Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Control”

26 Jul 2008
4 Comments

The Balance between Focus and Multi-tasking

Out of Focus by Billy Alexander

Out of Focus by Billy Alexander

I commented yesterday on the challenging tension between multi-tasking and focus on GTD Times. I referenced how I use Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow methodology (see blogroll) to enable as much focus as possible during day to day working.

What’s been nagging at me has been catalysed by my reading of Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain Tortoise Mind.  

In the book Guy argues that our ‘intelligent unconscious’ is a sophisticated nervous system that gets to know the world by the idiosyncrasies of our own experience: ‘a brain is plastic: it transmutes ignorance into competence….. categories and concepts are distilled from particular encounters so that, by a process of spontaneous analogy, ‘what I do next’ can be informed by records of ‘what happened before”.

It ‘registers its patterns and develops and coordinates skillful responses’

Read more…

Posted in Action Orientation, Business, Control, Focus, Habits and Routines, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged , , , , , ,
22 Jul 2008
2 Comments

Work Stress: Is it Wrong to Create it Yourself?

Men Sunset by Hilde Vanstraelen

Men Sunset by Hilde Vanstraelen

For a long (long) time, I’ve known very clearly about certain aspects of my personality. One of them that I had always labelled as somewhere along the spectrum of procrastination and laziness was the trait of always leaving important things to the last minute. Whether it was the last minute homework; the university essay deadline extension. The professional examination cramming or the Board papers finalised minutes before deadlines.

I had always put it down to laziness/ procrastination whilst at the same time being surprised whenever I came upon the output of my ‘rushed’ work. Invariably I was amazed with what I came up with in those final minutes. I was often left with the feeling that ‘if only’ I pulled my finger out, and gave myself ten times the time, I’d be able to incrementally improve what I produced tenfold.

Read more…

Posted in Action Orientation, Control, Creativity, Focus, Game Playing, Stress, Time Management and tagged , , , , , ,
21 Jul 2008

Finally Fooled by Taleb’s Randomness?

Indicating my need to improve my reading speed, I have finally finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s excellent Fooled by Randomness. The string of posts on the impact that Fooled by Randomness has had on me as I have read it is linked here.

I leave the book definitely impacted, and – as I should be – with questions.

I need to percolate on thoughts over the next few days. I’m reading Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain Tortoise Mind to try and act as counterpoint to the thing that I think left me most concerned on leaving the book:

1. That emotions are hard-wired and cannot be changed: ‘the epiphany I had in my career in randomness came when I understood that I was not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to even try to fight my emotions’

– I need to dwell on whether my problem with this is that I consider NLP to be something which can at least ‘re-direct’ my emotions (if I identify emotions with ‘state’)

Read more…

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Habits and Routines, Learning, Mindfulness, NLP and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →