Hiding Endings from Ourselves

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We avoid endings whenever possible, and we steer clear whenever we can of the neutral-zone emptiness. Endings feel like failure to us, and at a deeper level. So we use the busyness and structure and status of work and family life to hide ending it from view. Believing in doing so that if we just keep adding and adding to what we have, we’ll end up with something new and will avoid the need to make any endings.

But it is not just endings that we fear. The aloneness and emptiness that are often felt in the neutral zone are just about as fearful for many modern people as endings are. Whenever we can’t see that anything is happening—and you usually can’t in the neutral zone—we doubt that anything can “really” be going on.

We fail to see that real new beginnings, the kind that revitalize and inaugurate a new order of things, come out of that chaotic neutral zone.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

Don't Forget about the Blue Goat

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The most popular episode of the 1970s sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show was titled Chuckles Bites the Dust. The main character (Mary Richards, played by Mary Tyler Moore) was a news producer for a TV station where one of the shows featured Chuckles the Clown.

Chuckles served as grand marshal of a city parade when a rogue elephant attacked and killed him. Throughout the episode, Mary’s colleagues made jokes at the poor man’s expense. But she took his death seriously and chastised them for the inappropriate behavior. That is, until Chuckle's funeral. That’s when the roles reversed. Her coworkers became solemn and sober, but Mary couldn’t suppress her urge to giggle during the eulogy at the clown’s comedic demise and references to his silly routine for children.  

It was ranked #1 on TV Guide's 1997 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

Ever tried not to laugh at a wedding, church, or another solemn event? The more you fight it, the stronger the urge becomes to burst out howling. Ever had a crazy thought pop into your head about disrupting a meeting? Have you ever wondered what would happen if you stood up in a restaurant and started yelling? Or start a food fight? Have you had a crazy thought pop into your head about what it would be like if you jumped out of a one-story window to the surprise of your coworkers? 

Suppress that contrarian thought, and it can become an outright urge. Suddenly, you are wondering if you can prevent yourself from doing something completely outrageous and inappropriate. The more you try to avoid the idea, the stronger the desire becomes to do it. Anyone who’s tried to quit smoking or stop drinking alcohol probably knows the feeling. 

A paper in the Journal Science tries to explain the phenomenon. Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner says if you keep ruminating on the idea of something bad happening, it can make it more likely to occur. 

Our brains are busy suppressing impulses all the time. We use a great deal of energy to keep inclinations in check. When we focus intensely on avoiding errors and taboos, the impulse can be strengthened because the brain is locked on the idea. 

Just try not to think of a blue goat.

In sports, players may be told not to swing their bat or golf club a certain way. Soon, the athlete can barely avoid doing it and feels obsessed and distracted, especially under pressure.

Are you not thinking of a blue goat? 

It’s hard to shake until something new shoves the thought out of the way. There’s the solution: Instead of trying to keep down the stray thought, use your energy to focus on something else that can take its place.

Basketball players are more successful when they visualize the ball going through the hoop and the process of getting it there. Rather than focusing on "not missing," they see success through visualizing accomplishment. Even thoughts of depression can sometimes be squeezed out by changing our focus from our own situation to helping someone else.

Just don’t forget about the blue goat.

Stephen Goforth

Should you focus on learning the basics or developing creativity?

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Putting the learning basic knowledge against the development of creative thinking is a false choice. Both need to be cultivated. The stronger one's knowledge about the subject hand, the more nuanced one's creativity can be in addressing a new problem. Just as knowledge amounts to little without the exercise of ingenuity and imagination, creativity absent a sturdy foundation of knowledge builds a shaky house.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Gaining new Perspective by unfocusing

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Truly successful people don’t come up with great ideas through focus alone. They are successful because they make time to not concentrate and to engage in a broad array of activities like playing golf. As a consequence, they think inventively and are profoundly creative: they develop innovative solutions to problems and connect dots in brilliant ways.

In a time and age when everyone is over-scheduled and over-focused, creativity is more and more prized— it’s the key to your effectiveness and success, in life and in business.

Experts suggest that the key to being idle or to unfocusing is to diversify our activities rather than being constantly focused on a single task. To get a new perspective on something, we actually need to disengage from it. We can diversify in two ways: through mindless tasks or through a broader set of experiences.

Stanford psychologist Emma Seppälä writing in the Washington Post

Technology & the Ability to Focus

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There are two schools of thought on attention. The first argues that we haven’t lost our ability to focus, it has been wrested, even “stolen”, from us by technology. In this view we’re little more than lab rats lured by notifications and algorithms, pings and dings in a large-scale social experiment. We may develop strategies for resisting those dopamine dispensers, such as blocking software or switching to a “brick phone”. But the game is rigged against us.

