In the NYT, I read the obituary of Robert Gore , the inventor of Gore-Tex. Gore-Tex is a porous material made of teflon (made of carbon and fluorine atoms; it repels water very easily). If you have used a hiking equipment, from tents to shoes to jackets, chances are that you've used Gore-Tex. He discovered the material by happenstance: "Mr. Gore sought to make more efficient use of the material by stretching it, not unlike Silly Putty. But each time he heated and stretched a rod of PTFE in his lab, it broke in two. “Everything I seemed to do worked worse than what we were already doing,” he told the Science History Institute in a short film. “So I decided to give one of these rods a huge stretch, fast — a jerk. I gave it a huge jerk and it stretched 1,000 percent. I was stunned.”" It's a story that appeals to the chemist in me. It takes a tinkerer to test unlikely scenarios — it's not easy to acknowledge the limit of one's knowledge. For a chemical engineer,

 Here are the quotes from James Clear's "Atomic Habits" that I found insightful: “When it comes to habits, the key takeaway is this: dopamine is released not only when you experience pleasure, but also when you anticipate it.” “Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out.” “When the effort required to act on your desires becomes effectively zero, you can find yourself slipping into whatever impulse arises at the moment.” “… the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.” “… avoiding a 33 percent loss is just as valuable as achieving a 50 percent gain” “When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out. ”

 I have argued before that a slow-and-steady approach to habit change is superior to obsessive dedication. I would like to add a caveat. A slow-and-steady approach is definitely preferable in matters that are not central to our identity. If I want to learn a new language or write blog-posts regularly, getting started on small doses is the right strategy. However, if your life and career depends on a single activity with time cut-offs, a touch of obsession may be what is needed. Could be your college grades or a revenue-sensitive business — a huge upfront investment of time and resources may be needed.

I discussed before a role of dopamine for motivation and reward-seeking. I want to highlight a paper by  Colin G. DeYoung that tries to establish "a  unifying theory of the role of dopamine in personality."  One of the interesting point that Dr. DeYoung highlights is that " what is uncertain or unpredicted is unique as a class of stimuli in being simultaneously threatening and promising ." The promising nature of uncertainty explains why people like gambling so much. So what do people do when faced with uncertainty, what do people do? They do what every organism is hardwired to do: “… the organism should have two competing innate responses to an unpredicted event— caution and exploration …” I think this is where pessimists (caution) distinguish themselves from optimists (exploration). Pessimists routinely lack the skill to be lucky . Here's DeYoung's overarching theory: “the general function of dopamine is to promote exploration , by facilitating engage

Showing up matters. Often the hardest thing to do is to put in effort when we lack motivation. Everyone has off days. In those days, doing our best counts for a lot. If we want to do something everyday, say read, write, meditate, or exercise, doing less that we do usually can still be valuable. Keep the streak going. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”— Theodore Roosevelt “The best is the enemy of the good.”— Voltaire “Quantity has a quality all its own.” — Thomas A. Callaghan Jr.

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something -- anything -- down on paper.” -- Anne Lamott (Shitty First Drafts) “The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me.” — John McPhee (Draft No. 4) To write a great article in one sitting is folly. What we should instead is to write a suboptimal draft and the next day return to edit it (more than one if necessary).