Sometimes they accused demons of making their minds wander. Sometimes they blamed the body’s base instincts. But the mind was the root problem: it is an inherently jumpy thing. John Cassian, whose thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks, knew this problem all too well. He complained that the mind ‘seems driven by random incursions’. It ‘wanders around like it were drunk’. It would think about something else while it prayed and sang. It would meander into its future plans or past regrets in the middle of its reading. It couldn’t even stay focused on its own entertainment – let alone the difficult ideas that called for serious concentration.
Interesting read on the age old problem of distraction. It is just made worse now with all of our digital devices clamoring for our attention.
Lots of interesting goals or habits in this list, some I already do, the others I don't. Of particular interest to me is number 10, Plan Your Weekends.
Plan Your Weekends
We often think of planning only in terms of one’s workaday life (the scheduling of which can indeed be beneficial), whereas we feel that leisure time should be wholly spontaneous. But everyone’s life experience shows that good times typically don’t just happen; when left to chance, we end up surrendering our free time to inertia and don’t end up doing much at all. So take a page from Ernest Hemingway and intentionally plan out your weekends, always having an idea of a few fun things you’d like to do as you head into them. (If you’re married, we highly recommend doing this planning during your weekly marriage meeting.) You’ll have an easier time facing Monday, when you truly made the most of your Saturday/Sunday.
I'm going to give that a try this year. In fact I've already started yesterday. I created my first ever weekly spread on my bullet journal and planned the activities and tasks for this whole week.
Interesting podcast episode on the topic of fatherhood. If you are a father, or are about to become one, you should listen to this podcast. I even think it is a good one for moms to listen to as well. There's some good info on how a father can help the development of a child as they grow up.
Children of older fathers have an increased risk of having down syndrome. Children of older fathers have an increased risk of having schizophrenia.
All this time the focus is on how old a mom is when they get pregnant. Turns out, would be fathers should take notice too.
One of the things my wife always gives me a hard time on, is when I don't understand what my son is telling me. She always says, “hinde kame tan entendihan”, that we don't understand each other. Turns out, this might be beneficial to my son. Me talking to him, trying to understand him, using words he is not used to, forces him to expand his vocabulary and better understand how best to communicate with people. Apparently this sort of thing helps them do better in school. Anyway, listen to the podcast, it is an interesting one.
Totally did not expect that car to be the winner... but if you read through this highly detailed and descriptive article, you'll understand why that car won. Really good read, especially if you are a car enthusiast.
When it came to lap times, we enlisted a licensed club racer with no Thunderhill experience: me. We did this for a reason, and it wasn’t to build my ego. Most of our readers are not pro drivers. When you buy a new car, a professional’s lap time at any track is an interesting metric, but it’s rarely reflective of a normal person’s experience. We wanted to stress accessibility and adaptability. How easy is it to get up to speed in a given car? How communicative is the car? Is it hard to learn the quirks? Under the watchful eyes of our testing staff, every PCOTY contender got a quick warm-up session to set tire pressures, then no more than seven timed laps. Just enough to establish a representative lap and suss idiosyncrasies, not enough to set a record.
I love that. More car magazines/publications should follow suit.
The piece that separates this strategy from the increasingly popular digital-detox concept is that it’s not just about what you avoid but also about figuring out what you should do with your time instead. Stepping away from distracting technology while making no effort to replace it with something better invites backsliding. Seeking meaningful alternatives is so crucial that in Digital Minimalism I suggest that people map out detailed leisure plans to break down their goals, such as achieving a new personal record or finishing a craft project, into weekly milestones and daily habits.
Agreed. Can you imagine doing even just a weekend (2 days) of digital detox without any plans on how to entertain yourself during that time frame? It won't work. You'll be bored to death. Before embarking on any digital detox or digital minimalism attempt, you need to decide on what to do with your free time.
Move to your own little island archipelago on the internet. What Warren Ellis coined as “The Isles of Blogging”. Each blog “a little radio station broadcasting though the night”
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Early 2018 being the start of the Archipelago (re)settlement in my mind. The seas of social media have risen around us. So blogs, what once were the mountain tops of internet culture have become little Islands.
I love this analogy of blogging in today's age where social media dominates the internet.
A surprisingly, pretty good read on struggling to justify the love of automobiles in the face of climate change. Written from a car enthusiast point of view. Not something that I expected to read from a car magazine.
But. How else do you go anywhere in America? Outside a few select corridors, our public transit is patently terrible. And at the risk of sounding like a selfish ostrich, I like driving. You control a satisfying machine. Travel independently and with minimal restriction. In this vast country built by and for the automobile, the machine too often makes sense.
This is definitely a problem here. I've a tried a number of times to find a way for me to cycle to work, but it just won't work. My ride would force me into roads with inattentive drivers who drive with their eyes glued to their phone screens. Yeah I'm not risking my life riding my bike alongside drivers like that. Which is unfortunate, because I think cycling is a better, more environmental friendly alternative to internal combustion engines than electric cars are, as far as work commute goes.
Only two NBA players are averaging at least 25 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game this season. One of them — surprise, surprise — is the Lakers’ LeBron James. LeBron has had himself a long career during which he has dominated every inch of the floor for a very long time. He arguably has the most varied skill set in the history of the game, and it has earned him career averages of 27.1 points, 7.4 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game. This is just kind of what he does; it’s his version of normal.
The other player averaging at least 25, 7.5 and 7.5 is 20-year-old Luka Dončić of the Mavericks. That is not normal; that is special. The complete list of players ever to average 25, 7.5 and 7.5 over a single season looks like this: LeBron, Oscar Robertson (six times), Russell Westbrook (twice), Larry Bird, James Harden and Michael Jordan. None of those legends was as young as Dončić.
After every Dallas Mavericks game this season, I keep telling my wife, “Luka is special. He's really good!” At this early in the NBA season, my wife is probably already tired of hearing that from me.
In 2006, I published a new idea that could answer that question and more: the ‘snake detection theory’. I hypothesised that when large-gaped constricting snakes appeared about 100 million years ago and began eating mammals, their predatory behaviour favoured the evolution of changes in the vision of one kind of prey, the lineage that was to become primates. In other words, the ability to see immobile predatory snakes before getting too close became a highly beneficial trait for them to have and pass on to their descendants. Then, about 60 million years ago, venomous snakes appeared in Africa or Asia, adding more pressure on primates to detect and avoid them. This has also had repercussions on their visual systems.
Interesting read on how coexisting with snakes forced the improvement of our eyesight.
Also learned a new word from this article; ophiophobia – the abnormal fear of snakes. I don't understand why Wikipedia labels it as an “abnormal” fear of snakes. Is it normal to not fear snakes?
Mr. Rheingans is betting that we have this wrong. His experiment is premised on the idea that once you remove time-wasting distractions and constrain inefficient conversation about your work, five hours should be sufficient to accomplish most of the core activities that actually move the needle.
You know what, Mr. Rheingans might be on to something here. In my experience, when I've been working productively throughout the day, it is usually at the 5 hour mark that my brain starts slowing down. It is about that time when I would go to the break room, drink some water and think to myself, “my brain is fried.” Problem is, I still had 3 hours to go.