论功则推以让人，任劳则引为己责
2024年12月27日 16:59
李鸿章说：“论功则推以让人，任劳则引为己责；盛德所感，始而部曲化之，继而同僚谅之，终则各省从而慕效之。”
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Received today — 2025年6月7日阅读
别家写的“从小学到博士的77条学习感悟”，值得一看呵
2024年9月28日 02:04
只是觉得带娃，不仅费自己还费娃，感觉这篇文章列举的“感悟”，有很多值得借鉴的地方，帮收录于此……
摘要：
- 小学阶段：强调书写工整和数学运算能力的重要性，同时提倡给孩子一个多彩的童年。
- 中学阶段：认为学习内容不难，关键在于情商，特别是避免拖延。
- 天赋与努力：虽然天赋和智商对顶尖成就很重要，但考好大学更多依赖于情商。
- 城市与农村：观察到城市孩子在学习上可能更有优势，但农村孩子如果努力学习，往往能取得优异成绩。
- 性别差异：提到女生在数学学习上的挑战，建议女生在初中阶段要特别重视数学。
- 学习态度：强调勤奋和有效学习时间的重要性。
- 网络使用：提醒家长注意孩子上网的时间和内容，避免影响学习。
- 英语和数学学习：分享了作者个人的学习经验，如多听英语和整理数学错题。
- 家庭教育：建议家长关注孩子的玩伴和朋友，以及孩子的兴趣和爱好。
- 考试和评估：讨论了考试的公正性和选拔性，以及如何准备考试。
1、小学时代如果能写一手工整的字，具有准确的数学运算能力，OK，完美了。对以后的学业生涯够用了，所以尽量给孩子五彩缤纷的童年吧。
2、小学和中学这十二年的学习内容，都是几百年甚至几千年以前（阿基米德啊、牛顿啊、笛卡尔）人类创造的东西，思辨性不高，真的不难。
3、如果想要拿诺贝尔奖或者当选两院院士，这个要看天赋和智商，但是学那些几百年以前的东西，考个好的大学，基本和智商无关。和什么有关？情商！
4、学习不好的同学，基本都是严重拖延症患者，今天的事能拖到下个学期。（oh my god! 这真是一件恐怖的事情！）
5、勤奋永远是真理吗？！教育学理论里面有个“有效时间”的概念，看你的心用在学习上面的时间是多少。所以看到班上很多拼命学的学不好，玩的反而学的好的，不要惊讶。
6、总是期待天才，我就读的都算是不错的高中大学，读书读到现在都没有看到无师自通的天才。同学的差距是有的，差距在哪里？接受能力和专注程度，这些都是情商的范畴。
7、时代发展的当今，似乎城市里面的孩子更容易在学习方面出人才，我大学的同学只有不到三分之一的农村孩子。(寒门再难出贵子，虽然不想承认，但确实现实！)
8、但是农村的孩子要么不读，读就会读的非常好。“寒门出才子”是真理！高中、大学里面学习拔尖的一般家境都不好。我就是地道的农家子弟。
9、女孩子小学一般成绩都不错，到了初中就不是太好了。这个是什么原因？！教育学给出的是生物学解释，The law of the nature.
10、鉴于第9条，女孩子上了初中一定要对数学引起高度重视。哎，多少曾经优秀的女同学最后学业毁在数学上……呜呜。
11、对于成绩不好的同学，家长总是期待出现奇迹，成绩突然“冒起来了”。什么样的同学容易冒起来？似乎一般是男生并且一般很调皮。
12、初二真的很关键。基本是分水岭，所以要重视初二的学习啊……
13、初中时形成思想观和价值观的时候，这个时候有人带坏就带坏了。与其多花时间给孩子找家教找辅导班，不如多注意孩子身边的玩伴和朋友。有句土话叫做“人搀不走，鬼搀飞奔！”多关注孩子的生活吧！
14、家长如果发现孩子突然学业成绩掉得厉害，请参照13条。
15、“网络是是把双刃剑，有好有坏”。我的看法是：千万不要任由孩子沉溺网络！沉溺于网络，学业必然受影响！不过，现在的孩子，已经视网络为我们时代的电视，父辈时代的收音机，网络已经常态化、工具化，节制是关键。
16、孩子没考上理想的高中，该不该交择校费让他继续读？！这个要分类讨论。
如果的确是自然灾害，孩子临场没发挥好，那砸锅卖铁都要交。如果是确实已经不想学了，那就不用拿血汗钱养活一帮教书先生吧，此类择校生考上好大学的是特例，自己申请退学或是被开除的倒是很多……
17、刚才说“砸锅卖铁都要交”是不是过分了？！我觉得，小学、初中在哪个学校读不重要。高中真的太重要了……为什么？因为高考是选拔性考试，其他的不是。
18、英语怎么学好？我的经验是多听，就像我们从小听方言所以就会说一样。英语也是一门语言，不要过分强调语法啊、结构啊、我认识的母语是英语的外国友人没人搞得懂自己的语法（我们中国人又有多少知道汉语里面的主谓宾定状补？！），请不要妖魔化英语。
19、我真的要强烈建议多听英语，每晚睡觉前听半个小时。长此以往，英语保证不会差的。
20、插播一段自己的小故事：记得我小时候是个调皮大王，初一的时候英语总是不及格，后来家里发生变故，母亲重病一下子家境窘迫一贫如洗，十四岁的时候母亲去世对我打击很大，自己开始知道好恶了。恶补英语，每晚都在听，我喝学校免费的、能照见影子的稀饭，总是把早上买包子的钱拿去买电池（话说那个时候电池质量不好），看着别人吃包子，肚子真的好饿啊……
后来我中考英语满分，高中英语接近满分，大学获得了全国大学生英语竞赛一等奖。非英语专业第一人哈。由于专业排名第一，我跳过硕士，被直接保送博士了。
很多人问我有没有学习英语的窍门？我只是给两个字：多听（话说我现在还在每晚听英语。）
21、孩子要不要住宿呢？！我的建议还是住宿好（批注：这个要因人而异，损友一堆，也许会带坏），集体的氛围有利于孩子培养团队意识，知道怎样和其他人交往。这个社会，死读书的人不招待见的。但是要关心孩子的成长，请参见13条。
22、如果读书好算是成才的话，那么成才的人毕竟是少数，不要太苛责孩子。只要努力的都是好孩子，但是一定要成人，人品不管什么时候，都是最重要的。
23、应试教育的体制下，你不会还真的相信“素质教育”吧？！小学时代可以过的五彩缤纷，但是上了中学……还是现实点吧。
24、我和我家教学生的一段对话：
“我对数学这门科目没兴趣……呜呜。”
“孩子你二十岁了，都高三了，不到一年就高考了，你和我说你对数学没兴趣，我给你讲讲科学家小时候的故事？！再给你培养兴趣？！”
25、我都读博士了，至今不知道兴趣为何物。而那些天生对数理化感兴趣，而对玩游戏打篮球不感兴趣的名人典故，从人性角度出发，我更愿意相信只不过是讹传。在应试教育的体制下，我的解释是“不讨厌就是兴趣”。所以咯，其实考大学就是看谁对自己更狠……你信不信？！
26、早恋都是坏事？！我不觉得，在我身边就有一对高中同学，一起努力、互相勉励、互相加油走过苦难的高三，最后都考上了很好的大学。
27、我在提倡早恋？！错了。我还没说完，就我身边的例子而言，这种单纯美好励志向上的恋爱发生的概率基本和你买彩票中了五百万一样。所以，还是花花肠子收起来，好好读书吧。但是还是有许多人会买彩票……爱情来了真是挡也挡不住啊。
28、数学怎么学？！我数学一直都不错，我觉得这是一门技巧性的学科，小学要求运算准确就行，中学主要由四个思想方法：数形结合、分类讨论、函数思想、划归与转化。
29、那个四个思想方法，是我上大学在一个月黑风高之夜，总结高中学业和高考经历悟出来的（夸张啦？！哈哈哈），可惜已经迟了。我曾经断言，只要把这四种方法掌握了的，永远不要为数学而担心。话说我本科时期辅导过一个高中学生三年，本来数学基础一般，最后这么一灌输，考上了中科大！比我考得还好。
30、如果英语的秘籍是多听，那么数学就是整理错题。
31、太重要了！整理错题。我最辉煌的战绩，是辅导一个初二的女生，一开始期末数学只有36分，最后期末考试考了115分！！
那位家长期末奖励了我五千大洋，我是怎么做到的？我勒令她订正所有遇到的每一个错题，最后考试时候就基本没有错题可订正了……
32、为什么订正错题这么重要？！因为其实初高中数学所有的题型就那么多，把盲点都找出来就无敌了……这是为什么。请参见第2条。
33、你以为你数学只能考一般，你只是学会了一般的知识？！错了，你掌握了一大部分知识，只是有几个没掌握。就是那个没掌握的，总是做错。而考试，考的都是综合题，一个知识点没掌握基本就一票否决了，错题啊，真的是太重要了。
34、话说我初高中数学错题本写了五本，那个我辅导三年的最后考上中国科学技术大学的高中生写了七本。大概这就是为啥他高考数学考的比我好的原因吧！
35、数学学得不好的同学，一般都有两个明显的缺点：粗心、没有毅力。英语学得不好的同学有个共性的缺点：懒！
36、我至今没看到学习很刻苦，但是英语差的，如果您遇到过请您给我引见一下，增加我的阅历。学习认真但是数学差的有几个，主要还是不得要领，做的是无用功。参见第6条。
37、英语的学习，有很多方法，但是多听无疑是最快最有效的。这个要坚持，而且真的要坚持。每次想到自己切身学英语的经过，再看看一些教育砖家们总是喜欢把学英语上升到形而上学或者上升到方法论的境界，真是玄之又玄。我，只能莞尔一笑。
38、英语的提高，真的是个长久的过程，提高的速度较慢，但是考试的稳定性能好。尤其是高中，发现没有，班上拿英语第一的总是她或者他？！
39、你问我英语听什么好？我的回答是：小学随便听听，不要太有目的性，培养兴趣为主；初中听课文，高中听历年高考题。
40、还是有人想和我聊聊兴趣。小学的时候，还是不要太压迫孩子了，真的。著名的“起跑线”理论不知道扼杀了多少美好的童年，童年刚至心先老，长使英雄泪满襟啊……在我大学同学中，不乏从小家境很好的同学，我看到的真相是：凡是小时候的家人强迫学（钢琴、小提琴、六弦琴等等各种琴）的几乎没有坚持下去，把其当成事业的。而他们回忆起来的时候，只剩下一段灰暗压迫的岁月，这就是艺术的熏陶？！真的有这种必要么？
41、初中强烈要听课文啊！！初中是义务教育阶段，要知道，中考是必须保证很高的及格率的！！所以，很多中考试卷的真题都是来自课文原句的改写或者同一题材的改写，主要考固定搭配、语法（主要是从句）、一词多义、习惯表达，因为知识点就那么多。
42、当年明月在，曾照彩云归啊。记得那时我把自己的早饭钱全部奉献给了社会主义现代化电池厂事业，每晚都听课文，以致最后课文每篇都能背上，后来你知道了，不自吹自擂了……
43、我按照这样的英语学习方法，勒令我的学生背课文，真的要求严格啊，一开始他说自己很痛苦，各种尥蹶子，我还是能HOLD住他的，他初三的课文现在背的滚瓜烂熟。教了不到一年，现在已经稳定在115+，毫无压力。
44、其实中考英语拿高分真的很简单：如果哪位参加中考的同学，能把初二上学期到初三下学期的所有英语课文背的滚瓜烂熟，也每天都在听英语，正常发挥的状况下中考竟然没有考到110+，我绝对要振臂一呼，号召不明真相的群众们去教育局与英语出卷老师当面交涉。不肖生立此贴为据。
45、高中其实和初中区别很大的，因为即使在大学如此扩招的今天，重点大学录取率依然不足百分之十。初高中最大的差距是：初中只要能把课本看明白就能考得不错，高中即使把书本看烂可能也只是及格分……
此处省略xxxx字 理由，你已经上大学了，就不要回顾高中时怎么学的，不多说，你懂得！
46、腹有诗书气自华。多读课外书吧，天文地理历史人文都要读一些。书籍会给你打开一翻新的世界，中国古典文学让人陶冶情操，心清气静。我发现理科学习特别好的都喜欢读课外书，而且知识全面，充满灵气，我觉得两者不无关系。（认识的一位超级优秀的理科男甚是喜爱红楼梦~）
47、如果培养孩子的兴趣爱好，我弱弱地建议让孩子学一些中国风的吧，民族的才是世界的。不要一窝蜂学钢琴、小提琴、舞蹈，学学书法、戏剧、国画吧。尤其建议写书法，学习学得心气浮躁，写上一段名人字帖会让人清静，我一直热衷于临摹赵孟頫，但是仍不得要领惭愧惭愧，淮剧也能唱上《谈寒窑》《珍珠塔》《买油条》那么经典的几段，艺术细菌作祟啊。
48、我从来都不觉得初中的物理、化学属于理科的范围，尤其是初中化学。因为题型之固定、题材之简单、思维方式之单一、计算之粗略让人不忍心把他们归类到理科的范围。
49、如果哪位孩子初三化学没学好，和英语一样，基本就是一个字：懒。
50、读书从来就是一件很单纯的一个人的事情，和你的家境、出身、人品、父母关系不大。我上了大学，慢慢接触社会，我常想如果所有事情都能像高考那么单纯简单就好了。
51、不要让孩子太早接触网络，这个真的不是什么好东西。
52、有人发消息问我“我孩子严重偏科，其他科目能考130几，但是英语只能考50几，马上中考了，怎样让他中考成绩不偏科呢？！”我开玩笑的回答道：“让他其他科目都考50几就可以不偏科了啊”。我想说的是：这是一个长期的过程，应该早点关注，采取有效地学习方法，把偏科扼杀在摇篮之中。
53、我敢说：如果您的孩子能够每天做个学习计划，每天列出需要完成的任务，睡觉前逐一打勾，他的学习效率会快两倍，也会更加喜欢学习。你信不信？！
54、实践表明，调皮自负的孩子比沉默自卑的孩子要更好带些，成绩提高的更快。
55、大型考试比如高考、中考、研究生入学考试，那种感觉和平时考试是完全不一样的，必须承认临场发挥的重要性，你平时一定要刻意训练这一点。怎么样算是训练合格了呢？！平时就是中考，中考就像平时。
56、粗心只是你做的还不够，熟练程度还没达到！我从来不知道什么是粗心，我也不觉得世界上有粗心这回事。“粗心”二字，不知道多少次被当借口掩盖了事实的真相，害死了多少英雄好汉。你以为你会做了，其实你还没有那么熟练很容易“粗心”，这在大型考试里面会害死人的！！！
57、我和我学生的对话：学生说“老师，我本来可以考140+的，因为粗心最后只考了120+”我问“1加1等于几？”他回答道“等于2。”我说：“题目只有会做和不会做两种，不得分就是不会，这个在大型考试里面从来都是这样。为什么你1加1等于2没有粗心？！
所以你要做的是把你的熟练程度和对知识点的认识再提高一个境界，这些题目对于你来说都是1加1等于2的问题你就无敌了，把这些错题认真的誊写到错题本上，这个就是你最宝贵的财富。”话说这孩子后来数学考试只要会的就是对的，再也没有因为“粗心”丢过分。
58、你现在知道为什么你的错题本总是那么几张纸就没有再订正了吧？“哎呀，这个题目其实我是会做的，只是粗心了，计算出了点问题，下次注意就行了。没必要誊写到错题本上吧”。那我只能祈祷文殊菩萨保佑你中考高考不粗心吧！
59、坊间似乎总是把考试临场发挥的作用扩大化，常见的夸张版本就有：“额，那个本来能考上清华大学的，高考腹泄头昏，最后没考上清华大学，考上清华厨师培训职业学校学厨师了”。“额，我宝宝一个同学咯，本身成绩不如我家宝宝的，高考我家宝宝没发挥好。最后他考上了南京大学，我家宝宝考了南京职业大学了”。
60、经济学里面有个理论叫做“价格围绕价值上下波动”，具体例子就是一盒火柴再怎么涨价，也不可能比一辆汽车贵，因为固有劳动时间不一样。这个可以用来说明这个大型考试发挥的问题。
我读书读到现在，没看到过黑的发亮的马或者白的刺眼的马，小黑马或者小白马很常见。
61、高考、中考实际上是对你学习、心理素质、抗压能力、协调能力等综合能力的考察，不光考察学习，我想这也是高考中考存在的合理性之一吧。
62、那些抱怨自己因为考试当天过度紧张、腹泻、失眠、头疼、失恋、遭人暗算等总总原因没发挥好而与理想学校擦肩而过的同学，如果有这种认识，是不是那些纠结和遗憾释怀了很多？！
63、中考、高考几乎是我所有已知的国内考试中最公正公平的了，尤其是对于农村的孩子，是一个很好的也几乎是唯一的改变命运的机会。所以我看到很多农村的、家境一般的孩子也跟着叫嚣取消高考，改变现行人才选拔方式的时候，我，表示不能理解。
64、我有点后悔在以前过度强调英语多听，实际上除了多听以外还有一个大问题：词汇量。不背单词只听英语的人想学好英语，我不大相信有这种可能。
65、我敢说，高中英语得词汇量者，得天下。我曾经用一个暑假的时间背完了一本星火英语单词册，我高考的时候，一份高考英语试卷没有我不认识的单词，与看中文别无二致。
我都是这么要求我高三学生背诵课外常用单词，起码要达到大学四级单词水平，效果很好，一劳永逸，发挥稳定，高三后期英语根本不用操心。
每一个高中生都被要求去背课本单词，但是高考是选拔性考试，你知道为什么只背课本单词HOLD不住高考了吧？！
66、一份模拟考卷，假如你考了140分，你是不是很开心？！我不觉得，因为实际上你花了两个多小时去考试，又花了很多时间听老师改卷、评奖，而实际上对你学习进步有意义的只是那个丢掉的十分，知道了这一点，你还会轻视错题么？！
67、改写一位伟人的名句。‘错题本的步伐应该再迈大一点“，你觉得只有数学有必要订正错题？！
68、在错题本订正错题的时候，请用不同颜色的笔，注明题目当时为什么写错了，以及心得体会，不要干巴巴的只是错题而已。
69、学自然科学的都知道，哲学是一切自然科学的本源，数学思想方法其实属于哲学方法论的范畴。我们国家的中等教育很忽视数学思想方法的讲解与提炼，却经常考察一些涉及数学思想方法的题目，这个本身就是一对矛盾。数形结合、分类讨论、函数思想、化归与转化这四种方法，高三我会专门讲一个学期，初中我会讲半个学期。
