I have so much happening today, it took a toll on my concentration.

There came a moment when my staff was telling to look into several things one after another that I had to stop her and asked her to please say it to me one at a time. 

My brain just can't take it today. 

pearlie

I found this hilarious quote in one of my journal app today. 

I know being open-minded means having "a willingness to listen to or accept different ideas or opinions" but I must say I don't like the word. 

I'm all for being a good listener but being all opened up for anything?

I guess that is what Stephen A. Kallis, Jr. is trying to say—you still need to have your own opinion and worldview and you can have your own stand in the matter. 

What do you think would be a better word instead?

pearlie

pearlie

I have posted this video back in 2016 but I still talk about it and recommend it to others when the topic comes up. 

Are we born procrastinators?

I don't want to be one but I find myself procrastinating all the time. It's a refusal to just get to work and complete the stuff that I need to do. 

Why do we procrastinate?

Someone says it's a craving to do something else because we have an aversion to the very thing that we are to do. 

Is that so?

But there are things that I love doing that I procrastinate a lot on. Like writing. I love to put my thoughts into this blog but I keep procrastinating on it. But when I get started, I really enjoy doing it. 

So why do I procrastinate?

I suppose like what Tim Urban in the video says, the Self-Gratification Monkey prefers to play and do other more fun and useless stuff leaving the Rational Decision Maker with no handle on the situation but wait till the monkey gives up so he can get to work. 

I need to keep the monkey on reins and at bay.

I need to be rational and stop procrastinating especially when there are no deadlines. 

pearlie

Yes, you heard me right. I don't read the news. I always forget to. 

And I would feel guilty and left out and stupid when people talk about the big headlines. 

Until I read Chapter 99 of The Art of Thinking Clearly. Anyway, this will be the final post on that book, for now. But it will still be a book I will refer to every now and then. It is indeed very useful to train myself into thinking more clearly. 

Ok back to Chapter 99, on the News Illusion. 

Dobelli says, "We are incredibly well informed, yet we know incredibly little. Why? Because two centuries ago, we invented a toxic form of knowledge called 'news'. News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetizing, easy to digest—and highly destructive in the long run."

Really? 

But isn't news suppose to keep us in the loop, inform us about current issues and what matters?

I am still not sure about this.

But Dobelli brings out three points:

1. Our brains react disproportionately to different types of information. It is attracted to the sensational, shocking and scandalous. It filters out the subtle, complex, abstract, and profound. Think about it, would we rather read The Star or The Edge?

2. News is irrelevant. It is difficult to remember what we read and much of the time we can still get by not knowing. 

3. And as a result, news is a waste of time. He took the example of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. He said, "Out of sheer thirst for recognition, terrorists murdered two hundred people. Let’s say a billion people devoted an hour of their time to following the aftermath: They viewed the minute-by-minute updates and listened to the inane chatter of a few “experts” and “commentators.” This is a very realistic “guesstimate” since India has more than a billion inhabitants. Thus our conservative calculation: One billion people multiplied by an hour’s distraction equals one billion hours of work stoppage. If we convert this, we learn that news consumption wasted around two thousand lives—ten times more than the attack. A sarcastic but accurate observation."

I still want to be in the know, but I won't worry too much now about missing out on current issues. I will still do what I do now—scanning headlines in Google News. I only read a couple that I find interesting. 

And the rest I will go read up when I hear people around me talking about it. 

What do you think?

pearlie

I was reading the chapter on the Illusion of Attention in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly and I am being warned. 

I admit that when I drive, I'm always distracted. I am always listening to music, looking at my phone and all. 

When all things are running as clockwork, where all vehicles are doing what they are expected to do, all will be fine.

But when something unexpected happens, and they do, I will not be able to react in time. 

There are no buts. Consider myself warned. 

pearlie

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! 

His faithful love endures forever. 

Has the LORD redeemed you? 

Then speak out! 

Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies.

I'm only so thankful to the LORD for what he has done in all my life, even the little thing today which is a big thing to me. 

Thank you Abba. 

pearlie

I was watching a TV show and was reminded of the Streisand effect.

Have you heard of it?

This is attributed to Barbra Streisand when in 2003, she wanted to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California but inadvertently she drew more public attention to it. 

For example, have you noticed that when a book or movie is banned, you then have to read it, you have to watch it. 

What happened in the TV show I watched though was interesting. 

There is this book the king wanted to destroy because it will completely wreck his reputaton.

So did he just ban it?

Yes but he did much more. 

He banned all books in that genre. He got them all burned at the stake. 

Because of that, no one knew any better. The actual book he wanted to ban just disappeared into oblivion.

If only we have that power though. 

pearlie

I was worship leading in church today when I used this song, Jesus Shall Take the Highest Honor. 

