Jeff Eddy 🐸 The Reductivityist

Old guy with hat that says “Make” on it sitting in a largely empty section of airport.

Flying back from SF after a great three days at Make with Notion, learning about all the new stuff and plotting what do do with it with my fellow Ambassadors.

The Agile Life Design logo, which has agile in spaced out letters along the top with a dotted line running through the letters suggesting a dog running through weave poles on an agility course.

About a year ago I started working on an idea.

I had just finished reading "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, and was taken with the idea that small daily choices add up to substantial change over time.

Eventually it bumped into all the agile product development stuff I learned in my corporate years.

My husband hated all sorts of vegetables until I cooked them properly for him.

I wasn't a big fan of pork, but that was mostly because that was the cheapest and most plentiful meat animal to raise, so it was almost all we got. But mom sure did know how to cook fresh veggies.

My doctor has been suggesting I try Vyvanse, both because it is less "Boom Goes the Dynamite" and may have a longer tail-off.

If I take Adderall at 9am, I'm heading for a nap by 2pm.

Without Adderall I have trouble focusing on anything.

With Adderall I focus on EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE.

I think I may need to take my dose in the morning and then lock myself in a box with nothing but the one thing I plan to work on until it wears off.

Oddly I find someone else telling me I have to do the thing HELPS me. It is when I tell MYSELF I have to do the thing that it all goes wrong.

I think the Anxiety of not meeting someone's expectations beats the lack of Executive Function, for me.

Yes, go ahead and post a job that requires a Master's degree and 30 years of experience (for $50K a year)... then turn around and let an untrained, unvetted, technology with highly dubious intentions root around in your business data and tell you how to run things.

As a species, we are doomed.

Spotted on LinkedIn: "Think of MCP like giving AI a key to your office. AI can now look at your actual work directly. It's like having an assistant who already knows your business instead of one you have to train from scratch."

"Like giving AI a key to your office" is not in any way a good idea.

These things endure, regardless of the outcome of the country around you.

I'm not saying you should stop trying to make things better for other people, but you can't do that until you are in a better place yourself.

You get to that place one paddle stroke at a time.

It's hard, these days, to think about the future as an American. Things are bleak and looking darker by the day.

But vision is the one thing that keeps us moving forward, even if it's a vision of what little we CAN control.

Who you want to be.
How you want to feel.
What you want to stand for.

Once I get things put together a bit more I'll reach out. I'd love to have your insight on it!

Agile Life Design (noun): the practice of intentionally crafting one's existence through rapid, adaptive iterations

(verb): continuously sketching, testing, and refining your personal journey while maintaining responsive movement toward growth, meaning, and authentic self-expression

Design (verb): 1) to prepare the preliminary sketch or the plans for (a work to be executed), especially to plan the form and structure of 2) to plan and fashion artistically or skillfully 3) to form or conceive in the mind; contrive; plan

Life (noun): 1) the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally 2) the sum of experiences and actions that constitute a person's existence.

Agile (adj): 1) quick and well-coordinated in movement 2) marked by an ability to think quickly; mentally acute or aware 3) a philosophy of product development intended to create working products in a short period of time via a cyclical schedule of improvement and generation

Inspiring planning committee meeting tonight with a couple of the groups pulling together Twin Cities Startup Week. A lot of stuff has to come together in the next 2.5 months, but it's a great group of people and I look forward to helping them make it happen.

Yet Luigi launched a thousand hand-wringing op-eds from the chattering class. Makes you think

I was musing today about the old ST:TNG joke about how the invention of the holodeck would have ended all human endeavor.

GenAI is basically our holodeck moment.

This is not to throw shade on the presenter, more to illustrate the gap inherent in a lot of AI quick-fixes.

You can't use tools to build things you don't understand.

Presenter: With tools like v0, cursor, supabase, and vercel, anyone can now create apps!

Presenter: Then goes on to describe the process using an awful lot of standard engineering process terms, specific code base suggestions, and a lot of the sort of things you only know as an app developer.

I've not put any effort into playing with Obsidian, but ultimately the best tool is the one that works for you!

Hosting the first gathering of Notion Northstars, a user group here in the Twin Cities, MN. Not sure if anyone's going to show up since I got no RSVPs, but we shall see.

Sitting in the shade drinking an apricot wheat ale at Lake Monster Brewing Co and catching up on emails doesn't suck, regardless.

I really have to remember to post here more often, but you know... Brain not worky so pretty good.

Working on a lot of Notion things though.

A poster for the economic blackout on February 28. It is a big red Jack rabbit on an aqua blue back ground. It says economic blackout in hand done black type. There are two black speech bubbles. One says “don’t buy stuff Friday February 28th. The other says we have power. Below it says No Amazon, Walmart, target, gas food, gas. Below that it says OK small business, use cash. Designed by Martha Rich.

I made this the other night while procrastinating, mainly because I thought all the posts about the blackout were boring. It feels like there is momentum bringing people together!

I suspect it is many of the same huge private machineries of state that are behind this one, to be honest...

Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.

Love this approach, and yes I do this too.

I find myself acting more in the position of counselor sometimes, explaining why what they think is a personal flaw is just another of the ADHD things we all have to deal with. Often once they embrace that it makes working around it easier.

The happiest people I know aren't chasing big houses or fancy cars.

They're building tiny businesses that let them work 3-4 hours a day and spend the rest of their time actually living life.

This requires the clarity to understand when enough is enough.

Rare, but SO worth striving for.