说实话，效果好的有时候我自己都不敢相信，就是能明显感觉到学生突然开窍了。
70、是不是经常有一些题目（比如大型考试的压轴题），会出现没有思路，不知道怎么下手的情况？如果基础过关的情况下，那就是数学思想方法还不到位，就是常说的“不开窍”。
71、我如果是数学教师，我一定不按教学计划讲课，我会专门讲一个月的思想方法，磨刀不误砍柴工，真的太有用了。
72、对数学史和数学思想方法掌握后，学生能够高屋建瓴看题目，几何和代数已经没有明确的界限，有的时候看到一些题目，就有思想方法像虫子一样在脑子里蠢蠢欲动，比如看到数列我就想到用函数的方法去解答，看到一个函数解析式，我就试图做出它的图像，数形结合看看它的性质。大有裨益啊！
73、小学五六年级其实挺重要的，承上启下，尤其是一些数学应用题，考验你的抽象思维，而智商最重要的考核标准就是抽象思维。
74、字一定要写好啊！从小就要写好，这个也是一劳永逸。我所在的大学，每年都被选作高考中考的阅卷点，同样的卷子，卷面整洁与否判分也迥然不同，这是我有幸进高考阅卷现场后观察得出的结论。
75、奋斗永远都是一个连续的过程。我的意思是没有包括中考、高考在内的任何一场考试可以作为学业的一个节点，如果你觉得过完了中考或者过完了高考我就轻松了，那你真的需要再去成熟一下。
路遥《平凡的世界》一句话一直激励着我：把辛勤的耕作当作生命的必要，即使没有收获的指望依然心平气和的继续耕种。
76、话说我高中那些发挥不好的同学，研究生都考的是清华大学、复旦大学、上海交大、浙江大学等名校。所以高考很重要，但是也没“一考定终生”那么离谱。（一定要相信学渣也能逆袭啊）
77、学途漫漫，考试多如牛毛，发挥或好或坏，或喜或悲也很常见。即使不能做到“不以物喜，不以己悲”的境界，也要好好考虑坚持的价值。
弗格模型（The Fogg Model）
2024年9月22日 12:07
福格行为模型表明，行为发生必须同时满足三个要素：动机（Motivation）、能力（Ability）和提示（Prompt）。福格行为模型是通用的，适用于所有年龄段和所有文化的人的人类行为。
福格行为模型的最简单形式：
B=MAP
B=MAP模型认为，任何行为（B）的发生都需要具备三个关键因素：动机（M）、能力（A）和提示（P）。
该模型提出，当这三个要素在某一时刻同时存在时，个体会被推到超越“行动阈值”的状态，从而执行该行为[6]。动机和能力被视为一种权衡关系。因此，如果动机足够高，人们会克服能力上的障碍并执行行为。相反，如果能力足够高，或者行为非常容易完成，即使动机较低，人们也会执行该行为。
动机
在该模型中，动机指的是促使我们采取行动的基本驱动力，可能是生理的、情感的或社会的。
- 生理动机（感官）反映了动物（包括人类）倾向于做出导致积极后果、避免消极后果的行为，或追求愉悦、避免痛苦，无论是生理上的还是心理上的。感官包括原始和自动的驱动力（如饥饿、口渴、愉悦或痛苦）。
- 情感动机（预期）涉及恐惧或希望的情感。恐惧与对某些负面后果（通常是损失）的预期有关。希望则与对积极后果的预期有关。
- 归属感指的是他人对我们行为的影响。我们往往会寻求社会认可，避免社会排斥。
能力
在该模型中，能力与其说是技能，不如说是个体在特定情境下完成行为的能力，直接与行为的易操作性相关。具体来说，能力受到以下因素的影响：
- 时间 – 完成该行为需要多长时间
- 金钱 – 完成该行为的成本是多少
- 体力 – 完成该行为的体力需求有多大
- 脑力 – 完成该行为的脑力需求有多大
- 社会机会 – 该行为是否受到他人的鼓励或阻碍
- 习惯/例行 – 该行为是否是日常习惯的一部分
提示
提示指的是在情境中触发行为的线索。根据个体的动机和能力水平，提示分为三种类型：
- 激发型提示在动机水平较低时提升动机。例如，通过强调完成行为的好处来激发动机。
- 辅助型提示提升能力，使行为更容易完成，例如让行为变得更便宜、更快捷。
- 信号型提示适用于动机和能力都已经具备的情况，此时人们只需要一个行动提醒。例如，绿灯并不会激励你或提升你的能力，它只是提醒你可以开车了。
state 和 props 之间的区别是什么？
2024年6月25日 01:06
读书·美国商业400年
2024年6月16日 00:55
美国作家马克·吐温（Mark Twain）说，历史不会简单重复，但总在押韵。其实，在人类发展的漫长进程中，商业文明始终在障碍丛生、贸易困难、危机频发、混乱动荡的坎坷曲折中缓慢推进。
到了16世纪，随着科学技术蓬勃发展，国与国之间的距离被拉近，不同国家的商业文化开始碰撞、交融，经济开始飞速发展，经济强国在世界舞台上扮演的角色走马灯似的变幻。当然，有些规律永恒不变，不会随人类的意志转移而更迭，比如在历史长河中所沉淀的人类精神财富——企业家精神、契约精神、信用体系、创新观念、商业逻辑、管理思想等，从长远来看，绝不会被人类所背弃。
以上摘录来自《美国商业400年》
美国商业的历史可以追溯到殖民时代，涵盖了多个世纪的变革和发展。
17世纪：殖民地时期
- 早期商业活动：17世纪初，英国、荷兰、法国等欧洲国家开始在北美建立殖民地。主要商业活动集中在农业、渔业和毛皮贸易。殖民者与原住民进行物物交换，交易毛皮、食品和其他资源。
- 船运和贸易：新英格兰地区的船舶制造和航运业开始发展，促进了跨大西洋贸易。波士顿、纽约、费城等城市成为重要的港口和贸易中心。
18世纪：独立与工业的开端
- 独立战争：1775-1783年，美国独立战争不仅是政治独立的斗争，也是经济独立的努力。独立后的美国开始建立自己的经济体系，减少对英国的依赖。
- 工业革命：18世纪末期，工业革命开始影响美国，特别是在纺织业和铁工业。1789年，第一台美国制造的纺织机在罗德岛运行，标志着美国工业化的开端。
19世纪：扩展与工业化
- 西进运动：19世纪初，美国领土迅速扩展，西部的矿产、土地和其他资源成为新的商业机会。加利福尼亚淘金热（1848-1855）吸引了大量移民和投资。
- 铁路建设：铁路网的建设加速了商品、人员和信息的流通。1869年，第一条横贯大陆的铁路完工，进一步促进了经济一体化和市场扩展。
- 创新与发明：19世纪见证了许多重要发明，如电报、电话和电灯，这些技术创新推动了商业效率和新行业的兴起。
20世纪：现代化与全球化
- 大萧条与新政：1929年的大萧条对美国经济造成严重打击，导致大规模失业和商业倒闭。罗斯福总统的新政（1933-1939）通过政府干预和改革，帮助经济逐步恢复。
- 二战后的繁荣：二战后，美国经历了经济繁荣期，汽车、家电、电子产品等消费品行业迅速发展。大型跨国公司如IBM、福特和可口可乐开始在全球扩展。
- 信息时代：20世纪后期，计算机和互联网技术革命性地改变了商业模式。硅谷成为全球科技创新中心，诞生了微软、苹果和谷歌等科技巨头。
21世纪：数字化与创新
- 互联网经济：电子商务和互联网服务的兴起改变了传统商业模式。亚马逊、Facebook、特斯拉等公司成为市场领导者，推动了在线购物、社交媒体和电动车的普及。
- 全球化挑战：21世纪的美国商业面临全球化带来的机遇与挑战，包括贸易战、供应链管理和国际竞争。美国企业在全球市场中的角色不断演变。
- 可持续发展：现代商业越来越关注环境保护和社会责任。可再生能源、绿色技术和企业社会责任成为重要议题，影响着企业的战略和运营。
结论
美国商业的400年历史展示了从殖民地贸易到全球化经济的巨大变迁。这一过程中，技术创新、政策变化和全球市场的扩展都发挥了关键作用。理解这些历史背景，有助于更好地把握当今商业环境的复杂性和多样性。
读书·渺小一生（A Little Life）
2024年6月12日 18:49
我们无法选择出生的环境，却可以在外面的世界找到真正的家人——因为有我，你不会独自向下跌落。
四个相识于大学的好友毕业闯荡纽约，共同努力从黑暗中赢回一生。
在杰比的成长过程中，母亲总是很忙，但他从不觉得被忽略，也从不觉得母亲爱学生胜过爱自己。家里还有他的外婆，会做他爱吃的菜，唱法语歌给他听，而且天天都跟他说他是个不得了的宝贝，是个天才，说他是她一生最重要的男人。
威廉觉得，仿佛有一部分的他们已经活在想象的未来中，而那个未来的轮廓，只有他们才看得见。杰比的野心源自他渴求那个未来，渴望自己赶紧抵达；而裘德的野心，威廉觉得，是因为害怕自己如果不奋力往前，就会不小心退回过去那段他已经离开、从此绝口不提的人生。
一星期后的早晨，他母亲打电话来告诉他：亨明死了。他没有什么话可说。他无法问她为什么没告诉他状况有多严重，因为他心里早就知道她不会讲的。他无法问她有什么感觉，因为她说什么都不够。他想朝他父母大吼，想打他们，想引出他们身上的一些什么——某种温柔的哀恸、某种失态，让他看得出有大事发生，显示亨明的死让他们失去人生某种重大而不可或缺的东西。他不在乎他们是不是真有这样的感觉，他只是需要他们说出来，需要感觉到他们的沉着冷静之下还有别的，希望在他们心底有一道湍急、冰凉的水流，充满细小的生命，像是小鱼、青草和小白花，柔软又容易受伤，脆弱得你必须极其渴望才看得到。
路上的泥土好细，简直像沙子，他踩在上头时会扬起一朵朵小烟云；经过灌木丛时，细瘦的褐灰色小蛇在树下悄悄蜿蜒爬过。他走到海边，头上的月亮不见了，躲进破碎的云间。有好一会儿，他只听得见水声，但是看不到，天空充满温暖的潮气，仿佛这里的空气更浓密、更重。
洛阳新华书店：带着孩子过端午
2024年6月12日 01:27
今年端午没有回老家，带着孩子们去新华书店转转，我随便拿了本书装装样子（夹着手机装模做样）。
孩子们也各自挑了喜欢的书，注意观察了他们选的第一本书，老大选的是《西游记》带拼音的，老二选了《xxx奥特曼xxx》，老三选的是《大卫，不可以》。看没看完我就不知道了，反正是各自换了几次……
我的目标很简单，哪怕我拿本书挡着玩手机，哪怕他们是在”走过场“，也得按约定呆上至少1个小时……
比较意外的是老二竟然能说出来书中70%的奥特曼叫啥，我还专门研究了他问我的那本书至少10分钟，竟然还是没记住，也不知道这家伙从哪学的？这算是“文化入侵”吧！我想我得干涉一下……
家门口就有“河洛书苑”，也是一个看书的地方，很安静，但不适合带小孩子过去，不太好控制“分贝”。
书店则不同，有读书区，也有很多适合坐着读书的小台阶，但大多数孩子会选择坐在书架边的空地上，像极了小时候的自己，两腿一伸，小书一放，美得很。看到好玩的地方还可以莫名一声“惊呼”，或者“哈哈一笑“然后看看我的反应。对于他们来说，比在”书苑“自在许多……
洛阳这个新华书店里有两块这样的拼图，看着挺有意思，能看出黄河、长江的大致轮廓。
有很多孩子在认真看书和做作业，当然也有摸鱼的（桌上放着奶茶，手里拿着手机刷视频……）
这个楼梯我走过很多次，但直到前天才拍了这么一张……
孩子们现在会刷抖音了，我觉得不好，我在家不怎么看手机，基本上是回家就放鞋柜，但家里老人手机不离手，感觉不妥，但不好意思说。
试着引导他们阅读吧，读啥都行……
谁是我们的敌人？谁是我们的朋友？
2024年5月30日 09:17
谁是我们的敌人？谁是我们的朋友？这个问题是革命的首要问题。中国过去一切革命斗争成效甚少，其基本原因就是因为不能团结真正的朋友，以攻击真正的敌人。
年龄越大越能感觉其种种深意，越能感受其思想之伟大。
革命不是请客吃饭，不是做文章，不是绘画绣花，不能那样雅致，不能那样从容不迫、文质彬彬，温良恭俭让。
—— 《所谓”过分“的问题》
不论做什么事，不懂得那件事的情形，它的性质，它和它以外的整改的关联，就不知道那件事的规律，就不知道如何去做，就不能做好那件事。
测试一下WordPress后台SVG格式图片上传
2024年5月29日 14:30
试着用纯代码的方式来开启wordpress SVG格式图片上传功能。目前看使用Block编辑器图片能正常上传和显示。
function minuo_allow_additional_mime_types($mime_types) {
if ( ! current_user_can( 'administrator' ) ) {
return $mime_types;
}
$mime_types['svg'] = 'image/svg+xml';
$mime_types['svgz'] = 'image/svg+xml';
$mime_types['webp'] = 'image/webp';
$mime_types['ico'] = 'image/vnd.microsoft.icon';
return $mime_types;
}
add_filter('upload_mimes', 'minuo_allow_additional_mime_types');
function minuo_wp_check_filetype_and_ext( $wp_check_filetype_and_ext, $file, $filename, $mimes, $real_mime ) {
if ( ! $wp_check_filetype_and_ext['type'] ) {
$check_filetype = wp_check_filetype( $filename, $mimes );
$ext = $check_filetype['ext'];
$type = $check_filetype['type'];
$proper_filename = $filename;
if ( $type && 0 === strpos( $type, 'image/' ) && 'svg' !== $ext ) {
$ext = false;
$type = false;
}
$wp_check_filetype_and_ext = compact( 'ext', 'type', 'proper_filename' );
}
return $wp_check_filetype_and_ext;
}
add_filter('wp_check_filetype_and_ext', 'minuo_wp_check_filetype_and_ext' , 10, 5);Received yesterday — 2025年6月6日阅读
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推荐豆包电脑客户端应用
2025年6月4日 18:18
【读书记1567】苏童《群众来信》
2025年6月4日 08:05
我以为苏童是女的。中篇小说集《群众来信》，收《妇女生活》、《另一种妇女生活》和《群众来信》三篇，对女性描写的细 […]
【与Isaac同行】13：君子慎独
2025年6月3日 20:42
本学段时间已过半，今天与Isaac确认了英语、芬兰语、数学和历史的进度。 英语完成了学段计划内容的一半。芬兰语 […]
严歌苓《妈阁是座城》
2025年6月3日 17:34
这几天在读严歌苓的书——《妈阁是座城》。讲述的是一个女叠码仔梅晓鸥和一众赌徒之间的爱恨情仇。
关于这本书的名字，一开始我也不知道是什么意思，读了之后才懂，原来“妈阁”就是指的澳门。这本书正是围绕澳门的赌场展开。
叠码仔，通过看书才知道，就是在赌厅和赌徒之间的掮客，通过介绍客人获得码佣。除此之外，如果客户玩“拖”——明面上和赌厅赌，暗地里和叠码仔赌，比如拖三，就是这个赌徒赢一百，叠码仔要输给他三百，叠码仔相当于一个暗庄。
本书中的主角梅晓鸥在青春靓丽的年华，被一个赌徒骗了，骗到拉斯维加斯，后来又被安置到妈阁，因为这个赌徒的家在美国，所以要把她安置的远一点。
就这样，晓鸥来到了妈阁，为了养活自己和母亲以及和赌徒卢晋桐的儿子，后来干起了叠码仔。期间认识了一个叫老刘的人，这个人给她介绍了一些优质的“客户”，有史奇澜、段凯文等。这些人都是成功人士，有大把资产和钱。
史奇澜经营家具厂，有一双会雕刻贵重木材的手，他嗜赌成性，欠梅晓鸥一千三百多万。后来通过拉拢远房表弟去越南赌，成功把债务转嫁到远房表弟身上，用表弟的钱还了梅晓鸥九百五十多万。
段凯文，一个清华高材生，地产大佬，资产过亿，但是因为赌博，欠了叠码仔梅晓鸥三千多万。这个人不仅仅欠晓鸥的钱，他在认识晓鸥之前就赌，后来知道，找到晓鸥是为了换个赌庄想赢钱，拆东墙补西墙，最后墙没补上，还欠了晓鸥。这个人最后来到妈阁打算搏最后一周，结果不但没赢，反倒最后总共欠债一亿多。这个人是这本书里最彻头彻尾的混蛋，真的是没有一句话能信。最后的结局是出老千被抓，被遣返回大陆处理。
倒是史奇澜最后挺让人意外，在老婆孩子离开他之后，他变了，戒掉了赌博。两年多的时间里，在梅晓鸥的帮助下，彻底地变成了好人。
读这本书，让人看到了赌博的可怕，真的好可怕，不论你或穷或富，沾上必完！一定要远离之。
读到这本书281页的时候，突然意识到，现在对于孩子的教育，知识并不是最重要的，最重要的是要辨善恶，明是非。孩子早晚是要脱离自己的，未来的路要靠自己走，只有有一个正确的价值观，才能避免这些问题
