#making the jobs of the future scientists that study my brain easier

[romizari]

drew my boywifehusgirlfriendband (*ﾉωﾉ) i love sdv sam so much ill fight to the death for him. my silly sammie wammie.......... <-<-<-<- ramblings person who has NOT slept a wink in the past 20 hours

will drop my sam hcs and thoughts at a later date. savor my silence while you can. i Am crazy just a tiny lot about sdv and ESPECIALLY sam ........ but that is for another day i have sm work😭😭😭RELEASE MEEEEEEEEEEE

[secret-engima]

rereading the whole Nox verse tag, just got to N!Axis meeting the canon Glaives a year pre-Movie. and i had the thought of post-marriage, post-kids Nox (and his Axis, who very much remembers that dimensional trip when they were younger, /Nox/) /also/ meeting - maybe different, maybe /not/ and ooo imagine /that/ - canon Glaives pre-Movie. possibly in the field, but just imagine it in the /Citadel/. if they saw these two bf, they were teenagers, now less than a yr later they're grown and /scarier/

Anonymous said: something i wanted to add to that ask about Nox and Axis visitng the same canon verse they did as teengers, but couldn't because of the damned character limit. At some point during the whole thing, the would-be traitor Glaives see/hear/are told something that makes them actually, really /realize/ why the Lucis Caelums are called Martyr Kings. also Nox casually spills the beans on his traveling to many, many other worlds/dimensions, mentioning the Fall of Insomnia, betrayal, and directly to Nyx,-

Anonymous said: - that in every future he's ever been to and seen, he's not been a traitor in one of them, and generally, he was a little /too/ Heroic in most of them. the way Nox says it leaves not doubt about what he means by that. no one familiar with Nyx is remotely surprised, but even after Nox and Axis leave, they're a bit more conscious of Nyx's recklessness and heroic tendencies. also: "Calm down, Axis, maybe I died when I was a kid here, yeah, but Uncle might not even have a sister, here. Leave it be.”

Me: ohhhhh interesting thought! I like it in the Citadel, maybe a few months after their first appearance (not a full year tho otherwise Game Events would be happening) and some of the glaives are on Citadel Duty (aka Titus’s ultimate punishment via the most boring job in existence) when there’s this- glitch in the world and then the Crownsguard are YELLING because apparently the Crystal chamber just did something weird. All hands are on deck and the glaives are called in with the Guard to watch the sealed off will-not-open-from-the-outside Crystal Chamber doors and the KING is there with his Shield and the Marshal and Captain and then-.

The door swings open from the inside and the argument can be heard as two figures emerge from the room, one growling at the other in a voice that sounds ... eerily familiar to Nyx and the Glaives.

“-to the Matrons for an exorcism so help me.”

“Hey, I’m not possessed OR cursed, blame the Crystal. It likes to mess with me.”

“It’s a non-sentient hunk of rock and magic, it can’t ‘mess with you’.”

“Wanna ...” the two figures stop and study the bristling mass of Guards, Glaives, Royal Retinue, and King, “bet?” the shorter one sighs and Nyx is having a few flashbacks already to That Time because that is DEFINITELY an older, crabbier Axis Arra and the man next to him looks freakishly like a long-haired Prince Noctis.

Who has a marriage braid and an ULRIC BRAID in his hair.

What the Six.

The Definitely a Lucis Caelum raises his hand, small sparks of flow dancing off it in some weird kind of royal greeting, “Hi dad.” he says with a lazy smile that almost hides the tension in his shoulders and the way his free hand is loose and curled around an imaginary hilt of a blade, like he’s about to whip something out of armiger.

The King gapes for a solid ten seconds before breathing, “Noctis?”

There’s a slight twitch, a flinch from the look-a-like and a low growl from the Arra before the Lucis Caelum (and Nyx knows who this kid is, he REMEMBERS that morning, that scrawny boy, and he knows the other glaives do too) smiles sheepishly, “Not quite. I’m Nox. His older brother actually. Though I’m going to guess Noctis is an only child in this dimension.”

So yeah dimensional shenanigans and Prince Nox being infuriately blasé about the entire thing and hanging out with the very befuddled glaives (Nox stares at Nyx for a c!solid thirty seconds while he stares right back until Nyx asks HOW Nox is an Ulric and Nox cheerfully goes “I married you, how else? We have four kids.” And Nyx spends like- the next three days in a perpetual Blue Screen until Axis takes pity on his Internal Scream by explaining that Nyx is a fem in their world. No. No there was no magic involved in the creation of the kiddos where is your mind even GOING Ulric (Nyx: I don’t know! Magic is weird! And alternate dimensions are a thing how was I supposed to know what other fanfic tropes AREN’T anymore?!?!). Nox quietly dies of laughter in there corner.

They keep a wary eye on the C!Arra-Furia-Lazarus trio in case of trouble because it’s been years for N!Axis but only months for them and it’s like- during one of those wary but cordial hangouts that Nox makes his Comment about Lucis Caelums after a long bout of brooding out the window.

“Dad’s dying a lot faster in this universe.”

All the glaives freeze. Even Captain Drautos lowers the report he was reading and pokes his head out of his office to stare.

“What?” Someone in the glaives says.

Nox doesn’t look at them, he’s glaring out the window and with a jolt they realize he’s glaring at the Wall, “Dad. The King. The Wall is killing him faster here. It was killing him in my world too but ... Uncle and I took care of it. I guess ... it’s different here.”

There’s a long pause before Luche’s brain finishes its dial up noises and he scoffs, “The Wall can’t kill the king. It’s his magic.”

“It’s Bahamut’s magic,” Nox corrects coldly without looking at them, “Magic he forced into human skin and veins that isn’t meant to keep it.” As if he can sense their continued disbelief he drawls, “How long can you hold a Shield spell before you get sick? Before you’re exhausted because the magic has gone past your reserves and started taking you as fuel? The Wall is just a giant, city-sized shield.” Tredd makes a noise that might be question or might be a strangled scoff and Nox finally turns to look at them.

There is something utterly inhuman in his gaze. His eyes are still blue, his face is still human, but there’s something in his eyes that speaks to their primal instincts and tells them to run, to hide.

To dread.

“Go to your local library sometime and look up the births and deaths of Kings of Lucis,” he orders in a deceptively light tone that almost makes it seem like a suggestion instead, “compare the lifespans of rulers from before the Wall was raised and after. Then compare the average lifespan of a healthy Lucian citizen at the time of that ruler’s reign.” There’s a beat of silence, terrible and weighty, then Nox’s lips curl into a tiny smile.

It’s a terrifying thing.

“The Kings of Lucis never die of old age. Sometimes it’s sickness, sometimes it’s war. Sometimes it’s assassination. Sometimes they just- die. For no reason science can explain because scientists never take magic into account. Sometimes,” the smile gets colder, the eyes older, “it’s betrayal. Those who are trusted when they shouldn’t, those who should stand loyal when they are not.”

He looks over them all and every one of them feels a chill up their spine. N!Axis leans closer to Nox as if in an attempt to comfort, to snap him out of this eerie mood, but it doesn’t work. “This has happened to me before you know. Going to parallel times. Do you know how my father dies the most often?”

There’s a breath, and when Nox speaks, there’s a hint of other voices beneath his, an echo of times past and souls lost and endless, ageless rage, “By the hands of the glaives he blessed.”

And none of the Galahdians dare to breathe. Those who have been listening to Captain Drautos’s subtle poison more and more these past few months, whose loyalty is not as solid as they pretend and to whom Niflheim’s lies are starting to sound sweet feel stricken, terrified. Like there’s a shadow of a blade at their necks even though there is nothing.

Nox inhales and when he exhales his breath is like frost. The room feels very, very cold, “They sell themselves to the enemy, they wait until his back is turned, and then they kill him. And when those glaives who are still loyal,” here his red-tinged eyes fall on Nyx and there is weight to the gaze, calm promise that of all in the room, Nyx has never been among those Nox has seen become betrayers, “resist and refuse to join in. The traitors slaughter them too. No regard for Clan ties, no regard for oaths or loyalty or any Color beyond Pink and Red and NIflheim’s White.”

Blue eyes are fully red now as he hisses, “And I hate it. I hate that I remember it, I hate that no one ever understands that magic has a cost. That they can study and feel magic strain over and over again for years and yet somehow they never believe that their king is just as human. That it hurts us just as much. Because Lucis Caelums are ‘blessed’,” Nox laughs and the sound is eerie, dripping in memories of things no one living is supposed to see, “as if an Astral’s Blessing is something to be coveted. As if being born with burning, inhuman magic, like a constant spell of fire in your veins and just beneath your skin that never turns off day or night, makes it easier.” Nox laughs again, something dangerous and sharp in the sound-.

N!Axis fearlessly lays a hand on the back of his prince’s neck, “That’s enough, Nox,” Axis murmurs, “come back now.” And Nox blinks, once, twice, thrice.

And suddenly he is normal. The room is normal, the creeping impression of death and old fury is gone, leaving the glaives breathless from relief. Nox rubs his face with a hand and murmurs an exhausted sounding apology, excuses himself for the day to go lie down in the guest suite Regis gave him.

Nyx watches the prince and his Arra walk away and notices that Nox’s hands are shaking, that his steps are not as sure as they were just this morning.

He thinks of too old words and too ancient eyes, of the knowing bitterness when Nox spoke of magic burning just under the skin with no relief and thinks very suddenly that he is glad he is just an Ulric. Just a Kingsglaive. A glance at Luche, Tredd, and C!Axis reveal them to be just as pale, if not more so than the others.

That night, those glaives who had been listening to their Captain’s less loyal talk had a lot of research to do.

And a lot of silence to ponder in horror as they find that every word Nox said about the old rulers was true.

[the-house-of-the-nine]

In Depths Below: Epilogue, Part 5

Later that evening.... 

[ L.K ]     It would be a rough start to the night. Lazarius had accompanied Jursol back to her hut and patched the broken areas just before the storm let loose. And what a storm it was. No doubt those Tide Sages of Kul Tiras were at it again. But the rumbles of thunder and lightening crashing all around, as well as the torrential downpour, it bound them inside.

Lazarius had stripped down to his shorts in the swampy jungle heat once more. The glistening of his brandings, tattoos and scars evident in the light of what few candles there were to give them a way to see. He sat on the edge of the cot she had given him to rest on earlier, and in his silence, his extended palm in front of him would flicker with small galactic wormholes that would pop into existence and fade. A black purple flame swirling around him. He was simply toying with his magic.

“We once worshipped N’Zoth, the old god of the deep. My former Mistress was the leader of our cult of The Nine. In fact, Nine member all of which lead the rest of the order to its victory and inevitably its defeat. Decades passed... I have been leading us since the times of this great Third War of the mortal races. I know your people have never been too keen on involvement but that is how long.”

He closed his hand around the flame and sighed.

[ J ]       Once back at the hut, Jursol found a few things to patch the hole on the wall up with. With a smile she handled them to the elf. As she watch how surprisingly good he was at patching up such holes, a small laugh escaped her. She knew like him this was no normal storm coming. Those damn Tide Sages had it out for these lands.

[ L.K ]     “In recent months we have shifted further and further away. I took it upon myself to take inventory of what it is we truly do. What we stand for. And it is chaos, but it is more than that. We are saviors of some of the most brilliant and talented minds the world has ever seen. People who would otherwise be killed for their work, or worse imprisonment. We provide a home for like minded individuals who are through fighting others wars and wish to thrive on our own. A nation away from the political nightmare and a place that offers salvation to all who swear loyalty to the cause.”.

In his hand she would see the construct of a void magic made machine. He created it from the shadow to give her a visual representation of it.

“The Void Forge is our greatest achievement. Made from Titan technology, Mogu and ancient earthen wares. It was reversed engineered to take life, not create. Essentially what it does it extracts the void magic from the Ren’dorei. The void elves. It stores it in batteries for us to use.”.

The image would rotate and turn for her to see all the massive gears and devices.  

[ J ]        Zandalari after all had a great naval force that could rival their own. Due to the ongoing war however, Jursol feared this was perhaps their way of hiding ships sent to scout areas ahead of the coming battle. As she listened her eyes wondered to his hands. She was still mesmerized by the beautiful galactic wormholes he was making.

[ L.K ]     “The body is then stripped of its blood which is placed in a dedicated vessel for our blood mages to experiment on. And lastly, the organic husk is used as the fuel source. Perpetually it will run for as long as we provide it with its source of fuel, Ren’dorei.”

He collapsed the construct and peered over toward her, wherever she was at this point.

“We are bad people Jursol, I know this. But we are also true, pure and devoted to one another. Love and compassion are not lost on us. We do this because when the dam breaks, and the old one returns, lives will be lost. Chaos and the Black empire will return, I have seen this. These stores batteries will be enough to provide us with a shield that will allow the world to bypass us safely in the Bastille for generations to come.”

He looked toward her still and smiled.

[ J ]        As he spoke of his people, The Nine, and the old one N’Zoth she listened intently to every word. Like many Zandalari she knew the threat of Old Gods was real. They were coming back and soon. Hell there was already the created Old One who posed a threat, Ghuun. While he may be defeated easier then most he was still a threat to all life. Jursol recalled a old Seer speaking of the coming storm. A storm of blood, death, dark magic not seen in years. An evil that once thought dormant was said to be returning.

‘Could dis be N’Zoth then?’ she thought.

The more he spoke of how his people, and their home far from the political nightmare that most live in, the more she realized how truly misunderstood he was. Him and his people may have a strange way of doing things, but their goal is far from evil. She could hardly believe the structure of the Void Forge was real. The way it worked, how it was made, everything about it peaked her curiosity.

[ L.K ]     “I could not ask for a better person, you...you Miss Jursol, to be there with me, at my side. I would ask you for it is the respected position that you deserve.”.

She watched as he offered his scarred and worn hand toward her, the image of a serpent burned into the palm.

“Join us. You with your Magic’s..you are the prime candidate to offer us a perspective we have never seen. I see in you...a person worthy of a place where she can flourish...”

[ J ]        She only had to think for a moment after he’d stopped speaking.  He bright eyes looking toward him over the glare of the fire.

“You not be bad people my friend. Many forget der be times we must be doen thins we never thought we would in order to save ourselves or others Sometimes it be taken being da bad guy to get da job done.”

She said smiling looking at him.

“Da future of yo people means a lot to ya. Der be nothing wrong with dat in my eyes.”

As his hand was reached out towards her with an offer to go with him, she bowed her head and met his hand with her own clawed and scaled hand.

“I be happy ta be joinen ya Da raptors be happy as well. Dey seem to trust ya as I do.”

As she said this big raptors gave a small grunt sound in agreement. The smaller one leaping up next to the elf and laying down.

“A place to be using me magic in peace will be a nice change. Perhaps be learnen more about da blood magic I began studying before.”

[ L.K ]     Lazarius would listen to her as she explained and answered each of his various questions and requests. Listened to her explain her side of things. It was quite obvious he knew she was exactly the type of person who could work with the order.

“A place for you to work your blood magic and perfect it. Our former Grand Magus. . . .”

There was that pause again when he regarded her.  A hint of sadness in his eyes, but he would clear it away shortly after and continue on.

“ She has written two books on the subject, her parents before her were members of the council of Nine and served my former mistress. They’d written four. Also with the raw essence being reduced down from the forge you can perhaps practice hands on with it. I am sure a Zandalari brain can think of far more interesting ways to use the blood than we elves.”

The compliment was left there, hanging in limbo for a moment as he pondered.

“Blood Huntress Jursol.”. He said with a chuckle.

“Our last Magus took my hospitality and generosity and is currently beginning work on how to utilize this blood. If possible I’d like to put you in charge of how we research the blood within The Bastille. Perhaps you and our resident scientist Doctor Whistletorque can find a way to use the Azerite with it.”

[ J ]       Jursol moved around the hut as she listened to him. Grabbing some things to make something for them to eat. Herbs, spices, dried meat, and fresh looking fish. Using a very small fireplace she worked to mix the ingredients together just so. Her clawed hands seemed skilled as she gut, deboned, and flayed the fish.

Chopping the herbs with a large knife as she placed them into a bowl. Chucks of dried beef were tossed into a pot of boiling water. A small dash of spices were added as well. Grabbing the chopped herbs she added a bit of oil to them. In another bowl she worked to crush the herbs, turning it into a paste.

The paste was rubbed over the fish before she laced it onto a rack over the fire. Some vegetable type things got added to the stew of beef and spices.

“A place to be practicing in peace be something I be happy to have again. Ta learn more den I know would be a great gift to my allies. A curse to mah enemies.”

Her face seemed calm her pleased.

“So ya be having a scientist der? Dat would make finden new ways ta use blood magic much more fun, and if he be able to use Azarite as well, dat be amazing.”

A smirk grow on her lips as she laughed.

“Well I be not letting ya down. Dis magic be something I take pride in, even if he hated by many.”

As she spoke she kept up with the food. It now smelled like herbs and spices in the little hut. Her hands stirring the stew as she watched the fish.

[ L.K ]     “Well then on behalf of the Council of Nine. .  I officially welcome you into our order.  I know that it is not the Grand flare and show of excitement one such as yourself should warrant but...”.

The irony was not lost due to the fact that he was but one of the council, and the rest were not in attendance.  He extended a finger toward the air and from it a little violet spark shot up and burst into a small firework.  The explosion would for a serpent as it slithered around in a circular shape and then into a knot before vanishing.

[ J ]       Jursol gave a fanged smile as she watched the serpent slither around in a circle, then a knot, all before vanishing. It seemed to entertain her to see his use of his skills.

[ L.K ]     “Ive been giving it some thought.  And I think I know how we can get back to the Bastille.  But now comes the true test of our survival.  Getting us to the Eastern Kingdoms.  If we didn’t have to worry about the war I could arrange passage from Kul Tiras if we could get there.  But that is out.  But I need to reach Alterac.  If we can get there... the former Magus I spoke of who should still be there. . .”.

He sneered and shook his head.

“I installed a gateway through her lower sub basement into the Bastille.  It will place us directly where we need to be.  At that point I can sever her portal thus finally putting an end to that link, and reach my sisters hopefully before something terrible happens.”.

Lazarius would give only a glance toward her meal, granted he didn’t choose to eat anymore because of the parasite but he could still appreciate her talent.

“Are you up for the task Miss Jursol?  Any ideas on how we can escape this island?”

[ J ]       Hearing him speak about the order, and about getting back to them, she started thinking. She knew of the Eastern Kingdoms, and heard about the Alterac. However she never ventured there herself. Pondering for a few minutes before speaking.

