Lee Clemmer {dot} com

Bring the tyranny by your inbox to an end: slash your incoming email and organize the ones you’ve got and get. If you’re chained to the computer and depend on email in any kind of serious way, this is key. You may want to start by reading my earlier post on this topic or the excellent post over on zenhabits: Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox.

Speaking of Zen Habits, it has just posted a yearly roundup of its best of the best in this, its first year. Moreover, it has gone from 2 to 24000+ readers in just a year… I’m turning green with envy. Browsing the list of titles it really comes as no surprise, however. Merging of computers and humans is no longer science fiction (just think of all those goobers running around with phone pieces in their ear, looking like androids), and HCI, or Human-Computer Interaction, is indeed an academic field all unto its own. It would stand to reason then that the need for zen practices - or let’s call it living-in-harmony-practices - concerning daily life should emerge; daily life marked by the ubiquitousness of the computer.

So zen out man, zen out.

For some time now, a year in fact, I’ve been toying with the idea of shaving with an old-school razor. It bothers me to some extent that I am “hooked on” and locked into having to buy expensive Gilette razor cartridges over and over. I remember when I received my first Mach3 in the mail for my 18th birthday: “Free razor, cool!” I thought to myself. In retrospect it was just a great marketing move by the razor company to keep me hooked for life. In case you’re wondering, Gilette (from what I recall) actually “invented” the practice of creating a product that had refillable parts so that you become a life-long customer. SwifferJets, printers, and many other products operate on the same principle: make money on the refills. Kind of disgusting when you stop to think about it.

Well, apparently I’m not the only one who’s thought of going old-school on shaving: “The Zen of Shaving: How a Double-edge Razor Can Change Your Life” is a great post on the advantages of traditional shaving techniques and how to actually go about it. Here’s another one: “I Shave the Old Fashioned Way - Classic Shaving 101.”

Now, as with so many other things, I just have to start being about it, not talking about it. Uh.