Self Distraction

Self Distraction

Sticks and stones are easier

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We’re writers, we know that words hurt. But they also hurt ourselves. Take a look at this:

Remember the childhood rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?” It sounds optimistic, but it’s actually not true.

According to neuroscientists and brain communication researchers, words can do damage. In fact, negative words release chemicals in your brain that cause stress. Angry words send alarm messages through the brain that shut down logic and reasoning centers. Our minds are hardwired to worry.

But it gets worse. Just like that horror movie where the babysitter discovers the killer is calling from inside the house, some of the most damaging words are the ones we tell ourselves.

“Self-esteem is a word-based inner dialogue going on in your brain,” says Mark Robert Waldman, coauthor of Words Can Change Your Brain (Penguin Group, 2013).

How 60 Seconds And One Word A Day Can Reduce Your Stress – Stephanie Vozza, Fast Company (28 July 2014)

Read the full piece.

Lying and excuses: our route to creativity

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The always excellent Brain Pickings has an actually delightful piece about a book called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School:

…celebrated children’s book author Davide Cali and French illustrator Benjamin Chaud weave a playful parable of this childhood tendency to come up with excuses so fantastical that they become charming stories in their own right — a crucible of creativity and a sandbox for the young mind to play with the building blocks of storytelling.

One morning, the little boy is late to school and when his teacher inquires about the reason for his tardiness, he proceeds to offer a litany of imaginative excuses. Giant ants ate his breakfast! Evil ninjas ambushed him on the way to the bus stop! A massive ape mistook the school bus for a banana! His uncle’s time machine misfired and sent him back to the dominion of dinosaurs!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School: A Charming Catalog of Excuses and an Allegory for How Human Imagination Works – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (undated but 5 March 2015)

Go get your lunch and have a read of the full piece.

Not convinced: making Sundays better

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Didn’t we just do this with Mondays? Now we’re attacking Sundays which, I grant you, are usually in a a bit of shadow because of the following Monday. And also they are nearly as boring as Bank Holidays. But there are ways to make them better:

Do Sunday on Saturday. [T]ake care of buzz-killing chores, errands, and commitments on Saturday, when you’re naturally in a better mood. This… leaves you open for ‘moments of unencumbered joy’ on Sunday when your psyche is in need of them most.

Become a forward thinker. [End] your workweek with a plan… Create a Monday-specific to-do list, line up necessary files, and tag e-mails that require attention.

How to Make Sundays Suck Less – Allison Stadd, 99U (5 March 2015)

Notice that citation is for 99U, not Real Simple. This is partly because I found it first on 99U but also because for once Real Simple is a sort-of real magazine: you go through it like someone has scanned each page of a print title. It’s good, it’s interesting, it’s just hard to link to a specific line of text.

So do go read the full 99U feature but then click through to Real Simple, would you?

UK pricing for Apple Watch

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Let’s cut to it. The one you’re going to get is the cheapest. Except the Apple Watch comes in two sizes: 38mm and 42mm. For once the smaller device is the cheaper – doesn’t it cost more to squeeze components down? – and that will cost you £299.

The 42mm one will cost you £339.

This price level is called the Apple Watch Sport and I am not a sporting kinda guy but I will pretend I am as the next level up is a big step. Oddly, the next one is just called the Apple Watch: there’s no qualifier, no extra word in the name. It has the same two sizes and the smaller is £479.

Then there’s the Apple Watch Edition, the gold one. That starts from £8,000.

Told you that you’re going to get the cheapest. I have zero problems with this in terms of the watch: I neither want nor can afford to spend £8,000 on a watch. But the standard straps on the cheapest one do look cheap. I don’t have zero problems with that, I have something just above zero. It’s just that I think they might be uncomfortable: they look uncomfortable.

Still, whatever watch you buy, you can buy other straps, they’re just ranging from doable to silly money.

Nonetheless, they had me since last year.

Read more about the Apple Watch including all the UK pricing details on the official site. You’ve got up to 24 April to save.

