Volūmen is a personal repository where I occasionally post my notes. However, I mainly use notebooks and write by hand to process my thoughts. The term volūmen is Latin for “scroll” referring to a rolled manuscript. In ancient Rome, a volūmen (plural: volūmina) was the standard format for written texts before the codex, or bound book, became common.
2025-11-27
2025-11-27
The rosewood fingerboard and the U-shaped maple neck immediately caught my eye. I recognized this fine instrument instantly; it was the same Telecaster we had seen during our visit to Tokyo last year. And now, here I was, holding it in my hands, this time at the Fender Flagship Store in Harajuku. It felt and sounded incredible. What a thrilling yet confusing moment, torn between desire and indecision. In the end, we bought it and brought it home safely, thanks to the exceptional care and service of the ANA staff at Haneda Airport.
2025-10-30
This morning, I experienced deep satisfaction in rediscovering the tastes, sounds, and sensations I can effortlessly perceive, which profoundly affect my mind. Many advocate practicing gratitude to achieve such effects, yet prescriptive approaches may diminish the impact of these effects. Instead, I believe in cultivating a mindful life through a personal practice, discovered and developed individually, rather than adhering to fashionable methods for a quiet and peaceful life.
2025-10-29
The act of using a good pen or pencil overrides the dissatisfaction one feels from bad-looking handwriting. I currently don’t like how my handwriting looks; imprecise lettering, frequent errors, and sometimes crossing out words when I can’t erase them make the written page look suboptimal. That said, with this pen and this notebook, I still enjoy transferring my thoughts onto paper. And when I look back on these written pages, they actually don’t look that bad; they possess qualities beyond pristine, almost sanitized handwriting. I like to think it’s similar to something handmade; perfection in imperfection, beauty lying in the meaning the written words carry, not only in what they display. Needless to say, beautifully legible handwriting is still something I strive for; however, the tension in my grip and the clutter in my mind often negatively influence it.
2025-10-21
From Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore, (Murakami, 2006) translated into English by Philip Gabriel. The passage appears in a section where the character Oshima is speaking to Kafka Tamura about talent, discipline, and what Murakami calls “the plateau of talent.”
They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort. Because they haven’t had the discipline pounded into them. They’ve been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they’ve been able to play things well without any effort and they’ve had people telling them how great they are from the time they’re little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They’ll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher figures they’ve put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a certain element required for character building. It’s a tragedy.
2025-10-20
The more plugins you have, the more distracted you become in your text editor, defeating the purpose of having it in the first place. Similarly, the more pedals you collect, the farther you drift from focusing on your playing. Ironically, the very tools meant to help you make music end up getting in the way of making it. The same applies to many pursuits in life: the more we add, the less we often create.
Then there’s the moment of insight, an idea that illuminates us. Instead of developing it deeply, we start searching for more, thinking that quantity will lead to quality. Somehow, we’d rather have ten ideas that might work than one that truly does. Again, the more we add, the less we focus on what actually works.
2025-09-27
When I seek guidance, I turn to books. Classical philosophy and strategy teach leadership and discipline, especially during workplace challenges (Machiavelli, 1998; Musashi, 2005; L. Tzu & Needleman, 1989; S. Tzu, 2005). The Stoics highlight life’s fragility (Aurelius, 2003; Seneca, 1997). Modern thought provides clarity in varied ways: mindfulness practices (Suzuki, 2020), philosophical ideas (Frankfurt, 2005; Watts, 2007), science revealing hidden patterns (Penrose, 2004; Rovelli, 2022), probability and risk as subtle forces (Taleb, 2005), and problem-solving as daily practice (Polya & Conway, 2014). The human condition, shown in literature, remains compelling (Greene, 2019; Murakami, 2022; Rutherfurd, 2010).
I prefer durable, straightforward hardware. For writing, I use Leuchtturm1917 and MD notebooks, mechanical pencils, simple fountain pens, and sticky notes. My daily devices include an iPhone, an iPad Air, a Mac Studio, and two SSDs, supported by older peripherals. For leisure, I use Apple TV, Sony headphones, and Sonos speakers. For music, I play older Fender and Gibson guitars, a tube amplifier, and a digital effects unit.
I like to keep my tools simple. At home, I use macOS’s built-in apps and Homebrew to manage software. Bash and Python handle automation. For writing and research, I move through Obsidian, Pandoc, Positron, Quarto, and Zotero. KeePassXC and NetNewsWire keep things secure and connected, while Spotify and MuseScore take care of the music. By contrast, work feels more like a uniform: the standard Microsoft suite, with a little freedom in Notepad++ for notes and Firefox for the Internet.
