Table of contents
Child pages
Related pages:
Checklists
- Examples of checklists I've created
- 2008 - Movie-Making Checklist
- As a senior in college I took a class called "Directing for the Camera" in which students learned how to create short films. Over the course of the semester I was involved in creating multiple short films (working on both my own films and other students' films), and I was repeatedly struck by 1) just how many things can go wrong when trying to make a film, and 2) how important it is to get everything right when you have a team of 5 people donating their time to your project. One thing I was careful to do was to explain WHY each step was important to follow; I would explain what bad thing could happen if you didn't follow that step. I sent the checklist around to my classmates and my teacher was very pleased.
Here's a link to the checklist I created.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/otxsly9ktkljb ... CKLIST.doc
- 2013 - Gym Checklist
- In 2013 I began going to a gym again to lift weights and was repeatedly annoyed when I forgot one small item or another. For example, I might forget my deodorant one day (a minor annoyance), or I might forget Jojoba oil another day (a major annoyance since the skin on my face and scalp can get very dry after being blasted with water from a shower). Other days I would forget socks, or a new pair of underwear.
Remembering "The Checklist Manifesto", I decided to make a checklist to ensure that I stopped having these problems. And to make sure I used it, I taped the list to the side of my bookshelf, where it would be easy for me to look at right before leaving my house.
Here are pictures of the checklist taped to the side of my bookshelf:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ofa8l7k6oo9bc ... st%201.JPG
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1sidfpul4fynv ... st%202.JPG
Creativity (as a skill)
- I'm finding that spending time lying down in a quiet place is a fantastic way for me to come up with ideas.
- I find that my mind gets filled with all kinds of unimportant short-term stuff when I'm going through the day, and it's often only at the end of the day when I'm lying down and it's quiet that I actually start to think about things I think are really important.
- I think Thomas Edison also did the same thing.
Hobbies
- factors to consider when evaluating a hobby
- the cost of the hobby
- flying planes, sailing boats, and riding horses are expensive hobbies. soccer, skateboarding, and yoga are relatively cheap. aside from equipment, you should also consider other costs, like transportation and medical costs: e.g. having to drive 40 miles to go swing dancing is an added cost; breaking bones as a snowboarder is an added cost.
- it may be better to choose cheap hobbies that produce thrills rather than expensive hobbies that produce thrills. ex: I recently heard an ex-helicopter pilot say that he prefers powered-paragliding to flying a blackhawk, which was the complete opposite of what I would have expected (it really caught me off-guard). it made me remember that driving a car on the highway was a huge rush the first few times i did it, but soon became routine. the same pattern seems likely to show up with flying a plane/helicopter, but those will cost me a lot of money per moment of excitement. so it may be better to do something cheap that also produces thrills (e.g. stand-up comedy or acting). i haven't made up my mind, yet, though.
- the excitement from the hobby
- excitement can come from acceleration (cars), fear of pain (skateboarding), other in-born fears (climbing/fear of heights), strenuous effort combined with competition (soccer). more excitement seems to often make for a more enjoyable hobby. the big trade-off seems to be with danger; more excitement can often mean more danger. [connection: in "the 4-hour workweek" the author talks about how you should primarily seek excitement in your life]
- the number of people near you who do the hobby
- people feel better after interacting with other people, and hobbies are a good way to get that interaction. but if no one around you shares your hobby, you won't enjoy that benefit and may want to consider adopting a second hobby.
- the likelihood that you'll become the best at the hobby
- hobbies tend to be more enjoyable when you're the best at them among those you hang out with, because the other people who have that hobby will tend to treat you well.
- the culture of the hobby
- if your hobby involves getting together with other people, pick a hobby that will bring you together with people you will enjoy spending time with. for example, rapping tends to have a particular culture even though that culture is not essential to the actual skills they use (e.g. weird al's "white and nerdy" is a great rap song). if you're an asian baptist who wants to start a death metal bible band, you may have trouble finding a crowd to practice your hobby with.
- the skills you're developing from the hobby
- animals play around to practice skills they'll need later in life (like how to fight). bill gates played monopoly and risk as a kid and his family held competitive team events; presumably this gave him some great experience with cutting deals, being aggressive, and working as part of a team.
