There’s only a finite amount of time in the day, and when things feel out of control, our tendency is to fill the time with more action and busyness. But this exactly the wrong approach.

In order to maintain perspective, I do two things regularly, and it’s been immensely useful to me.

Thinking Thursdays

Every Thursday morning, I block off time to simply think. 

First, I do this starting 6am in the morning, when my wife and son are still sleeping. I close the door, lay out a yoga mat, put a clipboard with a pile of fresh paper and some pens next to it, set a timer for 90 minutes, and lie down to think. Continue reading Why I take a week off every 7th →

Just a quick post today, as I’m busy preparing for my PhD defense (on Monday!).

A few months ago, I started sharing a beta “public feedback” forum with a few Gingko users. I used UserVoice to allow users to submit ideas, and to vote on them.

In the end, I feel it was a mistake for this stage of Gingko’s life, and have since disabled it.
Here’s why I think it was a mistake, and what I learned from it.
Continue reading What I learned from my failed UserVoice experiment →

Today, a 3 minute blast from the past.

I believe that science needs to change, and that to do so, it needs a new medium to work within. 
I think Gingko is a step closer to this new medium, but the element we’re still sorely lacking is collaboration.

In any case, here’s a 3 minute talk I gave in 2012 (before Gingko), which summarizes some of these ideas.

I think we can all learn how to improve the way science works, just by observing how children explore their world.

The best part of my day is after breakfast, when I take my son out for a walk. My son and I get to spend quality time together, and my wife can have some quiet time to do her work (I’ve already done several hours myself during my 5:30am – 9am block).

Lately, instead of going to the park, with its slides and swings and plastic toy structures, we’ve been going across the street. To the massive, odd collection of concrete and ramps and hills and grass that is Montreal’s Olympic Stadium complex.

My son loves it! We get to climb up and down (and up and down and up and down) stairs, to swing on railings. To run up grass hills, and down ramps. To sit on the pavement and throw rocks down sewer openings.

It’s a large barren place, but there’s always the occasional tourist. And here’s the thing:

I know we get some very odd looks.

After all, I’m 30, my son is not even 2, and we’re climbing around at random like delinquent monkeys.

• “This isn’t a park!”
• “That’s not a designated play structure,”
• “What are you doing up there?”
• “Are you allowed to be on that side of the fence?”

There are no sharp boundaries

I find this kind of thinking very often, and its sad. We start labeling things very quickly.

• “That there is a park, but this here is an event area.”
• “This is a wooden triangle, not a super-spaceship-rocket-thing.”

And while it’s easy to look at a sign that says “Designated play area for 2-5 year olds, only.” and think it’s comical that things have to be so sharply delineated (what if my son is a week shy of 2 years?), we forget that the rest of our lives are full of labels and sharp boundaries.

• “I am a biologist, not a chemist.”
• “I am a writer, not a scientist.”

And what happens is that, instead of seeing the world as it is, with its infinite array of texture and complexity, we start to see the world as a series of abstractions.

And abstractions & categorizations can never capture the entire picture. We start to believe in the abstractions far too much, and no longer see the underlying complexity and unity… Continue reading Approaching Science as a Whole, with Childlike Wonder →

I find that it sometimes takes a while for new users to get used to Gingko.

I always say there’s no “right” way to use Gingko. But there is one point that might help you see your trees differently. And it might make the difference between getting stuck on an idea, and having it just flow onto the page.

First of all, think about the phrase “flow onto the page”. It implies that there is a stream of information that begins in your mind, and needs to pass through a very narrow channel (your typing fingers), to emerge on a Gingko tree.

Thinking of writing as information flow brings in a few analogies from the field of communication theory, which I find helps explain why a Gingko tree is not just an outline.

When arranging and organizing a tree, you shouldn’t be thinking in terms of categories (“Where should this go?”), but in terms of lossy compression and a sum of parts.

Lossy Compression

If you’re old enough, you might remember that back in the ancient World Wide Web (or Information Superhighway), you would sometimes watch an image download painfully slowly.

Continue reading Gingko is not (just) an outliner →

I’ve set myself a goal to write a blog post a week. But, since Gingko is used for so many different things, from academics and graduate students, to game designers and novelists, I find I’m often faced with the question, “I have so much to write about.. how do I choose?”

