Getting Things Done

How to get things done? I'm going to use some of these ideas by George Mack. Here's one of the nine suggestions:

Get a giant whiteboard in your home - My most contrarian belief: We could increase the global economy by 2-3% just by installing large whiteboards in every home. The whiteboard forces you to commit Kidlins’ law: If you write the problem down clearly, then the matter is 50% solved. With a whiteboard, it’s more like 70%; there’s an extra 20% because it stays there over the next few days, whispering into your creative subconscious whenever you walk past it.

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Long Winded Conversations by the numbers

All of us have been in some intolerable conversations with long-winded people. Some people don't know how to give and take. In my mind, good conversation is like a game of catch. Lots of people don't know how to get to the point and then let others talk.

I asked Grok for the research on this. How long can a person talk in a small group before others feel left out and get frustrated?

Grok's response:

Research on conversation dynamics, particularly in small groups (typically 2-5 people), highlights the importance of equitable turn-taking for maintaining engagement and satisfaction. Studies in linguistics and psychology show that natural conversations rely on rapid exchanges, with average utterance lengths around 2-4 seconds per speaker in dyads (one-on-one) and slightly longer in triads (three people), at about 2.7 seconds and 3.7 seconds respectively.

These short turns, separated by minimal gaps of about 200 milliseconds, create a rhythmic flow that allows everyone to contribute without feeling sidelined. When one person extends their turn significantly—holding the "floor" for much longer—it disrupts this balance, leading to perceptions of dominance.Conversational dominance occurs when a single speaker monopolizes airtime, often through extended monologues or repeated interruptions, and research links it directly to frustration among listeners.

For instance, nonverbal cues like prolonged speaking time and higher vocal energy signal dominance, which group members perceive subconsciously; in meeting simulations, dominant speakers were accurately identified 85-91% of the time based on such cues alone. This imbalance can make quieter participants feel excluded, prompting them to withdraw entirely—creating tension where others remain silent to avoid conflict. In extreme cases, it drives group members away, turning potentially enjoyable interactions into ones people dread.

Psychological studies quantify the emotional toll: A survey by the American Psychological Association found that 60% of people feel anxious and overwhelmed during encounters with long-winded speakers, viewing it as a subtle form of social control that heightens stress. Similarly, research from the University of California, Berkeley, showed that one-sided conversations reduce relationship enjoyment by 50%, eroding trust and overall satisfaction.

Over-talkers often prioritize personal anecdotes over group themes, leading to redundancy and boredom, which further alienates listeners by breaking the expected "just enough information" rhythm. While no study pinpoints an exact universal threshold (as it varies by group familiarity, culture, and context), frustration typically emerges when a speaker's turn exceeds 10-20 seconds or when they claim more than 30-40% of total airtime in a discussion—far beyond the 2-3 second norm.

In small groups, this dominance is amplified because cognitive limits (e.g., mentalizing multiple perspectives) cap effective conversations at around 4 people; larger imbalances exacerbate feelings of being left out. Strategies from communication research, like gentle interruptions or thematic redirection, can mitigate this, but the core issue is restoring reciprocity to keep everyone engaged.

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The Gymnastics many “News” Providers Do with Verifiable Facts

Journalism is not merely about providing the facts. There are so many ways to manipulate, censor and palter even though one is using verifiable facts. This is an excellent post by Michael Nayna:

There are three information filters that allow journalists to bend reality using verifiable facts.

#1 – Story selection. Each day offers thousands of stories, and editors typically highlight those that align with an ideological perspective. Politically inconvenient events can be ignored or buried with minimal coverage.

#2 – Fact selection within stories. The amount of details within a particular event is massive, and a journalist needs to choose which ones are relevant. I once worked with a journalist who had been covering a series of attacks on Indian students on public transport. The outlet’s interest was in the racial angle, but an interviewee mentioned other victims. She asked about their nationality, then chose not to pursue those attacks in detail because the victims were Australian. A single vague line made the final cut, and the piece implied racial motive when it couldn’t have been.

#3 – Framing facts with emotive conjugation. For instance, if I’m covering someone I don’t like, he’s cheap; if I’m neutral, he’s frugal; if I like him, he’s thrifty. Someone can be passionate, emotional, or hysterical; careful, hesitant, or cowardly; they can glisten, perspire, or sweat. This is subtle, but once you notice it, you’ll find that even though there’s better and worse news, none of it is purely objective.

