Tricks of the mind to avoid difficult tasks:
1. Rushing through things.
2. Producing inferior work to create a false sense of achievement.
3. Engaging us in trivial tasks to stay busy.
Thinking Shorts (4)
Given enough time and stupidity, we can rationalise almost anything.
Impatience = 90% errors.
Our psychological state (A.K.A the state of mind) is far more important in making a decision than data or fact-checking.
Thinking Shorts (2)
Better be serious about the problem than the situation.
Forget the circus and focus on the play.
Thinking shorts (1)
Discovery isn’t about novelty alone.
Not just finding new things
but also to discard old ways of looking at the problem.
Socialising
When Agustun Fuentes remarked that you are who you meet, Gandhi flashed across my mind. If Gandhi had not met the racist conductor who threw him away at the Pietermaritzburg station then Indian if not the world history would have been different because it reinforced his spirit to fight against the evil English empire.
We shape society is a fact we all know but we don’t realize is that society too shapes us. That’s why the old African proverb says that it takes a village to raise a child. All the teachers, friends, peers, co-workers, priests, and everyone in your vicinity make us the person we are. In other words, If we can map out all the people you met since childhood and flip them with someone else then you become a new you.
People say casually that you are the average of five people you surround yourself with. However, the fact is you become the average of all the people you meet from your womb to the tomb. Our perception of ourselves and the world then is a product of all the relationships we had and we will have in the future.
Writing and thinking
I think writing reveals your ignorance. Before we begin to write we think that we do know a lot about something and think that we can actually communicate a lot to people. But the minute we begin to type or write on a paper, then the problem kicks in. In the mind, it appears that one has exceptional clarity on anything we usually think.
However, dumping down the ideas onto the paper shows whether we know or not. Of late, it has become a sort of litmus test for me to check intellectual arrogance. On the other day, I began to write a piece on socialism vs capitalism. I was confident that I can write good stuff owing to the fact that I read a lot. But words and ideas began to crumble the minute pen hit the paper.
The fact of the matter of course is quite obvious. Holding random thoughts and a few quotes of famous men and women is easy and takes no effort. Being disorganized is simple and no sweat. However, writing demands shape, order, and sorting out the wheat from the chaff which is way harder than it actually sounds.
And writing also insists completion of thoughts. But in the mental world, we never care about that. Half-complete ideas are okay and do not require an extra struggle to bring a nice closure. We can also simply shut them off or divert them. On the other hand writing tests your will and is a sort of fire that burns away your nonsense and puts a deadline and orders you to take a stand on the issue at hand.
Paper at all times demands a settlement of thought and it doesn’t accept half-baked cookies.
Time
One, time corrupts memory. When recalled, we often exaggerate or understate what exactly happened. This was seen clearly when 9/11 survivors told the things that never happened to the media, that’s why so many rumors and gossip have cropped up. Second, we are poor long-term decision-makers. The brain has a ‘Now bias’, that is only to think of short-term consequences and effects and nudge us to do things that give fruits at this moment. The serious long-term effects are thrown away and never shown to us in the fullest sense, hence we often procrastinate or ignore important tasks and do silly things that usually won’t matter down the line.
Thy Vox 