Starting a new book is exciting. It’s like putting on a brand new pair of shoes on a sunny morning, with no puddles in sight. Sadly, the novelty wears off. Then, there’s that uncomfortable feeling at the prospect of leaving the book unfinished. The same book that starts as an exciting little activity becomes a nagging reminder that you failed to reach a goal.

Nobody likes starting a book and failing to finish it. So much so, I suspect, that it discourages us from starting a new one, in fear of not reaching the end. After all, who signs up for a marathon that they don’t expect to finish? Even if you ran an impressive 20 miles, you wouldn’t get the exhilaration of crossing the finish line and the satisfaction of officially achieving a commendable, well-defined goal that other people recognize and admire.

But is reading a book really about reading every single page that someone put between two covers? On principle, I think people would agree reading is about getting exposed to ideas that inform and influence the way we think. Surely, then, we can be done with a book regardless of whether we read it from beginning to end. And if we’ve “finished” the book in this way, shouldn’t we walk away satisfied and guilt-free?

Setting a goal number of books to read can foster the habit of reading regularly, a habit we all admire and covet. However, it’s easy to get carried away with trying to make measurable progress at the expense of approaching your actual goal. If you get fixated on officially finishing a book, you might be forgetting why you wanted to read it in the first place. By ditching a book when you feel you’ve had enough of it, you’re staying true to the real reason you set that goal of reading some special number of books by Christmas time.

In Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann, the authors tell a true story about a government that offered civilians bounty for killing rats in an effort to mitigate the local rat infestation. Specifically, they offered people money for each rat tail they brought in. They figured they could reliably track progress on the pest problem without having to handle the corpses. The plan backfired completely. Crafty entrepreneurs realized that they could capture a rat, cut off its tail, and then release it, so that it would live on to reproduce: more rats, more tails, more money. The pest problem worsened significantly.

But why all the gossip about rodents and dishonest bounty hunters? Well, Weinberg and McCann’s point is that metrics can be counterproductive. In the case of reading books, if you worry too much about how many books you’ve read front-to-back, you stray from your objective of learning and growing. Maybe you should change your metric or add a new one: the number of books checked out of the library, or the number of books you read for at least one hour. Anything that helps you make real progress and not counting rat tails.

Books aren’t perfect. Many of them are good. Many others are just okay. Sometimes, you benefit by leaving a book unfinished and moving on to another instead of persevering through to the end, regardless of how far you’ve made it. In that case, by quitting the book, you’re overriding a psychological flaw and making a more rational choice.

The sunk-cost fallacy, as defined in Thinking, Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman is:

We fall prey to this error when we stick stubbornly with a book just because of the time we’ve already sunk into it. If this book is no longer doing it for you, move on. There are millions of other books and many of them are better than this one. If you can cut your losses and push through the unpleasantness that comes with doing so, you’ve likely made the optimal choice.

If you feel guilty about not finishing a book you’re currently reading, you probably won’t start a new book. And so, if the book you’re reading loses your interest, you’ll end up losing steam and maybe reading no book at all. Unless it is important to you to finish this specific book, why not move on and keep your momentum going? By leaving a book unfinished and feeling good about it, you allow yourself to start a new book with excitement instead of guilt.

We’ve all finished reading a paragraph only to realize that we didn’t absorb much of the information at all. It can happen when we’re having trouble focusing, but it can also happen when you’ve lost interest. That’s okay. It might be time to move on. Life is long, you can come back to this book in some weeks, months, or even years if it’s a book you think is worth reading eventually. By moving on, you are valuing results above all else.

If you learn to ditch books with confidence, you’ll cover more variety of material. I think this is true not only because you start the next book sooner, but also because you avoid the reading slump you’ll inevitably hit when you’ve committed to a book that you have no interest in reading. By moving on to another book, you’re covering more ground when it isn’t worth staying put and drilling down for more.

You might benefit a lot from a book early on, but less so in later chapters. Perhaps you’ve effectively satisfied your curiosity, or maybe the book’s value is distributed unevenly across its sections. Regardless, you’re facing diminishing returns and the book might not be worth your time anymore. By ditching the book, you’re reacting intelligently to a waning profit.

