Jack Cheng

30 Minutes a Day

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:12:00 +0000

For the optimal viewing experience, check out the web version of this article (shown above).

We have a fucked up perception of time. We count hours but discount how they’re spread out. It’s binge learning and it’s no way to grow.

If you’re like me, there are times when you get so excited about learning something new that you spend a day or two on it non-stop, only to get tired of it and move on to something else. When mastery is the goal, spending an exorbitant number of hours in one sitting will likely lead to burnout. We don’t go to the gym expecting to put on 20 pounds of muscle in a single, day-long workout. Instead, we do several short workouts a week, spread out over months. Our bodies need time to heal; our muscles time to grow. And the same goes for that muscle inside your skull. When trying to develop a new skill, the important thing isn’t how much you do; it’s how often you do it.

Say you’re trying to memorize a list of new words. You’d probably go with one of two familiar strategies. The fancy term for the first approach is spaced presentation and it just means spreading out the studying over time. On the other hand, massed presentation (ie. cramming), helps keeps the words in your short-term memory, and is actually more effective if you have an exam the next day—just as working out right before you hit the beach makes a noticeable, albeit temporary, difference. In psych-speak, this is known as the spacing effect, and it explains why you can’t seem to remember anything you learned in college. Although, alcohol probably had something to do with this too.

An interesting third approach is one developed by a man named Paul Pimsleur. Pimsleur dedicated his life to understanding and improving language learning process. He observed that the first time you learned a new word, you’d forget it almost immediately. But if you reviewed it again as you were about to forget it, each subsequent review would exponentially increase the staying power of the word. To put it another way, if you could only remember the word for 5 seconds at first, reviewing it after those five seconds would boost your retention time to 25 seconds, then 2 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on. At this rate, the tenth review wouldn’t have to take place until about four months after the first¹.

Of course, these schedules depend on different factors like the difficulty of the word and the background of the speaker, but even a rough timetable would be invaluable for teachers as it’d let them know when they needed to review old material — to get maximum retention with minimum repetition. Make no mistake, the goal isn’t to do avoid having to practice every day; it’s to make the repetition manageable so you can introduce new material every day. It’s about staying interested and excited about what you’re learning.

Pimsleur shows us that memory isn’t linear; that even if you spend the same total amount of time studying, the time you spend in between significantly affects what your brain does with the information. Learning is the space between the doing.

If you want to experience the Pimsleur Method at work, Simon and Schuster publishes a series of Pimsleur-based language courses laid out across daily 30-minute audio lessons.

Building a Daily Practice

When software developer Brad Isaac asked Jerry Seinfeld, who in those days was still a touring comic, what his secret was, he advised Isaac to pick up one of those wall calendars that had the entire year on a single page. To Seinfeld, becoming a better comedian meant writing every day, so each day Jerry worked on his writing, he would put a big red X in the box for that day. Pretty soon, there’d be a chain of red Xs and not breaking the chain became its own motivation.

There are moments when, caught up in the mental resistance that keeps us from getting started, we forget just how enjoyable the act of doing really is. When you’ve finally started and you’re engaged in the work, you think “hey, I kind of like this.” What I love about the Seinfeld calendar is that it lets you channel your stubbornness and redirect it from not starting into not missing your reps.

Lucky for you, the Internet is filled with people who like to be productive by making things to help people be more productive. For the iPhone-enabled, I use and recommend Streaks. Otherwise, check out Chris Vertonghen’s printable PDF templates.

I want you to pick one longish-term goal and commit to it right now. Make a conscious decision to actively pursue what used to be an “I want…” or “I should…” like improving your writing, speaking a new language or finally learning CSS (you know who you are).

You’re going to accomplish this goal by limiting the time you spend on it to no more than 30 minutes a day. You’re going to learn more by working with your long-term memory rather than against it. If you can’t carve out a half hour each day, cut it to 15 minutes. Find a time span that makes it insanely hard for you to not do it every day. Keep doing it and over time, you’ll be surprised at how much you’re able to accomplish.

The Value of Certainty, Part 2

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:05:00 +0000

Continued from Part 1.

Those of you that follow me on twitter know that I’m in Michigan for the summer. I’m here because a couple months ago, my mother was diagnosed with stage 1A Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Quick cancer lesson: Hodgkin’s is a blood cancer, and typically more predictable than its non-Hodgkin’s cousin. There are four stages, with the lateness of the stage reflecting how far the cancer has spread. The ‘A’ designation means that Mom wasn’t showing any outward symptoms like night sweats, fevers or weight loss.

What started out as a swollen lymph node became an “oh shit” series of events, though we’re lucky that the doctors caught it so early and the outlook for full recovery is good. My parents were living in Shanghai at the time, and after getting the same prognosis from three different hospitals, they decided to come back to Michigan for chemo and radiation therapy. Because Dad has a job that requires him to travel back and forth between the States and Asia, my younger brother is just finishing his junior year of high school and I can work from anywhere, my coming back to help her through the entire treatment was a no-brainer.

Plan, meet wrench.

The day Mom scheduled the times for her two-plus months of chemotherapy and radiation, she was finally able to land an appointment with a fourth, well-respected hospital she had previously (unsuccessfully) tried to get time with. Here’s where things got complicated: the doctors at the fourth hospital reviewed the previous tests, conducted their own, and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t enough evidence to call it cancer at all! Their recommendation? No treatment, just monitor the situation closely.

We had to make a choice — in one scenario, we would (and were about to) endure chemo and radiation (no stroll in the park by any means), and in the other, we’d take the risk that it really wasn’t cancer and pray that nothing happens (or if something does happen, that we don’t catch it too late). Like in my thought experiment, it was a choice between the certainty of shorter-term suffering and the uncertainty of a possible longer-term, severe suffering.

Somewhat worse than food poisoning.

A majority of you who responded to the previous post chose the first scenario. The cloud of uncertainty surrounding the second scenario was the dealbreaker. Even those of you who chose Option B did so in a way that maximized the amount of control you had over the situation — some of you said you would stay away from certain foods and others based it on previous experiences with food poisoning. Still others joked around about the credibility of the source!

In the real world, things aren’t nearly as black and white. There is never absolute certainty—cancer treatment comes with its own set of dangers and potential problems: susceptibility to infection, risk of secondary cancers and so on. In the end, after asking plenty of questions, it came down to a choice over which uncertainties we could live with and which ones we couldn’t.

I think this tradeoff underlies any decision we make. Sometimes we barely even think about it, while in situations like this one, we spend a lot of time thinking about it. We essentially trade one set of uncertainties for another, and our values are the fulcrum of the scale we weigh these choices on. Some of us stay at full-time jobs because we dread the uncertainty of not having a steady income. Others venture off on their own because they can’t stand the uncertainty of not being in control of what they work on. Entrepreneurs don’t take risks; they’re just afraid of different things.

This past Monday, Mom, had her first of four chemo sessions. Parts of the Detroit-area hospital doing the treatment look like they were taken from the interior of a spaceship designed during the cold war. They hand out buzzers in the waiting area like they do at Shake Shack.

