Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the tag “Control”

01 Aug 2008

Good Habits, Bad Habits and the Breaking of Both

Deadly Habit by Sanja Gjenero

Deadly Habit by Sanja Gjenero

I’m continually interested by habits. Both good and bad.

In previous posts recently, I‘ve been thinking about the power of chaining, nudging and game playing. At the heart of these three areas is a fairly simple, lighter-touch approach to the creation of good habits and the removal of bad. This light touch approach I have frequently contrasted with more of a top-down, intellectually controlled approach.

Two thoughts have been rattling around in relation to habits, and I’m not sure how they fit in (if they do at all)

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Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Control, Game Playing, Habits and Routines, Mindfulness and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
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’

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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.

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

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