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Al salir el sol prendo el incienso. Pongo agua.

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Nada que contar y sin embargo cae una tormenta.

Sir Benedict just about nabbed a place yesterday for a tiny bit of profit. Still only the one winner on the blog though, but plenty of time to sort that out …

1.45 Bath In all honesty I should have probably left this one alone; a class 6 apprentice jockey handicap, but having looked at it I do think ALAZWAR has a decent chance, despite his rancid effort last week which I’m putting a line through as he can throw in a stinker or two, however today, I’m hoping is a going day as the 8yo is back on turf off a mark 5lbs lower than his Newbury win in June last year. He also drops into a class 6 for the first ever time on turf and with Brodie Hampson – by far the most experienced jockey on show here – can hopefully get involved.

ALAZWAR // 0.5pt E/W @ 11/2 (Paddy Power) BOG

4.15 Beverley Really keen on Mick Easterby’s CANONS HOUSE here who won four times last season, going up 2 stone in the process. That meant by the end of the season he was contesting some class 2 events, acquitting himself pretty well in most, winning at Southwell and finishing 5th at Goodwood. He had a decent return to action at Mussleburgh last month in another class 2 (on soft ground that may not suit) and today drops back into a class 4 for the first since winning at Hamilton last season off 79. He is still 8lbs higher than that but could well be a better horse nowadays, anyway. Midgeley has won this four times in the last nine years but think the selection could/should just have too much class for these.

CANONS HOUSE // 1pt Win @ 11/4 (Bet365) BOG

Freundinnen & Freunde der Weisheit! Wer studiert, eine Lehre macht oder sich beruflich weiterbildet – der Alltag in einer Ausbildung ist oft geprägt von hohem Anspruch und begrenzter Zeit. Lernstoff bewältigen, Abgabefristen einhalten, nebenbei vielleicht noch arbeiten oder soziale Kontakte pflegen: Wer sich hier nicht verzetteln will, braucht praxistaugliche Strategien.

Die folgenden fünf Habits unterstützen Dich dabei, konzentrierter zu arbeiten, bessere Prioritäten zu setzen und trotzdem Zeit für Dich selbst zu behalten.

1. Zeitfresser reduzieren – vor allem das Smartphone Unzählige Nachrichten, Reels und Updates – das Handy ist einer der grössten Konzentrationskiller. Wer lernen oder arbeiten will, sollte Push-Benachrichtigungen deaktivieren, das Smartphone ausser Sichtweite legen oder mit App-Sperren arbeiten. Ein bewährter Habit: das Handy bewusst ausser Reichweite bringen, z. B. in einen anderen Raum, einen Spind oder eine Tasche.

2. Besser arbeiten mit Deep Work und der Pomodoro-Technik Statt Multitasking: 25 Minuten volle Konzentration, 5 Minuten Pause – das ist das Prinzip der Pomodoro-Technik. Wer diese Methode mit Deep Work kombiniert (fokussiertes Arbeiten ohne Ablenkung), lernt effizienter und schafft mehr in kürzerer Zeit. Unterstützen können Tools wie Anki, Study Smarter oder KI-Chatbots, die z. B. Karteikarten oder Zusammenfassungen automatisiert erstellen.

3. Aufgaben sinnvoll priorisieren mit der Eisenhower-Matrix Nicht alles, was dringend ist, ist auch wichtig. Die Eisenhower-Matrix hilft Dir, Aufgaben danach zu sortieren, was wirklich zählt. Wichtig und unangenehm? Dann gleich zu Beginn des Tages erledigen – das ist die „Eat that Frog“-Strategie. Gerade am Morgen ist die Konzentration am höchsten. Wer mit dem Schwierigsten beginnt, startet mit einem Motivationsschub in den Tag.

4. Realistisch planen und feste Strukturen schaffen Lernpläne vom Abgabetermin rückwärts erstellen, feste Zeitfenster für Lernen, Alltag und Freizeit definieren – so entsteht eine klare Wochenstruktur. Haushaltskram und Besorgungen solltest Du bündeln, damit sie weniger Raum einnehmen. Und: Nach dem Pareto-Prinzip reichen oft 20 % des Aufwands für 80 % des Ergebnisses – perfektionistisches Arbeiten lohnt sich nicht immer.

