Tag: philosophy

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Life & Philosophy Productivity & Work

The flaws of forecasting

gif by Sasha Zutto

Predictability is a loose formula that describes how things usually go. What works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow.

But what may increase our chances of success is a little confidence.

“Be confident, not certain.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Confidence breeds success. Overconfidence begets failure.

When we work hard, we instill a practicable faith in ourselves. But we also understand that diligence does not guarantee that we’ll get what we want.

Effort merely gives us a chance to retain our snag of the pellet.

The ways of achieving success are perpetually changing, with the urge to nail down a replicable formula, futile. Success means never settling for what worked in the past.

One can’t smell the wind of their success unless they’re willing to buy more lottery tickets in the work we choose to believe.

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Culture Life & Philosophy

Still ignorant, not stupid

A lot of people get dumber after college. It’s not entirely their fault. A job takes up all their time. Besides spending time with family and friends and doing chores — getting on with the business of living — a lot of free time is spent on staring at lite brites for entertainment.

“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”

David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

Experience makes us wiser but not smarter

As we age, we’re able to resolve practical matters with less effort. But therein lies a skewed perception.

We accidentally interpret how things usually go as facts rather than acknowledging that’ that’s how the world works now. Change is constant, the possibilities infinite.

An educated person should never stop learning. They should revel in their ignorance, not as an excuse to know less but as a means of staying interested in understanding more.

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Books Quotes

Emil Cioran: “We are all geniuses when we dream…”

Emil Cioran: "We are all geniuses when we dream..."
The Temptation to Exist

“Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.”

Emil Cioran, The Temptation to Exist
Categories
Productivity & Work Psychology

Thinking less to do more

via tumblr

Rhythm builds thoughtlessness. Work can become more natural out of mechanical motion, a kind of doing without thinking.

Employees can’t make one hundred sandwiches in a couple hours without silencing the monkey mind. The process of unthinking begets a chorus of action.

Similarly, we can’t dribble a basketball nor soccer ball effectively while focusing on the mechanics of the perfect touch. The gears of cognition get in the way of flow. Continued practice helps numb the disease of crippling doubt.

Habits are bicep curls for the brain

Good habits strengthen human software, primarily if we aim to do something consistently.

Like brushing our teeth, it’s the repetitive locomotion that undermines inertia and compels one to keep connecting the chain.

We can get used to being productive if we choose to make practice non-negotiable. All such preparation helps plow the field.

Categories
Life & Philosophy

Anomalies wanted

Curiosity expands the truth. There’s always an insightful gem around the corner.

So we chase the unfamiliar, gathering knowledge about interesting subjects unrelated to our core interests.

Seeking knowledge should invite more ambiguity than it solves.

The tyranny of certainty tries to stem philosophical reflection.

The conflict between knowing and leaving the door open for an anomaly advances all interpretation.

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Tech

Everything is sampled, including our DNA

everything is sampled

It’s in our DNA to sample, to take existing slices from each other to build something new.

The internet is the largest cut and paste machine. A producer of novelty, it begs for recombinations, a collection of stuff we can remix and make our own.

Like a Tumblr page, we decorate our personalities with originality. But everything from our interests to our blood develops from outside sources like an amalgamation of sounds.

All one has to do is scour Twitter for the latest in curated novelty. When favorite something we like or find interesting, we should feel free to mash it up in new serum, in a new format, shuffling ideas into fresh architectures.