Ghost Story: A Surprise

Laurence killed Derrick while Derrick was on his run. Laurence waited in the bushes in the parkland he knew Derrick ran in. Then when Derrick came by, Laurence hit him with a baseball bat, dragged him into the brush and bludgeoned him to death.

The police questioned everyone, including Laurence. But they had no good leads. Derrick had disappeared. That was all they knew.

But then Derrick started digging himself up. He was found in a pile of dirt by the grave Laurence dug for him in the brush by a jogger and her dog.

The police asked everyone about Derrick including Laurence. But they didn't find out anything.

Derrick was buried in a cemetery. But he dug himself out. The groundskeeper found him out of his plot. He was lying motionless and highly rotted in a pile of dirt on top of his grave.

Chock it up to gauche pranksters. Derrick was buried again. The news of Derrick's second coming had disturbed Laurence. Grave vandals? He didn't know. 

Winter came. A snow fell. The groundskeeper of the cemetery was alerted by visitors to a foot of snow displaced and a dirty little hole emerging in front of a grave.

The groundskeeper shrugged it off. Why bother anyone about a little hole. Nothing important could have anything to do with the hole. Dog went digging there, or some critter. He filled it.

A day later, a skeleton was found on the road outside the cemetery. More news. The body was identified as Derrick. More news still. Pranksters again. The body would be secured in a mausoleum on the grounds.

Thank god, Laurence thought. He was a rationalist but Derrick seemed to be coming for him. Agonizingly slowly. But persistently.

Laurence dismissed the thought and got on with his life. But he couldn't sleep.

Well, you conquer irrational fears by confronting them. Laurence would go to the crypt.

A visit was arranged with a cemetery manager. Laurence was allowed into the mausoleum. The manager gave him some time.

After an hour or so the manager checked on Laurence. The manager found Laurence dead on the floor. The room was as it had been when the manager left, though it looked like Laurence had disturbed the sarcophagus' marble lid when he fell. It was ever so slightly askew.

Fictional writing: Saul writing slice-of-life stuff, part II

Saul continued writing his slice-of-life writings inspired by his limited reading of Bukowski:

"Another Saturday. I seem to be writing these things on the weekend. Okay. Woke up at 830 or so, well, was in and out of it before then I think. More dreams. I had a dream I was at a bar during a pre-wedding event. I needed to get some kind of drink but the bartender was out of brandy or something like that. Later I tried to get a beer from him and he told me he wasn't serving me. I told him something like 'Fuck you!' and then went to the manager and got him in trouble. I went back to the bar and someone new was there, I guess, and I was told that the original bartender was sent 'North', whatever that meant. I don't remember if I got another beer. I looked across the bar and on the other side were people I knew, though I can't remember who--I think they were the women involved in the wedding event. I went over to that side and Fiona, my fiancee, was there (we weren't there for our wedding--someone else's--I magically knew this). We danced on a disco-y dance floor with swirling lights and there was a mirror we could see ourselves in and we were dancing well (in real life I don't feel very comfortable dancing). We were moving all over the dance floor though, so we were causing other people to have to watch out for us.

"I had some other dream too but it's not coming to me too, so I'll leave it for the moment.

"I had been reading books on Lean Manufacturing, or Lean Thinking. This week I read Eric Ries 'The Lean Startup', 'The Machine that Changed the World' by James Womack and 'The Innovators Dilemma' by Clayton Christensen--the last one is not obviously related to Lean, other than being recommended by Ries in his book.

"So I've been trying to get a sense of Lean and how it might improve my way of doing things. This week I watched a video of a guy illustrating the idea that small batch processes can be more efficient than big batch processes (small and big batch processing I don't think is my own term but I can't recall where I heard the phrase)--he has ten envelopes and he does a large batch process, where he first folds all the papers to go into the envelop, and then he stuffs all ten envelopes, and then he seals all ten envelopes, and then he puts stamps on all ten envelopes, or simulates this. Then he does small batch processing, where he folds one paper, stuffs it into one envelope, seals the envelope and puts the stamp on it, or simulates this, and then goes on to the second paper and repeats this process ten times. He times both processes and finds that the small batch process is about a third faster than the large batch processing.

