I’m an ancient, impoverished Brit who, before our Prime Minister has me euthanized, wishes to pass on ‘what I know before I go.’ Yes, worldly wise tips to transcend various corruptions but interspersed with many joyful illustrations and confidence-building advice.
I’m trying to figure out whether I should try to use Substack or self-publish as a series of ebooks.
In the meantime, I have various obligations to fulfil that seem to take up a great deal of my precious time. I must get more organised!
The most important habit I have, ever since 2019, is that I've journaled every day as the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night, without exception. I use small paper journals from the Dollarstore with a clear vision for how I want my life to look and what is going well in my life on the front of the journal. I typically go through a journal every 8-9 months, so at the start of the journal I write down a goal I have for that period.
At the back of the journal, I put a cipher for my critical passwords for accounts that are most important to me. I try to have 25-30 character passwords that are so long I can't commit them to memory and I never use "Remember my password" features on any system. I have a mental algorithm I remember to have a different 20 characters for the middle sections of my passwords and change the first and last 5-10 characters of each one. I write down those first and last characters in my cipher.
The rationale being that the 20 characters I commit to memory would be very hard to brute force, hence someone who found my journal would not be able to log into any of my accounts without knowing the mental algorithm I have in my head.
At the same time, because I formed the habit of writing in my journal every day, morning and night, I always keep my journal somewhere safe and under my positive control.
While I have a routine for how I write in my journal, I also keep my most cherished memories and darkest secrets written in it.
In particular, because information systems are so prone to corruption (more so know as software quality standards have plummeted in the post-COVID lockdown years), forming this habit is critical, as reliance on digital information is extremely perilous.
You can't trust anything that's stored in the cloud or on some on-premise server owned by a corporation in the post-lockdown era, since no one can be trusted with anything (remember, everyone is lying to everyone all the time about everything, especially everyone in the corporate world).
Even data on local hard drives on mobile devices can't be trusted.
Having the habit of writing something down on physical object you maintain complete control over is the only way to be able to ground your perspective in objective reality, something very few people do these days and I believe is the reason our society is crumbling.
My wife actually taught me that password technique. Her father was a jeweler from a communist country and very often what the government officials (or their useful idiot ANTIFA style anarchist instigators) would do is kidnap jewelers to try to get them to open their safes to steal their gold.
What the smart ones did was keep a written cipher with part of their lock combinations written down, the other part committed to memory.
The jewelers would regularly change their combos so they could not remember the full combo, but needed to refer to their cipher to be able to open the safe.
The idea being that even if you were kidnapped or robbed, if the thief/government threatened to kill you - they would never be able to get the combination in time because the part of the combo needed to open the safe was in your head, but if they stole your cipher, they wouldn't be able to guess the fragment in the combination that wasn't written down and encrypted.
Moreover, under stress (such as a thief holding a gun to your head) you'd never be able to open it without your written cipher, because you didn't memorize the full combination.
Most thieves (besides those from the government) don't want to be murderers (because it's easier to get away with theft than it is murder), so a simple form of layered security like that is a very useful way to leverage human psychology to protect yourself and your assets.
The principle also works with Cybersecurity, as most cyber-criminals resort to emotional tactics to manipulate their victims to divulge confidential information on impulse.
If you have to flip through a paper journal, then mentally decode a cipher to enter a password, you're way less likely to act on impulse to disclose information versus if you have a saved password or even a password you can easily memorize.
Thank you for a timely reminder.
I have drifted off course and need a practical plan to keep me disciplined.
I'm always interested about my readers! What are you working towards (if you can share)?
Very kind of you to ask – thank you!
I’m an ancient, impoverished Brit who, before our Prime Minister has me euthanized, wishes to pass on ‘what I know before I go.’ Yes, worldly wise tips to transcend various corruptions but interspersed with many joyful illustrations and confidence-building advice.
I’m trying to figure out whether I should try to use Substack or self-publish as a series of ebooks.
In the meantime, I have various obligations to fulfil that seem to take up a great deal of my precious time. I must get more organised!
The most important habit I have, ever since 2019, is that I've journaled every day as the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night, without exception. I use small paper journals from the Dollarstore with a clear vision for how I want my life to look and what is going well in my life on the front of the journal. I typically go through a journal every 8-9 months, so at the start of the journal I write down a goal I have for that period.
At the back of the journal, I put a cipher for my critical passwords for accounts that are most important to me. I try to have 25-30 character passwords that are so long I can't commit them to memory and I never use "Remember my password" features on any system. I have a mental algorithm I remember to have a different 20 characters for the middle sections of my passwords and change the first and last 5-10 characters of each one. I write down those first and last characters in my cipher.
The rationale being that the 20 characters I commit to memory would be very hard to brute force, hence someone who found my journal would not be able to log into any of my accounts without knowing the mental algorithm I have in my head.
At the same time, because I formed the habit of writing in my journal every day, morning and night, I always keep my journal somewhere safe and under my positive control.
While I have a routine for how I write in my journal, I also keep my most cherished memories and darkest secrets written in it.
In particular, because information systems are so prone to corruption (more so know as software quality standards have plummeted in the post-COVID lockdown years), forming this habit is critical, as reliance on digital information is extremely perilous.
You can't trust anything that's stored in the cloud or on some on-premise server owned by a corporation in the post-lockdown era, since no one can be trusted with anything (remember, everyone is lying to everyone all the time about everything, especially everyone in the corporate world).
Even data on local hard drives on mobile devices can't be trusted.
Having the habit of writing something down on physical object you maintain complete control over is the only way to be able to ground your perspective in objective reality, something very few people do these days and I believe is the reason our society is crumbling.
Thanks AustismDad!
Regarding passwords, a good technique is a long sentence.
Alternatively BIP 39 passphrase is a really cool way of storing a secret - e.g. how Bitcoin wallets are remembered.
I also find daily practicing your secrets in your head, going through the passcodes, passwords in your head.
Coupled with monthly exercises of accessing secured things in your possession to keep it fresh in your mind.
I like the idea of journaling - to see your progress through life.
My wife actually taught me that password technique. Her father was a jeweler from a communist country and very often what the government officials (or their useful idiot ANTIFA style anarchist instigators) would do is kidnap jewelers to try to get them to open their safes to steal their gold.
What the smart ones did was keep a written cipher with part of their lock combinations written down, the other part committed to memory.
The jewelers would regularly change their combos so they could not remember the full combo, but needed to refer to their cipher to be able to open the safe.
The idea being that even if you were kidnapped or robbed, if the thief/government threatened to kill you - they would never be able to get the combination in time because the part of the combo needed to open the safe was in your head, but if they stole your cipher, they wouldn't be able to guess the fragment in the combination that wasn't written down and encrypted.
Moreover, under stress (such as a thief holding a gun to your head) you'd never be able to open it without your written cipher, because you didn't memorize the full combination.
Most thieves (besides those from the government) don't want to be murderers (because it's easier to get away with theft than it is murder), so a simple form of layered security like that is a very useful way to leverage human psychology to protect yourself and your assets.
The principle also works with Cybersecurity, as most cyber-criminals resort to emotional tactics to manipulate their victims to divulge confidential information on impulse.
If you have to flip through a paper journal, then mentally decode a cipher to enter a password, you're way less likely to act on impulse to disclose information versus if you have a saved password or even a password you can easily memorize.
Helpful advice - thank you!