读这本书的过程中，突然很想听一首歌——阿桑的《温柔的慈悲》，至于为什么，我也不知道，感觉这首歌作为这本书的BGM真的很有感觉，大概是主角梅晓鸥的性格使然？梅晓鸥对与赌徒的感情是怜悯的、复杂的，就像史奇澜，在他最穷困潦倒的时候，曾多次劝他戒赌，在这个追债和劝诫的过程中，滋生出一丝丝的情愫，甚至多次要把一千三百多万的债务一笔勾销，但是老史执意要还，最后通过曲折的方式还了她。
这本书大概是我读的最快的一本，严歌苓的细腻笔触加之情节的波澜起伏，真的让人欲罢不能。读严歌苓的书是一种享受，享受之余被书中的故事深深的震撼。
另外，这本书被拍成了同名电影《妈阁是座城》，2019年上映，演员阵容挺强大，有刘嘉玲和曾志伟，优酷可以观看。
【读书记1566】纳兰妙殊《荔荔》
2025年6月2日 11:47
在书房翻纳兰妙殊的中篇小说集《荔荔》，男男女女的情感纠葛在我这个年纪看来，实在是无聊，但又觉得下一页会不会出现 […]
How a Small Mexican Town Became My Template for the Ideal Place to Live
2025年6月2日 09:17
We’ve been living in Valle de Bravo – a mountain town a couple of hours outside Mexico City – for 9 months now.
I’ve lived in 5 countries for at least 6 months each, and traveled in another 20, and I think this is the most perfect place I’ve ever encountered for an expat family to live.
It’s so perfect, in fact, that I think it can actually serve as a template for finding other great places to live around the world.
After months of reflecting on what makes this place so special, I’ve identified 13 criteria (and one bonus criterion) that create the magic.
What’s fascinating is that these aren’t just random qualities – they work together as a system, each element reinforcing the others to create something truly extraordinary.
1. Right Distance from a Major City
A 2-3 hour drive outside a major city is the perfect distance.
It’s close enough that you can drive in for the day or the weekend, yet far enough that people can’t commute daily. This creates a rooted community instead of a bedroom suburb.
We love being relatively close to Mexico City and everything it offers, but we don’t feel like we have to go there to access people, culture, or entertainment.
I’ve also met some of the most fascinating people ever here – artists, writers, poets, spiritual guides, entrepreneurs, permaculturalists, and creators working remotely.
2. Mountain Location
The mountains are objectively a wonderful place to live.
You get milder weather, fewer mosquitos, tons of nature, and cold nights to cozy up in bed. Plus activities like hiking, horseback riding, and camping.
The mountains also keep it from developing too much and maintain the region’s rural and outdoorsy character, with that small town feel.
Valle is a world-class destination for paragliding, waterskiing, and other outdoor activities, located in one of the few mountainous, temperate regions of Mexico.
3. Water Access
A lake provides recreational activities like swimming, sailing, powerboating, and waterskiing. It also creates beautiful waterfront views.
Research consistently demonstrates that proximity to water bodies leads to higher levels of mood improvement and stress reduction compared to other natural environments. The sights, sounds, and even smell of water provide a calming sensory experience that promotes a uniquely positive state of mind.
Valle is well known for its lake. Lots of people water ski most weekends throughout the year.
4. Tourism and Wealth
This may not seem desirable, but a certain level of tourist influx brings benefits.
There’s likely to be more investment in the town, interesting people coming and going, and more amenities like restaurants, grocery stores, and paddle courts than there’d be otherwise. People are also more likely to visit you.
All the more so if it’s also a wealthy enclave. Valle has a population of around 100,000 that doubles during busy weekends, since many people have weekend houses there. But it rarely feels crowded.
5. Few Foreigners
Our main goal in moving abroad was to immerse our kids in the Spanish language and Mexican culture. I know from living abroad before that this really only happens if there aren’t too many Americans around.
Valle has surprisingly few foreigners living there. It seems like it’s kind of an undiscovered secret for Mexico City families.
6. Warm Culture
Mexico has to be one of the warmest cultures anywhere. We’re constantly surprised by how completely open and generous everyone we meet is.
Especially the families at our kids’ school, who have become our closest friends.
It’s like rewinding the clock to a time before smartphones and the Internet. People greet each other, even strangers treat you like a human, everyone knows each other, and it’s easy to make friends.
At a restaurant, if a kid is crying, a waitress will pick them up and carry them around. They’re happy to give you an extra condiment without charging you for it.
I love that we’re raising our kids in a culture that teaches them how to be warm and open, with a background level of trust between people.
7. Airport Distance
You might think you want an airport nearby, but many of the positive qualities above exist because it’s not too easy to get here.
There’s an airport in Toluca, an hour away, but it’s not international. So you have to drive to one of the international airports in Mexico City, around 2-3 hours away.
8. Low Labor Costs
The single most life-changing part of moving to Mexico has been getting full-time help.
My wife and I save probably several hours a day because our help does all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and sometimes watches the kids.
We spend all this extra time on exercising, resting, sleeping, art, hobbies, socializing, and hanging out with the kids – all things we had much less time for living in Southern California.
We pay probably double the local going rate, and it’s still remarkably cheap for us. About $137 per week for 40 hours (or $3.40 per hour).
9. Slow Lifestyle
Part of our motivation for moving abroad was to deprogram ourselves from the work-centric life we adopted in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.
We found it simply impossible to do this living in Southern California. As long as everyone else was work-centric, there was nothing to do and no one to hang out with!
A core part of that work-centric mindset is an addiction to speed. We found we couldn’t slow ourselves down when everything around us was trying to speed us up.
Every place has a background tempo that dictates the underlying speed of everything within it. I think the only truly effective way to change your tempo is to change your environment.
Mexico, and especially small Mexican towns like Valle, operate at a fundamentally different pace than the US. The cultural emphasis is on relationships and enjoying life rather than maximizing productivity at all costs.
10. Similar Time Zone
If you’re from the US and do business there, you’ll probably want to be in a similar time zone.
This facilitates so many things, from scheduling calls easily to not having too much jet lag when you visit home.
It’s also a bonus if you can get back to the US in just a few hours and have connections to different places within the US. This means Mexico and Central America are ideal!
11. Strategic Inconvenience
In the US, we’re constantly driving toward efficiency, which mostly means removing people from the process. This results in a highly efficient society in which everyone feels alone.
In Mexico, they just throw people at every problem. It isn’t optimized, but there are so many people around, it’s way more fun!
