Category: Attention
-
How Good Are You?
I’m fascinated by the various ways that we incorrectly perceive the world around us. For instance, I recently read about a cognitive fallacy that I like because I have experienced it’s truth: People who are beginners in a field tend to overestimate their ability in that field because they don’t have enough knowledge to know just…
-
Can you hear me NOW?
What about NOW? Ever felt annoyed hearing the person on the subway or at the table next to you say this into their cell phone? Ultimately, talking on cell phones in public places has become a shunned activity, but I’ve always wondered why this is so annoying to us? In pondering this question, I’ve come…
-
Affection Grows with Familiarity
Ever tried designing a website, logo, or essay and found that the longer you worked on it the more you liked the result? Ever heard a song once and thought, wow that was good, but the tenth time was even better? Why does watching the 5th episode of a television show give us more enjoyment…
-
The Pursuit of Flow
In the last few weeks, I’ve come across this idea in several different forms and thought it was worth capturing and sharing. Along the X axis, is your ability or skill level. Along the Y axis, is the degree of challenge or difficulty of the task you are trying to accomplish. When we don’t have…
-
The Original Ambient Intimacy – Meeting Face To Face
Over the last week, I spent some time meeting with both our clients and colleagues in person. I’ve long thought that meeting in person is the only way to have a truly good working relationship with people . However, I have long had a hard time enumerating the benefits to people – something that budget…
-
Confirmation Bias Fail
This summer, my wife and I traveled to Columbia. On our way from Medellin to Bogota, we showed up at the Medellin airport with plenty of time. The airport was closed down (no flights it seemed) due to massive amounts of fog and I made several assumptions: The plane hasn’t arrived yet from Bogita yet…
-
Finding a Job in a Recession
Right now the job market is tough. Like most businesses trying to get attention (and subsequently money) from an increasingly attention and cash poor consumer, job seekers are trying to seek the attention (and subsequent employment) from an increasingly conservative group of businesses. Sometime ago, I came across this presentation: “Recession Proof Graduate” which I…
-
What Do You Dwell On?
On a recent business trip, our CEO connected with a friend and shared some of the challenges that he has recently gone through. The friend shared that when he was going through a very difficult time in his life, he read an article that “changed his life”. As he recounted the content of the article,…
-
Standing In Line Behind Yourself
Ever open the fridge, pull out something and wonder if it’s spoiled, decide not to eat it and put it back in the fridge, as though next time you’ll decide differently? One of the books (“Brain Rules” – I’m pretty sure) I read recently discussed being careful how we make our first decisions because we…
-
It won’t always be like this
As I mentioned earlier, my dad recently had knee surgery and had a serious complication that resulted in an additional 2 hour surgery requiring him to have to fast (fluids and food) for 3 days while he was still forced to walk around on his new knees. It’s hard to even imagine the discomfort that…