Also see Durability
2025-09-16
The greatest worry about the idea of fake news isn’t actually that people believe false news - it’s that they stop believing real news. Phillips (2020)
2025-09-11
I came across this interesting thought on the internet: Consistent daily writing yields a book in a year, while sporadic efforts result in scattered fragments. The impact is profound. The initial effort feels heavy, the first page slow, and the first video awkward, but each effort lays groundwork for the next, multiplying rather than adding. - JA Westenberg
2025-09-07 12:13:00
Corb Lund, a Canadian country and western singer-songwriter from Taber, Alberta, performed a great rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ on Tuff Radio this morning. He’s released twelve albums, with three certified gold. Lund tours regularly in Canada, the US, and Australia, winning awards in both countries. He currently lives in Lethbridge, Alberta, and enjoys his family ranch.
2025-09-07 01:13:00
The Seneca Effect (Bardi, 2017), as explained by Ugo Bardi, views complex systems through a systems-thinking lens. Drawing on Seneca’s observation that ”increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid,” the book suggests that systems grow gradually but collapse swiftly due to fragilities, critical thresholds, and negative feedback loops.
In contrast, Everett Rogers’ ”Diffusion of Innovations” (Rogers, 2003) explains how innovations spread through social systems, from innovators to early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Network effects, where a product’s value increases with its user base, accelerate adoption.
The Seneca curve, with slow growth and rapid collapse, contrasts with the viral adoption curve, or ”Hype curve”, which exhibits rapid growth followed by a slower decline. Rogers’ model, driven by social contagion and positive feedback, leads to swift adoption, but enthusiasm may wane as market saturation or limitations emerge.
From a system dynamics perspective, the Seneca Effect is fuelled by negative feedback loops that amplify vulnerabilities, causing rapid collapse. Conversely, the Hype curve is propelled by positive feedback loops, such as network effects and social influence, accelerating adoption but potentially diminishing over time, leading to a gradual decline.
2025-09-06
I once came across this thought, though I can’t recall where: regrets belong to the past, and anxieties to the future. One cannot be at peace with life without truly living it. The past is fixed, the future uncertain and often overwhelming. The mind wrestles with both, but the solution is simple: accept imperfection and move forward.
2025-09-05
Quiet your mind to hear the nuances in the notes. Slowing down and calming the mind unveils hidden harmonies, textures, and rhythms. While this is a learning exercise, it also yields a delightful surprise in the resultant sounds.
2025-09-02
When it comes to tools, I prefer those that strike a balance between durability and simplicity. Durable tools endure wear and tear, ensuring their longevity and maximizing the value of investment. Simplicity in design and usage makes tasks easier and more efficient. I value tools that are both durable and user-friendly.
Also see Uses
2025-08-26
I recorded my Week 8 performance, which proceeded smoothly. I have modified my approach by not recording every exercise, instead focusing on daily guitar practice and study. On Day 7, following a breathing session, I played continuously without stopping for mistakes, recording the full set in a single take. I treated it as a real performance, beginning with a breath and concluding with a smile. Today, I forgot to include “Amazing Grace” at the end. There were some mistakes, but they did not affect me. I particularly appreciated the sound of my instrument, on which I focused. My emphasis was on tone rather than speed, except for the last couple of bars of the shuffle in A, where I played slightly faster than the metronome.
2025-08-25
I find myself increasingly drawn to a “one-and-done” philosophy when it comes to worldly possessions. There’s a quiet realization that I don’t have enough time to truly experience or make good use of the things I have, like pens, guitars, and other tools. It seems that to understand something deeply, to let it reveal its full functionality over time, one must live with it for years. Multiplicity divides attention; depth asks for commitment.
2025-08-25
I noticed certain asymmetries that govern the relationship between positive and negative outcomes—for example effort versus gain; especially once a critical point has been passed, such as the point of diminishing returns.
The Pareto distribution provides another example of this kind of asymmetry (roughly 80% of outcomes stem from 20% of causes).
This phenomenon is also discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, particularly in relation to “long tails.” He frequently emphasizes asymmetry and fat-tailed distributions in the context of risk, probability, and decision-making, especially in his books The Black Swan and Antifragile. N. N. N. Taleb (2010) and N. N. Taleb (2012)
2025-08-21
Darwin (Darwin, 2003) documented any information that contradicted his evolving theories and conclusions. He recognized confirmation bias long before it had a name and developed a practical system to counteract it. I try to do the same when reading or listening to podcasts. Here’s an idea that goes against the grain:
Chinese economist Keyu Jin discusses the Chinese motto “quick, flat, fast.” While it’s considered a short-term trend, short-termism prioritizes immediate profit or reward, quick execution of projects, and short-term results over long-term results and strategic action.
