How Do I Pick a Direction for My Life? | Get Your 20's Right “There is a certain terror that goes along with saying “My life is up to me.” It is scary to realize there’s no magic, you can’t just wait around, no one can really rescue you, and you have to do something. Not knowing what you want to do with your life—or not at least having some ideas about what to do next—is a defense against that terror.” Superman is my favorite superhero. And I hate it. Your life is a Superman comic. From one twentysomething to another, I want to share with you some of the experiences and wisdom that have helped me answer the question, “How do I pick a direction for my life that results in a story worth telling?” “Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come / or a plane to go or the mail to come / or the rain to go or the phone to ring / or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No / or waiting for their hair to grow / Everyone is just waiting.” I applied to 15 medical schools last year and wasn’t accepted to any of them. So get good at something. Matt!
Why Procrastinators Procrastinate PDF: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing. Buy it here. (Or see a preview.) pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən, prō-| noun the action of delaying or postponing something: your first tip is to avoid procrastination. Who would have thought that after decades of struggle with procrastination, the dictionary, of all places, would hold the solution. Avoid procrastination. While we’re here, let’s make sure obese people avoid overeating, depressed people avoid apathy, and someone please tell beached whales that they should avoid being out of the ocean. No, “avoid procrastination” is only good advice for fake procrastinators—those people that are like, “I totally go on Facebook a few times every day at work—I’m such a procrastinator!” The thing that neither the dictionary nor fake procrastinators understand is that for a real procrastinator, procrastination isn’t optional—it’s something they don’t know how to not do. Pretty normal, right? Notice anything different?
Romans 14:3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. New Living TranslationThose who feel free to eat anything must not look down on those who don't. And those who don't eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them. English Standard VersionLet not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Berean Study BibleThe one who eats everything must not belittle the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted him. Berean Literal BibleThe one eating, let him not despise the one not eating; and the one not eating, let him not judge the one eating, for God has received him. New Heart English BibleDo not let him who eats despise him who does not eat.
Quarter-life crisis I did not see this coming. I did not even know such a phrase exists. I am familiar only with “midlife” crisis, and it happens during someone’s 40s. I am 24 and this is my fourth job. After getting a degree in hotel and restaurant management (HRM), I found my first job in a small condo-hotel. Just after ending 2015 in the depressing state that I was no longer learning anything and wanted to escape the torment of the abyss, I applied as a customer service representative in a call center (a job title I once vowed never to take on). It was during my time at the restaurant that I realized I was undergoing the “quarter-life crisis.” I did not consider the “what do you want to do for the rest of your life” while picking out courses for college, and young as I was, I did really think that making this decision could affect the entirety of my life. I’m having endless thoughts of what-if and if-only. Now that I come to think of it, I wish there were a manual on how to plan one’s life.
Ligonier.org Everybody loves Jesus. Marxists love Jesus, because He was such a radical revolutionary. Unitarians love Jesus, because He befriended the social outcasts. Liberals love Jesus because, well, because He was liberal. Even some conservatives love Jesus, because He was so conservative. Which is true enough. Theological liberalism, which is short-hand for worldly thinking about God and other stuff the Bible sometimes talks about, can handle the cross. The righteousness of Christ, however, is a little more difficult for the world to squeeze into its self-righteous wineskins. This is, however, the dilemma of the postmoderns. Therein is the offence of the Gospel in our age. What separates our peculiar age from that which Paul faced isn’t, however, the different offenses that the world takes to the gospel message. The Scripture calls us the first born of many brethren.
uk.businessinsider Do you really believe that watching a lecturer read hundreds of PowerPoint slides is making you smarter? I asked this of a class of 105 computer science and software engineering students last semester. An article in The Conversation recently argued universities should ban PowerPoint because it makes students stupid and professors boring. What is so wrong with PowerPoint? Overreliance on slides has contributed to the absurd belief that expecting and requiring students to read books, attend classes, take notes and do homework is unreasonable. Courses designed around slides therefore propagate the myth that students can become skilled and knowledgeable without working through dozens of books, hundreds of articles and thousands of problems. A review of research on PowerPoint found that while students liked PowerPoint better than overhead transparencies, PowerPoint did not increase learning or grades. PowerPoint slides are toxic to education for three main reasons: Measuring the wrong things
√ Lonely Lyle Lyrics Poor Lyle He lives in an hourglass Counting every grain he sees Nothing but time Always the sun Kiss of a thirst felt with his teeth But he still has his arms He still has his legs Nowhere to walk to And nothing to hold After a panic Gathered his wizard bow (?) But not if it's windy And not if it's cold And nothing too risky And nothing too bold Poor Lyle He lives in an hourglass Counting every grain he sees Nothing but time Always the sun Kiss of a thirst felt with his teeth But he still has his arms He still has his legs With nowhere to walk to And nothing to hold Nobody Meets/needs him there, out there (?)
The biggest mistakes people make when choosing a life partner To a frustrated single person, life can often feel like this: And at first glance, research seems to back this up, suggesting that married people are on average happier than single people and much happier than divorced people.1 But a closer analysis reveals that if you split up “married people” into two groups based on marriage quality, “people in self-assessed poor marriages are fairly miserable, and much less happy than unmarried people, and people in self-assessed good marriages are even more happy than the literature reports”.2 In other words, here’s what’s happening in reality: Dissatisfied single people should actually consider themselves in a neutral, fairly hopeful position, compared to what their situation could be. A single person who would like to find a great relationship is one step away from it, with their to-do list reading, “1) Find a great relationship.” All the research on how vastly happiness varies between happy and unhappy marriages makes perfect sense, of course.