We’re still learning and getting used to the side-effects of chemo. Some days go by like nothing happened at all, while on others Mom says it’s like she’s pregnant all over again. My little brother flies in at the beginning of July and I’m looking forward to spending time with him too. This summer is going to be one of the most difficult of our lives, but I think, at the same time, we can make it on of the best.

I’ll end with the comment sasq left on the last post:

I say option a, because when you’re done with the curse, food will taste so much better.

Amen.

— Jack Cheng, June 2009

The Value of Certainty, Part 1

Sun, 24 May 2009 02:22:00 +0000

You’re on your way to the office when you pass by a tiny shop you’ve never noticed before. It happens to you quite a bit actually, though normally by the time you even consider going in, your inertia has already carried you too far past it for you to change course. This time it’s different; something about this place is calling out to you. You impulsively double back and walk through the door.

Inside is a figure sitting at a round table. His hands rest on its surface, palms facing upward as if he were about to make the universal gesture for “come in.” The way the place is lit, the only other part of him you can see is the lower half of his face. Suddenly you’re having second thoughts about your decision, but you sit down at the table anyway.

The figure tells you it’s your unlucky day — you have to make a choice between two options and neither are pleasant:

Option A

He casts a spell on you that, for the next three months, makes everything you eat taste like your least favorite food. Afterwards, things will return to normal. If you choose this option, you’ll have a week to prepare before the spell takes effect.

Option B

He does nothing. You go about your usual business, but you’ll have a somewhat increased chance of contracting severe food poisoning from everything you eat. If this happens, the only cure is to have him perform the same spell from Option A, except this time around, the spell lasts six months, possibly longer.

Which would you choose, and why? I’d love to hear your response in the comments. I’ll follow up in a few days with something less hypothetical.

Comments are now closed. This essay’s continued in Part 2

— Jack Cheng, May 2009

Doing the Dishes

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:35:00 +0000

Author’s note: this piece comes enhanced with background music, courtesy of the lovely Johanna, who helped her sound-designing significant other, Matt, record it for one of his plays. For the full experience, roll the tape and continue reading:

This essay’s about something that almost everyone does without really thinking. It’s an act in which, even equipped with the best tools, you still have to get your hands wet. But “doing the dishes” is just a name for this certain type of activity; it’s merely a part used to describe the greater whole.

Dishes don’t do themselves.

You can let the dishes sit there, but you have to do them eventually. At some point, you’re going to run out of clean dishes or start facing the wrath of cockroaches and rotting food, and that’s no fun at all.

It’s hard to do other things when you’re doing the dishes: both hands are occupied at all times, and it’s tough to hear the phone or TV over running water. So you rush through—you try to do the dishes as quickly as possible just to get them over with.

But you can’t rush doing the dishes. If you do, they’ll end up all crusty and you’ll have to do them again (that doesn’t stop you from trying though). Sure, brillo pads help you scrub out the tough stains, but you’ve still got to thumb over the inside edge of the bowl to make sure you didn’t miss a spot. Likewise, a dishwasher can take care of most of the washing, but you still have to rinse dishes, pre-treating heavily caked ones and placing them securely in the dishwasher.

See where I’m going with this?

Other dish-doing activities:

Cleaning your workspace
Refactoring messy code
Deleting and archiving the clutter in your inbox

When you really “do the dishes” without hurrying through them, you learn things. You notice how rectangular dishes have more nooks and corners and are harder to clean properly than round ones. You realize how you’ve been getting dozens of emails with questions and issues you can pre-empt. Or that those twelve lines of code you’re so used to writing can actually be handled with five.

Since dirty dishes beget more dirty dishes, once you start investing time and attention into doing the dishes, you’ll notice that they don’t stack up as often anymore. You’ll get into a habit of cleaning them as you go. When you come across new kinds of dishes, you’ll have a better sense of how they might work with your routine. You’ll start playing games with the order you do the dishes in and the way you stack them on the dish rack. Doing the dishes will become its own fun.

“Whether flying a plane non-stop around the world or washing dishes after dinner, he invests attention in the task at hand.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

The dude with the funny name is right on. Key word: invest. Patience… attention… these are investments that pay out over time in greater sums of themselves. Don’t look at doing the dishes as a chore; start seeing it as daily practice. Do the dishes. And do them well.

— Jack Cheng, April 2009

Steepster

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:14:00 +0000

Recently, my friends Mike, Jason and I flipped the switch on Steepster, a project that’s been lurking in the back of my mind for some time now. The idea’s pretty simple: you keep a tealog—a quick daily journal of the teas you drink—and follow friends and other tea lovers on the site and see what they’re drinking:

This way, if you’re obsessed with tea or even just getting into it, you can keep a tasting journal and discover new teas through people you know and trust.

An experiment in self-awareness

It all started over a year ago, when I was using the now-defunct morale-o-meter to track the hours of sleep I was getting, the amounts of caffeine and alcohol I was consuming, and how good I felt as a result. After a month, one thing was clear: I was drinking way too many cups of coffee and cans of Coke.

So I switched to tea.

Over time, I found myself consuming more tea in both quantity and variety. I started reading books about tea, taking classes on tea and even doing little projects with tea. The more I immersed myself in all things tea, the more I saw it as a way of thinking about the pressures of the daily grind.

Right place, right time?

About a week after our site launched, Wired posted an article declaring tea “the new coffee—the tipple of choice for the Twitteratti.” Brian Chen writes:

The culture that brought us pizza as a food group and $20,000 coffeemakers has now discovered tea. And its internet-savvy boosters like [Kevin] Rose and [Tim] Ferriss are leading a movement in the United States to promote the leafy beverage as a trendy drink for new-age geeks who are as obsessed with having energetic bodies as they are with fast computers.

Something’s not quite right here. If you look at the outside the U.S., you’ll find that tea’s been drink of choice for nearly every generation for hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of years. After water, tea is the second-most popular beverage in the world (here, it’s 6th, behind carbonated sugar-water, coffee, beer, wine and bottled water). So why is tea suddenly hot shit here in the states?

It’s 1990, years after Mel Ziegler and his artist wife Patricia sold their first company, Banana Republic, to The Gap. On a plane to San Francisco, Mel is seated next to a young consultant by the name of Bill Rosenzweig. Both avid tea drinkers, they begin talking about the poor quality and availability of real tea in the U.S. Even after they land and Bill returns to his home in Arizona, the two continue to hash out plans for a new venture called The Republic of Tea.

Keep in mind that this is the early nineties: the Web hasn’t gone mainstream yet, so in order to communicate, Bill and Mel send faxes back and forth to each other. Peppered throughout the faxes are Patricia’s sketches of logos, merchandise and packaging. Their book, The Republic of Tea is a collection of these exchanges.

It’s one of the most thoroughly fascinating business-type books I’ve read (there’s even a copy of their business plan in the back), but some of the parts I find the most enlightening are actually the ones that expound on the need for tea at that moment in time. Here’s a scan from one of the pages:

Big-picture observations from April 18, 1990 (p. 49)

Sound familiar? Today, The Republic of Tea is one of the leading specialty tea retailers in the country and thanks to the web and the numerous other tea operations that have sprung up since the 90s, we have access to the highest-quality tea from all around the planet. Nevertheless, the trends outlined in the list above are not only still true today; they’re even more true! Note to self: when starting a company, find a raison d’etre that gets stronger over time.

