A friend recently told me about Tony Robbins. I had heard the name but didn't appreciate who he actually was. This extended interview of Robbins by another productivity guru, Tim Ferriss, is well worth your time. I'm only half-way through and much of what Robbins says is resonating with me.
Eric Barker offers some excellent advice on how to stop being busy. I'm really appreciating and implementing many of the ideas he so succinctly presents. This article urges that you stop being busy and start being productive. Here's the nutshell:
Just because the other people at the office are overscheduled and the other parents are doing 1000 things doesn’t mean you need to.
We all only have 1440 minutes a day. Accept you can’t do it all, focus on what’s important and do that well.
We’re all jealous of the people who are calm and cool under pressure. Be that person.
Next time someone asks how you’re doing, don’t talk about how busy you are. Don’t get sucked into thinking busy means important.
Busy doesn’t make you important. Doing the important things you need to do makes you important.
People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive (U.S.: 45 hours a week; 16 hours are considered unproductive).Lots of good advice on how not to fritter away one's time.
I've soured on Sam Harris over the years, but I still find him to be highly articular and engaging. In recent weeks, some friends have indicated that I look absorbed and even anxious, even though my life is filled with joys and possibilities. I have been told that I have tied myself in knots, and I have heard, "You need to get out of your own way." For the umpteenth time, it has been suggested that I consider meditation in order to clear my mind. You can learn about meditation in many places. I've read articles and even a book on meditation. Today, I stumbled across this video by Sam Harris, who has long been an advocate of meditation. The fact that he is also well versed in cognitive science caused me to be interested in his approach to meditation. This is a 26 minute guided meditation. I found myself surprisingly able to hang onto the process and to escape some of the things that have been distracting me as I viewed this video. I'm going to come back to this several more times, while I continue to explore personal meditation.
There's an awfully large amount of money being spent on special gluten free products. How many of the people who buy these products really need them? According to this article on Buzzfeed, not many. The most memorable passages from this article:
17 million people may unnecessarily believe that they are gluten-sensitive. (Source: A Mayo Clinic survey in 2012, cited in a NY Times article.)
[We] spent $10.5 billion last year on gluten-free products. (Source: Mintel, a market research company, cited in the NY Times article.)
It is especially important because a psychological disease can spread as fast as any virus but be more enduring.
A 2012 Mayo Clinic survey concluded that only 1.8 million Americans have Celiac disease. Only 1.8 million people should be on a non-gluten diet. Compare this to the 18 million people who consider themselves “gluten sensitive”
According to this article many of the people who spend lots of money on gluten-free products, gluten serves as a "nocebo," defined below by Wikipedia:a nocebo (Latin for "I shall harm") is a harmless substance that creates harmful effects in a patient who takes it. The nocebo effect is the negative reaction experienced by a patient who receives a nocebo. Conversely, a placebo is an inert substance that creates either a positive response or no response in a patient who takes it. The phenomenon in which a placebo creates a positive response in the patient to which it is administered is called the placebo effect. The nocebo effect is less well-studied and well-known, by both scientists and the public, than the placebo effect.What's the evidence that gluten is not detrimental to most people who are committed to gluten free products?
This disease is largely self-diagnosed, and studies are starting to show that it may be real in a great number of cases. Professor and scientist Peter Gibson is no stranger when it comes to studying gluten. He did a study in 2011 that gave a lot of credit to the belief in (non-Celiac) gluten sensitivity. Seeing that NCGS had become a worldwide phenomenon, he revisited the topic in 2013 with a critical look at the original assumptions. These are the measures he took to validate his results: Subjects were given every single meal for the duration of the study.Any other potential causes of bad stomach symptoms were removed from the diet. (Think lactose from milk.) Just in case you do not think he was serious, Peter collected nine days worth of urine and fecal matter. (Now that’s a topic of conversation.) The results were pretty shocking. They concluded that gluten in no way could have caused any of the negative symptoms that the subjects were suffering from.Most claims of the need to be gluten free are starting to remind me of the phenomenon of facilitated communication regarding autistics.
This article at VOX points out numerous problems with the test. Erika Price, a friend of mine who has a Ph.D in psychology (and who has written articles for this website), summed up the criticisms as follows:
-Myers-Briggs is based on an old, fringe, untested hypothesis -The categories do not naturally occur in any sample data -The test itself was formulated by people with no psychometric training or experience - It divides people into categories when really every trait is a spectrum - People are divided into binary categories even though most people are near the middle of the spectrum. -Individuals do not consistently get the same type. (i.e. it is unreliable) - It does not predict behavior -It is not used in mainstream psychological researchThe article itself concludes:
It's 2014. Thousands of professional psychologists have evaluated the century-old Myers-Briggs, found it to be inaccurate and arbitrary, and devised better systems for evaluating personality. Let's stop using this outdated measure — which has about as much scientific validity as your astrological sign — and move on to something else.