"So I've been trying to do small batch processing in lots of things. I woke up today and did a small batch of laundry and I threw out a small batch of trash and recycling. I tried to keep my 'spaghetti chart' simple and with minimal movements. It's interesting. I don't know if I am more efficient or not. I'm experimenting.

"After I threw some laundry in the wash and made coffee et c. I brought coffee to Fiona in bed and sat down in bed with my lap top. I went to play a video on Facebook of a scene from Portlandia, but when I hit the mute button so I could hear, Guided by Voices' song 'Waving at Airplanes' started playing--I left Spotify on apparently. I played some more GBV and then turned to Pavement, playing most of their album, 'Slanted and Enchanted' while Fiona sat next to me playing 'Tetris Blitz'.

"I took a shower and did a reverse strip tease for Fiona when I got back to the bedroom. I was naked and then I put on my underwear while humming 'The Stripper' by David Rose. Then my socks in an awkward teasing, slow put-on. Then pants. Shirt. Ta-da! Dressed.

"Hm, is that erotic or not?

"Then Fiona took a shower and when she came back into the bedroom I played 'The Stripper' on my laptop and she did a better reverse strip tease.

"The night before, I had fallen asleep and Fiona was up. I was in the middle of a dream where I was around a round-table of people and someone had said something and I exclaimed, 'It's racist'--but I had woken up at this point. Fiona laughed. 'What did you say?' 'It's racist,' I said. 'You said something racist?' I laughed. 'No, literally, "It's racist!".' We laughed. 'What is?' she said. 'I don't remember.' We laughed again. I think I went back to sleep pretty quickly after that. Sleeping the sleep of the just apparently."

Fictional note: Dr. Bat's business idea

Dr. Bat jotted down an idea in his notebook while on the Red Line to Harvard:

"What if a company shared all information about its operations, costs, average sales, individual sales (all private info would be anonymous) and company cited this when explaining why they wanted a particular price for a product or when negotiating with a partner."

Fictional email: writer pitches horror sci fi idea

A writer emailed his agent:

"Here's a story idea. What do you think?

"A scientist claims to have found the key to immortality but won’t share it. Someone breaks into his lab. Finds out the scientist is really just a vampire."

Fictional Monologue: Crazy man

"I was at work. We have an elevator that goes up to the second floor. I asked a guy to hold it. He let the doors shut. I ran up the stairs and beat the elevator to the top. When the doors opened I blasted the guy with a punch to the face.

"I was idling in my car. The traffic was backed up through the intersection. Nowhere to go. Just bad traffic. The guy behind me honked his horn. I put my car in park and got out of the car. He saw me coming. He tried to lock his door but I got there first. I opened the door and pulled him out. We walked to the car in front of me, where a woman was sitting. She cracked the window as I we came up. 'This guy thinks you should move,' I said. 'He's going to explain to you how to do it.' I nudged him. 'Go on. And if you don't I'm going to throw you into the Charles.' The guy stuttered. 'Well,' he said, 'You have to just get into the wrong lane of traffic and drive past everyone else.' 'Good,' I said. 'Now there's a car coming in the other direction. They'd block her. We have to explain what they have to do.' We walked in front of the car coming in the other direction. We stood in front of the car. 'Yell your explanation,' I said. The guy wriggled a little. 'Come on man,' he said. 'Do it,' I said. He looked at the guy sitting in the drivers seat of the car in front of us. 'Get up onto the side walk and drive!' 'Good,' I said. 'Now we have to explain to the pedestrians what they have to do.' We walked up onto the sidewalk, and I threw the guy down the hill. Traffic was starting to move. I got in my car and drove off."