Analysis paralysis & the paradox of choice. It’s a situation I’m in constantly. And as creatives, I am sure you are too.

As CEO of Gingko, and the only non-coder in our two-man team, this can often become overwhelming.

I could be contacting the press, or thinking up ways of improving our retention, or writing better copy for our pricing page. A new pricing model? Should we start offering enterprise/team packages? If so, how would we start? Where can I start looking now, for the talent we’ll need later? What about one-off promotions? How much prep should I be doing for the upcoming Startup Festival? And on and on and on.

As a knowledge worker (which today includes almost everyone, by some definition), at any moment, of any given day, there are literally hundreds of possible things you could be doing. So how do you choose?

I don’t have the answer, but I did come to a basic understanding that has helped me feel less overwhelmed. And since any creative enterprise is a mind-game, feeling less overwhelmed is more than half the battle.

Forget the “To Do” list

A “To do” list is an overwhelming reminder of all the things you should be doing, but can’t (due to paralysis).

Sorting the list is painful, and it could include anything from important priorities to random ideas. GTD can help organize these, but in the end, you will just end up with different categories of “To Do” lists.

Instead, use “Must Do” and “Could Do”

Reframing your lists slightly can make a tremendous psychological difference. Here’s why.

The “Must Do” list is a list of promises (to yourself, to your partner, to anyone you respect). As with all promises, you shouldn’t make them unless you are sure you can deliver. And every item added to a “Must Do” list is deliberated on carefully, because adding too much to a “Must Do” list will lead to a complete breakdown of the system.

A “Could Do” list, on the other hand, is a list of all the possible paths you could take next (some of which may be mutually exclusive). There’s no fear of adding things to a “Could Do” list. And instead of approaching the list with dread, with a little practice you can learn to approach it with curiosity and excitement. (“Ooh, look at all the things I could be doing!”).

However, there is one more caveat: the “Could Do” list can (and should) become very large. So how do you prevent information overload, and actually choose from this list?

Brain-Sort/Cull cycles

Here at Gingko, when we come across a list that needs sorting, we don’t hesitate to use our internal brain-sort “app”[1].

What’s brain-sort? Quite simply, it’s a sorting algorithm (merge sort), but instead of using math or logic to compare and sort two alternatives, it presents them to you and lets you pick.

So:

1. You give this “app” a list.
2. You choose a question prompt (e.g. “Which is more important?” or “Which is more exciting?”).
3. You are then presented with two elements at a time from the list, and you choose which is most important/exciting/etc out of those two.
4. Repeat till your list is sorted.

The result is you relatively quickly have sorted the list by one criteria (“Impact”, say).

Now, you can simply cull the bottom third of the list, and sort by another criteria (“Desire to complete”).

Repeat as often as you like, until you get to a manageable list of tasks and actions that you could do, which are impactful, exciting, and any of the other variables you choose[2].

Just another technique

So I’m claiming that a “Must Do”/”Could Do” list is the solution to effectiveness and overwhelm?

No, but it is a technique that is useful to have in your toolbox. In some cases, it might make the difference between being stuck in analysis-paralysis, and taking action.

If you want to read more about “Must Do” tasks, and how you might keep track of them (either for one-offs, or for recurring actions), have a look at this Beeminder.com post.

For more on “Could Do” lists, I’d recommend you read “Get It Done: From procrastiantion to creative Genius in 15 minutes a day“. It’s a great read, with many useful actionable exercises to move you towards a more fulfilling creative life.

And as always, if you have anything to add, please comment below.

[1]: I put “app” in quotes, because it’s a 20 minute hacking job I put together a year or more ago. We are considering turning this into an actual app, or integrating this into Gingko.
[2]: Of course, what I actually want to do is sort the same full list repeatedly, by each variable, and then use a function of my choosing to give appropriate weights to each variable. But this is my OCPD taking over again… Culling the bottom x% leaves you with a much smaller list to sort for the next time around.

It’s spring, and my wife and I have been decluttering our apartment. We do this more often than most, and get more ruthless each time, but there’s one thing that I keep hanging on to: assignments and term papers from my Physics undergrad program.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I can’t just get rid of them, like we did with so much of our old clothes.

After all, they don’t mean anything to anybody besides me, and I keep them stuffed in a trunk, and never see or show them to anyone unless it’s to decide “should I throw this away?”

