Productivity
🙂
I relearned I have to aim for target times if I want to hit them. Up till now I’ve mainly been trying to schedule the important tasks for earlier in the day and letting everything take as long as it takes, which means later but still important tasks often don’t get done. Last week’s experiment was aiming to start my project time at 7 (or 7:30 if I had reasons) so I’d have about two hours for it. I’ve done this haphazardly before, but it worked so well this time that I want to train myself to approach my schedule this way.
Website
😐
I made slow but significant progress relearning how to set up my website on my local computer. This is what I spent all my project time on. This week I’ll spend some time analyzing last week’s work so I can choose the quickest methods of solving problems.
Spirituality
😐
I made no progress on the everyday prayer project. Now that I’m having more success fitting project time in, I need to learn how to juggle multiple projects.
Tea
🙂
I was introduced to another 5, Tazo’s Glazed Lemon Loaf. For my birthday my sister sent me a nice card with a bag of her favorite tea. I steeped it without really looking at the package, and I thought to myself it smelled like one of those glazed lemon cakes. Then I looked at the name. Well done, Tazo! Since then I’ve been telling people about it.
Fiction
🙂
The High King is an epic and satisfying ending to the series. I don’t know if literary criticisms have been written of the Prydain books, but the Encyclopedia of Fantasy has an interesting entry.
Politics
🤔
In Twilight of Democracy Anne Applebaum presents an interesting but perhaps limited perspective on the causes of authoritarianism. The causes I picked up were (1) resentment of the meritocracy of liberal democracy by ambitious but less capable people, (2) a desire for simplicity and uniformity in society, and (3) a nostalgia that seeks to recreate one’s image of the past. She doesn’t exactly dismiss the notion of people economically left behind by society, but it’s not what she cares about in this book. I believe this gap is filled by Fiona Hill’s new book, There Is Nothing for You Here, which I’ll get to at some point. Applebaum is a journalist, and her approach focuses on history. I’d like to see how researchers in the various social sciences would interact with her views.
I’ve been appreciating Adam Something’s YouTube posts analyzing the Ukraine conflict. I don’t know enough to evaluate them, but they at least make me feel better. And they introduced me to Francis Fukuyama’s interesting project American Purpose.
