A skeptical dive into the weird, sketchy, occasionally life-changing world
of self-improvement.
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The Third Way
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Daily blogging! What fun. I’m kicking off today by talking about a specific kind of procrastination that I get, and who knows? Perhaps you do too. That’s why we’re all here, right? Let’s say there’s something you want to do, or need to do. Bad news: there’s some kind of unpleasant association or anxiety that’s making it hard to get started. And there’s something else…
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The #1 thing most adults wish they could get better at
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Gidday Cynics, This newsletter has been a long time coming. This is strange, because it’s one of the very few areas in self-improvement where I already understand the topic, I’m reasonably proficient at it, and I even…
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Interlude
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A quick one, this week, because, well… Our cat Bianca died a few days ago. It was sudden. We’d hoped to have a couple more weeks, but she became unable to eat, and keeping her longer wouldn’t…
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A NU START
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When you’ve been painting for a stretch of time, something odd can happen. Lift your attention from the canvas, and the world appears as if made of paint, impossibly bright and detailed. Nip out to get some…
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Continue
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The last two weeks have been hard. When I try to write it up, as I have many times now, I’m hit with a wave of weariness. Inside and out, everything seems drained of colour and vitality.…
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I quit
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Gidday Cynics, Quitting is not my strong suit. It’s hard to think of something I’m worse at: apart from simultaneously quitting smoking, coffee and religion1 nearly twenty years ago, I don’t like to give up on things.…
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I found the Überman
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Gidday Cynics, Remember “life-hacks?” Today, life-hacking is a cutesy phrase that means anything from “make your bed after showering” to “rip the the transformer out of your microwave and use it to burn patterns in wood and/or…
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40
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I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago and thought it’d be a good opportunity to reflect, piecemeal, on where I find myself in life, the universe, and this whole self-improvement thing. Psuedo The pseudoephedrine has been…