There are so many streaming services these days, and they all want you to ante up something every month to access their programming. Many of them have a couple of compelling shows but not nearly enough good content to justify paying month after month. When I learn that a streaming service has a show I want to see, I’ll often subscribe for one month (or sign up for the free trial if there is one), watch the one show and whatever else seems interesting, and then cancel the service before the month is up. In theory I could watch the best offerings of twelve different streaming services over the course of a year for the cost of just one. . . .
Category: Advice
Your Email Inbox Makes a Terrible To-Do List
One little-noted fact about email is that no one teaches you how to use it. Email started out as a speedy and convenient way of exchanging written messages without all the fuss of printing and mailing them. For many people, in their personal lives, that’s still what email is — albeit with a lot more unwanted messages to sort through than we used to get. But at the office, email has morphed into a mammoth, all-purpose system for coordinating virtually all knowledge work. Dealing with email consumes what seems to be an ever-increasing portion of our workday. And yet over the course of this transformation, almost no thought has been given to how this increasingly pervasive system should be used, and what the best practices are for managing the flood of emails that contemporary knowledge workers receive every day. . . .
Take Notes
I’m once again venturing into the dangerous territory of offering unsolicited advice, as Kevin Kelly did in his blog post, “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice,” intended for young people and based on almost 70 decades of life-lessons learned. The advice I’m offering today is, take notes. Take notes about the places you go, the people you meet, and the things you learn. Take notes about what happens in important meetings — the commitments you make and the commitments other people make to you. Keep a record of all the books you read, and the important things you learned from reading them. Write down the name of the guy who fixed your electric garage door opener and what he charged for doing so. . . .
Unsubscribe!
I’ve been surprised recently to hear from a couple of friends that they are inundated with email. I found this puzzling because these are not people who work full-time and thus need to deal with a flood of work-related emails. They are retired. When I inquired further, I learned that most of the troublesome mail is from companies these people have done business with and non-profit or political organizations they support. When I asked my friends why they don’t unsubscribe from those senders’ mailing lists, I heard a couple of answers. . . .
How to Keep Razor Blades Sharp for a Long Time
As life advice goes, this is an odd one, but unlike most of what I post here, it could actually be useful. Most people change the blade cartridge in their safety razor every few weeks. I change mine every few months. That’s how long it takes mine to get dull. The reason is something I learned from my father. . . .
Mindfulness
Over the past few years I’ve become more appreciative of the power of mindfulness. Many of us are used to hearing that term in the context of “mindfulness meditation,” but the practice of mindfulness isn’t limited to meditating. In fact, although I meditated daily for several weeks a few years ago, I didn’t stick with it. But I have stuck with the practice of being mindful. . . .
Love as a Practice
I’ve written previously about Kevin Kelly’s “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice.” I was thinking again this morning about what my advice would be to younger people based on my own 67 years’ worth of lessons learned. The one I came up with this time is understanding what love is as a practice. . . .
Making People Wrong
Ever since I wrote about Kevin Kelly’s “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice,” I’ve been musing about what I would include if I were to assemble my own list of advice to young people. What lessons have I learned over the course of my life that not everyone might yet have learned? I blogged last month about the first thing I came up with. Here’s number two: . . .
Morning Pages
Years ago my friend Jill told me about The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron, a book of advice for people who make their living in the creative arts. Perhaps the best-known suggestion in the book is a practice Cameron calls “Morning Pages,” a kind of stream-of-consciousness journaling to be done each morning. . . .
What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know
I was just perusing Kevin Kelly’s 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice and wondering, not for the first time, what I would include if I were to make a list like that. What have I learned over my 67 years that I might pass on to a younger person in hopes of helping them avoid having to learn the same lessons the hard way?…