If we choose to finish a book, let’s make that choice for a good reason, and not because leaving it unfinished feels like failure. Moreover, let’s relish the opportunity to make the smart, if counterintuitive, choice of bailing on a book when it isn’t worth the time. If we overcome the mental hurdles that stop us from ditching a book even when we are justified, we’ll be free to read more widely and engage more deeply.

In his book The End Of Absence, Michael Harris laments the everpresence of digital technology. He writes stylishly and gracefully, but he struggles to get a grip on the argument he wants to make. I feel his yearning for mindfulness and relate to his distrust for apps and devices that leech on our attention for profit, but I balk at his dismay at seeing a toddler attempt to zoom in on the cover of a magazine as if it were an iPad screen.

This observation’s lack of consequence hints at the lack of clarity in the author’s critique of digital technology. Most frustrating is his lack of self-awareness when recounting past technology alarmists. He tells us of Hieronimo Squarciafico, who in the 1400s decried the printing press for making too many books available, and of Socrates before that, who warned that writing was bad for one’s memory.

Harris seems to recognize these two as cynical luddites, but then refuses to acknowledge them as his forerunners. Instead, he sidesteps into a discussion about how tools reshape the psychologies of their wielders. It’s a real shame, because a serious take on the role of digital technology in our lives cannot ignore either its usefulness or its permanence.

It is clear that this technological revolution like all others cannot be evaded without exit from society and that it will continue to transform us. The question is: how do we incorporate these new technologies into our lives? How do we retain their usefulness while minimizing the harm they might do to us?

There are signs, earlier in the book, that the author won’t really be trying to sort out this knot and will content himself merely with perusing and picking at it. He mourns the “end of absence”, but never makes it clear where his concept of “absence” even begins. His vignettes hint at some possible meanings – time without digital technology, time alone out in nature, time to think. Is that all? These goals seem perfectly achievable with a little time management. Has he tried the Pomodoro Technique? Why ring the alarm bell when a simple kitchen timer will do?

For Christmas and New Years, I went to Japan with my wife Z, my mom, my older sister, her boyfriend, and my younger sister.

Z & I flew with Air Canada. We upgraded to Premium Economy to avoid being stuck in a couple of middle seats. It was expensive, but it made our flight much better. I spent the whole flight reading and writing. I read the first 150 pages of Normal People and

, pausing only to eat meals. I couldn’t believe it when it was announced that we were beginning our descent.

I had severe allergies until the early evening. This happens to me whenever I travel somewhere new. In 2017 I went to Europe for the first time and I spent the first full day sneezing and oozing. Same thing this time in Tokyo for the first 24 hours. Reactine didn’t seem to make a difference, just had to wait it out.

The architecture and spatial planning of the theme park was really impressive. It seemed like every corner we rounded we encountered another stridebreaking view of the park. It reminded me of the architectural tactic of constraining the height and width of hallways to reinforce the impact of emerging into a bigger space. It’s a method that’s been employed by Tadao Ando of Osaka and other famous architects like Frank Lloyd Wright.

Tokyo station was huge and very busy. It felt like being in a beehive. It took me and Z a while to figure out how to pick up our tickets. One machine gave us an error message but then we tried a machine in a different section and it worked. Then we circled through the masses, trying to figure out which screen listed our train’s platform. When we finally found it, we struggled to pass through the gate. Z put in the two tickets as the ticket machine had instructed but that wasn’t enough. We had a confusing interaction with a worker there, who we finally understood was saying to scan our IC card after inserting the tickets. We made it through and with thirty minutes left until departure time, we lined up to buy food and drinks to take onto the train. It’s good we came an hour early.

This was one of the best days of the trip.

A thunderstorm began while we were in a taxi on the way to the Kanazawa train station. Flashes of lightning so bright I thought for a moment our driver had run a red light and triggered a super powerful automated stoplight camera. We tried a coffee shop near the train station but it was closed for New Years, which is the biggest national holiday in Japan. Train station was full of stores and flooded with white overhead lighting. Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift playing in the overhead speakers. We sat in Tully’s Coffee lounge with our bags piled around our ankles. On the far wall a horribly sappy and nonsensical marketing poem for & Tea. I felt like I could be in any other manufactured commercial center around the world. Soulless places like these often have this sort interchangeability, lack of identity. Being there, it doesn’t feel like you’re in an actual place. You’re just temporarily detained in a massproduced commercial limbo.

Grateful to be back in the sun.

