I've started an as-yet short playlist on YouTube named “Orderly and Disciplined Work”, intending it to collect videos that in some way document methodical, detail-oriented, clean, well-organized, and calm workspaces and processes. This is part of my ongoing attempts to encourage those qualities in my own work and in the various places I do that work, which include, at the moment, my work office, home office, workshop, garage, and kitchen.

Feburary 24, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of Estonian independence! As one of their many good ideas, the organizers of the centennial year celebrations have suggested that anyone might offer a birthday gift to the Estonian Republic, anything from a new symphony to baking a special cake to planting an oak tree. Here's a small gift from me.

In the upper-right corner of this site, I've added an overlay banner displaying the EV100 logo (an absolutely brilliant piece of graphic design work, by the way) and linking to the EV100 website. Fortunately the official color palette is nicely compatible with my own! I'll leave it up here for the rest of this centennial year.

As part of a personal goal to organize my work supplies a bit better, I created a sort of visual checklist of the things I carry, or would like to make sure I carry, in my everyday backpack. To organize the list according to what things go in what pockets (and to get some drawing practice), I made a sketch of my pack (EM brand, naturally) so that I could call out each compartment specifically. Click on the image to download a PDF.

If you carry a lot of stuff in a backpack, briefcase, toolbox, or whatever, try it yourself! Don't worry about your drawing skills—a more schematic or cartoon-like sketch would work just as well. Or take a photo and use that. Be sure to share your results!

Working in open plan offices and other noisy environments has made it obvious to me that I (probably this is true for everybody else, too) can't do my best work without a certain amount of privacy. In fact, “isolation” would not be too a strong a word to describe the most productive environment for me. When my various workplaces fall short of the monastic austerity and complete solitude I imagine to be ideal, which is always, noise cancelling headphones have been an enormous help. I'm using a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-ANC1 at the moment and am very pleased with them, although their on-ear design may be physically uncomfortable for some. Of course, noise cancellation is far from perfect and voices still come through, but filling the headphones with some kind of audio signal helps make up the difference. Music is often too distracting on its own, but I have a few favorite audio loops that are just enough to mask off the world without wearing on my concentration themselves:

• SimplyNoise is a website with white, pink, and brown noise generators, any of which can be amplitude modulated by a slowly varying sinusoid. I suspect the oscillation prevents my mind from getting too good at filtering the noise out and picking up voices again.
• RainyMood.com offers a recording of a rainstorm with occasional thunder. This audio signal is certainly more structured than the other noise sources I use, but the sound of rain is so natural that it's not usually able to break my concentration.
• My absolute favorite, though, has to be this 24-hour long (!) YouTube video of the ambient engine noise heard on the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I grew up with ST:TNG, and I have to admit there's something very comforting about getting some work done with this particular soundtrack!

For more on the relationship between sensory stimulation and workplace productivity, I recommend Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which, among other influences, has lately given teeth to my desire for a quiet and focused workplace.

Picture it with me: an MMO based in the Italian Renaissance. Races could correspond to the various city-states of Italy, or to foreign nations, perhaps. Play as:

• Merchants (sea voyages out of Venice, perhaps?)
• Unscrupulous churchmen
• Stiletto-armed assassins
• Scheming Medicis
• Your typical painter-sculptor-scientist-architect renaissance genius (should be an epic roll, this!)

Imagine riding into battle atop some Leonardo-designed war machine! Fencing with rapiers! Imagine going on quests:

• Steal the head of John the Baptist for the glory of Florence
• Dissect executed prisoners to level up in Anatomy
• Bring back exotic goods from around the Mediterranean
• Earn yourself an equestrian statue in your city-state's palazzo with military exploits

There's something very appealing about this, at least to me. It would be just the thing to finally get me to play an MMO.