- even hobbies that may seem useless to many people can serve as valuable analogies for analyzing other aspects of your life
- example 1: for a time in high school i played a computer role-playing-game called Diablo 2 in which you control a character who fights demons and gradually learns different fighting skills. the majority of your time playing the game involves clicking furiously on monsters to kill them; in hindsight the game seems pretty repetitive, but I gained a valuable insight into the relationship between your time and your skills: the game was set up so that you couldn't learn every skill to the maximum degree possible; in fact, you could only fully develop a small subset of the abilities open to you. if you developed your skills in an inefficient manner (e.g. partially developing every possible skill, including those you wouldn't likely use as much), you wouldn't have as powerful a character as some other player who chose to develop their skills in a more thought-out manner (fully developing several skills, and only developing those skills that they would be using). to bring the analogy back: most people spend their lives dabbling in many different hobbies, jobs, and interests, and so they never really excel in any one area. the guys who get all the attention are the ones who've been dedicated solely to a single pursuit for a long time (mozart, tiger woods, michael jackson, warren buffet, etc). of course, the question remains: is it better to have that recognition or is it better to experience the variety of many different pursuits? I'm honestly not sure yet what the answer to that is, but at the very least it seems worth being aware of this trade-off. One of the reasons I stopped playing videogames is that I noticed that I wasn't really making any cumulative gains: I would become proficient at one game, but when that game went out of style all of those hours I had spent learning to play it seemed suddenly useless (or at least less useful). I didn't like that.
- example 2: Mark Cuban was an avid stamp collector as a teenager and learned a lot of useful business skills from his hobby. he has a post about that I need to track down.
Learning
- Figure out some way to practice the thing-to-be-learned many times in a short span of time, even if that means doing it somewhat artificially.
Owning pets
Cats
Feline panleukopenia
- Wikipedia - Feline panleukopenia
- Once contracted, it is highly contagious and can be fatal to the affected cat.
- Feline panleukopenia requires aggressive treatment if the cat is to survive, as this disease can kill cats in less than 24 hours.
- Most panleukopenia deaths are due to secondary infections or dehydration resulting from diarrhea. This is because the virus affects the infected cat's immune system, leaving it vulnerable to secondary infection.
- AVMA - Feline panleukopenia
- Infected cats may even show signs that resemble those seen when a cat has been poisoned or has swallowed a foreign object.
- 2015.01.24 - YouTube - Cat with panleukopenia
- Comment: I'm so glad this kitty was on the road to recovery. My friend's little clan was destroyed by panleukopenia. I had kittens dying in my car on the way to the vet. Out of a litter of seven kittens, two survived with CH (both passed not long after...one just died and the other fell down stairs). It also killed the kittens' mother and other cats in the household. This isn't something to mess around with.
Pest Control (Mosquitos, Mice, etc.)
Mosquitos
Politics (as a skill)
Related pages
Misc links
Pranks / Practical Jokes
Examples
Sequels (General Principles)
- If possible, try swapping a component of the sequel into the original work and see if it feels appropriate.
Eminem - Kim
- This is probably one of the best "sequels" I've ever seen done.
First song: '97 Bonnie & Clyde
Sequel: Kim
What it does right:
- It's stylistically very different from the original.
- The original is characterized by Eminem's unemotional / playful tone, as he's talking to his daughter.
- The originality comes from the contrast between his low-key delivery and the situation he's describing.
- The "sequel" is characterized by an extremely emotional delivery.
- It shows the next-most-interesting moment to describe, rather than just thoughtlessly assuming it needs to cover something that happened after the first song.
Throwing a party
Related pages
How to do it well
- You must vet the people trying to enter the party.
- Mood
- If someone's in a bad mood, they're going to bring down the general mood at the party.
Examples of good parties
- 2017.03.12 - YouTube - hurfyd - CoastDream - Soft Moon
- Awesome, just awesome.
- It reminds me of the big bicycle events in DC / LA that John would always talk about.
- I think DC also had some kind of walking event, but I don't remember what it was.
- This is also like the floats in the Pride parades.
- It may be worth noting that–apparently–the dancers in the video were not dancing to the song that is featured in the video. And the video is (obviously) an edited-down depiction of what it would have been like to be present at that event. So the video may not be conveying the actual feeling of being at the party.
- Cool things they did:
- Costumes
- Good dancers
- Cool lights on the truck
- They rented a huge 16-wheeler(?) to hold everyone in.
- It was totally improvised / not part of a big bureaucratic event.
- The dancers were doing crazy stuff like hanging upside-down off the outside of the truck with their heads just above the street.