But I know showing off runs counter to my nature*, so I shouldn’t be surprised they’re not showcased. Also, who frames their assignments?

*(which can cause problems, since I’m currently the one in charge of Gingko’s marketing…)

What is surprising is that I feel the quality of that work is sometimes far better than some of the work I’ve been putting out there recently with Gingko and other projects that are far more important than some Quantum Field Theory assignment.

For quite a while I assumed the answer was “lack of time”. I’m the founder of a startup and father of a one year old boy, sharing all childcare and household duties* with my wife (who also runs a vegan skincare business). I don’t have a lot of uninterrupted time.

*I believe equally, but I should note my wife disagrees.

But two weeks ago, my wife went with our son to go visit his grandmother for 5 days. The apartment was eerily quiet, and I had all the time in the world.

Now was my chance to produce something that I would be proud of, but nothing came of it. I did find an interesting problem to work on, and went on a sort of “math binge” to tackle it. But the end product was just a bunch of scattered notes.

So, time is not the main issue.

But in looking over these assignments, I was once again reminded of a simple truth via an exceptionally indirect path:

The truth is that constraints lead to simpler solutions. And the reminder comes from Quantum Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics, in a few words, is how we study the motion of particles at very small scales, where everything is blurry (including the particle itself). And not blurry as in “we can’t see it” but blurry as in, “it has no definite position”; the particle itself is literally spread across space in a weird kind of cloud.

Some of the types of questions you can answer with QM is, “if you throw this particle at a wall that’s this thick and this high, what’s the probability that it’ll just suddenly appear on the other side?”.

And no, the answer is not “zero”, which is what makes QM weird.

To figure stuff like this out, in the simplest of cases, requires solving Schrodinger’s equation:

One of the first exercises in an introductory QM course is to answer “Ok, so you have this one particle constrained to be within this box. What are the ways it can move?”

And here’s the thing:

1. If the constraining walls are infinite and truly impenetrable constraints, the solution you find is extremely simple: just a bunch of sine waves.
2. If the walls are anything less than infinite, the solution isn’t just hard, it becomes absolutely impossible to find exactly.

The reason is that, with only weak constraints, the particle “leaks” out into the world, and though it’s “most likely” in the box, there is some very small chance it could be a long ways outside of it.

And though these chances are small, we are forced to include the entirety of space in our calculations.

A Generative Analogy

I am sure you’ve heard that “constraints lead to creativity”. I have heard this as well, and said it myself several times.

But nothing brings an idea home as much as the combination of a learning experience combined with a deep generative analogy that resonates with me.

And while it might seem silly that I’m evoking Quantum Mechanics to explain common sense (clearly an odd situation), to me it provides a model for this idea in a way that allows me to understand why constraints lead to creativity. And why it only works if the constraints are truly rigid.

Without rigid constraints to your problem, the possible solution “leaks” out into the entirety of space, meaning that you’re forced to imagine the entire solution space, no matter how unlikely those outcomes are.

Next time I’m working on a project, besides the usual steps of identifying a clear purpose, and envisioning a clear outcome, I need to make sure to expressly state the impenetrable constraints of the project.

With that said, my 90 minute timer for this post is running out, so I have to bring this to a close.

Aleksey and I are both avid fans of productivity systems here at Gingko, and I might be borderline obsessed with building the “perfect” system (dangerous word, by the way).

Yet, in all my years of obsession, I’ve never once tried or read extensively about the Getting Things Done (GTD) system. Which is a little like being a supposed wine connoisseur, and admitting to never having tried a Cabernet!

Then three weeks ago I received a call from a good friend of mine, raving about the transformation he saw in his brother, thanks to GTD.

Continue reading Nothing Beats Word of Mouth →

If you search for “Alternatives to Goal-setting”, you’ll find a growing list of resources. It seems to be the trend now to bash goal-setting as detrimental and soul-crushing.

But the proposed alternatives, are full of “soft” ideas that don’t resonate with me.
“Follow your heart, not your head” is an example. It’s this kind of language that has turned me away from even considering alternatives to goal-setting.

However, I’ve come up with a different understanding of what goal-setting is, and the valid alternatives to it. And it’s based on mathematics, with a touch of psychology.
Continue reading The Multi-step, Bottom-up Alternative to Goal-setting →