Those in the second camp may scoff at this: they maintain that most of our struggles with focus are more to do with self-control. There is no notification that can distract us unless we are on some level willing to be distracted. Even the notion of a “shorter attention span” may provoke skepticism.

Instead, could it be that you’re just not that motivated? Whichever worldview you subscribe to – that our attention has been hijacked by our devices, or by our lack of self-discipline – they share an element of fatalism: there is either little you can do, or you’re just not doing enough. 

Elle Hunt writing in The Guardian

Our Brains Trick Us

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The futures we imagine contain some details that our brains invented and lack some details that our brains ignored. The problem is that our brains fill in and leave out. God help us if they didn’t.

No, the problem is that they do this so well that we aren’t aware it is happening. As such, we tend to accept the brain’s products uncritically and expect the future to unfold with the details—and with only the details—that the brain has imagined. One of imagination’s shortcomings, then, is that it takes liberties without telling us it has done so.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

15 Data Science Articles from Jan 2023

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Bosses: Don’t be Jerks

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After decades of being bossed, and 16 years of bossing, I’ve developed a prime directive for bosses which will probably not be taught at Harvard Business School: Don’t be a jerk. Organizations need hierarchies and leadership, so yes, you get to call some shots. You can be tough and demanding. But remember that your authority over other human beings is an artificial construct. You are not better than the people working for you. Fire people if you must, but humiliate no one. Be kind. Granted, many bosses don’t operate this way, and I can understand why women in positions of power want the right to be as obnoxious and tyrannical as their male counterparts. But wouldn’t it be better still if no boss could get away with acting like a jerk?

William Falk writing in The Week Magazine

Imagination inflation can lead to false memories

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Imagination inflation refers to the tendency of people who, when asked to imagine an event vividly, will sometimes begin to believe, when asked about it later, that the event actually occurred. Adults who were asked "Did you ever break a window with your hand?" were more likely on a later life inventory to report that they believe this event occurred during their lifetimes. It seems that asking the question led them to imagine the event, and the act of having imagined it had the effect, later, of making them more likely to think it had occurred (relative to other group answer the question not having previously imagined it occurring).

Accounts that sound familiar can create the feeling of knowing and be mistaken for true. This is one reason that political or advertising claims that are not factual but are repeated can gain traction with the public, particularly if they have emotional resonance. Something you once heard that you hear again later carries a warmth of familiarity that can be mistaken for memory, a shred of something you once knew and cannot quite place but are inclined to believe. In the world propaganda, this is called "the big lie" technique—even a big lie told repeatedly can come to be accepted as truth.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Great Leaders vs Managers

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Great leaders aren't always the most likable people. In the long run, great leaders recognize that their job is to get people to do things they might not want to do, in order to achieve goals they want to achieve.  Contrast that with "mere managers," who either want to be liked or try to convince themselves that they don't care. Great leaders know that cordiality is necessary, but also that they might sometimes have to sacrifice short-term likability in favor of long-term respect. 

Bill Murphy Jr. writing in the Understandably newsletter

By Our Love

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In a 2021 sermon, controversial pastor Matt Chandler called leaving the faith “some sexy thing to do.” He denounced the process of critiquing one’s childhood faith, saying, “If you ever experienced the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, actually, that’s really impossible to deconstruct from. But if Christianity is just a moral compass, I totally get it.” 

Ultimately, Chandler and those who follow his teachings are wrong: Christianity isn’t losing followers because leaving is “some sexy thing to do.” It comes down to how people are being treated, specifically marginalized communities.

Brandon Flanery writing in Baptist News

When we use depression as an excuse

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We often use depression as an excuse for not doing something we don’t want to do or afraid to do. When someone suggests that we go ahead and do whatever we are trying to avoid, we usually agree and say, “I think you’re right, but I’m just to upset right now to do it.” For example, your company is downsizing and you lose a good job through no fault of your own. You tell me what happened and how depressed you are. I try not to pay much attention to your depressing. Instead, I say, “I know it’s hard, but don’t sit around; get out your resume.”

But you are depressing for a good reason. You have just been laid off and feel rejected, even though it was not your fault. You are afraid of another rejection, of facing the fact that there may be no good jobs for you at your age and with your experience. As painful as depressing is, it’s less painful at this time than looking for job and getting rejected again and again.

William Glasser, Choice Theory