Patrick Roberts

On Closer Inspection

Realization: I'm not lazy. Proof: On many projects, say this blog, I'll work till my eyes ache. Why do other projects - I have my book in mind - not attract the same energy? That's the useful question. Maybe I better break that work into vivid and satisfying steps. Maybe the more familiar work is easier because I unconsciously learned to break that work, but only that work, into the right size. For the book, could a step typically be a paragraph?

Social Bookshelves

I heard of GoodReads from Felicia Day and then found Shelfari and LibraryThing. They all let you publicly list the books you read, are reading, or will read, and see the same of other users and groups. I think this is my point of diminishing returns from social web-services, but one of these might just be worthwhile for marketing my book.

From the cute book widget on the right, you can tell I chose Shelfari. You might think that the designers of sites for literati could, excepting GoodReads, coin names that don't cause blood to drip from my ears. LibraryThing has a one time fee. It's small, but I just can't bring myself to pay money for the meager privilege of them keeping a list of a few hundred books. GoodReads seemed fine. I just disliked their widget. Shelfari's owned by Amazon, so at least it won't disappear, and frankly I like cold faceless corporations.

Public Works

Slick blog, professional photo, give city, Flickr photos, Twitter micro-blogging, Delicious bookmarks, YouTube videos - my experiment in working publicly. The downside: time spent separating what should stay private. The upside to others: they can enjoy and benefit from my thoughts, solutions, photos, links and videos. The upside to me: some of that attention is occasionally, and maybe someday very, useful to me. Another advantage: all these polished cooperating services, available on all my devices.

Working publicly also builds my habit of finishing work, especially writing, even if only a sentence, and quickly putting it where others at least have a chance of seeing it. Real artists ship.

What next? A wiki.

A Science of Genius

A book I want, one that scientifically identifies the physical and chemical conditions of genius, or of productivity generally. How to sleep (if you delay it, how to avoid illness), fresh air, humidity, diet (fast? protein? vitamins?), sun exposure, exercise (aerobic or anaerobic). Not just tips on planning and prioritizing or avoiding procrastination and distraction. Varying with the kind of work: the philosopher might need isolation, the artist, a busy city.

Blogger Mortality

Tonight my parents warned me that including my photo and city on my blog will cause readers to track me down and kill me. I hadn't imagined that my existence was so offensive that it must be concealed. Seriously, many bloggers do the same as I am, and judging from the dates of their posts, have somehow managed to survive for years.

Praise for Laziness

I have my reasons for doing little work. I noticed that when I worked hardest, it was for the pleasant illusion of productivity, not working the best way or even on the best thing. Now I test and wait. Take the smallest possible step for a project, no huge perfect plans, then I do anything else while waiting for enough of a result. It's theory vs. experiment; since I used to be all theory, now I try to start with experiment. Of course, if the experiment's too small, I can't expect much of a result. In that case, if I can spot a likely reason for failure, then I try a slightly larger or different experiment. When finally sure that I have a worthy problem and the simplest, not the most complete, solution, then I let myself enjoy the stupidity of having to think only of how to execute it.

Draft of the Foreword to Lessons from a Machine Mind

A genius sees ghosts—gravity, electricity, evolution—in this book, mind. Now vivid. Now a hoax. He can pretend to be coarse and not see them, but once glimpsed they'll return and demand understanding.

When a difficult old phantom nears, Mr. Roberts doesn't step into the fog: revel in the ambiguity of natural language, confuse the issue with a splatter of conflicting official opinions, or mention curious but irrelevant facts. This book starts where most turn. Praise others only for writing a question mark after a word, not for showing how to question, much less answer.

This book doesn't hold another untested theory of mind. An idea's prized if it made a blank machine more bright, swift, or elegant. An idea's condemned if it made the machine dull, slow, or fat.

If Mr. Roberts would waste your time with unimportant words—not requiring himself to think only what no one thought, write what no one wrote—his book wouldn't be so lean. And there are already too many books, Frankenstein books, made from older books, cut, shuffled, and sewn again.

A social worker, psychologist, teacher—anyone whose universe goes not an inch past humanity—would commit Isaac Newton for his self-experiments. The hurried crowd doesn't want a second to think. Given their use, they're likely right not to try. To them, genius seems a disease, though they'd freeze in dark caves without it. The brain values the liver; to the liver, the brain's a leech. They can't see the threads that their comfort hangs from, not that they'd mind its loss so long as who they feel to be their peers were trapped there with them. But they will have the gifts of genius whether they want them or not. This book is one.

Serious Bodily Injury

Somehow I remain surprised that the best setup to my day is to nearly break my neck. In today's case, when landing after a small ramp, the front of the snowboard caught the snow, leaving me to spin upside down and land on my right shoulder. Crunch, slam, slide.

Blogs

I'm finally taking a serious shot at blogging, even micro-blogging. The entire Cor site is done as a blog - been editing HTML for too many years; no more. Plus this personal blog. Lastly, a blog to market my products that actually make money now, which I've seen recommended a 1000 times, which is how often I need to be poked before I actually bother; sale referring websites are tracked, so I'm looking forward to seeing sales from the blog.

Everyone recommends installing WordPress. I value my time too much to spend it installing security updates all year, forever. I'll happily pay someone else $200/year so I don't have to stay up at night worrying that a hacker/spammer will wreck my server and zero my income. So I chose TypePad.com. WordPress.com blocked embedding Flash in your posts - pass. Blogger.com seemed to be for amateurs. TypePad.com seemed for the serious. You can even control your favicon.

So now I'm committed. Really. I write in my personal journal everyday. Most of the material there could be public and at least the solutions to technical problems and product recommendations would interest others. Also, I think I'm mature enough to reliably judge what, ten years from now, I won't regret posting.

As for the micro-blogging, Twitter, I'm using it, mainly from iPod Touch, as a way to track my time - slept, woke, watched movie, emailed, etc. Maybe having my decadent lifestyle broadcasted will shame me into some diligence.

Morale

With essentially all my time at my whim, it's embarrassing how little work I do. Of course, I know it's highest to ensure I'm working on the most rewarding job, but that ranking is just another kind of work that I want the energy for.

Usually I'm energized by novelty but can that carry me through a substantial project?

My talent for forming huge plans, to reach a huge goal with maximum efficiency - I neglect to optimize morale. I'm a communist central planner, ignoring my greatest resource. So break my lofty works into one or two week plans with a reward that really gives me a feeling of completion. Don't write a book in one leap; finish a blog post, article, novella, lastly a short book.

I also suspect that if my unconscious thinks some important need is unsatisfied, it will deny me the energy for any other work, but of course without telling me what it wants instead.