Myth-Folklore 2020

 These notes are taken from "Why Time Management is Ruining our Lives" by Oliver Burkeman (2016).  This is kind of a long article, so I'm going to not really take detailed notes on this. I'm going to read and write a reflection instead! I think that I've heard of inbox zero, and I think I lowkey tried it myself. I now delete most of the email before bed or when I wake up in the morning (at least in my gmail). It's a pain! But, I love having a clean inbox. And it makes it easier to find my important emails, they're the only ones I haven't deleted. It's interesting that even things that are supposed to save time end up making us feel more stressed. I've never thought about it that way, but it's true.  The guy that started Inbox zero project noticed that people can procrastinate doing their work by planning out how to do their work. I do that all the time! I love getting out my planner, but I'm really just avoiding doing work.  Why do we h...

 These notes are over "The magic of the Book: Hermann Hesse on Why we Read and Always Will" by Maria Popova  Author is talking about how reading an old book and writing poetry reconnected her with her own childhood memories.  The thrill of reading can be lost when we get older. I think this is in part because of the education system and the way they deal with reading Author reads "The magic of the Book" by Hermann Hesse: Among the many worlds that man did not receive as a gift from nature but created out of his own mind, the world of books is the greatest… Without the word, without the writing of books, there is no history, there is no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. (From Hesse) Other quotes other popular book sayings--what do books do for the human experience?  Apparently,...

For this challenge, I read "Learning in the Age of Digital Distraction" by Eric Westervelt  This article is about how phones and other technology are changing the way people think and act. Specifically, this article interviews Dr. Gazzaley and asks him about his research on human productivity and digital devices. Gazzaley argues that human brains have evolved to seek out information. This is opposed to food, since that need is not longer critical for survival.   Even though this behavior can be negative, humans still do it. Multitasking is bad for the brain and performance. It divides up attention, making it harder to focus.  It's easier to put things into memory if your brain can filter out different distractions (background noise) There are so many distractions in our world today. We constantly task switch, but we need to work one doing one thing at a time. We need to focus attention on 1 single task, not multiple.  Multitasking also increases stress, mood, an...