Fictional Journal Entry: R.E.A. Liste muses about an alternative-history United States 'baiting and bleeding' the Allies and the Axis in World War II

R. E. A. Liste mused in his journal:

"Just as an interesting speculative game--what would have happened had FDR tried to maintain the balance of powers among all the states during World War II? When the Allies were losing, the US would help them, and when the Axis was losing, the US would help them. I could see at the time France had been knocked out of the war that the US might rush in on the side of the UK, in 1940, rather than joining the war in late 1941. Then, as the Axis started to lose the war in 1941 or 1942, the US would step off the gas and stop pushing so hard against the Axis. Maybe the US wouldn't push so hard against the Italians in North Africa. And then as the Soviets and the Brits pushed back against the Axis, the US might even start to support the Axis, stemming the advances of the Allies.

"It seems pretty much impossible though for the US to do such a thing. It just doesn't seem very easy to change sides in a war. I suppose in order for the US to balance powers it might use its economic might to support one side or the other, to varying degrees. That would seem easier. When the Brits were on the ropes after France was knocked out of the war, the US would throw lots of economic and material support to the Brits. When the Italians were on the ropes against Britain in North Africa the US would throw more support to them in money and material and start taking it away from the Brits. Something like that.

"The end result would be what? The war would maybe go on longer and all the great powers involved would be weakened except I suppose the United States. There would be more death and destruction I suppose. Or maybe because the powers involved would feel themselves to be stuck in a deadlock, they would treat with each other and end the war more or less status quo antebellum--I've heard the idea proposed by I think it was Harry Browne and Murray Rothbard, and Patrick Buchanan--noninterventionists basically--that such an outcome would have happened in World War I--I don't recall if they applied the same lesson to World War II.

"So the negative probability from a humane perspective would be more war, more death, but from a political realist perspective, perhaps the US would have 'bled their enemies white' as John Mearsheimer roughly said, and I think others have used that phrase too. The positive possibility from the humane perspective is perhaps the nations would have seen they were stuck in an inescapable equilibrium and would have ended the war quicker and with fewer deaths. I am a bit skeptical since it seems like it would take a while for people to catch on to the US's game of playing both sides. The most likely-seeming result is the US becomes more powerful while the other great powers weaken progressively. The war ends in a stalemate and the US is left the world's sole superpower.

"But who knows! It also occurs to me that the approach I ascribe the US isn't power balancing I don't think, but 'bait and bleed' which John Mearsheimer, Wikipedia tells me, writes about."

Fictional Email: Non-Ghost Ghost Story

A writer emailed his agent:

"Here's an idea for a non-ghost ghost story. A man and his wife--they agree to get their heads frozen when they die. She passes before him and he lives on and marries again. He and his new wife get their heads frozen. They are all thawed out at different times in the future..."

Fictional Monologue: Dr. Bat on efficiency software for keystrokes

Dr. Bat wrote an email to friends:

 

"I think it would be neat to build software that made a sound to indicate when you had used more keystrokes than needed to do some routine process. The software would make pleasant sounds that changed to different pleasant sounds as you moved over the optimal amount of keystrokes for an activity, to indicate in a nonannoying way that you went over. Maybe something like this exists already. The software could count how far over you went. Maybe the screen could change to a different shade as you went over the optimum. The further you get from the optimum the more the sound and shade would change.

 

"That's all, thanks for listening!

 

"Dr. Bat"

Fiction Monologue: Saul on the day

Saul sat at his lap top and started typing:

"I was reading Bukowski's book 'Hollywood' and liked the slice-of-life approach. So I think maybe I'll try something like it. I don't know if I'll be any good at it. But I'll just write and see what happens.

