Intrinstic motivations
Malcolm Gladwell recently reviewed Dan Pink’s latest book, “Drive,” about what motivates people to do good work. We assume that people are motivated by external factors such as money, but alas, it’s for personal rewards. Of course — we are fueled by our selfish motivations.
“The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.”
Incentives, monetary and otherwise, are not the answer, but how do you change internal drive?
In restless anticipation
Two qualities that can be mildly enjoyable by themselves, but together are completely and wholly disastrous. It’s a constant influx of extreme boredom then excitement. The anticipation makes time move more slowly — the boredom and restlessness, twice as slow.
My solution: Why not counteract the dawdling days by moving even slower!
If you are trying to contact me in the early evenings only to find that I’ve fallen asleep, I apologize in advance. I’ve descended into one of the most unproductive phases of my adult life. Someone please inspire me.
Also, I think I’m doomed to write only about time until my watch is fixed.
Education, revisited
And, an accompanying article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on for-profit education.
Instant bliss in every atom
Before I run off to class (classes that truly do get in the way of my education, thanks Mark Twain).
We all have those moments—where time passes by so slow it’s as if she’s been sedated by our own ennui. This essay I just read on boredom suggested that there was a neurological explanation, as there always is (love’s just a chemical reaction, yeah?).
Researchers have discovered that when people are conscious but doing nothing — for example, lying in an f.M.R.I. scanner, waiting to be given some simple mental task as part of a psychology experiment — the brain is in fact firing away, with greater activity in regions responsible for recalling autobiographical memory, imagining the thoughts and feelings of others, and conjuring hypothetical events: the literary areas of the brain, you might say. When this so-called default mode network is activated, the brain uses only about 5 percent less energy than it does when engaged in basic tasks. But that discrepancy may explain why time seems to pass more slowly at such moments. It may also explain the agitated restlessness that compels the bored to seek relief in doodling or daydreaming.
So, bore me & spend a little (more) time with me.
“Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”
Time: a measurement system invented by humans to quantify a universal and constant progression whose true definition escapes us. And the caveat—our minds can manipulate and perceive time as it wishes.
Is time subjective? Time keeps moving without us. Don’t be stuck in the wrong time.
[Source]
Figuring things out
The latest is how to sort all the junk I post online in one neat Web site—this one.
What is an education, anyway?
What did I get from Simon? An education – the thing my parents always wanted me to have. I learned a lot in my two years with Simon. I learned about expensive restaurants and luxury hotels and foreign travel, I learned about antiques and Bergman films and classical music. All this was useful when I went to Oxford – I could read a menu, I could recognise a fingerbowl, I could follow an opera, I was not a complete hick. But actually there was a much bigger bonus than that. My experience with Simon entirely cured my craving for sophistication. By the time I got to Oxford, I wanted nothing more than to meet kind, decent, straightforward boys my own age, no matter if they were gauche or virgins. I would marry one eventually and stay married all my life and for that, I suppose, I have Simon to thank.
But there were other lessons Simon taught me that I regret learning. I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of “living a lie”. I came to believe that other people – even when you think you know them well – are ultimately unknowable. Learning all this was a good basis for my subsequent career as an interviewer, but not, I think, for life. It made me too wary, too cautious, too ungiving. I was damaged by my education.
An excerpt written by Lynn Barber, whom the movie An Education was based on.
The whereabouts of time
There are few ideas I think of more often than the concept of time. The, however foolish, way I understand time is that it is a constant, as defined, interpreted and created by society. It’s a socially constructed idea that would continue to exist without said definition — time goes on without its acknowledgment. What?
As with every new year, I’m prone to those awful pensive state of minds where I can’t help but rant about my discontents about this arbitrary time of new found goals, the shortcomings of society, the educational system — anything really. [Exhibits A-Z of my cynicism and negativity: On people becoming increasingly banal, on being skeptical of NY resolutions, on arbitrary ambition, on — this one is just really me being incoherent and trying to sound like a smart 16 year-old, on apathy, on being devoid of personal emotions, etc. See the archives.]
This year, hopefully as a sign of growth and progress, I will transcend beyond those diatribes.
Anyway, as the frou frou statement, “As I grow older…” goes — As I grow older (and wiser, I hope), I’ve realized that:
Chicago, I love you
R U Wired?
That’s what it says on top of the bathroom mirror at It’s a Grind.
I use the restroom often — due to excessive liquid consumption, not excessive high-fiber consumption, to be frank.
Exciting details ensue.