2025-08-17
Practice with discipline, but without friction, maintaining a calm and steady approach. Take each step deliberately to enter the flow state where progress unfolds. Though progress is not the goal, it arises as a consequence of unintended outcomes. This is the ultimate state of mind, the one that brings true contentment.
2025-08-16
When we travel, there is almost no downtime as we hop from one place to another. Exploration is wonderful. Seeing extraordinary places, nature, and culture often leaves us in overwhelming awe, yet these moments tend to slip away with time, leaving only fragments in our long-term memory. What is almost permanently stored in the mind, however, are some ordinary parts of experiences and the sensations they evoked: a quiet street with rundown houses, yet somehow charming, or a walk on flat terrain by the rice paddies, bringing truly remarkable emotions despite seemingly unremarkable perceptions for most people. I find this hard to grasp and somewhat bizarre, but I must accept it. Ordinary sights, extraordinary memories.
2025-08-14
Daniel Kahneman said most people make quick judgments and then try to prove themselves right. The wisest wait, gather facts, and trust their intuition last.
I recently learned that Kahneman passed away on March 27, 2024, though his death wasn’t announced until March 2025. He was best known for his work on System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is fast and automatic but prone to errors. System 2 is slower and more deliberate, used for careful thinking and problem-solving.
2025-08-14
Reflect on what you’ve read and written. Information becomes knowledge by reflection. Reflection cultivates intuition. Abundant intuition makes up for the lack of information, thereby enabling you to operate where your knowledge is limited.
This principle aligns with learning theory, cognitive science, and decision-making.
In short, reflection turns raw data into actionable knowledge, making this principle sound and useful.
2025-08-03
As Donald Knuth wrote in 1974, programmers often waste effort optimizing too early; “premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming” (Knuth, 1974). This sentiment applies beyond code. We often fall into the trap of optimization too early, whether in programming, designing a template, or starting an exercise routine. Instead of putting a functional version to use, we start tweaking it, reshaping it until we barely recognize it. As a result, we lose the value of the original. The code ends up doing things we do not need, the template produces excessive output, and the workout becomes so complicated that it discourages us from following through.
It is often better to stick with the raw idea, no matter how rough or unrefined it may be. If you follow it long enough, perhaps for a year or even a month, you may start to notice natural patterns emerge. Haruki Murakami describes a similar experience in Novelist as a Vocation (Murakami, 2022). Early in his career, feeling constrained by traditional Japanese prose, he began writing in English and then translating the text back into Japanese. The process was not optimal, but it helped him discover a personal voice. Rather than optimizing the method, he committed to it, letting clarity and style emerge over time through repeated practice.
2025-07-24
Borges wrote and lectured extensively on the art of translation, holding that a translation may improve upon the original, may even be unfaithful to it, and that alternative and potentially contradictory renderings of the same work can be equally valid.
2025-05-31
The longer you remain seated and focus on a task, the shallower you breathe, and the less oxygen gets to your brain. Therefore, quickly step away from your work and cycle your attention every 20 minutes. Quickly stepping away from your work to get a drink of water, walk around the block, or go to the bathroom to splash water on your face allows you to consciously regulate your breathing and get more oxygen to your brain (so you can extend your focus session).
During your mini work breaks perform “box breathing” like Navy Seals do before combat:
When you move during your mini work break, you can replenish the neurochemicals you need to focus. Dr. Andrew Huberman says, “Physical movement activates pathways in the brain that increase dopamine, which is the basis for epinephrine (aka, adrenaline) and all neural energy.” In other words, a short movement period can provide the fuel to focus intensely and continue producing at a high level.
Source: Insights from Manage Your Day‐to‐Day by Jocelyn Glei
2025-05-31
Concision is to mind what cleanliness is to the body. Concision, like cleanliness, plays a crucial role in personal and professional life. Just as cleanliness eliminates dirt and clutter from the body, concision eliminates unnecessary words and ideas from communication, leaving behind clear, precise, and effective messages.
A concise mind expresses ideas efficiently, avoiding redundancy or overcomplication—just as a clean body is free from excess grime. In both cases, the result is clarity, ease, and refinement.
2025-05-26
Considering current times, the number of books and mass media, the situation is a lot worse today. Also, no country has fallen as Roman Empire did… So it’s a lot worse but global dynamics also evolved. Untruth existed for a long time and there’s nothing new about mind boggling nonsense that affected (negatively) the history of mankind. From Phillips (2020)
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. - Harry G Frankfurt
Truth had ever one father but lies a 1000 men’s bastards. - Montaigne
We have reason to fear that multitude of books which grows everyday will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of Roman Empire. - Written in 1685 by French Scholar Adrien Baillet
There’s an extremely limited number of ways of being right and an almost infinite number of ways to be wrong.