"Okay, I guess I'll work backward since my memory is best about things that just happened. I woke up around eight and lay around in bed. I was just thinking about various things and flopping around, but I was comfortable enough. Fiona was asleep. She would have these little snores now and again, very light. A feminine snore. I apparently have annoying, whiny-sounding snores. Like the snore is complaining about something. Fiona once recorded me snoring to give me an idea. Funny thing is I snore like my mom--when I heard it I thought that, and not like my Dad who has a good snore, something that sounds like it comes from the mouth of hell. Loud. I remember as a kid hearing him one night snoring so loud I thought maybe he was hurting himself.

"I think I dreamt but I don't remember the dreams. For some reason the idea of a menacing face leaps out at me. Oh, no, I do remember some of my dreams. I was at the office, and I was at my computer. The screen was a massive round screen the size of an one of those inner tubes kids ride down snowy hills on. Or float in pools in--I'm from the north east so I think snow when I think of those things. We have pools in New England but they're almost pointless. Hey, want an expensive pond for ten months a year?

"Anyway, in the dream I was at my work station and someone came up behind me and I was looking at some site on the internet and wanted to shut it down, and I couldn't. The person shook my hand and told me that I was doing a lot of work, compared to my coworkers.

"Another section of the dream involved a dishwasher being installed in our kitchen. It was our house but didn't look anything like our real house. The super, Maxim--who is our super in real life--was this bald almost alien looking guy--that is the menacing face I was remembering. He shook my hand with a crushing grip--I normally don't have sensations in my dreams. He had a HEPA mask on, and took it off and said, "Maxim, nice to meet you." Real-life Maxim is a short Russian guy, but this guy was a bald, tall Middle-Eastern looking man.

"That is an odd phenomenon in dreams--things are taken to be familiar things but are represented in unusual ways--my dream office was considered familiar, but was nothing like my real life office. Ditto my house. Ditto my super. Weird. In the dream the versions of life were sort of better in some way.

"And the places are also somehow other places. I think my dream house was my residence but also simultaneously understood to be a place I was a guest at. Or something like that.

"I slept a lot last night. I was in bed at 7pm and was in there till 9am or so this morning. With say 3 hours of interruptions in there. So 11 hours of sleep. That's good. I slept from 7pm to 9pm or so the first leg, and Fiona, who was out with her friend, came back and I woke up and talked with her a little bit. Fiona found the cat had left a shit on the floor. She cleaned it up and got into bed. Then the cat jumped up on the bed and I saw a nugget of shit hanging from her behind.

"'Oh, she has a shit hanging!' I said and picked her off Fiona and dangled her off the bed.

"'Wait, it's okay. I'll just use a tissue to get it.'

"'I just want to get her off the bed first.'

"Fiona got a tissue from the bed stand and got the shit while I dangled the cat over the floor, and Fiona got up and flushed the shit. She came back into the room and got in bed. The cat sat by the window looking embarrassed.

"'You can come back here. It's okay,' Fiona said. The cat hung out by the window a little longer, but then jumped up on the comforter and sat on Fiona.

"'Hello, you little shit,' Fiona said and laughed.

"That day I had woken up at about 6. I skipped the shower. I got my clothes on. I love skipping the shower, because I can just get on with the day. I feel sort of bad in the mornings often, so the less I have to do early on the better. I had been tracking my energy patterns. I had a spreadsheet. Every hour I would note how I felt. I didn't do it for the first couple hours of the day but I probably would rate those hours something like 3 out of 10 or something, 1 being the least energetic and 10 being off the walls.

"At work I start off usually a bit low energy, around 7am, averaging something in the 4 out of 10 area. Then I rise up to something like 6 out of 10 around 10am. 10am is my peak. Then I slowly descend till the end of the day. Often there is a dip after lunch, what I have heard called the 'postprandial dip,' which I get from time to time, but the average trend is just a rise to 10am and then a decline of 4 out of 10 energy or so around 3pm.

"And during the week my pattern seems to be high energy on Monday, say a 6 out of 10 maybe, and then a decline to Wednesday to say 4 out of 10, and then Thursday leaps up to something like 6 out of 10 and declines on Friday a bit.