Your smartphone is making you thick

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Our smartphones help us find a phone number quickly, provide us with instant directions and recommend restaurants, but new research indicates that this convenience at our fingertips is making it easy for us to avoid thinking for ourselves.

The study, from researchers at the University of Waterloo and published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, suggests that smartphone users who are intuitive thinkers — more prone to relying on gut feelings and instincts when making decisions — frequently use their device’s search engine rather than their own brainpower. Smartphones allow them to be even lazier than they would otherwise be.

“They may look up information that they actually know or could easily learn, but are unwilling to make the effort to actually think about it,” said Gordon Pennycook, co-lead author of the study, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Waterloo.

In contrast, analytical thinkers second-guess themselves and analyze a problem in a more logical sort of way. Highly intelligent people are more analytical and less intuitive when solving problems.

Reliance on smartphones linked to lazy thinking — ScienceDaily (5 March 2015)

Read the full piece on your iPhone.

More on doing fewer things at once

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This may be the thing you need to know most: stop with the multitasking. It is bad. It is rubbish. Here’s someone with a psychology background agreeing with me:

One thing at a time — For many years the psychology research has shown that people can only attend to one task at a time. Let me be even more specific. The research shows that people can attend to only one cognitive task at a time. You can only be thinking about one thing at a time. You can only be conducting one mental activity at a time. So you can be talking or you can be reading. You can be reading or you can be typing. You can be listening or you can be reading. One thing at a time.

We fool ourselves — We are pretty good at switching back and forth quickly, so we THINK we are actually multi-tasking, but in reality we are not.

The one exception — The only exception that the research has uncovered is that if you are doing a physical task that you have done very very often and you are very good at, then you can do that physical task while you are doing a mental task. So if you are an adult and you have learned to walk then you can walk and talk at the same time.

The True Cost Of Multi-Tasking – Susan Weinschenk Ph.D, Psychology Today (18 September 2012)

That last bit about physical tasks was new to me but I think we all need reminding of the problems of multitasking. As ever, read the full piece.

Fitness and Productivity. Oh Dear God.

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We all know that sluggish feeling in the morning. Your body is moving but your mind hasn’t switched on yet. Imagine the impact on your day if you had a dose of endorphins before your morning meetings?

Exercising first thing is daunting, it’s tough, but it truly sets you up for a wonderfully effective day. It gives you a positive, fresh outlook and a real head start. Adding exercise to your day means your productivity will increase because you arrive to work energised, focused and more organised than before. You will be able to think more clearly, your energy levels will be higher throughout the day, you will be less stressed, more creative and better prepared.

Just think about it – you’ve done a workout, had breakfast and are up and at ‘em, feeling amazing – and all before 9am!

Positive Fitness and Productivity – Liz Costigan, ClaireBurge.com (undated

She’s not wrong. I know. I know. Read the full piece for a lot more. Then break it all to me softly.

Weekend read: but what about you?

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I write a personal blog called Self Distract every Friday and today’s one, intended to be just an aside and a musing on things if not necessarily amusing about anything, has caused some comments. Lots of nice things but also people identifying with its topic.

That topic was about conversation and how when we talk to friends, we have to make it a joint, two-way thing. Let me set the scene:

Okay, you may have trouble swallowing this considering how I go on at you every week. But when we meet in person, I am infinitely – infinitely – more interested in you than I am in me. Have I said this to you before? I tell you everything, I must’ve mentioned it: my attitude when nattering away with someone is that I know all about me, I was there, I saw me do it, let’s talk about you.

Truly, time spent talking about me is wasted and boring. I’m not knocking myself, I’m just not interested and I have plenty of time to know me, I might get only minutes with you. And look at you: look at all you’re doing, all you know that I don’t, how could I possibly waste any time talking about me?

I got told off for this today.

It’s not you, it’s me – William Gallagher, Self Distract (6 March 2015)

Read the full piece for what happened – and, much more interestingly, how it might ring some bells with yo.