Why smart people defend bad ideas.

Scott Berkun has actually come up with something useful in his essay Why smart people defend bad ideas. I've had plenty of "bad ideas" over the years, especially during college. I expended a lot of effort defending them. I got really good at arguing but sometimes , as this essay says, being good at arguing is either A. a waste of time and B. not the best way to interact with others productively.

That staring out into confusion/apathy feeling

Yep... I get it a lot. Where I have no energy to do anything except stare at the screen and read blog after blog. It's that kind of lowest common denominator entertainment mode I get in. Where my brain shuts down and all that I'll respond to are caffiene, sleep and anything that will produce a cheap giggle. Is this some kind of medical condition? I drink enough caffeine as it is. This kind of mood also has its energy but it's fake energy that leads me to analyze and criticize and think over and over again about politics or philosophy or some kind of very abstract inconsequential garbage.

Let's contrast this with the "I can clean out my whole inbox feeling"... Which seems to come randomly every two weeks or so and in a rush catches me up with the things that directly affect my life and actually matter.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to provide a means to concentrate like a laser on actual stuff that matters to me on a day to day basis. Narrowcasting if you will. It's the total opposite of other blogs which talk about all kinds of worldly 'meta' big stuff.

I'd really like to know how to get from the confusion/apathy/meta feeling to the doing feeling, as I bet a lot of people would.

Going to bed early? Is it worth it?

I am becoming convinced that going to bed early is only worth it if you get to work early. Let's face it, that quality time in the morning is lame because nothing is open yet if it's before 9 and all you can really do is read last night's articles you read the night before. There usually isn't enough quiet time to do anything enjoyable as all your neighbors are waking up and stomping around the apartment building getting ready for their days. My advice. Get up as late as you can to get to work on time. Have quality time after work.

Shipwrecked in the South Pacific in the 1850s

While using google to look up remote places on my world map I came across this very interesting diary of a captain of a sailing ship from San Francisco that was shipwrecked in the South Pacific. It's a very entertaining 1 hour read. It's amazing how many practical skills these sailors had, such as being able to build ocean going boats by hand.

Real Estate: Got that Weightless Feeling Yet?

I am a renter and among my guilty pleasures is being a real estate bubble news junkie. I am so waiting for the bubble to burst. Yeah I know I could have made millions if I had rode it but but it seems like it's now about spent and the Willie Coyote real estate market is about to realize that its fannie and freddie mac rocket powered roller skates have run out of gas and run the economy off a cliff.

Here's a good place to keep up with the latest: The Housing Bubble

Resistance to Doing Things

In my never ending attempts at self-psychoanalize myself out of procrastination I've noticed a pattern of internal resistance against doing things. If there's something I always wanted to do, like write a book about social networks or something like that I will not want to read a book written by someone else about social networks even though I think it might be useful. It's dumb but I have a lot of dumb things going on.

Back is screwy again.

Got some lower back problems lately. I sure hope they get better. :/. Anybody got any good tips. "Backaches: What Excercises Work" is my current guide.