Jason Mccool > Recent Status Updates

A real gem of a book. Burroughs is insightful in his observations of the human condition & humble & pastoral in his tone, even with 4 centuries separation from us. "Lightly edited" for readability, this is a great series of classic works of the Puritans. This one is especially applicable to those of us living in an affluent culture.

Berlinski applies a razor-sharp wit to the frequently condescending atheists who ironically look down on the religious from positions supported by thin air. His candid (quite blunt) observations of that ungrounded view are refreshingly direct.

Good stuff. A lot that should probably be obvious, but like most obvious, common sense observations, it takes someone pointing them out before we really see them, I suppose.

Really fascinating deep dive into the systems engineering of the human body.

I like that Cal offers several variants of deep work routines.

What can I say? I am that knowledge worker with attention fragmented by a thousand distractions, struggling to focus, frustrated by lack of progress on anything, to whom Cal is writing. The rare times that I have felt like I really accomplished something useful were exactly what Cal calls deep work. But they're never consistent. So Cal's already convinced me of the book's main premise. Now to implement.

Hardly surprising, I suppose, that an engineer would immensely enjoy reading about the amazing design of the human body, but I'll just state clearly that I am loving this! I knew the human body was incredibly well-designed, but the half had not been told! Fascinating book so far.

Started this once & made it to p. 84 but never finished. It had been a while & I'm still struggling with lack of productivity, so I just started over again & am up to p. 120 now. Don't know if his system will help or not, but he's certainly diagnosing everything plaguing me pretty accurately. He's an engaging writer, humorous, & often able to turn a memorable phrase.

Newport's preaching to the choir in part 1, and I can "amen" everything he says about the exhausting, frustrating workflow of modern life in the knowledge sector. Just starting part 2 where he starts trying to solve the problems identified.

Yes, I'm just now reading this. Why? I guess because I've been under a rock (with my email inbox) for the last few years....😏 Not bad so far. His section about how badly both senders AND recipients misjudge the intended message of communication lacking verbal intonation, facial expressions, & body language (like email) was particularly enlightening. No wonder social media is so unsocial.

Really interesting walkthrough of a Passover Seder and the meaning of each step, along with insightful commentary about the importance of gratitude, etc.

I found his 14 reasons for the divine inspiration of the Torah in this section particularly insightful.

Very interesting book. I always enjoy Dennis Prager's insightful writing, & I didn't know any details of the Seder, so this has been quite informative. And the starting at the back cover and reading toward the front (i.e., right page then left page) still trips me up almost 1/3 of the way in🙃 But don't worry - the English text on the page is still left to right 😉