Elon Musk Food Challenge I plowed through 14 bags of pasta in 31 days.Kathleen Elkins/Business Insider When Elon Musk was 17, he lived off a dollar a day for a month to see if he had what it takes to be an entrepreneur. He explained the experiment to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in an episode of Tyson's StarTalk Radio podcast: In America it's pretty easy to keep yourself alive. In fact, when I first came to North America — I was in Canada when I was 17 — and just to sort of see what it takes to live, I tried to live on $1 a day, which I was able to do. I decided to replicate the challenge this past month. Musk lived off mostly hot dogs and oranges, occasionally mixing in pasta and jarred tomato sauce. I reached out to Musk after completing the challenge. (Yes, I realize he just said 1990, but I did the entire month based on the value of a 1988 dollar, and I'm not about to re-do it ... so bear with me. Kathleen Elkins/Business Insider 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Pasta: $0.99 per bag/8 servings = $0.12 per serving
Effective learning: Twenty rules of formulating knowledge The speed of learning will depend on the way you formulate the material. The same material can be learned many times faster if well formulated! The difference in speed can be stunning! The rules are listed in the order of importance. There is an underlying assumption that you will proceed with learning using spaced repetition, i.e. you will not just learn once but you will repeat the material optimally (as in SuperMemo). Do not learn if you do not understandTrying to learn things you do not understand may seem like an utmost nonsense. Avoid setsA set is a collection of objects. Here again are the twenty rules of formulating knowledge.
Russia: Stray Dogs Master Complex Moscow Subway System Every so often, if you ride Moscow's crowded subways, you notice that the commuters around you include a dog - a stray dog, on its own, just using the handy underground Metro to beat the traffic and get from A to B. Yes, some of Moscow's stray dogs have figured out how to use the city's immense and complex subway system, getting on and off at their regular stops. The human commuters around them are so accustomed to it that they rarely seem to notice. "In Moscow there are all sorts of stray dogs, but... there are no stupid dogs," Dr. Andrey Poyarkov, a biologist who has studied Moscow's strays for 30 years, told ABC News. As many as 35,000 stray dogs live in Russia's capital city. Taking the subway is just one of many tactics the strays have come up with for surviving in the manmade wilderness around them. "The street is tough and it's survival of the fittest," says Poyarkov. To keep up with news about Russia follow ABC News' Alex Marquardt on Twitter Animal Intelligence
Millennials Aren’t Entitled—They’re Just Better Than You “Millennials care more about internet fame than their company!” “Millennials expect to be in the C-suite after their first week!” “Millennials are coddled babies who’ve never had to work for anything in their lives!” Sound familiar? People—the Baby Boomer generation especially—love criticizing Millennials. Millennials are entitled. People who say this kind of stuff usually have a litany of stats to back up their claim, things like: Millennials change careers four times before turning 30.Over 30% percent of Millennials live with their parents at 30.Over 35% still receive financial help from their parents. But do these stats really point to entitlement? I don’t think so. Millennials are about ownership. Millennials Own Their Lives—And Boomers Hate Them For It The Baby Boomer generation—the people who raised Millennials—defined success by three things: 1. 2. 3. Anyone who defines success as status, prestige, and security is seeing life through the lens of scarcity. See the problem here?
Stop Being a Butthole Wife | Her View From Home Stop being a butthole wife. No, I’m serious. End it. Let’s start with the laundry angst. What if that pile of laundry is a gift in disguise from a God you can’t (yet) see? I was a butthole wife. The day my husband left earth for heaven, all of my marriage problems vanished. Marriage is designed to be a reflection of Christ’s love for His people. Follow Her View From Home on Facebook The reality is, I wasn’t helping him or our marriage. Days after his funeral, I stared at our dirty clothes basket that sat atop our dryer, knowing his clothes were inside. A week before I would have rolled my eyes at that basket. Those messes dotted around the house are reminders of God’s gifts to us. Those clothes were painfully cleaned and boxed away or donated. And God, the Lover of my soul, in His infinite mercy, later gave me a special gift. Recently, I walked into the master bedroom and I stopped, nearly bursting into tears. I get to do this! “Let us not become weary in doing good.” We’re Dating Again
10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings I remember my first awareness of mortality as a child in Bulgaria. I was nine and my father was relaying an anecdote from his youth. I asked him when it had taken place. After one such time-block, I left Bulgaria for America, lured by the liberal arts education promise of being taught how to live. All the while, I was working numerous jobs to pay my way through school. The site grew as I grew — an unfolding record of my intellectual, creative, and spiritual development. And now, somehow, a decade has elapsed. Because I believe that our becoming, like the synthesis of meaning itself, is an ongoing and dynamic process, I’ve been reluctant to stultify it and flatten its ongoing expansiveness in static opinions and fixed personal tenets of living. Here are all ten, in the order that they were written. From year seven: Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind. From year nine: Seek out what magnifies your spirit. And as I round the decade: