And so I’ve been very interested in a new book by Jenny Odell called How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. She describes a world where “every last minute” ends up “captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily.” But in the midst of push notifications and likes and friend requests, a “certain nervous feeling, of being overstimulated and unable to sustain a train of thought, lingers.”
Sounds like a book I should read. Adding it to my “books-to-read” list.
I didn’t solve everything in my strolling, but I started to notice some patterns. I was finally able to hear God’s voice because the noise was turned down. I couldn’t block it out with the distractions–parties and drinking and social media and to-do lists and podcasts and music and movies and shows and idle fretting about work—that were my preferred methods. Instead, I just had to be present to exactly what I was feeling at each moment. If I was sad, I just had to be sad for a bit. If I was excited, I just got to experience it rather than try to share it on an online profile. If I was worried, I lived through the worry instead of numbing it.
I experienced something similar when I started practicing digital minimalism. I even wrote it down in my journal. Without distractions, it was like all of a sudden I had all this time to think, to be present, to live in the moment, to hear God.
Let’s look more closely at the anatomy of boredom. Why is it so damned boring to be stuck in a departure lounge while our flight is increasingly delayed? We are in a state of high arousal, anticipating our imminent arrival in a novel and stimulating environment. True, there are plenty of shops, screens and magazines around, but we’re not really interested in them and, by dividing our attention, they serve only to exacerbate our boredom. To make matters worse, the situation is out of our control, unpredictable (the flight could be further delayed, or even cancelled) and inescapable. As we check and re-check the monitor, we become painfully aware of all these factors and more. And so here we are, caught in transit, in a high state of arousal that we can neither engage nor escape.
Ever wondered why you get bored while waiting for your flight in the departure lounge? Well there you go.
I knew Kobe Bryant only as a basketball player. I remember owning a pair of his first shoes from Adidas, the Crazy 8. He was a spectacular basketball player. The only other player that came close to being considered another Michael Jordan. This article though, talks about a different side of him that I never knew existed.
Failure and even scandal are a part of Kobe’s life too. Suffering is a quick litmus test of what lies underneath all of the talent. In another interview, Kobe spoke about how he found his faith after dealing with some serious allegations of sexual misconduct. He said, “You can know [that God is great] all you want, but until you have to pick up that cross that you can’t carry, and he picks it up for you, and carries you and the cross . . . then you know.”
Man that's deep. Something that you'll only hear from someone who was weighed down with a heavy burden. A heavy cross as he says.
The Rockets did not play a traditional center in their victories over the Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans over the weekend despite having 7-foot reserves Tyson Chandler and Isaiah Hartenstein available. Houston became the first team to go an entire game without using a player taller than 6-foot-6 since the New York Knicks in a Jan. 31, 1963, win over the Chicago Zephyrs, according to research by the Elias Sports Bureau.
The link is for an article about a trade that sent Clint Capela to the Atlanta Hawks, but the quote above is the most interesting part of that article for me. I think that small ball lineups is a preview of the future of NBA basketball.
Centers playing with their back to the basket, backing down defenders is a rare sight in the NBA these days. Joel Embiid is probably the last dominant, back to the basket center the NBA has left. Most other tall centers/power forwards nowadays prefer to shoot perimeter shots anyway. Yet these same players can sometimes be too slow in defense, especially in “switch-all” defensive schemes.
Interesting read on why you should quit the news, with some history lesson thrown in as well. This one is a lengthy read (45 minutes estimate), so best to read this on your lunch break or after work.
Well, that’s easy. The goal of the news is to motivate you to keep consuming news.
This is something that I only realized the past few months when I tried decreasing my consumption of news. Now I can't stop noticing it. If you look at how they structure the presentation of news in like the morning news shows, they do it in a way to keep you hooked on news.
Same thing on news websites. They want you on their website as long as possible, nudging you to click links left and right so that you stay even longer on their site. If their job was to inform, they've done it, but do they have to try and hold my attention all day? That's the part that gets to me.
Research on deindividuation theory has been conducted in numerous settings (not just driving) and has found that when we feel anonymous, we’re more likely to disregard societal norms for behavior.
Basically, it’s easier to get mad at someone when we don’t know them because we’re less likely to be held accountable for it.
“It’s the same reason why people feel like they’re entitled to be angry on certain social media platforms,” Dr. Himanshu Agrawal (a psychiatrist at the Medical College of Wisconsin) explains.
Since we rarely know the person in the car next to us (and since we also have a box of glass/steel between us and them), driving creates that sense of anonymity, making it easier for us to lash out.
When I decided to read this article, I was doing so because I wanted to learn more about road rage and how to avoid it. I didn't expect to run into this gem. This article basically says that one of the causes for road rage, is also responsible for the sad state of communications online. If you really read into it, it does make sense.
One of my goals this year is to be able to do more pull-ups. Currently, I can only do 2 in a row. I want to be able to do 5 in a row before the end of this year. This pull-up guide from Nerd Fitness seems to be exactly what I need.
Award-winning psychologist Bruce Hood draws on research from his own lab and others around the world to explain why psychological ownership is an emotional state of mind that governs our behaviour from the cradle to the grave, even when it is often irrational and destructive. What motivates us to buy more than we need? How does our urge to acquire control our behaviour, even the way we vote? And what can we do about it?
Timely, engaging and persuasive, Possessed is the first book to explore how ownership has us enthralled in relentless pursuit of a false happiness, with damaging consequences for society and the planet – and how we can stop buying into it.
Sounds like a very interesting book. Adding it to my “want to read” list.
I’m done offering free ebooks as incentives to signup...
I’m done creating courses that I have to spend hours creating only to discover that no one is signing up because I don’t get enough traffic.
I’m done sharing my writing five times a day on several different social media sites...
Damn! Dan must have been really fired up when he wrote this. To clarify, he is railing against what he calls the traditional model of blogging. I don't think he is railing against blogging in general, or writing on the web for that matter.
Imagine my shock then, to find myself enjoying the game! Lebron and his teammates were skilled ballplayers, exciting to watch and fast on their feet. Two quarters in, my fears had lifted. Unlike fifteen years prior, this basketball arena was the site of my ultimate, God-given purpose. God had not created me to be a basketball player, but He had created me to love and support my student, Lebron.
Maybe where you are right now is not where you want to be. Or, maybe you are exactly where you need to be, to be of the greatest help to someone else.