"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once."
-- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

This article on self-handicapping (via Brad) puts a spotlight on something that's been on the periphery of my awareness for a long time. I think a surprising amount of weird human behavior becomes explicable once you start ( Read more... )

Speaking of John Perry, he has a really really really insightful essay on perfectionism as the psychological motive behind chronic procrastination. It's short and is so good you should just read it, but if I had to pick out the nut it's this: "Procrastinating was a way of giving myself permission to do a less than perfect job on a task that didn't ( Read more... )

Spoken as I handed in my final exam to my organic chem prof last night ( Read more... )

John Hawks just got tenure (congrats, John!) and is now writing a series of posts on blogging for academics. The first installment has pushed me further along in considering something that colinmarshall got me started on about a month ago -- pseudonymity ( Read more... )

After several years of arguing, I'm still not too great at avoiding exchanges that lead to frustration -- which is an annoying admission, since I actually know exactly how to do so. For the edification of all, I can condense my accumulated wisdom on this subject into four rules, the thoughtless violation of any of which usually ends badly:

1. ( Read more... )

Passive-aggressive behavior is a symptom of difficulty making decisions quickly and efficiently -- it's an inappropriate and generally harmful kind of dithering. Go one way or another and be ready to change course if need be, but whatever you do don't wobble. (Or, as I think Watts suggested -- if you must wobble, wobble mindfully and wholeheartedly ( Read more... )

"The sense of time should be impaired. . . . Information recalled from memory (retrospective function) should be temporally disorganized -- that is, the very syntax of recall should be deficient. . . . Consequently, the syntax of motor planning and execution should likewise be disorganized. . . . knowledge [of social or adaptive skills] should not ( Read more... )

Two bad habits I engage in when I'm by myself: I eat too fast, and I talk audibly to myself in a stream-of-consciousness manner that would probably get me regarded as insane if I did it out on the street. Both are bad because they're signs of a lack of adequate regulation, one in terms of what I'm putting into me and the other terms of what's ( Read more... )