Welcome to the May newsletter! Hope everyone’s been well.
Let’s just skip past the pleasantries and get right to business today, shall we?
I don’t do resolutions – an update
Let’s briefly update a couple of previous newsletter items.
First, longtime readers will recall that I’ve occasionally dropped by to share my rules of thumb for various activities. I have a new one for writing (a rule I’m sure to violate several times in this
What is verb ‘to’ verb? It just means connecting two verbs with ‘to’, a construction that I’ve noticed creates a lot of unnecessary verbosity (and thus, admin) in what might otherwise be a simple sentence.
There is an example in this section: …I’ve occasionally dropped by to share…
Why not just – I’ve occasionally shared? No one knows, especially me, and I wrote that stupid f'ing sentence. I'll
The other change involves running. Back in January, I
There will be more about my (non) running in an upcoming post.
Leftovers, Newsletter edition - March was Made of Yarn
My brother and I – among many others, now that I consider it – have often joked about our unusual combination of grandparents. On our father’s side, our grandparents were Irish immigrants who arrived in America around a century ago. On our mother’s side, both grandparents were Japanese and lived their entire lives in Japan.
As I read the mini-bios for each author featured in March Was Made of Yarn, I came across an unexpected note – Bonnie Elliot’s background includes an Irish-American father and a Japanese mother. What were the odds? I wonder if her middle name is something extraordinarily Japanese like ‘Honda’ or ‘Yasui’.
Maybe I’ll check out more of her work at some point.
2018 TOA Book of the Year Award
I forget to do this every month and this month is no exception. I’m just going to update readers on progress over the course of the next couple of months whenever I can. I think if we can finalize a winner by the end of the year and hand out The Most Irrelevant Prize In World Literature before Christmas, we’ll all be happy, right?
What is the goal of email? A preview…
I wrote an extended series on how I use email that I will probably share during the latter half of the summer. For today, I thought I’d provide this sneak preview for those readers who may currently be overwhelmed by their inbox.
So… SPOILER ALERT… here goes...
First - ‘The Goal’ of email is to delete it from your main inbox.
How do we achieve this goal? Consider the following tactical flowchart:
DELETE means permanent deletion right away.
-> If we cannot DELETE, try to DO
DO means permanent deletion after a defined action.
-> If we cannot DO, try to DELEGATE
DELEGATE means permanent deletion of all similar emails in the future
-> If we cannot DELEGATE, try to DEFER
DEFER means temporary deletionKeep those eyes peeled for the full series – summer fun on TOA!
-> If we cannot DEFER… it must mean we are DELETING, DOING, or DELEGATING
May links
I enjoyed this episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast – The Infocalypse Pod, if you will – where he spoke with Buzzfeed's Charlie Warzel about a variety of topics related to the internet's past, present, and future.
I did not enjoy this Japan Times article but thought it made a related point to what I’ve said a lot over the last year and a half – America’s worst case scenario isn’t turning into some throwback World War II era totalitarian state, it’s turning into modern-day Japan. We’re much closer than some realize – I mean, what’s the difference between Cosplay and dressing up like this
Finally, it wouldn't be April 2018 without some reference to Liverpool being back in the latter rounds of the Champions League for the first time since I was in college. It’s been incredible, really, and almost impossible to believe. This article from The Guardian isn’t quite about Liverpool – it’s about the development of one of their current players from before he signed with the club – but I thought it was a fascinating look into how some people are approaching the challenge of player development.
Ha, Liverpool. They in the final?
Actually, they wrap up the semifinal tomorrow, so fingers crossed.
I see. You gonna write another dumb post about Champions League Finals, then?
Well, not if you are gonna ask with that kind of attitude.
Oh, lighten up. No jokes this time around?
Why would I make a joke? You didn’t even get the one from last time.
Which was…?
That Foundation could actually make my ‘Book of the Year’ shortlist.
Right, well, whatever, some people have the brain power to understand that Foundation was good… anyway, a summer blog series about email? Watching Liverpool games? Surely, you didn’t leave the apartment?
Not really, no. April really was a slow, boring month. No running, no nothing. I did have to go to the bar to watch soccer, but that was only for two hours at a time. I did read Maniac Magee again, I suppose, but I’m not going to write about it.
Oh, thank goodness! Anything else?
Folks, I’ve been hinting at it almost from the day I started this silly little venture but here it is in official form – I’m finally committing to shrinking this thing down a little bit. Starting tomorrow, I’ll cap a week of posts at around three thousand words. For those interested in the admin, a ‘TOA week’ will run from Monday to Sunday.
Why the change? The big reason is that I think the space becomes inconsistent when I post a few hundred words one week and follow up with consecutive two thousand word blogs the next. This change should get us to between twenty and thirty minutes of reading a week on TOA and I think that will make for a small but important improvement. We all (allegedly) have better things to do than read TOA, you know?
The good news is – this all starts tomorrow! So, for you audit-inclined readers out there, don’t bother counting these words. There will be plenty of opportunity to pick on me in the coming months...
See you in May!
In the next month of... True On Average...
1. I put Ben Franklin in his place.
2. I avoid going north, or east.
3. Does buying groceries prove focus or ambition?
