Retention

A graph of "Information retained" versus "Time in presentation". The first (solid) curve is an increasing linear function (What you hope for). The second (dashed) increases at early times, but then goes down as time goes on (What happens).

Two reasons: working memory overload and fatigue. It’s a fantasy to imagine that my audience will immediately soak up everything I share.

22 Mar 2025

Outline

Left panel (Writing with an outline): The writer makes clickety-clack sounds as they type happily away at a laptop and says, "Wow, a thousand words in an hour!" Right panel (Writing without an outline): The writer scratches their chin and is not writing anything.

As I’m in the midst of thesis-writing, I definitely understand the power of the left panel!

15 Mar 2025

The Distraction Hump

A graph of "Desire to distract oneself" versus "Time in focus mode". The curve initially skyrockets, but the desire for distraction then comes down and approaches zero as one stays focused.

Unfortunately, giving in to a distraction doesn’t pause your way through the curve, but resets you back to zero.

01 Mar 2025

Edge

Representing the boundary of "X" versus "Not X" with an edge. As one zooms in, the edge becomes more and more twisting and ragged.

My hobby horse is for X = Sports.

22 Feb 2025

Distillation

A distillery where the input is a vat full of "blood, sweat, tears, bugs, dead-ends, confusion, and time." The distillation process produces just a little liquid: a paper.

And I thought the conversion rate from maple sap to syrup was low…

15 Feb 2025

Polished

A friend checks up on their writer friend, who is busy building a massive structure of convoluted words. The friend looks up at his friend and asks, "What are you doing?" She replies, "Polishing my sentences." He then says, "I think you'll be doing something different soon..."

(After the whole structure falls down in a convoluted mess.)

The writer: “Let me start building anew right from my delightful sentences!”

08 Feb 2025

Done

A project timeline from start to end as a line graph. There are dots on the line which represent someone saying, "We're done!" Halfway through the project is the first dot, closely followed by more. Soon, there are a ton of dots all crowding the line, until finally they lower in number again and the final dot actually occurs with reality.

“We’re done!”

(Checks timeline and shakes head)

“No, we have about ten more to go.”

01 Feb 2025

Paper Collaboration

A graph of "Changes Remaining" versus "Time" for a paper. The curve trends downward until the first draft is completed, and then it periodically spikes back up as collaborators ask for changes. First Collaborator 1, then Collaborator 2, then Collaborator 1 again, and so on. The trend line has the label, "Hope this doesn't asymptotically reach zero".

Rapid progress occurred when one of the collaborators said, “Screw it!” and allowed the revision of the paper to continue without including their pet idea.

25 Jan 2025

Saturated

A graph of "Facts uttered" versus time. There's a dashed horizontal line that marks the "Fact limit". For messages that creep above it, people forget them. It's messages that stay below which stick.

The best is when I have a time limit and suddenly I’m trying to break the world record for most facts stated in a minute as if that would help get my message across…

18 Jan 2025

Fractured

On the left is a series of spaced lines, indicated "Scattered reading". On the left is a filled rectangle, indicating "Uninterrupted reading". There's an inequality saying that scattered < uninterrupted.

I feel like I’m reading in smaller and smaller chunks each year.

11 Jan 2025

To the past To the present