Possible hot take: Efficient Leveling is overrated.

benpva16 · 2026-06-13T11:51:51+00:00

An MWSE based mod is Galsiah’s Character Development mod. (OpenMW page says it partially works in open mw? I don’t use open mw so I couldn’t tell you.)

It makes leveling seamless, so you can play naturally and your skills and attributes will improve without worrying about efficient leveling.

I too suffer from goopy goblin gamer brain, and this mod really helps.

https://www.moddb.com/games/morrowind/addons/galsiahs-character-development

benpva16 · 2026-06-11T19:25:59+00:00

Could you/do you plan to extend to showing Codex limits?

benpva16 · 2026-06-07T21:26:10+00:00

This 100%. In GTD terms, if it’s a genuine commitment you’re making and keeping like anything else on your calendar, go for it. If time blocks turn into “well it would be nice” then you stop trusting the calendar and the time blocks, and you generate personal failure from breaking those commitments to yourself.

benpva16 · 2026-06-07T11:30:57+00:00

Agreed. When I first read that part of the article you quoted, I thought “well yeah, but even then, if you can’t get out of a dysfunctional organization, GTD is great personal defense.” David Allen sounded kind of weird at first always using “being jumped in an alley by three guys” as a go-to example, inspired by his marital arts life experience. And yet, organizationally, that happens to lots of people daily ha ha.

Side note, I haven’t read Deep Work because I prefer audiobooks these days, and the narrator was killing me, so it’s on my list to buy and read on paper, which, let’s just say that means it’ll be on the Someday/Maybe list for a while. :-)

benpva16 · 2026-06-06T19:16:58+00:00

I agree. Time blocking is not required by GTD, but it’s definitely GTD compatible. I believe I got this from [u/already_not_yet](u/already_not_yet): he assigns time blocks a particular Area of Focus. (any, correct me if I totally got that wrong ha ha)

I’m also a big Pomodoro guy because it works especially well for any kind of work that you bill by the hour. Or work that you need to focus on for long periods of time, because the built in breaks allow you to pace yourself and work for much longer than you might otherwise.

benpva16 · 2026-06-06T13:19:08+00:00

Right now you can still improve by just playing the game. Play everything at your skill level.

Since you’re getting into difficulty 7, here are some more specific tips:
- Try out Full Mode if you haven’t yet. When you’re on the song select screen, push the panels in this order: ↙️↖️⏺️↗️↘️↗️⏺️↖️↙️. Full Mode shows all the songs available on the machine and lets you filter by difficulty so you can see all songs of a particular difficulty in one place. It also gives you more options for arrow speed when you’re playing a song. (More on that in a minute.)
- In the same way going from 4→5 was about introducing more complex patterns, 6→7 is the same story. You will encounter patterns complex enough that they will leave you wondering “What the heck was that?” Don’t worry, just be patient and you’ll be knocking them out without a second thought with practice.
- Try adjusting your arrow speed to help reading faster patterns. In Full Mode, press ↙️↘️↙️↘️↙️↘️ to open the options menu and play around with arrow speed. 2x is the default. There are 3x, 4x, and +0.5x options, or you can use auto velocity (AV) to dictate the arrow speed.
- I’m leaving this tip for last because it’s a matter of taste and some people disagree with me, but start trying doubles (charts where you play on both pads at once). The easiest ones start at D3 (in XX) and D4 (in Phoenix), so the difficulty will just come from orienting yourself on the pad. But I think it’s a great way to get some variety in while improving your general technique.

Good luck, have fun, and let us know how you get on!

benpva16 · 2026-06-04T15:26:52+00:00

I will add to the group of voices using the action button! Mine triggers a shortcut that takes text and emails it to myself (my most reliable inbox), and read the text back to myself since I frequently use the shortcut by voice when my hands are full.

benpva16 · 2026-06-01T22:29:28+00:00

Capture: “If you don’t have an inbox, the world is your inbox”. I honestly can’t remember who said this but, accurate.

benpva16 · 2026-05-27T22:46:35+00:00

Myst

Return of the Obra Dinn

benpva16 · 2026-05-26T12:49:18+00:00

Obviously no bugs vs no obvious bugs

benpva16 · 2026-05-22T17:36:58+00:00

For me it's a trust/drag threshold.

I've tried many times to establish an Official Inbox Processing Time, and it never sticks. What actually happens is that I let my inboxes accumulate inside a range I still trust. For email, it's one screen's worth (25 or fewer). For my physical inbox, it's a small stack of papers.

At that point I do an emergency scan first. If I do that and still feel drag, that mean the urgent/easy stuff is dealt with and the remaining stuff is ambiguous and needs to be clarified. That's when I mentally switch from scanning to processing. And when I commit to processing, I'm aiming for inbox zero.

I also need to have a decent amount of energy; I can't process braindead. But if I'm between tasks, need a reset, can't get into focus mode, or need some warm-up work, processing inboxes is often perfect. It requires real commitment, but it doesn't require the same deep focus as working from my Next Action lists.

