The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet? | Books. There are countless stories about how we ought to live our lives. We are expected to be ambitious; to want to be wealthy, successful and well educated; to get married, be monogamous and have kids. These social narratives can make our lives easier, by providing guidelines for behaviour, and they might sometimes make us happier, too. But they are, at their heart, stories – and ones that may not have originated with present-day people in mind. As such, many of these stories end up creating a kind of social dissonance whereby, perversely, they cause more harm than good. Since we’re talking about stories, let’s start with an experience of mine.
It’s about a working-class kid who becomes a university professor and who is expected to change his behaviour in accordance with a (harmful) narrative about how academics ought to behave. Ordinarily, I would embrace being a hero of any kind but, in this context, I was made to feel like an arsehole. But I digress. This is wilfully overoptimistic. GTD in 15 minutes – A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done. GTD—or “Getting things done”—is a framework for organizing and tracking your tasks and projects. Its aim is a bit higher than just “getting things done”, though. (It should have been called “Getting things done in a much better way than just letting things happen, which often turns out not to be very cool at all”.) Its aim is to make you have 100% trust in a system for collecting tasks, ideas, and projects—both vague things like “invent greatest thing ever” and concrete things like “call Ada 25 August to discuss cheesecake recipe”.
Everything! Sound like all other run-of-the-mill to-do list systems, you say? Well in many ways it is, but there is more to it, and it’s really simple. Promise! One of the basic assumptions of GTD is that you are dumb—or, rather, that your subconsciousness is quite dumb when it comes to thinking about things you should have done. Jessica Kerr put it perfectly: Pretend your brain is a white board. Awesome! You will have to make the following lists: But… why‽ Productivity Strategies.
21 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read. The Dangers Of Externalizing Knowledge. Contemplating the shortcomings of the younger generation has ever been a hobby of the elder. As I start to transition to the latter population (perhaps a bit early for my age), I’ve found myself worrying more and more about the kids, and how little they seem to appreciate things. That kind of complaint is neither constructive or original. But the fact is that the kids are growing up pretty weird these days, because of the way technology has outpaced our institutions of learning and standards of knowledge.
The short attention span and reliance on non-text media are to be expected in an age where attention is indulged by on-demand information, and the effects of these things will continue to be written about, rightly and wrongly. It’s a process that has been going on for a long time, but that recent developments may push to the breaking point. Externalization The fact that virtually all of the world’s knowledge is only a few taps away is truly mind-blowing. Internalization Volition. IKÉA pas simple marchand de meubles : pollueur non payeur ? Five Ways to Write Magnificent Copy. Busting an iPhone thief. Monday - The Setup The whole thing started when my plane landed in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon at 2:55pm coming from Cabo San Lucas. The guy sitting next to me on the plane asked me to loan him a pen so that he could fill out his customs form. I watched him fill out the form and clearly remember his birth year of 1984, but am a bit unsure about his name.
I think it was -----, but in this story, we will refer to him as Pinche. How It Was Lost As we were about to disembark from the plane, I sent my friend Ramiro a text saying that I will be out of customs in about 30 minutes. Faceoff In customs, I skipped passed the line and found Pinche. Tracking the iPhone When I got to my office, I pulled up the MobileMe site and used the Find My Phone feature. Why did I assume this? Now I was beginning to get suspicious. Tuesday - Faced with Defeat The next day, I tracked the phone again, and it was traveling on the 99 freeway at exit 255 in Stockton! Wednesday - It's All Over The (323) Number Silence. Derek Sivers: How to start a movement.