"The numbers are probably a bit off, but that is the general pattern. You want to catch me at my highest energy, meet me at 10am on Thursday.

"I haven't been good about tracking my time in my free time, but I should. It seems more important to know what my energy patterns are like when I am doing the stuff for me and my loved ones rather than work. Though I guess work is for me and my loved ones in a more indirect way. It's not fun always, though it's usually not bad, but it's not something I would do for fun.

"Well, so tracking my energy in general seems like a good idea. I got the idea from reading Scott Adams' book 'How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big' which should be taught in classrooms. I should buy that book for everyone I know and give it on the condition that they read it and give it away, or give it away to someone on the condition they read it or give it away, so the book just circulates through the population.

"I like that idea. I'm sure the book would end up sitting on someone's shelf. The thing is that you might mean to read it and then just forget about it, and so you're not really breaking my rule of reading it or giving it away. Maybe I should put a deadline on how long you should hold on to the book. I don't know. I have no way of enforcing this rule. I need to get some thugs to do my bidding. Flunkies. Thing is I would only be giving this book to friends and friendly acquaintances, so I wouldn't be sending my flunkies to go beat up on them for not following my rule about reading and giving away the book.

"That appears to be the only problem with this plan...

"Anyway, in the Scott Adams book, Scott recommends you focus on maximizing your energy as your main priority, so you have energy to do the other important stuff.

"Actually, from a dark side, this reminded me of what I read in the evil genius Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf', which was that he believed that the first task of his effort to grow his malevolent Nazi movement was to train organizers who would recruit more people who would organize--the focus was on recruiting recruiters, if I remember correctly. The energy of the movement was in its growth, so focus on the agents of growth. Focus on what energizes the movement most. The dark side of this approach, perhaps. All the more reason for counterforces to adopt useful methods to oppose the bad guys.

"Arguably Britain sort of focused on energy after they had been ejected from the continent by the Nazis post Battle of France. Churchill wanted to keep his forces working the periphery and working with guerrillas on the continent, husbanding his forces and preserving their energy while courting the Americans, whose manufacturing and population might could considerably expand the energy of anti-Nazi efforts. And Hitler squandered his energies against the USSR.

"Scott Adams, in any event, wisely I think recommends focusing on maximizing your energy, thinking about what energizes you, observing what energizes you, and then doing more of that--or avoiding or minimizing what drains you. So I started tracking my energy.

"Anyway, I go to work. I ride the 66 Bus to Harvard Square. I have my headphones on, plugged into my Kindle. Kindle has a text to audio app that allows the Kindle to read to you in a computer voice. So I read most books this way, or 'read' I guess. It's much more efficient for me to 'read' this way than the conventional ways. As experts have observed, sometimes people subvocalize when they read. I do this. So when I read I make a little voice in my head that speaks the words I read. Speedreading advocates try to get you to stop doing this but I find not doing this is annoying. So by listening to text I cut out a step in experiencing a text--I don't read and subvocalize anymore--I just have the Kindle read the writing to me. And this frees me up to walk around or look out the bus window or close my eyes so I can relax. I don't know how much energy vision takes up, but I think I've heard it's a fair amount, and so I can preserve energy this way.

"And I do. I often have the Kindle reading to me while I close my eyes and ride the bus in the morning.

"I was listening to a book, 'Lean for Dummies' about Toyota's approach to reducing waste and streamlining their production line. My boss was interested in introducing Lean ideas into our work system, and I had been interested in Lean myself. I had heard of it and read a little bit about it. It seemed opportune to learn more about it.