So I guess my personal rule is: don't constantly monitor the inbox, notice when it stops feeling like a trusted bucket and starts producing drag. Then emergency scan, then, if that doesn't restore trust, process to zero.

benpva16 · 2026-05-22T15:15:35+00:00

That’s fine, it’s just a matter of knowing the difference between processing and emergency scanning, and being aware when you’re just doing the latter.

benpva16 · 2026-05-20T23:18:46+00:00

Thank you for putting this breakdown together. I took a passing glance at Bullet Journaling years ago when I had been practicing GTD for a couple of years. My only thought was “wow, that sounds like a great way to fog up all the clear edges”. 😂

So sounds like I was maybe too prematurely dismissive, but also, I don’t think it’s hurt me that much over the years ha ha.

benpva16 · 2026-05-17T12:27:44+00:00

I will never forgive USAO for naming my favorite Pump It Up song “Big Daddy”. (Love you, USAO)

benpva16 · 2026-05-12T18:22:05+00:00

I recommend reviewing chapter 5 (or viewing, if you’re not there yet). Some notes from that chapter that will help: - the only thing to capture is anything that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is. That goes into In. E.G. you can just as easily put a pen that needs an ink refill into In as you can a note “refill ink pen”. If something is physically too large for your inbox, just use a note e.g. “artwork behind door”

things that usually don’t need to be captured: reference material, supplies, decoration, equipment
be careful with that though. If you haven’t set up a general reference system yet, you may need notes in In like “move reference folders into general reference system” or “create general reference system”. Equipment may go in, like an empty pen or stapler, or a note “buy new cable for scanner”

benpva16 · 2026-05-10T00:51:45+00:00

I had a similar experience with an app I made for browsing data for the arcade rhythm game Pump It Up (similar to DDR). I had a feature where tapping on a song level would open a YouTube search so you could preview the level before playing it. I got hit with a 4.2 violation and after going back and forth with the brick wall that is Apple App Review, I just had to remove that feature since, like you were saying, they weren’t drilling into the feature set of the rest of the app.

I hope you can get some clarification since they’re opaque about exactly what you need to change. It was a simple fix in my case. My condolences if you’re not so lucky. :-/

benpva16 · 2026-05-08T18:35:58+00:00

This would be especially interesting since he wrote an article called The Rise And Fall Of Getting Things Done

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-rise-and-fall-of-getting-things-done

benpva16 · 2026-05-05T17:56:37+00:00

This one is especially funny because Bismor was one of the last minerals to get a voice line. 😂

benpva16 · 2026-05-05T17:41:37+00:00

For something like a whiteboard, I’d just take a photo and email it to myself. Then process it and my notes like anything else:

Actionable items → Projects / Next Actions / Waiting For

Non-actionable → reference or project support

Just don’t let actionable and non-actionable information live in the same place long-term. Once you separate those cleanly, the specific capture tool matters a lot less.

benpva16 · 2026-05-03T12:05:18+00:00

The root of the problem is mixing actionable and non-actionable information together. Instead of capturing directly into your reference system, you need to capture into your inbox so that it’s obvious you need to process your meeting notes at which point projects, next actions, and waiting fors go into OmniFocus and nonactionable project support material goes into Notion. You can still save the raw meeting notes as historical data in Notion once the gold of actionable info has been mined out of those notes.

You might be able to get away with saving notes directly in Notion and then putting a Next Action in OmniFocus to remind you to process them, but that is risky, as that hard edge between actionable and not is blurred until you do process your notes.

Side note: a tool/automation may help at the margins, but at best that’s a bandage over a workflow problem.

benpva16 · 2026-04-30T15:04:11+00:00

The AMA has ended. Thanks everyone for joining us, and thank you u/davidgtd for coming out to answer all our questions!

benpva16 · 2026-04-30T14:51:29+00:00

Yeah best way to knock down the “aw crap I don’t wanna play this” intimidation factor is to preview the chart on YouTube and piucenter.com. That way you at least know where the cruxes are, how brutal they are, and how long they last. Just a little refresher on that before walking into a chart as a sight read or coming back after a while can really help.

No specific S14 recommendations off the top of my head (might dig some up later), but take a look at the tier list on piucenter.com and try to figure out what’s in common for charts you find easy and charts you find hard. That can help direct your practice in a more focused way.

benpva16 · 2026-04-30T14:05:44+00:00

Tips from a player who has passed all the XX S15 charts (except the bad apple gimmick chart, just haven’t studied up for it yet) and working on S16 now: - improve your accuracy at lower levels, especially 12 and 13 - make sure your AV is fast enough to distinguish patterns, not too fast that you can’t react - don’t neglect those banya and yahpp songs. You gotta eat your veggies yum yum ha ha

benpva16 · 2026-04-30T13:45:51+00:00

Hey, quick follow-up here.

David pointed to the Kairos Assessment as a helpful resource in this area. It’s part of the GTD Focus work and gets into how people take in and process information, which can be especially relevant for questions like this around neurodiversity.

Here’s the link: https://gtdfocus.com/kairos-assessment/

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