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POPSHow To Think With the internet saturating ever deeper into our busy lives, humans are navigating uncharted informational and attentional waters these days. MIT neuroengineer, Ed Boyden, put together these rules of thumb to managing brain resources in an age of complexity. 7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." (Via Kottke.)
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POPSHow to Write Aphorisms Delacroix, Eugene (France, 1798-1863) To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty; to be a poet at forty is to be a poet. According to James Geary, editor of the compendium Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists , a truely memorable, quotable aphorism satisfies five laws: It must be brief. It must be definitive. It must be personal — that's the difference between an aphorism and a proverb. It must be philosophical — that's the difference between an aphorism and a platitude, which is not philosophical.... And the fifth law is it must have a twist. And that can be either a linguistic twist or a psychological twist or even a twist in logic that somehow flips the reader into a totally unexpected place. Now you know, so get to work! :)
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POPSThe Soul of the Commuter Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. Until recently, I was one of these Americans. What started out as an invigorating drive through new urban environs eventually became repetitious and wearisome. Even though I was careful to fill my time with music, podcasts, audio-books, or phone calls, I don't miss this daily aggravation at all now, instead embracing the freedom public transportation confers. (Trains can be your friends...who knew? :).) The mental relaxation that comes with not being on constant heightened alert for all the unpredictable hazards is priceless and has returned a small measure of serenity to my life I thought I had lost. What do clippers think? Are extended commutes worth their return? Given its finite supply, shouldn't most of us be valuing our precious time higher?
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POPSHow to Brood Tom Chiarella might be my favorite author to clip, not only because of the originality of his topics but because of his pithy, honest terseness and his wry approach to modern life. Now pardon me while I mull over what all this implies about me, Clipmarks, and the entire history of humanity alone in a corner somewhere.... Some people are smart. They stay away. You might call this respect. Others are pathological in their worry. "Why so glum?" they ask. Or "How you doing, big guy?" And just because they won't honor my need to be alone in public, to stretch around inside the muscle of my worry, or respect the fact that a smile is sometimes just a tiresome, mawkish mask, I flat-out lie. I tell them I'm doing fine. Jim Dandy. Then I smile and wait for a good moment to turn back to my troubles -- which now include the fact that some jackass thinks it's okay to call me "big guy."
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POPSOn Architecture and Elegance bridge is endowed with a subcategory of beauty we can refer to as elegance, a quality present whenever a work of architecture succeeds in carrying out an act of resistance—holding, spanning, sheltering—with grace and economy as well as strength; when it has the modesty not to draw attention to the difficulties it has surmounted. From philosophical historian Alain de Botton's inimitable The Architecture of Happiness , itself a paradigmatic illustration of the aesthetic elegance of well-engineered minimalism (be it architectural or textual). The NYRB's synopsis of de Botton's work makes note of this: The simplicity of his writing is not the product of a simple mind.... In The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) he remarked that "there are...no legitimate reasons why books in the humanities should be difficult or boring; wisdom does not require a specialized vocabulary or syntax."
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POPSHow Do You Psyche Yourself? Up? Or Out? The moral of the story? No matter how high you jump, how fast you run or swim, how powerfully you row, you can do better. But sometimes your mind gets in the way. “All maximum performances are actually pseudo-maximum performances,” Dr. Morgan said. “You are always capable of doing more than you are doing.” From an article on how athletes trick their brains into letting them achieve what their bodies are capable of. I think this anecdote perfectly encapsulates what makes pushing one's personal boundaries so maddening yet rewarding. If I had more time, I would come up with some witty, insightful comments right about here, but I'm afraid I need to run (for work, unfortunately, not for pleasure). Anyone else have some thoughts? :)
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POPSWhere to Put Your Money From an article on the author of Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment , a summary of professor and star investor David Swensen's advice for how individuals should be investing in markets driven by full-time professionals like him. While perhaps unconventional, Swensen would certainly seem to have the authority to advise on such matters. Yale University recently announced a 23 percent return on its investments, swelling its endowment to a whopping $18 billion. The man behind that investment success is David Swensen, one of the most gifted investors in the world. He's made an average 16 percent annual return over 21 years — better than any portfolio manager at any other university.
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POPSHe’s Happier, She’s Less So Latest studies say American men's average happiness level has been going up while womens' have stayed the same, largely due to both increasing social demands from women as well as increasing economic ambitions by them. A big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago — despite far more discrimination — is probably that they had narrower ambitions, Ms. Stevenson says. Many compared themselves only to other women, rather than to men as well. This doesn’t mean they were better off back then.
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POPSHow to Get From a 7 to a 10 What's your 7? Do you want more? Is a 10 even possible? Sometimes you need to step down first to find that next step up. Getting past a 7 is hard. It can take more effort to get past a 7 than it takes to reach a 7 in the first place. Some people would complain that it takes too long to get past a 7. But the truth is that the time is going to pass anyway. Even if it takes 5-10 years, you might as well get yourself to a higher level within that time, since the years are going to pass anyway. Whenever I feel I’ve gotten stuck at a 7, I stop and ask myself: What would a 10 look like?
