On Hard Work and Thinking.

the reader,

following are tiny excerpts from articles i read recently here. these are lines that made me ponder/ wait/ stop. the links to the sources are given – give it a try!

 

Hard Work: The Greatest Con

Odin Halvorson

Living to work is not a grand state of human existence, but a perversion of it — a perversion which provides the natural state of idle time to those who control those who work.

Source : Hard Work: The Greatest Con

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Mental Models, Dragonfloxes, and How to Think Real Good

Charles Chu

Our eyes are constantly assaulted by a never-ending stream of data. Without some way to filter and organize all this information, it would be impossible for us to do anything at all.

A subway map can distort reality to better help you navigate. Likewise, we humans can distort our view of the world to better help ourselves navigate life. In other words: beliefs have consequences.

Source : Mental Models, Dragonfloxes, and How to Think Real Good

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The Purpose of Life Is Right In Front of You

Zat Rana

The purpose of life is right in front of us: It’s to create a reality we want to inhabit — to reach towards the better end of our conscious experience. At each moment, in every second of life, we are given a choice about how we want to conduct ourselves in this world, and though it might not always seem like it, each of these choices are of consequence. They each interact with culture to give it a new form; a form that we are responsible for creating by either doing what is right or doing what is wrong in that specific moment.

Source :The Purpose of Life Is Right In Front of You

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In Defense of Laziness

Charles Chu

A quote, from The Silences of Hammerstein:

“I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent — their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy — they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent — he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief.”

Sometimes, the fastest way to recover is to do nothing.This is an example of what the philosopher Nassim Taleb calls iatrogenics — when we do more harm than good with our interventions.

Source :In Defense of Laziness

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The Tyranny of the Perfect Life 

In the tyranny of the perfect day, blogger and author Matthew Sweet writes of his attempts to make each day conform to his ideal of the perfect:

“A while ago I discovered my ‘perfect morning’. I liked to rise before the sun, meditate for a while, read whilst drinking a few cups of coffee, then write for a few hours. After that, I’d squeeze in whatever else my relationships, commitments and ambitions demanded of me. So, I thought, why not try to make every morning like that? I tried and it was surprisingly successful. But it also made me fragile. If I didn’t get up early enough then I felt the morning was lost. If my meditation session went terribly then it threw me out of rhythm. If I couldn’t focus whilst reading I felt annoyed. If I sat at the keyboard and nothing came to me, I’d wind myself up into a hybrid state of anxiety and fear. I was seeking uniformity in my mornings and Life was giving me the middle finger, thwarting my quest in mostly consistent, but sometimes unexpected, ways.”

Source : The Tyranny of the Perfect Life