Article – Blognuson

📰 Everything must be paid for twice

The idea here is that almost everything you acquire must be paid for twice: Once using money to purchase the item and a second time to make use of the item. If you purchase a book, you have to spend time reading the book. Otherwise the book becomes an unread burden staring at your from the bookshelf. If you purchase a piece of software, you have to spend time becoming proficient with using the software. Otherwise it sits wasting space on your computer. Until you’ve paid that second price, you fail to receive utility from the initial purchase. Modern, industrialized life has given us a wealth of opportunities to pay that first price while our ability to pay the second time has not correspondingly increased.

Everything Must Be Paid For Twice [Raptitude]

This article struck me particularly strongly when considering the philosophy of Getting Things Done (GTD). I’ve long believed that GTD is the best productivity method available for my brain, but I find that I am able to capture far more tasks, projects, and ideas than I have time to work on. In a sense, I am paying the initial price of spending effort to capture these tasks and ideas, but then I fail to pay the second price of acting on what I capture. Instead, I carry around the ever-increasing debt of a bloated inbox and project folders that never get opened because they have too many tasks.

For a long time I have recognized that there is a problem with my GTD system. Considering this problem in light of paying for everything twice makes me realize that I need to focus on paying the second time and avoiding paying for so many things the first time. I can continue to capture ideas and tasks, but I need to focus my attention on what I can/want to get done right now. Everything else should go into a database tool like Notion instead of my task manager OmniFocus for later recall. I’m still a new user on Notion, so I haven’t quite fully paid that second price yet. We’ll see how this effort goes…

📰 Everything must be paid for twice Read More »

📰📹 Bulldozers are only slightly slower than atomic bombs

Article, Videos

The simple, straightforward story presented here by Dorothea Lange and Pirkle Jones is an understatement — purposely and understatement. Under the swelling pressure of a skyrocketing birth rate, places for people to live and water for crops and factories has become critical. Perhaps understatement is the better way to show that bulldozers are only slightly slower than atomic bombs; or that the nature of destruction is not altered by calling it the price of progress.

To witness population inflation of such proportions that ways of life are uprooted, fruiting trees sawed down, productive land inundated and bodies already buried force out of the ground is to realize that as life teems so does death. And that man is the active agent of both.
Aperture magazine, 1960

📰📹 Bulldozers are only slightly slower than atomic bombs Read More »

📰🦴 Why is it called “Skyline Blvd”?

Article, History

There were few all-year residents. The Mountain’s main use was light recreational, primarily summer use. Why, then, was Skyline Boulevard built in 1924 if there was no one here to demand it? Amazingly, the first urgings came from the military. The thinking ran like this: “With a good road down the ridge, we can quickly place heavy armorments anywhere best suited to stop a Pacific Coast invasion.” They thought invaders would have difficulty fighting uphill against well positioned artillery. They called it the “Sky-Line.”
They Called it the “Sky-Line” [Kings Mountain Online]

📰🦴 Why is it called “Skyline Blvd”? Read More »