Belly Button Lint

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Tag: productivity

  • Theme:

    Humor and Efficiency (Right & Left Brain / Open & Closed mind)

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    1–2 minutes

    To be creative you must be open, which means to be humorous (seeing the odd angle) requires an open disposition. Once you have made a decision you must be efficient: practical, linear path making.

    To do both at once is to accomplish nothing: procrastination or chaos is self-defeat.

    Knowing when to release from the left brain impulse of rationality and invoke the holistic story-telling flow of the right brain -closed vs open- is how even the mediocre can transcend.

    To be the best, you become a conductor of groups of people, opening them and then focusing on them, letting them dream, and then motivating them to produce.

  • Theme:

    don’t aim for happiness or you will destroy it

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    1–2 minutes

    We say we are looking for happiness, but we are looking for a marvelous life that comes from a great pursuit.
    Almost none of which appears as happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of doing excellent work.

    Furthermore, even if we achieve happiness we promptly destroy it agitating for a novel heightened level of experience or meaning: we destroy happiness seeking more happiness.

    (in part from Jordan Peterson)

  • Theme:

    the need for love to overcome

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    1–2 minutes

    Amidst real, detrimental, and untenable problems, we seek to overcome them. While desperation and survival may drive us, for emotional (psychological) overcoming we require a lack of strife, and preferably love.
    With an emotional foundation internally, you can more clearly react and develop the prowess and motivation to tackle the external.

  • Theme:

    Manufacturing our dislikes

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    1–2 minutes

    We believe we dislike the person because of who they are or their actions: they caused us to dislike them.

    However, the opposite is true: we manufactured our dislike.

    We do this because it aligns with our goals: we want to have an enemy or be victimized so we can blame them for our inability to succeed, or we don’t want to be challenged by their brand of honesty.

    We reverse the causal relationship by finding a point from which to string together our narrative into what appears to be coherently rational.

    Yet the unexamined point is why we cannot accept or forgive this person. Why do our likes or dislikes even matter?

    This may seem abstract or untrue, but Alfred Adler points out how love often works: the tiny things that made you adore your partner, how they eat or comb their hair, go from cute to deplorably disgusting once you have decided to destroy the relationship.

  • Theme:

    proximity determines your goals

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    1–2 minutes

    It is impossible to achieve goals that are outside of your system.

    To attain success, one must strategically try to place themselves closer to their desired outcome, which opens new possibilities. Even luck cannot happen without proximity.

    More importantly, Luke Burgis elucidates the distinction that we are not capable of wanting something outside of our system. We can only want what we see modeled for us, so our goals are based upon our limited orbits influence. While proximity provides better odds of success, if you extend your orbit, your desires will shift to encompass new models of success.

  • Theme:

    Time management

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    1–2 minutes

    Hosteter’s law says projects you undertake will always take longer than you think, even when you account for adding time.

    And yet another adage is "the time you allot to do any task is how long it will take," if you will work within the time you are given.

    For example, if decide to spend one hour, it will take an hour and a half, but if you plan for an hour and a half it will probably take 2 hours. Yet if you allot 2 hours (thinking it will take one) it will take more time. But even if you allot four hours you will stretch the project into the four hours, and probably not be done.

    Reality seems to fight back in an exponential fashion, in which we always lose. Planning seems not to coincide with how we see reality.
    Yet the conundrum of not planning is never to achieve.

  • Theme:

    leisure: the highest human virtue

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    1–2 minutes

    Aristotle suggests the highest human virtue is leisure.
    Not producing (or consuming) is when you can self-reflect and pontificate.
    Every other action, such as war, politics, or vacation, serves some other function.

    The real question is: if we have forgotten how to serve ourselves, we must always serve a function.

    {from Oliver Burkeman, “4,000 weeks” }

  • Theme:

    Perfect Procrastinating

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    1–2 minutes

    A common trait of the procrastinator is an inability to prioritize.
    They can be productive and busy without achievement.

    One method is to be a “perfectionist” who can never release your projects into reality, constantly tweaking and rebuilding, and worrying.

    By blaming the project, we can hide our insecurity. A flawed product released into the world will provoke criticism, and prove our lack of talent. A theoretical project never realized shelters our ego: I may not be successful, but you can’t say I am not talented.

    More than likely, the procrastinator is hiding rather than perfecting, but occasionally a masterpiece is achieved, which only empowers more procrastination.

  • Theme:

    the time problem with saving environment

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    1–2 minutes

    People have a difficult time living out a set of principles that will bear fruit in 200 years.
    It is difficult to sacrifice your life today (and endure the pain now) for a distant future that you will not know. More difficult is assuming your sacrifice in the present will be appreciated with a commensurate level of responsibility by future generations.

  • Theme:

    Sports: Learning to Quit Gracefully

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    1–2 minutes

    There is a tendency to grasp tighter as something slips away: fight harder to retain what was.

    Another approach to loss is through sports: you give it all you have and leave it all on the field. Shake hands and walk away. You just need to know when the final buzzer is sounding.