learn. create. share. reflect. iterate.
You will be one day exactly what you are.
I took a break from school two quarters ago, with the idea that I would be freed of the oppressive institution’s shackles. Instead I found what I was warned about: a 30 hour workweek to pay for food and rent, an increasingly difficult time socializing with and relating to my peers, and an overwhelmingly depressing boredom.
I’m going back to school. I’m ready now. In my time off I have accomplished the most important part of what I set out to do: I have gained perspective on life outside of school, and on the opportunities I have access to when I’m enrolled, or when I have a degree.
I reread God’s Debris recently, and in it the old man says that stress is a sort of cognitive dissonance you get when your actions contradict what the odds would have you do. A university education, from UCSB no less, is a tremendous opportunity I’ve stumbled into, and it would be foolish of me to squander it for any lofty, idyllic reason.
But it might be as simple as what my mom told me: You figured out you don’t know everything, huh?
What a smartass. I knew I got it somewhere…
It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.
You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.
But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures.
Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them. Their older siblings may have been high achievers, leaving big shoes to fill, or their parents may have had neurotic and inhuman expectations of their own, or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.
— David Cain, “Procrastination Is Not Laziness” (via pawneeparksdepartment)(via berserkfuck)
The Power of Habit
Charles Duhigg
We are mostly our habits. Repeated over and over again in the book, it’s a fairly powerful central premise. And a little unsettling — or, it would be if the book wasn’t entirely about grabbing your habits by the reins.
The habit loop: you notice a cue (like fighting with your spouse), respond with a routine (go to the bar and get smashed) to receive a reward (sweet escape from the mundane your life has become). For a while your brain reacts normally to each of these steps, baselining brain activity during the cue and routine and spiking when you receive the reward; but it becomes a habit when your brain activity begins spiking on cue. It becomes a craving. You have a fight with your spouse and you need the escape, and if you don’t follow your routine and obtain that reward, you feel uncomfortable.
The trick, Duhigg says, is to keep the same cue and reward, but just change the routine. Jot down all the cues that provoke an unwanted routine, and jot down all the rewards you get out of your habit loop. Then, find a routine you can swap in using the same rewards and cues, and changing your habits becomes much easier.
Like if you went to the gym when you had a fight instead of the bar. Or the library. Or maybe you go to the beach and meditate. Fight with your spouse, read a book, escape into the alternate reality between the pages? You’ve got options.
He talks about organizational and societal habits as well, but they’re really just aggregates of individual habits. Keystone habits are the neat ones; these are habit loops who’s effects spread into other aspects of your life after undertaking them. Working out is the best example — studies show that people who adopt working out and turn it into a habit end up with better sleep and eating habits.
I’ma go build me some habit loops.
So humans are better incentivized by loss aversion — for example, giving bonuses upfront and threatening to take them away if performance doesn’t improve as expected. This works way better than offering a bonus after the fact.
How to incorporate…
It’s only just under $2 billion right now, estimated to be just under $4 billion by 2015.
But probably $10 billion by 2020.
Mayyyyybe get in on this?
late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) by Dave McClure
I’m catching up late but it’s now obvious why this post was tweeted like crazy today. Well done Dave.
(via bijan)
(via bijan)
Salman Khan at Rice University’s 2012 commencement
Incredible.
What really got me was the letter he received from the woman with terminal cancer who had 2 months to live. In her letter she told him that she had always wanted to learn calculus, and with Khan Academy she would be able to spend her last 2 months doing just that; and then she thanked him.
I’m doing calculus at Caje on the verge of tears right now.
Relaxing too much stresses me out.
I’ve been watching too much TV, smoking too much weed, and overall doing too much chilling these past few months.
Needless to say, now I’m at Caje (my new favorite workspace) studying calculus on Khan Academy. And hopefully I’ll have enough willpower come Monday to start waking up at 5:30 to workout, meditate, cook breakfast, and read before work. Gotta get that shit done at the beginning of the day or it doesn’t happen, ya know?
Especially the breakfast part.
I need a microwave. But I digress.
Some lady at the LAX terminal started a convo with me.
By the time I got on my bus she gave me her email and offered me a job interview.
(via oldenough2burmom)
(via standupportal)
(via theamateurninja)