Resisting that drive toward efficiency and convenience is nearly impossible as an individual, and even more difficult as a family, because you seem strange for actively resisting things being too easy.
I’m happy to be raising my kids in a place where there’s still friction, still humans you “have” to deal with, where you literally can’t go it alone to accomplish anything of significance. Relationships are the central element in life.
Part of this is also having a tolerance for risk. We live in a bubble-wrapped, liability-waiver, hyper-sensitive culture, especially when it comes to children. We’ve forgotten how to let them rough it up and find out for themselves.
Paradoxically, as my wife put it, we “overvalue” life to such a degree that we end up devaluing life, by refusing to allow our kids to face its risks.
It’s very hard to intentionally expose your kids to risk, though – you have to move somewhere where the environment provides it. We love that in Mexico, kids are an integral part of every activity. They’re not in a separate world where everything is anesthetized and infantilized.
12. Good Schools
This is probably the crux if you have kids, because good schools are hard to find anywhere. I would start your whole search for a location on this basis.
Valle has several great options, including (incredibly for such a small town) a Montessori and Waldorf school.
High school is harder, and some families move to Mexico City when their kids reach that age. But there are a couple of good options and additional ones on the way as more people settle permanently in town.
13. Good Weather
This is also a good starting point for your search, as weather defines so much of daily life. Obviously you’ll want somewhere without too many extremes.
Valle has year-round spring-like weather, except for an intense rainy season from June to September. But that just gives us the perfect excuse to travel in the summer, as many families do.
14. Artistic Culture (Bonus)
I don’t consider this essential, but Valle has a wonderfully artsy vibe. It was the “Woodstock of Mexico,” hosting a huge concert in 1971 that introduced rock ‘n roll to the mainstream.
This makes it unusually rich in all kinds of art, music, dance, and even psychedelic medicine. It’s more open-minded generally than most places in Mexico, all of which we enjoy immensely.
Finding Your Own Valle de Bravo Around the World
After thinking through these criteria systematically, I discovered dozens of other towns that fit this template. Here are some of the most promising options (courtesy of Claude 4):
In Mexico
Malinalco, Estado de México
- 2 hours from Mexico City Mountains: Dramatic cliffs, mystical pre-Hispanic sites
- No lake but swimming holes and streams
- Wealthy weekend enclave for Mexico City families
- Very few foreign residents
- Traditional Mexican pueblo culture
- Labor costs comparable to Valle
- Extremely slow-paced, artistic community
- Good private school options emerging
Zacatlán de las Manzanas, Puebla
- 3 hours from Mexico City, 2 from Puebla
- Mountains: Pine forests, apple orchards
- Lake: Presa de Tenango nearby Mexican tourist destination (famous for apples/cider)
- Almost no foreign residents
- Warm provincial Mexican culture
- Very affordable labor
- Traditional, family-oriented lifestyle
- Growing educational options
Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí
- 3 hours from San Luis Potosí (with airport)
- Mountains: High desert mountain town
- No lake but stunning desert landscapes
- Mystical/spiritual tourism, wealthy Mexican visitors
- Few permanent foreigners despite tourism
- Deep traditional culture Very low labor costs
- Contemplative, artistic atmosphere
- Alternative education options
Tapalpa, Jalisco
- 2 hours from Guadalajara Mountains: “Pueblo Mágico” with forests
- Lake: Presa del Nogal
- Guadalajara’s weekend retreat
- Minimal foreign presence
- Traditional Jalisco hospitality
- Affordable labor
- Outdoor-focused, slow lifestyle
- Good local schools
Cuetzalan, Puebla
- 3 hours from Puebla city
- Mountains: Cloud forest, coffee region
- Waterfalls instead of lakes
- Cultural tourism but few foreign residents
- Strong indigenous Nahua presence
- Incredibly warm community
- Very low labor costs
- Traditional, market-town pace
- Local schools with cultural programs
In Central America
Suchitoto, El Salvador
- 1.5 hours from San Salvador
- Mountains: Overlooking Suchitlán Lake
- Lake: Lago Suchitlán (country’s largest)
- Arts/culture destination for wealthy Salvadorans
- Almost no permanent expats
- Warm Salvadoran hospitality
- Very affordable labor
- Artistic, slow-paced colonial town
- Emerging private school options
Gracias, Honduras
- 3 hours from San Pedro Sula
- Mountains: Celaque National Park
- Hot springs instead of lakes
- Honduran tourist destination
- Virtually no foreign residents
- Traditional Lenca culture influence
- Extremely affordable
- Quiet, colonial atmosphere
- Local schools improving
Matagalpa, Nicaragua
- 2 hours from Managua Mountains: Coffee highlands
- Rivers and waterfalls
- Nicaraguan tourist/coffee region
- Very few expats
- Warm mountain culture
- Lowest labor costs
- Coffee-farming lifestyle pace
- Several school options
Volcán, Panama
- 1.5 hours from David
- Mountains: Volcanic highlands
- Streams and rivers (no lake)
- Wealthy Panamanian retreat
- Some retirees but families can find Spanish immersion
- Indigenous Ngäbe influence
- Reasonable labor costs
- Agricultural, outdoor lifestyle
- Good private schools
San Agustín Lanquín, Guatemala
- 3 hours from Guatemala City
- Mountains: Limestone caves region
- River: Cahabón River (turquoise pools)
- Growing eco-tourism, Guatemalan visitors
- Few permanent foreign families
- Q’eqchi’ Maya culture
- Very affordable
- Nature-based, slow lifestyle
- Community schools with cultural programs
In the United States and Canada
Nelson, British Columbia, Canada
- 3 hours from Spokane, WA (airport)
- Mountains: Stunning Selkirk Mountains
- Lake: Kootenay Lake (magnificent)
- Tourist/wealthy enclave: Vancouver families’ mountain retreat
- Warm Canadian mountain culture (surprisingly bohemian)
- Slow, artistic, non-work centric lifestyle
- Good Waldorf school + alternatives
- Great weather (for Canada)
- Pacific Time Zone
- Missing: Low labor costs, foreign language immersion
Salida, Colorado, US
- 2.5 hours from Denver
- Mountains: Arkansas River Valley, 14ers all around
- River town (Arkansas River) rather than lake
- Wealthy outdoor enthusiast enclave
- Warm, artistic community vibe
- Deliberately slow, “simple life” culture
- Growing alternative school scene
- 300+ days of sunshine
- Mountain Time Zone
- Missing: Low labor costs, foreign culture, major language immersion
Joseph, Oregon, US
- 3.5 hours from Boise (a stretch, but worth it)
- Mountains: Wallowa Mountains (“Alps of Oregon”)
- Lake: Wallowa Lake
- Tourist destination, Portland/Seattle wealthy retreat
- Genuine cowboy/artist culture mix
- Extremely slow-paced, no chain stores
- Small but good school
- Beautiful weather, real winters
- Pacific Time Zone
- Missing: Low labor costs, foreign culture, close to major city
Sandpoint, Idaho, US
- 2 hours from Spokane
- Mountains: Selkirk and Cabinet ranges
- Lake: Lake Pend Oreille (huge, gorgeous)
- Wealthy Seattle/California exodus destination
- Surprisingly warm, outdoorsy culture
- Anti-corporate, slow lifestyle ethos
- Waldorf school + good public schools
- Four real seasons
- Pacific Time Zone
- Missing: Low labor costs, foreign culture
Rossland, British Columbia, Canada
- 2.5 hours from Spokane
- Mountains: Ski town in the Monashees
- No lake but close to Christina Lake (30 min)
- Weekend destination for Vancouver/Calgary families
- Small, tight-knit community
- Extremely slow, outdoor-focused
- Good elementary, high school requires creativity
- Snowy winters, perfect summers
- Pacific Time Zone
- Missing: Low labor costs, foreign immersion
The System Behind the Magic
Strangely enough, the mountain town I lived in for a year when I was 14 – Campos do Jordão in Brazil – meets most of these criteria as well. It’s a few hours outside São Paulo, in the mountains, a tourist destination and wealthy enclave, with a warm and inviting culture.
The year we spent abroad there was so formative for me, I think I’ve subconsciously tried to recreate as many of those conditions as possible for my kids, but in Mexico.
What I’ve learned is that these criteria work together as an interconnected system. The distance from a major city creates the rooted community. The mountains provide the natural beauty and limit overdevelopment. The tourism brings investment and interesting people. The culture provides immersion and different values.
Each element reinforces the others to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
The real insight isn’t just about Valle de Bravo – it’s about understanding what creates the conditions for the kind of life you actually want to live, then systematically looking for places that provide those conditions.
What would your criteria be? What kind of life are you trying to create, and what environmental conditions would support that vision?
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The post How a Small Mexican Town Became My Template for the Ideal Place to Live appeared first on Forte Labs.
【读书记1565】余华《我胆小如鼠》
2025年6月1日 16:17
余华《我胆小如鼠》，收《我胆小如鼠》、《现实一种》和《偶然事件》三篇。翻完的上海文艺出版社“小文艺·口袋文库” […]
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【读书记1562】陈重远《古玩谈旧闻》
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徐贵祥《历史的天空》
2025年5月28日 12:46
这本书在去年冬天就开始读了，但是中间停了很长时间，不是因为没有时间，而是因为读不下去。当时刚从严歌苓细腻的笔触中走出来，猛地换一个粗犷风格，有点适应不了。
真正地开始读这本书，也就是最近两个星期，是接着之前读的100多页开始读的，每天读一点，读了没几天，就一发不可收拾，越读越快，在今天上午，彻底读完。喜欢这本书，不是因为文笔，不是因为技巧，完全是因为情节。
读完后，真的，有点意犹未尽，心里在想，就这么结束了？
这是我读的第一本战争题材的小说，书中主要描述了梁必达（梁大牙）、陈墨涵、韩秋云、张普景、朱预道、窦玉泉等一批军人从抗日战争、国共内战到抗美援朝、文革等这一历史天空下的爱恨情仇。其中重点描写了主角梁大牙的个人成长经历，从一个一无所知的农民泥腿子成长为一个军区司令员的故事。
梁大牙迎亲路上，在蓝桥埠遭到了日军轰炸，火光中逃出四个年轻人。想投国军的梁大牙意外地被新四军收留，想投新四军的同乡陈墨涵却被国军抓差。因为错位，所以各有不甘，由此小说充满了悬念。小说叙述了以梁大牙、陈墨涵、为代表的一代人，在抗日战争、解放战争、抗美援朝战争、文化大革命直至新时期的生命历程，如实描绘了自二十世纪三十年代开始的近半个世纪复杂多变而又跌宕起伏的革命历史，塑造了一批性格鲜活，可敬可感的平凡英雄。
《历史的天空》始终将目光聚集于个体的人在与战争与政治的多重纠葛和激烈碰撞中的复杂境遇和传奇经历，在种种历史的偶然背后，显示出了历史的必然，曲折地演绎了主人公从一草莽到高级将领的性格史和心灵史，从而以鲜活强悍的性格和人格的光芒照亮了苍茫深邃的历史的天空，丰富了当代战争文学的人物画廊。
错位的人生，平凡的英雄。向历史致敬！向英雄致敬！
另外，这本书被拍成了同名电视剧《历史的天空》，于2004年8月1日首播，电视剧里，主角“梁大牙”被改名为“姜大牙”。
【读书记1561】吉田兼好《徒然草》
2025年5月28日 10:25
上一次读与清少纳言的《枕草子》和鸭长明的《方丈记》并称日本古典三大随笔的《徒然草》，是十几年前。读了觉得就是随 […]
【与Isaac同行】12：这端午的雨其实也还是可爱
2025年5月27日 22:39
“等天气好起来，我们走远点？”端午节快到了，从前天到今天，一直都在下雨。 “走多远？”身旁的Isaac问。 我 […]
【读书记1560】萨尔曼·可汗《教育新语》
2025年5月26日 16:03
教育的价值不在于记住很多知识，而是训练大脑会思考。AI的学习过程是大量识别和记忆已有的知识，它已经代替甚至超越 […]
【知途人文】10：世界在哪里
2025年5月25日 17:26
长期以来见诸君写字还有很大的提升空间，于是今天起，每次先写10分钟古诗词字帖，不追求写多少、写多快，只求字字认 […]
【2025也闲谈·廿二】埋了足够多的种子，就一定会有种子发芽
2025年5月24日 22:56
“红伞伞，白杆杆，一起吃了躺板板；躺板板，睡棺棺，然后一起埋山山。”《套中人：契诃夫短篇小说选》、《少年维特的 […]
【读书记1559】儒勒·凡尔纳《八十天环游地球》
2025年5月23日 09:02
记不清楚第一次读儒勒·凡尔纳《八十天环游地球》是在几年级，在小学是没错的。山顶上那个子弟小学的图书室里被翻得纸 […]
【读书记1558】韩少功《报告政府》
2025年5月21日 08:17
“贫困和权势都是犯罪的条件，你要是没碰上它们，当然很容易做好人。” “世界上的大多数人，其实只分成两种，一种是 […]
What J Dilla and Early Hip-Hop Teach Us About AI and the Future of Creativity
2025年5月19日 23:46
In 1997, a young hip-hop producer from Detroit named J Dilla did something that violated every rule in music: he programmed his drum machine to play “off beat.”
Not just slightly off, but deliberately off—breaking up the rigid timing that had governed musical performance in every genre.
What happened next confounded the music industry. Instead of sounding amateurish, the “wrong” beats created a revolution. They somehow felt more organic, more alive, and more expressive than anything else in electronic music up to that point.
Professional musicians couldn’t explain it. Hip-hop critics couldn’t categorize it. But listeners—particularly other producers and artists—couldn’t get enough of it.
And here’s the paradox that stopped me cold: Dilla used the most mechanical of tools—a drum machine—to create something that sounded profoundly, unmistakably human.
(I suggest listening to this playlist of J Dilla-produced songs on Spotify while reading the rest of this piece.)
I’ve been thinking about this story as I’ve watched the panic unfold around AI and creativity. Many cultural critics and artists paint a bleak picture. They warn of creative fields decimated by automation, of human imagination rendered obsolete, of a future where authentic human expression drowns in a sea of algorithmic content.
But what if they’re wrong?