"The 66 bus comes a little after six to the end of my street. It's maybe a third full by the time it gets to me. Sometimes I miss it and take the 70 Bus to Central Square in Cambridge, or the 86 Bus to Harvard Square. The 66 Bus is most characterless in terms of the people who ride it. It's hard to do a thumbnail sketch of it. There are people, usually attractive young women, in exercise gear, who ride it to Harvard Stadium down the street, I guess. Or maybe they are running along the Charles. Take the bus from the ugly places to the pretty places to run.

"And then maybe a handful of students at Harvard or working people are on the bus. The bus does seem sort of democratic in the sense that it seems like a guy in a casual professional outfit might be riding with a construction worker, usually a white guy with a tan and paint on his pants, or Central or South American people (I'm guessing)--I see a lot of them coming out of the city to go to the suburbs. I wonder what they are doing? Landscaping? Working in kitchens? Mall or hospital janitorial staff? They're seldom in obvious work clothing--you work in an office you wear office clothes to work usually--if you work at a restaurant you usually put on some kitchen-wear when you get there, I guess, so you would wear your casual gear before you get there presumably. If you work as a janitor you might wear a uniform that you put on when you get there, perhaps. Landscaping I'm thinking you would look like a construction worker--durable, comfortable, well-worn clothing--the latinos I see don't seem to be wearing this stuff, just normal casual wear.

"I don't know. The latinos often travel in groups and seem cheerful and friendly and talkative. I've read there is less mental illness in the latino population and one theory I've read is that it's because of strong community ties. I could believe it.

"I used to drive to work, but my car died and I didn't want to spend the money on a new car. I used to live in the suburbs, so a car was necessary. But now that I live in the city, I can take public transportation. I can get to my work in the suburbs via bus and subway easily enough. It's interesting. You never see the same people in cars when you're driving to and from work. All cars seem new, the people in them new, as you drive along them. But I regularly see the same people on public transportation on my commute."

Fiction monologue: Dr. Bat on 10 percent of things working

Dr. Bat wrote an email to his friends:

"Hello all!

"I had some thoughts. I have noticed an interesting pattern from tracking some personal data. I have found that about 10 percent of the resumes I send out get responses. I notice about 10 percent of requests for people to reconsider something important to me lead to positive outcomes. I have noticed that often times when I break a record on some measure of performance, it is often around 10 times the average performance (say if I wrote one page on average a day, my record would be something like 10 pages).

"I wonder how true it is to say that 10 percent of your ideas will work, or will be accepted, and it's hard or impossible to tell which ones these ideas are. Or if you average a certain output, your best output would be 10 times that. If this is true, you might crank out lots of output--resume letters, requests in email, request for dates, whatever--on the idea that you'll get a bite on 10 percent of them.

"If you want to be a lady's man, ask out 1000 women, 100 of whom will give you the time of day, 10 of whom will do more than that. Figure out how to ask women out easily and more or less in bulk. Stand at a corner and say something like, 'Hey, wanna go out?' in machine-gun fashion to any reasonably attractive woman who walks by.

"Obviously I don't quite know how this rule might work, but it's just something I noticed in my data collecting. I feel like I might have read someone make a similar point but I can't quite remember. I recall Perry Marshall talking about something like this, regarding the 80/20 rule, but I can't recall the point and think it might have been a bit different.

"Anyway, here are a couple of thoughts that were floating through my head recently. I don't know if they are true or not, but they sound cool:

"Creativity or control--pick one.

"I'm rarely master of a situation. I'm rarely a slave to a situation too.

"OK, signing off!

"Dr. Bat

"PS: It occurs to me my musings on 10 percent of things seeming to work might be another way of stating Sturgeon's Law--it's not clear to me but things are close enough to give a nod to the law I suppose."

Fiction monologue: Dirk Rambler on Lean Manufacturing, energy and time as personal bottlenecks, efficiency through chamber pot usage, et c.

Dirk Rambler started to talk into his iPhone's voice recorder:

"Okay, I am just going to ramble and see where it goes. I guess I am thinking about how I can be more...energetic. I think probably aiming for a flow state is probably the main thing--a flow state is a psychological state discovered by a psychologist with a long name I don't know how to pronounce. Anyway, when I am in a flow state a produce a lot.