We sing it oh-so-easily, but do we take Jesus and put Him as the highest in our priority, in our lives?

More often not, it's ourselves we find there, in the highest place. 

pearlie

I got this idea when I attended Deloitte's seminar on the latest HR trends. 

Among the things I picked up was that we need at least 100 days of learning in a year to remain relevant. 

With that, I wanted to learn something every day and I thought it'd be a good idea to start a journal to record what I learn on a daily basis. 

I downloaded Diarium, a journaling app and I have been doing it for a week now. Some days were hard whilst other days I have loads to write about. 

Since I kept it a point not to miss even a single day, some days are quite forced, but I would still write something, however irrelevant or trivial that learning item is. 

And it's a good thing because by the end of the day, if I have nothing to write about, I had better go do something useful before the day is out. 

pearlie

I got my colleague to also get a copy (as of today it is still selling at $1.99) and we have been talking and discussing about what we read and what had intrigued and even amused us. 

Rolf Dobelli is a witty fella and we were both caught laughing so loud in the office today, when we exchanged notes and talked about his expressions and explanation. 

Especially his section on Social Comparison Bias, which he explains is "the tendency to withhold assistance to people who might outdo you, even if you look like a fool in the long run."

And he quoted Guy Kawasaki who "says: 'A-players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B-players hire C-players so they can feel superior to them, and C-players hire D-players. If you start hiring B-players, expect what Steve [Jobs] called ‘the bozo explosion’ to happen in your organization.' In other words, start hiring B-players and you end up with Z-players. Recommendation: Hire people who are better than you, otherwise you soon preside over a pack of underdogs."

This really had both of us in fits of laughter today. It's so funny but sadly it's so true. 

And I really like it when he ends the section with, "Admittedly, in the short term, the preponderance of stars can endanger your status, but in the long run, you can only profit from their contributions. Others will overtake you at some stage anyway. Until then, you should get in the up-and-comers’ good books—and learn from them."

Go get the book already. It's definitely worth a read. 

pearlie

It means if the upper (上) beam (梁) is not (不) straight (正), the lower (下) beam (梁) will slant (歪). 

And if you notice, the word for slant 歪 is made up of two words, not straight 不正, one on top of the other. 

Such is the beauty of the Chinese language. 

And it's poetic too. 

I found it interesting that is has a 4+3 meter. I tried to find out the implication of its unevenness but couldn't find anything yet. 

What I notice is that Chinese sayings usually have matching meters, i.e. 3+3, 4+4 or 5+5.

But in some sayings, the second portion has one less. And I feel it denotes the negativity and incompleteness of what it wants to convey. 

What do you think?

Like in this case, if the upper beam is not straight, if the top is not set right, whatever that is the bottom will not be stable and may fall. 

What other such uneven metrics of Chinese sayings come to mind?

pearlie

But we were wondering why it is called that. 

Apparently the dish originated from Buhari Hotel, Chennai, India but nobody knows exactly why it's named Chicken 65. 

Some say it's because it was created in year 1965. Some say it's because it contains 65 chili peppers. Some say it's made from 65-day old chickens. Others say the dish has 65 pieces of chicken. And yet others say it was the 65th item in the menu of the restaurant. 

Whatever the story, it's absolutely yummy. 

It's like spicy popcorn chicken without the batter, without the frying. 

pearlie

Sadly, this cartoon from theAwkwardYeti.com pretty much sums up my eating behaviour lately. 

We were taught and told that we eat to live, that we need to eat to get the energy to pursue our daily living. 

That's logical, but that does not seem to tell the whole story, does it?

So I went googling for some insights and found this book.

Hedonic Eating, How the Pleasure of Food Affects Our Brains and Behavior

by Nicole M. Avena, ed.

It was published in 2015 where the author editor compiled and reviewed literature from various writers on the topic of hedonic eating. 

Hedonic eating? 

She says that hedonic eating is a relatively new term derived from the concept of  hedonism, which by definition is the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life. Hedonic eating is a form of eating in which one eats for pleasure rather than for energy needs. The desire to eat solely to reproduce the pleasurable feelings associated with particular foods activates the reward circuits of the brain. 

With that I can confirm that I am a Hedonic Eater. 

pearlie

It is almost empty now and so he bought me another bottle for my birthday and I just opened it today. 

Victoria's Secret Bombshell Wild Flower has the same scent but it's a bit sweeter and stronger. 

Loving it!

pearlie

It is a movie about prisoners of war in Geoje Prison during the 1951 Korean War.

I am not a fan of war movies but I'd watch anything with music and dance. I finally got to watch it. I really like it, though I did find it a tad too long.

Here's a trailer, which I found quite compelling.