“Rational” resolutions for 2014 — The Wall Street Journal

It’s not too late for resolutions, is it? This article gets into the science of “optimized decision-making,” helping people set achievable goals and strategies to meet those goals. The category that appealed most to me is “structured procrastination.” I read about this approach years ago, and believe heartily in it. Basically, if you know you’re going to procrastinate on a project, get something unrelated done. Clean the kitchen or get some exercise. It’s a way to stay away from Facebook and cat videos and actually get something accomplished.

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The lost art of conversation – The Atlantic

The use of smartphones and other interactive devices in almost any setting has become pervasive, so articles like this have started becoming pervasive, too. How is the constant use of devices going to affect human interaction? Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at MIT, wrote “Along Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other” in 2011, when smartphone saturation was just emerging. This article features Turkle, who is described as a “tech critic” despite not being “tech-skeptical.” Imagine, if you can, reading about this future phenomena 10 years ago. It would have seemed straight out of a Ray Bradbury novel. Continue reading →

In defense of a messy desk — The Economist

If you keep a cluttered desk, you’ll love this article from The Economist. This piece is near and dear to my heart, but a warning: it’s pretty long. And it was written 11 years ago, so some of the specifics may be dated; after all, a lot of organizational resources – and even the iPhone – weren’t present in 2002. Here is a teaser: “Work by Steve Whittaker and Julia Hirschberg of ATT Labs-Research, however, suggest that clutter may actually be quite an efficient organizing principle…There is a ‘warm’ area, of stuff that needs to be got through in the next few days: it may be there, in part, as a prompt. And there is a ‘cold’ area, at the edges of the desk, of stuff which could just as well be in an archive (or, often, the bin).” Take that, chronic organizers!

Executives learn the basics in social media — Wall Street Journal

CEOs and other high-level executives are paying as much as $60,000 for a two-day course to learn the basics of social media. And you might be surprised how basic these basics are, such as teaching the difference between a Facebook “like” and “share.” The class gets into much more detail and ultimately hits on complex marketing strategies involving social media, but it’s surprising to learn how little some executives know about something that is second nature to workers in their 20s and 30s. And that suggests again how beneficial a “reverse mentoring” program would be for some companies. I linked to an article about the practice in my first blog on November 13.

The 8-hour workday vs. the 90-minute project – LinkedIn

This article on LinkedIn discusses the arbitrary nature of the 8-hour workday. It’s not the result of rigorous scientific analysis, but rather the post-Industrial Revolution desire to add balance to people’s hardworking lives. “Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest,” went the refrain. Continue reading →

I like to sift the good articles from the dross and share the good stuff with friends and coworkers. That’s the purpose of this column, incidentally. I read stuff, find things that are both informative and interesting to working professionals, and offer it for your consumption. Continue reading →

I like to sift the good articles from the dross and share the good stuff with friends and coworkers. That’s the purpose of this column, incidentally. I read stuff, find things that are both informative and interesting to working professionals, and offer it for your consumption.

Get enough sleep or die – Mashable
The topic of sleep is always close to the fore here at Leggett & Platt, so a lot of us pay attention to every bit of news we get about it. So, here’s a short piece about it. By the way, have you noticed how much attention has been given to sleep lately? It seems as if you can’t go a day without hearing about the importance of sleep, and how you’re basically a nonfunctioning troglodyte if you don’t get the recommended eight hours. Does this article shed any new light on the subject? A little, at least for me. And that is: the cells in our body produce waste product, which needs to be cleaned up. The best conditions for that cleanup exist while we’re sleeping.

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