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POPSThe Courage to Live Consciously I wasn't sure which was better, Steve Pavlina's article on living your live with courage, or the quotes he used to illustrate his ideas. Either way, worth reading. How would you live if you had no fear at all? You'd still have your intelligence and common sense to safely navigate around any real dangers, but without feeling the emotion of fear, would you be more willing to take risks, especially when the worst case wouldn't actually hurt you at all? Would you speak up more often, talk to more strangers, ask for more sales, dive headlong into those ambitious projects you've been dreaming about? What if you even learned to enjoy the things you currently fear? What kind of difference would that make in your life?
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POPSHow to Haggle Tom Chiarella's adventure into the art of negotiating the un-negotiable, starting with the price of a hot dog on the streets of New York. With practice and expert advice, he finds there basically is no such thing as a firm price. "You're offering them less money," says, "without giving them anything in return." He holds a finger straight up in the air and wags it at me. "You always have something to offer. Loyalty. Future business. Increased volume. Whatever. You have to think about their needs. You have to create an offer that gives something rather than takes it away."
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POPSIt's Not All About You Most people are too busy worrying about their own personal problems to notice yours. In a 2000 study, Gilovich and colleagues reported that students also badly overestimated how well their own gaffes and clever arguments were noticed by others in discussion groups. "The fact is that others do not notice us nearly as much as we think they do," Gilovich said. Contrary to every instinct, our nervousness, our sadness, even our lies are largely lost on most observers, he said.
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POPSHow to Listen Push this listening thing. Even for a day. When asked for your opinion, say, "I don't know." You'll baffle people, sure, but maybe that's a good thing. You can be the Quiet Man. Let them try to figure you out. I'll add: at the same time, don't be mysterious to the point of inscrutability. Share your thoughts when appropriate. If you've practiced listening to others, you'll have reserves of knowledge and experience to draw upon, which tends to compel people to listen to you in turn.
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POPSHow to Survive In a Black Hole... ...or, more precisely: How to squeeze out a few more hours during which to contemplate the highs and lows of your life and what you could have done differently to avoid having it end in the middle of a damn black hole. :) The analysis is usually done by thinking about a person who falls into the black hole starting from a state of rest at the event horizon.... But in general a person falling past the horizon won't have zero velocity to begin with. Then the situation is different — in fact it's worse. So firing the rocket for a short time can push the astronaut back on to the best-case scenario: the trajectory followed by free fall from rest.
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POPSHow to Use First Names In the world of influence, names are money. Schoolteachers know it. Bartenders know it. Salesmen know it. Very polite children know it. These people have figured it out. A name well used makes any person feel seen. When someone uses my name, I know that he has at least considered me in some fashion, that my presence has registered. It conveys a substratum of intimacy, a level of connection, a sense that life does not have to be lived in a torpid fog of anonymous comings and goings.
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POPSA Monolinguist's Guide to Mediterranean Menus Once you start to appreciate fine dining, you can't help but pick up some other languages along the way. In the meantime, let this (American) pronunciation guide to some of the most common French culinary terms (see source for Italian terms and wine appellations) help you act like you're already a worldly gourmand.
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POPSGeorge Washington's Rules of Civility
Insightful precepts of civil social behavior; as applicable now as ever. As a young schoolboy in Virginia, George Washington took his first steps toward greatness by copying out by hand a list of 110 ' Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation .' Based on a 16th-century set of precepts compiled for young gentlemen by Jesuit instructors, the Rules of Civility were one of the earliest and most powerful forces to shape America's first president.... Most of the rules are concerned with details of etiquette, offering pointers on such issues as how to dress, walk, eat in public and address one's superiors. But in the introduction to the newly published Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace , Brookhiser warns against dismissing the maxims as "mere" etiquette. "The rules address moral issues, but they address them indirectly," writes. "They seek to form the inner man (or boy) by shaping the outer."
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POPSWhatever Happened to Online Etiquette? Maybe as the Internet becomes as predominant as air, somebody will realize that online behavior isn’t just an afterthought. Maybe, along with HTML and how to gauge a Web site’s credibility, schools and colleges will one day realize that there’s something else to teach about the Internet: Civility 101. Also see: Why are we so nasty (online)?
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POPSThe Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters Science writer, Malcolm Gladwell, debates the worth of placing so much attention on childhood prodigies and whether the notion of childhood prodigy hasn't been romanticized beyond it's importance. Our romanticized view of precociousness matters. When certain kids are singled out as gifted or talented, Gladwell suggested, it creates an environment that may be subtly discouraging to those who are just average. “In singling out people like me at age 13 for special treatment, we discouraged other kids from ever taking up running at all. And we will never know how many kids who might have been great milers had they been encouraged and not discouraged from joining running, might have ended up as being very successful 10 years down the road.”
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