“Hmm, I be knowing one way ya travel der. Dey be smugglers doe. We be needen ta get off Zandalar before dey can help. But if we be getting away from Zandalar dey can help get us ta Alterac, or close at least. Ta get off Zandalar we be needed a boat. Dat be easy, if not for da war. Mah people don take kindly ta outsiders. We be needen ta get past dem somehow.”

[ L.K ]      “That is good for us then.  Unfortunately the Horde had not actually made contact with your people before this all began.  I never gave the order to send my own operatives into Zandalar.  But hindsight is of course twenty - twenty.”

Lazarius would think for a moment.  His eyes drifted toward his hands.  The edges of his fingers slightly starting to blacked right at the tips.  Alarming but not enough to warrant attention.  

“What if....”.

He slowly smirked and shifted on the bed while sitting on its edge.  His pale flesh glistening in the hot jungle night; the humidity was overwhelming and the rain outside on made it worse.

“You take the guise of a guard.  One of the elite kings men.  Since I can easily pass for a Ren’dorei, you could be doing a prisoner transfer.  Say you’re taking me for a parlay with the Alliance, trading one of theirs for one of “ours”.  We get our boat and sail to where these smugglers are, they’ll never see us again.”

[ J ]       A grin crossed her lips as she gave the stew a last stir. Scooping some into wood bowl before grabbing a wooden spin.

“Dat may actually work. Ta get a guard be easy enough. Get one ta chase ya ta me, and I can use a dart with poison on dem. Can’t be having blood on da armor.”

Jursol took a bite of the stew before speaking again.

“Da dart be covered in jungle frog poison. Works fast and silently. Most be to busy ta question a prisoner trade. One of da Zandalari priest been missing for some time now. If dey ask I can be saying we be trading for her.”

Jursol laughed as she said that last part.

“Don’t worry she not be comon back. Saw her body being eaten by a few stray raptors. Some small men be killing her. Dey were near some strange looking metal things.”

She nodded and smiled, a tusked toothy smile.

“Yes dis may work for us.”

[ L.K ]     He nodded right back, and gazed at the warrioress with a matching grin.

“Yes...dis may work for us.” 

To be Continued in. . . “In Depths Below: Epilogue, Part 6″

[scoutshonor56]

Burning Down the House

With a new year upon us, I decided to leave our pouting, petulant, and clueless “president” alone for a while.  I’m at the point where I don’t want this blog to become a regular, though fun and cathartic, critique of this moron’s day to day behavior.  Besides, who can keep up these days?  Certainly I never intended this blog to become solely a political airing of grievances anyways, when started back in November of 2016 - but then, who would have ever envisioned the likes of Donald Trump in the White House?

 So today I’m going to address an issue close to my heart; the wellspring that nourishes my spirit and is essential to the health and well-being of every living thing on our planet – the environment.  You see, I’m a baby boomer who grew up in the 60’s, and was quite the impressionable 14yr old on April 22, 1970, when the first official Earth Day was proclaimed. That year also saw the creation of the EPA, and like most of us from “back then”, I still hold onto many of the ideals of an aged hippie -  

 Those who know me also know I later worked for NASA - another touchstone for my generation - at Johnson Space Center, inside the television/communication contract, for 14 years.  During that time I got to watch the Space Station being built piece by piece, from when the first module, Zarya, went up on a Russian Proton rocket, to the first crew occupation, to its successful completion.

 I still pay attention to our space program as a tax paying enthusiast, although not nearly as much, and thus I watched a fascinating show on NOVA a week or so back, entitled “To Pluto and Beyond”.  It was about the continuing voyage of NASA’s New Horizons exploratory spacecraft, which is now traveling at roughly 37,000mph some 5 billion miles from our planet and still able to send back data and outstanding imagery to its home base here on Earth (taking over 4 hours to do so).

 In a nutshell, when New Horizons was first launched, in January of 2006, scientists and astronomers didn’t even think much existed past what they call the Kuiper Belt (the area in space past the planet Neptune), other than insignificant, floating chunks of minerals and ice of varying size and shape – such as Pluto, now not even an officially termed “planet”.  

 But soon that would change as our telescopes got larger, more sophisticated, and certainly more powerful (such as the Hubble), revealing a wealth of new discoveries and vastly widening out view, and theories, about space past our solar system.    

 In just a little over two years after its successful flyby of Pluto and its moons, sending back stunning and never before seen imagery, project managers were able to plot a new course that would enable the probe to fly past what is now called 2014 MU69, or its more colorful nickname, Ultima Thule (which sounds much more bad-ass!)  

 To go into any detail about the show and this discovery would require a whole different blog, so for my purpose today, let’s just say the level of technology, engineering, and computational math involved in this exploratory endeavor is right up there with just about any other high achievement in man’s history; an incredible display of determination and shear brain power that simply boggles my mind.  Sure, it was just an unmanned flyby, a probe…but successfully plotted over billions of miles, traveling at 37,000mph through orbiting planets, asteroids, and clouds of space debris, where a collision with something the size of a pea could mean instant disaster?  Where the tiniest fraction of miscalculation can put the craft literally millions of miles off course?  In the harshest and most unforgiving environment imaginable?  You may as well try to explain quantum physics to me.

 So what - what’s this got to do with a Talking Heads song... my point is this: excuse me if I don’t buy into this long running campaign of bullshit and misinformation put out by the petrochemical and carbon-based conglomerates, their money-wallowing and soulless lobbyists, and the special interest groups, who for the better part of fifty years have retained a complete stranglehold on our politicians and policy makers.  They continue to control the discussion of our energy sources with fairy tales and scare tactics in support of a technology that is over 200 years old. Let’s dim the lights, roll out the boogyman, and wind him up:

 “It will cost jobs!!  The transition to renewable and clean energy is too expensive, the sources unable to compete in today’s economy!!  The technology and infrastructure have yet to be fully worked out!!  It’s much more difficult and complicated than you can possibly understand!!  It’s simply going to take more time – it will be a long, slow process, and oil and gas will continue to play a dominant role in the meanwhile!!”

 And on, and on, and on…

 Bullshit!  Germany now gets 40% of all its energy generated from renewable, clean sources.  There are other countries in Europe harnessing tides to generate energy.  Our planet is a hotbed for thermal energy potential.  A recent study done here in Houston, at Rice University, claims Texas (who leads the nation in wind generated energy) has enough sun and wind to completely wean itself off coal within the near future.  

 Since when did America become the nation that couldn’t; that shied away from a challenge, technological or otherwise; that chose to follow instead of lead… was I stoned during that period?  Did I miss something?  Fifty-eight years ago, President John F. Kennedy stood at a podium at Rice University Stadium and declared:

 “We choose to go to the Moon!   We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”  

 To put this into context, at that time it had been just over a year since America had launched their first man into space: Alan Shepard riding a Redstone rocket 116 miles into suborbital flight, lasting fifteen minutes.  Back then NASA scientists and medical professionals didn’t even know if a human could survive such a trip, or for how long.  Would they retain their vision, their mental capacity?  Would they lose all sense of direction?  Pass out? Would they be able to endure and function during the required long duration flight to the moon and back?  How would we even achieve such a feat?

 OK, some might say, “Well, sure, NASA had a limitless budget - and after all, the space race was strictly for nationalistic reasons anyway, to beat the Russians to the moon…”

All true, but umm, have you looked out your window lately?  Pay attention to any news?  And no, Fox doesn’t count.  According to a recent analysis, published in the Journal Science (see the story in the NY Times), our oceans are warming far more quickly than previously thought; like 40% faster on average than a United Nations panel estimated five years ago.  Researchers now conclude that ocean temperatures have been breaking records for several years straight.  Compounding the effects of our melting polar caps, warm water also takes up more volume than cold water, resulting in sea levels rising at an estimated rate of .13 inches (3.2mm) over the last 20 years.  Satellite measurements tell us that over the past century the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 4 to 8 inches.

 Right now, over the last decade, we are seeing an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes, monsoons, tornadoes and wildfires.  NEWS FLASH Gomer and Thelma Lu, this isn’t a conspiracy perpetrated by greedy and alarmist eggheads in lab coats, nor is it “fake news” or fuzzy science; and it certainly shouldn’t be considered, or treated as a political issue.  It’s rock-solid, provable science that is accepted by 97% of scientists, climatologists, and geologists all around the world, who continue to ring the emergency bell. It’s happening today, all around us, and the bad news is we’re already too late; at this point, if we were to get serious this year, 2019, it will still be a game of damage control; of mitigating the consequences of our greed, ignorance, and gullibility.  

 In comparison, the goal and challenge of beating the Russians to the moon seems quite miniscule to that of restoring and maintaining the health of our little blue lifeboat called Earth.

 “Whatever, our planet is a dynamic, ever changing thing - Earth has gone through similar climate changes before!”   Yes, true – but over the span of tens of thousands of years, you moron.  Man has achieved the same results in barely two hundred.  

Just curious, but what part of 2.5 million pounds/second of co2 pouring into the relatively thin, fragile layer of atmosphere that protects our planet don’t you get?  Too hard to think about, or conceptualize?  Or is it easier for your lazy, flabby, unexercised brain to simply believe that it all just dissipates into outer space – you know, where the alien abductors that beamed you up into their mothership that weekend reside…

 Make America Great Again?  What a sad, short-changed, and utterly empty joke of a campaign slogan… Here, I’ve got one for you: SAVE OUR PLANET!  For your children’s future and their children’s future.  There simply is no option; no magical, last minute solution.  No plan B.  No spare planet accessible, sorry, this isn’t a movie - its real.  

 I simply don’t understand; why isn’t this the number one issue of concern for everyone?  Could there possibly be a greater threat and more important challenge facing us all today?  

 Ah well, what the hell – we’ll all be fine in a couple thousand years after we evolve with gills and become aquamen and women… Although, good luck finding something to eat, as we’re also killing the entire food chain of life in the oceans, from coral reefs to the dolphins, the sharks, and the whales…I guess we could become aquacannibals – now there’s a surefire idea for a hit movie!    Hmm, I wonder if we could talk Jason Momoa into that hard turn in the movie series plotline…  

[howtohero]

Getting Transformed Into an Animal

In the days of Myth (a period of time which is nestled right in between the days of yore and the days of future’s past) there were three major problems that plagued the world’s heroes. 

Finding out one of your parents was a promiscuous deity.

Sandal chafing.

Getting transformed into an animal.

This last one was especially prevalent. Apparently it was super easy to get transformed into an animal back then. It seemed like anything could cause it. Get stranded on a mysterious island? You’re gonna get turned into a pig. Upset an elderly shopkeeper? Congratulations, you’re his pet parrot now. Antagonize a tribe of desert wanderers? You’re going to become one of their donkeys real quick. Turning somebody into an animal was pretty much how most disputes were settled back then. (Occasionally they were solved by tearing a lion in half straight down the middle but that sounds difficult. {Also those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive, next time you get into a petty spat with your friend try turning them into a lion and then tearing them in half straight down the middle.})

Unfortunately for our modern day heroes, this practice has not disappeared completely. Many villainous sorcerers or transmutaters still employ this beastly battle tactic to this very day (11/6/18). Which means there’s a very good chance that someday soon you’ll find yourself being turned into a chipmunk or a llama or something. 

Usually when you get cursed or drink a potion or get hit by a “de-evolutionary ray” (the name of which, by the way, is highly indicative of some mad scientist’s grievous misunderstanding of the theory of evolution) the transformation is complete and won’t reverse itself until somebody reverses it. Sometimes, however, that’s not the case. In some instances the transformation only kicks in at night, or during the day. Or just like an afternoon. Or every third Thursday. Werewolves are usually this kind of creature. They only get transformed into their animal form when they can see all of one side of the moon. (You’ll find a lot of werewolves hanging around observatories.) Night-Cobra is also in a similar situation, he was cursed by a shaman who he once beat in a game show and now turns into a giant cobra as soon as the sun sets. What sets people like Night-Cobra apart from other people who find themselves in similar predicaments is that the only thing that changes for him is his physical form. He remains capable of speech and all of mental faculties. Some people only retain one or the other or even sometimes neither. 

One of the best ways to avoid getting yourself turned into an animal is, and I’m completely serious here, to not have an animal motif. Studies (ha) have shown that superheroes who name themselves after animals or design their costumes after animals find themselves getting turned into those very same animals 75% more often than superheroes who have nothing to do with animals. While there’s no clear reason for this, I’d theorize that most sorcerers who are using a trick as hackneyed as “turning a person into an animal” simply aren’t that creative. If you don’t dangle the idea of animals in front of them they won’t turn you into an animal it’s as simple as that. They’re not very clever. *Ribbit*

(Oh hey, looks like Zach’s been turned into a frog. That’s what happens when you antagonize an entire subset of magic-wielders on the internet. Anyone can read the internet Zach. I guess that means I’m in charge now.)

(Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is about being turned into an animal. I’m pretty sure being an animal is better than being a human. And being an animal with human intellect is really the best of both worlds. Think about your pets: They’re adorable. You shower them with unconditional love, you feed them and shelter them. If you’re trying to become insta-famous you let them wear lots of cool hats. They don’t have day jobs. They don’t have night jobs. They don’t have to work for anything. Being an animal is awesome and you’re lucky to be one and the witch who turned you into one is cool as heck.)

(Sure there may be a few downsides to being turned into an animal. Animals aren’t allowed to go most places. Especially if you get turned into a species that is not commonly domesticated. But even that can be gotten around if you’ve got the intelligence of an average human. {Or the ability to read the tips we’re about to outline for you.} The first thing you need to do to increase your field of movement is get yourself licensed as a support animal. You should be smart enough to keep blind people from walking into traffic or to support a human who’s going through some tough times. Being a therapy animal is actually pretty easy. Much easier than being a human therapist. All you have to do is be nearby and be adorable and make sure your human eats regularly. You should be able to pull that off. Once you’ve gotten that down you’ll find that you’re allowed in a lot more places. Nobody’s going to tell a small child that they can’t bring their therapy bear into a supermarket.)

(If you don’t agree with my opinion on the situation then you should feel bad. {Don’t feel bad nobody ever agrees with him.} But if you really don’t like being an animal and want to go back to your lame old human life then don’t worry these things tend to be reversible. You can try hitting up a different magic-wielder. This is one of the reasons why magic is so gosh darn useless. Any other user of magic can pretty much undo any magic you do. What a waste of effort. If you were turned into an animal by some sort of mad science machine, fear not, thanks to a deep cover plant we’ve placed in the Mad Science Institute of Technology, all mad scientists have been taught to always incorporate an on/off switch into every device they create. Flipping this switch the other way will instantly undo everything the machine has ever done. If you’re wondering, that same deep cover agent is also responsible for the mad science practice of always putting large self-destruct buttons inside evil lairs.) <Wait that’s why we all always do that???> (Yep! You’ve all been tricked! If your friends are worth the paper they’re printed on they might be working to turn you back into a boring human right as we speak!) *Ribbit?* (They might be! If you think this might be the case you need to be very careful about what you do and where you go. If you think you’re likely to turn back into a person at any time you need to either:

Make sure you’re wearing clothes.

Be in a place where you don’t need to be wearing clothes such as your own home or a public bathhouse.

You also need to make sure that you’re only hanging out in places that you’re allowed to be in. People tend to be more loosey goosey about say, a goose, hanging out in a public fountain than they are about a naked man splashing around in that same fountain.)

(Until you’re turned back though you should relax and definitely not continue fighting crime. While we’ve spoken at length about animals who are capable of fighting a crime a person being able to fight crime who has been turned into an animal is a very different thing. For one thing, your powers might not transfer forms with you. They definitely won’t transfer if your mind is being transferred into the body of an animal and vice versa. In a case like that you’ll only have whatever abilities that animal already had. Which is almost definitely none. Also there is now a person with the brain of a platypus and the powers of a superhero running around so somebody should get on that situation. You also have a different physique than you’re used to, which will severely affect how effective your fighting style is. You definitely shouldn’t go after the person who turned you into an animal. Leave that to your still-human friends. If a villain turned you into an animal it’s like they let you off with a warning. If you come back while still sporting a curly tail and a snout they might not be so kind and you could very well...) *croak* 

[perfectirishgifts]

Why ‘Brownouts’ Undermine Career Success And How To Outsmart Them

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/why-brownouts-undermine-career-success-and-how-to-outsmart-them/

Why ‘Brownouts’ Undermine Career Success And How To Outsmart Them

Memory loss due to brownouts interfere with job engagement, productivity and career success.

The owner of a small tech company said her team told her she has a memory problem because she doesn’t recall their conversations. “They’d be telling me about a concern, and I wouldn’t hear them,” Laura said. “Because something else usually steals my attention. I’m working out a problem in my head and tune out everything around me. Many times I’ll be driving somewhere else and end up at work. When my mind is on five million other things, I get in my car and go on autopilot without realizing it.”

Laura suffers from brownouts—the equivalent of alcoholic blackouts when the mind is overloaded and preoccupied with work. During a brownout, people tune out the here and now and forget previous conversations or meetings because their wandering mind is busy working. Driving while working (DWW) has caused people to zoom through stop signs, past destinations or end up someplace unfamiliar to them.

A professor at a major university said she frequently finds herself in the middle of downtown, forgetting her destination. She’s trying to figure out a solution to a problem at work or planning a special project. Once while driving, she had been mentally coordinating course assignments for the next three academic terms. To her dismay, she found herself pulling into the parking lot of a condominium where she had not lived for many years and had no memory of driving there.

A client told me, “My wife sometimes tells me she thinks I have Alzheimer’s, but she doesn’t have anything to worry about. It’s just that my mind is on my job and nothing else is important at that particular moment. I’ll ask her a question, and rather than wait for an answer, my thoughts jump to something else. When I ask again, she tells me I asked her the same question three times, and I don’t remember asking the question, much less hearing an answer.”

Scientific Research

Brownouts are byproducts of work overload and job stress, causing workers to be frustrated, inefficient, unproductive and mentally exhausted. Plus, brownouts break down clear communication among managers, co-workers and team members. Research shows that stronger memories help us make sense of future changes. But when previous memories are blunted by brownouts, it interferes with our ability to function optimally in our careers.

Recently, a study by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis showed that the stronger a memory is as it’s first encoded, the easier it is to note subsequent changes and integrate it to update your understanding. Our memory is based on features of past experiences to guide current behaviors. Whether experiencing something new or something we’ve experienced a hundred times, we use memories of the past to navigate subsequent encounters. “The bigger the discrepancy is between a previous memory and what happens the next time,” said Professor Jeffrey Zacks, a member of the research team, “the stronger the signal is that you need to update your memory representation.”

