Author Archives: Kerch McConlogue

How to get up in the morning Redux

Funny how one of the most viewed posts on my blog is one called “How to get up in the morning.”

I thought it a bit of an odd fluke til I read over at MakeUseOf.com that THEY also noticed it’s something people search on a lot. So they reviewed an online alarm clock that allows you to pick the song you want to wake to.. and a lot of other stuff. And it’s on your computer so it will even work when you’re traveling—presuming you travel with your computer. (HA! Silly me, of COURSE you travel with your computer! Doesn’t everyone?)

And they this other link to a  great DIY project: World’s Loudest Alarm Clock

Hope you don’t live next door to me!

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a-great-online-alarm-clock-metaclock/

And you thought procrastination was bad

There’s a word for those who have it worse…

A friend sent me this info… today… on the day it was posted at Wordsmith.org.

perendinate

PRONUNCIATION:
(puh-REN-di-nayt)

Meaning:

verb tr. : To put off until the day after tomorrow.
verb intr.: To stay at a college for an extended time.

(Personally, I like that the day after tomorrow and being at college too long are somehow related!)

I’d like to think that this is not necessarily a bad thing… the putting off part, not the college part.  If I just don’t get around to something to day for some “whatever” reason, then I feel like a slug.

HOWEVER, if I decide that I can’t do it today, and tomorrow won’t work either, then I can perendinate on purpose. I can give myself a slight break from feeling guilty for putting the thing off and make a real plan to do it the day after.

The trick is to actually pat myself on the back for making the decision and then doing the thing.

We can hope, right?

Decision making and math

morguefile.com/archive/display/105605It seems like the more complicated the decision the more people look for some easy answer.

Wanna lose weight? Couldn’t there just be one food you could eat that would fix it all? Buy a car? Some simple calculation to make the right decision?

A couple of years ago (actually way back in 1980) Dale Dauten wrote a book called Quitting, Knowing When to Leave…a job, a marriage, or any other unhappy spot you’re in.

I loved the simple process of evaluating the possibility of really being satisfied with a decision to quit something.

Basically he says, first you become aware that a decision must be made. Then you determine and weight the possibilities for the future, whether the decision is really in your own best interest and how certain you are about the necessity of the decision.

I loved the book!

And then this morning I read over at ScientificBlogging.com an article by Hank Campbell, Garth Sundem Makes Geeks Cool(er) Again.  The post at least starts out with a reference to Geek Logik: 50 Foolproof Equations for Everyday Life by Garth Sundam. Hank suggests it’s:

a way to quantify every important decision you may have wanted to make, from how many drinks at the company picnic you should have to how much sports you should watch today. The beauty of it was that by abdicating the decision you also abdicated responsibility – or so you thought. ‘Should I hit on that girl?’ calculations combined with errors in a ‘How many beers should I have?’ calculation probably took you to a bad place if you are married and no amount of pointing to his book was going to help.

The value of using equations to solve life’s dilemmas was verified time and again…

Check out the results of four geeks in a bar in the 5:44 minute video  here.

But in the end, it seems that making the right decision has less to do with the math and more to do with the evaluation that yields the confidence to move forward.

And really that confidence in the choice is most important.

Wristphone: Can flying cars be far behind?

watchphonePeople of my generation (including Ted Forth of the comic strip, “Sally Forth”) are pretty universally bummed that when the century turned, we did NOT have flying cars.

But today IEEE Spectrum reported from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the phone to make Dick Tracy proud!

LG has a prototype for a wristwatch phone! If Dick Tracy started using a phone on his wrist in the 30s and it took 70 years to become reality… well then, does that mean we’ll have flying cars in 2080?

Bet I won’t live to see it. But maybe–if i HAD grandchildren…. which I am NOT pining for–maybe I could promise THEM flying cars. Then they could be disappointed in me long after I’m gone.

What a way to start a day.

Decisions don’t have to be conscious

More news on the decision making front.
According to the Brain Mysteries site on December 27.

brain… Alex Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, has shown that people do indeed make optimal decisions-but only when their unconscious brain makes the choice.

“A lot of the early work in this field was on conscious decision making, but most of the decisions you make aren’t based on conscious reasoning,” says Pouget. “You don’t consciously decide to stop at a red light or steer around an obstacle in the road. Once we started looking at the decisions our brains make without our knowledge, we found that they almost always reach the right decision, given the information they had to work with.”

I knew it! Don’t work so hard… Just freakin’ decide, already!

Further Pouget says:

If we had to wait until we’re 99 percent sure before we make a decision…then we would waste time accumulating data unnecessarily. If we only required a 51 percent certainty, then we might reach a decision before enough data has been collected.

Try it.  See what it feels like.

As long as no babies will die, you can always change your mind.

Check out my other articles on deciding.