I did not see it coming. She was fun-loving, attractive, smart, and I thought she had her head screwed on pretty good. Yet, she committed suicide.

And you know what? She is still dead. I know that seems like a calloused thing to say. But I am trying to drive a home a point that is suicide is permanent. One moment of foolish action translates into a permanent end.

Most of us get a little depressed at times. For those whose depression lingers on and on, please get help. Please talk with friends or family or professionals.

Although Thesis 1.6 is flush with new features, one in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest—the all-new dropdown navigation menu!

Good video from Chris Pearson on using the Nav Menu customization features (and more) in Thesis 1.6

Dean,

I don’t bother drilling down to next actions on my maps. Too much work to double-enter, and they move too fast anyway. I just do the map, figure next action, then go to my action lists (in Lotus Notes). I’ll sometimes put a shortcut in the notes section of a project on my list, to the mind-map.

I just use maps for capturing and developing projects and themes. Have lots of ActiveWord cues to pull them up fast to add things as required.

David

Good advice from David Allen on how to use Mind Maps

The Internet is becoming a vast petri dish for the group polarization phenomena. As Sunstein puts it “The most striking power provided by emerging technologies,” is the “growing power of consumers to ‘filter’ what they see.”

Not only are group dynamics at play, as discussed in the article, but we also _must_ filter information these days because there is so much ... the problem is, our filtering mechanisms are biased (partly by group dynamics, but also by individual factors).

Far too often, we don't. We tend to be poor judges of risk. We overact to rare risks, we ignore long-term risks, we magnify risks that are also morally offensive. We get risks wrong -- threats, probabilities, and costs -- all the time. When we're afraid, really afraid, we'll do almost anything to make that fear go away. Both politicians and marketers have learned to push that fear button to get us to do what they want.

I wonder how much better off we would be if we wrote down all of our fears in a list, and then worked through the list one-by-one to overcome each fear. I suspect that the key problems in doing this are (1) we probably are not even aware of what some of our deep fears really are, and (2) some of the fears probably work for us, instead of against us and are best left alone.

Another tip I got from my boss is to everyday do at least one thing I don’t want to do – that’s not so easy!

A really good interview of Steve Rubel, with lots of productivity tips

I wonder if his parents were religious, and whether he is: I cannot but imagine that routinely contemplating 11 dimensions and a constantly expanding universe (only 20% of the matter in which is currently understood, the rest being dark matter. And that's not to mention dark energy, or the multiverse) might induce a kind of existential vertigo, and thus nihilism, or belief, or total rejection. Some properly thought-through accommodation with the idea of divinity, at least. Dimensions, particularly, seem to me to require a certain leap of faith. He admits to regularly feeling awe, but the dimensions don't seem to trouble him much – mostly because, rather than trying to imagine them in space, they generally exist, for him, as letters and numbers in equations.

He doesn't believe in God. "My parents were very unreligious. Extremely. I presume they influenced me. I'm sort of jealous of people who do have faith. I suppose it depends on the sort of god you have faith in, but it gives you security, I guess.

"I get angry with people who are wildly atheist, because they sort of deny any humanity whatsoever. They deny the poetry – and they talk as if we understand everything, including love, and actually there are beautiful things which can move you in ways that presumably can be understood entirely in terms of complex pathways in the brain, but that's still not a useful way of thinking of them. So I get annoyed by ultra-atheists who aren't willing to tolerate anything – I suppose I'm less atheist than that."

Green's thoughts on religion are probably much more representative of the scientific community than are the thoughts of Dawkins or Stenger, et al.

Talent is God-given; be humble. Fame is man-given; be thankful. Conceit is self-given; be careful" -John Wooden

John Wooden was more than a coach (which is a hard enough job by itself) : he was a great leader, and one who could describe leadership skills (and pitfalls) in very understandable, and sometimes inspiring, terms.

Looks like this one is going to give the iPhone a real run for the money.

You didn’t clarify enough. If your mind thinks there is more planning or brainstorming to do about that, or what you captured as a next action is not the next physical, visible step, it will take it back.

You’re not reviewing enough. If your mind doesn’t trust you’re looking at that choice often enough (Are we doing anything about this??), it will take the job back.  The Weekly Review is gold.  It’s not just clean-up time, it’s reassurance time for your mind that you’re “on it,” even if that’s a decision to let it incubate some more on Someday.

Good Stuff from David Allen's GTD Team. I can certainly say that this has applied in my use of GTD ... typical mistakes are not clarifying enough and not reviewing enough. I'm not too shabby on the review aspect, but sometimes do not take the time to really clarify what I need to do.