Anti-what?

Flash forward two decades: most Americans still consume tea in grab-and-go forms. A commonly cited statistic is that iced tea accounts for 80% of tea drinking in the States. Now, I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to choosing convenience, but I think “functional” bottled drinks that emphasize the physical health benefits of tea overlook the very thing that makes tea tea.

The act of making the tea is inseparable from the leaves themselves. True tea is about the ritual. It’s a ritual that exemplifies slowness, gratitude and attention: you let the water boil, you let the leaves steep, you put everything else on hold and sit down with friends for a fresh cup and conversation. Tea time is lo-fi time.

One reason, I think, the tech-savvy are leading the charge is that we’re the ones knee-deep in overload. For the always-connected and ever-distracted, tea’s a gasp of air amidst a torrent of tweets. Ultimately, when we’re surrounded by products and systems growing increasingly complex by the day, there’s something vastly appealing about the simplicity of leaves in water.

— Jack Cheng, April 2009

Guestbook

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:42:00 +0000

This little blog has really picked up some steam in the past few months, and I have all of you to thank. Pretty much all the opportunities I’ve had and projects I’ve worked on since last fall can be traced back to someone I’ve met through this site. At the time of posting, here are the rough numbers:

35,000 of you have visited this site since the beginning of the year (!!!)
1,600 of you are subscribed to the RSS Feed.
1,100 of you are following on Twitter
200 of you are getting quotes and other bits of inspiration via Tumblr

So on that note, let’s open it up, bring back the guestbook from the geocities days, and see if we can’t make some new friends or connections. Leave a comment, introduce yourself, and tell us one thing that you’re doing or working on that you’re totally excited about.

— Jack Cheng, March 2009

Denial

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:15:00 +0000

Denial gets a bad rap sometimes, but the right kind of denial, especially when you’re embarking on a new project, can be tremendously motivating. Good denial is a wonderful thing.

Good denial is often the result of inexperience. Good denial doesn’t know well enough to realize what the obstacles are, and that’s why good denial plows right through them.

Good denial is marked by action; it’s a reason to do something, rather than an excuse to stay the same. When everyone else says “it can’t be done,” good denial finds a way to do it.

Good denial should be embraced. I’m most excited about my work when I’m in good denial. If you start looking for ways to get out of denial, you usually end up sabotaging your enthusiasm. At the end of the day, good denial is just an extreme form of optimism.

Of course we can.

My friend Chris has a great story about street-artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey’s portrait of Barack Obama has become a fixture in the highlight reels of the past election. You can’t even talk about his work without using the word ‘iconic.’

Shepard Fairey is on an absolute roll. The man was recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning and the Obama portrait was just installed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in DC. Last week, Fairey sat on a stage with Lawrence Lessig and Steven Johnson and jammed about remix culture in front of a sold-out New York Public Library crowd.

Photo courtesy of cliff1066

A decade or so ago, Fairey had just emerged from the skate-culture scene and was gaining notoriety for putting up stickers depicting a posterized image of wrestler/actor Andre the Giant and the line “Andre the Giant has a posse.” These stickers were the predecessors to Fairey’s eventual Obey Giant Empire.

In those early days, my friend Chris was in middle school. Chris would see Fairey in the neighborhood all the time, placing the stickers on signs, lampposts and the sides of garbage cans near the school. Curious about the man’s motivations, Chris walked up to him one day and asked bluntly, “dude, what the hell are you doing?”

Shepard Fairey looked back and replied, “you’ll see.”

— Jack Cheng, March 2009

In Praise of Lo-Fi

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Whenever I travel, I feel a remarkable sense of clarity on the return trip. It usually hits me as I’m staring out the window of the airplane cabin or train car. I think it happens because on the way there, you have all this pent-up anticipation — you’re looking forward to seeing old friends or new cities, and chances are you’re still worrying a bit about hotel confirmations. And whether all your stuff made it through airport security.

But it’s different on the way home. You know exactly where you’re headed and what’s happening once you set foot on solid ground. If you’re coming back from vacation, you’re probably not in any hurry to return to the chaos of everyday life. If there aren’t any crying babies or stray pigeons, you’re happy where you are, taking in the now of things.

Plus it helps that there’s no wi-fi or cell coverage on that plane, am I right?

“For your information, the Internet — if you’re connected to it— automatically turns off at 10,000 feet during descent.”

I heard those words for the first time on my way back from LA last week, thanks to the inflight wi-fi service on my American Airlines jet. Scary. If you’re reading this site, it’s likely that having an instantaneous, always-connected, accessible-everywhere pipe of information is already the rule, rather than the exception. And the way we’re headed, disconnectedness is turning into even more of an anomaly.

It’s scary because I don’t think we’re properly equipped to deal with the new choices technology offers us. In the grand scheme of things, the way our brains are wired hasn’t changed much over the past few centuries — we’re running new software on old hardware.

So what happens when the situations that once forced us to disconnect start to disappear? What happens when the entire globe is blanketed with wi-fi and iPhones don’t run out of batteries? What happens when we have to consciously decide to switch things off?

The opportunities for deep contemplation and big-picture thinking get put at risk. Personally, I rarely have big ideas while sitting in front of a computer or staring at my phone. Those types of things usually come to me when I’m walking down the street or in bed about to call it a night. Unless we start adopting the kind of habits to manage how and when we connect, willpower won’t stand a chance against computing power.

The Hanjin Boston is a Korean-built freighter ship that transports thousands of shipping containers filled with scrap metal across the Pacific. It’s common for these freighter ships to come equipped with a few nicely-furnished cabins for passengers seeking adventure (or lack thereof) on the high seas.

Photo courtesy of Rob Long

On a recent voyage from Seattle to Shanghai, one such passenger was a Hollywood screenwriter named Rob Long. Long went on one of these freighter cruises in order to devote undistracted time to a few of his writing projects. He spoke about the journey on his weekly podcast, Martini Shot.

“I recognize [it] is an extreme solution – couldn’t you just check into a hotel? Someone asked me, unaware, apparently, that hotels have dozens of soft-core offerings on demand. Couldn’t you just turn off your wi-fi? Another naive soul asked, as if that’s the kind of thing a person can do, just turn it off and stop Twittering.

No, the right thing to do is what I’ve done. Book passage on the Hanjin Boston, from Seattle to Shanghai, face King Neptune and write the damn script."

We’re not all in the position to spend three weeks floating across the ocean on our own industrial versions of Walden Pond, but I think these types of retreats are only going to get more appealing. And while we might not be able to change our minds’ ability to deal with an overwhelming amount of information, we can do things to force ourselves into environments and situations better suited for reflection.

Lo-fi time, I call it. And it’s about blocking off time for sitting still and letting your mind wander. Or going for walks without necessarily trying to get anywhere. I very rarely take my Macbook to cafes anymore and sometimes I conveniently “forget” my phone at home. Even though most of my own work ends up living digitally, there are plenty of things to do that don’t require a computer.

