crystallize!

Want to know whether your four-year-old will be successful later in life? Try replicating the psych experiment outlined in this fascinating few-minute TED talk by Joachim de Posada. He presents research from Stanford showing a strong correlation between a young child’s ability to delay gratification and that same child’s academic and social performance a decade or more later. Check out the adorable footage of four-year-olds attempting to stave off (or cheat their way out of) temptation. I also enjoyed the New Yorker article discussing these results, and related studies on self-control, at greater length.

Would you have been able to resist a marshmallow for 15 minutes when you were four years old? Has your self-control gotten any weaker or stronger since then?

Loved this image from my friend Doug’s daily photo blog. He documents an entire playoff prediction chart for an imaginary(?) Battle of the Gods, as sketched on a coffee shop chalkboard at the U Chicago divinity school.

(Not a new trope, I know, but how often are you prompted to speculate about the likely outcome of a showdown between Confucius and Rasputin? Or Moses and Chuck Norris?)

Beautiful animation sequence from Australian artist Lucinda Schreiber, using the unusual medium of good old-fashioned chalkboards, and set to a meditative soundtrack.

Recently I’ve been struck anew by the fact that often my relationship with all my travel plans and ideas has been to relegate them to the maybe-someday queue. Someday I’ll go to New Zealand, someday I’ll go to Australia,… Bali, Ireland, Bhutan, Uzbekistan, Japan,… I’ve been adding new places to the list for decades, and not crossing them off anywhere near as fast. Some of them have been on the list for over 20 years, which in other circumstances might merit the label of “stuck.” So it’s occurring to me that now would be a good time to change the way I think about planning travel, at a basic level. This realization has been helped along by an inspiring meeting with a new friend who spent 10 months traveling around the world a few years ago, and also by the somewhat alarming number of my friends who have been contracting sudden fatal illnesses over the past few years. (Probably any number over zero would seem alarming.)

One of my several first steps: start reading more about the places I want to go. My library obligingly supplied a couple of books about travel in Australia; it also happened to have another with an amusing title nearby, so I pulled all three.


Quick reactions, in lieu of actual reviews: Bryson is hilarious, as always; Parry’s writing is less skillful but still amusing; both added substantially to my previously miniscule grasp of Australian geography and history. Which is to say, my mind is now full of vivid maps and images of lots of places I must go see for myself. I enjoyed Gurdon’s documentation of his travels-with-chicken publicity stunt, too (he is a writer in England who was on book tours in aid of his previous book, also about chickens).

Getting more done by doing less—it’s a simple enough premise. Identify what’s essential, limit yourself to doing the things that fall under that heading, and presto! you have amazingly improved productivity. In practice, of course, it may be simple but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy. But if you’re ready to give it a try, this books offers an excellent set of clear steps.

I’ve been experimenting with his basic building blocks for a couple of weeks, and I’ve gotta say, they’ve been really helpful so far. One of my perpetual challenges has been learning to set a reasonable task list for myself, so I don’t become a slave to my endless to-do list. I mean, yeah, obviously you prioritize and then you do the most important things first, yadda yadda—but there are always umpteen things left on the list at the end of the day, right? So here’s the new rule I’ve been using with great success: as you begin your workday, choose just three things that you absolutely must do today. These are your Most Important Things, and you may work on other things only after all of them are completed. I must confess, I’m still a little sloppy on that latter bit, sliding in some little stuff up front and thus effectively assigning myself more than three things. And I’m still refining my ability to choose the right three. But even so, the overall effect has been notable. For me, this is largely because that one rule gives me a simple and attainable goal: done the things? today is a success!

The book covers a lot of ground, first presenting several chapters of basic principles about setting limits and creating new habits, and then offering practical advice on how to put all of those principles into action. Lots of tips here about setting setting goals and tasks, managing your time, handling email and filing, creating daily routines, decluttering, slowing down, improving your health and fitness, and finally on sustaining your motivation as you work on all your new habits. None of it is rocket surgery, as they say, but nevertheless it’s a great little resource.

Babauta also writes a great blog called Zen Habits, if you’re interested in lots more reading and inspiration about simple productivity.

Just learned about this nifty visualization tool via @zaibatsu on Twitter.

The dynamic interface is at least as much fun as the information gleaned. Enter a term, and watch as Visuwords assembles a sort of neural net view of related terms, with much bouncing about of prettily colored circles. Mouse over a word to see a definition. I looked up “music” and learned that “skirl” means “to play the bagpipes.” Probably my bagpipe-playing friends already knew that?