Just Seven Things

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

Archive for the tag “Mindfulness”

24 Jul 2008
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The Psychology of Game Playing… continued

Kid's Game 5 by Adrian van Leen

Kid's Game 5 by Adrian van Leen

Further to a series of posts on game playing, it was great to be able to add to the different tools after reading a post on Mark Forster’s blog about Chaining.

Mark explains ‘There is a simple method called “Chaining” which can greatly increase your chances of success. It takes the form of competing against yourself to produce the longest chain of days in which you succeeded with your goal. 

For example, if your goal is to practise the piano daily you manage to carry this out for two weeks and then miss a day. You have made a chain of fourteen days. Now your aim is to beat your record of fourteen days.’

Great links on the comments, including one from Janine Adams to http://www.dontbreakthechain.com./

I’m still fascinated though why game playing is so effective in helping us change. Why is it so core? I thought about a number of different nature/ nurture sources, and will explore these further in weeks to come. Steve Nichols’ article on Game Psychology provides a fascinating primer before then.

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Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Game Playing, Habits and Routines, Learning, Mindfulness 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
19 Jul 2008

My Pursuit of Happiness III

Review

This is the main area in other systems (particularly in David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) ) that such emphasis is given to the importance and impact of this regular behaviour.

It’s always been something I’ve struggled with and I don’t really know why. It kind of feels like an easy thing to do compared to having to actually do tasks. I also find it to be an activity which is so easy to get sidelined in. So easy to just quickly do a short task that to come upon during your review……

I want to shift this by applying a structure to the review. A bit like I’ve heard about buffalos only travelling with the slowest in their herd, I want to cull the long tail of tasks by evaluating my accountabilities, projects and My 3 Very Next Actions for each. And then using Mark Forster’s ruthless time assessment (if you haven’t got the time longer term to do something, renegotiate it or drop it), review task ‘doability’

Posted in Control, Focus, Happiness, Management, Mindfulness, Time Management and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

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