Sunday links

Time management using fixed schedule
The main idea of article simply says that we can accomplish more by doing less. Quit all inefficient activities, say “no” to not important task, concentrate on doing things, which give the most of results. Time management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers — and finishes by 5:30pm.

You must trust your product
How you can sell (not literally, but in the broad way) product, you don’t believe in? Well, you shouldn’t. Watch the money.

December 6, 2009 · Povilas Panavas · No Comments
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Why television is evil

I think most people understand it, but they still do not throw a TV out. Therefore in this article I want to remind you about the damage we do to ourselves while using it.

How TV harms

  1. Enormous stress to the brain. It is generally believed that the television emaciate eyes. Yes, this is true, but it is doing something worse. Seeing television with your eyes is not difficult, but brain not only sees the picture, but from the drawings creates life reality. This is a complex and tiring process. Claiming that watching television is a rest is simply a lie. The studies has found that while watching television our brain activity is very high.

    Another problem is that people perceive that they see a false picture, but the other parts of the brain behaves as if it were reality. How to prove this? People has nightmares, gets scared while watching horror movies, tries to avoid the flying objects, which coming to their way and so on. Some people cries at the sad end of a movie. Thus, human experiences psychological stress. On the other hand, the comedy makes us laugh.

    Thus, a man watching TV in order to rest, only gets even more tired mentally.
  2. Many precious time gets wasted. The average American stares to the TV box more than 4 hours a day. This is 28 hours per week – not far away from the standard work week. During a year, people consumes for television 2 months! What do you think can be done within 2 months of each year? Becoming happier? Richer? Better? Learning a foreign language? You can do many things!

    A man who has reached 65 years old, will have spent 9 years of his life watching television! Bear in mind that most people will live even longer than 65 years. These statistic really opens eyes, doesn’t it? What do you really want to do with your lifetime, which is being so recklessly wasted? You can choose.
  3. Advertising effects. Have you ever wondered why the same advertisement is repeated again and again? Often thought is: “what is the benefit of showing the same promotion? It’s has been long time I don’t pay attention to it”. But the truth is the opposite. The brain thinks so: I hear this information constantly, apparently, it is extremely important. I must not forget it – I will write it not only in consciousness, but also to the subconscious mind. It’s how people becomes victims of advertising.

    Another problem is that watching television makes us want things, which we don’t need. Have you ever noticed how adverts seek to show that a man having one or the other thing is superior to others, more successful and so on?

    Also, if you were watching television for 1 hour, then advertising took at least 10 minutes of your lifetime. So, per day at least 40 minutes of advertising – almost one academic hour per day, and almost 5 full hours per week. It’s a great amount of time. I hope you’re not one of those people who constantly says that they lack the time?
  4. Poor source of information. There will be people who will say: “but I watch only news.” Ask this man a simple question: what was showed in yesterday’s news? Well, if he overcame this question, ask him to remember what was showed the day before yesterday.

    Second, information that isn’t used has zero of value. What is the advantage of knowing the fact that some stranger has been killed by an unknown man? What value has knowing the outcome of football game, when you even do not like this sport?

    Third, the information is facts, but often there appear only views and opinions. I’m not interested in their opinions. I don’t know those people, how can I trust their words and interpretations of events? I think that the past my article perfectly illustrates how people confuses facts with their interpretations.

Conclusion
There are so few reasons to watch TV that rather to save money and space and not have a TV set.

If you know more reasons not to watch it, please leave them in the comments – I will take them into account and add to article.

December 5, 2009 · Povilas Panavas · No Comments
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Power of paradigm shift

First of all, I’m sorry that this post wasn’t published yesterday as promised. To redeem from sin, I will post two articles today.

This article is closely related to the previous one – “how we improve”. This time I will tell you not about the specific skills and qualities of character, but how we can improve our views and and perception of the world. The article was inspired by Stephen R. Covey book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”.

Firstly, let’s answer the question what does paradigm mean? This term was introduced to scientific work by Thomas Kuhn, in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”

Paradigm – a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated.

In personal development this term means the system of views for understanding the world, or simply the certain world model, which we use to interpret everyday events.

Experiment with drawing having two meanings
The experiment was conducted at Harvard University. Lecturer divided a student audience into two parts. The first half was given the young woman’s images, and for the other – old. jauna_sena_moteris In the images you were able to see only one woman. Then the teacher showed a large aggregate picture on the wall, which you can see on the left. Then he asked students what they see. Disputes were started in the audience. Some of the students were furiously trying to convince others that this is the young woman, while others on the contrary – that this is the old one. Eventually, students began to particularly analyse the image, until the whole classroom was able to see both women.