This is why I love school
(And take 1-unit classes on the “History of Type”)
“For homework, please draw your name (first or last or nickname) in one of the fonts you have the sheet for. Of course, that means that you’ll either have to research the letters online to find those m’s or j’s or k’s or other letters that aren’t on your sheet — OR you have to try to extrapolate from the features in front of you. This is all about learning to look at the letters, so do not be anxious about getting it ‘right’ just try to make the best possible observations and drawings.”
Everybody says time heals everything
…but what of the wretched hollow?
Steeped in History: The Art of Tea
I wasn’t supposed to take photos, but the security guard was a nice man and kindly turned the corner when I pulled out my phone. ;-)
See the rest of the set here.
10 to 60 without retouching
This is amazing. It’s quite old, but Vogue Paris did an editorial featuring model Eniko Mihalik at the ages of 10, 20… 60 with only make-up, etc.
In Defense of Food
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
I’ve really got to hand it to Michael Pollan for being so savvy with his catchy, catchy taglines.
I just finished another book by him, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Overall, it was a very quick and easy read. It was equally interesting as The Botany of Desire, but definitely more politicized. The book is divided into three sections and the first two deal with “nutritionism” and the Western diet and the accompanying diseases. These first two sections do a good job in dispelling ambiguities of the politics of food and agriculture and exactly how much policies have affected the way and what we eat now and consequently, have made us “overfed and undernourished.” Much of these first two chapters deal with a lot of potential and relevant ideas, especially with the healthcare debate going on right now. An interesting, but seemingly obvious figure he gave was that “in 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food, and 5.2 percent of national income on healthcare. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on healthcare has climbed to 16 percent of national income” (p. 187-188).
If you never see me again…
This is why. So, read it. Fan it. Whatever!
Dedicated to B. Frank
My roommate, J, just asked me if I considered myself romantic. After careful deliberation and suspicion of the context and reason for her query, I said, “Behind closed doors.” To which she replied, “Yeah, you don’t seem it.”
“And you?” I ask.
“Oh yeah, definitely. I am hopeless.”
GREAT. Sometimes, I think the universe is playing a big joke on me, pairing me with those love-y types in futile hope of changing my cold exterior. I’m no cynic though.
That’s no accident!
Needless to say, I get overly excited when I spot “fittingly” outside of this blog.
The Queen of Night
I just finished Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire and wanted to share some excerpts on the section about beauty and tulips—especially the Queen of Night tulip.
“Maybe there’s a good reason we find their fleetingness so piercing, can scarcely look at a flower in bloom without thinking ahead, whether in hope or regret. We might share with certain insects a tropism inclining us toward flowers, but presumably insects can look at a blossom without entertaining thoughts of the past and future—complicated human thoughts that may once have been anything but idle. Flowers have always had important things to teach us about time” (p. 68-9).
[Photos by Screen Deb and gwiwer]
“Queen of Night is as close to black as a flower gets, though in fact is is a dark and glossy maroonish purple. Its hue is so dark, however, that it appears to draw more light into itself than it reflects, a kind of floral black hole. … For Dumas the black tulip was a synecdoche for tulipomania itself, an indifferent and arbitrary mirror in which a perverse consensus of meaning and value came briefly and disastrously into focus” (p. 92-93).
“The canonical flowers seem to me almost all female—except, that is, for the tulip, perhaps the most masculine of flowers. If you doubt this, watch next April how a tulip forces its head up out of the ground, how the head gradually colors as it rises. Dig down along the shaft, and you’ll find its bulb, smooth, rounded, hard as a nut, a form for which the botanists offer a most graphic term: ‘testiculate’” (p. 98-99).
This is easily one of my favorite books. Pollan’s writing is clear and simple, yet beautiful and his ideas and conclusions—especially while intoxicated in the name of “research”—are fascinating. I appreciated the nuanced botany information but really fell in love with his ideas of order and disorder à la Apollo and Dionysus. It’s difficult to say what my favorite chapter was, but needless to say, there’s something for everyone: sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control.
Such easy mornings
[Source]
An e-mail from a professor I will have in the fall:
Millie,
Thanks for your note. The fonts will be the ones in the shop… including some mystery things!!!! You’ll see that you can find some cousins to your dear Helvetica! they will also respond well to your care and attention, I hope.
JD
Lovely.
Ain’t it the truth
There comes a point in life where the respect of a few starts to mean more to you than the attention of many. I’ve been there. At first you feel like a loser for abandoning your “principles,” but then you realize that those principles never really had your back. When the shit hits the fan, those few people whose respect you’ve earned will keep you from getting buried, and it will be worth more to you than all the adoration of all the juicy political gossip sluts on the Internet. ~Lynde
On a related note, I am tired of Twitter.
My name is Millie.
I enjoy yoga, traveling, cooking, reading and running.
And, sometimes I write.
If the computer is a bicycle for the mind, I can ride pretty fast. 