5. Eigenverantwortung stärken – aber mit gesunder Begrenzung Ob Klausuren, schriftliche Arbeiten oder Prüfungen: Mehr als sechs Stunden konzentriertes Lernen am Tag sind selten sinnvoll. Besser ist es, Lernstoff über mehrere Tage oder Wochen zu verteilen – so bleibt mehr hängen, und Du schonst Deine Energie. Wer häufig Nachtschichten einlegt, braucht keinen Stolz, sondern einen besseren Plan.

Diese fünf Habits helfen Dir, Deine Zeit gezielter zu nutzen, produktiver zu arbeiten und gleichzeitig Raum für Erholung und persönliche Interessen zu behalten. Denn nachhaltiger Lernerfolg entsteht nicht durch ständigen Druck – sondern durch klare Prioritäten, kluge Planung und regelmässige Pausen.

Denkanstoss zum Wochenbeginn

„Demokratie ist nicht, wenn Menschen Dinge wählen, die man selbst gut und richtig findet!“ – Juli Zeh (*1974)

ProductivityPorn-Tipp der Woche: Rituale schaffen

Etabliere feste Routinen, um Deinen Tag strukturierter zu gestalten. Ein klarer Start in den Tag mit festen Abläufen hilft Dir, produktiver zu arbeiten.

Aus dem Archiv: Die Einzigartigkeitsfalle: Warum wir uns für besonders halten – und darum schlechtere Entscheidungen treffen

Ich kenne das Gefühl nur zu gut: Ein neues Projekt, eine knifflige Herausforderung, eine wichtige Entscheidung – und sofort denke ich, dass meine Situation einzigartig ist. Keine Erfahrungswerte, keine Vergleiche, keine Vorbilder. Doch genau dieses Denken kann zu gravierenden Fehlentscheidungen führen. Im aktuellen Harvard Business Review findet sich ein aufschlussreicher Artikel (Paywall) zum Uniqueness Bias, einer kognitiven Verzerrung, die uns glauben lässt, dass unsere Probleme oder Projekte einmalig sind. Die Autoren zeigen: Wer sich für einzigartig hält, trifft oft schlechtere Entscheidungen, unterschätzt Risiken und ignoriert wertvolle Erfahrungen anderer.

weiterlesen …

Vielen Dank, dass Du Dir die Zeit genommen hast, diesen Newsletter zu lesen. Ich hoffe, die Inhalte konnten Dich inspirieren und Dir wertvolle Impulse für Dein (digitales) Leben geben. Bleib neugierig und hinterfrage, was Dir begegnet!

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EpicMind – Weisheiten für das digitale Leben „EpicMind“ (kurz für „Epicurean Mindset“) ist mein Blog und Newsletter, der sich den Themen Lernen, Produktivität, Selbstmanagement und Technologie widmet – alles gewürzt mit einer Prise Philosophie.

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Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet. Das Artikel-Bild wurde mit ChatGPT erstellt und anschliessend nachbearbeitet.

Topic #Newsletter

The Pre-Raphs looked at paintings in their time and decided that art, beginning with Raphael, had moved in the wrong direction. So they sought to return to an earlier aesthetic – one that was pre-Raphael. The idea that we look backwards to better times when things go wrong seems common to me. That approach has fueled my newly found love for open-source software and user-repairable hardware.

One area I've been reconsidering is my web host. I have no complaints about Squarespace except that I'm not likely their target customer. I may have been their ideal customer 10 or 15 years ago, but now they seem more focused on businesses than the small blogger. I suspect that most small bloggers are on Substack these days hoping to monetize their writing.

I considered hosting my own WordPress server but decided that I don't want to invest the effort (especially after the Anthropic debacle). As I'm moving forward with A Dark Wind Howls, I'm finding my time constrained.

So I investigated. It was a toss-up between a small company in New York and a couple of companies in Switzerland. Cory Doctorow has been discussing the “post-American internet” (one that's more free of government surveillance, which is to say an internet that's more free), so I thought I'd try the Swiss hosts. I use Proton, which is also based in Switzerland, for virtually all of my online needs, and overall they've been outstanding.

While I love Proton, my experience with these other Swiss companies was underwhelming. One host even asked me to send my passport to them over bare email (not even offering an encrypted link) to which I replied with a hard “no.” Apparently, no one has told them about identity theft. So, I switched to the company in New York, named Write.as.

