Be Simple

Your Most Improbable Life

Your life’s goal should be to become the most improbable person you can be.

Chasing life goals is a recipe for disaster – so try these tiny experiments instead

Whether its our careers, health or relationships, we often set the bar too high and end up feeling disappointed when it doesn’t work out. Try this new way of thinking … and you may just see some real results

» The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 3: The Sims The Digital Antiquarian

I don’t think people realize how much tactical and strategic forethought goes into their daily lives. There’s a whole subconscious time-efficiency layer in our lives. In essence, real-time strategy is our lives.

Maybe you should learn something

You can learn new things. Pixel art, touch typing, 3d modelling, music, calligraphy, wood working, knitting, a language. Whatever is practical and calls to you, you can learn. In the long term, learning new things is fun and makes life richer in ways you can’t even imagine, and it’s a time investment that will pay dividends for life as these skills never really go away. There are even social aspects, as you’ll quite literally become a more interesting person to talk to.

Life in Weeks

My life, where each week I’ve been alive is a little box, inspired by this post by Tim Urban. When meaningful things happen (for both better and worse) I make a note of it so I can remember how much of life is influenced by these factors. If you’d like to create your own version of this, it’s basically a data file, a template, and a blog post mashed together on Jekyll blog hosted on Netlify.

Everyone Should Know SIMD

SIMD has a reputation for being complex. I've met many very good software engineers who dismiss it as something too complex to learn or a niche optimization meant for only the highest-performance software, not useful in everyday programming.

Simplify | Find Your Dream Job 10x Faster

Simplify is a common application for jobs & internships. Autofill job applications anywhere on the web, get notified when new jobs open, & seamlessly track your applications.

Ask Everything

Ask, answer, & explore questions about everything.

‘Find Your Passion’ Is Awful Advice

A major new study questions the common wisdom about how we should choose our careers.

Simple living

Simple living refers to practices that promote simplicity in one's lifestyle. Common practices of simple living include reducing the number of possessions one owns, depending less on technology and services, and spending less money. In addition to such external changes, simple living also reflects a person's mindset and values. Simple living practices can be seen in history, religion, art, and economics.

Developing creative identity

I was a theoretical physicist from 1992 to 2007. It was a romantic activity, exploring the fundamental nature of the cosmos! I became a university professor, wrote papers and books, and got to explore some of the most beautiful ideas ever discovered. In parallel, I also developed a fascination with the social systems humanity uses to make knowledge. Systems like the university or peer review are immensely deep inventions: our discovery system is itself one of the great inventions of humanity! But I believed a radically better discovery system must be possible. I became obsessed with this idea, eventually giving up tenure to work on it1. My first big project was to write a book helping develop and spread the fundamental ideas underlying the modern open science movement.

The Key to Act Two

How do you top life rules ? With a life script, that's how. Here's an absolutely minimalist 2-step one. Guaranteed to work for 90% of humanity. Across all…