No. 111 Toto toilets, fear of death, liquid glass, and more....
No. 111 • 6/13/2025
Dear readers,
Welcome to issue number 111 of The High Pony. That's a fun number. Hope you enjoy!
What I’m up to writing / teaching / speaking….
- Scheduling a Livestream with YouTube stars, Nicole van der Hoeven and Tris from No Boilerplate to discuss A System for Writing and all things zettelkasten. Shooting for end of this month. Details to come. Looking forward to this one!
- Been working on a single chapter of a new book for, like, six months. Grueling. Hope you like learning about how having strict intentions for what you want to take away from a book can both help and harm your reading experience. Sexy.
What we’re up to on the property….
- After a long and very wet winter, we finally got the saw mill running. That is, not before it poured (again), and we had to free up some levers that rusted shut, unclog the hose that brings water to the blade so it doesn't melt, and fix the saw blade that skipped off the flywheel three times in thirty minutes, which ultimately led to us changing the saw blade entirely, cuz it got bent to shite. But, we did manage to mill two sides of a giant white oak "bench" (aka big square log to sit on), and about ten beautiful red pine boards destined for the floor of a studio we're hoping to build.
What my book, A System for Writing, is up to....
- Almost a year since publication, and the reviews keep coming (translated from German):
"In his book (written in English), Bob Doto deals with the zettelkasten system in its entirety. Anyone who felt more insecure than inspired by Sönke Ahrens will find a clear structure here — both in terms of organization within the note box and the writing process. As far as I know, this is the only book that really comprehensively explains all important aspects of building a note box, I am happy to give it 5 stars."
Now for the high ponies….
"Game-ify Your Tasks" is an old story, but I get it
For the past ten years, "Game-ify it!" has been the go-to, universal advice online talking heads give for unfun tasks. Don't wanna wash the dishes? Game-ify it! Don't wanna check your emails? Game-ify it! Don't wanna write your next newsletter? Game-ify it! The idea is simple and not entirely unfortunate: if you turn what you don't wanna do into a rewards-based system (the kind where dopamine gets released / i.e., the kind where you check things off lists and watch your "progress meter" go up), you'll be more likely to check those bummer tasks of your list.
Of course, the problem with this approach is that it circumvents any self-inquiry as to why you avoid beneficial tasks in the first place. Game-ification is the perfect capitalist response to procrastination. And, like a handful of capitalist-coded things.... I get it. As Laurie Hérault says:
The rule is simple: the more you procrastinate on a task, the more you should break it down into micro-tasks, even ones that take just 2 to 5 minutes in extreme cases.
I agree ten thousand percent with breaking down unfun tasks into multiple tiny bits that can be checked off a list, which I talk about in this video. Instead of putting "Clean the bathroom" on your to-do list, put "Gather cleaning supplies," "Remove all the towels," "Sweep the bathroom floor," "Wipe down sink," etc.
Cleaning the bathroom sucks. But, wiping down the sink ain't no thing.
https://www.laurieherault.com/articles/a-thermal-receipt-printer-cured-my-procrastination
What's really behind your fear of death?
I find if you push people to dig a little deeper, very few are afraid of dying. What they're really afraid of is dying alone ("in their own ooze," as my wife and I call it). They're afraid of a potential pain associated with dying. They're afraid of leaving their partner alone. They're afraid of dying in public, on a bus, around strangers. They're afraid of being afraid the moment they realize they're gonna die.
My guess is you're not of death, you're afraid of everything that leads up to and surrounds death. So, if you wanna approach life like a fearless samurai, no need to conquer Fear of Death. Explore instead:
- Why you think you have no one around to take care of you when you die
- Why you're afraid of a fear that hasn't occurred yet and that you may not even experience
- Why pain looms so largely in your mind
- Why you think dying in front of strangers (and not your significant other) would be so bad
Examining these fears will not only speak to your so-called Fear of Death, but, more importantly, your fear of what's going on for you emotionally here and now.
Which kind of healthy are you?
Are you "healthy do," "healthy don't," or "healthy both?"
