Acetio | Blogma

WalkScore is a site that rates towns and neighborhoods based on how easy it is to get around on foot - The way it works is essentially based on how close a place is to businesses. So in a way, the site is as much a measure of population density and zoning regulations as anything else.

When I think about the places I would want to live, it ultimately comes down to the single issue of how pedestrian-friendly the place is. Living in New York was great for this reason, and Lubbock, TX was terrible. As a kid, we lived across the street from a library, but the street was a 12-lane highway with no place to cross. We had to wait for my dad to come home with the car so that we could drive across the street.

Paul Graham puts into words thoughts that I've had for years, about why it's so difficult for me to work in an office.

"Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it."

Read the full essay here

A blog called Daily Routines covers "How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days."

The entries are collected from diaries, interviews, and other documentation about these writers' (most of the people covered are writers) habits.

This is a subject that should be boring, yet I find interesting. I (like many others, as evidenced by the preponderance of books claiming to help boost productivity) sometimes wonder whether I could be using my time (my hours, my days, and my weeks and months) more effectively.

Many of the writers seem to have the habit of getting up early and getting a lot done before the normal day's work begins. Ben Franklin said, "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise". And there is a Japanese proverb that translates to something akin to, "If you wake up after the Sun has risen, you're already late." And the one about the early bird (and the Garfield-esque response, "and look at what happens to the early worm!")

But I find I'm most productive at night. For me, often, the act of creation and expression is a way of distilling my reactions to things - condensing a dozen conversations into a single sentence. And when better to compact all those reactions than at the end of the day?

Also, I am absurdly distractable. There cannot be human language within earshot for me to be productive. The exception is certain languages, such as Italian, which is so musical that I interpret it as music instead of speech.

And the night time is quietest time.

Some more thoughts here