The Objective Standard Blog
Author: Daniel Wahl
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The Key to Eating and Acting Without Regret
Peter Bregman loves buffets. He loves the variety they offer. He loves the opportunity he gets to taste many different dishes. And he loves the low cost of being able to eat so much.
But invariably Bregman leaves feeling uncomfortable and exhausted—full not just of food but also of regret. Many people experience this after eating at a buffet, and probably as many of us have felt the same when looking back on how we’ve used our time.
In his latest book, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, Bregman coins this “the buffet challenge” and shows how it’s related to that of managing our time.
Because there’s so much to do—so many interesting people, enjoyable activities, worthwhile causes, compelling opportunities—it’s hard to choose. So we don’t. We try to do it all.
The problem with most time management systems is that they don’t help solve the problem: They’re focused on how to get it all done in less time. But that’s a mistake. Just like tasting from a buffet is a mistake. Because we can’t possibly get it all done and not end up frantic, depleted, and overwhelmed.
The secret to surviving a buffet is to eat fewer things. And the secret to thriving in your life is the same: Do fewer things.
Bregman himself thinks it’s best to focus on roughly five broad areas. For example, you might want to devote time to growing your business, spending more time each day with loved ones, or achieving peak physical shape.
Whatever five areas you choose, however, Bregman thinks they all should have a certain characteristic. “They should be substantial things,” he says, “so when you spend your time on them, you’ll get to the end of the year and know it was time well spent.”
Without a doubt, being selective at a buffet can be difficult—and in life, even more so. However, Bregman is spot on when he observes that this is key to leaving a buffet feeling good—or looking back on your time and being full, not of regret, but of cherished memories of a life well lived.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Related:
- Objective Moral Virtues: Principled Actions
- Making Life Meaningful: Living Purposely
- Book Review: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Posted in: Productivity
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Three Ways iDoneThis Helps Me Get Things Done
If you’re looking for a useful app to boost your productivity, I recommend iDoneThis, which I’ve used every day for the past six months. Here are three ways the app helps me get more things done:
1. It enables me to effortlessly keep track of what I’ve done and thus how productive I have (or haven’t) been.
At the end of each day, iDoneThis sends me an email. “Hi there,” it says, “Take 30 seconds to write out what you got done today.” So I do—and that’s that. Keeping track of what I’ve done isn’t something I have to think much about; with iDoneThis it’s just a question in my inbox that I respond to in less than a minute.
2. It motivates me to get the right things done.
I have a handful of things I want to do each day and knowing that I’m going to report what I did sometimes gives me just enough added motivation to take action on the most important things when I otherwise would not.
For example, I normally treasure reading to my son. Sometimes, however, particularly when I’m tired, I waver between going upstairs to read to him and skipping it. Then I remember that I’ll be able to report the activity to iDoneThis by email—and just that much tips me to read. Shortly thereafter, I’ve read two or three short books to my son and strengthened not only an important habit but also a vital relationship—and I’m feeling more energetic to boot.
3. It keeps me honest about what I have actually done.
It can be easy to blame outside factors for not getting things done or not being happy. After all, other people and chance events can influence both of these things. But iDoneThis keeps a clear and definitive record of what I do each day, and when I look back on what I have done I can see the results of my decisions and actions.
For example, I can see that over the past month I read many more books for my own enjoyment than I had planned and, partly because of this, wrote much less. Without iDoneThis, it would be easy to tell myself that I was productive, having read so much, and leave it at that. But with the record that iDoneThis provides, I can see that my indulgence in reading, however productive on one level, precluded me from doing the writing that I wanted to do. This enables me to adjust my plan for the following days, weeks, and months.
There are other ways iDoneThis helps me boost my productivity, and other ways it can help you boost yours too. If you want to give it a try, you can sign up to use the app here. (It’s free.)
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and making objective journalism a regular part of your life.
Posted in: Productivity, Psychology, Science and Technology
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Did the U.S. government secretly plan for a drone to crash in Iran?
Perhaps I read too much fiction, but is it possible that someone in our government actually planned for a drone to crash land in Iran? Given what has been attempted throughout military history, the possibility is not unprecedented.
Consider a maneuver by the British government in World War II that Ben Macintyre, in his book Operation Mincemeat, called one of the most extraordinary deceptions ever attempted. As I summarized in my review of Macintyre’s book:
The British Secret Service [took] a dead man and [planted] on him fake documents that suggested that the Allies were planning to bomb Sicily only as an initial feint preceding an attack on Nazi forces in Greece and Sardinia. They . . . then [floated] their man near the Spanish coastline, making it appear as though he drowned at sea, and [hoped] that one of the many Nazi spies in Spain discovered him and the documents and passed their content along to his superiors—convincing them to weaken Sicily by moving forces to Greece and Sardinia. . . .
In that operation, British officials had to feign aggressive efforts to get the dead body back quickly once it was found, but they had to ensure that they didn’t succeed in getting it back too quickly, else the Nazi spies in Spain would not have time to copy and transmit the false information to Berlin.
As reported, Obama’s response to the downed drone has been entirely in character. He meekly asked Iran to give it back. Iran’s response has been in character, too. They said no with typical scorn and promised ever more acts of war, just as they have done for the past thirty years.
But maybe, just maybe, someone in U.S. intelligence has planted false information in that drone, ensured that the Iranians will have a new Stuxnet-like virus in any computer system that connects to it, or rigged it so that it blows up when whatever scientists Iran has left attempt to dismantle it or decode the information inside.
One can hope.
In any event, intelligently thwarting the number one state sponsor of terrorism would be a welcome change—and one that, given our history with Iran, the mullahs would never suspect.
Related:
- Book Review: Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
- Interview with Reza Kahlili, an Ex-CIA Spy Embedded in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
- An Interview with John R. Bolton on the Proper Role of Government
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Posted in: Foreign Policy and War, History
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Orville and Wilbur: Men of the Mind
Orville Wright once said that he and his brother Wilbur “were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate whatever aroused curiosity.”
On this day, in 1903, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville got an answer to the question he often pondered: “If birds can glide for long periods of time, then . . . why can’t I?”
He could. But only after trying one design after another, gathering data from many experiments with his and his brother’s homemade wind tunnel, observing how birds fly, and adapting that to their own flyer and its ever-improving system of controls.
Orville’s first flight on this historic day was 120 feet; the second, 175; and the third, 200. The fourth flight that day, by Wilbur, was 852 feet. Two years later, after many iterations, Wilbur flew for 39 minutes, covering 24 miles.
For centuries, men had said that human flight was impossible. But these two brothers proved otherwise, thanks to their questioning, experimenting, and reasoning minds.
Related:
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Posted in: Science and Technology
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Never Count a Good Author Out
Andrew Bernstein began his 2008 article “The Exalted Heroism of Alistair MacLean’s Novels” as follows:
Less than fifty years ago, Alistair MacLean’s novels were international best-sellers that spawned major motion pictures. Today, his novels are out-of-print in America and MacLean, once considered a “master storyteller,” is virtually unknown to an entire generation of readers. This is tragic, for MacLean was one of the few authors of the last one-hundred years who both displayed a genuine comprehension of man’s potential for heroism and possessed the ability to convincingly portray this potential in literary form.
Bernstein went on to survey MacLean’s books, indicating their value to those who love novels “with relentlessly goal-directed characters” and, by the end, had indeed conveyed the tragedy of the books being out of print.
But never count a good author out. In June of this year, Sterling Publishers reprinted five of MacLean’s novels, including two—The Guns of Navarone and H.M.S. Ulysses—that Bernstein discussed extensively in his article. And in 2012, Sterling plans to publish eight more.
The literary tides, it seems, are changing. And if reviews of the republished works are any indication, MacLean may prove to be, as Bernstein hoped in closing, “not the last of [the] great writers of heroic adventure fiction—but the first of their return.”
Related:
- The Exalted Heroism of Alistair MacLean’s Novels
- The Mastermind behind SEAL Team Six and the End of Osama bin Laden
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Interview with Karl Kowalski
I recently spoke with Karl Kowalski about his work for TOS and what he does when he’s not producing audio articles for the journal.
Daniel Wahl: First off, thanks for taking time to answer a few questions.
Karl Kowalski: I’m happy to oblige, and I think interviews are fun.
DW: Let me begin by asking about your background. What did you go to school for and what has been your main line of work since then?