What if new technology doesn’t destroy creativity but instead transforms it in ways we can’t yet imagine?
Recently, I found an unexpected source of insight into this question—a book about the life and innovations of that same hip-hop producer: Dilla Time by Dan Charnas.
As I learned about Dilla’s career, I couldn’t help but notice striking parallels to our current moment with generative AI. Here are seven insights drawn from the early history of hip-hop that challenge today’s techno-pessimism about AI and creativity:
1. Technology can create new creative forms that humans can’t
James Dewitt Yancey—known as Jay Dee and later as J Dilla—died in 2006 at the age of 32 from a rare blood disease called TTP, but his revolutionary approach to rhythm lives on. As Charnas puts it: “He is the only producer-composer to emerge from hip-hop and, indeed, all electronic music to fundamentally change the way so-called traditional musicians play.”
J Dilla’s innovation was impossible without the Akai MPC3000 drum machine. By deliberately manipulating the timing of drum hits, he created what Charnas calls “Dilla Time”—a style that juxtaposed even and uneven time-feels simultaneously, creating a pleasurable rhythmic friction that no human drummer could physically execute.
The parallel to generative AI is clear: while many fear AI will make creative work formulaic, it might instead enable entirely new forms of creative expression—forms that humans alone couldn’t accomplish due to our cognitive or physiological limitations.
2. The most innovative uses of technology often subvert its intended purpose
Drum machines were designed with a quantizing function to “correct” human timing errors using software.
But J Dilla deliberately subverted this function. He turned off quantization or manually moved drum hits off a mathematically precise grid, creating beats that communicated emotion through “imperfect” rhythm.
This paradox—using a machine designed for metronomic perfection to create controlled imperfection—suggests that the most powerful innovations often come from subverting a technology’s intended purpose.
The most transformative uses of AI may similarly come from those who find ways to bend the technology, introducing controlled variations that make its output more distinctively creative and human.
3. New technology can reconnect us with ancient traditions
Surprisingly, Dilla’s innovation via digital technology represented a return to older forms of musical expression. His rhythmic approach reconnected with polyrhythmic traditions from West Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia that had been marginalized by the conventions of European classical music for centuries.
As ethnomusicologists noted, Dilla’s rhythms broke through the European frame that colonialism had forced on much of the world’s popular music.
This challenges the narrative that technology alienates us from our authentic human nature. In this case, the drum machine allowed musicians to reconnect with complex rhythms that had been all but lost to history.
Similarly, AI might not lead us into a posthuman future but instead return us to our primal roots, surfacing ancient aspects of our psychology that were repressed by industrial-age modernity.
4. Creative relationships with technology evolve from conforming to bending
Early hip-hop producers conformed their creative process to their drum machines’ limitations, trying to make audio samples fit neatly into the rigid 16-pad time grid. But Dilla took a fundamentally different approach.
As DJ Jazzy Jeff observed: “Everyone in hip-hop had heretofore been trying to cut, splice, and jam samples to accommodate the machine’s time grid… But Jay Dee did the opposite: he bent the machine grid to accommodate his sample sources, because he was focused on using those samples for their rhythmic and harmonic feel.”
This evolution from conforming to technology’s rigid constraints to bending it to human intention is instructive. The earliest AI-generated art shows creators conforming to algorithmic limitations, but as these tools develop and creators’ technical understanding deepens, we’ll see more instances of the technology being bent to accommodate our visions.
This evolution from conforming to bending seems inevitable in every creative-technological relationship. It’s not a question of if professional creators will bend AI to their will, but when and how they’ll discover the equivalent of turning off quantization in their generative workflows.
5. New technologies create new creative specializations
J Dilla’s innovation created an entirely new category of musicianship. He wasn’t a traditional percussionist but what audio technology pioneer Roger Linn called a “sequencer player”—someone whose primary instrument was the programming of rhythmic time itself through digital interfaces.
Dilla made microsecond timing variations in ways that were impossible for human drummers, creating a new art form that required a new type of technical virtuoso.
We’re seeing the same pattern with generative AI. These tools are giving rise to new creative specializations: prompt engineers, AI image directors, model fine-tuners—emerging roles existing at the intersection of human aesthetics and machine capability.
Just as many classically trained musicians initially dismissed “sequencer players” as not being real musicians, we see traditional creative professionals dismissing these new AI-adjacent creative roles.
But these new creative forms don’t replace existing ones—they expand the total landscape of expressive possibilities. They are additions to our creative ecosystem, not wholesale substitutions within it.
6. Technological innovations transform how we value information repositories
Hip-hop pioneered sampling—taking segments of existing recordings and transforming them into new compositions. J Dilla elevated this practice using sophisticated digital techniques to chop, stretch, and manipulate audio samples into entirely new sonic arrangements.
This practice made certain information repositories—warehouses of obscure vinyl records from defunct labels—skyrocket in commercial value. Producers spent countless hours digging through dusty crates searching for unique drum breaks and bass lines no other producer had discovered.
We’re seeing this same pattern with generative AI, where specialized datasets have suddenly become incredibly valuable for training and fine-tuning. Collections of information previously overlooked in the pre-AI economy now hold tremendous monetary and strategic value.
This raises profound questions about creativity itself: Has human creativity ever truly been about creating from nothing? Or has it always involved recombining, transforming, and recontextualizing what came before us in novel ways?
7. Machine innovations feed back into human creative practice
Perhaps the most powerful lesson from J Dilla’s story is how his machine-enabled innovations transformed human musicians’ techniques.
Professional performers like Questlove of The Roots and neo-soul keyboardist D’Angelo meticulously studied Dilla’s machine-made rhythmic patterns and learned to replicate them with traditional acoustic instruments, fundamentally rethinking their relationship with music in the process.
As Charnas describes: “Jay Dee could shift a drum’s position in time by programming it, and there it would remain. But Questlove had to counteract a lifetime of physical reflexes, to retrain his body to do things and feel time differently.”
A machine-made innovation forced one of the world’s most accomplished drummers to unlearn years of muscle memory and develop entirely new techniques. The drum machine wasn’t replacing the human musician—it was pushing human creativity into previously unexplored territories.
J Dilla’s innovations extended beyond hip-hop, influencing jazz orchestration, classical composition, and mainstream pop production. His work has been interpreted by symphony orchestras at Lincoln Center and studied in university music conservatories.
This pattern suggests something important about our AI future: the most significant impact of generative AI on human creativity may not be direct replacement of jobs, but how it challenges professional creators to develop new capabilities and aesthetic perspectives they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
Embracing the Meta-Creativity of the AI Era
If the evolution of music production technology and electronic instruments teaches us anything, it’s that new tools don’t eliminate human creativity—they transform it, often in ways that expand rather than contract the range of human creative expression.
But this technological transformation requires a specific creative approach.
J Dilla didn’t set out to revolutionize rhythm—he simply explored the creative possibilities of his MPC3000 with extraordinary dedication and meticulous attention to detail. His daily creative routine, as described by Charnas, involved rising at 7 am, cleaning his Detroit studio while listening carefully to newly-acquired vinyl records, and then making beats from 9:00 a.m. until noon. He created them “quickly, one after the other, finished them, and then moved on.”
I find this aspect of his disciplined practice particularly illuminating for our AI moment.
This combination of structured daily practice, deep listening to source material, and rapid iterative experimentation mirrors what the most innovative creators are now doing with generative AI tools. The truly groundbreaking uses of AI aren’t coming from those who simply prompt a model to create something and uncritically accept whatever it produces. They’re coming from those who engage in a sustained dialogue with the technology, who develop deep technical understanding of its capabilities and limitations, and who have a clear creative vision that transcends the particular tool itself.
What would a “J Dilla approach” to generative AI look like in your specific creative field?
What we should be looking for (and investing in) are not just incremental improvements in AI model capabilities, but the emerging meta-practices that leverage AI to create new forms of human-machine creative collaboration. These emerging practices might involve using AI to rapidly explore creative possibilities, to overcome specific technical obstacles, to challenge established aesthetic assumptions, or to handle routine aspects of production work so that human creators can focus on higher-level creative decisions and emotional subtlety.
The story of J Dilla reminds us that when a new technology enters a creative field, the most interesting developments often happen not at the center of that technology’s intended use but at its experimental edges—where innovative humans push it beyond its manufacturer’s instructions, bend it to their unique artistic vision, and in the process, discover entirely new dimensions of creativity.
Rather than fearing that AI will replace human artists, we should be asking more specific questions: What new forms of meta-creativity will emerge in the AI era? What new patterns of thought and creation – what new harmonies between human aesthetic intelligence and machine computational intelligence – might become possible through thoughtful collaboration?
The answer to these questions won’t come from the technology itself, but from the James Yanceys of our era—those visionary creators and artists who see in our new digital tools not a threat to human expression, but an invitation to expand it in ways we’ve yet to imagine.
And perhaps, just perhaps, that creator could be you.
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The post What J Dilla and Early Hip-Hop Teach Us About AI and the Future of Creativity appeared first on Forte Labs.
我和 Google AdSense 的故事
2025年5月19日 10:33
网站挂广告这事，以前对我来说挺神秘的，因为我以前并不会做网站，后来会做了，也不知道该怎么去挂广告。
后来知道了，有个百度联盟，但是申请过多次，都没有通过，也了解过其它的联盟，要么就是要求高，要么就是看起来不太正规的小平台，无奈放弃，不了了之。
在去年年底的时候，又萌生了做网站的想法，于是尝试着做了一个工具站——虽然这种网站挺多的，但是胜在好维护不用总更新内容。
借助AI，很快网站便上线了。随后就又开始琢磨广告联盟的事。在一个开发者微信群里，无意间知道了 Google AdSense 这个全球最大的广告联盟，于是便尝试申请了一下。
申请后，需要 Google 审核，这个网站审核的时间比较长，接近一个月才有结果，期间，有人说新网站一般很难通过，但是最终的结果是我这个新网站却神奇的通过了。
这是我第一次成功地申请广告联盟，惊喜和意外之余，感觉网站挂广告也不是什么难事，Google 的广告联盟很接地气也很人性化，完全不像国内的广告联盟那样“傲慢”。
申请成功之后，就按照平台的指引，添加广告代码，很快网站上就显示广告了，为了方便省心，我使用了平台的“自动广告”，虽然这会导致页面看上去广告有点多。
至于收入，每天就只有1、2分钱，虽然不能指望它干啥，但这种被动收入的感觉还是很好的。
上图是接入 AdSense 近三个月以来的收入情况，平台的要求是满100元才能提现，照这个情况不知道要猴年马月……
最近 又把另外两个网站也申请了接入，一个是当前的博客，这个网站审核非常快，不到三天的时间就通过了，可能是老网站的原因？而另外一个网站却遭到了拒绝，原因是“低价值内容”，这个被拒绝的是一个纯技术博客，可能上面记录的技术笔记太简单了吧。
这就是我和 Google AdSense 之间的故事，文字止于此，但故事还在继续，有新的网站我会再次尝试申请，对于已通过的网站，也会持续改进优化。
如果你也想加入 Google AdSense，希望本文能帮助到你。
【知途人文】9：教育不是为了加工考试机器
2025年5月18日 22:26
Y君一走进教室，就对我说：“我没有写作业，因为学校作业太多了。”我说知道了。 开始上课，W君说忘了带书。我说等 […]
【2025也闲谈·廿一】人工智能时代需要怎样的教育
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居学评，点评了几位学者天才写作者般的作品（作业）。我接触过的所有学校语文课上的作文套路，在他们的写作面前，都黯 […]
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2025年5月16日 08:34
《汪鸿藻楷书金刚经》，系汪鸿藻应歙县同乡、真达长老之请而沐手恭书，弘化社据民国十四年（一九二五）流通版影印。7 […]
【乡下父母的人生课】9：只要努力成为自己就好
2025年5月15日 10:30
上周六在也闲书局讲古诗词时，五年级的学者Lemon提到李清照，我见机缘难得，当时就说下次我们就讲一首李清照的词 […]
【与Isaac同行】11：历史是什么
2025年5月14日 11:02
我们五月到六月的新学段已经开始，这两周，Isaac的各学科自主学习都在按照计划进行，进度也都达到约定节点。欢喜 […]
【知途人文】8：对阅读写作提出了更加明确的要求
2025年5月11日 10:04
今日诸君的状态更佳。飞花令较之月前，能接出的古诗词更多；提问环节，提出的问题也更加有思考性。写作环节，是根据《 […]
【2025也闲谈·廿】礼，比胜负重要
2025年5月10日 10:12
因为五一调休和假期，与诸位学者两周没见，今天的讲谈，来了个轻松有趣的“句读”开场，将“明知山有虎偏向虎山行”断 […]
【读书记1556】陈存仁《银元时代生活史》
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在广西师范大学出版社“十三邀”丛书《十三邀1：我还是更喜欢失败者》中，许知远与姜文聊电影与阅读，姜文说：阅读非 […]
【2025也闲谈·十九】《旅行记》
2025年5月8日 14:22
一位家长说孩子在学校从二年级就开始学语法。她认为一门语言最开始不注重听说读写，而教语法，这是无效的，都是为了应 […]
特朗普对等关税后股票操作小记
2025年5月7日 11:56
4月6日，我写了一篇帖子《小议特朗普关税新政与A股走势》，预测了特朗普对等关税政策后中国及全球可能的对策及股市 […]
【读书记1555】《汪鸿藻楷书地藏经》
2025年5月6日 09:32
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【读书记1554】马克·格林格拉斯《基督教欧洲的巨变》
2025年5月5日 15:49
“企鹅欧洲史”系列，是企鹅兰登出版集团集合欧洲史权威学者，历时十余年打造的一套全景欧洲史，堪称“当代出版界的巨 […]
Introducing Death Clock (And My First Experience with Vibecoding)
2025年5月5日 10:00
I’m proud to introduce Death Clock, a life expectancy calculator that predicts the day of your death based on 17 personalized variables.
This is not only the first “app” I’ve ever created myself, but also my first experience with AI-assisted coding, which has become known as “vibecoding.”
I can definitively say this was one of the most eye-opening, impressive encounters with technology I’ve ever had, and it opened my eyes to a vast horizon of possibilities that I think AI-assisted coding will open up going forward.