"I am interested in Lean Manufacturing and its ideas. But I'm not sure how to apply it to my life. I suppose in a perfect world I would make tons of money and I would do only what I want when I want with who I wanted. I would have all things immediately, magically.

"Well, I can't have that. But per Lean Manufacturing I might look towards intermediate steps. How about work? I don't want to work. Could I telecommute? That would save time. I don't think so. Could I do work from home without my boss knowing and then slack off at work doing things I am interested in? Possibly. Possibly. The problem is I work with sensitive material and and I have to be logged into company computer systems and if I did that from home they would know, I suppose--my employer. And I would possibly get in trouble or fired.

"Maybe I could stay late some days when I feel energetic and work until I don't feel like it and then leave other days or just stop working some other days. The idea would be that sometimes I have energy to work and sometimes my energy would be better spent doing non-work, but the nine to five dictates rigidly I do work at the same time every day. So Monday I feel energetic. I get in early and work before I'm technically supposed to. Maybe I do work that can't easily be verified by checking some computer system. Maybe I set up some work the night before using computer systems in order to work offline with the material I have gotten. That could work possibly.

"I could maybe stay later...the problem is my boss stays late too. See, what I am thinking is Monday, I feel energetic and so I work from say 630am, a half an hour before we technically are supposed to start working, and go till say 6pm, and take an hour in the middle there--possibly I work even later if I can. But let's say 630am to 6pm with an hour lunch. So that would be 10 and a half hours. Then say I do 10 hours the next four days and on Friday I pretty much just spend my time looking like I am working while I am actually just working on a novel or something.

"That would be interesting, but hard to do really. My boss would probably notice I am staying late and would think I am working OT, and expect to see it on my time card, when I am really just trying to get my 40 hours in quicker and then use Friday more or less as my own time, just at the office. This doesn't appeal to me either, this kind of week, because I'd be spending about 48 hours at the office while only getting paid for 40, which isn't very appealing I must say.

"Telecommuting would be great though. Too bad we can't do it. The government should mandate it. It would totally save companies in office space, and would save people in gas or bus fare getting to work. It would reduce road congestion and would reduce the wear on roads as they would be used less. Plus if you telecommute you could be around your kids while you work, so you could save on daycare.

"The problem is that your bosses wouldn't easily monitor you, but that can be gotten around a bit. I know a guy who telecommutes and his company has him leave his computer camera on. Companies could monitor how long people are logged on to their computer and how many keystrokes they did. But the simplest thing would be that companies pay people for productivity. You did x widgets and you get paid your pay check.

"Anyway...one big improvement for me was when I started taking the bus to work rather than driving in. I saved a lot of money because owning a car ended up costing me something like 200 bucks a month, when you tallied up all the expenses, while taking the bus is about 70 bucks a month, and the quality of the bus ride is better than the car ride, because I can read or listen to music or close my eyes and relax. Big improvement, though I wouldn't have thought so until I tried it out and saw for myself.

"What else...well, could I be more efficient in how I do my work? I think for me the big waste factor is probably in interruptions and maybe being forced to do work I don't have the energy to do at the time. One way to handle this might be to focus as much as possible on one thing--for example I have to do X form twenty times over the day. I could do them in a few sittings or I could do them in one sitting. One sitting is probably more efficient. Productivity gurus call this batching. So batch as much as possible. Being forced to do things I don't have the energy for--well, if you have to you have to, but maybe you can sometimes hold off on it till you have energy. I guess you have to read the situation and see if you can hold off till later. I don't know. Boss says do X thing now, and you think you can hold off till tomorrow when you'll have more energy, so you do. That sort of thing.

"I get energy from being productive, and I am productive when I am energetic. There's a positive feedback loop between the two things I think. I also get energy from listing ideas. Creativity gives me energy. A good conversation with someone I like gives me energy--someone I like or someone I think is at least probably okay.