It was certainly a mistake to visit Japan in the first few days of January. As noted all over the internet, New Years is Japan’s major national holiday and many things close not only on the first but for a week. I’m sure Z would’ve determined this if we had been more involved in planning the trip. Lesson learned, I suppose.

I had

. Or, I don’t know, maybe I just needed a meal. Or a better sleep. Or to feel like I chose to go there. Or to have had a period earlier in the day where I’d gotten to direct my attention to things of my choosing. Or a period to produce something, so that I might be in a more

. That certainly makes me feel better about socializing aimlessly in the evening, when I feel like I’ve done something productive with my day.

The Digital Art Museum was really cool. It was a dark maze on the bottom floor of a fancy mall where myriad projectors shone moving patterns and images of light on walls, floors, and ceilings. This by itself might’ve been a gimmicky socialmedia tourist trap, but embedded throughout the large labyrinthine gallery were rooms where sculptural elements combined with light, music, and mirrors to create surreal experiences.

My intention was to browse Hands and Itoya in Ginza, but I came across the flea market when I stopped for coffee by Ginza station. There were dozens of stalls selling ceramics, porcelain, kimonos, jackets, bluedyed fabrics, and so on. The orange tinted glass I bought was only 400 yen, less than three dollars in USD, and I could see it selling for tens times the amount at trendy stores in the USA and Canada. I’m still sour about going to the East Vancouver “Flea Market” to find they charge an admission fee and sell priced up secondhand and vintagestyled clothing.

The prose is great, incredibly tidy and evocative. The dialogue is good. It is quite a moving story. But the ending feels… optimistic?

(Poorly adapted into

.)

There is something skeevy and suspicious about how the writer designed Raoul, the white poor guy, and Burnham, the black poor guy, to create so lurid a contrast between them. Raoul is so cruel that he is unsympathizable while Burnham is so principled in favor of the safety of our rich white protagonists that by the end he seems more devoted to their safety than his own welfare or that of his family. The tell that reveals the loaded hand of the writer is the movie’s failure to explore what a real living Burnham would think, feel, and do. This evasion is reflected in the denial of Burnham’s due place as a protagonist in the story. The movie guiltily represents him as collateral allowing innocent whites their riches and presents it as a moral tragedy, but refuses to look it in the face. It poses questions about class disparity and then sidesteps them, invoking us to focus instead on the mortality we all share, as if this transcendence bridges the gap in material resources that makes life viable. But notice who is rich and innocent, and who martyrs himself tragically but righteously for the morality of it all. By acknowledging racialized socioeconomic oppression but not engaging with it honestly, this movie functions as a pressure relief valve to ease the moral guilt of neoliberal whites who feel sorry but not remorseful.

Missing Japan, losing weight, experimenting with daily routines, & more.

We just got back

. I would love to live there for a while someday, although I think it unlikely, even though they offer a six month Digital Nomad visa. Z’s work is not remote and she wants to develop her career, so teaching English or something of the sort is not particularly useful to her. Regardless, I am sure we will visit again.

I am twenty pounds lighter than I was a year and a half ago. I still want to lose another twenty. I am trying to eat very consciously and exercise everyday. I feel optimistic.

For the last few days I have woken up early and immediately gone out on a walk with my coffee. It’s a lovely way to warm up for the day and start by accomplishing my daily task of exercising. Walking is useful for me given that I am a homebody with a remote computer job and a reliance on soccer for exercise. After returning from my morning walks I’ve spent some time reading before getting on with my day. An aspiration I’ve set for myself is to do each of these everyday: exercise, read, write, work, enjoy, socialize, discuss, grow, & plan. I realize they might sound cheesy, but they are distillations of more specific intentions I have for 2025.

In December I received my expected promotion to Senior Software Engineer. It’s a milestone in my career. The pay bump was nice if modest for industry standards, but the biggest perk is the deference I am already getting as part of the increase in my responsibilities. I have strong opinions on how certain things should be done and I feel already a boost in persuasive power generated from my new title. To summarize, I feel like I have more agency, and I welcome it.

Matthew B. Crawford’s

has provoked in me a lot of reflection about what things consume my attention and how

dictate that.

I recently read

by Samuel Beckett and I intend to continue with the second book in the trilogy.