Here are my observations and insights based on my first few hours of vibecoding.
Finding an entry point
One of the first things I look for when trying to learn a new skill is a good “entry point.”
Simply typing the topic into Google or YouTube is not smart, as it only results in a flood of mediocre-quality, clickbait-driven results. Instead, I look for a single, in-depth piece of content or a course taught by a qualified instructor with a strong track record of quality. Ideally, there’s also an accompanying community or discussion forum associated with it, so I can see what others are doing.
All these criteria were fulfilled when I signed up for my friend Nat Eliason’s new course, Build Your Own Apps with AI. One recent Saturday morning I started watching the instructional videos while my wife and the kids were sleeping in.
The course recommends the coding program Cursor. As I downloaded the desktop app and created an account, the complex-looking interface was already starting to intimidate me. I had downloaded IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) before, but since I have virtually no technical ability or knowledge, I always felt overwhelmed and confused by the unfamiliar interface and quickly gave up.
Here’s what the interface looks like in Cursor:
As I watched Nat’s videos, it soon dawned on me how incredibly straightforward and easy it was to create functional code using Cursor, for one simple reason: it draws on the formidable powers of leading LLMs.
As I began experimenting, I found that it wasn’t necessary to interact with any part of the software except for one: the ongoing chat with the AI. Although you can directly manipulate the code, navigate around the various project files, approve or reject individual edits, and issue commands in a terminal window if you want, none of that is strictly necessary. The AI can take all the actions itself.
Building Death Clock v1
After watching the first module of the course, I decided to go right ahead and try building something I actually wanted: a life expectancy calculator.
I’m in the midst of writing my new book, on the art and practice of completing an annual life review, and I’m finding that one of the main themes of the book is reckoning with one’s mortality and limited time on the planet. It’s quite hard to take on that longer-term perspective day to day. But at least once a year, I think it’s incredibly valuable to do so. I was looking for a way to give readers a visceral, felt sense of how short life truly is.
I can write thousands of words about mortality and its ability to put our lives into proper perspective, but no volume of words compares to the power of a personalized, interactive tool that calculates your own expected date of death. It’s the difference between generic advice and an expiration date that takes into account your own unique life circumstances.
Living in Mexico has also exposed me to a very different attitude toward death than I’m used to in the US. Instead of something to be feared and the mention of it avoided, death is a much bigger part of the culture, from the ofrendas of Día de Muertos to the ubiquity of skeleton iconography to the constant awareness of ancestors. I want to make death something that people can talk about more openly.
And lastly, I turn 40 next week, so let’s just say that mortality is on my mind
Working with the AI
I started my project by creating an empty folder, loading it up into Cursor, and asking it to “Build a web app that calculates someone’s life expectancy based on lifestyle factors.” That was it. There were no technical specifications, no feature requests, and no tech stack. Just a simple request made in natural language.
Cursor gives you the option to select which LLM you want to use, including all the leading models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. I kept it on “auto-select,” which means it decided which model to use depending on the situation.
It proceeded to immediately build a full-fledged React project, which took several minutes and involved creating an entire structure of multiple interlinked files. I asked it to open the app in my web browser, and it prepared the file, which I just needed to double-click.
Here’s what that very first version looked like:
So the app now existed, but with one tiny problem: there was no way to input any personal information! I asked it to add input fields for each of the lifestyle factors, and in a couple of minutes they appeared. I put in my own information as a test, and it spit out the results:
After only about 5 minutes, I already had a functional web app! This alone is astonishing, as I would have probably needed hours to get even this much up and running on my own. I thought back to my early web design efforts using Microsoft FrontPage as a teenager in the 90s, and how that experience was so daunting that I gave up on the endeavor altogether.
I spent the next several hours adding features, which amounted to no more or less than asking for them in the AI chat window and waiting. Here’s what I changed, one element at a time:
- Added a total of 17 questions, encompassing various aspects of a person’s life that influence their life expectancy
- Added an in-line BMI calculator, based on a person’s height and weight
- Asked the AI to create a logo of an hourglass and place it at the top of the page
- Had it try out a couple of styles, settling on a muted, grey and blue color scheme
- Added some interesting outputs and observations related to life expectancy to the “results” page, based on the answers to the questions
- Added a pie chart visualizing a person’s remaining lifespan (which required Cursor to download and install a new library, which it handled on its own)
- Added a call to action to check out my website at the end
- Set up a repository on GitHub and published the app using GitHub Pages, so I can share it with others
All this took about 3-4 hours, but I would estimate around half that time was spent waiting for the AI to do the work, or for the new version to deploy, so I could view it in a browser. While all this was happening, I hung out with the kids, washed dishes, took a shower, and got some reading done. Instead of requiring an all-encompassing, immersive day of obsessive learning, which is what I would have expected, I actually had quite a relaxing, balanced day!
There were only a couple of hiccups I encountered during this project. At one point, there was a bug that would make the whole screen go blank when I clicked the “Calculate Life Expectancy” button. Cursor asked me to copy and paste the error message from the console into the chat, but before I even did that, it guessed what the problem was and proceeded to fix it by itself. Here’s what that interaction looked like:
I sometimes had to perform actions beyond just clicking “accept all,” such as typing “y” into the command line to allow it to proceed, or typing in my computer’s root password to allow it to install something, so I did have to pay a bit of attention and look out for next steps.
A few times, a new feature didn’t work correctly the immediately, and required follow-up fixes, such as this first attempt at a pie chart:
One of the most surprising parts of working with an LLM in a coding environment is that the AI has context and knowledge about many, many domains that have nothing to do with code. For example, at one point, I got stuck with the GitHub settings, so I just pasted a screenshot of what I was seeing into Cursor, and got a precise diagnosis of what was wrong, plus step-by-step instructions on how to fix it.
But it also goes beyond software. At one point, I asked Cursor to tell me how robust or evidence-backed a question about income level was, and in seconds, it pulled in an academic paper that examined exactly this question. It still had to simplify the correlation between income and life expectancy into a multiple-choice question, but knowing there was at least some validity to this question gave me the confidence to move forward.
I kept assuming I would hit a roadblock and have to switch to a “real” LLM to do more serious research, planning, or structuring of questions. But that wasn’t the case: the LLMs that Cursor is drawing on are exactly the same ones you’d have access to via ChatGPT or Claude, so there’s no need to leave.
That also means that Cursor can do design work. I asked it to create a visual style reminiscent of the blocky, 8-bit graphics of early Nintendo games, but with a death-themed, macabre look. It instantly understood the assignment, using red and black to convey the right feeling:
I decided that look wasn’t quite right, so I had it pivot to a cleaner, more modern style. Here’s what that interaction looked like, replacing probably hours of work:
The ability to pivot on a dime like this and effortlessly try out a completely new direction is astonishing. Small experiments and whimsical curiosities can be indulged and tested without expending significant time or effort.
My 4 takeaways from vibecoding
This first experience of a few hours of vibecoding left me with 4 takeaways:
- Learning to code is now optional
- The new bottleneck is how you spend the time that’s saved
- Software is the new frontier of book publishing
- We’re entering a more impressionistic era of creation
Learning to code is now optional
Over the years, I’ve considered whether I should build an app many times. I live in the world of tech and software, and in many ways, the ability to create a new software tool is the pinnacle of agency in that world.
Yet every time, I’ve decided not to pursue building an app, either because I lacked the time to learn it myself, or didn’t want to spend the thousands of dollars it seemed to require to even build something basic.
But now, in a matter of hours and at almost zero cost, I can build something that’s genuinely useful. I didn’t learn anything about coding, but I think that’s overall a good thing. Learning can be fun and is certainly useful, but it isn’t always inherently good or necessary.
Why should the ability to leverage software be limited to those willing to spend months or years studying arcane details of technical implementation? Why should someone’s vision or mission require them to know the low-level details of how a webpage gets rendered? And now, nearly all of the details are “low-level.”
Learning coding is now optional, but I think AI tools will also make it easier to learn to code for those who decide they want to. At any point, you can bring in context from any part of the codebase and ask the AI to explain it to you at any level of detail you want. You can even have it explain things outside that environment, such as the many external systems and interfaces you’ll need to get a full-fledged website working.
This is such a remarkable level of accessibility for a technology that was previously very hard to use, and it’s difficult to predict how the world will change when everyone can wield the power of software.
The new bottleneck is how you spend the time that’s saved
It’s so fast to create and edit code this way that the bottleneck starts to become how fast you can move your mouse, the speed of your internet connection, how long it takes to deploy a new build, the speed of refreshing the page, etc.
I predict we’ll see a variety of efforts to speed up every little step involved in coding, the same way that factories once invested millions in reducing the time it took to switch a production line from one activity to another, as that became the bottleneck.
But more broadly, the true limiter on the quality of software that people will be able to produce using Cursor and similar tools is how they spend the time that AI frees up for them.
You could spend it chilling by the pool or watching TV, but you have to remember that everyone else is also having all their time freed up, so the level of competition will increase like a rising tide. Many web apps that people will build this way are hobbies, or experiments, or complements to other projects. Still, many will have some kind of competition or alternative, and the only way to compete effectively will be to invest the time saved in new dimensions of quality.
Maybe you spend that time exercising and meditating, so that you can ground yourself and bring wiser, more holistic decision-making to the AI. Maybe you spend it reading and researching, so the knowledge underlying your app is richer and more nuanced. Maybe you spend it hunting for obscure sources or offline archives, so that you can incorporate context that the LLM doesn’t already know. Maybe you spend your time talking with potential customers, so your choices more accurately reflect what they want.
All of these are valid choices, and they will all become important dimensions of competition and quality, even more so than they already are today. The true scarce resource continues to be the time and attention of other people, and I only expect the battle for that attention to keep heating up.
Software is the new frontier of book publishing
One of the domains I’m most excited about applying these new tools to is book publishing. Books have changed so little over time, and increasingly suffer in comparison to other, far more interactive and engaging forms of media.
I don’t think bemoaning this fact and lecturing people on the importance of reading is helpful, but I do believe interactive web apps like this could make a tremendous difference. What if, every time you finished a book, or even a single chapter, you were presented with a link to a free, interactive, personalized web app that directly applied the ideas you just read to your own situation?
Instead of trying to guess how to apply a book’s ideas, or get upsold to a course, or have to get expensive support from a coach or consultant, you would have a self-serve piece of software you can immediately engage with.
The value of a book is that the author has taken an extraordinary amount of time to research and think deeply about an important issue, topic, or skill. That’s a rare thing in our hype-driven online world of disposable headlines. But that same slow-moving, timeless quality makes it very difficult for books to recommend or prescribe any given form of implementation. There’s just too much variation between individuals to offer a one-size-fits-all solution, and long publishing timelines mean that any solution printed in the pages of a book is likely to be obsolete by the time it hits the shelves.
This is a way to combine the best of both worlds: to deliver the timeless, wise, holistic wisdom of books, accompanied by a suite of personalized, customizable, up-to-date digital implementation tools, accessible in one click or tap. This is how you save the culture of reading – not by resisting change but by embracing it. I plan on making extensive use of this approach in my next book.
We’re entering a more impressionistic era of creation
One of the most continuously surprising aspects of AI-assisted vibecoding is how brief, imprecise, informal, and vague my instructions can be, and still be understood. I could almost always just say “Fix this” with a screenshot, or “Make this look better,” or even just “Improve the question,” and AI would figure it out.
This is so different from past technologies that require you to be extremely exact, specifying what you want with mathematical precision. Even a single wrong character in a codebase of thousands of lines could result in a catastrophic error.
My unclear instructions often resulted in better results, because the AI would misinterpret my intentions and make improvements I hadn’t even thought of. Some of the best ideas came from the AI, either because I asked it for ideas or because it contributed them spontaneously as it guessed what I was trying to achieve.
Like the transition in painting style from the Realism of the mid-19th century to the Impressionism of the late 19th century, driven by painters’ desire to capture changing qualities of natural light, fleeting moments, and spontaneous experiences using quick, expressive brushwork rather than carefully finished compositions, we’re going to see a similar transition in software design.
Interestingly, what sparked the transition back then was technology – the advent of photography meant that scenes could be captured with nearly perfect realism, which devalued that ability by humans. Human artists pivoted in reaction, exploring a new frontier of perception, novel color combinations, and everyday life.
I think we’ll soon see our technological creations becoming much more impressionistic, based on ambiguous premonitions, subtle feelings, or vague notions that we can’t fully articulate. We’ll see people create various kinds of software as artistic expressions, or to capture a fleeting memory, or to convey a single message. Software will become its own mode of creative expression for a much wider range of people now that the price of entry has plummeted to near zero.
4 tips for using Cursor
Despite my lack of commitment to learning anything in particular, I found that I did end up learning a few things about how to work effectively in Cursor:
- You don’t have to deploy a new version with every new feature you build, as that takes a few minutes. But it’s a good idea to do so anytime you get a major new feature working, as you’ll be able to “roll back” to that point if you mess up anything in the future.
- It’s always helpful to bring in the relevant context to any interaction with the AI chat. Cursor makes this very easy by including an “add to chat” button both in the code window and in the terminal, which are the two places you’d want to draw on for context
- Pasting screenshots into the AI chat is remarkably helpful, as it allows the AI to see exactly what you’re referring to. Often, you don’t even need to say anything – the AI understands what’s working as soon as it sees how it’s appearing.
You can check out Cursor with a free trial at https://www.cursor.com. I signed up for the paid version for $20 per month to build my first app, though you’ll have access to a lot of functionality for free. I recommend their “getting started” documentation to learn about the basic features, which are more than enough to allow you to build your first simple app.
Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.
The post Introducing Death Clock (And My First Experience with Vibecoding) appeared first on Forte Labs.
How I use Obsidian
2023年9月16日 08:00
I use Obsidian to think, take notes, write essays, and publish this site. This is my bottom-up approach to note-taking and organizing things I am interested in. It embraces chaos and laziness to create emergent structure.
In Obsidian, a “vault” is simply a folder of files. This is important because it adheres to my file over app philosophy. If you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Obsidian gives you that freedom.
The following is in no way dogmatic, just one example of how you can use Obsidian. Take the parts you like.
Vault template
- Download my vault or clone it from the Github repo.