2025-05-19
In Japanese esthetics pathos of things played a major role in the world’s first novel, Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), going back to the early eleventh century.
The meaning of the phrase mono no aware, simply put, is awareness of impermanence. This brings about some degree of melancholy but mono no aware teaches us the realities of life.
2025-04-22
To begin, you require only a book, a pen, and time. While additional tools may appear beneficial, they can be counterproductive, resulting in negative utility. These tools do not accelerate your work; rather, they consume as much time as you are willing to expend on them.
The essence of productivity lies in performing the work itself. This is the only productivity advice you need and the most valuable guidance you will receive.
You could divert your attention to numerous optimizations, such as managing email, scheduling meetings, organizing notes, maintaining calendars, tracking time, setting goals, creating to-do lists, estimating time requirements, applying prioritization frameworks, using quantified self-sensors, analyzing data, adopting apps, managing documents, or journaling.
However, it is critical to resist the temptation to become mired in these optimizations. Instead, prioritize executing the work. When you focus on the work, all other aspects will naturally optimize themselves.
Also see Good Over Perfect
2025-04-21
The objective is to make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.1 Self-imposed constraints facilitate the simplification of concepts and processes. However, the risk of oversimplification must be considered, as it may compromise the desired outcome. Thus, self-imposed constraints can be regarded as an art form, enabling the effective achievement of goals.
When a task involves numerous steps or requires substantial resources, its completion becomes increasingly challenging. Self-imposed constraints help minimize or eliminate distractions and foster creativity. Creativity, in turn, is the key to originality.
Albert Einstein is known to have said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”↩︎
2025-03-27
When man is spared real struggle, he manufactures his own. Deprived of battle, he wages war against shadows, offended by whispers, unsettled by silence. The absence of hardship does not bring peace; it breeds restlessness.
Work suffers the same fate. Without a higher purpose, we busy ourselves with the trivial, polishing stones that need no shine. We mistake movement for progress, refinement for creation.
Man was not made for stillness. Even in calm waters, his spirit thrashes, yearning for a storm.
2025-02-17
Willpower, like a muscle, can tire. The only question is when.
Rules, like guidelines, help us navigate life. We’ve been taught to follow them since childhood. Think about speed limits, hallway running, and instructions. Rules are everywhere, but we haven’t used them to our advantage. They shape our behaviour and can help us achieve our goals.
Make good choices the default choice.
When you use willpower to make your future self’s choices, create an automatic rule.
Source unknown.
2024-07-25
An advise from Richard Feynman:
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.
2023-10-31
It is more feasible to play and potentially win a game of chess when competing against an opponent who is also adhering to the rules of chess. It is inconceivable to assume otherwise, as an opponent playing a different game would fundamentally undermine the contest. Nevertheless, it is entirely possible for individuals to engage in games without adhering to established rules. A prudent individual must pause and consider whether both parties are indeed playing the same game.
People frequently disregard or bend rules and conventions. Therefore, one should never assume that an opponent is fully aware of the rules or will adhere to the intended structure of the game.
Competent chess players often find it challenging to compete against complete novices, as they are frequently surprised by the unconventional moves novices make.
This principle extends beyond chess to any rule-based interaction, where mutual understanding of conventions is critical.
2023-10-20
Rigid things have a tendency to break. For example, physical things like airplane wings or ships will flex and not break when in turbulence. Non-physical things such as rules, procedures, and protocols, unless flexible, will break when under pressure.
Flexible things have a tendency to adapt. Thus, it’s important to find a balance between rigidity and flexibility. Strong enough to withstand and weak enough to conform and all the while maintain physical and non-physical integrity.
Perfectionism and idealism bring about rigidity; keep that in mind, always. The problem is that you are a perfectionist. The desire for perfection could be a deadly weakness; see Denk (2022).
2023-09-05
Continuous improvement is more valuable than striving for perfection.
2023-07-21
I recall Nassim Taleb’s advice to avoid reading newspapers. If one must engage with them, he suggests reading editions from a year prior, allowing you to assess the news with the benefit of hindsight and a clearer perspective.
News can shape our perceptions in distinct ways:
In our workplaces, communities, or neighborhoods, whether a high-rise building, a city block, or a small town, news circulates constantly, influencing our decisions. To maintain clarity, we must discern what is truly valuable from what is mere noise. Often, this means turning off the news or avoiding newspapers altogether.
2022-12-19
Trying hard doesn’t always bring results. Effort can be wasted if other parts don’t match—like bad eating or poor balance. Success grows slowly but can be lost quickly. Don’t undo what you’re working for.
2018-01-01
Volūmen is built with Pandoc, Python, and the Courier monospace typeface.