Making Lemonade

Airlines do what they can to help you make the time go by faster. The more you’re distracted — with 30,000 movies, on-demand mp3s, seat-to-seat video games and now wi-fi—the less you’re thinking about how much you hate flying. I used to write ads about these kinds of modern conveniences and there’s nothing wrong with that… if we think of plane rides as necessary evils. But maybe we should consider these lo-fi zones as a blessing rather than a curse; as places to be enjoyed, rather than endured. ’Cause before you know it, the cloud will be everywhere, and not even a cruise on a freighter ship will provide escape.

— Jack Cheng, January 2009

Brief Updates: Improv, Behance, Cali

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:59:00 +0000

Hi folks, just a few quick announcements before we return to your regularly-scheduled essaying.

A few months ago I took an intro-to-improv class at the People’s Improv Theater. It was insanely fun and useful at the same time. I’d recommend it to anyone and I wrote a series of short articles for Behance Magazine about that experience (if you’re not already familiar with Behance, they build products and services to help creative professionals make ideas happen).

The first article, Lessons from Improv: Create Inertia, went live last week, and the remaining articles will go up in the weeks to come. (I’ll update this post with links as they appear).

Secondly, I’m going to be in LA from the 14th through the 22nd. If anyone wants to meet up for tea or a bite to eat, let me know.

That’s it for now. Have a very nice weekend.

Update (Jan 28): Lessons from Improv #2: Let Ideas Happen

Update (Apr 25): #3: Failing is Good and #4: Establish Context Quickly

— Jack Cheng, January 2009

Buckminster Fuller's Universe

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:35:00 +0000

It’s no coincidence that I’ve referenced Buckminster Fuller a few times lately. Fuller is known for popularizing the geodesic dome — Epcot center and the crystal ball that dropped in Times Square last Wednesday are examples of such structures. Bucky’s also perhaps infamous for his utopian visions of floating cities or putting an energy-saving bubble around midtown Manhattan:

Image courtesy of The Buckminster Fuller Estate

Although Fuller’s legacy is still a topic of debate to this day, there’s no question that he saw the world differently from most people. In the book Buckminster Fuller’s Universe, Lloyd Steven Sieden gives you a sense of Fuller’s extraordinary psychology —of not just what he did, but why he did it—and all the events that shaped his life’s philosophy. Or as Bucky called it, his operating strategy.

On Ideas

Fuller believed that individuals, acting in cooperation, free from archaic bureaucracies was a more natural and efficient way to live. Most of his work was directed at helping solve problems that prevented people from being self-sufficient — challenges that limited one’s mobility or sustainability. In working on these problems, Fuller discovered the best way to express his comprehensive ideas was to turn them into tangible artifacts:

“Bucky had, however, concluded that merely talking about ideas does not support their advancement or the development of individuals and humanity. In fact, he found that the majority of people do nothing about their good ideas except engage in seemingly endless discussions. During such discussions, those with the good ideas perpetually attest to the value of their concepts and how their ideas would improve the human condition if only other people would abide by their wisdom.” (p. 258)

Awesome. That’s why Bucky built prototypes, both full-sized and to scale, and used them whenever he could to explain his ideas. He would carry trunks and trunks of models to his lectures, and amassed quite a collection over the years:

Just a small chunk of Bucky’s collection. (p. 301)

On Patience

Fuller also believed in a concept he dubbed emergence by emergency. He recognized that it was human nature to put things off until they’re of absolute urgency, like not calling the landlord about a leaky faucet until you come home one day and the entire apartment’s flooded. Bucky saw that this applied to broad, social issues too — that a problem would suddenly arise to the public eye, focusing the attention of a general population on solving that issue until it was solved and something else surfaced (climate crisis, anyone?).

So when nothing progressed with his projects, he just moved on to the next thing that required his attention, knowing that the previous idea would manifest itself when the time came.

“I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented.”
— Buckminster Fuller

Bucky’s experiences reinforced this belief. When he was driving through the Midwest in 1940, along the roads he noticed identical grain storage bins, all manufactured by the same company. Fuller, who had always carried an interest in efficient, mass-produced (and thereby much more affordable) housing, found a way to develop units using the same manufacturing processes that produced the grain silos:

Image courtesy of the Google-hosted LIFE photo archive

Bucky concocted a bunch of totally new construction and auxiliary processes, and his prototype impressed military leaders searching for inexpensive housing options for remote radar stations during the war. Thus, Bucky’s ‘Dymaxion Deployment Units’ began popping up in the Persian Gulf and the islands of the South Pacific. But when the U.S. officially entered the war in 1941 and steel was devoted to making guns, planes and ships, the project lost all its momentum.

It didn’t faze Bucky – he just moved on to the next thing. Then in 1944, as the war dragged on and affordable, industry-supporting housing in the Midwest became an issue almost overnight, Fuller was perfectly ready to deal with it. He was able to apply his previous learnings and not only design but also construct, within a single year, a set of ‘Dymaxion Houses’ for the Air Corps to examine:

Image courtesy of The Buckminster Fuller Estate

At 1100 square feet and 6,000 pounds (the weight of two Toyota Priuses), the aluminum houses incorporated much of what Fuller learned in building his DDUs. The parts for the Dymaxion House were mass-produced at a factory and designed so they could be easily shipped and assembled. In fact, no single component weighed more than 10 pounds and yet the structure was remarkably stable. Take that, IKEA!

The Dymaxion House would suffer its own setbacks, several of which were a result of Fuller’s adherence to only using the finest (and sometimes not-yet-invented) materials and technology, but Bucky took it all in stride, shifting his attention to his next project.

On Gratitude

Early in the book, Sieden describes Fuller’s severe myopia, which at the time that Bucky was four years old, had yet to be diagnosed by his doctors. When they finally discovered his condition and prescribed him thick, coke-bottle glasses, Bucky felt no remorse. In fact, quite the opposite:

“Bucky considered himself fortunate to be able to remove his glasses at times and consciously shift his attention inward, using his imagination and intuition, rather than his sight, for guidance.” (p. 6)

Even at a such young age, Bucky’s attitude was consistent with his eventual operating strategy.

Change your attitude. Change the world.

Buckminster Fuller saw each person as an experiment by the universe, and therefore each has important role in the greater story. Fuller believed that it was his responsibility to take on what the Universe called him to do and live as proof of what a single individual was capable of. With this sense of purpose, he was able to approach projects, successes and failures alike with gratitude and patience.

Image courtesy of kevinh_photos

As we work toward our resolutions for the new year, we can draw inspiration from Fuller’s remarkable mindset. Take a look at your list of resolutions. Instead of only asking “what do I need to accomplish?” maybe another question to ask is “what do I need to believe in order to be the kind of person who accomplishes these things?”

If you’re trying to to quit smoking, run a marathon, or work on your writing, it’s not going to last unless you get yourself to believe that cigarettes are absolutely disgusting, running is fun, and writing and rewriting (and rewriting again) is an enjoyable process. And if you can get yourself to believe that the universe wants you to write that screenplay, I guarantee it’ll last a lot longer than a couple of months.

“I look for what needs to be done. After all, that’s how the universe designs itself.” — Buckminster Fuller

Here’s to 2009 and beyond.

