Procrastination

1 min read

Finding Motivation on Important But Non-Urgent Tasks : zen habits

we know there’s something we should be doing that’s really important for our careers, personal lives, businesses … but there are other less important we do instead. We check our email, respond to messages, read news, find interesting things to read online.

Our problem isn’t that these important tasks are that hard … it’s that we don’t feel motivated. So we procrastinate.

I suppose writing this post is a form of procrastination for me - there are more time-sensitive things I could be doing!

I struggle with juggling multiple priorities, figuring out what I need to do right now, and finding blocks of time when I can immerse myself in one task. I don't expect to solve the problem for myself, but work towards managing it in a way that I don't feel like I'm letting things slide.

The linked post talks about some ways to address this tendency.

The end of work?

1 min read

Viewpoint: Why do people waste so much time at the office? - BBC News

Almost all of our institutions have been built around the mythology of work. Our very sense of self-worth is based upon it. It is almost taboo to even question work.

Taboo subjects are those that need to be questioned the most. As my brother likes to point out, we will find a different way to redistribute wealth - it is pretty clear that jobs and work are not an efficient way to do it.

The problem with generational stereotypes

1 min read

Whole Foods’ Misguided Play for Millennials - HBR

This is the problem with traditional segmentation approaches.  By relying on demographics to define a consumer base, executives are implicitly, or explicitly, saying that all people of a certain demographic (in this case the same age cohort) are the same and that they are also distinctly different from everyone in other demographics. As most people will tell you from their own experience, this thinking is fundamentally flawed. This flawed approach applies not just to Whole Foods but to any business.

The idea that there are monlithic cohorts, based on age, moving through the generational cycle has always troubled me. It's not that there aren't some characteristics that are more common within the different age cohorts, but that we paint with such a broad brush. We lose sight of the fact that these cohorts are creations of our own imagination and arbitrary ticks on a birth timeline.