I also resumed reading and marveling at the prose in Blood Meridian. I think it appropriate to take my time with what Harold Bloom called “the major esthetic achievement of any living American writer.” Of course, McCarthy has since died and his legacy has begun morphing due to recent news of a very inappropriate relationship he had with a teenage girl named Augusta Britt.

Last year as soon as the weather started cooling and days darkening early I started watching movies. In the last few months I’ve watched The Substance, Woman of the Hour, We Live In Time, The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2, The Power of the Dog, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anora, A Real Pain, Perfect Days, Gladiator II, and Punch-Drunk Love. Reviews and ratings for these are or will be on my letterboxd account. Tomorrow I’m going to watch The Brutalist.

Following the English Premier League is so interesting because the competition is so fierce and sophisticated. It is so difficult for teams to win. It is so difficult for fans or pundits to predict what will happen. New players arrive, old ones fall away, young ones rise into prominence. It’s a lucrative business but it is also genuine, gripping drama.

The year 2025 is a blank canvas. We don’t have any specific plans. Of course, it is predictable in some ways. But perhaps more so, it is open ended.

I begin the year with several intentions. Do big things at work. Get fitter. Lose twenty pounds. Have more discussions with friends. Read copiously. Keep writing for and developing this site. Nurture friendships. Heal and grow. Enjoy our DINK status. Ruminate on longterm plans.

I round the corner of another year with the intention to change my life. Change it not majorly, but minorly. I intend to live in the same place, work the same job, drink the same coffee. But I want to sharpen my focus. I intend to withhold my attention a bit more and marshall it with more discipline towards things that matter. That doesn’t mean I will scold myself if I waste time, or spend it on unimportant things. But I want to try everyday to dedicate more attention to things that matter, to things that will accumulate rather than disappear into the void like jewelry into the drain.

I will continue resisting idealistic aspirations towards abstract virtue, but will try to submit myself to disciplines that I trust will render concrete results. Spending more time reading. Waking earlier. Avoiding cheap distractions that undermine opportunities to spend time meaningfully. I’m not so interested in deeming time spent scrolling on instagram or passively consuming recommended YouTube videos as immoral. It is not bad to produce nothing or learn nothing for a few minutes on a random day, but it is costly to let it become a habit. Costly in time and in opportunity. I don’t believe I’m particularly special but I do think there is a version of me at eightysomething years old that looks back with some sastifaction at his life’s work. I want to do something meaningful and I know the steady progress of minutes hours and days can lead to things that irregular bouts of inspiration can imagine but never produce.

Learning to pick between

activities based on my current mood and energy level has helped me notice, for example, when I should try to write instead of reading.

← productive                                                                                                                                 absorptive →

It occurred to me recently that there are many other dimensions to consider when picking an activity. An obvious distinction is active vs passive activities. It is similar to productive vs absorptive, but it’s possible to be absorptive both actively (e.g. reading) and passively (e.g. watching, listening).

← active                                                                                                                                               passive →

Are you in a mood to expend energy or do you need to refuel? The same answer will have different implications for different people. For introverted people, having “expensive” capacity at a given moment offers an opportunity to socialize.

← expensive                                                                                                                               regenerative →

After determining that you want to watch a movie – a fine choice when one is feeling passive-absorptive-regenerative – you can figure out whether you want to do your passive absorbing alone or with other people.

← individual                                                                                                                                             social →

While going through this exercise, you don’t have to pick a point on each spectrum. I think it’s unlikely you’ll have answers for all. (Ah yes, I’m feeling productive-active-social-regenerative, that’s the word I was looking for!) But with every choice, you filter down many possible activities into the ones best suited to your current mood.

Are you in a social-regenerative mood? Meet with friends to do something that nourishes you. Or are you feeling social-expensive? Do something that you’re not easily motivated to do but that your loved ones want to do with you.

I always try to choose activities based on how I’m feeling so I can evade the taxing experience of forcing myself to do something through willpower alone. But you can’t always wait for the right mood to come. In life, you have to do some planning, and you can do that better if you learn how your moods and energy levels fluctuate.

Notice which activities are expensive for you. Make time after those for your regenerative activites. Whether you’re more introverted or extroverted, take note of how often you need social interaction to keep a healthy balance. Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, dedicate your expensive mood to

. If producing is important to you, dedicate time to absorbing as well. As Stephen King writes in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: