I happen to live in a city that I once visited on vacation.

Because of this, I often wonder: In a given moment, when I'm not actually working, what is the difference between being on vacation and not being on vacation?

Well, I'll tell you: It's doing the dishes. But a big part of it is the mindset. I've learned that I can be "on vacation" by changing my attitude.

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I recently discovered an expert in a subject I'm interested in.

Studying his work has been intense. I'm reading his book, but I don't fully understand it. I understand the articles on his website more than the book, but I have to reread them multiple times to really get the concepts. And then, implementation of the new ideas is still beyond me.

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I figured something out recently that looked an awful lot like something I had figured out already.

It had to do with branding and business strategy, something I'm already pretty opinionated on. In short, I believe that a lot of the frameworks that are being presented as necessary and universal are not, and don't need to be implemented on a certain timeline (or at all).

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Around March of each year, there's a crop of eighth graders who think that they aren't learning anything.

They are bored and frustrated with their teachers, classmates, and schoolwork. In our tiny homeschool program, they have the luxury of believing that they would feel differently if they went to a traditional public school.

They say that they're ready for high school and just want to be there already. They don't know that they're exactly where they should be.

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In the language-learning app I use, like so many games and gamified platforms, it takes an ever-increasing number of points to graduate to each subsequent level.

For example, it might take 100 points of gameplay to go from level 1 to level 2, and 1000 points to get from level 9 to level 10.

This is good game design, taking advantage of the nature of operant conditioning.

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