Creativity

Creativity / Humor

A silly post I couldn’t help posting

Though I post daily, I think of more post ideas all the time, more than I can post. I write some ideas on paper, some in files, some in browser tabs, some on the big blackboard in my apartment. Usually I get around to posting each idea. Sometimes after a while I decide the idea isn't worth posting. One post idea has sat on my board maybe for a year, far longer than others. I can't bring myself to erase it but it doesn't seem worth posting either. It's not even that original. I guess I'm sharing this build up to the idea to share some of the creative process, if these notes of context qualify. I like mixed metaphors. I like when people look…

June 12, 2026

What artificial intelligence does to our minds

Awareness / Creativity / Relationships

What artificial intelligence does to our minds

Say you want to run a marathon. Someone says they developed an amazing exoskeleton. They tell you that when you wear it, it can help you run. You'll be able to finish a marathon in one hour. In fact, it helps you so much, you won't even break a sweat. Running a marathon with an exoskeleton doing the work for you achieves the opposite of the point of running a marathon. Crossing the finish line faster isn't the point. Likewise if you used an exoskeleton to lift weights and could bench a thousand pounds or to play tennis so could beat Federer, etc. Using the exoskeleton transforms an activity designed to build coordination, fitness, and strength achieves the opposite. While "lifting" heavier weights, your muscles…

May 21, 2026

This week’s selected media, May 3, 2026: Changing views of extinction in history

Art / Creativity / Education / Exercises / Hands on Practical Experience / Models / Nature / Tips

This week’s selected media, May 3, 2026: Changing views of extinction in history

This week I finished: A Man at Arms, by podcast guest Steven Pressfield: I hear Steven has two groups of fans -- those of his The War of Art-type books and those of his historical fiction -- and they don't overlap much. I was in the first group. His latest book, The Acadian, comes out soon. We're scheduled to record our second podcast episode on it this week. It stands on its own, but follows A Man at Arms, so I started with it. I'm also watching his Warrior Archetype series. It's also my first novel in a while. The basics are great, but it works as a complete whole where each part builds to a conclusion that feels greater than the sum of its…

May 3, 2026

Artificial Intelligence and atrophy of mental ability like intelligence, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and expression

Addiction / Creativity / Doof / Fitness / Nature / Relationships

Artificial Intelligence and atrophy of mental ability like intelligence, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and expression

I see more and more ads for artificial intelligence. This evening on the subway one ad promoted how AI could turn the workplace task of creating a slide deck from two weeks of many sub-tasks like compiling data and designing slides into one prompt followed by a complete slide deck. The task would take minutes now. I've heard a lot of uses for artificial intelligence. I haven't heard of one that improves people's lives. I'm sure they exist, but I haven't seen them. Most are like the one above. It's tempting to point out that it saves time and likely improves the quality of output, that it enables the person to focus on what they want to, not low-level mundane work like making sure the…

May 1, 2026

My Spodek Method commitment to make water ice from snow: A photo essay

Creativity / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature / Stories / Visualization

My Spodek Method commitment to make water ice from snow: A photo essay

First, I grew up in Philadelphia, and in Philadelphia, we have something called "water ice." It's like cheese steaks in that it's local. I didn't know it wasn't universal until I moved away. Elsewhere they call something like it Italian ice, but we don't. Here's an article on it from USA Today: What is Philly-style water ice? We explain how it's made and where to get it. On to the matter at hand. I was recently led through the Spodek Method to a commitment that involved finding some clean snow, mixing it with fruit, and making something like water ice from scratch---that is, mixing fresh fruit with snow. I did it today. Here is my journey. First, I chose the fruit based on what I…

January 31, 2026

Year 16, day 1: posting here daily

Creativity / Habits / SIDCHAs

Year 16, day 1: posting here daily

If you want to reach your potential simplify your life live by your values create mental freedom create more free time save money build a community of people doing similarly You can achieve all of the above more effectively with a sidcha than any other way I know. I created the sidcha concept inadvertently by creating each part, step by step. The first major step came on this day in 2011, when I started posting daily to this blog. I haven't missed a day since. The result? See the list above. Want to do it? Many of my leadership clients and students have done so. I don't think any have spent a penny developing and implementing their sidchas. You can too. Watch the video on…

