• Book title: The Notebook
• Author: Roland Allen
• Rating: 6/5

This book was written for me, and I am utterly convinced of it. It’s an absolute gem. For anyone who loves stationery as much as I do, this is a must-read. I even quoted it at length in my Paper Pro review.

Notes & Highlights

It even accorded with the classic principles of Italian design: like an espresso, a pair of Persol sunglasses or a Prada dress, le moleskine was minimal, functional and assertively black.

I prefer Leuchtturm1917 notebooks, though.

The oldest item that looks to modern eyes like a notebook sits in a display case in a castle in a Turkish city, [...]

The wreck is the oldest shipwreck yet excavated: it went down in about 1305 BCE, and its other contents confirm that we inherit the diptych from a sophisticated trading network.

Cai Lun, a Han dynasty eunuch, is said to have been responsible for the invention of paper, discovering that pulp vegetable fibres drained over a fine mesh dried into a durable, versatile and affordable material.

What makes the Farolfi ledger a key document in European history – indeed, world history – is that this wreck of a notebook is the first place where we see all the abstract concepts of accountancy, and the practical techniques by which they were managed, used at once.

Wandering around the Tuscan countryside with a merchant’s ledger and an ink bottle, young Cimabue invented the sketchbook.

What did people write in their zibaldoni? In a word: everything. Poems in Latin, poems in Tuscan, prayers, excerpts from books, songs, recipes, lists, you name it.

So notebooks democratised literature by giving readers another way to read; but they also gave writers another way to write.

English readers first learn of Boccaccio when they study Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, six of which draw heavily on stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron. Chaucer’s Clerk, Franklin, Merchant, Pardoner, Reeve and Shipman all retell stories familiar to the Tuscan’s readers, and the works’ shared structure – tales told by a disparate group thrown temporarily together – is obvious. But in an age before print, how could an Englishman have come to plagiarise a collection of stories written only a few years before in the local dialect of a town a thousand miles from his own? And what can this connection tell us about the way notebooks moved outward from Tuscany, and across Europe?

Bon vin, belle Dames et bonne viande, Pendu soyt il qui plus demande

Good wine, fair ladies, and good meat — hanged be he who asks for more.

As the voyage progressed, Darwin became more aware of the value of his field notes and he started writing at greater length. ‘Let the collector’s motto be “Trust nothing to the memory”,’ he would later write, ‘for the memory becomes a fickle guardian when one interesting object is succeeded by another still more interesting

The results were dramatic: Pennebaker’s study revealed that those people he’d asked to write about trauma went to the doctor at about half the rate of people in the control group, who’d written about routine matters. They used less aspirin, too. The correlation, he would later write, was ‘exceptionally powerful’, and unambiguous: ‘when people write about upsetting experiences it has a positive health effect upon them.’

Long practice teaches an artist to direct their gaze in an unusually focused way; it trains them to repurpose areas of their brain; and it changes the very structure of the brain’s neural networks.

In 2021, a Japanese study compared how effectively we take (non-academic) notes on paper, a phone, or a tablet. Pen and paper proved the most efficient by far: not only did subjects complete the note-taking task more quickly, they later had much better recall of the details

You could file calculators, slide rules and computers alongside the pen and paper, or any device that enables us to think in ways which our brains alone are not up to. Such things have usually been considered to be external aids to thought, supports which allow the neurons firing around our brains to do their thing: but for Clark this didn’t ring true. Certain kinds of thought – writing a novel, multiplying ten-digit numbers together, calculating a planet’s orbit – only became possible with these external tools and, that being the case, surely those indispensable things should share the credit with the brain?

Where to buy The Notebook by Roland Allen:

• Bookshop.org
• Amazon

This week’s been a bit all over the place. I probably broke a bunch of my rules, though I think I can let them slide since most of it was for "work".

WWDC happened this week, and I watched the livestream on YouTube. I also listened to a few podcasts afterward, primarily Dithering, since it kind of counted as research. I might write down some thoughts on the event for overkill, so I wanted a few different angles.

Speaking of YouTube: I miss it. I still go through my subscription tab once a week to save stuff for after this experiment, but there’s so much good content online that I’m starting to wonder if I should just admit defeat, clean up my subscription tab like I said last week, and start watching again. Manuel might be shouting at me in a second.

