How can I improve my thinking?
Last updated 2024 May 19 | More of my big questions
Sub-questions
- How do reading, writing and thinking fit together?
- What process changes would help me think better?
- How can I be more proactive in what I want to think about?
Bookshelf
Related books I’ve read since 2021. Links go to my book review.
Articles
Articles or longer responses I’ve written.
- Recipes as a score for improvisation
- The siren call of LLMs ⭐
- An improvisational walking newsletter
- The pros and cons of sponginess
- Recursive human thought
- How I approach crafting a blog post
- Types of creative thinking time (Cascadia Inspired)
- Diversifying my blogroll
- Thinking time is writing time
- With a blog, everything is a prompt
- Discerning the value of note-taking
- The intellectual barriers of moral judgment and emotion
Notes
Bookmarks and quotes from articles I’ve read.
- Mistakes are part of the learning process
- Control of thought, control of movement
- Adapting your tools
- Categorizing information: grouping or separating
- Thinking with paper
- Learning in community
- It’s ok if not everyone gets it
- Foraging for insights
- A note-gathering and idea-making process
- Ideas for playing with language to spark your mind
- Thoughts Spawned by Collecting Thoughts
- Anyone can write a how to; think and write at a more strategic level
- Collecting thoughts’
- Learning as vibes
- Building maps of notes helps synthesize ideas
- Daydreaming as a skill for writing
- Reflection is Key to Progress
- Investing time in longform writing
- Draw inspiration from, not be influenced by
- Tricking your brain into writing the way you want
- Structures of Thought
- Don’t try to make yourself look good for knowing things when you’re there to learn
4 replies on “Thinking Better”
I have too many pages to fit in my nav! Here’s a sitemap of all the pages on this website. Blog Mind Garden Index Links to blog about Big Questions Big Questions Balanced Lifestyle Effective Creative Processes Writing Fiction Thinking Better Information Diet Future of the Internet Resisting Fascism Building Community Transforming Capitalism Collections Cool…
Spring is here — it was a big wildlife week in the neighborhood! Heard coyotes howling in the greenbelt and the frogs started their evening chorus, saw a doe in the backyard and a hummingbird out front, and spotted the first bees cruising. But, allergies also hit me hard 🤧
I downloaded my Google Takeout data. I’d forgotten they own Blogger and was delighted to discover they had atom feeds for all of my old college blogs! No photos, but still funny to see what I wrote about twenty years ago. I’ve marked the date of my very first post on my calendar so I can celebrate the anniversary come September 😁🥂
I’ve been working on keeping fewer tabs open on my phone. I was doing pretty well till yesterday but left six tabs open overnight 😂
Stuff I Did:
About eight hours of consulting work
Developed a new revision plan for my novel
Started exploring webfonts for my consulting website
Went to Homebrew Website Club
Watched a webinar about home design
Walked with a friend twice
Baked scones
One appointment
Reading:
Read Alien Mercenary’s Destiny by Mina Carter and re-read The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan
Started reading Effortless by Greg McKeown
DNF’d Breath of Life by Jocelynn Drake and Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Added five books to my TBR
Words I looked up / concepts I learned:
cognate
caliginous
No free lunch theorem
New newsletter I’m trying out:
Ann Friedman’s newsletter
Pretty things I saw:
Ryan Swierczek of Swierczek Design Co — I like the color palettes, especially the photo tints, and the photo collages on their posters
Roland Kraemer on ThatBloom.com — lots of neat abstract natural photo series, and I thought the inverted cursor overlay was cool looking (although the size changing was a little confusing)
Parag Sahasrabudhe on parag.micro.blog — a series of colorful doors in Puerto Rico
Website Changes:
New organizing section!
I created a new section called “Big Questions” which organizes a lot of my notes and reading under broad questions that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past couple years:
Balanced Lifestyle
Effective Creative Processes
Writing Fiction – this one hasn’t been populated yet
Thinking Better
Information Diet
Future of the Internet
Resisting Fascism
Building Community
I got some good ideas at Homebrew Website Club that I’ve only started implementing on the ‘balanced lifestyle’ page, so these still have some work to do. I also need to figure out what system I’m going to follow to update them since it’s all manual 😉
New page
I also finally published a page collecting “neat websites” as an addition to my pages for interesting people and cool artists and blogroll. I’d been sitting on it, feeling like it needed more content before I could post it, but whatev, may as well post now and can keep adding 🤷♀️
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hanging out with the cat on a chill Sunday Highlight of the week: we saw a bobcat in our yard!!! Looking forward to: three day…