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Reverse Engineer Your Mind and Body

In his excellent book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Peter Attia stresses the importance of intentionally putting in the time now to safeguard your physical function and independence in later decades. He refers to this as the "Centenarian Decathlon," where individuals reverse-engineer their fitness goals by imagining the physical demands they'll face in their 90s or 100s—such as carrying groceries, playing with grandchildren, hiking, or simply rising from the floor unaided, and then building the necessary strength, stability, and endurance today to make those activities possible and perhaps likely.

Attia warns that without this forward-thinking approach, natural age-related declines (like muscle loss, reduced VO₂ max, and joint instability) erode over time, causing your body to become frail. Instead, you need to treat exercise as the most powerful "drug" for longevity, structured around four pillars: stability (to prevent injury and support safe movement), strength (to build muscle reserve), aerobic efficiency (for cardiovascular health), and anaerobic performance (for high-intensity bursts). An excerpt:

I ask all my patients to sketch out an alternative future for themselves. What do you want to be doing in your later decades? What is your plan for the rest of your life?

Everyone has a slightly different answer--they might want to travel, or continue playing golf or hiking in nature, or simply be able to play with their grandkids and great-grandkids (top of my own list). The point of this exercise is twofold. First, it forces people to focus on their own endgame, which most of us might prefer to avoid thinking about. Economists call this "hyperbolic discounting," the natural tendency for people to choose immediate gratification over potential future gains, especially if those gains entail hard work. Second, it drives home the importance of healthspan. If Becky wants to enjoy a healthy, rewarding life in her later years, and not repeat her mother's fate, she will have to maintain and hopefully improve her physical and cognitive function every decade between now and then. Otherwise, the gravitational pull of aging will do its thing, and she will decline, just as her mother did....

You remain relatively robust until about the fifth decade of life, at which point your cognitive and physical health will likely begin a gradual but steady decline, until you die (healthspan = zero) sometime in your sixties or early seventies. This would have been a not untypical lifespan for someone born into a hunter-gatherer or primitive agrarian tribe, provided they managed to avoid early death thanks to infectious disease or another calamity.

Attia distinguishes lifespan from healthspan:

The important distinction here is that while actual death is inevitable, this deterioration that were talking about is less so. Not everyone who dies in their eighties or nineties passes through the valleys of cognitive, physical, or emotional destruction on the way there. They are preventable--and I believe that they are largely optional, despite their ever-increasing gravitational pull over time. As we will see in later chapters, cognitive, physical, and even emotional deterioration can all be slowed and even reversed in some cases with the application of the proper tactics.

The other key point is that lifespan and healthspan are not independent variables; they are tightly intertwined. If you increase your muscle strength and improve your cardiorespiratory fitness, you have also reduced your risk of dying from all causes by a far greater magnitude than you could achieve by taking any cocktail of medications. The same goes for better cognitive and emotional health. The actions we take to improve our healthspan will almost always result in a longer lifespan. This is why our tactics are largely aimed at improving healthspan first; the lifespan benefits will follow.

[ pp. 40-46] Attia urges that by investing effort today you will "future-proof" your body, preventing decline so your older self remains capable and vibrant. In essence, Attia argues that if you work on these things, you will be giving a gift to your future physical self, enabling a higher quality of life rather than merely extending lifespan.

Why not do something similar to protect your mind? Exerting cognitive load builds up your ability to think. Reading widely (rather than simply following corporate news) will protect you from being manipulated by gaslighting and psyops. Now is the time to protect that version of you that will exist in five or 10 years!

[Supp Oct 3, 2025]

Lack of concern with health and growth, even if done in private, are obvious in public. One's huge belly is a lie detector regarding one's bad diet & and lack of exercise. One's willingness to make ad hominem arguments betrays one's refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas.

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Remembering the Good Old Days When Evidence Mattered

"I have a mental illness that makes me think that people will change their minds if i present the correct arguments with the appropriate facts and data."

And to make things even worse, consider the Boomerang Effect. I turn to Grok:

The boomerang effect (also known as the backfire effect in some psychological literature). Is a persuasion paradox where presenting strong evidence or arguments to debunk a false belief doesn't sway people; instead, it often reinforces their original misconception, making them dig in even deeper. This happens because the challenge feels like a threat to their identity, worldview, or autonomy, triggering defensive reasoning—think of it as the brain "boomeranging" the message right back at you with amplified conviction.Classic examples include political debates (e.g., fact-checking a conspiracy theory that only rallies believers more) or health campaigns (e.g., anti-smoking ads that ironically boost smoking among defiant teens). Studies show it spikes when the persuasion feels too forceful, emotional, or condescending, as people resist perceived control. To counter it, softer approaches like asking open questions or building rapport work better than direct confrontation.It's a frustrating reminder that facts alone don't always win—emotions and ego often steal the show.

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