Geek Drivel

One of the repeating items on my to-do list is cleaning off my office desk. It’s something I committed to recently, to try to keep my working area tidy; so long as I keep on top of it every few days, it only takes a few minutes each time. But I’d found myself putting it off for several days, and yesterday I decided to figure out why.

It didn’t take much detective work. We’ve moved most of our stuff into the new place now, but we’re still unpacking and organizing it all, and a lot of things don’t have places to go yet. One of those things was presently-unused computer cables and parts, which comprised the majority of the items on my desk.

Once I determined what to do with them, it was child’s play to clean off the desk. Total elapsed time: less than five minutes, including the time needed to set up the place.

Why is this worthy of a blog post? Because it’s a common productivity trap: you repeatedly procrastinate on something because you don’t know something about it, when it would only take a few minutes of thinking or research to figure it out. It’s easy to do once you realize that that’s the problem, but it can take some time to achieve that realization.

To reiterate the mantra of productivity:

1. Identify your goal and determine the measurable outcome that embodies it;
2. identify the next physical step toward that outcome that’s small enough to accomplish;
3. execute that step;
4. repeat steps 2 through 4 until the goal is achieved.

Or, in the oversimplified words of the shoe company Nike (named after the Greek goddess of victory): just do it.

I’ve long maintained that anyone with a normally-working brain can learn to be smart. This article lends weight to that opinion.

At least a dog is likely to listen, or look like he’s listening. Cats, children, and non-scientist adults (unless you’re paying them) aren’t likely to even pretend interest.

I’ve never been able to understand people who reject scientific evidence outright, in favor of whatever their chosen authorities dictate. (I recently saw a quote that sums it up: “[T]he problem with all the “science deniers” is they think the argument is about power and “we” think it is about what reality is.”) The book mentioned here (available as free PDF files on the site) promises a deep delving into the psychology of such people, with scientific evidence backing up every premise.

I haven’t read it yet, but quite frankly, I think such people have a mental illness and need treatment — and if they refuse treatment, or if one can’t be developed, need to at least be barred from any position of authority. Especially in government!

(This will probably be denounced as religious persecution, since the vast majority of religious fundamentalists have this authoritarian mental illness. But consider… we, as a society, don’t allow pedophiles to work in child care, so why do we allow authoritarians to run for public office? The two cases are a lot more closely related than they first appear.)

It makes sense, things that are “good for you” never feel good.

I’ve long suspected that brains don’t have to be human-sized for intelligence.

Short answer: not bloody likely. At least not in my lifetime.

And to top it all off (so to speak), it’s called the Happiness Hat. Ouch.

Food for thought.

Happy Hallowe’en! Here’s a vaguely Hallowe’en-themed article I stumbled across last week. It’s exciting, but the scary part is what an amoral dictator could do with it once it’s perfected.