Files

T

Tom e73455d2ca Reorganise into two books plus shared theory and essays

theory/                 EVIDENCE.md + THEORY.md, shared by everything
  a-days-walk/            Book One: CHAPTERS, CRAFT, FIELD_BRIEF, OUTLINE, drafts/
  seasonal-intelligence/  Book Two: OUTLINE
  essays/                 the six pieces
  archive/                superseded originals, unmaintained by design
  PORTFOLIO.md            the split and the sequence

Adds a README to each directory. Cross-references updated to the new
layout; archive/ references left broken deliberately, as those are
historical documents.

Also revises chapter 6 of Book One: the notification scene is now four
items rather than four hundred, since the narrator is a light user. The
low volume is stronger evidence than a flood would have been - it is the
case the attention-economy account cannot explain. Tracked as A26 in the
argument ledger, planted in the prologue and chapter 1.

2026-07-25 18:47:33 +02:00

2.9 KiB

Raw Blame History

Essays

Six pieces, publishable before either book exists. They do four jobs: find out whether the voice is there, test which ideas land before a year is spent on them, build the platform any publisher will ask about, and each one becomes a chapter draft.

Written roughly in ascending order of difficulty. Claims are governed by ../theory/EVIDENCE.md; for register, ../a-days-walk/CRAFT.md applies to anything that will end up in Book One.

1. Stress Hunger

Personal essay · ~2,000 words · needs nothing you don't already have

Ravenous after a day at a desk. Barely hungry after four days walking with a pack. The observation, the cortisol literature, and an honest admission that the specific mechanism is a guess.

Write this first. Shortest distance to a finished piece, pure voice, lowest stakes. It requires no trail, no research trip and no permission. If writing it is a pleasure, the book is worth two years. If it's a grind, that's worth knowing now.

→ Book One ch. 12

2. Why 5,000 Steps in a Forest Beat 10,000 in a Corridor

~1,500 words

The salience-environment argument on Bratman 2015 — ninety minutes in grassland versus ninety minutes on a road, same duration, different brains coming back. Best evidence-to-length ratio in the whole project and the most shareable thing in it.

→ Book One ch. 12

3. The Dopamine Detox Is the Wrong Fix

~2,500 words · contrarian

The reward-hacking story is real but shallow; the mechanism is misfiled relevance. The detox literature is behind you — abstinence has the weakest record, and changing how people use platforms beats quitting.

→ Book One ch. 6 and 10

4. Within a Day's Walk

~4,000 words · the flagship

The three-distance model itself. This is the piece a book proposal gets built on. Write it fourth, once the first three have taught you the register.

Pitch high: Aeon, Noema, The New Atlantis. In Czech, Vesmír, Respekt or Deník N would each take a different version of it.

→ Book One Part II

5. The Middle of the Night

~2,500 words

Biphasic sleep, with the Ekirch/Yetish dispute as the story rather than a footnote. The contested evidence makes it better: a thing we assumed was human nature turns out to be a Western European habit.

→ Book Two ch. 4

6. January Is the Worst Time to Change Your Life

~1,500 words · seasonal hook

Publish in late December. Tests Book Two's market for almost nothing, and the argument survives even though the neuroscience doesn't — because it's made from cultural design, not brain states.

→ Book Two ch. 6

Sequence

Essays 1–3 — three months. Find the voice; confirm you want this.
Essay 4, pitched high — the credibility piece.
Book One proposal plus three sample chapters.

The only irreversible mistake available right now is spending another twelve months on structure. Essay 1 is roughly a weekend.

2.9 KiB Raw Blame History Unescape Escape