KK: This is one of the fun questions. I studied aeronautics and astronautics in college and I received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in “rocket science.” For several years after my college education, I was working in the aerospace industry. However, I’ve been programming computers since I was about ten, and that’s still what I did as a rocket scientist. About fifteen years ago I left the industry and have been working as a software developer on a variety of different types of software ever since. I’ve moved from mainframes, to PCs, and now to smartphones.
DW: How did you start working for TOS?
KK: I first found The Objective Standard back in 2007, and a year after that, I bought a gift subscription for a friend who I thought would enjoy the articles. When I asked her how she was enjoying the journal, she mentioned that while the articles on the cover always sounded interesting, she didn’t have the time to spend reading them. I knew she had an hour or so commute, and I knew she had an iPod, so I thought about recording a podcast of Raymond Niles’ “Net Neutrality” article, since my friend was also into computers and software. I wrote to and requested permission from Craig Biddle to podcast this one article, and then asked if he had any plans to put other TOS articles into MP3 format. And the rest is history.
DW: What are some of the challenges involved?
KK: Good question. I’m a low-budget podcaster, so I use my own computer and record in my living room. The biggest challenge is reducing the background noise – I’ve gotten most of the major sources removed, and I think I may try the next session using a computer with a solid-state disk, as this will keep things more quiet. Other challenges are more intellectual instead of mechanical. For instance, doing a dry-run and picking up on tongue-twisting word sequences before a recording, marking pauses in the text, and so on, really helps prepare for the live recording. One of my greatest mental challenges was in editing the recording. I discovered that it was easier and better sounding to correct a mistake during the initial recording than it was to change it later, so now I’m paying more attention to getting the correct recording the first time through, even if it means repeating a phrase or a sentence several times in succession. This has made editing the audio much easier and quicker.
DW: Why did you choose to work specifically with TOS?
KK: Simple—I love the articles. And I love the work—of all the different things I get paid to do, this is the most fun. I don’t think I can explain it better than that.
DW: What are some of your favorite readings so far, and why?
KK: Paul Hsieh’s articles on health care are the first to come to mind—I’ve been Type I diabetic for almost forty years, and his words and ideas resonate in ways that have me pondering just how much closer a cure could be, if only the government kept its hands out of the health care marketplace. I also enjoyed Craig’s recent article on career colleges as well as Michael A. LaFerrara’s article on school vouchers vs. tax credits. I come from a family with more than a few professional educators, and I respect what can be done when freedom is allowed to reign in the educational marketplace.
DW: Do you have any readers that you enjoy listening to in particular—or that you strive to emulate?
KK: Sean Saulsbury’s recordings are awesome, and I think he’s got a great voice. I also respect Matt Damon’s documentary films for his voice as well.
DW: What other projects are you involved with now that might be of interest toTOS readers?
KK: Luckily, you’re catching me at a slow moment. I’m in the process of wrapping up my second book, “Macintosh Application Development for Dummies”. I recently submitted a Macintosh app to Apple’s Mac App Store, and am busily writing another one for the iPhone App Store to work with it. In addition, I’m a co-owner of a small company called BlazingApps that produces applications for mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry smartphones.
DW: Do you have any apps on the market now?
KK: You can find DiabeticPad 1.0 available for $1.99 at the Macintosh App Store. This app lets me record the important data for maintaining control over my blood sugar, and also provide that data in a spreadsheet form for my doctor to review. I also wrote The Word Locker, a BlackBerry app available for free at the BlackBerry App World. This app was written for my first book, “BlackBerry Application Development For Dummies” and is a password-protected notepad app.
DW: Thanks again for your time today.
KK: It’s been a pleasure, and I look forward to reading and recording more articles for TOS.
Related:
Posted in: Business and Economics, Science and Technology
Friday, April 22, 2011
Interview with Sean Saulsbury
I recently spoke with entrepreneur Sean Saulsbury about his work for TOS as a reader and producer of audio articles, and his other endeavors.
Daniel Wahl: Thanks for taking time to chat with me, Sean.
Sean Saulsbury: My pleasure.
DW: To give our readers an idea of who the man is behind that golden voice, let me begin by asking about your business background. What kind of work did you do before getting involved with TOS?