January 23, 2026

Another big, passionate writing day

Creativity / Habits

Another big, passionate writing day

Last week I finished the first draft of my next book, though more accurate I finished the most challenging parts. I took a couple days off after a couple days of intense writing, then got back to work. Regarding the word "work," here, I talked to a friend who said he wouldn't want to write because of deadlines and pressure. He sounded like writing sounded like a burden or obligation. I tried to convey that when working on something meaningful, a deadline inspires. Besides, I'm not writing the book for a hobby or ritual, like meditation. I don't try to meditate on a deadline, nor do calisthenics on a deadline. I'm not writing this book for me, though I love writing it. It's not the…

January 17, 2026

I searched “comprehensive list of environmental solutions.” No wonder everyone feels hopeless and gives up.

Creativity / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Nature

I searched “comprehensive list of environmental solutions.” No wonder everyone feels hopeless and gives up.

I searched "comprehensive list of environmental solutions." The results search results showed nothing meaningful or helpful. Before continuing, I should point out what prompted that search was writing my next book, which does present a solution, not only to our environmental problems, but to things that result from it, such as corruption, tyranny, racism, addiction, despair, and more. So I don't feel despair or anxiety from pointing out that not one proposed solution nor combination of them so far presented in the media solves our problems, at least that I know of, including from the search above. I think everyone can tell they don't work. Even the people proposing them know they don't work and will likely never work. That's why ardent environmentalists don't try…

January 16, 2026

Finished the first draft of my next book

Finished the first draft of my next book

The title slightly overstates my accomplishment, since several sections remain unfinished, but I finished the very hard parts. The remaining parts need writing, but not figuring out composition and how they work. I finished enough to send what I finished to an editor at a publisher. I don't remember when I started writing it, rather I didn't start on a particular day, but I think I started getting more serious about a year ago. It started because I kept sharing a similar thought in conversation with several people and they responded positively. Since I said something similar so many times, I thought writing would be simple compared to past books. Instead, it became an intense journey. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much it prompted me…

January 10, 2026

My favorite books and movies of 2025

Art / Creativity / Tips

My favorite books and movies of 2025

Each Sunday I post selected books, movies, courses, and other media I finished that week. Today, I'll see if I can pick the ones I liked the most. I'll write the categories first, then fill them in after searching this year's posts. I'm not sure which I'll remember or forget. I don't think I read many fiction books. I don't usually note podcasts or short videos, but I listen to and watch a lot of them. For example, after finishing each work, I usually watch, listen to, or read five or ten reviews or commentaries if I liked it. For works I love, I might go through far more. After Mulholland Drive, for example, I found tons of sites and videos piecing it together, interpreting…

January 3, 2026

Allowing pollution and depletion stifles innovation and creativity

Creativity / Freedom

Allowing pollution and depletion stifles innovation and creativity

Another cloudy day means I have to post fast. My main battery remains empty. My backup battery is running out. The forecast was for the clouds to break before the sun set, but they didn't. I'm posting about innovation and creativity because I've found several places selling or developing human-powered generators. To cook, heat an apartment, operate an elevator, or other operations that require more power than humans can output for long, they don't work, but to power a phone or laptop, a generator attached to a stationary bike or rowing machine would do fine for converting sugar and fat in fruit and vegetables to battery energy. Alas, the demand for energy is met through sources that violate the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence,…

December 29, 2025

Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and my friend who met Albert Einstein in person

Art / Creativity

Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and my friend who met Albert Einstein in person

I wrote a few months ago about my physics professor who met Albert Einstein. He also plays piano, at least once even at Carnegie Hall, though a private event hosted by Steinway not for an audience. You might notice a resemblance to Einstein: He played at a private recital this week. I don't attend enough in-person music performances, all the more for living in New York City. He played last after about ten other performers, all students of a teacher. I often enjoy the contemplative state that live classical music puts me into. This time I loved it. Life has been so hectic. I had to rush to make the recital in time. Then the music made the moment timeless. The rest of the world…

