Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
This last election season was not a great one for political polls. The presidential election polls were off for the second straight presidential election, leaving many with doubts about the effectiveness of polling. Many state senatorial polls were also off, leading to expectations that were not met by the actual election outcomes. I spent a … Continue reading Conforming to What We Think People Expect
We are social creatures that crave connections with and acceptance from other people. We want to have many allies as we move through life and want to be seen as a valuable ally to others. In our minds, we magnify our actions, words, and behaviors, examining what we do and how we present ourselves to … Continue reading The Spotlight Effect
I wrote earlier about an experiment that Daniel Kahneman discusses in his book Thinking Fast and Slow where college students were asked to evaluate their life and asked to count the number of dates they had been on in the last month. When the question about dates came after the question about happiness, there was … Continue reading Focusing Illusion
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes, "remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present." He also writes, "if though holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which though utterest, though wilt live … Continue reading The Happiness of the Moment
"The evidence is persuasive," writes Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow, "activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation." Yesterday I wrote about our misconceptions regarding individual self-control. … Continue reading Self-Control Depletion, Continued
"Wherever you direct your gaze, you will meet with something that might stand out from the rest, if the context in which you read it were not equally notable," writes Seneca in Letters From a Stoic. Quite a while back I listened to a podcast interview with the founder of a music streaming service … Continue reading Stimuli, Attention, and What We Notice
There are two traits of humans which were great for ensuring our survival as a species tens of thousands of years ago that combine today in ways that don't always have good consequences for our lives. The first is that we are highly adaptable. We can adjust our lives and our focus to survive in … Continue reading A Craving for More
Cal Newport writes, "in many cases, contributions to an outcome are not evenly distributed," in his book Deep Work. Across many different domains, several of which Newport mentions in his book, we find an 80/20 split emerge terms of relationships between important things. Newport states that 80% of computer program crashes are caused by just … Continue reading Focus on the Few Major Items
"Once you're wired for distraction, you crave it," writes Cal Newport in his book Deep Work. Our technology today is not built nor designed to provide us with the best space for focus, it is not intended to provide us the maximum possible value, and it is not sold to us to truly enhance … Continue reading Wired for Distraction
"Your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to," writes Cal Newport in his book Deep Work. Newport builds on ideas by Winifred Gallagher in her book Rapt in which she discusses where her attention landed and how she tried to approach life and thinking after a difficult cancer diagnosis. What Gallagher found, and … Continue reading What Do You Pay Attention To?