According to Zacks, memory has a survival quality. “We have memory so we can recall—the last time I went to the watering hole, the sabre-tooth came from my left, so I’m going to look left this time,” he says. “But if this time it comes from my right, I’d better be able to update my representation. That is how you pass on your genes.”

In short, the Washington University study showed that we draw from multiple sources of information when trying to remember an event. Some of that is specific, acute information: the color or texture of your favorite pillow, for example. Others are more general, provoking more of a generic response without being tightly bound to a specific, situational feature.

Decision Fatigue And Cognitive Health In The Workplace

After hours of brownouts, chances are the job decisions you make will be different from the ones you make after your brain has a rest period. Scientists have discovered a phenomenon known as decision fatigue—which is what happens when brownouts wear out your brain and deplete it of mental energy. The longer you’re on autopilot and the more choices you make in those extended hours, the more difficult it is for your strained mind to make decisions. It becomes hard to make even ordinary choices, such as what to wear, where to eat, how much to spend or how to prioritize work projects. Many workers start to take short cuts, compromising quality standards. And some have short fuses with co-workers and loved ones, eat junk food instead of healthy meals or ask someone else (sometimes unqualified sources) to make critical decisions for them.

The human mind wasn’t designed to be chained to the desk and overrun with flooding thoughts. It needs restorative rest just like your body does when you’re tired. Not unlike the human body, cognitive health requires present-moment rest and relaxation to prevent brownouts. A calm mind is just as essential to cognitive health as turning off your car engine to keep it from overheating. The resting state stimulates the rest-and-digest response and relieves brownouts.

It is essential to make a point to get out of your head occasionally and engage in certain activities such as brisk exercise, relaxing in nature, power napping, deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, yoga and massage. These activities turn off your mind’s red alert and throw a calming switch that brings balance. Mindfulness—the peaceful observing what’s happening around you as it’s happening—is a healthy antidote to brownouts while you go about business as usual.

Open awareness can be any brief activity that makes you mindful of the present moment. Open awareness meditation for just 60 seconds helps you unwind, clear your head and raise your energy level. Focus on the different sounds around you, pay attention to flowers, trees or some aspect of nature. At your work station, notice the exact spot where the floor supports your feet or the back of your chair supports your back. When walking, zero in on the feeling of your feet inside your shoes and of the carpet underneath your feet. Take time to really taste your beverage of choice during the workday instead of chugging it as you ruminate over a work problem. After one minute of open awareness, bring your attention inside and notice if you’re not calmer and more clearheaded.

From Careers in Perfectirishgifts

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

WARNING: Sailor Moon and related characters ©Naoko Takeuchi. Story/plot © me! Mostly based on the first season of the original anime (esp. Rei's personality), also the manga/Crystal. Rated T for some light sensuality and language.

This is a series of five fluffy oneshots, plus a bonus sixth chap. Enjoy! See below for more notes.

Act 1. Ami: Solve For Why?

Poor Usagi Tsukino had been studying for hours. All her life, school had been something of a challenge; grade one was the last time she could remember being as effortlessly adept as her classmates. Year after year, her best friend Naru had very little trouble with their classload, and she struggled with even the simplest concepts. Nevermind how her genius-level classmate Umino did, but he was clearly a special case. She had no hope of ever getting the material to take root in her head at this point. As much as she really wanted to be better, it just wasn't sinking in no matter how long she stared at the pages. So she defaulted to one of her usual depressurizing exercises.

"Usagi…" Ami Mizuno's voice was less than enthused, but still managed to sound patient even while it also sounded exasperated with her short attention span. "While I appreciate the balance and dexterity it takes to hold that pencil on your upper lip…"

"Thank you," Usagi replied through her teeth as she stared at the ceiling, twitching the lips back and forth to keep said pencil from falling off. "It's a real talent!"

"But we really should get back to studying. The test is in four days!"

Whining, she finally sat up, catching the pencil. "Come on, Ami! I can't do this! Face it, my brain is a bowl of oatmeal and nothing's gonna stick in there except a spoon!"

"Oh, Usagi…" But she wasn't disappointed or angry, the way her mother would have been. The crease in her noble brow and the clarity of her blue eyes told a different story: one of concern. "You really need to pass this. Your grades are so low! I just… I don't want to move on to ninth grade, and look back at you still being in eighth. That would be truly unfortunate."

"I knowwwwww…" Slumping downward, she looked at the pages. "Just feel dumb all the time."

"You aren't 'dumb'. Which is an inaccurate word, because it means you are incapable of speech; we both know you're highly accomplished at talking." That did make Usagi snort, and Ami leaned down catch her gaze before she smiled at her. "You're actually a very bright girl, Usagi. I just think you need… well, I don't know. Confidence, maybe? Or focus. Maybe you could try ginkgo!"

Her head tilted slightly to one side. "Does that really work? I mean, I'd try anything if it made me smarter."

"Well, that isn't exactly how it works. But some scientists do claim it enhances one's powers of retention."

"Ohhh." Not that she understood the difference; it still sounded like 'smarter' to her. Her mouth twitched upward. "Ami, why are you so nice to me when I'm such a dope?"

As she turned a page backward in their textbook, she said easily, "You're the leader of our team. I have to be nice to you." But the slight smirk when she glanced up again betrayed that she wasn't serious, and Usagi relaxed. "Now then, back to problem four…"

"What team?"

It was a shock to hear another voice in the room. Ami and Usagi both blinked a few times before turning to where Naru Osaka was sitting with her pencil dangling out of her mouth. They both gaped, having forgotten she was there because she was just quietly reading through the material.

"Pardon me?" Ami asked.

"I asked, what team? You said something about a team. I didn't think you played any sports."

"O-oh!" Usagi burst out.

"Oh, what?"

"Well…" Instead of either trying to figure out how to explain the situation to their friend, or telling her the sad news that she'd been forgotten in lieu of their somewhat more intimate conversation, Usagi just laughed. "The team of Usami! You know, Usagi and Ami? Since we… well, we've both got… oh, we were just kidding! D-don't worry about it!"

Naru raised an eyebrow at the way both of them were fidgeting, but then shook her head and turned back to her book. "Sometimes, Usagi, I really think you're losin' it."

                                              ~ o ~

Not that she was kidding. Usagi really was the leader of their team. Every so often, having a secret identity was something that she forgot about. Understandable, since it had only been a part of her life for a few months.

She needed a moment to take stock of her positioning. Left boot forward, gloved fists upon her hips. Shoulders thrown back and chest forward, back straight. Long blonde pigtails trailing out behind her on the slight breeze — she loved it when the breeze could ruffle her skirt and her hair, it made her feel so much more heroic. Satisfied, she cleared her throat very quietly, then shouted down into the night.

"Stop right there, Nega-trash!"

The abomination with mottled fur snapped its face up to look at her from where it stood, crouched over a hapless citizen. Lips pulled back from fangs into a snarl as it readied to drain the metaphysical energy from her body. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ami getting into a similar pose, so she decided not to wait any longer.

"I am Sailor Moon! Champion of justice! On behalf of the moon…" Leaping off the ledge, she executed a quick flip in midair that seemed so effortless to her now. Even if she wasn't always the best heroine, the moves came a lot easier to her now that Luna had unlocked her potential; it was only too bad that she couldn't translate that poise and confidence into her civilian life.

"I will right wrongs, and triumph over evil. And that means you!"

That had gone according to plan. Once she had delivered her line, Ami stepped out and said hers: "And I am Sailor Mercury! You're through here, you rapscallion!"

Rapscallion? Maybe they should go over their superhero banter after this battle. But either way, it was time to go to work.

That particular enemy didn't put up much of a fight. Today, their defeat came easily, and Usagi was left with the odd feeling of having extra time on their hands and that she and Ami had cheated somehow. On other days, they would wind up running for the hills, or flung around by their hair, or tied up, or flattened… the possibilities were endless, and Usagi's least favourite part of being a Senshi. The victories usually made up for that. Fortunately, their powers kept them from sustaining any lasting injuries most of the time, but now and then there would be a little residual bruising that carried over into their 'daily lives'. Rough stuff. She was glad not to have to deal with that this time.

"Whew!" Ami panted once Jadeite had vanished, done with his grandstanding for the night. They were leaning back against a pillar in a square near Akihabara, both eternally grateful the fight was over. "I… I need to sit!"

"Here…" Usagi put an arm around her as they walked over to the steps of a building and took a seat. Today, Mercury definitely had to do the most flipping around between the two of them, so she didn't mind supporting her. Once sat down, she sighed and patted her shoulder.

"Thanks," Ami panted as she wiped her forehead clear of sweat on the back of her glove.

"No problem. We Sailor Senshi have to stick together!"

They simply stared up at the sky for a few minutes and caught their breath before Ami asked, "Usagi?"

"Hm?"

"Well, I was just thinking… do you ever think we'll be able to stop the Dark Kingdom for good? It's awfully taxing, just the two of us standing against the forces of villainy."

Nodding, she leaned back to look at the stars as she pondered. How many were there above them? A hundred, a thousand? She didn't know anything about astronomy, and didn't want to ask Ami for fear she would actually answer. A brainy girl like her was too smart to bother trying to educate a dimwit like herself. Maybe that was part of why she felt herself wanting to give up so quickly when they studied together.

"We'll be fine. We're pretty strong, right?"

"Yes, but it would certainly be nice to have more teammates. Didn't Luna promise us that she would find the other Senshi eventually?" Ami's frown was more concerned than anything. "I don't want us to be defeated. It would leave Tokyo defenseless."

"Wow," Usagi sighed, hanging her head. "You're a way better leader than me. All I was thinking was that I don't wanna die."

That made the frown deeper, and she turned to look at her, laying a hand on her forearm. "You mustn't think that way, Sailor Moon. All we can do is our best to fight the enemy; if that isn't enough, then we have given our lives in service of others. Isn't that the most noble way to meet our fate?"

"Way to get all deep on me." Ami did smile a little with humour, though the topic was too dark for either of them to truly laugh. "But… yeah, you're right. It's just hard; we're kids, Ami. I want to fall in love, get married, get a job. Maybe see Paris. All that stuff before…"

"Oh, I do understand; so do I. And we'll do those things if we have time. And if we don't, then this is the most important use of that time."

She couldn't answer right away. Ami was right. She felt selfish for wanting to argue against her, especially when she didn't have a decent argument. "Yeah, true."

"Okay. Let's go home and finish studying for-"

Throwing up both hands as she stood from the steps and began to walk away, Usagi exclaimed, "GOD, Ami, not tonight! I need sleep or I really will kick the bucket way too early!"

"Sailor Mercury is right!"

They both looked over their shoulder to see a violet-furred cat perched atop a nearby wall, eyes gleaming in the relative darkness. Usagi groaned. "Should have known you'd side with her, Luna. But I'm so sleepy!"

"There can be no rest when you're handling both Senshi duties and your future on Earth!" Luna's paws made a soft tmp as she landed next to them. "It is quite late, but you can at least go over your books for a few minutes before bedtime! Now let's get a move on!"

She din't miss the way Ami snickered very softly into her hand as they went on their way. Privately, she wanted to trip the both of them for being so mean, but she was way too tired to even try. Maybe she could go crash at Naru's place…

                                              ~ o ~

The night before the test had arrived. Every evening before, as long as they weren't called upon to defeat the forces of the Dark Kingdom, she and Ami had been up cracking the books — or that is, Ami was cracking the books. Usagi was bouncing between reading random manga, fidgeting, snacking, pacing the room, and idly wondering what was on television. Naru had enough of trying to get the information through Usagi's thick skull and had given up to study on her own. Ami got impatient with her a few times, as well, and though Ami's "shouting" never really involved raising her voice or using unkind language of any sort, the night before had resulted in a teary breakdown that left the slightly-taller Senshi patting her leader and offering her a handkerchief.

Now was crunch time. Usagi was starting to get the most simple concepts, but it was as if her brain were stretched to its absolute limits instead of just gearing up for the tough stuff.

"You can do this!" Ami encouraged her. "Where does Y go?"

"Y bother?" she tried to joke with a hopeful smile. Ami's face didn't change from its stern-but-patient expression. That was starting to drive her crazy; she almost wanted her to snap at her again. "Okay… um, here?"

"No."

"Here?"

"Sorry, no." After a pause, she sighed. "Alright. We can take a break. If you don't need it, then I certainly do."

Letting out a long, slow sigh, she whined, "Ami, you should give up on me and go home. I'm a total reject! Like, I'm really trying and I just can't make myself care about a bunch of stupid numbers!"

"Think of it another way. This isn't about what you want to be doing and what you don't. It's a necessity. Like taking a bath, or doing your chores. They may not be the most fun of activities, but they're important for your life, aren't they?"

"Hate chores, too," Usagi muttered, lips pouting.

"Alright, alright." Thinking another moment, she held up a finger. "Imagine you're buying the latest Sailor V video game. You really want that game and have been dreaming about it since you read about it in Nakayoshi. But in order to get it, you have to save up your allowance for a few weeks. It's not easy because you like to eat sweets at Fruits Parlour, or buy hamburgers or other fun things."

She had to work hard not to grumble "Are you calling me fat?", but instead kept listening to Ami.

"But if you do the hard work, force yourself to save your yen and avoid the temporary pleasure, you can eventually get the reward. Your game."

"Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying. But what's the reward here? Just passing a class? It doesn't matter. I'm not really good at anything; I'm not even that good at being a Senshi, I'm just the only one with the tiara. So even if I finish high school, what's next? University? I'm not getting into any of those with my grades! And if I did, what would I study? No idea, I can tell you right now." Sighing, she slumped down against the table. "Mom's right. Everybody's right; I'm just… useless, lazy, and pointless. So maybe I can do that thing you said and sacrifice myself for the planet. If I suck at life, at least I can do something with my death."

The room was quiet for a few seconds. Usagi finally spared a glance over at Ami, expecting her to sternly tell her to get back to work, because her whining wasn't helping. Which was very true. But instead…

She was crying? Why crying?! That was the weirdest reaction she could have! "Ami? What's wrong?"

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, Usagi…" Her hand swiped at her eyes. "I just hadn't realised… how little you think of yourself. And it really isn't fair."

"What do you mean? I don't…" After an awkward second, she got up and moved to her dresser to retrieve a packet of promotional tissues from some new store in the neighbourhood, popping it open and offering one to her friend. She took it, blotted the rest of her tears away, then smiled up at her. It was so watery and laced with emotion that Usagi could only glance at it out of the corner of her eye.

"You're an absolutely wonderful person, Usagi Tsukino. So what if you aren't as w-well-read, or adept at arithmetic as some? That isn't a measure of your character. You're very smart in your own way."

"No way," she laughed softly, even though she did feel a slight warmth in her chest from the mild praise.

"Yes, way! Goodness, you have an innate sense of how to strike the Enemy that I can only hope to cope with through my strategising — and I can only do that thanks to years of chess matches. You've never played chess in your life, I'm fairly certain, and yet I never outshine you on the battlefield. Something's working in that brain of yours, even if you don't want to see it. And that's not even getting into… how kind and generous you are, how thoughtful. I've never had a friend so loyal as you in all my life, and if you think that's 'pointless', well then… you can just think again!"

By the end of that, Ami had hopped to her feet and begun shouting. Usagi felt an odd mixture of reactions, both chagrin from being scolded and her heart pounding from how sweet her tutor-and-comrade was being. Over nothing! Her own eyes were plenty wet by now, and Ami had stopped blotting the tracks from her cheeks.

So Usagi stood and took the tissue from her fist with a couple of tugs. Then she began drying the moisture away with gentle pats while Ami shivered.

"It's okay. Wow, I'm so dumb, I didn't think… I didn't mean to make you cry just because I'm such a whiner! Can you… can you forgive me?"

Her sob turned into a chuckle toward the end. "See there? I'm crying over n-nothing, and shouting at you, and y-you're apologising for nothing. You're so sweet…"

When Ami embraced her, she was caught completely unawares, and could only catch her and pull her in close, fingertips gouging into the back of her shirt, raking through her short bobbed hair. Somehow, even though she had known her less time than her previous best friend, Naru, this brainiac had become equally important. Crucial, even.

"Ami, thank you so much! I'm sorry for b-being so… w-waaahhhh!"

Of course Ami's first reaction to her bawling was to laugh. As often as Usagi broke down in a puddle of childish sadness, no one was ever surprised. But this time, no one was chiding her, or asking her to tone it down. There were only soft lips pushing into her forehead, gentle hands caressing the sides of her face.

"Shhh, shh. I didn't mean to shout; that was unbecoming, and probably didn't make you feel like you had any more self worth. You simply mean a lot to me, Usagi. More than you might expect."

"Why? I don't really understand… I m-mean, I know what you said, but I don't really see how being nice makes me different from anybody else."

"Because you don't have to be nice. You're a Senshi; you could use your powers for evil, and yet you do not. You use them to fight the true evil in this world. And that… is as noble as the policemen and armed forces. They get medals for their service; we don't even get to tell anyone we're doing it. More than that, you were already doing this before we met, and all on your own! So… I think you're very brave. Nobody could tell me otherwise."

"Brave? That's…" Swallowing hard, she looked up into Ami's eyes. "But you're much braver than I am! I've never heard you complain about going out on patrol, or having to fight Nega-dweebs!"

"I'm not brave. If I were… I'd…" Her words cut off.

"You'd what?"

"It's nothing." But when Usagi's gaze didn't waver, Ami looked down toward the floor between their bodies, at Usagi's fuzzy bunny slippers and the carpet beneath them. "You know… those things you've felt about Tuxedo Mask?"

"Tuxedo Mask? I mean… um, sure, but what things?"

"How brave and fearless he is. Beautiful to you, both because you like how he looks in a suit, and because of his heroism. It's not just one or the other, right?"

Usagi nodded without needing to think about it much. "Yeah, exactly. It's like, that Mamoru guy who keeps hanging around is cute, too, but he's a real jerk. I'd much rather have a chance with Tuxedo Mask, since he's the total package instead of… well, half a package."

That got Ami to giggle a little, at least, and Usagi chanced a tiny smile. "I've felt that way, too. I really have. Just… I'm not brave or I would have been able to say it. That's all I meant."

"Well…" The idea that they both were interested in the same man did throw Usagi for a loop. Jealousy was beginning to tingle behind her temples. However, Ami was her friend, and their friendship was very important. Much bigger than petty jealousies or worries about some guy she'd never said more than five words to. It was hard for her to do, but she forced herself to say, "Then if you feel that way, you should tell him how you feel. Like… I've tried with Tuxedo, but I keep getting tripped up on my words, and we're in the middle of a fight… but you shouldn't hold back! I might talk faster and more than you, but your words always come out a lot smarter! S-so… so I wish you the best of luck!"

