September

Even better, I understand where the productivity came from. Much of the credit goes to my routine, which, in a nice self-referential twist, I was using and writing about at the same time; the rest goes to the fact that I wasn't trying to do anything besides write, a point that is discussed in Free Time. (Actually, some of the credit has to go to the fact that I've bought into the idea that a batch is “for” a particular month. That makes the start of the month into a deadline.)

By chance, the essays are divided equally among two sets.

The first set is the one I mentioned back in June, that started with Flexibility and Mind Maps. I don't really have a name for the set … this time the essays are all about time, routine, and attention, but next time (yes, it's not done yet) they'll be mostly about organization and infrastructure. Basically, the set consists of a bunch of related stuff that has never quite crystallized for me, and I'm writing about it as a means of understanding it. (Writing always advances my understanding, but usually I have the main idea in hand before I start.)

Anyway, you can find most of the essays filed under Time (Not Enough Time is the only one that's not new), and you can get to the rest by following prose links.

The second set consists of two incredibly ancient incomplete essays, Selection and Convergent Evolution, plus various essays that support them. (I think the overview of evolution is particularly nice.) The two essays do have some tenuous connections to the first set, but I'd been meaning to finish them in any case. The fact that they both turned out to be exceedingly long indicates, I think, that one shouldn't accumulate too many notes in one place … better to write a short essay and then refer back to it in various other contexts.

In both sets, there are a lot of cross-references between essays. I apologize if that makes them seem all tangled up, but hey, that's why they're part of the glue!

Finally, I have a technical change to report: I'm going to make the entire project available as a single file again. I did that for two months back in 2002 (see An Experiment), but this time I think I'll keep it as a permanent feature of the site … I really like the idea of the file being scattered all over the place. Anyway, the file is up on my home page.