As for the other things, I’ve been meditating daily, except for yesterday. I was so deep in a rabbit hole I woke up this morning, realizing I completely missed it. I’m also slowly increasing my sitting time from 10 to 20 minutes. I’m using this app, and it might be the best one I’ve tried so far. Still early, but it’s unlike anything else I’ve used, and I’ve done meditation retreats.

Still actively reading, still running and going to the gym.

Two more weeks to go. But I think the experiment won’t have as big an impact as I expected.

He asked:

What’s your dream life scenario? Without thinking too much about the financial aspects of it, that is. Like, if you could have all your basic needs met no matter what you decide to do, what would you want to do?

It didn't take long to answer the question: the life I currently have, minus the day job, except I’d work with my current employer as a client instead.

This made me realize that the life I currently live is close to what I'd call a dream life scenario. The only difference is that I'd like to have a bit more freedom in how I plan my day. Right now, I'm trying to fit all the different puzzle pieces (gym, running, overkill, cliophate, reading, journaling, meditating, spending time with loved ones) around a 9-to-5 lifestyle.

If my basic needs were covered², I could probably dial down the 9-to-5 by either working part-time, or by taking my employer on as a client (and maybe some other companies, too), and then flip the puzzle pieces: try to fit in the client work around the other stuff.

This realization showed me how the life I have right now doesn't need much changing, and that anything messing too much with this lifestyle, without bringing me closer to that dream life scenario, just isn’t worth doing.

There's an interesting equation by Chris Williamson (timestamped) that I came to believe in strongly:

One of my favorite insights is that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice happiness in order to be successful, so that when we're finally sufficiently successful, we can actually be happy. And if you have some sort of simultaneous equation, and you just sort of stripped success off from both sides, [only happiness remains].

Realizing this showed me that a recent path I thought I’d be interested in³ was a dead end. Following it would’ve meant giving up all the puzzle pieces I actually care about, just to pick them back up later, with nothing gained but burnout, since those pieces are what keep me balanced in the first place.

That path wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Not worth giving up happiness, not even for a while.

• Book title: Things Become Other Things
• Author: Craig Mod
• Rating: 6/5

As I've said in my review of the original, fine-arts version: Craig writes, I read. This is law. And this version of the book is better. Expanded, more details, better prose. If you want to read one version, make it this one.

Where to buy Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod:

• Bookshop
• Amazon

The truth, though it often makes people indignant to hear it, is that it’s almost never literally the case that you have to meet a work deadline, honour a commitment, answer an email, fulfil a family obligation, or anything else. The astounding reality – in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999 – is that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

You don’t have to answer. You don’t have to show up. You don’t have to do anything, really. You just have to deal with the fallout. And I’d argue that in a lot of cases, the fallout’s just a story you’re telling yourself. One that isn’t half as bad as you think.

• Book title: Meditations for Mortals
• Author: Oliver Burkeman
• Rating: 3/5

I read the whole book in two days instead of the 28-day pace the author suggests. It’s fine. A few good quotes in there. I’ll probably use some bits in a future blog post.

Notes & Highlights

Almost nobody wants to hear the real answer to the question of how to spend more of your finite time doing things that matter to you, which involves no system. The answer is: you just do them. You pick something you genuinely care about, and then, for at least a few minutes – a quarter of an hour, say – you do some of it. Today. It really is that simple. Unfortunately, for many of us, it also turns out to be one of the hardest things in the world.

The truth, though it often makes people indignant to hear it, is that it’s almost never literally the case that you have to meet a work deadline, honour a commitment, answer an email, fulfil a family obligation, or anything else. The astounding reality – in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999 – is that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.’ – IDRIES SHAH

Almost everything that happens, according to an adage of uncertain origin, is either a good time or a good story.

[...] from the essayist Anne Lamott: Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to their outsides.

But the relationship between the two kinds of ‘impossible’ is actually an inverse one. In other words, the more willing you are wholeheartedly to acknowledge the hard limitations of human finitude, the easier it gets to do what others might dismiss as impossible. Once you stop struggling to get on top of everything, to stay in absolute control, or to make everything perfect, you’re rewarded with the time, energy and psychological freedom to accomplish the most of which anyone could be capable.

