Life

In the olden days, we had résumés, and today, well, some of us still have résumés (or curriculum vitaes, if you prefer). But now, we also have social media profiles, which–to some folks–are the new résumés. They are the new first impression for the chronically online, the new first point of contact, the new first everything. And in the context of getting a job, these profiles and our Internet behavioural breadcrumbs are the new first thing that can get you hired or not hired. Let’s hope those recruiters don’t find your Reddit profile.

Speaking broadly, there are two ways to think about life: passively or actively. Passive philosophy amounts to letting things happen, whereas active is about making things happen. I generally try to stay active. If I want something to happen, I need to make it happen. Sitting around waiting for something to happen or for someone to come along and tell you what to do is passive.

Life is a series of random walks. Even if you walk the same path every day (in the literal sense), your individual steps on every walk you take are essentially random, and for the most part you aren’t even conscious of them because this is handled by muscle memory. When I say the steps are random, what I mean is that if you could precisely measure every step you take, where your foot lands, how much force you apply with your individual muscles to all the components of your leg and foot and torso and so on, the data would appear to match a pattern from a statistically perspective, but each individual step would have a normal random distribution.

There are 2 ways to go through life: you can either play the game, or you can play the metagame. The game is 1-dimensional chess, and the metagame is N-dimensional chess. You can apply this idea to just about everything in life. The easiest way to move from playing the game to the metagame is to think about every interaction in terms of incentives. Examining incentives is the easiest way to figure out what people want and how to turn win/lose or lose/lose transactions into win/win.

I’ve never been great at talking to people, especially strangers, but I’m much better than I used to be. In this post I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned in my quest to be a better human. It’s good to have friends

I’ve long held the belief that it’s better to try and fail, than to never even attempt doing something. Along with a few successes in life, I have had a very long list of failures to my name. Here’s a story about one such failure. Christening Ursula, my canoe

I get asked all the time by strangers, something to the effect of “Can I pet your dog?”. People see her, think she’s cute, and feel a sudden strong urge to touch her. Some people will just reach out without asking, but the majority of people ask first. My pup at the Union Square dog run in Manhattan