Update (Jan 15): Fuller’s ideas also inspired Stewart Brand to start the Whole Earth Catalog, which is returning after 40 years. The WEC online archive has a lot articles written by Fuller, such as this one: http://www.wholeearth.com/issue/2005/article/94/2025.if

— Jack Cheng, January 2009

StickyScreen

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:48:00 +0000

I have a habit of putting sticky notes on the edge of my monitor. Usually these notes consist of mantras I come up with based on something I’ve learned or read recently. I have to change it up about once a week because if I get too used to seeing it, I start ignoring it.

Meet StickyScreen

My new mini-project takes the note off the edge of your monitor and puts it smack dab in the middle. The idea is to set StickyScreen as your homepage so that your ‘note to self’ shows up whenever you open a new tab or browser window.

It’s just like leaving yourself a note on the bathroom mirror before you go to bed: you know you’ll see it the next morning, but at the same time, you’re not totally expecting it when you do. That’s why StickyScreen works well as a procrastination roadblock — a small reminder to stay on task when you’re opening new pages left and right. Merlin Mann has a great term for these types of things: he calls them undistractions. StickyScreen probably wouldn’t exist had I not come across his own personal undistraction a week ago.

How it works:

No bullshit login screens, database voodoo or even a ‘submit’ button. You type directly onto the sticky and it updates as you type. Your sticky is unique to you – nobody will see it but you (and whomever you let use your web browser). You can change it as often as you like, so it never gets stale. Firefox users can make it load on every new tab too, with the New Tab Homepage addon.

Here’s my current StickyScreen:

Show me yours! Or better yet, don’t. Type yourself a note and get on with it — you have better things to do than posting screenshots to some dude’s blog.

Update: Since I’ve gotten a couple messages about it – yes, you are free to make your own version or adapt the page to your own liking, though I’d greatly appreciate a shout out if you do.

— Jack Cheng, December 2008

Time on your side

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:07:00 +0000

We all have nagging to-dos — the ones we put off for weeks or months (or even years). When we finally get around to taking action, we realize that we spent more time dreading them or worrying about them than it actually took to do them.

For the past couple months, I’ve been attaching a time estimate to the end of each item on my to-do list. This simple trick has completely changed how I deal with the things on my plate, especially the tasks I’d normally keep putting off. I call it time-tagging:

Time-tagging helps you filter.

Say you’re a fairly-organized, somewhat-busy individual and you have a list of to-dos, arranged by project like so:

And you only have 20 minutes before your next meeting starts. In this case, Subconscious Jack would decide it was too much mental work to scan that long list and process those few hundred characters to figure out which one he had time to do. So naturally, I defaulted to reading blogs, checking email incessantly and general slackery (also known as “killing time”).

But if you have the minutes in advance, you skip over a lot of the mental resistance that comes with figuring everything out on the spot. You can glance at this list and just ignore any task longer than 20 minutes:

Time-tagging helps you clarify.

Often our to-dos are so vague that we end up thinking they’re bigger and more energy-consuming than they actually are. By going through and consciously considering how long it’d take to complete them, we can break down vague tasks into ones that aren’t quite as daunting:

I follow the 5-60 rule. If it takes less than 5 minutes, it’s a waste of time to even write it down. You should do it on the spot if possible. If it’s longer than an hour, it’s probably too big and needs to be split into smaller tasks. Otherwise, you’re going to skip over that 3-hour to-do every single time.

Time-tagging helps you democratize.

When you think about your tasks in terms of how long it takes to complete them, the volume on what the project is gets dialed down. Important projects you’ve been putting off gain weight on impulsive, less-productive things.

We go through huge chunks of our day on autopilot. When that happens, we let our subconscious minds dictate what we feel like working on (which often leads to a couple hours reading wikipedia or watching youtube videos) instead of what we know we should work on. Seeing things in terms of time give our conscious minds some leverage — that extra little boost we need to overcome the mental hurdles that stand in the way of putting creative energy toward something amazing.

— Jack Cheng, December 2008

Maxing out your Triangle

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:40:00 +0000

I find that most people take on new jobs, projects and hobbies for three reasons:

To learn something new
To pay the bills
Because they love doing it

These three things fulfill some of our very basic needs — they give us stability, excitement, ways to contribute and opportunities to grow. If you’re with me so far, then allow me to present exhibit A, the love-growth-cash triangle:

Here’s where some common activities could fall on our chart:

Some people might ascribe to the philosophy that it’s okay to be at a well-paid-yet-crappy day job and use the remaining time and money enjoying your hobbies. I disagree. Here’s why — if you combine the two triangles, you get the following:

In other words, you end up missing out on pieces of the bigger (triangular) pie. There’s a certain joy that comes from doing what you love, getting compensated for it and constantly learning new things in the process. Your goal should be to maximize each experience and try to cover as many new areas of the bigger triangle as possible.

If you have a shit job, come up with new ways to learn something out of it. If you have a hobby you’re super-excited about, try to turn it into a business. If you’re just starting a new gig, instill it with something you’re passionate about.

Do it.

Re-evaluate everything you’re working on. Grab a pen right now and draw a triangle for every job, project and hobby. Take a good hard look at each one. What can you do to get more out of that experience? If it’s not helping you max out the bigger triangle, drop it and find something else to spend your time on.

— Jack Cheng, November 2008

Passion Projects

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:35:00 +0000

Thank you. For all the supportive comments and emails. It’s been 3 weeks since I took the leap and I’ve already sat down a ton of interesting people for lunch and tea. A surprise for me so far is the number of new projects I’ve had to turn down or pull myself away from. I’m going to tell you about one of these projects.

Meet Will

My friend Will has been bitten by the travel bug (though it’s probably more of a full-on infection). If he could have any superpower, it’d be to teleport to new places on a whim. Will’s also a web developer who’s worked at companies like Google. He approached me at the beginning of the year for some help on a travel planning site he was building. There was no budget, but it seemed like an interesting challenge, so I jumped on as a partner.

We quickly realized there were too many travel planning sites out there already. Most of them tried to be a “one-stop stop all for your travel needs” and many had an overly-tidy view of how travel planning worked. These sites expected you to know what your travel dates were and tried to confine you to a very linear, step-by-step kind of travel planning.

But real-world travel planning looks more like this:

Photo via Philosopher Queen

It’s chaotic. You have a million different websites open, hear recommendations from co-workers, clip articles from the travel section of the Times and bookmark pages in your Lonely Planet guide. All the while, there are emails going back and forth constantly between you and your friends. Most people just end up copying and pasting stuff into a Word document or printing everything out and shoving it into a manila folder.

Our approach

We wanted to be a little more forgiving of all the chaos. No matter what kind of trip you’re planning, where it is or when you’re going to take it, you’re essentially just collecting ideas for things to do, based around a certain location.

We’re calling it Duffel. Here’s what it looks like:

Duffel’s now at a stage where we’re not totally embarrassed to show it friends of friends (some companies call this the private beta). If you’d like to play around with it, ~~leave a comment here or email me directly and I’ll get you in~~ [use this signup link]. Since I don’t have any trips lined up in the near future, I use it to keep track of things I’ve been meaning to check out in New York.

“I think we need a break.”