This silence was longer, heavier. Ami crossed to Usagi's window, wiping her tear tracks away. Usagi followed, but didn't quite touch her; merely stood within arm's reach, to one side and watching.

"What if… he… isn't a 'he' at all?"

"Huh?"

"I'm not brave. I merely do what my higher cognitive functions tell me to; self-preservation. Because admitting my feelings to myself means I ought to admit them to the other party, and I can't tell her or else I'll… risk everything. And that isn't anything like courage, it's just… protecting myself."

Somewhere in there, while doing her best to keep up with it all, she did catch that one word Ami might not even have meant to say: "her."

"Wait, are you… Ami…" The way her friend's entire frame tensed up and she gripped the window ledge sent a panic through her, so she hurried to squeak, "Sorry!"

"What are you sorry for this time?"

"No, I…" Clearing her throat, she tried again, "Do you have a crush on a girl?" No answer. Fidgeting, she whispered, "Do you… have a crush on… a girl I know?"

"Decidedly yes."

"Is it Naru?" Her head shook from side to side. By now, Usagi was beginning to feel lightheaded, but she persevered. "That only leaves me. But I mean, if you liked me you would have… said…"

Finally, Ami turned around with her eyes wet. "You already act like you're disappointed, s-so I'll get my things. This really wasn't how I meant to tell you! But now the cat is out of the bag. I apologise, Usagi."

The blindsided blonde watched her collecting her books for a few seconds. Everything felt like it was happening so fast, but seeing that made her drop to her knees and grasp both of Ami's arms.

"Don't go. Okay? Don't… I'm just… really wigging out right now, but I promise it's not- I don't think you did anything wrong."

"Never said I did anything wrong. Just… it isn't right for us, either. We're both Senshi, and it's such a bad idea-"

"Hey, whoa, whoa, that's not…" Realising she wasn't even sure what she had been about to say moments before, Usagi tutted and leaned in closer to Ami. "I mean, I've never thought about… girls… in that way before, but like, not everybody's the same. I've heard of this! I think… yuri? S-so if we have a word for it, that means it has to happen once in awhile, and if you're one of those people, then that's… that's great! I mean, good for you!"

At the last line, one of Ami's eyebrows twitched up and she had to suppress a smile. "Oh? You're congratulating me on being attracted to women? That's probably a first."

"Well hey, I mean, I just learned something new about my friend! Getting to know a friend is a positive thing, right?" Both of their cheeks were a little rosy now. "I just never… well, of course I like girls, but I don't know about like-liking them, it's… but I did think you were really pretty when I first saw you…"

"You did?" That seemed to shock Ami out of her self-loathing. "Oh no, why would you? I'm so plain…"

"Nuh-uh! You're mega cute!" Ami's blush only got worse, and Usagi realised she was basically hitting on a newly-out lesbian, so she dipped her head slightly. "U-um, if that's okay for me to say. But I… I don't know what to do with this information exactly, but you can bet I'm not mad, or uh… sad? I don't know."

Both of her shoulders rose and fell. "To be honest, I never gave much thought to dating either gender until recently. Even with these feelings, it's still less strange for me to think about women than men, but the whole idea of dating anyone seems… unattainable for me. Since my interests are so nerdy and uncommon."

"Well, I think your interests are cool. Just way over my head." She stuck her tongue out, and Ami giggled again. Then she leaned a little closer. "Do you, um, maybe want a hug? And like, to sit back down? Because you look like you might faint."

"Yes," she admitted with a weary nod, accepting the embrace. Usagi didn't hold back; maybe she was a teeny bit less comfortable hugging her, because now she knew what it could mean to Ami, but at the same time she also knew in her own 'higher cognitive functions' that nothing had really changed. She and her partner-in-crime-fighting were still friends, and could still study together. It just might mean a little more to Ami than it did before.

Once seated by the table again, Usagi didn't take her arm away from around her. And Ami laid her head on Usagi's shoulder, humming contentedly as they arranged the books to look through them again. Much to her own surprise, she didn't mind this. Ami fit together with her as snugly as Y fit into the equation.

Y fit into…

"OH! I got it — that's the inverse! Right, Ami?"

"Very good!" Ami laughed, and Usagi clapped her hands in triumph, then pumped both fists in the air which only made her laugh harder. "See? All you needed to do was stop overthinking it so much. Not that I intended for my sexuality to be the necessary distraction…"

Sticking out her tongue, she said, "It works as a pretty good one, I guess. This time. But hey, at least I'm finally getting somewhere! Go, me!"

"You are. And to the victor go the spoils!"

When she kissed Usagi's cheek, it nearly sent her scrambling away, but she managed to fight down her reaction to a mighty blush and a dopey laugh that made Ami grin even wider. "Th-those are definitely spoils! I feel spoiled!" She still wasn't sure about returning the affections; she definitely bore her friend no ill will for having them, but knowing whether or not she felt the same was another story entirely! After a second or two, she reached up to cup her cheek; that seemed safer. "Um… I'm not really sure what you want from me…"

"Oh, this is fine," Ami reassured her. She sounded so confident; it was impressive, given how vulnerable she had seemed when confessing. "Please don't think I'm requiring anything further. My feelings aren't your feelings, and assuming otherwise would be silly."

"But… I do think you're really…" What else could she say? At a loss, she kissed the top of Ami's head, and heard her cooing, which immediately made her giggle stupidly. "This is so weird, but it's also… nice? Does that make sense, or am I nutso?"

"Don't feel weird. I love it. Even if it's only temporary… it's very sweet of you to indulge me."

"Um… do you wanna try some other stuff? Like, I know I sound like I'm about to implode, but you're my friend, and like… I don't know, if this is just a 'Class S' phase thing…?"

"It isn't in my case," Ami assured her, though she didn't look offended that Usagi had brought it up. "I'm very comfortable in knowing that I find both men and women attractive. Some girls go through a phase like that of liking other girls before they become women, I suppose, but I'm at least reasonably certain my phase is permanent."

One hand behind her head, she laughed, "Hey, that's cool! You know yourself better than anybody else does!"

"Yes," she laughed lightly. "As for 'trying stuff'... I'm also not sure I'm terribly interested in those activities. Which made it difficult to be sure I like girls, to be fair, since I'm undecided on whether or not I want to have sex with either gender."

"SEX!" Usagi burst out. "I meant like, maybe kissing or holding hands or something!" They both giggled, more from relief on Usagi's part.

"Well… if you did want to kiss me, I wouldn't be opposed. In fact, I'd love that very much, but I wouldn't dare ask it of you if you aren't interested in trying."

Both of Usagi's shoulders rose and fell. "Why not? Even if I don't end up liking kissing girls, at least I'll get some practice before I kiss a boy."

"Mm. Then go on; practice away."

At first, Usagi wasn't sure what she meant. Go on? And do what? But when she got the sense that Ami was waiting for her to move, her slow brain fully realised — she was supposed to kiss Ami. Not the other way around. Was she really alright with that? Though it would be a bit wishy-washy to back down after she had made a point of telling her that she would try things out with her if she so desired. Which apparently, she did.

"Oh," Usagi breathed when she was cupping Ami's cheek. "This feels… I dunno."

"Bad?"

"No way! I just didn't think I'd ever be… on this end." By which she meant, Ami was reclining just enough so that Usagi was positioned above her, looking down into her patient, canny eyes. How was she supposed to play the more 'masculine' role when she had no experience with that?! Ami's little bow mouth was parted very slightly, waiting, willing. She leaned down…

It was far better than she had any right to expect. Really, she had expected for it to feel weird, like kissing her brother or something similar, but Ami's mouth was so sweet and vulnerable, completely at her mercy, that connecting it with her own was just… easy. Even without knowing what she was doing! When she began to move her mouth a little, she heard a hum of approval that got her trying more, kneading her lips back and forth, breathing softly along her cheek as their heads tilted in opposite directions. Hands came to rest on her chest, and she slipped her own around Ami's waist, feeling that was somehow the best thing for her to do.

And she didn't hate it.

"Nhh!" she burst out when she felt a tongue prod her bottom lip, drawing away. "Whoa, what was that?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Ami piped up, blinking a few times and covering her mouth. "Was that too forward? My reading told me that was the next progression…"

"You've read about this?!" Then she shook her head and pushed her hands into her cheeks. "Wait, of course you have. You study up on everything. But wow… okay, that was… really interesting, and like, better than I thought…"

Those soft, properly-warmed lips pushed into her cheek again, and Usagi sighed. "What did you think it would be like?" Usagi didn't want to answer. Eventually, when no answer came, she nuzzled her jaw and whispered, "I enjoyed myself. And if you did, we could try it again sometime, but not tonight, I should think. You'll want time to adjust."

"Uh-huh…." Another cheek-peck. "Wow, Mizuno-chan, you're such a temptress."

"I am?!"

"Well… okay, maybe not. But you are super confident, and didn't seem scared at all, which helped somehow. Like, I wish I had that going for me!" This time, she was the one to lean over and kiss Ami's forehead, which earned her a closed-eyed coo that made Usagi's stomach do flips. "Oh my GOD, you're so cute!"

Again, she squawked, "I'm cute, too?! Goodness!" While Usagi was laughing, she cleared her throat. "We really should get back to studying… but… I also wouldn't mind incentivising our study habits with a new reward system."

"Yeah? You mean… if I get one right, I get a kiss?" When she felt Ami nod under her chin, where her head was nestled, she whispered, "And I didn't even think I would want that like, five minutes ago. Now I'm not sure! But… j-just for tonight… what if we just assume that I like it and I'll figure out if I was confused tomorrow?"

"Mmmhmmm," Ami hummed with clear and pronounced pleasure. "I find this to be an acceptable proposal, Usagi. Let's begin."

Which is how Ami somehow got Usagi to her first math score that was above a 70. Their "reward system" was going to lead to a period of adjustment, and they'd have to do continual assessments of the situation as they went along. But not everything could be solved with the scientific method. Sometimes, it was pure chemistry.

                                               THE END

                                              [Next: Rei!]

MORE NOTES: Basically, blame Yamino for pointing out to me several times over the years that Usagi can basically be shipped with anybody. She's such a hapless lesbian (Usagi, not Yamino, who is a very cunning lesbian). So my idea for this, rather than trying to balance a 5tp fic that would end up being WAY too long and cut into my other writing projects, was to do a series of one-shots depicting what I imagine Bun-head falling for each of her close friends would be like. Feel free to only read the one(s) that interest you!

First, a couple of notes:

1. Each oneshot is its own separate "verse". This isn't Usagi burning through each Senshi in turn, they are "what if?"s independent of each other. So if you're wondering why one character doesn't have strong feelings of jealousy about her hooking up with another in the next "chapter", that's why. (Also you're more than welcome to pick the one you like best and accept that one as canon, rejecting all others haha)

2. Don't forget that this is taking place in the early 90s, so a lot of the technology and references won't be modern. Also that I'm going to try to keep Japanese terminology to a minimum but also I'll try to italicise it so you at least can more easily spot the words you need to look up (if you don't know them). I left everyone's names in American order (IE: Usagi Tsukino would be Tsukino Usagi in Japan). Even though I was a big fan of the DiC dub when I was small and I'll drop quotes from it, no, Sailor Moon isn't set in America and they don't go to Crossroads Junior High.

Anyway, I hope you like it (or at least one of them)! I tried to balance the five ficlets to be of similar length and definitely gave them each equal consideration; none of them were "rushed", trust me.

Tsuki ni kawatte, oshiokiyo!

Jessex

[jaykong99-blog]

IDEATION AND CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING

During my time in Ideation I studied the ways in which you can stimulate your mind into thinking more creatively. The ability to think creatively is “not a talent. It is a way of operating” according to John Cleese. I found that we can do different activities and we can go through different processes in order to train your mind into thinking more creatively.

Collaboration  

 In the Collaboration session we examined the way in which working together in groups and pairs can influence our mind into thinking more creatively. In class we worked together to construct towers made from toothpicks and marshmallows. We were challenged to see how high we could make the construction. Before we created it, we discussed our opinions and as a collective we formed an approach we wished to take when we started to make it. We had to take into consideration the weight aspect of the marshmallows as well as the time we had to complete the task. A quote from Twyla Tharp states that “people who are practiced in collaboration will do better than those who insist on their individuality”, this quote supports the idea of collaboration and suggests that those who are keen to work alone and are autocratic miss out on the heights you can reach working together.

   One way we can inspire creativity is by working in collaboration with other people as it allows us to open our mind up to other ideas, ideas that we may not be able to think of if we worked independently. When working collaboratively it is integral to the steps of ideation to listen to other opinions and to take them on board rather than neglect them. It is from this we are able to take ideas and improve on them. The ways in which we are able to improve on these ideas in a group is by brainstorming thoughts. We then draw the positives from all of the suggestions and can devise a way of which we can tackle the problem.

I believe collaboration is a very effective method of ideation as it allows you to optimise efficiency as well as creativity. The underlying theory of collaboration suggests that everything you do alone can be done better as a collective. Helen Keller says, "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." Working with peers allows you to also be more time efficient, the spare time gained from teamwork means you have more time to plan ideas. For example, when we attempted to make a toothpick and marshmallow phenomenon in class, we were able to compartmentalize jobs between the group. This meant that we were each able to focus on our own individual tasks allowing us to put more thought and care into what we were doing, resulting in better results.

Everyone has different life experiences. Working in a group is a hugely beneficial method of ideation as you are able to gain knowledge or ideas from peers. This can be reciprocated as collaboration involves giving ideas as well. We may have an idea which needs a lot of adjustment or maybe just a little refining, idea’s may also be incomplete. Those who collaborate effectively will be able to use the cumulative knowledge to their advantage. By working with others, you are able to get a better idea of what you are doing. Moreover, by working collaboratively you immediately have a larger skillset at your disposal and from working together weaknesses may become strengths.

A study shows that working with others benefits our motivation and we may get greater enjoyment from the task. This leads to higher levels of performance within the group. Getting feedback on idea’s may motivate an individual further as they can feel more confident and thus more creative with their work. Scientist, Gregory Walton said that “Simply feeling like you’re part of a team of people working on a task makes people more motivated as they take on challenges”. Problems can be solved.

The skills I have learnt from this class can be easily transferred to any type of collaborative work. For example, working in a group to construct a story will ask for the same skills such as communication, teamwork and decision making. I thoroughly enjoy collaborating with friends and peers on projects as I believe creativity flows at its best when you are able to give and receive feedback. It is from the constructive criticism we receive from peers that we are able to improve on ideas. I could possibly collaborate with someone in the future if I am unable to use a certain software. So, by finding someone to collaborate with who can use a particular software I would be extending the lengths that imagination and creativity could go.

                                                                                              Improvisation

 Another effective way of inspiring creativity is by improvising. In this class we went through a number of different exercises one of them being, “Fake it ‘till you make it”. The basis of this game is that you have to stand in front of the group and attempt to talk like an expert in whatever topic you are given. We also played a game called Statements and Questions. The game involves two teams and every round one player is selected to go face to face with a member of the opposing team. They are then given one of two possibilities, statements or questions. For example, if questions are selected for that round the players take it in turns to say a question each without hesitation or repeating anything said. We continued to improvise in the Wednesday lesson, one task we were given was to design an experience of connection for the group using the materials in the room. My group decided to make a vehicle using the chairs and we led the group around the classroom in the makeshift car. Another exercise we took part in involved describing your life story with a partner using facts, shapes, colours and personal preferences. The exercise started off with us standing up telling our partner facts about our life, then sitting back to back discussing our interests and hobbies and lastly, the task involved lying down describing our life story with our partner using only shapes and colours.

Being put in a situation where you may not feel entirely comfortable forces creativity out of you, from adapting and working spontaneously we obtain irrational thoughts and ideas. This method of ideation allows you to generate random ideas that may be quite small at first, but you are then able to build on them. I found that improvising helps you to warm up your mind and gives you a creative flow. Ideas are generated faster and are of better quality when ideating using improvisation.

Improvisation teaches us to say yes to doing things, no matter how bizarre it may be. It puts us in the habit of accepting challenges and giving things a go. From this we are able to face bigger challenges without hesitation. It teaches us to fully participate in the activities we take part in without the fear of being wrong. This allows our mind to think outside the box and acting purely on impulse we create a scenario etc. “Fake it ‘till you make it” was one exercise we used improvisation in, and it required us to fake being an expert at something. This sort of activity could be replicated with different criteria to inspire creative thoughts. For example, using this exercise for a comedic purpose could work.

Being out of your comfort zone means you have to adapt to the situation, using only instinct. Improvisation requires intuition. You are able to train your improvisation skills and they can be used to help creatively imagine ways of which you can overcome a particular problem. Improvisation teaches us to act on impulse and as we better our improvisational skills we may find it easier to tackle new issues at hand as our intuition does the work for us.

A study that supports the effectiveness of ideating using improvisation was conducted by Dr. Charles Limb, he used an fMRI scan to check the brain activity of a Jazz musician while they played a memorised piece and also an improvised one. The studies show that when the musician’s played the improvised piece, self-expression rose. Limb found that an area of the brain associated with the fear of failure was shut down, meaning the musicians were more creative.

I enjoy writing fictional stories, so I believe improvisation is important when trying to start the story or maybe getting the initial idea. A quote by Harvey Keitel states that, “To create characters, one must build background and one of the tools we use is improvisation.” Thinking of characters and plots are not straightforward and those ideas do not come instantly. Through improvisation we can create situations we’d find our characters in and I believe that from this you are able to identify important factors such as personality traits and motives. It is from improvisation you are able to truly understand who it is your writing about. Life is not black and white and often in everyday life you come up against a problem that you aren’t used to, the skill of being able to adapt is a prime aspect in improvisation and can easily be applied to a project or just life in general.

Creativity and the Unconscious

 The relationship between the unconscious mind and creativity is another theory we looked into and is another method of ideating. In this class we did an exercise that started off with us each choosing our own letter from the alphabet and writing it down, we then wrote down a word beginning with that letter. From this we listed words associated with the word we wrote down, followed by writing a paragraph connected to a story in our lives using two words from the list. We then continued the story using elements of what we had learnt about life from other subjects and different fields. This was added to with another paragraph of our own wisdom and thoughts. After this exercise we were tasked with writing a poem using standard poetic techniques such as similes and rhyme etc. The last activity we did involved us listening to a partner’s dream and writing down a few of the most prominent features and then designing a game that could incorporate the features.

The theory is all about allowing our subconscious and unconscious mind to find the solution to what we are looking for. It involves using intuition, which hides behind our consciousness, Robert Moore said “You cannot control creativity, you can only dance with it.” This supports the idea that the ability to be creative cannot actually be controlled by the subconscious, but it is in fact more spontaneous and random. The initial exercise which involved us writing random words associating with a certain letter and later developing on it with other specific criteria. We then used the ideas generated in the previous task to create a poem and I believe this initial exercise allowed me to write a poem with ease. The initial idea for the poem was thought of quite fast and from then on, the vocabulary I was looking for in each line just came to me. This form of ideating is effective as it essentially warms up your brain before you move onto the actual task.

The unconscious mind is also a place where we are able to think creatively with a lot of freedom. Paul McCartney wrote “Yesterday” of which he credits the song to the creative process we have when we sleep. When we are in the unconscious, we may experience something we know as REM sleep. During REM sleep our brains are more active and this can result in intense dreams. In these dreams our unconscious mind pieces together bits of information and events that have occurred in our life. The university of Berkeley conducted a study of REM sleep and found that the brains problem solving capacity was 15-35% more effective than its ability to solve the same issues while awake. Another task we completed in task involved us using ideas and thoughts from our dreams and incorporating them into a video game poster. So instead of trying to consciously think of a new game idea we allowed our unconscious mind to do the work for us.

In a video for Big Think Dr Barry Kaufman states that “Great creativity doesn’t come when we’re just solely rationally consciously focused on solving a creative problem.” Kaufman says that we rarely find the answer we are looking for when we try and consciously attempt to figure it out, but when we distract our minds with something else, we often find solutions. When you remove yourself from the situation your subconscious tries to solve the problem at hand. All of the ideas formed by the subconscious mind stay in the subconscious until they are close to the point of finding an answer. The idea then springs into the conscious mind when the idea is finally solved.

I believe I would apply this theory to future tasks and problems as it teaches you to not just rely on conscious thoughts but to also appreciate the idea’s we generate from our unconscious mind. A study shows that 95% of our brain’s activities are performed in a non-conscious manner. We are often not able to recall dreams, but you are able to train your mind into remembering them. One way of doing this is by having a dream diary. If we are able to train our minds into remembering dreams, we can maximise creativity and fully utilise the creativeness that exists within our unconscious mind.

                                                                                    LEGO Serious Play

In this class we recalled the games we used to play as children, and we looked at the features these games included. We were instructed to build a duck using seven LEGO pieces, followed by removing three pieces and explaining how it could still be perceived as a duck. We then had to build a creature of any kind and then later would change the creature to show how it could represent yourself on a Monday morning. After this we were told to create anything we wanted to, followed by making something which was a metaphor for your relationship with coding and then we worked in pairs to create a metaphor for a successful student at university.

The theory of Serious Play is that from playing with toys such as LEGO we can improve on our creativity. Lego Serious Play challenges you to think more imaginatively as you have to use limited resources to try and convey different messages and meanings. The guidelines of LEGO serious play can be similar to the ones we have when starting a project. You are confined to work with what you have in front of you, so you are forced into thinking imaginatively.

“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” This quote by John Cleese supports the idea of LEGO Serious Play. It suggests that without actually being able to play around with things it is hard to be creative. It requires a physical, hands on approach. Being able to have the creative space to work will allow for better productivity and more

By starting off by building a basic idea such as the duck then moving onto creating a creature it aids the brain into generating more creative ideas. This could be linked with the study of the unconscious mind and ideation. The tasks then move onto more complex proposals such as creating something which may be a metaphor for success. Gradually increasing the difficulty of what you are trying to portray whether it be a scenario, or an object it will allow your mind to think more creatively for the harder tasks.

The steps for LEGO Serious Play involve having a question and building on it, then presenting it and telling the story behind it. This is then followed by questions and reflections. The steps found in this theory can be compared to the thought process of any idea a problem or when trying to solve a problem. Seymour Papert believed that when people are assigned to create something, they would in learn more effectively.

LEGO Serious Play teaches us to have fun and to work with what we have. What I learnt from this theory I could apply to different situations I may be faced with. For example, if I was trying to complete a project where I’m using software I am unfamiliar with. Instead of going straight into it I would play around with a smaller idea. From this I could learn more about the software and it might have inspired an idea for the bigger project. I believe LEGO Serious play could also be applied very effectively when story building, as you can visualise scenery and characters. The ideas aligned with LEGO Serious Play could be applied when working on product design as it goes through stages of prototyping designs and then explaining what you have made.

                                                                                                                                            References

Cleese, J. (2019) TOP 25 QUOTES BY JOHN CLEESE (of 191) | A-Z Quotes, A-Z Quotes. Available at: https://www.azquotes.com/author/2973-John_Cleese (Accessed: 16 May 2019).

Tharp, T. (2019) Collaborations, ROBERT DIAZ DIAZ. Available at: https://robertdiazdiaz.com/collaborations-2/ (Accessed: 16 May 2019).

M. Walton, D. (2019) Just Feeling Like Part of a Team Increases Motivation on Challenging Tasks, Association for Psychological Science. Available at: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/just-feeling-like-part-of-a-team-increases-motivation-on-challenging-tasks.html (Accessed: 17 May 2019).

Mumaw, S. (2019) Comedy Improv Training: Ideation Central, HOW Design. Available at: https://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/comedy-improv-training/ (Accessed: 17 May 2019).

Keitel, H. (2019) Improvisation Quotes - BrainyQuote, BrainyQuote. Available at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/improvisation (Accessed: 17 May 2019).

Barry Kaufman, D. (2019) Creativity is the subconscious mind combined with intuition and rationality, Big Think. Available at: https://bigthink.com/videos/scott-barry-kaufman-on-intuition-and-rationality (Accessed: 17 May 2019).

Kearney, D. (2019) Dreams, Creativity and how they are Connected, Fluid UI - Unlocking the world's creativity. Available at: https://blog.fluidui.com/dreams-creativity-and-how-they-are-connected/ (Accessed: 18 May 2019).

Rymenant, M. (2019) 95 percent of brain activity is beyond our conscious awareness, Neurosciences UX. Available at: http://www.simplifyinginterfaces.com/2008/08/01/95-percent-of-brain-activity-is-beyond-our-conscious-awareness/ (Accessed: 18 May 2019).

Cleese, J. (2019) John Cleese Quotes, BrainyQuote. Available at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_cleese_133998 (Accessed: 18 May 2019).

[bisoroblog]

How Do We Get Middle School Students Excited About Science? Make It Hands-On

Eighth-grader Liam Bayne has always liked math and science — that’s one reason his family sent him to The Alternative School For Math and Science (ASMS). But he was surprised and excited when his sixth-grade science class started each new topic with experimentation, not lecture or textbook learning.

“I was really excited because the first thing we did was experiments and hands-on stuff, which is my favorite part,” Liam said. At ASMS the teaching philosophy centers around giving students experiences that pique their interest to know more. Their science curriculum is based on a program called Full Option Science System (FOSS), but has changed over time as teachers bring new ideas to the curriculum and focus on meeting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

“It’s really based on the idea that students learn science by doing science,” said Kim Frock, co-founder of ASMS. Kids ask questions, make observations, manipulate data, analyze, “and really through that process develop deep conceptual understanding of what they’re doing.”

This style of learning can feel foreign to many ASMS students at first, whether they come from a private or public elementary school, but with time and support they often come to see its value. Kids talk with one another, and ASMS kids know this isn’t how a lot of friends at other area middle schools are learning.

“We’re learning similar things in science except they have the facts memorized, but they don’t really know them,” said Carolyn Heckle, an ASMS eighth-grader. “Here if you have something in your brain, it’s because you did something that made it a memory.”

For example, Carolyn clearly remembers an earth science unit about how different sedimentary rocks form, in which she and her partner, Liam, made sedimentary layers of shale, limestone and sandstone. They recreated the geological processes using sand, a sodium silicate solution, clay, plaster of Paris, oyster shells and water, slowly building up sedimentary layers and discussing their structures along the way. Heckle said watching rock formations form crystallized her learning about geology.

Both Liam and Carolyn admit group work was one of the hardest things to get used to at this school. But now, three years in, they can see just how much they’ve learned from peers. Liam described a sixth-grade engineering challenge that required student teams to design a spaceship that could pick up items and drop them off at a predetermined distance. No one in his group knew how to start. Liam asked a shy person in the group if they had an idea.

“They came up with an idea that we stuck with the whole time,” Liam said. “ I thought, wow, I could actually learn from them. That was the first time I started to ask other people for their opinion rather than asking for help for my opinion.” THE TEACHING PHILOSOPHY AT ASMS

The Alternative School for Math and Science started 15 years ago when co-founder Kim Frock was startled at data showing only about half of eighth-grade students in her region, near Corning, New York, were meeting standards in math and English. In contrast, almost all the fifth-grade students were on track, “so it was pretty clear where the system was starting to break down,” she said.

The science curriculum at ASMS encourages students to work collaboratively to solve the roadblocks that real scientists face when developing experiments. (Courtesy of The Alternative School for Math and Science)

The data prompted Frock to start the independent school in a space made available by Corning Incorporated, a global company responsible for inventing products like Pyrex, the gorilla glass on smartphones and the ceramic in a catalytic converter. Corning is a small, rural community with a median income of about $50,000, but Corning Inc. draws many highly educated scientists who want good local schools.

Corning donates to its local public schools, but ASMS has a special relationship, getting free facility space and annual funding for financial aid. While the school is private, Frock said it doesn’t use academics to determine admissions and every child’s education is heavily subsidized, although some receive more than others. She also said the school has more kids with special needs than the public schools and draws students from over 10 local districts.

“If you want to bring physicists and scientists to the area you have to have a top-notch education,” said Jenna Chervenic, an eighth-grade science teacher at ASMS who used to work at Corning  Inc. as a fiber optics mechanical engineer. She left that job to become a high school math teacher, but later joined the ASMS staff.

“What I love about this job is I get to do both,” Chervenic said. “I put a lot of engineering tasks into the science curriculum.”

When they started the school, Frock knew they needed to teach science differently. She didn’t think the “canned experiments” many schools do, where students walk through a step-by-step process and get a predetermined result, was a good representation of what real scientists do. It’s too controlled, and doesn’t have enough room for the types of failures and setbacks that professional scientists face everyday.

“That’s not learning and it’s not engaging for kids,” Frock said. “Here, instead, we have inquiries for them to do and general guidelines, but they’re really asking their own questions and discovering their own knowledge.”

At each grade level students do three big units focusing on Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Physical Science. At the end of each unit they do an engineering challenge designed to fill gaps in the curriculum and to get students applying what they’ve learned throughout the unit.

“It’s very few tests until they get to eighth grade,” Chervenic said. “There’s just a lot of authentic evaluation and looking to see what students have learned, and if they didn’t get it we don’t just keep moving on. We figure out how to put it back in our teaching so we make sure every kid has a level of proficiency and that they have felt success.”

Teaching this way requires small class sizes and teachers with a deep grasp of their subject matter. The teachers have to be comfortable with students pursuing their own areas of inquiry and guiding them to continue asking questions, iterating, researching and experimenting until they’ve come up with some conclusions.

This process was frustrating for Liam and Carolyn at first. Liam was worried people would think he wasn’t smart if he “failed” at something.

“Even just the word failure gives a negative connotation,” he said. “I remember I failed at something and then my teacher said, ‘Now we know one way not to do it.’ ”

He’s gradually become comfortable with the idea that when he hits a roadblock in a project, that’s a chance to re-evaluate and try something else. It’s led him to always be asking “why” in everything he learns, whether that’s social studies, earth sciences or chemistry.

In addition to science class at each grade level, students are required to complete an independent project or compete in a national science competition. All sixth-graders do a controlled experiment answering a question they’ve designed. Questions range: Does putting food coloring in a muffin change the taste? If I drop different sized balls off a bridge, will the crater size change? It’s a science experiment, but done at school without parental help. And even if students come up with questions the teacher knows they won’t be able to prove, educators let kids pursue the idea anyway. It’s part of the learning process.

“If you can create that safe environment where kids are willing to take a risk, they can present a whole experiment, even if they didn’t get an answer or didn’t get the answer they were looking for,” Chervenic said.

When students get to seventh and eighth grade they have more options to meet their science requirements. They can do another controlled experiment if they want or they can participate in six different national science competitions: First Lego League robotics, Rube Goldberg machines, eCybermission, Exploravision, Future Cities and 3M Young Scientist.

“We want kids to be doing the work independently and we want them to be doing the work here,” Frock said. The expectations are high, but teachers want students working through their own problems in a place where they can get just the right support from a teacher. Work on science competitions is almost always collaborative, so staying at school is logistically easier for kids whose homes are spread out across the region. Teachers also encourage students to attend study hall and homework club after school so they can get work done at school before heading home to rest.

“We’ve created an environment where they come in expecting to work hard, but there’s that internal reward,” Chervenic said. “It creates that environment where they’re excited to get into class everyday, and what the day is going to hold, so you don’t have to do a lot of redirecting and stuff like that.”

The collaboration teachers work hard to promote throughout their students’ learning is evident in the adult work at ASMS as well. Teachers regularly visit one another’s classrooms to make sure, for example, that they’re using the same language to talk about an algebraic concept in science as they are in math class. If the English teacher notices students are weak on their writing, then in science class they may also spend extra time writing strong conclusions. Teachers here recognize that without all school disciplines working together, students won’t become well-rounded or see how big questions in life are interconnected.

HIGH SCHOOL

After three years at ASMS, most students have gotten good at solving their problems independently and collaborating in groups. Many have discovered a deep love for science and a desire to know much more about why the world works the way it does. And then most go off to the public high school where class sizes are bigger, some teachers are more traditional, and they take regular tests and receive grades. It’s very different from ASMS and it can be a shock.

“The feedback we got was that they weren’t prepared to take tests and do notetaking all year long,” Frock said. These insights came out of a survey Frock conducted with early graduates. To rectify those holes, eighth-graders now spend the last trimester learning some basics about how other schools work. They practice opening a locker, discuss how to advocate for themselves to teachers, and take practice tests. They even read class syllabi together and play around with a mock gradebook to understand how grades are weighted and what scores on different items on the syllabus could do to a final grade.

“The transition wasn’t that bad,” said Gracie Speicher a ninth-grader at Corning Painted Post High School. “I really like my classes. I have really good teachers.”

She says grades and tests are different from her learning experience at ASMS but not necessarily bad, and the transition class helped her know what to expect. She says she knows who she is as a student now, and feels comfortable asking for what she needs. On some assignments she’ll stick to the rubric, but on others, when she’s passionate about something, she goes above and beyond. She recently built a scale model of the Globe Theatre, an idea her teacher was skeptical she could complete in time, instead of presenting a slideshow about Shakespeare like many of her classmates.

“The project work that was very interesting and engaging helped me in the long run because it got me engaged in middle school so enjoying learning in high school is easier,” Gracie said about the transition from ASMS to high school. And she learned valuable lessons about collaboration there, something that was hard for her, since she often prefers to work individually.

Kim Frock, co-founder of ASMS, is proud that over 70 percent of kids who went to ASMS have gone on to pursue college degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees. And, she says, that’s not because they are screening for 10-year-olds who already know they want to be scientists or mathematicians. In fact, many students come in hating the sciences, but they leave excited about them. To her, that’s proof that the learning experience students get in middle school at ASMS is sticking with them, making an impact well beyond the three years students spend in her building.

She knows that a private school like ASMS, with financial support from Corning Inc., gives her freedom to offer exactly the kind of education she believes all kids need, and to do so for families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. But she also thinks middle school is such a crucial time to get students excited as learners that other schools can learn from the success they’ve had.

“We’ve known how to do education right for probably 40 years, but there are very few schools that have been able to implement it,” Frock said.

For her, it starts with hiring teachers that share a particular education philosophy.

“In order to teach here, our teachers really have to believe that every kid can be successful,” Frock said. “And I would say that’s not the attitude I’ve seen from every public school educator.”

How Do We Get Middle School Students Excited About Science? Make It Hands-On published first on https://dlbusinessnow.tumblr.com/

[perfectzablog]

How Do We Get Middle School Students Excited About Science? Make It Hands-On

Eighth-grader Liam Bayne has always liked math and science — that’s one reason his family sent him to The Alternative School For Math and Science (ASMS). But he was surprised and excited when his sixth-grade science class started each new topic with experimentation, not lecture or textbook learning.

“I was really excited because the first thing we did was experiments and hands-on stuff, which is my favorite part,” Liam said. At ASMS the teaching philosophy centers around giving students experiences that pique their interest to know more. Their science curriculum is based on a program called Full Option Science System (FOSS), but has changed over time as teachers bring new ideas to the curriculum and focus on meeting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

“It’s really based on the idea that students learn science by doing science,” said Kim Frock, co-founder of ASMS. Kids ask questions, make observations, manipulate data, analyze, “and really through that process develop deep conceptual understanding of what they’re doing.”

This style of learning can feel foreign to many ASMS students at first, whether they come from a private or public elementary school, but with time and support they often come to see its value. Kids talk with one another, and ASMS kids know this isn’t how a lot of friends at other area middle schools are learning.

“We’re learning similar things in science except they have the facts memorized, but they don’t really know them,” said Carolyn Heckle, an ASMS eighth-grader. “Here if you have something in your brain, it’s because you did something that made it a memory.”

For example, Carolyn clearly remembers an earth science unit about how different sedimentary rocks form, in which she and her partner, Liam, made sedimentary layers of shale, limestone and sandstone. They recreated the geological processes using sand, a sodium silicate solution, clay, plaster of Paris, oyster shells and water, slowly building up sedimentary layers and discussing their structures along the way. Heckle said watching rock formations form crystallized her learning about geology.

Both Liam and Carolyn admit group work was one of the hardest things to get used to at this school. But now, three years in, they can see just how much they’ve learned from peers. Liam described a sixth-grade engineering challenge that required student teams to design a spaceship that could pick up items and drop them off at a predetermined distance. No one in his group knew how to start. Liam asked a shy person in the group if they had an idea.

“They came up with an idea that we stuck with the whole time,” Liam said. “ I thought, wow, I could actually learn from them. That was the first time I started to ask other people for their opinion rather than asking for help for my opinion.” THE TEACHING PHILOSOPHY AT ASMS

The Alternative School for Math and Science started 15 years ago when co-founder Kim Frock was startled at data showing only about half of eighth-grade students in her region, near Corning, New York, were meeting standards in math and English. In contrast, almost all the fifth-grade students were on track, “so it was pretty clear where the system was starting to break down,” she said.

The science curriculum at ASMS encourages students to work collaboratively to solve the roadblocks that real scientists face when developing experiments. (Courtesy of The Alternative School for Math and Science)

The data prompted Frock to start the independent school in a space made available by Corning Incorporated, a global company responsible for inventing products like Pyrex, the gorilla glass on smartphones and the ceramic in a catalytic converter. Corning is a small, rural community with a median income of about $50,000, but Corning Inc. draws many highly educated scientists who want good local schools.

Corning donates to its local public schools, but ASMS has a special relationship, getting free facility space and annual funding for financial aid. While the school is private, Frock said it doesn’t use academics to determine admissions and every child’s education is heavily subsidized, although some receive more than others. She also said the school has more kids with special needs than the public schools and draws students from over 10 local districts.

“If you want to bring physicists and scientists to the area you have to have a top-notch education,” said Jenna Chervenic, an eighth-grade science teacher at ASMS who used to work at Corning  Inc. as a fiber optics mechanical engineer. She left that job to become a high school math teacher, but later joined the ASMS staff.

“What I love about this job is I get to do both,” Chervenic said. “I put a lot of engineering tasks into the science curriculum.”

When they started the school, Frock knew they needed to teach science differently. She didn’t think the “canned experiments” many schools do, where students walk through a step-by-step process and get a predetermined result, was a good representation of what real scientists do. It’s too controlled, and doesn’t have enough room for the types of failures and setbacks that professional scientists face everyday.

“That’s not learning and it’s not engaging for kids,” Frock said. “Here, instead, we have inquiries for them to do and general guidelines, but they’re really asking their own questions and discovering their own knowledge.”

At each grade level students do three big units focusing on Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Physical Science. At the end of each unit they do an engineering challenge designed to fill gaps in the curriculum and to get students applying what they’ve learned throughout the unit.

“It’s very few tests until they get to eighth grade,” Chervenic said. “There’s just a lot of authentic evaluation and looking to see what students have learned, and if they didn’t get it we don’t just keep moving on. We figure out how to put it back in our teaching so we make sure every kid has a level of proficiency and that they have felt success.”

Teaching this way requires small class sizes and teachers with a deep grasp of their subject matter. The teachers have to be comfortable with students pursuing their own areas of inquiry and guiding them to continue asking questions, iterating, researching and experimenting until they’ve come up with some conclusions.

This process was frustrating for Liam and Carolyn at first. Liam was worried people would think he wasn’t smart if he “failed” at something.

“Even just the word failure gives a negative connotation,” he said. “I remember I failed at something and then my teacher said, ‘Now we know one way not to do it.’ ”

He’s gradually become comfortable with the idea that when he hits a roadblock in a project, that’s a chance to re-evaluate and try something else. It’s led him to always be asking “why” in everything he learns, whether that’s social studies, earth sciences or chemistry.

In addition to science class at each grade level, students are required to complete an independent project or compete in a national science competition. All sixth-graders do a controlled experiment answering a question they’ve designed. Questions range: Does putting food coloring in a muffin change the taste? If I drop different sized balls off a bridge, will the crater size change? It’s a science experiment, but done at school without parental help. And even if students come up with questions the teacher knows they won’t be able to prove, educators let kids pursue the idea anyway. It’s part of the learning process.

“If you can create that safe environment where kids are willing to take a risk, they can present a whole experiment, even if they didn’t get an answer or didn’t get the answer they were looking for,” Chervenic said.

When students get to seventh and eighth grade they have more options to meet their science requirements. They can do another controlled experiment if they want or they can participate in six different national science competitions: First Lego League robotics, Rube Goldberg machines, eCybermission, Exploravision, Future Cities and 3M Young Scientist.

“We want kids to be doing the work independently and we want them to be doing the work here,” Frock said. The expectations are high, but teachers want students working through their own problems in a place where they can get just the right support from a teacher. Work on science competitions is almost always collaborative, so staying at school is logistically easier for kids whose homes are spread out across the region. Teachers also encourage students to attend study hall and homework club after school so they can get work done at school before heading home to rest.

“We’ve created an environment where they come in expecting to work hard, but there’s that internal reward,” Chervenic said. “It creates that environment where they’re excited to get into class everyday, and what the day is going to hold, so you don’t have to do a lot of redirecting and stuff like that.”

The collaboration teachers work hard to promote throughout their students’ learning is evident in the adult work at ASMS as well. Teachers regularly visit one another’s classrooms to make sure, for example, that they’re using the same language to talk about an algebraic concept in science as they are in math class. If the English teacher notices students are weak on their writing, then in science class they may also spend extra time writing strong conclusions. Teachers here recognize that without all school disciplines working together, students won’t become well-rounded or see how big questions in life are interconnected.

HIGH SCHOOL

After three years at ASMS, most students have gotten good at solving their problems independently and collaborating in groups. Many have discovered a deep love for science and a desire to know much more about why the world works the way it does. And then most go off to the public high school where class sizes are bigger, some teachers are more traditional, and they take regular tests and receive grades. It’s very different from ASMS and it can be a shock.

“The feedback we got was that they weren’t prepared to take tests and do notetaking all year long,” Frock said. These insights came out of a survey Frock conducted with early graduates. To rectify those holes, eighth-graders now spend the last trimester learning some basics about how other schools work. They practice opening a locker, discuss how to advocate for themselves to teachers, and take practice tests. They even read class syllabi together and play around with a mock gradebook to understand how grades are weighted and what scores on different items on the syllabus could do to a final grade.

“The transition wasn’t that bad,” said Gracie Speicher a ninth-grader at Corning Painted Post High School. “I really like my classes. I have really good teachers.”

She says grades and tests are different from her learning experience at ASMS but not necessarily bad, and the transition class helped her know what to expect. She says she knows who she is as a student now, and feels comfortable asking for what she needs. On some assignments she’ll stick to the rubric, but on others, when she’s passionate about something, she goes above and beyond. She recently built a scale model of the Globe Theatre, an idea her teacher was skeptical she could complete in time, instead of presenting a slideshow about Shakespeare like many of her classmates.

“The project work that was very interesting and engaging helped me in the long run because it got me engaged in middle school so enjoying learning in high school is easier,” Gracie said about the transition from ASMS to high school. And she learned valuable lessons about collaboration there, something that was hard for her, since she often prefers to work individually.

Kim Frock, co-founder of ASMS, is proud that over 70 percent of kids who went to ASMS have gone on to pursue college degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees. And, she says, that’s not because they are screening for 10-year-olds who already know they want to be scientists or mathematicians. In fact, many students come in hating the sciences, but they leave excited about them. To her, that’s proof that the learning experience students get in middle school at ASMS is sticking with them, making an impact well beyond the three years students spend in her building.

She knows that a private school like ASMS, with financial support from Corning Inc., gives her freedom to offer exactly the kind of education she believes all kids need, and to do so for families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. But she also thinks middle school is such a crucial time to get students excited as learners that other schools can learn from the success they’ve had.

“We’ve known how to do education right for probably 40 years, but there are very few schools that have been able to implement it,” Frock said.

For her, it starts with hiring teachers that share a particular education philosophy.

“In order to teach here, our teachers really have to believe that every kid can be successful,” Frock said. “And I would say that’s not the attitude I’ve seen from every public school educator.”

How Do We Get Middle School Students Excited About Science? Make It Hands-On published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

[hellofastestnewsfan]

I’m trying to construct an alternative theory of myself in which I’m a tidy person. It’s not going well. Walking my recycling from my apartment to the trash room down the hall takes me anywhere from two minutes to a month. I hate looking at broken-down boxes and empty LaCroix cans in my apartment, but studies say humans are bad at prioritizing long-term goals over instant gratification, and I apparently find doing anything else much more gratifying.

It doesn’t take a scientist to explain why I might put off other things, such as doing my dishes. Those are annoying and kind of gross, and the primary reward is just being able to use them in the future. Still, at a certain point, the anxiety of not having done these tasks surpasses the annoyance of doing them in the first place. That’s an entirely predictable cycle that many otherwise productive people find themselves in when it comes to simple household jobs: A chore that I could feel good about completing in 10 minutes instead stresses me out for days or weeks.

It can be hard to understand why this behavior is so common. The topic is tempting fodder for self-styled gurus wielding empty motivational platitudes, but the underlying cause is complex—an odd cocktail of emotional and psychological dynamics, all conspiring to let my bedding remain dirty for another week.

[Read: The procrastination doom loop—and how to break it]

According to the DePaul University psychology professor Joseph Ferrari, there are two distinct types of people who have a problem completing household chores in a timely manner: task delayers and chronic procrastinators. The scientific distinction between the two is hazy, but it comes down to pervasiveness. You might feel overwhelmed by your aversion to housework, but on its own, it’s not enough to be indicative of a chronic problem. All people procrastinate sometimes, Ferrari says, but for chronic procrastinators, it happens in all areas of life and has a negative impact on a person’s health and relationships. It’s a “lifestyle of avoidance,” he says.

Ferrari’s research finds that description applies to about 20 percent of people. Simple task delayers are more common, but they usually have a much easier time building better habits than their chronic counterparts, which is good news for people whose primary problem is chore procrastination. We’re not that bad!

Part of the reason task delayers are lulled into their bad habits in the first place might be the time of the day or week when chores often occur. “Doing those tasks takes some self-control, and if you’ve made a lot of choices already that day, it’s harder to exert self-control,” says Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist and Florida State University professor. Baumeister is referring to a somewhat contested theory called “decision fatigue,” which holds that people’s brains get worn out by the necessity of being decisive and exercising restraint, usually at work. If you could sit at your desk and play Candy Crush all day like you might want to, washing some plates when you get home might not seem as onerous.

As any good chore procrastinator knows, the drama doesn’t simply end with deciding to do something later. For Gloria Fraser, a caretaker from Massachusetts, that’s where it just begins. She’s always considered herself a prompt, efficient person in her professional life, but the emotional baggage of housework makes personal chores more difficult. “There’s the negative tape going on in my head that I should have done something, and why did I wait until it got this bad,” she says. “So that’s piling up, and instead of doing it, I’m thinking about all the times I should have been. So I end up kind of catatonic over not doing stuff instead of doing that stuff.”

Guilt and shame can be big parts of procrastination if the procrastinator begins to internalize the desire to avoid dirty dishes as indicative of larger moral failings. “We bring other things to this besides the task itself, and we tell ourselves stories about who we could be if we just buckled down and did that thing,” says Liz Sumner, a life coach who helps older women break bad habits and be more productive. Sumner recommends breaking tasks into small, manageable steps, but those efforts can still be thwarted when people worry they aren’t changing or progressing quickly enough.

“A big problem people have is they attack themselves and not their behaviors,” Ferrari says. If task delayers can depersonalize their aversion to, say, vacuuming or litter-box changing, he believes, they stand a better chance at being able to evaluate it rationally, avoiding the shame cycle that can calcify negative behaviors into bad habits.

[Read: The mechanics of preventing procrastination]

If a problem can be understood, maybe it can be fixed. Betsy Burroughs, a Silicon Valley branding executive turned neuroscience researcher, used to have a hard time keeping her home tidy. “It was just a disaster all the time,” she says. “But then I noticed that if I was having people over, not only would I clean the place up, but I’d actually enjoy cleaning it.” Her solution was to start a monthly conversation salon at her San Francisco loft, which ran for more than 12 years. Starting your own event series might be a little extreme for most people, but the idea of recognizing what you dislike and recontextualizing it as an element of something positive can be applied to most housework.

Being conscious of your habits does seem to have an impact on procrastination, but in ways more complicated than I had first assumed. In 2011, the Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck published findings that suggest decision fatigue more negatively affects people who already expect their willpower to be low. People who expect themselves to fail toward the end of the day, in other words, often do. Maybe task delayers could all be better around the house if we simply stopped granting the premise that “bad” is the default with which we are stricken. Procrastination researchers, it should be mentioned, all seem to answer their emails in a timely manner.

Still, a certain level of delay might just be an inescapable part of the human brain, especially when the task is tricky. When I asked Ferrari what the inflection point is between being a task delayer and a chronic procrastinator, he told me that was a complicated question. “Every two years, researchers on procrastination have an international meeting. We’ve been doing it for 20 years,” he says. “After each of these meetings, we walk away saying that we’ve got to get people to understand the difference between delaying and procrastination.” They haven’t arrived at an answer yet. Maybe the time for it, like the time for my recycling, will come soon.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2S1iEaL

[nancygduarteus]

The Torturous Psychology of 10-Minute Tasks

I’m trying to construct an alternate theory of myself in which I’m a tidy person. It’s not going well. Walking my recycling from my apartment to the trash room down the hall takes me anywhere from two minutes to a month. I hate looking at broken-down boxes and empty LaCroix cans in my apartment, but studies say humans are bad at prioritizing long-term goals over instant gratification, and I apparently find doing anything else much more gratifying.

It doesn’t take a scientist to explain why I might put off other things, like doing my dishes. Those are annoying and kind of gross, and the primary reward is just being able to use them in the future. Still, at a certain point, the anxiety of not having done these tasks surpasses the annoyance of doing them in the first place. That’s an entirely predictable cycle that many otherwise productive people find themselves in when it comes to simple household jobs: A chore that I could feel good completing in 10 minutes instead stresses me out for days or weeks.

It can be hard to understand why this behavior is so common. The topic is tempting fodder for self-styled gurus wielding empty motivational platitudes, but the underlying cause is complex—an odd cocktail of emotional and psychological dynamics, all conspiring to let my bedding remain dirty for another week.

According to the DePaul University psychology professor Joseph Ferrari, there are two distinct types of people who have a problem completing household chores in a timely manner: task-delayers and chronic procrastinators. The scientific distinction between the two is hazy, but it comes down to pervasiveness. You might feel overwhelmed by your aversion to housework, but on its own, it’s not enough to be indicative of a chronic problem. All people procrastinate sometimes, Ferrari says, but for chronic procrastinators, it happens in all areas of life and has a negative impact on a person’s health and relationships. It’s a “lifestyle of avoidance,” he says.

Ferrari’s research finds that description applies to about 20 percent of people. Simple task-delayers are more common, but they usually have a much easier time building better habits than their chronic counterparts, which is good news for people whose primary problem is chore procrastination. We’re not that bad!

Part of the reason task-delayers are lulled into their bad habits in the first place might be the time of the day or week at which chores often occur. “Doing those tasks takes some self-control, and if you’ve made a lot of choices already that day, it’s harder to exert self-control,” says Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist and Florida State University professor. Baumeister is referring to a somewhat contested theory called “decision fatigue,” which holds that people’s brains get worn out by the necessity of being decisive and exercising restraint, usually at work. If you could sit at your desk and play Candy Crush all day like you might want to, washing some plates when you get home might not seem as onerous.

As any good chore procrastinator knows, the drama doesn’t simply end with deciding to do something later. For Gloria Fraser, a caretaker from Massachusetts, that’s just where it begins. She’s always considered herself a prompt, efficient person in her professional life, but the emotional baggage of housework makes personal chores more difficult. “There’s the negative tape going on in my head that I should have done something, and why did I wait until it got this bad,” she says. “So that’s piling up, and instead of doing it, I’m thinking about all the times I should have been. So I end up kind of catatonic over not doing stuff instead of doing that stuff.”

Guilt and shame can be big parts of procrastination if the procrastinator begins to internalize the desire to avoid dirty dishes as indicative of a larger moral failings. “We bring other things to this besides the task itself, and we tell ourselves stories about who we could be if we just buckled down and did that thing,” says Liz Sumner, a life coach who helps older women break bad habits and be more productive. Sumner recommends breaking tasks into small, manageable steps, but those efforts still can be thwarted when people worry they aren’t changing or progressing quickly enough.

“A big problem people have is they attack themselves and not their behaviors,” Ferrari says. If task-delayers can depersonalize their aversion to, say, vacuuming or litter box-changing, he believes, they stand a better chance at being able to evaluate it rationally, avoiding the shame cycle that can calcify negative behaviors into bad habits.

If a problem can be understood, maybe it can be fixed. Betsy Burroughs, a Silicon Valley branding executive turned neuroscience researcher, used to have a hard time keeping her home tidy. “It was just a disaster all the time,” she says. “But then I noticed that if I was having people over, not only would I clean the place up, but I’d actually enjoy cleaning it.” Her solution was to start a monthly conversation salon at her San Francisco loft, which ran for more than 12 years. Starting your own event series might be a little extreme for most people, but the idea of recognizing what you dislike and recontextualizing it as an element of something positive can be applied to most housework.

Being conscious of your habits does seem to have an impact on procrastination, but in ways more complicated than I first assumed. In 2011, the Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck published findings that suggest decision fatigue more negatively affects people who already expect their willpower to be low. People who expect themselves to fail toward the end of the day, in other words, often do. Maybe task-delayers could all be better around the house if we simply stopped granting the premise that “bad” is the default with which we are stricken. Procrastination researchers, it should be mentioned, all seem to answer their emails in a timely manner.

Still, a certain level of delay might just be an inescapable part of the human brain, especially when the task is tricky. When I asked Ferrari what the inflection point is between being a task-delayer and a chronic procrastinator, he told me that was a complicated question. “Every two years, researchers on procrastination have an international meeting. We’ve been doing it for 20 years,” he says. “After each of these meetings, we walk away saying that we’ve got to get people to understand the difference between delaying and procrastination.” They haven’t arrived at an answer yet. Maybe the time for it, like the time for my recycling, will come soon.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/12/ill-do-it-later/578173/?utm_source=feed

[sunshineweb]

The Most Important Question We Never Ask

A few years ago, the key executives of Disney summoned a study of their theme parks to figure out what kids found most absorbing.

Were they more enticed by Mickey and Minnie Mouse, or were they more in awe of Cinderella’s castle? Were they attracted more by the sweet-smelling snacks or colourful toys that were sold at the parks?

The study revealed that it wasn’t the Disney magic that captured the young children’s attention the most. Instead, it was their parents’ cell phones, especially when the parents were using them. And because the parents were always staring at their phones, the kids wanted to as well – even when they were surrounded by giant mice, spinning teacups, and the magic of pumpkin turning into a carriage.

Today, more of us are hooked to our devices, which in turn keep us hooked to work…and away from the more important things in life. An average American spends over two hours on his or her smartphone every day.