- Unzip the
.zipfile to a folder of your choosing. - In Obsidian open the folder as a vault.
Theme and related tools
- My theme Minimal.
- Obsidian Web Clipper to save articles and pages from the web, see my clipper templates for specific sites I clip from.
- Obsidian Sync to sync notes between my desktop, phone and tablet.
- Obsidian Bases has replaced my use of Dataview as of May 2025.
- Leaflet plugin for maps used in some of my templates.
Personal rules
Rules I follow in my personal vault:
- Avoid splitting content into multiple vaults.
- Avoid folders for organization.
- Avoid non-standard Markdown.
- Always pluralize categories and tags.
- Use internal links profusely.
- Use
YYYY-MM-DDdates everywhere. - Use the 7-point scale for ratings.
- Keep a single to-do list per week.
Having a consistent style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives me focus. For example, I always pluralize tags so I never have to wonder what to name new tags. Choose rules that feel comfortable to you and write them down. Make your own style guide. You can always change your rules later.
Folders and organization
I use very few folders. I avoid folders because many of my entries belong to more than one area of thought. My system is oriented towards speed and laziness. I don’t want the overhead of having to consider where something should go.
I do not use nested sub-folders. I do not use the file explorer much for navigation. I mostly navigate using the quick switcher, backlinks, or links within a note.
My notes are primarily organized using the categories property. Categories display an overview of related notes, using the bases feature in Obsidian.
Most of my notes are in the root of the vault, not a folder. This where I write about my personal world: journal entries, essays, evergreen notes, and other personal notes. If a note is in the root, I know it’s something I wrote, or relates directly to me.
Two reference folders I use:
- References where I write about things that exist outside my world. Books, movies, places, people, podcasts, etc. Always named using the title e.g.
Book title.mdorMovie title.md. - Clippings where I save things other people wrote, mostly essays and articles.
Three admin folders exist so that their contents don’t show up in the file navigation:
- Attachments for images, audio, videos, PDFs, etc.
- Daily for my daily notes, all named
YYYY-MM-DD.md. I do not write anything in daily notes, they exist solely to be linked to from other entries. - Templates for templates.
Two folders are present in the downloadable version of my vault for the sake of clarity. In my personal vault, these notes would be in the root, not a folder.
- Categories contains top-level overviews of notes per category (e.g. Books, Movies, Podcasts, etc).
- Notes contains example notes.
Links
I use internal links profusely throughout my notes. I try to always link the first mention of something. My journal entries are often a stream of consciousness cataloging recent events, finding connections between things. Often the link is unresolved, meaning that the note for that link isn’t created yet. Unresolved links are important because they are breadcrumbs for future connections between things.
A journal entry in the root of my vault might look something like this:
I went to see the movie [[Perfect Days]] with [[Aisha]] at [[Vidiots]] and had Filipino food at [[Little Ongpin]]. I loved this quote from Perfect Days: [[Next time is next time, now is now]]. It reminds me of the essay ...
The movie, movie theater, and restaurant each link to entries in my References folder. In these reference notes I capture properties, my rating, and thoughts about that thing. I use Web Clipper to help populate properties from databases like IMDB. The quote was meaningful to me, so it became an evergreen note in my root folder. The essay I mention is in my Clippings folder, because I didn’t write it myself.
This heavy linking style becomes more useful as time goes on, because I can trace how ideas emerged, and the branching paths these ideas created.
Fractal journaling and random revisit
Fractal journaling and randomization are how I tame the wilderness that a knowledge base can grow into.
Throughout the day I use Obsidian’s unique note hotkey to write individual thoughts as they come up. This shortcut automatically creates a note with the prefix YYYY-MM-DD HHmm to which I may add a title that describes the idea.
Every few days I review these journal fragments and compile the salient thoughts. I then review those reviews monthly, and review the monthly reviews yearly (using this template). The result is a fractal web of my life that I can zoom in and out of at varying degrees of detail. I can trace back where individual thoughts came from, and how they bubbled up into bigger themes.
Every few months I set aside time for a “random revisit”. I use the random note hotkey to quickly travel randomly through my vault. I often use the local graph at shallow depth to see related notes. This helps me revisit old ideas, create missing links, and find inspiration in past thoughts. It’s also an opportunity to do maintenance, like fix formatting based on new rules in my personal style guide.
People have asked me if this could be automated with language models but I do not care to do so. I enjoy this process. Doing this maintenance helps me understand my own patterns. Don’t delegate understanding.
Properties and templates
Almost every note I create starts from a template. I use templates heavily because they allow me to lazily add information that will help me find the note later. I have a template for every category with properties at the top, to capture data such as:
- Dates — created, start, end, published
- People — author, director, artist, cast, host, guests
- Themes — grouping by genre, type, topic, related notes
- Locations — neighborhood, city, coordinates
- Ratings — more on this below
A few rules I follow for properties:
- Property names and values should aim to be reusable across categories. This allows me to find things across categories, e.g.
genreis shared across all media types, which means I can see an archive of Sci-fi books, movies and shows in one place. - Templates should aim to be composable, e.g. Person and Author are two different templates that can be added to the same note.
- Short property names are faster to type, e.g.
startinstead ofstart‑date. - Default to
listtype properties instead oftextif there is any chance it might contain more than one link or value in the future.
The .obsidian/types.json file lists which properties are assigned to which types (i.e. date, number, text, etc).
Rating system
Anything with a rating uses an integer from 1 to 7:
- 7 — Perfect, must try, life-changing, go out of your way to seek this out
- 6 — Excellent, worth repeating
- 5 — Good, don’t go out of your way, but enjoyable
- 4 — Passable, works in a pinch
- 3 — Bad, don’t do this if you can
- 2 — Atrocious, actively avoid, repulsive
- 1 — Evil, life-changing in a bad way
Why this scale? I like rating out of 7 better than 4 or 5 because I need more granularity at the top, for the good experiences, and 10 is too granular.
Publishing to the web
This site is written, edited, and published directly from Obsidian. To do this, I break one of my rules listed above — I have a separate vault for my site. I use a static site generator called Jekyll to automatically compile my notes into a website and convert them from Markdown to HTML.
My publishing flow is easy to use, but a bit technical to set up. This is because I like to have full control over every aspect of my site’s layout. If you don’t need full control you might consider Obsidian Publish which is more user-friendly, and what I use for my Minimal documentation site.
For this site, I push notes from Obsidian to a GitHub repo using the Obsidian Git plugin. The notes are then automatically compiled using Jekyll with my web host Netlify. I also use my Permalink Opener plugin to quickly open notes in the browser so I can compare the draft and live versions.
The color palette is Flexoki, which I created for this site. My Jekyll template is not public, but you can get similar results from this template by Maxime Vaillancourt. There are also many alternatives to Jekyll you can use to compile your site such as Quartz, Astro, Eleventy, and Hugo.
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2025年5月2日 11:42
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做自媒体，首先要选平台，我目前选择的是微信公众号和小红书，因为这两个平台支持图文。由于剪辑视频太耗时，而我也不太会剪，所以打算先从图文做起。
关于内容，我目前也没有想好做什么，每个赛道都很卷，我觉得要想持久，还是得做自己擅长的领域，这样才有可能坚持下来。而我擅长的除了软件开发，好像也没有什么了，但是发一些编程相关的内容，受众又有点小，更重要的是，谁会上公众号和小红书上看技术内容？如果是真正的程序员，白天工作和代码打交道，晚上没事刷个小红书还要看编程？所以这个想法作罢。
但这个事情总要推进下去，不能等想好了再做，如果等想好了再做，可能这件事就做不成了，我了解我自己。
经过一番思索，我干脆把我博客里的读书笔记略加改动发到了公众号和小红书上，配上了书的封面。
虽然还有很多问题，比如图片不好看，书很破旧，写的也不好，但不管怎么说，这个想法总算是落地了。剩下要做的就拍好看的图片以及持续输出内容，坚持一段时间看看，行就行，不行就拉到，最起码尝试过了。
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横盘时期基金应该选指数型
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【读书记1549】《易中天中华史：青春志》
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网站搬回了搬瓦工
2025年4月17日 17:08
这件事情其实一个多月以前就做了，但是忙没有记录，最近没事，感觉还是有必要记一下，算是博客网站变迁的一个历程。
网站最初就是运行在搬瓦工上的，去年由于备案迁移回了国内，使用的是阿里云99一年的特价机器。国内的服务器线路是没得说，但是无奈带宽太小了，3M的固定带宽相比于搬瓦工的G口显得有些鸡肋，在打开图片多的页面时就会加载缓慢，浏览器持续转圈圈，实际体验下来还没有美西的搬瓦工好。
国内的服务器如果想有好的体验，就要升级带宽，使用钞能力，无奈国内带宽太贵了。所以还是回到最初的小窝吧，巴适得板。
如果你也需要，欢迎使用我的链接：https://bwh81.net/aff.php?aff=40338
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春日随想
2025年4月15日 10:23
很久没更新博客了，看了下日期，上次更新是2月15，正好两个月的时间。
很久没写，打开博客后台，面对着空白的富文本编辑器，却不知道该敲下些什么。
随便写写吧，总不能一直停更下去。
说说自己的近况吧，这段时间以来，接了老客户的一个项目，并且签订了两年的维护合同，虽然钱不是很多，但好在项目比较轻松，还可以接受。然后闲暇之余就做做自己的网站，本来打算今年尝试一下做自媒体，但不知道从何下手，至今也迟迟没有行动。
自从淘宝店铺黄了之后，就一直在筹划网站+自媒体，现在发现这条路也很难走，但既然选了，总要做做试试，现在手里有五个网站，有两个申请了 google adsense，其他的还在想出路，有一个需要和行业去谈合作，但首先网站要做好，有初步的流量才行。很难。
从业十多年以来，我发现我总是错过风口，PC时代刚入行，什么都不懂，互联网时代我在做桌面开发，移动应用时代我在做外包，现在AI时代我又开始做互联网，有点四九年入国军的感觉。按理说现在应该做和AI相关的才对，但真的不知道关于AI能做些什么，或许和AI相关的应用可以做，但也还没想好该做什么，或许应该少想多尝试一下。
当今社会，活着就离不开钱，似乎赚钱是活人永恒的话题，无奈钱越来越难赚，唉。要是有一个没有金钱的社会就好了，就像陶渊明的世外桃源，但这几乎不可能，只能存在于理想中。
随着三宝的长大，生活越来越忙，每天要接送两个学生上下学，三宝需要一个专人照看，一到上学、放学的时间，真是忙的不可开交。前几天，三宝刚刚学会走路，看着那稚嫩的步伐，感觉一切都是值得的。
每天中午接完二宝放学，就和二宝一起去接大宝，我们每天都会经过沿途的公园，这段时间以来，我们几乎欣赏了公园的整个春天。
公园每天都是这样，从春天伊始，看到花开花落，虽然忙碌，但是内心充实而满足。
怎么才能让博客更有人气
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Productive Disorder: The Hidden Power of Chaos, Noise, and Randomness
2025年4月7日 21:00
In the early 1700s, Central Europe faced a crisis: the forests were running out.
An explosion in mining, shipbuilding, and early industry had devastated old-growth forests that had stood for many centuries. Meanwhile, the population was exploding as well, creating demands on forests that clearly couldn’t be sustained for long.
The kingdoms of Prussia and Saxony decided to apply the emerging methods of science to the problem, developing what would eventually become known as Scientific Forestry. In order to maximize timber production for the state, forestry officials turned their wild and messy woodlands into outdoor timber factories.
They began by meticulously cataloguing every tree in the forest by species and size. They analyzed growth rates and wood quality to identify the most productive species, settling on Norway spruce to yield the maximum volume of timber per square foot. They then cleared the existing forests and turned them into monocultures – endless rows of evenly spaced, identically sized spruce.
What had once been an impossibly complex tangle of diverse kinds of vegetation – oak, beech, fir, and countless others – became a “planned forest.” It was the biological equivalent of a spreadsheet, with straight rows of trees laid out in a precise geometric grid ready for bureaucratic regulation.
At first, it worked beautifully. Forestry officials could now predict with extreme accuracy the exact yield of every patch of forest. The new plantations produced more lumber, at a faster pace, to a more precise standard. Harvests came in on schedule and in uniform sizes ready for sawmills. Logging boomed and the revenue flowed into state coffers.
But something strange began to happen after the second or third generations of trees were planted. The first generation had flourished in the absence of competition for soil and nutrients, but in the following generations, those same ecosystems collapsed, with dramatic production losses of 20-30%.
In order to make the forest more productive, the underbrush had been cleared of smaller trees, bushes, and shrubs. That underbrush had fertilized the soil with decomposing leaves and wood; without this undergrowth, the soil soon became depleted. The disappearance of fungi, worms, and insects caused pollination and soil aeration to crash.
Pests like the pine looper moth and bark beetle raced through identical strands of trees, encountering no obstacles or predators. Storms damaged vast swathes of the forest, toppling over the shallowly rooted spruces like “bowling pins.”
It turned out in retrospect that the messy diversity of the forest had been the source of its resilience. When stresses such as storms, disease, drought, fragile soil, or severe cold struck, a diverse forest with its full array of different species of trees, birds, insects, and animals was far better able to survive and recover. A windstorm that toppled large, old trees would typically spare smaller ones. An insect attack that threatened oaks might leave lindens and hornbeams unaffected. The rigidity and uniformity of the system meant that failures were not small and contained but systemic.
By the late 19th and early 20th century, forest plantations had become “a pale shadow of their previous ecological richness.” After all the effort and resources invested, the forests of Central Europe were now producing less timber than the wild forests they had replaced. All these changes culminated in what Germans grimly came to call Waldsterben, or “death of the forest.”
The supposedly “scientific” management of forests led to ecological problems so severe that multiple generations of restoration ecology have been needed to restore the previous diversity in insects, flora, and fauna. Germany continues to struggle with the lasting effects of monoculture forestry to this day, most recently in 2018 due to the mounting effects of climate change.
This story is recounted in James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State, and in his book, Scott notes that far from being a unique or isolated incident, scientific forestry was one incidence of a far broader movement, which he dubs Authoritarian High Modernism.