SS: For about eight years I was co-owner and Managing Partner at Box Office Mojo, a popular movie Web site that reports theatrical box office results. I built the company, along with my business partner, Brandon Gray, into a publication that served nearly 2 million readers a month. I’ve always loved movies, technology, and business, so running my own company in this space was a great fit for me. We sold the company in July of 2008 to IMDb.com, however, and I left the company a year ago to pursue other interests, including doing voice over work for TOS.
DW: And we’re glad to have you working with us. What motivated you to get into voiceover work?
SS: I enjoy this kind of work because it gives me an outlet for performance without much overhead. I was in several plays in high school—and even had the lead in a few of them—and, because I was more of a “behind the scenes” guy at Box Office Mojo, I hadn’t had an outlet for performance for years. There are things I don’t like about acting—memorizing lines being the major one—but voiceover work is great because I get to perform without having to do tedious prep work, and I can do it from the comfort of my own home.
DW: What are some of the challenges involved?
SS: The biggest challenge for the TOS work is to find the “voice” of the piece I am reading. Each author has his own writing style and so I try to connect with that, put myself in his or her mindset as best I can in order to illustrate the theme of a given piece, for a performance perspective. Also, figuring out what the piece is about, in my own mind, while reading it, is a challenge. This can be different from the theme of an article, and I try to attach an emotional or motivational word to it. Some articles should be read more matter-of-fact, others very impassioned. Sometimes they’re skeptical of their subject matter, and sometimes they’re in love with their subject matter, and I find that and embrace it as best I can.
DW: Why did you choose to work specifically with TOS?
SS: I wanted to work with TOS because they create great content about current, culturally relevant issues from an Objectivist perspective, and I can pretty much guarantee that anything I read out of the journal will be interesting and thought-provoking. For me, performing isn’t an end in itself, and I really need content that I believe in to do a piece justice. It also allows me to “chew” and “digest” each piece in TOS a bit more than I used to. Since I have to perform it, I’m spending a lot more time with each article—there’s a stronger purpose for me to analyze what I’m reading—and that allows me to obtain a deeper understanding of the pieces in TOS as well. Plus, everyone is really easy and fun to work with. That makes doing this a real joy.
DW: What are some of your favorite readings so far, and why?
SS: Let me start with the most challenging, which would be Yaron Brook’s article, “The Morality of Moneylending.” Generally, the two things I least like to read are Shakespeare and the Bible. So imagine my surprise when I find I’m reading extensively from both of these—and in an Objectivist publication, no less! But I managed to get past that and, I think, do a decent job reading those parts of the article.
I’ve also enjoyed reading the chapters from Craig Biddle’s book, Loving Life, that have appeared in the past several editions of TOS. Craig has a writing style that syncs well with me, and I find it very enjoyable to follow his logic and express the core messages he’s trying to convey throughout his articles.
Because I enjoy reading anything related to business and the history of it, my favorite reading is probably an article on Standard Oil by Alex Epstein. That was a great read and fun to perform.
DW: What other projects are you involved with now that might be of interest to TOS readers?
SS: I maintain a personal blog where I write from time-to-time about whatever fancies me. But TOS readers will most likely be interested in the two audio podcasts I’m currently producing.
One is an interview show on small business called The Independent Entrepreneur, where I interview small business owners about creative vision, leadership, and making one’s way in the world of business.
The other is called The Movie Film Show, which is a movie review show covering current theatrical releases by the characters Mr. Movie and Mr. Film (I play the Mr. Movie character). The “Mr. Movie” character never says the word “film” and Mr. Film never says “movie”—unless they’re addressing each other of course. It’s a good mix of critical reviews and discussion, combined with a bit of humor and just plain fun.
DW: Thanks for your time today, Sean—and, as a fan of both shows, thanks for those too!
SS: Thank you.
Related:
An Interview with Karl Kowalski
Posted in: Business and Economics, The Arts
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Lee Bollinger: Let’s Force Americans to Broadcast Al Jazeera!
Just as a substantial number of Americans are coming to recognize the injustice of forcing people to fund NPR, Lee Bollinger—the President of Columbia University—has written an article in Bloomberg calling for the government to force cable companies to broadcast the Al Jazeera network.
This is insane.
