http://fred.yankowski.com my personal blog Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:44:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en From "Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth" by Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2008: There are several predictable thinking errors people commonly make that lead them to incorrectly predict their own future emotions in general, and future happiness in particular: Focusing on a single salient feature or period of time in a ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/08/01/predicting-happiness-when-making-choices/ From Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain your brain operates on the edge of chaos. Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. systems on the edge of chaos are said to ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/07/14/your-brain-is-like-a-pile-of-sand/ From Heidegger and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: [According to Princeton economist Alan Blinder] the labor market of the next decades won't necessarily be divided between the highly educated and the less-educated: "The critical divide in the future may instead be between those types of work that are easily deliverable through ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/05/21/work-that-cant-be-done-over-the-wire/ From In Defense of Distraction: “Where you allow your attention to go ultimately says more about you as a human being than anything that you put in your mission statement,” [Merlin Mann] continues. “It’s an indisputable receipt for your existence. And if you allow that to be squandered by other people ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/05/20/distraction-and-attention/ From What Makes Us Happy?: ... positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/05/12/positive-emotions-make-us-more-vulnerable/ From Don't in the New Yorker: What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/05/11/self-control-via-strategic-allocation-of-attention/ I think Scott Adams is right, "the biggest software revolution of the future is that the calendar will be the organizing filter for most of the information flowing into your life". Sharing calendars is still too hard, and when we solve that problem I expect it to be hugely ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/05/08/calendar-as-information-central/ From an essay by Milton Glaser: "... there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/05/04/tired-or-energized/ From The Unfinished in The New Yorker: The central issue for Wallace remained, as he told McCaffery, how to give “CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.” He added, “Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/03/20/yet-more-on-dfw/ From Foreclosures Are Not the Problem. Those Who Build Financial Time Bombs, and Those Who Pick Them Up, Are the Problem on Angry Bear [emphasis added]: But the real problem, the cause of this whole mess, is simple: every few decades, our economic system morphs into a structure that rewards making ... http://fred.yankowski.com/2009/02/23/welfare-for-grifters-and-marks/