Across many facets of the modern world, from urban planning to public health, from transportation infrastructure to online social networks, we’ve sought to “rationalize” and “optimize” the messiness and complexity of the world. From the way we organize our cities and homes to how we manage the economy, all the way down to the systems and routines we create for our personal productivity, we’ve tried to impose rational order on complex systems based on a narrow vision of efficiency.
In this piece, I’ll argue that the results of that effort have been disastrous, and it’s time to return those systems to their natural, messy state.
An optimal level of mess
I first read the story of scientific forestry in a blog post by Venkatesh Rao in 2014. It was a paradigm-shifting moment for me. I saw in myself much the same attitude as 18th century German forestry officials – an unquestioned belief in order, reason, and systematic thinking.
I had always believed that anything I wanted to achieve in life was to be found on the other side of “getting organized.” My assumption was that there was one “best” path to achieving any goal, which was to follow a highly specific, structured, step-by-step plan with objectives and metrics. It was the “one true way,” as universal and unquestioned as my childhood religious faith.
Yet, in my early 20s, I began to run up against the limits of my blind faith in order. I began to see more and more examples of how it failed – in my own life, the lives of my friends and peers, and even in the business world and in society. The pitfalls and weaknesses of highly ordered, rationalized systems started to become ever more glaring, especially in a world that seemed to be changing faster and becoming more ambiguous and uncertain.
What if, I began to wonder, the costs of being neat and organized outweighed the benefits? What if there were hidden advantages to being messy, informal, loose, and even chaotic?
Last year, I picked up a book called A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, that finally addressed my longstanding question. Their striking conclusion after studying dozens of disciplines was a strong affirmative yes: that “moderately disorganized people, institutions, and systems frequently turn out to be more efficient, more resilient, more creative, and in general more effective than highly organized ones.”
They argue instead for an attitude toward organization that takes into account its costs, by asking yourself: Will more effort spent organizing be worth what it costs me in time and other resources? They suggest that there is an “optimal level of mess” for any given person and every given situation…and that it is just as common for people to err on the side of overorganization as underorganization.
This assertion is akin to heresy in our productivity-obsessed world. And for me personally, as someone who’s dedicated my career to teaching people how to be more efficient and organized, it felt like the portal to a hidden, subversive world.
The surprising benefits of disorder
This may seem counterintuitive, but you can think of “mess” not as simply the absence of order – like a vacuum of nothingness – but as a phenomenon in its own right, with its own qualities.
You can even conceive of mess as a valuable resource you can draw on or a strategy you can proactively apply when needed.
To understand when and where we might want to employ messes, we need to identify its unique benefits. Abrahamson and Freedman suggest six of them: flexibility, completeness, resonance, invention, efficiency, and robustness.
Messes are flexible in that they can adapt and change more quickly, more dramatically, in a wider variety of situations, and with less effort than would be required by highly ordered, formal systems.
For example, the messiness of a jazz ensemble enables improvisation, as any musician can shift at any moment to address any other, whereas a symphony orchestra has to play the music as written. Neat systems struggle to fight off randomness, and when randomness inevitably leaks in, the system is thrown off.
Messes are more complete (or comprehensive) since they can comfortably tolerate an exhaustive array of diverse entities.
Neat systems tend to whittle away at the diversity of their elements (as we saw in 18th-century German forestry). As another example, Thomas Edison tried any and every material in his quest to invent a workable lightbulb with a long-lasting glow, without regard to elegant theories as to why they might work. His approach to experimentation was wide-ranging and messy.
Messes are resonant, as in they facilitate surprising connections between overlapping, heterogenous elements.
Alexander Fleming happened upon the discovery that led to the invention of the first antibiotic, penicillin, because his lab was notoriously messy. A small, ragged circle of mold had invaded one of his petri dishes, but the staphylococci culture it contained seemed to steer clear of the mold, his first clue that the bacteria couldn’t tolerate it.
Messes facilitate invention by randomly juxtaposing many elements in unexpected, unconventional ways.
Neatness tends to limit novelty and the unexpected and sweeps them aside as aberrations when they do occur. A sobering example: a major reason modern terrorists are so hard to fight and defeat is because they are constituted by loose, constantly shifting, non-hierarchical, i.e., messy groups.
Messes are efficient, able to accomplish goals with a modest consumption of resources.
Consider the “productivity” of the wild forests before scientific management took root – they produced immense value for a wide variety of human and non-human species, despite the complete lack of an organizing scheme. Neatness tends to require a constant expenditure of resources just to maintain itself.
Messes are robust in that they tend to weave together and interlace many disparate elements, making them more resistant to destruction, failure, and imitation.
For example, competitive runners benefit from “inconsistent” workouts that mix up the speed, length, difficulty, frequency, and inclination of their running routines, leading to muscles that are more adaptable. Mixed-breed mutts are often hardier than purebred dogs thanks to the random interweaving of genes from their unlike parents. Neat systems, in contrast, tend to be more brittle and more easily disrupted or copied.
Later in the book, Abrahamson and Freedman introduce a seventh benefit: messes can be fun!
Consider the joy of sorting through antiques and doodads at a flea market, browsing a stack of random magazines, or spelunking through a messy collection of notes and finding something you didn’t even know you were looking for. Messy situations inherently include many qualities we find enlivening and interesting: surprise, delight, exploration, and discovery.
Adding disorder to a system can make it more effective
It’s one thing to believe that messes have some intriguingly positive qualities in theory. It’s quite another to realize those benefits in real life.
Let’s get one level more concrete and look at practical ways we can use the benefits of disorder in our daily lives.
Specifically, let’s see how disorder can make for more creative environments, allow information systems to contain more information, make the human brain smarter, enhance one’s personal productivity, and allow us to make more consistent progress on our projects and goals.
Disorder makes for more creative environments
In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson highlights many surprising examples of how disorder has led to new ideas and inventions throughout history. In his research, he found that innovation is often driven by “the collisions that happen when different fields of expertise converge in some shared physical or intellectual space.”
Perhaps the most classic model for such a space is the eighteenth-century coffeehouse, which Johnson notes was the hotbed for Enlightenment-era innovations that transformed our world: everything from the science of electricity to the insurance industry to modern democracy itself.
Sigmund Freud famously hosted an intellectual salon on Wednesday nights in Vienna, where physicians, philosophers, and scientists came together to discuss the emerging field of psychoanalysis. The legendary Homebrew Computer Club in 1970s Silicon Valley was made up of a ragtag group of amateur hobbyists, teenagers, entrepreneurs, and academics, who together somehow sparked the personal computer revolution.
Berkeley psychology professor Charlan Nemeth began investigating the relationship between noise, dissent, and creativity in group environments more than thirty years ago, and her research offers a clue as to why noisy cafes and amateur hobbyist clubs might have fostered so much creativity: she found that “good ideas are more likely to emerge in environments that contain a certain amount of noise and error,” ranging from mock juries to corporate boardrooms to academic seminars.
Maybe the best environment for our creativity is not sitting in a minimalist cafe, wearing noise-cancelling headphones, with an all-consuming focus on a tiny screen. Maybe there are times we’d be better served by immersing ourselves in randomness instead.
Disorder makes for more information-rich systems
Steven Johnson, in his book, introduces the field of Descriptive Complexity Theory, a branch of information science that has found that the more randomness in a system, the more information it can hold.
This may seem paradoxical, but imagine the case of two professors: one with a perfectly tidy, neat office with not a paperclip out of place, and one with a messy office full of personal items strewn all over the place. Which one provides you with more information about what kind of person the professor is? Clearly the messy one, since too much neatness and order tends to hide away the idiosyncratic details that distinguish one person from another.
Now imagine a digital notetaking app such as Notion, Obsidian, Tana, or Evernote. You might imagine that perfectly organizing your notes app – with neatly formatted text, seamless folders, comprehensive tags, and uniform headings – might allow you to fully maximize the potential of your knowledge.
But then again…maybe not. Maybe it is the very messiness that we tend to despise that makes our notes personal, intimate, and unique to us. A perfectly organized set of notes could belong to anyone, whereas a messier collection might contain all sorts of hidden clues about your unique desires and interests.
Disorder makes for smarter brains
In a 2007 study on the brain activity of children, neuroscientist Robert Thatcher and his team found that there was a correlation between the IQ of individual children and the amount of time their brains spent in “chaotic mode” (in contrast to “phase lock,” which is a more ordered and focused state of mind).
Every extra millisecond spent in chaos added as much as twenty IQ points, whereas time spent in phase lock was correlated with reduced IQ. Their conclusion is astonishing: the more disorganized your brain is, the smarter you are likely to be.
It turns out that the human brain relies on disorder for its basic functioning at multiple levels, from the processing of raw sensory data to the interplay of abstract ideas. Our brains evolved to navigate a messy world, and perhaps when we insist on organizing its activity, we rob it of that essential ability.
Consider how too much silence in a group dinner can be uncomfortable. Or that kids can knock out homework in a noisy home. Or that jiggling a telescope can help an observer’s eye pick up a faint celestial body. We are designed to thrive in chaos.
Disorder makes for higher productivity
Jane Jacobs, the famous urban planning theorist, noted a similar phenomenon at work in the design of cities.
She noticed that planners had a tendency to substitute superficial visual order for true functionality. In other words, whether a neighborhood “looked right” became more important than whether it worked for its inhabitants. The assumption seemed to be that if an arrangement was visually pleasing, that automatically meant it would function well.
I see this tendency run amok in the personal productivity space as well: people tend to love visual order, manifesting as pleasing symmetry, clean lines, perfectly squared little boxes, and severe minimalism. Yet all too often, this order and elegance comes at the expense of functionality – Does the thing actually work? Does it work sustainably for the long term? Does it fit how your mind works? Does it provide more value than it requires in upkeep?
It’s far easier to make something superficially pretty than to answer such questions. It’s much easier to compulsively switch to a different app that promises to instantly sweep aside the digital disorder than to figure out what we’re truly trying to accomplish. It’s much easier to organize things than to decide which of those things actually matters.
No doubt some situations call for a more structured approach – think of checklists used by an operating surgeon or an airline pilot. But most of us don’t face such high-stakes situations in our daily lives and would benefit from less formal tools.
Disorder helps you make progress
We normally think of “organizing” a collection of physical, visual, or digital elements, but it also applies to how one structures one’s efforts, including goals and projects.
In Tim Hartford’s book Messy, he found in his research that the top scientists tend to switch topics frequently: “Over the course of their first hundred published papers, the long-lived high-impact researchers switched topics an average of forty-three times.”
We are normally taught that in order to achieve something great, we have to focus maniacally on a single pursuit. Yet by cultivating a variety of projects at different stages of fruition, leading scientists clearly gain four benefits:
- Multiple projects cross-fertilize, with the knowledge gained in one sometimes unlocking key insights in another.
- Diverse pursuits provide variety that captures our attention, whereas a single-minded pursuit can become monotonous and boring.
- Each project provides an “escape” from the others, giving you something to turn to when you face an impasse, instead of it becoming a crushing experience.
- Turning our attention away from a project gives us a chance to process it subconsciously, which some scientists believe is an important key to solving creative problems.
This last benefit was designated by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard as “crop rotation.” One cannot use the same field to grow the same crop indefinitely. Eventually the soil must be refreshed by planting something new or simply giving it a break.
This agricultural metaphor brings us back full circle to James C. Scott’s ideas in Seeing Like a State, where he makes an intriguing observation: “The rule seems to be that the more rigid and exclusive is the specialist’s boundary, and the stricter the control within it, the more disorder rages around it.”
In other words, you can’t really ever eliminate disorder; you can only move it around. So perhaps the greatest cost of creating a highly organized environment is that everything just outside its borders – which includes the rest of your life, your body, your family, other people, the natural environment, and human society generally– becomes flooded with externalities for the sake of that perfect system.
Practical takeaways for your productivity
So what does all this mean for our personal approach to order and organization?
Here are some actionable takeaways I can offer based on the findings and examples above:
1. Don’t feel guilty about putting off organizing
The authors of A Perfect Mess note that there’s an advantage in putting off organizing: it’s more efficient to organize a larger batch of items all at once than to do it a little at a time.
This is known as “batch processing,” and I tend to save it for my weekly, monthly, and annual reviews, when paradoxically, the more stuff that has piled up, the better!
Don’t feel guilty about postponing your organizing to a later date, or only doing it occasionally, because in the meantime, you’re benefitting from all the advantages of mess I highlighted above.
2. Notice and embrace the odd, eccentric ways you tend to organize
Many people say they don’t have time to get organized, but in reality, they are constantly engaging in a wide variety of ingenious organizing strategies. Our propensity to seek shortcuts, find the path of least resistance, and expend as little time and energy as possible to achieve an outcome are some of the most reliable ways to find little tips and tricks that may seem eccentric or odd but work for us.
Abrahamson and Freedman present multiple examples of how most people, since they aren’t aware of the ways they naturally stay organized, tend to misjudge how a technology system might help them. They assume that the laid back, informal methods they already use are suboptimal and that they need a piece of software that only adds a lot of burdensome formality.
3. Satisfice instead of maximize
One of the subtle implications of the ideas in this piece is that we don’t ever truly have control. If we try to fully organize our surroundings, we fall into the traps and pitfalls noted above. If we instead accept the messiness, then we don’t have full control over it either.
What’s left then is to accept the reality: that we are all careening through a chaotic void, with at most brief moments of stability and fleeting periods of agency. Instead of trying to order and control our lives, we can use this inherent randomness as an excuse to satisfice, which has long been recognized as an essential ingredient for happiness.
As Nicholas Nassim Taleb puts it, “Having some randomness in your life can actually increase happiness: it forces you to satisfice, instead of maximize. Research shows that those who live under self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress.”
Living in the balance
It’s all a balance, all masculine and feminine, yin and yang. When the benefits of order start running out, it’s time to switch to disorder. And vice versa – when disorder starts careening out of control, try adding a little structure to the problem.
There are no “right” ways that work universally in all situations; only tools that work better or worse depending on the job.
It’s not that order, reason, and efficiency are bad – it’s that they are sometimes extolled as inherent virtues when, in fact, their opposites can be just as valuable and useful.
Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.
The post Productive Disorder: The Hidden Power of Chaos, Noise, and Randomness appeared first on Forte Labs.
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