Dimly Lit

According to SI’s John Donovan: Pujols is baseball’s Mr. Everything

I agree.

Once again it is shown that good for you! As anyone that has actually paid attention and read this blog for awhile knows, I’m alway looking for opportunities to justify my weaknesses.

I will note, however, that the study does seem to limit consumption to 1 to 3 cups a day. In the past this would have struck me as paltry, surely if 3 cups is good 10, 12, even 15 cups woul be better? But now my friends, I am a dedicated 2 cup a day (caffeinated) drinker.

Decaf doesn’t count, does it? I’m still not downing 15 cups a day, but I do enjoy an occasional cup or 2 of the unleaded variety in the evening.

This guy really is amazing…

Pujols becomes fastest to reach 19 homers -

“I’m a line drive hitter with power, and that’s it. All I try to do is just hit for average, and hopefully if I put a good swing on it the ball’s going to go out of the park.”

A Star Is Made
is an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine (registration required) discussing research into what really makes someone truly excellent at what they do. The researchers have been studying all kinds of data collected from star athletes, musicians, business people, etc. to try to determine what separates those at the very top of the field from the rest of us. The conclusion is, in some ways, surprising in that they believe the old cliche of ‘practice makes perfect’ has much more impact than natural, genetic talent.

the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

Naturally, there is a degree to which this seems pretty intuitive and you can wonder why they heck these guys spent who knows how much money and time to figure this out - after all cliches often become cliche because they’re, um, true. But, as my statistics professor way back in college used to remind us, don’t put too much stock in what seems to be an obvious truth. After all, most of those tried and true sayings have an opposite that is just as tried and true; e.g. ‘opposites attract’ and ‘birds of a feather flock together’.
I know I, for one, have been guilty more than once during my life of claiming the mantle of ‘Oh, I just don’t have the talent for ___________’. This gives me the convenient out so that I don’t have to put in the work and practice at something I simply don’t like doing.

Most people naturally don’t like to do things they aren’t “good” at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don’t possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.
“I think the most general claim here,” Ericsson says of his work, “is that a lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it.”

Aha! Someone else understands and has written a book!

One of the problems that has always frustrated me (and I’m sure those around me) is my seeming inability to really make up my mind about what I’m doing with my life. I went through 7 majors in college, finally getting a degree in “Interdisciplinary Studies”. As I progressed through studies in philosophy and theology, one of the things that most irked me was recognizing that I was going to need to narrow my focus to some specialization. I’ve always had a hard time deciding what I want to be when I grow up. And as a result I’ve always (vaguely sometimes, acutely at others) felt like there was something wrong with me.

Well, according to this person, I simply have a Renaissance Soul.

What IS a Renaissance Soul?
Short answer: A Renaissance Soul doesn’t ask, “What color is my parachute?” but rather “What colors are my parachutes“!

That sounds about right, I tried to read this book quite a while ago, and got discouraged and depressed. I didn’t finish it and went away thinking that I didn’t even have a parachute, screw the color choice.

I took the little quiz at the Get Unstuck website (that’s the official website for the book), and answered yes to almost every question, which seems to qualify my as a Renaissance Soul.

Anyway, this looks interesting, if nothing else as a balm to my soul so I think I’ll check it out.

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Since I’ve been spending some time writing about my own laziness and lack of organization, I thought I’d share a quote I came across a while ago from the late Robert Heinlein:

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

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I’m more than halfway through the book now, so I thought I’d give a quick update on my how I’m doing, after all, I’m pretty happy to have made it halfway through a book!

Several years ago I tried to incorporate Steven Covey’s stuff and essentially failed miserably at it. I never felt like I could really get things off the ground and was spending too much time figuring out the “high level” stuff. The organization geeks will tell you that one of the primary differences between the “7 Habits” method and the GTD method is the difference between top-down and bottom-up organization.

Top down organization is the 7 Habits method. You start off by looking at the big picture of your life - the big rocks. Once you have the big stuff figured out you can move down the list until you are dealing with the smaller pebbles and grains of sand. Anyone who has ready 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or been to a Franklin Covey seminar knows exactly what I’m talking about here.

Bottom up organization, the GTD way, somewhat flips this over and says that you just need to deal with all your stuff! If you have piles of papers and things that need to get done scattered all over your desk/cube/house, in all likelyhood many of those things are going to be missed and your going to spend your time runnign around unsure of what to do next. So the first thing you need to do is get the stuff organized - then you can actually deal with it and eventually have time to really think about the more top shelf “who am I” types of questions.

Because I am by nature a very unorganized person, the bottom-up method seems to be a better fit. With Covey I ended up spending all my time navel-gazing over my Roles and Goals. With Allen I am actually already seeing progress in getting through my Inbox. I am encouraged.

One discouraging aspect for me is when Allen talks about taking 2 days to fully implement the system! Who the heck can do that?

Tags: GTD, Productivity

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I came across this article a while ago and intended to write about it…then I forgot. It’s pretty interesting and certainly seems to describe me pretty well.

it’s a condition induced by modern life, in which you’ve become so busy attending to so many inputs and outputs that you become increasingly distracted, irritable, impulsive, restless and, over the long term, underachieving.

It also seems to be somewhat Neil Postman-ish:

It’s the result, he contends, of the modern workplace, where the constant and relentless chatter coming from our computers, phones and other high-tech devices is diluting our mental powers.

Except this guy thinks technology is great:

Technology is a great blessing. It is behind much of our progress. But if we’re not careful with it, it can start running us ragged.

Thus, part of my need for help in the area of Getting Things Done.