The U.S. government was not created in order to force Americans to provide radio or television shows for others, let alone to coerce Americans to provide air time to foreign media sympathetic to our mortal enemy. The U.S. government was created to protect American’s rights—including their right to property—and that is the government’s only proper purpose.
Perhaps someone in the U.S. media could inform Mr. Bollinger of this fact, as he is unlikely to hear it aired on Al Jazeera in between interviews with terrorists.
Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Al_Jazeera_English_Doha_Newsroom_2.jpg
Posted in: Business and Economics, Foreign Policy and War, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, October 11, 2010
The “Green” Agenda, the Cost of Energy, and the Price of Freedom
Investor’s Business Daily recently exposed one of the lies behind the Energy Department’s efforts to force Americans to be “more green.”
The department reportedly claims the new [energy efficiency] standards will save consumers from $250 billion to $300 billion on their energy costs through 2030. But that’s what Democrats always say about their green schemes: “We’re doing this to clean up the Earth, and we’re going to save you money while we do it.”
Don’t believe it.
“If past experience is any guide, these regulations will raise the purchase price of appliances — in some cases more than is ever likely to be earned back in the form of energy savings,” [says] Ben Lieberman, an environmental policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute…
It is of course true that government-mandated purchasing standards raise the price of goods in the aggregate. But what if, just this once, government mandates didn’t? What if, somehow, magically, this mandate actually lowered costs? Would that justify the intervention? It would not.
Whether such interventions raise or lower costs is superficial and largely irrelevant. The fundamental principle is that the government has no moral right to impose them.
The proper purpose of government is not “to clean up the Earth,” or to manipulate the economy, or to reduce the cost of energy. The proper purpose of government is to protect citizens’ rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. And the only way the government can serve this purpose is by banning the initiation of physical force from social relationships and refraining from the initiation of physical force itself.
If Americans want to put an end to government interference in the economy, we must demand that government be strictly limited to the protection of individual rights. This is the principle on which America was founded; this is the price of freedom; and, if we are ever again to be the land of the free, this is the principle to which we must repair.
Related Article:
Related Posts:
- The Little Dictators
- There’s Nothing “Bright” About the Stimulus Bill
- Capitalism: The Only Moral System
- Government Intervention: It’s Not Just Bad for Business
Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Flag_Map.svg
Posted in: Business and Economics, Environmentalism, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, September 27, 2010
Six Clarifying Quotes on Honesty
In Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, Tara Smith dives deep into the virtues on which life depends, showing why they are requirements and what they demand. Here are six quotes I particularly liked, from Smith’s chapter on honesty:
- “As the refusal to fake reality, honesty consists in a deliberate, principled renunciation of any evasion, distortion, misrepresentation, or artifice. In essence, honesty means not pretending.” (p. 78)
- “Dishonesty is self-defeating insofar as pretending that facts are other than they are only diverts a person from identifying and pursuing rational strategies for achieving the objective values that will advance his life. The propriety of honesty is not a concession granted out of deference to some authority other than self-interest. Honesty is the only practical means of surviving qua human.” (p. 87)
- “Because reality sets the ultimate terms of a person’s survival, reality—rather than one’s own or others’ beliefs or wishes—must command a person’s paramount allegiance. Faking reality is futile. Dishonesty only diverts a person from facing the facts that he must face, in order to act in ways that can achieve his objective flourishing.” (p. 88)
- “Honesty demands taking cognition seriously. This requires that a person develop an active mind, seek knowledge in order to act on that knowledge, and refuse to fake any item in his mind.” (p. 89)
- “Misrepresenting facts does not change them. However successfully one might fool another person, faking is ultimately futile. For it does not alter the underlying facts.” (p. 105)
- “Facing reality is in a person’s self-interest, even when certain aspects of reality are threatening, because it allows him to proceed rationally—realistically—and thus with the chance of overcoming threats and achieving happiness. The case for honesty is completely egoistic. Whatever positive effects for others may result from a person’s honesty, a person should be honest because his happiness depends on it.” (p. 105)
For more on Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics, see Diana Hsieh’s review in the Spring 2007 issue of TOS—or buy the book. It has helped to concretize, clarify, and integrate Rand’s ethics in my mind, and I recommend it highly.
Posted in: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Philosophy
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