All posts tagged ‘Idleness

Paradoxes I Live By

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” –Niels Bohr “Since the beginning of time, tricksters (the mythological origin of all clowns) have embraced life’s paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion — adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.” […]

Action Bias

Wikipedia on social desirability bias: Social desirability bias is the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. It can take the form of over-reporting good behavior or under-reporting bad behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports, especially questionnaires. This bias interferes […]

It’s Not Too Late To Push Your Deadline

My former boss is certainly one of the more interesting persons I know. A professor of political theory, an investigator in the South Pacific, a theologican with an emphasis on logic, a successful visual artist – you name it. There are many things that contributed to his success, but I personally like to think that […]

Out of the Headlights

I got some interesting reader comments by email for last week’s post, Deer in Headlights. One common objection was: “But it’s not my fault!” Of course it’s not. At least not exclusively. Deer in headlights isn’t just a hart problem. It’s a hard problem. And it’s also a herd problem, from all I can tell: […]

The Nothing Alternative

Raymond Chandler had an interesting approach to getting things done. In his case: Getting things written. Here’s what he said, according to Roy Baumeister and John Tierney in their book, Willpower: ((More on Willpower very soon. That book really is a blast if you know what to take from it.)) Chandler had his own system […]