Open Loops 1/20/2009: Articles I Found Interesting
Posted on January 20, 2009 by LJ
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Tuesdays are open loop at SimpleProductivity blog.
“Informing Ourselves to Death” is the text of a talk given by Neil Postman to the German Informatics Society. The paper, entertaining, and bringing the non-advantages of technology to the forefront in a very appealing way, is about information and information overload. The interesting part of this is the paper was presented in 1990. Yep, almost 20 years ago. And has it been proved right? You decide.
Unclutterer’s “Words to keep you motivated” is an article I make it a point to read before embarking on any sort of decluttering project. There are a few points here that are important to me. “You don’t have to unclutter in one fell swoop” keeps the effort in balance; when I start to purge I want to tackle everything, which leads quickly to burnout. “The person with the most amount of stuff at the end of his or her life doesn’t win an award” is true, but it is followed by “The person with the least amount of stuff at the end of his or her life doesn’t win an award, either….Simple living is about getting rid of distractions that prevent you from enjoying a modern, luxurious life. It’s about smart consumption, not no consumption.”
“Having Trouble Keeping Routines?” from My Simpler Life is another one I turn back to. As a former adherent to the Flylady system, I have set routines that I would like to follow daily, weekly and monthly. I dropped from Flylady in a large part because I got tired of being told to do these things in a routine way. And I felt like a failure, because Flylady is the lifesaver of so many people. Beth reminds me, “I believe in working with your personality and quirks, not trying to change them into a mold.”
Over at Organize It, they ran an article (Self-Help Myths: Expand Your Comfort Zone“) which I come back to after the first of the year. Many times I resolve to push myself beyond my comfort zone because I don’t want to get “stuck”. But the article reminds me that the comfort zone is in large part who I am. And “It doesn’t form overnight and the idea that doing something new once will actually make a single dent on that comfort zone is naive.”
“Go on a High-Information Diet – Stepcase Lifehack” is a great explanation of the Low Information Diet. I tried it, and it helps. What it boils down to is not less information, but “what you need less of are the multiple (and multiplying) inputs in your life that contain no information at all, the equivalent of a diet high in fat and high-fructose corn syrup without any protein or fiber.”
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