health

There have been a few fun synchronicities for me on the web in the last few days that I felt like sharing. This week the NYTimes had an article on changing your habits, not by trying to remove old habits, but by "overlaying" (my term) new ones. One paragraph in particular stuck out for me though:

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

The same day, I saw this post on Mind Hacks referring to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's ("chick-sent-me-high" is the pronunciation of his name, apparently) book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:

"Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not passive, receptive, relaxing times - although such experiences can be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

The reason all of this seems relevant to me in particular lately is because I've been trying to learn more about math, and I'm finding it relatively challenging, but it feels like I'm actually getting it (slowly). It's very satisfying and feels good, and it is illuminating to me to realize that I'm probably positioning myself just right with this stuff to get the maximum benefit out of it. At times I've worked at things that were too far over my head, and on the other hand sometimes I feel like the majority of my time is spent executing things that are below any level of challenge for me (let me clarify that that is 'cause I think I'm lazy, not 'cause this ho-hum existence doesn't offer enough challenges for me...).

I guess the really interesting thing for me is that, putting the ideas above together, there is the implication that the most satisfying experiences in our lives might be when we are working hard to integrate new patterns into our behavior. It's not easy to do, but these can be the most rewarding experiences in many ways.

"...you know what they say on the barstool, there's poor and there's poor."

I'm a few years behind the curve on these last few posts, I know, but I figured it couldn't hurt to bring it up again anyways.

I was feeling sorry for myself just now about my (very relative) state of brokeness, and found this online. I don't feel sorry for myself any more. It's a few years old, but timeless.

What it means: being poor.

Oh, and check out the comments at the bottom too.

I've always theorized (with only sparse anecdotal evidence) that one's name has a significant effect on who one becomes. Now I've found an article that more solidly analyzes the idea that our names determine or affect our behavior in some way, and affect how we are perceived and treated. Some effects are clearly disturbing:

When resumes were mailed out in response to job postings, with typical black and white names randomly assigned to resumes of various sorts, the black-named applicants got 33 per cent fewer responses, even from self-described equal opportunity employers (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004). In order to achieve the same interest as would be generated simply by changing the name to a white one, a black-named applicant needs an additional eight years of job experience. So far, then, it would seem that, whatever gains there may be in pride and group identity, there is a serious cost in employment prospects.

...but other qualities are more whimsical:

Moving to whole names, it appears that Louis will tend to live in St. Louis, and Mary in Marysville, and that this effect, applying also to surnames, is not likely to be due entirely to parents naming children after their location, but to implicit preferences for one’s own name, and variants of it (Pelham et al., 2003).

Fascinating. Those poor French people.

GIANTmicrobes: they make "stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes—only a million times actual size!"