When you don’t have a steady job, your time suddenly becomes a lot more precious. If you’re doing something and it’s not paying the rent or offering you some kind of unique learning experience, you start asking yourself why you’re not spending the time on your own obsessions.

A few days ago, I told Will I needed to step away from Duffel for the time being. It had turned into a passion project that wouldn’t really help pay my rent (at least not immediately). And while I have no problem working on passion projects, in the end it’s Will’s passion—not mine. He’s the one that obsesses over travel. He’s the one who’ll enthusiastically read every piece of feedback you send in.

We all have our own personal Duffel. Some us need to find it and some already know what it is — we just need to start giving ourselves a little more attention.

— Jack Cheng, November 2008

On Permanence

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:28:00 +0000

How many times has this happened to you:

You summon all your brilliance to put together a killer design, email, presentation or blog entry.
Time whizzes by and you’ve read, re-read, tweaked and re-tweaked everything for the five hundredth time.
The instant you look at the sent message, printed slides or published blog entry, you notice typos, redundant phrases and other things that make absolutely no sense.

It happens to all of us (at least from my unscientific survey of a few friends these couple days). The question is why? Why does it seem like we’re better at picking up mistakes only after the fact? Why do we notice different details when we print something out and read it over versus trying to review it on-screen? As I brought the subject up over lunch, Johanna mentioned that she had written about almost the exact same thing two weeks ago. Her entry deals with the act of organizing thoughts in physical space and there are some wonderful ideas in the comments too.

Review vs. Do

My personal take is that for any given task, our minds constantly shift between two modes: review and do. Review-mode give us perspective on the big picture and keeps us on track toward reaching our destination. Do-mode is focused on implementation — building, typing, moving pixels and making changes.

The problem is that when we’re in front of that blinking cursor, everything is so easily editable that we get caught up in do-mode. When we try to review things, we think, “oh, that’s an easy fix, so I’ll do it right now,” and instantly return to do-mode. We keep bouncing back and forth between the two without maintaining the proper altitude to see the bigger picture. To use the forest-from-the-trees analogy, it looks something like this:

On the other hand, paper isn’t so immediately malleable. Sure we can make marks on it, but we don’t actually implement the changes until later. When we print something out, read it through and then go back to make the revisions, our path looks more like this:

The permanence of printed ink on paper forces us to stay in both review-mode and do-mode for longer spans of time. The end result is we fly a smoother path, save time and energy and reduce the risk of crashing and burning along the way. I think we all realize that on some fundamental level, paper offers us greater clarity of mind. It just feels better.

Putting it into Practice

We can force ourselves to stay in each mode for longer periods of time by applying permanence in some of the following ways:

Print it out. Grab a pen, move away from the computer, and go through it.
If you don’t like wasting trees, save it as a PDF and review it that way. Jot notes down on a scrap of paper as you flip through and then go back to make the changes.
If you’re writing a blog entry, use the ‘preview’ mode so you can see what it will look like on your blog before you publish.
Set up a text-to-speech shortcut, highlight what you’re working on and have your Mac read it back to you.

By creating constraints on our ability to instantly manipulate what’s in front of us, we can carve out a smoother, more effective path to getting things done and getting them done well.

— Jack Cheng, October 2008

Presidential Teas

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:22:00 +0000

Funny thing that Twitter. First this:

Then this:

Along with this:

And a few emails, IMs and many cups of tea later, we have Obama Tea and McCain Tea! I created the photo-illustrations on those sites and the tea itself is blended and packaged by the wonderful Elise at Pearl Fine Teas, you can order them from the Pearl Fine Teas website up until election day.

Because of obvious timing and logistical details, the orders will start shipping inauguration week in January. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the Washington Humane Society. I love it when a plan comes together.

Be sure to check out the TeaLove Blog for further developments on the presidential blends.

— Jack Cheng, October 2008

I am my own boss (and so can you!)

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:08:00 +0000

This is my last week at ss+k. I’ve had a wonderful two years at the agency and have nothing but nice things to say about the people there.

The last major risk I took was coming to New York without a job three years ago. Look what it got me: colleagues I’ve learned a shitload from, amazingly supportive friends, fascinating conversations over tea and a city I consider home. In fact, if I go back and recall every time I’ve pushed myself outside my comfort zone, I’m always glad I did it.

And lately I’ve been too comfortable. I’ve talked the talk and now it’s time to get off my ass. I see myself running my own businesses in the near future. I see myself building ridiculously awesome things that make the world a more interesting place. In the past I’ve spent time planning, trying to find the right ideas. But one thing I’ve learned is that nothing ever goes according to plan. And you can spend forever planning. That’s what most people do. They keep waiting and waiting until they have enough saved up, find the right idea or until they’re in a position with more responsibility.

But conditions are never perfect. And when we’re so focused on our plans, we lose sight of the openings in front of us. Instead of plans we need habits. Habits of taking risks. Habits of keeping our eyes open for new opportunities. Habits of putting ourselves in situations that force us to grow and change. We can all introduce a little chaos into our lives.

What’s next? I’m working on a few projects that I’ll post in the coming weeks. Aside from that, I’m keeping an open mind and figuring out other ways to pay the rent without working a full-time job. I’m sure you have some ideas too. Let’s talk.

— Jack Cheng, October 2008

How many gallons?

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:20:00 +0000

^{Disclosure: the agency I work at (SS+K) does work for the Obama campaign. That said, I personally don’t work on that account and launched this site completely independently of anything the agency or campaign is doing.}

Here’s a quickie: howmanygallons.com. Go to the site, type in your hourly wage, and then you’ll see how many gallons of gas it’s worth. The site pulls in weekly gas prices from Energy Information Administration and it’s inspired by the voter registration ads the Obama campaign’s running in battleground states.

Whether you’re an Obama supporter or not, you can use the Vote for Change site to register to vote, check to see if you’re already registered or find your polling location. Get to it!

— Jack Cheng, October 2008

Stuff I love: Muji Chronotebook

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Start with the simplest thing imaginable: a blank sheet of paper. Add a rows of lines and it becomes a notebook. Add a grid instead and it becomes an drawing pad for architects. Add a few tiny boxes and it turns into a to-do list. Put in dates and you’ve got a calendar.

But as they teach you in your high-school econ class, everything has a cost. For each function or feature you add, you lose a purpose. A blank sheet that could’ve been used in a million different ways can now only be used for a few. Artists aren’t going to buy a calendar if they’re looking for something to sketch on. Writers aren’t going to pick up to-do lists to use as a journal. This isn’t a bad thing per se—by narrowing down on a purpose, a blank sheet of paper can become more useful and relevant to certain people.

The Status Quo

But there is such a thing as too narrow. Take the typical day planner. You have a day and date printed at the top, timestamped lines for each hour, a section of little boxes for your to-dos and more lines underneath for notes. In theory it’s everything you need to go about your day. In reality, the various functions have whittled the audience for these planners down to people who have 8 to-dos, a full calendar every day, need exactly 6 square inches of space to take notes and who like buying a planner at the beginning of each year.

You get one of these things and you realize that you always write outside the boxes. There’s never enough space and every day needs a different allocation of it. Feature-creep, as it turns out, happens to paper too.