"Healthy do" people add healthy habits while letting the unhealthy ones remain (i.e., eating a whole avocado to "cancel out" having just eaten six bags of "Blue Heat" Takis). "Healthy don't" people remove unhealthy habits, but don't add any healthy ones (i.e., not eating six bags of "Blue heat" Takis, but also not eating a whole avocado to fill the caloric gap). "Healthy both" people do a little of each. They remove the baddies while introducing the goodies.
Of course, everyone is gonna say they're both. Cuz they are. As am I. But, which one are you really? What's your go-to?
Liquid Glass is coming for your iPhone (and your eyeballs)
Much of my childhood can be summed up with this factoid: I got into bands right when they were about to break up or recently did. Nation of Ulysses? Just broke up. Jane's Addiction? Broke up a year or two later. The same holds true for "tech."
I've never had an iPhone. It started because I had a thing for "widgets," which back in the day, iPhone didn't support. Now, after much deliberation, I've decided to move over to Apple to complete my "laptop + iPad + phone" trifecta. Of course, now everyone's talking about leaving iPhone cuz Apple is set to introduce "liquid glass." And, people hate it.
Cue text from wife:
"Oh people will be mad for like 4 minutes and then they'll get used to it and we'll never hear of it again"
No punctuation. All insight.
Subtext: Apparently, we're a couple who texts each other about Apple software releases even though we don't really care about Apple software releases.
Always keeping it spicy.
Using anecdotes as a way to "ground" or "humanize" a book's content has gotten way out of hand
The overwhelming majority of productivity books to come out in the past five years—I don't care if they're touting a "mindful" or "slow" approach—are just bad. Bad bad bad. And, while I soooo wanna name names, if you're in the pkm / productivity sphere, you know the books I'm talking about. Those books by those people with many followers on Twitter.
There's a lot that makes these books bad (the fact that they're basically inflated blog posts is just one of the many reasons). But, what really bugs me is their reliance on anecdotes.
Anecdotes are stories people pepper throughout their books in an effort to "humanize" or "make relatable" the content. Telling a story about how their mother always salted the pasta water as a way to show how "systems are present in everyday life." Stuff like that.
I blame Ryan Holiday, who I genuinely appreciate and consider a Very Smart Dude, and whose books I'll probably never read, but who I do watch on YouTube and do listen to his talks, and who's made a career out of telling nominally interesting stories about well-known people to drive home his points. But, most people are not Ryan Holiday.
So, if you're thinking of going this route, take heed....
One or two benign stories is fine. But, a whole book of them just tells me you're radically uninteresting. Instead of telling me how Thomas Edison really didn't invent the ightbulb by himself, but had a team working with him, and how that shows we all need the support of our fellow humans, tell me about that time you fell into a pit of quicksand. Tell me about the shark attack. Tell me about the ghost that lives under your bed.
No one cares about the fact that you aced your SATs cuz you studied really hard night before. Tell us about how you studied really hard, cuz your parents were fighting (again), and the only place you could go to get away from the chaos was your own head, working out which trains get where at which time from which station.
Toto toilets are an incredible experience, but....
Speaking of benign personal stories....
Once, when pondering whether to buy a Toto toilet, my wife and I went to the Toto showroom in Manhattan, where I had her distract the employees so I could climb up and stand on the toilet seat, face forward, and squat as if going to bathroom. No one saw, and we did not buy the toilet. Why?!
For more than a decade (at least), I've taken the "squatting is better for you" approach to "2" to the extreme. And, my toilet must comply. So, while I believe Toto smart toilets are smarter than most people, and are what tech should be focusing on, if you're a squatter, a Duravet toilet is really the best. Toto seats are all sort of narrow. All sorts of pitched forward.
Mushrooms speak to one another
A couple weeks ago, my wife spotted an enormous cache of oyster mushrooms growing on a dead tree on our property. She cleaned them, cooked them, turned some into broth, and proceeded to get freaked out by them (cuz bugs) and abandoned the first of many homesteading ventures.
Seeing as mushrooms apparently speak to each other in a language all their own, I wonder if we're getting a bad reputation as mega poseurs among mushrooms.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/06/fungi-electrical-impulses-human-language-study
Bonus Poné
And, that's that! See ya next week.
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