Archive for the ‘Happiness’ Category
The 35 Million Dollar Answer
Erica O’Grady recently wrote a post about success called The 35 Million Dollar Question. It’s worth a read, but here’s the money graph:
If you find that thing you’re passionate about – your one burning desire. In the beginning you won’t be great at it. But if you put in the hard work – over time you’ll get better. This is where you have to watch out for Blind Faith. Blind Faith will tell you that because you’ve got “talent” – you don’t have to work as hard as everyone else. You can take a shortcut to success. But you can’t listen to that voice. It takes courage – but you have to be willing to forge new paths.
The key to that whole paragraph is “If you find that thing you’re passionate about”…which is no simple thing.
I am in “The Busy Trap” and I’m going to break out!
For this to make sense, you’ll need to follow the links and read the articles.
We are creating the Busy Trap ourselves. I think it’s a way of avoiding our fear of death. If we are in the Busy Trap, we don’t have to spend time alone, or thinking about ourselves, or thinking deeply about the stuff we are interested in.
I am entirely in agreement on the “fear of death” thing…spending time alone is very hard. Sometimes, it takes several hours of solitude just to get calm.
What is “Continuous Partial Attention”?
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the massive explosion in communication technology over the last 20 years—e-mail, smartphones, etc. I’ve been wondering if they’ve been making us more productive, but also if they’re making us happier.
For example, I recently took my e-mail off of my smartphone. I didn’t like the feeling of worry that it caused me—is there an e-mail that I’m missing???—and I found that when I tried to ignore it, I wasn’t able to do so. I guess I just don’t have the mental strength to ignore them. I still get my e-mail through the web browser on my phone, but I don’t have a little, blinking number there to say, “Oh my god…you have messages!!!”
In other words, being more connected was making me unhappy.
Living Peacefully Through Common Sense
From Common Sense for the Healing Arts by Robert Duggan:
Our main task as we move between our birth and death is to learn to live peacefully day-by-day.
Living peacefully day-by-day demands common sense: eat moderately, breath deeply, drink wisely, get plenty of sleep, accept life as it comes. And as we move through life we have a marvelous resource—our symptoms, which remind us to slow down, be peaceful, to care for ourselves. It’s wondrous to think of the symptoms our bodies create as teachers, as wisdom rather than problems.
How many of your problems are “first world problems”?
In a continuing theme this week, think about it: Is it really a problem? Is it really worth getting bent out of shape over?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2p5svFJ9cQ[/youtube]
Perhaps this is the answer to why everyone is unhappy.
If “everything is amazing, yet nobody is happy,” then the question is, “why”? Perhaps this is the answer:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGab38pKscw[/youtube]
Designing for Happiness
This video from Coke illustrates a genuinely delightful experience. Obviously, it’s not sustainable, but it raises the question: are you intentionally designing your product to deliver happiness?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqT_dPApj9U[/youtube]
Happiness is Removing Stuff From Your Life
I was just thinking about the post I wrote on design by removal. It occurred to me that this lesson may apply to life as well.
That is, if we want to improve our design, i.e. life, then we should be asking “what can be removed?” not “what can be added?”
This reminds me of a chat with James the other day: Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Birthday, Grandma!
My grandma turns 91 today.
Ninety One.
Just think about how much has changed in 91 years. Every single piece of technology that is being used for me to create this blog post, and for you to consume it…not a single one of them existed then.
There were no phones, smart or otherwise, no cars, no NFL, no…I wonder if they had radio in 1919? Sure, they must of had radio. Yes, absolutely they did. But they didn’t have all these fancy kitchen appliances or fancy automobiles.
And, as far as I can tell from TV (which they didn’t have back then either) all their clothes were shades of grey. Can you imagine that? My grandma didn’t even have color!
Recessions Test Social Capital
I had coffee this morning with a friend who is looking for work. (He’s a great guy…10 years at Amazon.com…if you’re looking for someone, let me know!)
As we talked, we came to the subject of “job listings” which are so impersonal. For a professional, they feel like a pretty bogus way of getting a job. Or, at least, uncertain and unreliable.
Of course, my thought was that it’s all about who you know…networking. Essentially, my view is that personal relationships are what will lead to the next opportunity.