And this is where the story gets interesting – not because of what happened but because of what I had no internet access in my apartment My life did not get any worse ..read more

To this end, I propose the following tips (you can read an early version, slightly shorter, of this in a series of tweets ). They are not tips to be more productive, per se, but to ..read more

I will begin by sharing a general  strategy for getting things done that I have found very useful, and then turn to some much more specific  strategies. The macro-level strategy is simply this: I have found that, for me, the single most important strategy for getting things done is having  do is share some of my struggles and experiences grappling with them, in the hope that my remarks can potentially help others facing similar struggles.  ..read more

So, I thought I’d write a companion piece inspired by Jason’s post, about how to be productive in a teaching-centered position. , his advice is pretty restricted in scope, to grad students who want to publish a lot and are on track for jobs where publishing a lot is the most (only?) important thing. Most of us aren’t in that position, which means his advice is of somewhat limited value (I'll leave to one side the debate about whether we should want to be in that position, though you won't have to do much detective work to see what I think about that). by David Enoch. Jason’s advice is actually ..read more

There are many anecdotes about the ways in which Parfit simplified his life to take as little time as possible away from his work. He ate only twice a day, with almost no variation in what he had at each meal. He ate cold food only, mostly fruits and vegetables without any preparation. Even when he could have had freshly ground coffee with only a minute’s additional preparation, he drank instant coffee, often with water straight from the tap. He sometimes kept a book open on the chest-of-drawers so that he could read while putting on his socks… Wanting to preserve his mental and physical capac ..read more

We use age as a measuring-rod, a series of checkpoints that we should have reached. Seeing younger people getting all sorts of accolades and accomplishments fills us with gladness for them, but also amps up our insecurity, as if we're missing the targets we need to hit. A bit like looking at the ultrasound of a gestating fetus, there are these set checkpoints that we evaluate ourselves by. By age x I surely should have accomplished y. Otherwise, there's a problem ..read more