It's a late Monday evening and I find myself in "another one of those"1 days without anything ready for my Tuesday post. I have to publish something, I think. After all, that's what I've agreed upon with myself. What do I do? I shut down my computer after work and come back to the keyboard a few hours later. I write a few paragraphs and this idea comes to mind. I want to finish early to have time for other things before I go to bed. The alternative—which I manage to do every now and then—is to work on a piece of writing and schedule it for next Tuesday in advance2. That way I can enjoy the peace of mind of shipping early.
In Principles: Life and Work, Ray Dalio uses the "another one of those" expression to signal recurrent decision-making scenarios and points out the benefits of defining rules to decide with the same criteria every time. ↩
Another alternative is to pick a draft that's almost done, or one that's finished, and translate it into Spanish; at least when that's faster than coming up with something new from scratch. ↩
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