Enter the Chronotebook

The chronotebook was a judges’ prize winner in last year’s Muji Award International Design Competition and is available in Muji stores across the globe. The notebook chucks out the gridularity of the typical day planner and puts an analog clock in the middle of the page.

It’s the simplest manifestation of what a day planner is all about: time on paper. The clocks occupy a small amount of space on the page and rest is completely flexible. You can write in your own dates at the top of each page, and you can treat the rest of the space like a blank page. Here’s are some words from the designer, Wong Kok Kiong:

Because of the numerous hours in a day (and various other constraints), the lines in a diary are typically very narrow. They are also usually equally distributed (somewhat). But our information is a hierarchy. Some are more important to us. Some we feel happier about. We want to highlight stuff that’s important to us. We want to write things that are more important in BIGGER sizes. Our lives cannot be so easily and clearly divided into equal parcels.

I use the clocks in my chronotebook to keep track of appointments, how much time I spend working on things, and when I wake and sleep each day. The free space is great for daily to-dos and interesting quotes or ideas I come across. It’s small enough to fit in my back pocket and it’s the first day planner I’ve consistently used for over a week (going on 2 months now).

The chronotebook teaches us that multifunction is not the same as multipurpose. That there’s a logical, hypothetical way to do something and a simple, flexible way to do the same. When given the choice, I choose the latter. I absolutely swear by my chronotebook and recommend it without reservation (I’ve already bought three more of them).

Update 10/15: hello kottke.org readers! For those of you wondering how you can get it outside New York, commenter ‘jamaica’ says below that you can call Muji Times Square (212)382-2300 and they’ll ship it to you. The notebook itself costs $4.95.

Update 4/17/09: You can now order Chronotebooks from MUJI’s new online store.

— Jack Cheng, September 2008

Idea: Judge books by their cover

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:20:00 +0000

Here’s another small project I’ve been working on. It’s called judgeby and it does exactly what it sounds like. You go on and get shown a random¹; book cover from Amazon. Your job is to guess how good you think the book is. After you click, you see what Amazon reviewers actually rated it (and can head to the book’s Amazon.com to find out more). Rinse. Repeat.

Footnotes

¹ Not totally random since Amazon doesn’t let you just grab a random book from its catalog, but there are ways to fake it ;)

— Jack Cheng, September 2008

Risk-inverse

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:25:00 +0000

We’re in a recession. Lawmakers are scrambling. Businesses are in a hiring freeze and suddenly we all own a little piece of AIG. Everyone is hunkering down and preparing for the worst. The phrase “especially in this economy” is the new black.

Translation:

Great ideas and opportunities are being left on the table. Few people want to take chances right now. And when everybody plays it safe, the ones that go dancing in the rain will come out ahead when the storm clears.

Example:

During the dot-com bust, instead of cutting back and laying people off, Apple did the opposite. They kept their existing talent and upped their R&D budget. In Steve Jobs’s words:

What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time.

There’s no better time than now to make shit happen. Zag.

— Jack Cheng, September 2008

How to remember stuff

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:11:00 +0000

My short-term memory has been getting worse. A friend kindly suggested that I’m just getting old, which I guess is in some ways true. But I don’t blame aging brain cells. I blame the Internet.

The downside of sitting in front of a computer all day and having another one in your pocket is that after some time, you let the ‘cloud’ take over. And like any other muscle, the less we use those parts of our brains, the weaker they get.

Wait a sec…

Isn’t that the whole idea? We let the computers handle the lower-level stuff so we can spend our time philosophizing about more important things. Like Alaskan vice presidential candidates, LOLcats and social media.

Theoretically, yes. Technology is supposed to make things easier. Its purpose is to give us more time, clarity and control over our lives and the world around us. And it has. But in a lot of cases, it’s done quite the opposite too. When we let technology take over too much of our biological memory, we put ourselves in a constant state of reaction. We end up with less time and less clarity because we become increasingly vulnerable to the push and pull of trivial outside forces. Like a zombie army whose commands are issued in the form of bouncing email icons, chiming calendar alerts and vibrating hunks of metal and plastic.

I could go all day about the merits of moderation in digital stuff, but let’s talk about ways to clear out some of the cobwebs. Memories are the strongest when they are anchored to something; when we associate them with some specific act or trigger. And the more we rehearse those associations, the deeper they’re ingrained on a subconscious level. We’ve all been beaten over the head with inspirational sports movies preaching “practice makes perfect,” yet the problem is that some acts, like remembering directions to a particular address, aren’t easily practiced. The best way to learn those is to go again and again, which takes significant time, effort and gasoline.

Science to the rescue!

Here’s the interesting thing: a recent study mentioned in the New York Times highlighted strong biological evidence to support a popular theory about memory — that when we recall something from our past, a lot of the same neurons fire as when we’re actually experiencing it.

In other words, when Tom Brady sits on the couch to study his playbook and he visualizes how a play unfolds, his brain behaves (for the most part) like he’s actually on the field running the play. Of course, it’s never as good as the real thing, but it’s pretty close. We can use this insight to our advantage.

What you can do right now:

Say for instance, you want to remember to take out the trash before you leave for work in the morning. Imagine yourself going about your AM routine. Close your eyes and focus on one specific thing. Something you know you’ll do for sure, like putting your shoes on before you head out the door. Got it? Now think about every little action you’d need to take to put on your shoes: kneeling down, slipping your foot in, adjusting the heel and tying the laces. Relive that memory — the more specific, the better.

Now comes the fun part. Imagine yourself standing back up, but instead of walking out the door, you walk over to the kitchen, open the garbage can, and lift the bag out. Go back to the beginning and repeat the process a couple more times. The goal is to mash up two memories and create an association between the act putting on your shoes (the trigger) and the act of taking out the garbage (the action). It’s mental rehearsal for something that hasn’t happened yet!

And it works (for me at least). Try it. Let me know if it works for you too.

— Jack Cheng, September 2008

Idea: So easy, mom can do it.

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:11:00 +0000

I love digging into the details when something new catches my eye, but I’d argue that less than 1% of the time do you actually need to understand how everything works to be able to perform a certain task. It helps to know the basics, but you don’t have to grasp the full science behind electricity to be able to flip on a light switch. You have better things to do with your time.

I’m interested in that other 99%. I was at a cafe a couple weekends ago thinking about how I could make my life easier. With the video of John Mayer giving tech support to his dad fresh in my mind, I started thinking about the common questions I get from parents and friends regarding things like starting a blog or setting up a router. And thus, soeasymomcandoit.com was born.

The first tutorial is How to start a blog with your own .com name. I like to think of it as a mini-project for now, and I hope to launch many more mini-projects in the weeks to come. As always, I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Update (April 24, 2009) : I’ve since realized how time-consuming hand-crafting each individual tutorial would be, and until I find a different way to tackle the problem, this project is on hold.

— Jack Cheng, August 2008

Working Life

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:04:00 +0000

Picture an average American who decides to stop working at the age of 65. Got it? Now guess how many years he’ll have to enjoy his post-retirement before he passes away.

I’ve asked this to a bunch of friends and coworkers over the last two weeks. I’ve heard answers like “15-20 years” or at the very least, 10 years. But none of those is even close.

