Monthly Archives: January 2014

Man vs nature

“Shakespeare’s plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much as drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.”

 

― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise

 

Keep up the good work – a feedback more valuable than it seems.

At work, it is now ever-more popular to give and receive feedbacks routinely.  These business guys, these doctors, and even these video game makers all talk about giving frequent feedbacks makes you a better whatever-it-is-that-you-do.  Unfortunately, very few people talked about the other person – what does one do when all these feedbacks started coming your way from well-intentioned leaders? Continue reading

Sorry Mario, our princess is in another castle. But here’s a job offer!

I spent the better part of childhood playing video games.  These absurdist approaches to accomplishment — rescuing a princess by jumping over turtles, rolling ever larger objects until you physically create a moon, or growing potatoes to defend against a brigade of the undead — they were immensely enjoyable. “Enjoyable” was all that video games were ever designed to be… until now.

As a kid, when my mom would grow upset when I go over my allotted hour – usually by factors >100% – I would defend by claiming it is improving my ability to think ahead and coordinate my hands and eyes.  Now, twenty years later, science has begun to prove me right.  However, when I sent this article to her to prove my point, she just chuckled and said that these things don’t actually translate to better jobs, better income, or even better “real-life” skills. Continue reading

The career advice an iPad would give

“Success in today’s world is no longer about being the best,” the iPad may say, “It’s about being good enough.” Continue reading

Quote

A fig­ment of my own yearn­ing imag­i­na­tion

A life story is a care­fully shaped nar­ra­tive that is re­plete with strate­gic for­get­ting and skill­fully spun mean­ings. Like any pub­lished mem­oir, our own life sto­ries should also come with a dis­claimer: “This story that I tell about my­self is only based on a true story. I am in large part a fig­ment of my own yearn­ing imag­i­na­tion.”

– Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Seven seconds

… is the average attention span.

Marketing theory says seven seconds is how much time a digital marketeer has to prime a customer’s attention.  Entrepreneurship adage claims that the first seven seconds of an elevator pitch matters the most.  It’s how long we take to figure out what’s on TV before deciding to switching the channel, how much time elapses before your doctor interrupts your “what happened,” and how quickly we grow tired of the mundane for a better thrill.

Continue reading

A simple interaction

Gazing through a pair of thick black frames, salt-and-pepper hair curling across his wizened forehead, Jim the clerk stands behind the US postoffice counter and elaborates on the minute differences between certified mail and delivery confirmation. Continue reading