Write.as is its own open-source platform, distinct from WordPress. I could self-host it if I wanted. What I like about Write.as is that its founder, Matt, isn't someone who's trying to take over the world. He's trying to build a sustainable business that will last his lifetime. How refreshing. He comes across as the antithesis of the Doctor Evil tech bro Silicon Valley type. When you read his blog you learn that he's someone who's out starting writing groups. Like Framework, that's the sort of company I want to support – someone who isn't shitting on their users and the world.

It helps that Write.as and I share the same aesthetic – a blog that looks like a book page. Visually, all I've really had to do is change the fonts.

So, unless something goes drastically wrong, this will be my last Squarespace post. If you subscribe via my newsletter, you'll receive a confirmation email soon asking you to confirm your interest. If you're an RSS reader, I'll submit a 301 redirect which should transfer the feed. Please visit bleifus.com and resubscribe if you don't see a new post for a while.

While, based on my experience, the world might not be quite ready for a post-American internet, that time is coming. Until then, I think it's certainly ready for open-source software and dis-empowering these tech bro Silicon Valley companies.

モーニングはサンマルクで食べた。 フレンチトーストとアイスのセットがあったので、もともとはサンドを食べる予定だったが、朝からそれを食べることにした。 朝からアイスを食べることはあまりない。

漫才を書かないとな、と思いながらも、いまいちやる気が出ない。 まあ、別にやらないといけないわけでもない。 誰か自分をぶったたいてくれないかと思いつつ、ぶったたかれるにも実績がいる。

会社に行くたび、コーヒーメーカーもウォーターサーバーもないため、毎日300円ほど払っているのが本当にむずがゆい。 それでAmazonでポータブルケトルを買うことにした。 ポータブルケトルは意外と安い。 買おうとしていたメーカーの商品を見たら、グリーンは3,000円で売られていて、ホワイトは4,500円だった。 グリーン、売れ残りすぎだろと思いながら、グリーンを購入。

あとはスティック状のインスタントコーヒーと紙コップ。 これを会社に持っていかないといけないのか。 全然スマートじゃないから、あまり好きな行為ではないけど、毎日コーヒーを買うよりはマシか。

「〇〇よりマシ」で済ませていると、また不幸になっていくんだろうなあ。 まずは上司に「コーヒーメーカーとか置かないんですか？」と聞くのが先なのではないだろうか。

夜はツナパスタ。 シンプルな味付けに鰹節が効いていて美味しい。

結局、今の自分はGWの休日に守られているので、今日も柔らかい空間の中に収まり、その日をやり過ごす。

Pittsburgh is a sports town. Especially when things are going well for the local teams, the rhythm of their seasons directly affects the pace of life in the city. I follow the local teams more closely some seasons than others, but I like that, even when I'm not actively keeping up with them, I know how they're doing by a kind of osmosis just from existing here. 

And that's one of the things that's fun about sports, I think—it creates this collective experience that connects people across an entire region, a shared touchstone of identity that unites across other dividing lines. That also makes it useful for storytellers. It can be a setting to bring two disparate people together, or a telling detail that automatically anchors the reader in a specific place. 

There are other things that make sports useful for writers, too. If you're looking for ways to build tension, for example, you can mine tons of them from sports. They have a ticking clock, built-in stakes, and natural good guys and bad guys. They're also active. The characters are constantly in motion and interacting with each other and their environment. Of course, writing about sports also has its challenges, which I've written about before on this blog, but it's still a setting and world that I like playing around in with my stories. 

I've been in the mental world of sports writing lately because I've been in late-stage edits on a hockey time loop story that I've been fiddling around with for a while. Because that's another cool thing about sports—they don't necessarily need to only live in the real, expected world, but can have a role in fantasy worlds, alternate realities, and far futures. You also don't need to directly write about sports to use the ideas behind them as a device in your writing. I wrote up a few sports-themed writing prompt for an event I participated in related to the NFL draft last week, and I figured since I was already in this headspace it was a good time to share a few of them here. 

Prompt #1: Sports lingo. 