The actual answer? 18 months.

18 months! A year and a half! In a 2002 study on Boeing retirees, researchers found that those who worked til the age of 65 faced significant health problems as a result of putting their bodies under work-related stress for that long (basically forcing them into retirement). Not surprisingly, these workers passed away shortly after due to their health complications. According to the numbers, for every year a person worked past the age of 55, he/she died two years earlier.

If it was this bad 6 years ago, how much worse is it today? People are working more hours than ever before. They’re also pushing retirement back a couple years because they want to pad their nest egg. The perception is that if we make the immediate sacrifice, we’ll be better off in the long run. The reality might turn out to be quite the opposite. Happy Monday :)

Update (25 Nov 2008): In responding to one of the comments, I’ve come across some other articles saying that the study is outdated and not completely valid.

Here’s the original link (which now has a message to reflect the disputes):
http://www.seeya-downtheroad.com/InformationPage/WhyRetireYoung.html

Here’s another link with related studies/questions:
http://acpilot.blogspot.com/2006/11/does-retiring-later-mean-dying-sooner.html

— Jack Cheng, August 2008

The Illness

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:11:00 +0000

Tomorrow you visit the doctor and find out you have a life-threatening illness. There’s no cure. Nobody knows how much longer you have to live. It could be a few weeks. It could be a few months. It could be a few years. Possibly longer. The only thing that’s certain is that you will die. You won’t experience any physical pain as a result of the illness. One day you’ll just go to sleep and you won’t wake up again.

If this happened to you, how would you change your life? What would you do right away? What would you do after that? The answer to those questions is what you should be doing right now.

— Jack Cheng, July 2008

Routines for Creativity

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:11:00 +0000

One of the biggest problems facing retirees is that they don’t know what to do with all that free time. Many end up returning to the workforce, working jobs as Walmart Greeters just because they need someone to structure their day. We’ve heard that too much freedom is paralyzing. Without a specific plan of action, we feel helpless and overwhelmed.

Routines give us structure, and this is good for creativity too. Whether it’s writing for 30 minutes every morning or meeting with friends once a week to brainstorm business ideas, these rituals tell our brains and bodies to get into a specific mode at a certain moment. It’s like your subconscious saying “okay left-brain, you turn off for a little while and let right-brain do it’s thing.” Routines get us into a rhythm and allow us to shift from thinking to doing. Routines help us make shit happen.

One of the biggest advantages of having routines is what comes out of breaking them. Think about the excitement you have when you get a new project after working on a previous one for months on end. Bursts of creativity happen when you break the cycle. When you get used to sleeping at 11 every night, staying up until 4 can lead to a new spectrum of ideas. Same goes for sleeping and waking early if you’re usually a night owl.

But having no routine is really the worst routine of all. It’s the hardest one to break. Without a rhythm, music becomes random noise. Contrast and repetition are just as important for creativity.

If you’re on the no-plan plan, the first step is being conscious of your routines. What are some rituals in your life? Which ones help you be more productive or creative? Which ones are hard to break? Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

— Jack Cheng, March 2008

51 ways to change your life

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:02:00 +0000

We’re obsessed with lists. Not shopping lists or top-five-robotic-villains-of-after-school-cartoons-from-my-childhood lists (Megatron, Doc Ock, Krang, Dr. Claw, Dr. Robotnik) but different kinds of lists.

When I was cleaning my desk a few weeks ago, I found a folded-up copy of Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Flash back two years: I shrank the font down enough to print it onto one 8.5×11″ sheet, which I then folded in half a few times and put in my wallet. I probably carried it for two days before I misplaced it. Finding it again years later, I still agree with most of what’s on the manifesto. It’s hard not to.

But acknowledgment is different from action. The nature of the list format stops these behavioral lists from being more valuable. 10 ideas to simplify your life. 30 ways to reduce stress in the workplace. 48 principles of good design. When things are packaged into a list, we have a habit of reading one thing, nodding and moving on. When the next bit of juicy advice is just a few lines down the page, it’s effortless to tilt our eyeballs the extra millimeter. In our quick-fix culture, lists are the Taco Bell of knowledge.

I had a habit of doing this with self-help books and business books as well. It’s too easy to turn the page and read the next insightful tip, without stopping to really think about or try what you’ve read. The creators of these lists or books aren’t are at fault-we can only blame our own hyper-indulgence of knowledge. We’re so infatuated with the idea of learning something, we don’t take the time to really learn it.

If you feel the same way I do, here’s one (and only one) piece of advice for you. It’s a simple act that’s made a universe of difference for me lately:

Learning in moderation.

When you find yourself saying “that’s a really great idea, I should try that,” stop reading. Pick one thing from that list of fifteen. Don’t worry about finishing the rest of the book. Try it. Practice it, repeat it, until it becomes routine. Remind yourself to consciously think about it on a regular basis. When you make that one item a habit, you can come back to the source and learn something else. Then, every time you practice the new thing, you’ll be reminded to keep practicing all the old ones.

Moderation is key. The more we try to learn everything, the more we learn nothing.

— Jack Cheng, February 2008

Starting anew

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:59:00 +0000

The past few months have been hectic, but in a good way. I’m still at ss+k, working on some pretty exciting projects. I have one or two ventures of my own that are starting to become a little more real. Lately I’ve been trying to streamline and unclutter my life, and I’ve finally gotten around to this lil’ site.

The old content is here now (though if you’re on rss, you probably won’t miss a beat). The new version will be less about general thoughts/theories and more about my projects and personal methods. All those ideas aren’t any good unless you put them into practice.

In other words, less talk. more do. Time to stop wasting time.

— Jack Cheng, February 2008

Jack Cheng

30 Minutes a Day

Building a Daily Practice

Further Reading

The Value of Certainty, Part 2

Plan, meet wrench.

Somewhat worse than food poisoning.

The Value of Certainty, Part 1

Option A

Option B

Doing the Dishes

Dishes don’t do themselves.

Other dish-doing activities:

Steepster

An experiment in self-awareness

Right place, right time?

Anti-what?

Guestbook

Denial

Of course we can.

In Praise of Lo-Fi

Making Lemonade

Brief Updates: Improv, Behance, Cali

Buckminster Fuller's Universe

On Ideas

On Patience

On Gratitude

Change your attitude. Change the world.

StickyScreen

Meet StickyScreen

How it works:

Time on your side

Time-tagging helps you filter.

Time-tagging helps you clarify.

Time-tagging helps you democratize.

Maxing out your Triangle

Do it.

Passion Projects

Meet Will

Our approach

“I think we need a break.”

On Permanence

Review vs. Do

Putting it into Practice

Presidential Teas

I am my own boss (and so can you!)

How many gallons?

Stuff I love: Muji Chronotebook

The Status Quo

Enter the Chronotebook

Idea: Judge books by their cover

Footnotes

Risk-inverse

Translation:

Example:

How to remember stuff

Wait a sec…

Science to the rescue!

What you can do right now:

Idea: So easy, mom can do it.

Working Life

The Illness

Routines for Creativity

51 ways to change your life

Learning in moderation.

Starting anew