The experiment perfectly demonstrates how it’s easy to confuse facts with their interpretations. In this case, facts were only black and white lines. While the image that we see is our interpretation, based on our paradigms of reality perception.

Thus, people tend to think that sees the world objectively, but in reality it is not the case. We see the world through who we are.

Power of paradigm shift
Paradigm shift is a change in system of attitudes, leading to a new interpretation of the events and circumstances. For example, in the previous example this shift occurred when the students saw the both women in the single image.

Let’s go to to more real life situations. It’s late evening and you’re getting home. A man with three children board a subway. The children act very ravingly and it is clear that they are beginning to increasingly irritate and interfere with passengers. However, the father does not resort to any action to make them stop. Finally, you lose your patience and say: “Hello, your children cause a lot of noise and disturbs the passengers. I think you should discipline them”. It looks like that the man sitting next to you awakens from a dream and says: “Yes, I’m sorry. You see I don’t know what to do or say, we’re returning from the hospital, where their mother has died”. These words suddenly change your attitude. You start looking to the man and children differently. It does not matter anymore that they behave as before, after all, the man still hasn’t resort to any means to change children behaviour. However, it is likely that now your view to situation justifies such behaviour. You may even offer to help them. The shift of paradigm has occurred.

Now let’s imagine that instead of a pleasant appeal to the man, you roughly say to him: “Stop your children from acting ravingly? Are you blind? Don’t you see how they are behaving!?” Well, after these words it’s possible that you wouldn’t even know why the man with children are acting in a such strange way. And probably you would be ashamed after getting aware that you have been such a “fair” guy and told him everything so crudely.

All of this takes place in a much larger scale. For example, R. Kiyosaki book “Rich dad poor rad” radically changed my attitude to money. I’ve started to think that I should have money for a rainy day, that it’s stupid to buy a car on the limits of your income.  That buying on credit is the same as paying for already dead horse, and even more expensive. And the most important thing, I’ve learned from the book, that money must be my employees, who work for me. The money they earn becomes my new employees, who are working for me too and etc.

How to change paradigm – perform its shift

  • The diversity in life experience. New experiences, other cultures and other areas encourages us to look at everything differently. Error forces us to edit them and learn from them, so, the next time to do it properly.
  • Reading, reading and one more time reading. It’s best to read books, whose ideas are contrary to your beliefs. If you read to understand the different approaches and supporting arguments, then it is likely that your own attitude will change. Probably not radically, but some aspects of the paradigm will change.
  • Communicate with many people. It seems like the case with books. Different people see life differently. Understanding their paradigms helps us to adjust our own, bringing them closer to an objective understanding of reality.

Summary
Paradigm – the whole pack of attitudes through which people look at life. People with different paradigms sees the world entirely differently. This means that people think that they see the world objectively, but they see what they are. This leads to errors when interpreting the data, where facts are mixed up with interpretations.

If you want to improve the understanding of the world and bring it closer to the objective reality, you need to compare your paradigms with others existing in the world and select what is real and what is not.

December 5, 2009 · Povilas Panavas · One Comment
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Sunday links

I want to emphasize that the goal of this kind of entries is to find the best articles of the week.

The 10 obvious ways to be productive
I liked this article because it pointed out how people like to lie for themselves. They seek “actionable advice” instead of doing the obvious things. To read more go here – the 10 really obvious ways to be more productive.

If you are doing something interesting, prepare to be criticised
The main idea of the article is reflected into the name of this paragraph. People like to criticise. There are many reasons for it. But I don’t know even one, which would be a good one. Read more – the benefits of pissing people off.

November 29, 2009 · Povilas Panavas · No Comments
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Work, illness and rest

Currently I have stacks of work: I’m helping to repair the apartment, which must be done till the 12th of December, otherwise I will have no place to live :) Also, there is the daily job of programmer and work related to this website.

I got cold at the beginning of the week. The body couldn’t stand continuous lack of sleep, working from morning till night. Thus, the last days I was just doing nothing – resting both psychologically and physically. There wasn’t enough will power to wake up early to take exercise, to accomplish daily task and to read. However, now I’m strong again and ready to face further challenges of life.

As the disease consumed much time, in order to fulfil my promises, I’ll do everything simpler than originally planned. This week there will be no post, but the next one will be on Friday – it’s how regularity will be achieved.

Links entry will be created soon after this. And there will appear tiny section of recommended books.

P.S. recreation is another work, which must be done.

November 29, 2009 · Povilas Panavas · No Comments
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