An average Indian smartphone user spends almost three hours every day on his or her device. We check them first thing in the morning, and often the last thing at night.

Now, what are the consequences of such an addiction towards cell phones?

There’s erosion in our ability to communicate in face-to-face dialogue and reduction in family conversation. Gone are the days of sitting together at a table and asking the simple question of ‘how are you?’ and ‘how was your day?’

Increasingly, more people are dying in road accidents caused by the focus on their cell phones instead of on the road and traffic. Then there are the grave consequences seen in our brain, eyes, and hands from the overuse of cell phones.

Talking about consequences, more people die taking selfies than by sharks. In 2014, for instance, 15 people died while taking a selfie worldwide; in 2015 this rose to 39, and in 2016 there were 73 deaths in the first eight months of the year (most of them in India). Sharks, on the other hand, kill 6 people annually on an average.

Ah, Consequences! He or she was surely a wise man or a woman who said, “You are free to make whatever choice you want but you are not free from the consequences of the choice.”

Sadly, consequences are what we fail to put our attention to as we make decisions under uncertainties. It’s not that we are not aware of the consequences; it’s just that we fail to give them much importance because, like death, we keep believing that bad things won’t happen to us.

Of course, there is no point living a life or taking decisions only worrying about the future, it’s important to understand the consequences and how you would deal with them when you are starting out or indulging in something…like smoking, drinking, overusing cell phones, speculating in the stock market, or quitting your job to become a full-time investor.

The Most Important Question We Never Ask The key thing in economics, whenever someone makes an assertion to you, is to always ask, “And then what?” Actually, it’s not such a bad idea to ask it about everything. But you should always ask, “And then what?” ~ Warren Buffett

I was recently reading an old interview of Peter Bernstein, author of the critically acclaimed history of financial risk, Against the Gods. Here is a key segment from the interview (emphasis is mine) where Bernstein was asked his most important lessons about risk from his book –

Two things. First, in 1703 the mathematician Gottfried von Leibniz told the scientist Jacob Bernoulli that nature does work in patterns, but “only for the most part.” The other part—the unpredictable part—tends to be where things matter the most. That’s where the action often is.

Second, Pascal’s Wager. In making decisions under conditions of uncertainty, the consequences of being wrong must carry more weight than the probabilities of being right. You begin with something that’s obvious. But because it’s hard to accept, you have to keep reminding yourself: We don’t know what’s going to happen with anything, ever. And so it’s inevitable that a certain percentage of our decisions will be wrong. There’s just no way we can always make the right decision.

That doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. But it does mean you must focus on how serious the consequences could be if you turn out to be wrong: Suppose this doesn’t do what I expect it to do. What’s going to be the impact on me? If it goes wrong, how wrong could it go and how much will it matter?

Pascal’s Wager doesn’t mean that you have to be convinced beyond doubt that you are right. But you have to think about the consequences of what you’re doing and establish that you can survive them if you’re wrong. Consequences are more important than probabilities.

…Risk-taking is an inevitable ingredient in investing, and in life, but never take a risk you do not have to take.

Nassim Taleb writes in The Black Swan –

The probabilities of very rare events are not computable; the effect of an event on us is considerably easier to ascertain (the rarer the event, the fuzzier the odds). We can have a clear idea of the consequences of an event, even if we do not know how likely it is to occur.

…This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can’t know) is the central idea of uncertainty. Much of my life is based on it.

Warren Buffett has written a lot about consequences in his letters, because he seemingly has the “And then what?” question on top of his mind while making decisions –

1959 – Most of you know I have been very apprehensive about general stock market levels for several years. To date, this caution has been unnecessary. By previous standards, the present level of “blue chip” security prices contains a substantial speculative component with a corresponding risk of loss. Perhaps other standards of valuation are evolving which will permanently replace the old standard. I don’t think so. I may very well be wrong; however, I would rather sustain the penalties resulting from over-conservatism than face the consequences of error, perhaps with permanent capital loss, resulting from the adoption of a “New Era” philosophy where trees really do grow to the sky.

1968 – I make no effort to predict the course of general business or the stock market. Period. However, currently there are practices snowballing in the security markets and business world which, while devoid of short term predictive value, bother me as to possible long term consequences.

1997 – In this respect, as in others, we try to “reverse engineer” our future at Berkshire, bearing in mind Charlie’s dictum: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” (Inverting really works: Try singing country western songs backwards and you will quickly regain your house, your car and your wife.) If we can’t tolerate a possible consequence, remote though it may be, we steer clear of planting its seeds.

2005 – Every day, in countless ways, the competitive position of each of our businesses grows either weaker or stronger. If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs and improving our products and services, we gain strength. But if we treat customers with indifference or tolerate bloat, our businesses will wither. On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous.

These insights from Bernstein, Taleb, and Buffett help me realize that – while not constantly worrying about the future – I should probably do more to balance my optimism about my investing, work, and life with occasional reminders that risk is real and things may not work out at all like I expect.

And Then What? When you are an investor in businesses, it’s important to always consider secondary and long-term effects of an action. This is akin to second-level thinking that Howard Marks writes about in his seminal book The Most Important Thing.

Asking “And then what?” to every data point or analysis that is thrown at you is of extreme importance. Especially when you are looking at a commodity business or one earning substandard returns, it’s important to question every capital investment or cost saving that the company is making…because the benefits would rarely flow to the business or its shareholders, but always to the consumer. For example, this is what Charlie Munger has to say about the textile business and the failure of business owners to ask the “And then what?” question –

…all of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers … the people who sell the machinery – and, by and large, even the internal bureaucrats urging you to buy the equipment – show you projections with the amount you’ll save at current prices with the new technology. However, they don’t do the second step of the analysis – which is to determine how much is going to stay home and how much is just going to flow through to the customer.

I’ve never seen a single projection incorporating that second step in my life. And I see them all the time. Rather, they always read: “This capital outlay will save you so much money that it will pay for itself in three years.” So you keep buying things that will pay for themselves in three years. And after 20 years of doing it, somehow you’ve earned a return of only about 4% per annum. That’s the textile business.

And it isn’t that the machines weren’t better. It’s just that the savings didn’t go to you. The cost reductions came through all right. But the benefit of the cost reductions didn’t go to the guy who bought the equipment.

Investors who overpay for stocks fail to ask the “And then what?” question. They forget that when they are overpaying for an investment, they automatically lose some of the implied return on that investment. If the investment loses money, they lose even more when they pay too much to own it.

Investors who buy sub-standard businesses fail to ask the “And then what?” question. For instance, when they are buying leveraged businesses, they fail to consider that most such businesses don’t have the staying power in the face of adversity.

Investors who partner managers with low integrity fail to ask the “And then what?” question too. They forget what Thomas Phelps wrote in his book 100 to 1 in the Stock Market – “Remember that a man who will steal for you, will steal from you.”

And not just investors, even managers fail to ask this question, especially when the times are good. I am sure the guys at Tata Steel didn’t ask “And then what?” when they were paying more than they could have afforded to buy Corus in 2007. Those at Suzlon seem to have never asked this question at all.

Fund manager Bill Ackman failed to ask this question when he was doubling down on his stake in the scam-tainted Valeant Pharmaceuticals. And as Warren Buffett has confessed at so many times, he failed to ask this question while throwing good money after bad money on the textile business of Berkshire in the 1960s.

Asking “And then what?” is all about looking past a news event or action and understanding what that event or action might mean for the bigger picture. Of course, not all events and actions will destroy your core assumptions, but looking at things wearing the “And then what?” glasses would keep you from making hurried investing decisions based on your emotions, which are often an investor’s worst enemy.

Whether you are looking to invest in a business, or invest in a new relationship or career, never forget to ask the “And then what?” question.

It’s a life saver, believe me!

The post The Most Important Question We Never Ask appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

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[solopreneurlifestyle]

The Hidden Truth Behind Multitasking and What You SHOULD Do

You may have heard that multitasking is not good for you …

Heck, you may even think you’re a great multitasker.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but research shows that multitasking is less productive than doing a single task at a time. Not only that, but multitasking kills performance and may even be detrimental to your brain health, and even lower your IQ to that of an eight-year-old. (temporarily)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a few IQ points to spare for the sake of multitasking.

Do you?

In fact, this single change from multitasking to focusing on a single task has allowed me to be more productive, have more free time, and live a happier and healthier life.

And that’s what we’re all after aren’t we?

So, what is multitasking?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of multitasking is the performance of multiple tasks at one time.

For example, you might be reading this while simultaneously checking your email, browsing Facebook, or have the TV on in the background showing Game of Thrones.

*busted*

The chances are that if you are simultaneously working, reading, and trying to do something like say… listening to a podcast or watching a show you’ve probably missed something and had to hit the rewind button a few times.

I know, because that was me. I’d be lying if I said that it still doesn’t happen now and then.

Do any one of these describe you?

When you’re working, you check email, hop on Facebook, talk to co-workers, or whatever?

When you’re watching TV, are you using your phone as well?

When you’re exercising do you check your phone?

When you’re on the toilet, are you catching up on some social media?

While all of those may seem harmless, you’re creating a bad habit and weakening the ability to focus your attention by “multitasking.”

There are almost undeniable research and studies that suggest multitasking is unproductive.

Researchers found that people who are engaged in multiple streams of information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

When we switch our focus from one task to another, the change can disrupt the flow of thoughts and force them in different directions.

Simply put, it takes our brains some time to come back to the original task, your attention ends up stuck thinking about whatever diverted your attention in the first place.

This idea is referred to as attention residue, originally coined by Sophie Leroy. She explains why switching between projects isn’t a smart idea:

“People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on that next task.”

MULTITASKING MAY SHRINK YOUR BRAIN

This study found that people who regularly multitask have lower brain density in the region of their brain responsible for empathy, emotional control, and cognitive control.

Correlation does not equate to causation; I get it.

But hey, now you have an excuse for your significant other

“Honey… all those outbursts weren’t my fault. It’s because of all those times I thought I was using my multitasking skills, but in reality, trying to multitask was just causing me to have less empathy and emotional control.”

Devora Zack, author of the book Singletasking: Get More Done – One Thing at a Time, says “The brain cannot be in two places at once, so what people are referencing as multitasking is actually what neuro scientists call task switching and that means rapidly moving back and forth between different tasks.”

MULTITASKING MAKES YOU LESS PRODUCTIVE

As a solopreneur (and any individual for that matter), time management is crucial.

There’s only one of you and thousands of tasks that need to be completed.

Think about it… every time you switch between tasks your brain must stop and restart. You’re likely taking a single project or task that could be finished in an hour and turning it into a 2+ hour ordeal.

According to researchers, multitasking makes you a whopping 40% less productive.

According to researchers, multitasking makes you a whopping 40% less productive. Click To Tweet

Yikes!

You just turned three days’ worth of work into five days.

How about chalking up another point for single-tasking?

Now, if you simply focused on one task at a time, you’d be completing almost DOUBLE what your coworkers or competitors are producing given the same amount of time.

Let me rephrase that. You could have twice as much free time to watch cute puppy videos on Facebook than your coworkers!

Just kidding. Kind of.

MULTITASKING LEADS TO MORE MISTAKES AND POORER QUALITY WORK

The biggest reason why we multitask is that we want to save time. But studies show exactly the opposite.

The reality is that multitasking increases the number of mistakes you make as shown in this study. The subjects, who were given three tasks to perform, made THREE times as many errors as those only given two tasks.

That’s a 300% increase in errors.

But Steven, I can eat my lunch, listen to a podcast, and check my Facebook. Boom!

Can you though? Try it and let me know just how much information you absorbed from your podcast. Really.

According to Koechlin, “the ease with which we juggle tasks depends on just how engaged the prefrontal cortex is. For instance, natural activities such as eating or walking place less demand on the prefrontal cortex compared with activities like reading or driving. Therefore, it’s easier to check a message on your phone as you eat than when you are behind the wheel.”

And to add that… it simply doesn’t get better with age.

Forget what that bright idea was that popped in your head? Or forgot to lock the door? Realized you left your phone when you got to the car?

Moreover, it’s been said that the greatest power of the human mind is its ability to focus on ONE THING for an extended period.

In the famous book Psycho-Cybernetics, Maltz asserted, “Peak performers virtually worship at the altar of ‘focus’ and ‘concentration,’ working tirelessly to achieve it, for very good reason: Concentration is a major key to minute-by-minute success in any endeavor.”

So, can you multitask? You may be beginning to change your stance on that one.

Only 2% of the population are “supertaskers,” according to a study from the University of Utah. Strayer believes that there is a tiny but persistent subset of the population—about two per cent—whose performance does not deteriorate, and can even improve when multiple demands are placed on their attention.

The rest of us are just disillusioned.

Or just maybe… you are one of the two percent.

Here’s a neat little test you can give a go.

MULTITASKING IS DANGEROUS FOR CREATIVITY AND HEALTH

Multitasking stresses you out which causes the brain to release Cortisol – the stress hormone. And we all know how bad stress is for a person’s health.

This study found that even after just 20 minutes of interruptions, people start to feel significantly more stress, frustration, and pressure.

Another example is people who always check their emails. *raises hand*

Studies show that individuals who always check their email lead to increased heart rate. Every time they check email their levels of cortisol rises.

I’d venture to say a lot of disease and illness, apart from dietary choices, is a result of stress.

Another often overlooked health hazard of multitasking is mindless eating.

How many of you often eat at your desk or eat while watching television?

One minute we’re opening a bag of chips and the next we’re wondering how we got to the bottom of the bag.

On the creative front…

According to a study carried out at the University of Illinois, Chicago,” Multitasking requires a lot of temporary brain storage which can be termed as working memory in layman’s terms. When working memory is used up during multitasking, it leaves us with lowered ability to think creatively.”

And this study out of George Mason University, in Virginia, shows that multitasking is especially bad for creativity, which, I would argue, is necessary as a solopreneur and entrepreneur.

Our goal is to create more than we consume.

Our goal is to create more than we consume.Click To Tweet

MULTITASKING JUST MAY KILL YOU

Literally.

According to this article, distracted walking causes pedestrians to fall off bridges, get hit by cars, and some have even stumbled onto subway tracks.

Guilty of this one too, the almost hit by car one at least. Though, I’m lucky enough to be here still.

And don’t get me started about multitasking while driving. You know you do it.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) leads the national effort to save lives by preventing distracted driving.

According to the NHTSA, in 2015 alone, 3,477 people were killed, and 391,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers.

In a study, researchers at Texas A&M University’s Texas Transportation Institute examined the impact of texting in an actual driving environment. They found that texting almost DOUBLED reaction time.

It didn’t even matter if drivers used voice-to-text. The only result of using voice-to-text was that the driver felt safer.

So, texting while driving is MORE dangerous than driving while stoned or drunk.

Alright, so now what?

You’ve acknowledged you don’t have the ability to multitask and you’ve decided that you want to start “single-tasking.”

Easier said than done.

Multitasking, much like anything we do on a constant basis, is a habit. 

A bad one at that.

And we all know how habits are hard to break, but we’ll leave that to a future discussion.

We almost always non-consciously try to do more than one task at a time.

For now, we want to train our attention muscle and make it AS EASY AS POSSIBLE to start single-tasking.

HOW TO SINGLE TASK

BUILD FENCES

Any interruption will kill your productivity. So, what you want to do is firewall your attention.

Any interruption will kill your productivity. So, what you want to do is firewall your attention.Click To Tweet

Try to expect those distractions and stop them before they occur. This means closing out all your open browser tabs, turning off all notifications, disabling pop-ups, even turning the phone screen upside down or putting it somewhere inconvenient.

Heck, I’ll even take my watch off since it’s connected to my phone via Bluetooth and will buzz with notifications.

BATCH TASKS

Widely popularized by Tim Ferris in his bestselling book The 4 Hour Work Week, (one of my top 10 recommened books) batching tasks such as email will free you up to more focus and productivity.

With constant email bombardment, it’s common to find that we’ve been super busy, but haven’t done much about creating anything substantial.

As a creator, you must learn to be intentional with your time instead of putting out fires and reacting to every email as they come in.

Personally, I’ll check my email three times a day (or at least make a valiant effort to only do so) Usually this will be around 10 am, 2 pm, and 6 pm.

WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS

ALL OF THEM.

We all have distracting thoughts that enter our brains when we’re trying to focus on the task at hand.

We’re not trying to avoid these ideas, but merely setting them aside temporarily.

Your mind is for creating ideas, not storing them.Click To Tweet

Once you have written everything down, your mind becomes decluttered and free from distractions.

Since you know that your thoughts are safely stored somewhere, it removes the constant feeling of “What’s that thing I needed to remember…”

For a more comprehensive system, be sure to give Getting Things Done by David Allen a read.

Seriously, just read it.

FOCUS ON DOING ONE THING AND STAY FOCUSED ON THAT ONE THING.

AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.

Sounds like a simple strategy, but sometimes simple is best.

K.I.S.S.

Experts recommend that you focus entirely on one task before moving on to the next one.

Experts recommend that you focus entirely on one task before moving on to the next one.Click To Tweet

In fact, a gentleman by the name of Ivy Lee, a highly respected productivity consultant in the early 1900s, developed his method for achieving peak productivity which went as follows.

At the end of each work day, write down the six most important things you need to carry out tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.

Prioritize those six items in order of their actual importance.

When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first mission. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.

Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion. At the end of the day, move any unfinished items to a new list of six tasks for the following day.

Repeat this process every working day.

I might even venture to recommend you start with only three or four.

Once carrying out four tasks has become a breeze, only then may you want to decide on increasing that number to five or six… AT MOST.

The list strategy might sound simple, but if it helps you stay focused, produce better quality work, AND finish your tasks quicker…

Don’t you think it might be worth the try?

You don’t have to pay the costs your brain incurs when switching from one task to the next.

The result? More productivity and less stress.

I believe in this strategy so much I’ve come up with a free bonus cheat sheet to get you started and what I use personally.

Though, if you’re interested, John Lee Dumas from EOFire has come out with a fantastic resource I’d vouch for in a heartbeat.

The Mastery Journal

Utilize this simple strategy and framework that top level executives and ultra productive individuals are using. Increase productivity, prevent overwhelm and accomplish your goals utilizing this tried and true method. Click Below.

CONCLUSION

If you want to be more productive, and who doesn’t, then stop multitasking.

It slows down your productivity, decreases the quality of your work, stresses you out, damages your brain, temporarily lowers your IQ to that of an eight-year-old child, and in some cases, it just may kill you.

We’re so used to being distracted and trying to juggle multiple tasks at once that it’s HARDER to work and focus on a single task.