December 19, 2025

Book update: progress found and lost, but in sight

Art / Creativity

Book update: progress found and lost, but in sight

The first drafts of all my past books were long, followed by many rounds of editing, including a lot of cutting. My latest draft is around 80,000 words with maybe 20 percent more to write. At 275 words per page, that's pushing 300 pages. Not bad for a first draft. Except for some good news. My best writing, or progress, tends to come not when I'm writing or at the keyboard, but when I wake up before the alarm or if I go to sleep early and wake up in the middle of the night and allow myself to reflect. I also write most of the most important parts by hand, since that way feels like there's less between me and what I'm writing. I…

December 11, 2025

Sketch for my next book’s opening

Creativity / SIDCHAs

Sketch for my next book’s opening

I'm constantly thinking of how to make my next book as accessible as possible. How do I write something so people want to read more, want to change their lives. Usually I write ideas by hand on paper, a mode that feels like there's less between me and what I write. Then I transfer it to my files by typing it into the computer. I also write here as a sidcha. Today, I'll combine two processes and type my ideas here. I'm not sure if the following will make it into my book, but even if it doesn't, it may help share my thought process. It feels more vulnerable to publicize something less edited, but maybe seeing into it will engage some of you or…

November 28, 2025

Book idea: How Not to Fly

Creativity / SIDCHAs

Book idea: How Not to Fly

I've thought of several book ideas lately. Since I can only work on one at a time and don't want to distract myself, though I'll keep up the sidcha of posting daily here, I'll post some titles, sketches, and outlines here when I think of them. I welcome feedback. Draft ideas Title: How Not to Fly: How to make your most harmful activity feel repugnant and easy to quit Chapters (unordered): My initial journey: From seeing problems as environmental therefore not acting to seeing them as hurting people and acting From starting acting to thinking of avoiding flying for a year and freaking out From committing to a year with fear to, within a few months, finding more of what I feared losing and committing…

November 27, 2025

Simple math humor

Creativity / Education / Humor / Stories

Simple math humor

Saturday I posted about a joke I did in a college math class. That math class did witness a great joke, but not by me, and it may only make sense to people who have done advanced math. The professor was going to prove that a certain group, which is a precise mathematical concept, had a certain property. The group is the set of symmetries of an icosahedron. The property was that its only subgroups were itself and the identity. A group with that property is called "simple." That group has a name, "I," from the first letter of icosahedron. The professor explained what he was going to do, walked to the board, and, as he said "I'm going to prove that I is simple,"…

November 24, 2025

Movies so great that they spoil me for other movies

Art / Creativity

Movies so great that they spoil me for other movies

I've talked a lot lately about a few movies that have spoiled me for most other movies. That is, I find them so meaningful that other movies might entertain but don't compare in value they bring to my life. After seeing them, if any other movies resemble them, I can't help but try to compare them and the other ones don't measure up. The movies that spoil me for other movies that I've seen lately include Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day, and Tokyo Story. Older ones include Fanny and Alexander and The Best Intentions. I have to watch The Grand Illusion again to see if it qualifies. Maybe Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Annie Hall. What I love about these movies is that…

October 23, 2025

More delicious free heirloom tomatoes that volunteers and poor people rejected but I turned into gazpacho

Creativity / Stories

More delicious free heirloom tomatoes that volunteers and poor people rejected but I turned into gazpacho

In my newsletter I wrote about heirloom tomatoes that taste delicious that I eat after other volunteers, homeless people, and poor people reject them. Here's what I wrote, followed by a picture of the tomatoes and a picture of the gazpacho, as if it tasted different if the tomatoes weren't bruised. What's wrong with us that we act as if other people waste food? Or all the other garbage we produce? I haven't written about people wasting perfectly good food and heirloom tomatoes in maybe a month, but yesterday, again, there were at 80 pounds of bruised heirloom tomatoes. The volunteers, who volunteer to help hungry and poor people, wanted to throw the bruised one away without even offering them. The hungry and poor people…

October 1, 2025

A fun quote/pun I stumbled into making

Creativity / Humor

A fun quote/pun I stumbled into making

I try to post things of substance or that will make you think and act. Today might be more silly. More self-indulgent. I'm posting a pun I stumbled on---that is, someone was saying something and the pun came to mind. I liked it enough to burn a post on it. Background: Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the best known commercials began, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." It was jaded, and I suppose many would claim it brilliant. For most viewers, it probably reached the value of a doctor endorsing the product, despite the person not being a doctor. On the contrary, they got someone more photogenic than most doctors. Someone (sorry, I forgot who) talking to…