Sports come with their own unique language and terminology. Some of these are used across various sports—think about broad concepts like scoring points or penalties. But pretty much every sport also has its own set of words that define it. If a quarterback throws a touchdown, you know you're on a football field; if the winger shoots a one-timer on the power play, you're in a hockey arena. 

That distinctive language can also be used metaphorically by applying it to other parts of life. We already do this on a daily basis in conversation. Idioms like step up to the plate, out of left field, jump the gun, on the ropes, and par for the course all started with sports before gaining traction as everyday expressions. All of these phrases are so commonly used that they can feel like cliches if you use them in creative work, but there are plenty more terms where those came from that aren't used as often in metaphoric language. 

This prompt is going to play with some of them. To do it:

1. Pick a sport that you're familiar with. This doesn't need to be a professional team sport like football or baseball—it could be anything from racing to golf to bowling to running marathons.

2. Think of an important relationship in your life, then brainstorm some ways that concepts or terms from your chosen sport could apply in a metaphorical way to aspects of that relationship.

3. Write a poem or scene incorporating those words or ideas. 

Prompt #2: Play-by-play.

While we're thinking about language, let's take a second to play with voice. One voice that's shared by any televised sport is that of the commentator's play-by-play. The pace of this varies depending on what sport it is, from the frenetic high-energy calls of soccer, hockey, or basketball to the more measured and low-key commentary behind a baseball game or golf tournament. But regardless of the sport, these have some things in common. When the athletes are active, the commentary describes what's happening (making use of lots of those unique terms we talked about in the last prompt). During lulls, the commentators fill in the space with context: facts about the players, how the outcome of this match will impact the standings, or historical context on past matches and how this one compares. 

This kind of format could be applied to a story, too, and we're going to play with that form in this prompt. To start, pick a moment to focus on. You could use a moment from a work in progress that you want to play with from a different angle, or come up with something new (if you're coming up with a new one, also take a second to think about the character(s) involved and where this moment is taking place). 

Once you've figured out those details, write the moment in the style of a sports play-by-play. Try to emulate the idea flow of sports commentary along with the voice, using the lulls between actions in the present scene to fill in any necessary details about the character(s) or the events that led to this moment.

Prompt #3: Sports of the future.

Sports have a way of enduring even while culture around them changes. Some current pro teams were founded in the 19th century, like Sheffield FC in the UK or the Chicago Cubs here in the US. Of course, the sports have also evolved in the hundred-plus years that those teams have existed—if a fan from those early years were teleported to the stands of a modern game, a lot of things would be strange for them, but there'd still be aspects of the game and traditions that they'd recognize. 

For this prompt, we're going to into the future another 100 years, to 2126, and picture the sports of the future. To start, pick a sport that exists in the present day and brainstorm what it might be like in 2126. What parts of the game do you imagine would stay the same, and what might change? What about the spectator experience—how might the way that fans watch games or engage with the sport evolve in the next century? 

Once you've thought about that, imagine that a major championship event is about to happen. Write a scene or poem from a fan's perspective as they prepare to watch it. Think about how the sport plays into the characters identity and day-to-day life, and how the world around the sport has changed, too, as you're writing through the moment. 

Prompt #4: Family legacy.

Now that we've zoomed forward into the future, let's also take a second to linger on those long sports roots that I mentioned in the last prompt. In places where the same teams have played for decades, it's very common for that fandom to get passed down along with other family traditions. And this doesn't just happen with professional teams—the same can happen with college sports, or even the local high school team. 

For this prompt, start by picturing a family that has rooted for the same team across at least 3 generations. This can be your own family or a made-up one, and you don't need to stick to real sports if you don't want to—this could be a fun way for speculative writers to explore a new aspect of a world they've built. Once you've decided on those basic details:

1. Brainstorm what traditions the family might have related to this sports fandom that span across three generations. 

2. Now, think about how those different generations might do things differently in how they root for or watch their team of choice. These could be universal changes, like the shift from listening to games on the radio to watching on TV, or an individual change, like if one of the family members moved to a different country and now watches games at an expat bar. 

3. For the last step, write a scene or poem that shows members from 3 generations of the same family watching the same game. They could be watching it together or separately, whatever works best for your characters. In the course of writing it, aim to highlight both the similarities and the differences in their experiences with watching the game. 

See similar posts:

#WritingExercises #WritingAdvice #Sports