Therefore, we must strengthen our attention muscle by taking the simplest of tasks and placing 100% focus on them.

Just think about that the next time you’re on the toilet and want to bring your smartphone with you…

or you’re standing in line and need to check Facebook to feed your attention.

Sometimes boredom can be a good thing.

Sometimes boredom can be a good thing.Click To Tweet

Simply put, boredom is your brain without the luxury of distraction.

Think about it: most of the things we do are to remove the burden of boredom from the moment by way of distraction.

We scroll mindlessly through social, looking for something to give us a little hit of dopamine.

Or we check our email, which as you’ve read, can cause stress in chronic checkers.

That silence… that BOREDOM you feel between your thoughts and the outside world is the first step in setting your brain free to be creative.

Next time you’re out at a restaurant and your significant other heads to the bathroom don’t pull out your smart phone.

Next time you go for a run or a walk just soak up the atmosphere and leave the headphones.

And next time you think you can multitask with those multitasking skills of yours, think twice.

Or five times.

And imagine, by switching from multitasking to single-tasking you might even increase your productivity by 40%.

SCORE.

Now I’d love to hear from you. Reflecting on your habits, what are some ways you “multitask,” but in reality, are just trying to handle more than you can chew.

Or

If you are a single-tasker, what are some ways you could harness this ability?

The post The Hidden Truth Behind Multitasking and What You SHOULD Do appeared first on Solopreneur Lifestyle.

from Solopreneur Lifestyle https://solopreneurlifestyle.co/multitasking/

[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: Future Education - A Father's Perspective

Education is an increasingly complicated business, and you are all experts, which left me wondering how I should approach this speech to you today;

Should I come to you as Paul Rennie, DHM Malaysia, and regional head of the British Government’s ASEAN Education campaign, spouting numbers and stats about futures and impacts;

Or should I draw from my experience as a governor of a leading international school in Kuala Lumpur, and explain how the market is shifting around us, and the challenges that governors face to read the tea leaves;

But in the end I decided it would probably be far more useful to talk to you about none of that, and instead talk to you straightforwardly as the father of a six-year old daughter. Because, as someone who hopes to be a customer of your services for the next decade and a bit, I can tell you that I am utterly terrified about the future;

Now this is not some dystopian monologue about global warming, deforestation, or the extinction of species – though all of them are things my daughter has already lobbied me on. Instead it is a recognition of the competing demands that education is going to place on my daughter, and on me, and ultimately on you;

I will start with my first favourite statistic - that 90% of the jobs that my daughter is likely to apply for by 2032 don’t exist yet. Think back to the six-year olds of 2003. How many of their parents planned for them to be social media strategists, app designers, iphone engineers – how many of them thought they would get a nice stable job at Nokia;

And those trends of globalisation are not limited to jobs that don’t exist yet;

I look down the road, and see that globalisation is going to be pushing work up, as well as down. Mega companies will become even more mega, but at the same time harder to get into. While the market for the self-employed entrepreneur, these job makers not job takers, is going to explode;

Work will become more cross cultural and more international, which means a boy like me, who grew up, went to school, and went to university within five miles of the hospital he was born in, getting a job with an international company, let alone the Foreign Ministry will seem like an absurdity. (Joke though I know Scotland remains on the brink of being a foreign country to the UK);

The ability to scale at speed will continue. It took Ford Motor Company a little over a century to sell 350 million cars; Apple sold 1 billion iPhones in nine years. That, frankly, isn’t a world I grew up in;

What I would call ‘Combinativity’, the ability to merge different ideas and product together, is likely to become more important than pure creativity, and that will require a broad understanding of the world – but if you don’t specialise, how will you ever get ahead?

Yet what I don’t believe will change is people. In fact those people skills are likely to become more important as automation becomes more prevalent. But would we give up on learning French because we perfected the Babel Fish (as only Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy fans would understand);

So where does all of that leave my daughter – where does that leave schools? Because one of the biggest challenges in the sector is risk aversion, which is something that I absolutely share as a parent – and you probably need to help me not to;

My father, for example, went on a journey that involved going to school five days a week; sitting a series of individual exams; going to university and then applying to a company for a job;

I went on a journey that involved going to school; sitting individual exams with a bit of individual course work; going to university (to sit more individual exams) and then applying to a company;

My daughter is going to school right now, and at the end of the pathway I still see A-Levels, or IBs, and then University. Because grades matter, and that is what I demand, and what schools live and die by, but is that enough?

Well it’s not enough for me as a parent, which is why I begin to make extortionate demands of you. I want, obviously, straight As, but I also want you to have a drama studio that could host a west-end musical; sports facilities that could hold the 2020 Olympics; and a design and technology centre that could put a probe on the moon.

It is a virtual arms race at international schools, to the point where even Universities are struggling to keep their tech current with what the kids are used to. And it’s all because I want you to keep doing the traditional stuff, but also help her to find her niche;

And that is a challenge for me as a parent, in letting go and trusting schools. One headmaster told me that 90% of everything we know about the human brain we have learned in the last ten years. That’s staggering, but it also post-dates everything about my school experience that I rely on to help my daughter;

Most of you will be familiar with the phonics system of learning to read. I wasn’t. I learned to read via a series of little slips of paper with words written on them, kept in an old tobacco time (spelling smelled like Virginia Gold Leaf until I was ten). It was a huge leap of faith to go with phonics – but it is incredible;

And then there are topics now that I don’t even understand, like coding. I always knew the day would come when I lost track of what my daughter was studying, I have never been much of a scientist so if it came to GSCE Chemistry she was on her own. But to have you six year old daughter teaching you how to use coding programme Light Bot on the iPad, well, I thought I would have more time. (In fact, I got cocky after that and tried to do some of the Year 5 coding activities on the EducationCity website – I got 27%);

She needs those skills, she needs these new ways of learning, but how do schools help to take me as a parent on that journey?

If someone had said to my parents when I was at school they were going to put me up for an exam in game design, they would have wondered what I was going to do with a degree in PacMan, and yet today the games industry is worth more than Hollywood;

There is also the challenge of the cultural shift, which I get glimmers of being here in an international environment, but those in the UK probably don’t see as clearly.

There is little doubt in my mind that the century belongs to Asia, if nothing else they have demographics on their side. There are 140m people under the age of 14 in ASEAN alone, and another 100m yet to be born by 2030. They will be going for those global jobs at the mega corporations too;

Even at six, frankly even in pre-school, it was a startling revelation to see what people have termed ‘tiger parenting’ in action. I’d heard of it, but when you see it in practise, it is both terrifying, but also incredible to see what some children can achieve with that level of investment;

And while it is absolutely not what I want for my child, I realise that as long as the main determinant of University entrance are is still the grades, then that is what my daughter is up against. I find that I have become a bit more like that myself, though probably better described as dwarf leopard than Tiger – but is that right? Should schools be taking a view?

Because when you look to places like Malaysia, you can see the churn in the education sector in all its glory. You have long established schools, and new entrants. For profit, not for profit, and even a few in between. And that innovation in the market means schools have to keep up;

Like in the UK, where around 150,000 children will sit GCSE French, compared to about 4,000 doing Mandarin or Cantonese. Is that imbalance because schools there have carefully thought about the future needs of a British work force when set against growing export markets; or is because we have lots of French teachers, and it’s what their parents learned?

But while it may be easier for new entrant schools to ditch ‘traditions’ there is also the danger of getting caught by fad-ism. Just as someone once described a leader with no followers as simply a person taking a walk, so if you are pioneers in every new field it might turn out to be no field at all – just ask all the people who have big collections of laser discs;

And obviously as a parent I want you to do both. I want a massive French department, as well as a fully staffed Chinese department, and what about Spanish while we’re at it. Because I want you to give her all the skills to be at the cutting edge when she graduates, but I don’t want you to bet her future on it in case she gets it wrong;

It is impossible, and I know every time as a Governor when teaching colleagues come with the next big idea, that schools will have to do all of the above without putting a single penny on tuition fees;

But I also have more fundamental worries as a parent about my daughter’s education, particularly in the international sphere;

Mulitculturalism is amazing, but does becoming a global citizen risk becoming a citizen of nowhere? I didn’t leave Edinburgh until I was twenty one. My daughter is half British, half Dutch, was born in India, and now lives in Malaysia. I have a very clear idea of where I am from, does she, will she, or is that an absurd thing to wonder about? One thing is for sure, I can’t draw on personal experience to help, so do I rely on the teachers who will be steering her in four year chunks as I move around the world – is that your role?

And I worry about the digital and online world, because I know I will always lag in my understanding of it, like my parents did, as teachers probably do. As a tech thinker once told me, if you describe a technology as disruptive, it shows you are already too old to understand it – people who disrupt aren’t disrupting, they are just living. And because nothing ever dies online, can she have fun at school, and yet still start as an adult with a clean slate, as I did?

Which merges into the digital world blurring the lines between home and school, particularly in the future. As her personal life and school life merge into a single iPad, will she ever be able to switch off? And in that space, does it mean she can now take her bullying home with her, and nobody will ever know? Maybe by the time she is fourteen there will be teachers around her who have personal experience of being trolled by cyber bullies and can help, but I suspect few of your teachers could claim that – but does it matter? Is that what your Year 12s and 13s are there for, to bridge the gap?

And, obviously, I worry about the cost of all of this, in a world of shrinking budgets and resources, will I be able to keep her in the schools that are offering her all these opportunities, or will you end up pricing me out of the market, as you keep up with my demands?

There is a lot ahead of you, the margins of success become ever smaller at A-Grade; there is more competition than ever; the reputational risks are only growing; and to meet all the demands I’ve listed you’re going to need a body of staff that is both multi-talented and specialised – who is going to train them for you, and what will they cost? Sadly, we will not all be investors in Snap to pay for it all.

But in spite of these worries, the final thought I would leave you with is my huge pride, and belief, in the British education model I see in international schools today (and I would say that even if my government weren’t paying me to). I think it does have tradition as well as modernity; I think it puts a lot of trust in its teachers, rather than wrote structures; and I think it gives children a wide exposure, but still creates a sense of belonging.

I wish you every success in the conference, and look forward to fruitful discussions. You have great challenges, and even greater responsibilities, and parents like me will need your help more than ever in the future.

from Announcements on GOV.UK http://ift.tt/2rxjejt via IFTTT

[ourhealthyfoodblog-blog]

New Post has been published on Healthy Food and Remedies

New Post has been published on http://healthyfoodandremedies.com/2017/02/01/science-happiness-complaining-literally-killing/

THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS: WHY COMPLAINING IS LITERALLY KILLING YOU

Sometimes in life, all the experience and knowledge simmering around in that ol’ consciousness of ours combines itself in a way that suddenly causes the cerebral clockwork to click into place, and in this fluid flow of thought we find an epiphany rising to the surface.

One such point for me came in my junior year at University. It changed the way I viewed the world forever as it catapulted me out of the last of my angsty, melancholic youth and onto a path of ever-increasing bliss.

At the time of this personal discovery, I was pursuing a double-major in Computer Science and Psychology. Aside from these declared interest, I also had an affinity for (Eastern) Philosophy and Neuroscience. This led to semester course load comprising of two 300-level psychology courses, one 300-level philosophy course, and a graduate-level artificial intelligence course for both biology and computer science majors. This amalgamation of studies quickly tore my brain into a dozen directions, and when I put the pieces back together, I found myself resolute with rational reasons for optimism and for removing from my life the people who liked to complain.

“SYNAPSES THAT FIRE TOGETHER WIRE TOGETHER.”

This was the first phrase my AI professor told the classroom, and to this day it is still one of the most profound bits of logic I hold onto in order to dictate the decisions of my life. The principle is simple: Throughout your brain there is a collection of synapses separated by empty space called the synaptic cleft. Whenever you have a thought, one synapse shoots a chemical across the cleft to another synapse, thus building a bridge over which an electric signal can cross, carrying along its charge the relevant information you’re thinking about. It’s very similar to how nerves carry electric from the sensation in your toe all the way up to your brain where it’s actually “felt”.

Here’s the kicker: Every time this electrical charge is triggered, the synapses grow closer together in order to decrease the distance the electrical charge has to cross. This is a microcosmic example of evolution, of adaptation. The brain is rewiring its own circuitry, physically changing itself, to make it easier and more likely that the proper synapses will share the chemical link and thus spark together–in essence, making it easier for the thought to trigger. Therefore, your first mystical scientific evidence: your thoughts reshape your brain, and thus are changing a physical construct of reality. Let that sink in for a moment before you continue, because that’s a seriously profound logic-bomb right there.

SHORTEST PATH WINS THE RACE.

Beyond the absolutely incredible fact that your brain is always doing this, consistently shifting and morphing with every thought, even more exciting is the fact that the synapses you’ve most strongly bonded together (by thinking about more frequently) come to represent your default personality: your intelligence, skills, aptitudes, and most easily accessible thoughts(which are more-or-less the source of your conversation skills).

Let’s dig deeper into the logic behind that. Consider you have two pairs of people throwing a ball back and forth. One pair stands ten feet apart, the other at a distance of 100 feet. One partner from each team throws their ball to their respective partners at the exact same moment with the exact same speed. The first team that catches the ball gets to dictate your personal decision and mental state of mind.

So which team will get the ball first? Basic physics of distance, time, velocity tell us that it will always be the pair standing 10 feet apart. Well this is basically how your thoughts work. Through repetition of thought, you’ve brought the pair of synapses that represent your proclivities closer and closer together, and when the moment arises for you to form a thought ( and thus throw our metaphorical ball of electric energy), the thought that wins is the one that has less distance to travel, the one that will create a bridge between synapses fastest.

MIRROR-NEURONS

So if your mind hadn’t already exploded when you learned you could alter reality with your thoughts, you may want to get ready for it.  Because guess what? It’s not just your thoughts that can alter your brain and shift those synapses; the thoughts of those around you can do it as well.

If there’s any ability that truly separates us from our primate ancestors, it’s that of imagination. It’s the root of all art and architecture, of the (fictional) stories that formed religions that now control the lives of billions—even to the point of war over which fairytale is the “right one.”

That human failing aside, imagination lets us live in the past and in the future, and by escaping the present moment we can use our memories of the past to predict what will happen in the future; ie: I know from past experience that fire burns skin, so I know inside my minds-eye that if I stick my hand into a fire I will lose my flesh. This is so instinctual we don’t even recognize it’s constantly happening with every symbol that we’re perceiving in our day-to-day moments. But it is this ability that allows us to navigate the complexity of our society. Even more exciting is the fact that this skill also works with emotions, not just situations.

The premise, again, is quite simple: When we see someone experiencing an emotion ( be it anger, sadness, happiness, etc), our brain “tries out” that same emotion to imagine what the other person is going through. And it does this by attempting to fire the same synapses in your own brain so that you can attempt to relate to the emotion you’re observing. This is basically empathy. It is how we get the mob mentality, where a calm person can suddenly find themselves picking up a pitchfork against a common enemy once they’re influenced by dozens of angry minds. It is our shared bliss at music festivals, or our solidarity in sadness during tragedies.

But it is also your night out with your friends who love to constantly complain, whether it’s about their job, the government, or about their other so-called friend’s short-comings, or whatever little thing they can pick apart in order to lift themselves up and give themselves some holier-than-thou sense of validation when you nod your head in acquiescence, agreeing like a robot afraid of free-thought.

As you continually surround yourself with this attitude, you are continually trying out this attitude by firing the synapses in your brain. And as I explained above, every time you fire these synapses, you’re reshaping your brain.This is why it is so important to spend time with people who lift you up, because your friends are moving those fearful, cynical, pessimistic synapses closer together, making your default, short-path-personality as jaded and bitter as your peers.Want to be happy? Surround yourself with happy people who rewire your brain towards love, not towards fear of being invalidated.  I’m NOT saying don’t be there for friends who are having a hard time and need an ear or who need to work through a difficult situation. Nor am I saying you can’t be critical about the failings and injustices in the world. Positive change usually requires critical thought.

STRESS WILL KILL YOU.

You see, the thing about all this negativity, of regretting, of attachment to desires, of pointless complaining about impermanent things that will always continue to pass in an existence where time moves forward—the thing is: it all causes stress. When your brain is firing off these synapses of anger, you’re weakening your immune system; you’re raising your blood pressure, increasing your risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and a plethora of other negative ailments–as PsychologyToday points out below.

The stress hormone, cortisol, is public health enemy number one. Scientists have known for years that elevated cortisol levels: interfere with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease… The list goes on and on.Chronic stress and elevated cortisol levels also increase risk for depression, mental illness, and lower life expectancy. Recently, two separate studies were published in Science linking elevated cortisol levels as a potential trigger for mental illness and decreased resilience—especially in adolescence. Cortisol is released in response to fear or stress by the adrenal glands as part of the fight-or-flight mechanism.

-PsychologyToday

And if you need more evidence for the damaging effects of stress, there are innumerable more studies that show the negative impacts of pessimism, bitterness, and regret on your health. Here’s one from the Mayo Clinic and another from APA.

Regardless of what the universe brings your way, your choice is simple: Love or Fear. And yes, I understand it’s hard to find happiness on those nights when you feel like you’re all alone in the world, when a loved one passes, when you fail that test or get fired from that job; But when these moments come, you do not have to live in regret of them, you don’t have to give them constant negative attention and allow them to reshape your brain to the point that you become a bitter, jaded, cynical old curmudgeon that no longer notices that the very fact that they’re alive means they get to play blissfully in this cosmic playground where you get the godlike power of choice.

What you can do is say; “Yes, this sucks. But what’s the lesson? What can I take away from this to make me a better person? How can I take strength from this and use it to bring me closer to happiness in my next moment?” You see, a failed relationship or a bad day doesn’t have to be a pinion to your wings, it can be an updraft that showcases to you what things you like and don’t like, it can show you the red flags so that you can avoid them. If there was a personality your ex-partner had that drove you insane, then you now have the gift of knowing you don’t want to waste your time with another partner who acts the same way.

If you are mindful to the lessons of the failures, there is no reason that you can’t make the default of every day better than the one before it. Do something new everyday, learn its lesson, choose love over fear, and make every day better than the last. The more you do this, the more you will see and appreciate the beauty of this existence, and the happier you’ll be.

This article has been republished from Curious Apes

About the Author

Born and raised in Cincinnati, OH, Steven Parton moved to Portland, OR after getting a degree in Computer Science. As well as programming software, apps, and websites, he is an avid writer of novels and short stories, which can be found through Curious Apes Publishing. Like most Portlanders, he also rides a bike and loves IPAs. His latest book can be found at Amazon