September 12, 2025

Some ups, downs, ins, and outs of writing a book

Art / Creativity / Hands on Practical Experience

Some ups, downs, ins, and outs of writing a book

I'm deep into writing my next book. It takes a lot of work, and I don't just mean time and attention. As part of the process, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. I wanted to see finished great works of art to inspire me, but I also hoped to see something in particular, and I found some examples. I wanted to see sketches and studies. Sometimes a museum will show early practice attempts. I found some such examples today. One was Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The original is almost 7 feet high and over 10 feet wide, but the study I saw at the Met was a few feet tall. You've seen sketches da…

August 27, 2025

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

Addiction / Awareness / Creativity / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Perception

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the New Yorker wrote about how people who are suffering from loneliness are finding help from artificial intelligence. Some people can't help loneliness, not out of character defect but circumstance. It gets the reader thinking about the elderly, for example, who outlive everyone they've been close to, or it describes as worse, if those who remain are senile. Sorry to give away the ending but it suggests that for however it helps people who can't escape, it will create dependence in far more. The article is A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem: The discomfort of loneliness shapes us in ways we don’t recognize—and we may not like what we become without it. by academic psychologist…

July 15, 2025

I wrote a poem: The Poem of the High-Fiber Diet (trigger warning: juvenile humor)

Addiction / Creativity / Humor / SIDCHAs

I wrote a poem: The Poem of the High-Fiber Diet (trigger warning: juvenile humor)

Am I going to get in trouble for a puerile post? Will it distract from my sustainability leadership focus? I hope not. I had a blast making the poem. Regular readers know my sidchas and standard operating procedures mean that I meditate as one of my first morning activities. Before meditating I go to the bathroom. Between my routine being so consistent and my diet containing so much fiber, I poop every morning around the same time. This morning I woke up about fifteen minutes before the alarm. As I sat on the toilet, my digestive tract wasn't ready to send the poop out, being fifteen minutes ahead of time. The situation brought to my mind the classic poem that people used to write on…

June 13, 2025

Interesting trivial meditation story and book pictures

Awareness / Creativity / Stories

Interesting trivial meditation story and book pictures

I meditate first thing in the morning every day. I've experimented with apps, but found them distracting. I joke that the countdown timer on my phone is my app, set to 33 minutes. I start the timer, then sit down and meditate until it goes off. Why 33 minutes? I ramped up over time and that's where I've reached. I can usually tell around when the time is nearly up. When I started my legs would start to hurt after a few minutes. Now they might feel like they're falling asleep slightly near the end, but not much. Then while meditating the other day, my legs started hurting a lot. I couldn't understand why they hurt so much. Plus it felt like I was meditating…

May 19, 2025

Some of my creative writing and editing process

Art / Creativity / Hands on Practical Experience

Some of my creative writing and editing process

I recently finished a book and a video course on sustainability leadership. Writing means editing. Any creative, expressive work means sketching ideas, composing, outlining, etc. Any creative, expressive work emerges from copious practice work---any painting, musical piece, novel, poem, etc. You've seen sketches by da Vinci, Michelangelo, and so on. I don't keep a writer's or artist's notebook. I don't start by writing on a computer. I start by writing on the backs of scrap paper. I don't write haphazardly, though it probably looks that way since I tend to use every part of the page. I don't have to avoid wasting paper since I live in a culture with more waste paper I can use before recycling it. I need only go to my…

April 12, 2025

What the Spodek Method workshop delivers

Art / Creativity / Education / Leadership / Visualization

What the Spodek Method workshop delivers

I've thought of a simple way to illustrate what the Spodek Method workshop delivers. The mission is to change American and global culture to embrace sustainability by evoking our powerful, basic human emotions relevant to nature. The Spodek Method unearths joy, wonder, oneness, connection, spirituality, divinity, and related passions in people you do it with. They return gratitude. Evoking joy and returning gratitude leads to growing community acting together, achieving wondrous results of everyone loving their part. Here's what I can feel it starting to feel like from the workshop participants and alumni. Candidly, we aren't there yet, but we're on our way. https://youtu.be/uooe16ILaPo?t=93 How do you get a big community rousing and inspiring everyone? Not by lecturing theory at people, hoping they'll form community.…

February 23, 2025

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