"Interesting reading gives me energy. Whenever I can I try to keep my headphones plugged into my Kindle, which can read me text via its text to audio function.

"Energetic music gets me going--Slayer. Andrew WK--that's when you are in the mood for that kind of over the top stuff. Motorhead. The Misfits. Stuff that also energizes me in a different way might be Guided by Voices.

"Beauty gives me energy too sometimes. A beautiful painting. The paintings in the bar downstairs at Red Bones--a restaurant in Davis Square, Somerville, MA--those give me energy.

"Scott Adams recommends fantasizing to gain energy and I think he's right. I have to try it more. Plus you might get some ideas about what you would like to do in this world.

"Writing gives me energy. Just rambling. Rambling and rambling on the page.

"Coffee. A walk. Getting good sleep. Keeping stress levels down. Accomplishing something cool like putting on a show--I'm in a rock band. I had a job interview a while back and that gave me a boost of energy. Felt good to be looking into my options.

"But yeah...waste. How about waste in my personal life? I waste money. I spend  money on coffee rather than making my own, which is silly I suppose. Or eating out. Or on drinking beer. Beer makes you tired, fat and poor.

"Parties give me a boost when I get to hang out with my friends. Or going out to dinner with a friend or two and just talking about interesting things.

"Usually being uninterrupted in what I do and doing one thing for a long time--as long a time as I practically can--is a good thing for my mental health. If I could figure out a way to turn my to do list into something a little bit easier to focus on intently. Things that are easy to focus on require a kind of repetitiveness--writing you're typing on the keyboard. Playing guitar you're repeating a riff. Talking you're going back and forth with someone, talking and listening--oscillating--not a rhythm necessarily but I suppose a focus on communication, maybe? But with chores--for me it seems like they are often piecemeal affairs. Elements have a repetitive quality--doing the dishes, or doing the laundry. I suppose you could do all your bills all at once. Or all your emails to people. You could make all your appointments in one session. I guess it's doable.

"I guess the main principle is to stick with things as long as you can, until you get sick of doing the thing. Productivity gurus have more or less championed this idea or something like it. Don Aslett talks about getting into the zone or something like that and keeping with it for productivity's sake, which I think is probably right. Other productivity gurus talk about time-batching or avoiding multi-tasking or switch-tasking as I read someone call it. Steve Pavlina has also I think recommended sticking to something for a long time and this being good for productivity. I'm inclined to agree.

"One thing that is annoying at work is that I get coffee or have to go to the bathroom and that  breaks things up a bit. I have this little french press I can make coffee from but it's just one 20 oz coffee that it makes. Maybe what I could do is to make one coffee, pour it into my cup and then instantly rinse out the thing, pour more grounds in and then hot water and have that ready to go for when I want another. The coffee would cool but that's not a big deal really. I'd need to put milk in it which would mean I would have to go to the fridge. I guess if I had a little thermos with milk in it I could keep it at my desk. Save a trip. Still would have to piss though. Can't bring a chamber pot to work...or can I?

"No...at home I could, but my fiancee would kill me. Do people use chamber pots anymore? I bet you could sell chamber pots to college guys and other young bachelor types. Put it right by the bed--drank too much? Don't piss out the window--just use your chamber pot and empty it in the morning.

"I like it. I was reading Otto von Bismarck had enormous chamber pots. I don't remember from the reading if it was because he had enormous shits, but you can imagine he did given his girth and eating habits.

"I wonder if it's better to do one big exercise session compared to ones broken up throughout the week. Health recommendations seem to change over time--right now I think most health experts would say no, break your work outs up throughout the week, but I don't know. Say I just went did like three hours at the gym every Sunday or something and that was it?

"Seems like a bad idea. So don't batch exercise for efficiency. I have a jump rope I need to start using."