For the past few years, I’ve loosely followed the “Bullet Journal” method of note-taking. Usually in a Leuchtturm1917 Hardcover A5 notebook with dotted pages (the best!). Whenever I finish one notebook and start another, among other things, I like to write down some key questions and mental models at the front of the new notebook, so that I can easily refer back to them whenever I need to. Here’s what I’ve written at the start of my current notebook....
In November 2024, I bought a 55-inch Hisense U6 4K Smart TV on sale for $350. It’s been great so far! Definitely an upgrade over our old Samsung. I’m not a TV expert, but I did a fair bit of research and the consensus seems to be that the Hisense U6 series is a great deal for the money. Here are some of the online reviews I found helpful: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-4k-tv/ https://www....
Until the past few days, our 4-year-old son, Andrew, has mainly prayed something like the following before dinner: “Dear Jesus, help us to have a good day tomorrow, and help this food to be good.” However, in the past few days, he has started to pray more spontaneously and creatively before dinner. Here are some highlights: “Give us this day our holy bread” “Help us worship you even when we are in heaven”...
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” has long been one of my favorite hymns. This Advent, I’ve decided to write some additional verses. They emphasize God’s heart for the poor and the powerless. If you read the Bible looking for these themes, they show up almost everywhere. However, in particular, I’ve drawn from Leviticus 25, Psalm 113, Isaiah 58, Amos 5, Luke 1, and Luke 14. O come, Defender of the weak,...
UPDATE: This now seems to work! The post made it to Micro.blog, BlueSky, and Mastodon, at least. Just not to Threads. I’m trying to troubleshoot what’s going on with my current crossposting configuration between my Hugo website, my Micro.blog account, and my accounts on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads. What’s supposed to happen is that this blog post, after I merge it to my GitHub repository, will end up on the JSONfeed at https://joshuapsteele....
Source: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort? Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet? In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be?...
Source: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity Keep two todo lists, one unbounded and one limited to a certain number of items (max 10); you can’t add a task to the second list until you’ve completed a task Might also need an “On Hold” or “Waiting For” todo list Set predetermined boundaries for your daily work Focus on only one big project at a time Decide in advance what to “fail” at (“strategic underachievement”) Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete Consolidate your caring (pick your battles!...
I’d love to blog more regularly, and I love answering questions. So the “WeblogPoMo AMA” challenge caught my eye! For this challenge I want to foster writer interaction: write a blog post starting with a question—the AMA—and then answer the question yourself in the blog post. Others will likewise write AMA/question posts, but also answer the AMA/questions from other bloggers, linking to their initial post. I brainstormed a bit on this idea when I first thought about creating WeblogPoMo Challenges....
In God’s economy, the most important people are not the billionaire, the business owner, or even the blue-collar worker. Instead, in God’s economy, the most important people are the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. Which is to say, the poor and the powerless. I’ve previously gone into depth on what the book of Proverbs has to say about poverty and wealth, as well as how Christians should think about wealth....
Today should have been my cousin Eric’s 32nd birthday. Instead, having lost him earlier this year to some serious health complications after a devastating motorcycle accident, we gathered to remember him and celebrate his life. Another member of our family gone too soon. Two passages of Scripture came to mind as I thought about Eric today. First, this one from Ecclesiastes (which I previously wrote a bit about after the untimely death of my Uncle Tim)....