‘There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat’s black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.’ – JORGE LUIS BORGES

Where to buy Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman:

• Bookshop
• Amazon

• Book title: Awareness
• Author: Anthony de Mello
• Rating: 3.5/5

This book didn’t hit me the way I thought it would, based on what others said. It’s solid and might shift your perspective on the world. It just didn’t for me. Maybe because I already agree with most of what it says.

Notes & Highlights

Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.

All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. “Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success.” This is what they want; they want their toys replaced.

We don’t want to be unconditionally happy. I’m ready to be happy provided I have this and that and the other thing.

What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you’re not aware of. When you’re aware of it, you’re free from it. It’s there, but you’re not affected by it. You’re not controlled by it; you’re not enslaved by it. That’s the difference.

Nobody was mean to you. Somebody was mean to what he or she thought was you, but not to you. Nobody ever rejects you; they’re only rejecting what they think you are. But that cuts both ways. Nobody ever accepts you either. Until people come awake, they are simply accepting or rejecting their image of you.

Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don’t. It’s you who give this power to them.

Another illusion: You are all those labels that people have put on you, or that you have put on yourself. You’re not, you’re not! So you don’t have to cling to them. The day that somebody tells me I’m a genius and I take that seriously, I’m in big trouble. Can you understand why? Because now I’m going to start getting tense. I’ve got to live up to it, I’ve got to maintain it.

That is why it is so difficult to translate from one language to another, because each language cuts reality up differently.

Every language has untranslatable words and expressions, because we’re cutting reality up and adding something or subtracting something and usage keeps changing. Reality is a whole and we cut it up to make concepts and we use words to indicate different parts.

As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.

Where to buy Awareness by Anthony de Mello:

• Bookshop
• Amazon

It doesn’t matter if they tried doing a thing and it didn’t work, or simply came across something unfamiliar. These people go the extra mile to figure out how and why things are the way they are.

They don’t stop at the first layer either. They dig deep, keep asking how and why over and over again until their curiosity is satiated.

Not all paths they follow have a specific end goal. Sometimes they stumble upon something, explore it, find alternative routes, and decide to follow those for a while.

This curiosity always comes with a certain friction. Not giving in to it is the default, easier mode. Being curious is, at times, hard. Joan Westenberg explains it like this:

⁠Because in the real world, knowledge is earned through movement. Friction. Ambiguity. The old experience of falling into a stack of books at the library wasn’t efficient, but that was hardly the point. You’d go in looking for one answer and come out with five better questions. That’s how curiosity thrives: in the space between expected and unexpected, between map and territory.

My closest friends are very curious people. I’d like to believe I am too. But from the outside, this trait might seem unnecessary. Some people might even find it bothersome. “Stop asking questions” or “because I said so” are phrases curious people have heard hundreds of times.

Asking yourself why things are the way they are doesn’t always bring obvious value. There might not be any benefit to knowing, except for the fact that now you know. Knowledge and embracing curiosity is often the end goal.

But if you practice curiosity over a long period, you start to see the world differently. You ask questions others don’t, simply because they didn’t know they could. And once you start doing that, the world opens up.

You also train your mind to switch modes at will. That’s useful, since curiosity and anxiety share similar brain regions. Anne-Laure Le Cunff²:

Curiosity activates many of the same brain regions [as anxiety], but with a crucial difference in framing. Instead of asking “What might go wrong?” curiosity asks “What might I discover?”
⁠⁠The anterior cingulate cortex, which processes uncertainty in both anxious and curious states, shifts from threat-detection mode to exploration mode. The prefrontal cortex, instead of ruminating on potential failures, begins generating possibilities.

Curiosity is the basis for a creative life. I doubt you can reach your full creative potential without cultivating it.

And cultivating curiosity is simply the act of asking “why” and “how” about seemingly mundane things. It’s the act of digging, removing layers one by one, until you feel satisfied. On some topics that comes quickly. On others, you dig for years and one day realize you’ve become an expert. Without even noticing the shift.

For curious people, being curious is like swimming for fish. We do it because it’s just the way we work.

So, stay curious.

• Book title: The Denial of Death
• Author: Ernest Becker
• Rating: 2.5/5

I find this book weird. I read through it all, and at the end of it, I still don't know the point of it. I don't think there is anything that I got out of it? Also, Freud was a weirdo.

Notes & Highlights

Beyond a given point man is not helped by more “knowing,” but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way.

Where to buy The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker:

• Bookshop
• Amazon