Pandora, Anyone?

If you are on Pandora, add me (brittfrey@gmail.com) or let me know your email address so I can add you.

On a side note, how am I supposed to customize my damned station if it won't play songs I dislike!? I think it's psychic.

Starting My Think Tank

I have always believed that my dream job would be to work in a think tank. As a corollary, if I were rich, I would want to bankroll a think tank, recruit some of the brilliant people I know with diverse talents, and be the project manager, doing what I believe I do best: fix things. While I was driving up to Tulsa yesterday (I do my best thinking on long drives, for many reasons), I started wondering why I needed to wait until I had money to start working on the think tank. Sure, I wouldn't be able to pay anyone salaries, including myself; I wouldn't be able to actually implement most or any of the proposed solutions; I wouldn't have resources for face-to-face meetings or any helpful tools. Maybe no one would pay any attention to what we develop, but is it possible to start working towards solutions now, without money? It seemed to me that it is possible and I should start now, while I have some free time.

To that end, I've started coming up with a list of what I need to do to get things rolling. The first couple of steps are to get a discussion forum running and to try to recruit some people to help in the whole thinking business. Then I/we will need to start developing standard procedures for selecting problems to be discussed and how to address a problem once it has been selected. After that, it will just be a matter of discussion, research, thinking, more discussion, arguing, more thinking and research, more discussion, and hopefully coming to some sort of consensus. Maybe nothing will come of it, but it shouldn't hurt to try, and maybe it will do some good.

So now I'm off to send an email or two about getting a discussion board up, then start drafting some invitation emails for people I think might be interested.

My Opposition to New Year's Resolutions

We find ourselves at the time of Earth's rotation about the Sun where most people come up with things they'd like to change during the next rotation; the vast majority of these changes are subsequently abandoned, probably before Luna completes one rotation about Earth. Several years ago, I began to feel uncomfortable about New Year's resolutions. At that time, the cause was very likely something as base as a disappointment with my past performances and a dislike of the expectations placed on me. Within the past couple of years, though, I've developed a more nuanced dislike for the concept. Although I'm sure it was only so that I could rationally justify my dislike, I feel that I have a few reasonable points against the tradition.

To be clear, I am not complaining about individual or specific resolutions, rather the tradition of using January 1st as a motivator for resolutions. I will admit that actively contemplating what might be wrong in our lives is a useful exercise. I will also admit that some people actually succeed with their New Year's resolutions; however, I believe these people would have succeeded with their resolutions if they had started at any other time of the year.

My first complaint is that New Year's resolutions encourage people to delay enacting changes in their lives. It seems that when people think of something they want to change, they put it off until January 1st. Now, don't get me wrong, I am definitely not a concrastinator; I have taken procrastination to limits that should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. But when it comes to improving yourself or your life, I think that delay should be avoided whenever possible. Many times, including some recently, I have heard people comment on things they would like to change, but that they were going to wait until New Year's Day. This means that, despite their realisation of a problem, they fully intend to keep up a bad habit for a period of time. New Year's, in these cases, is encouraging them to keep doing things they would like to stop. That, to me, seems to be a negative consequence of the tradition.

My second complaint is that these resolutions are extremely ineffective. Doing a quick search (i.e. go do your own research if you want reliable figures), it seems that over 90% of New Year's resolutions fail. When people try something and fail, it discourages them, making them less likely to try again. I believe that many of the resolutions would not be made were it not for the pressure of the tradition. So if any of those 90+% of resolutions might be made some time later when the person has really decided that they want to try to change, because of past failures during New Year's attempts, they will be less likely to try later when they are actually more likely to succeed!

So, in my estimation, the entire concept of New Year's resolutions encourages people to maintain bad habits until the 1st, at which time they attempt to quit cold turkey, fail when the 'magic' of 1/1 fades, get disappointed in themselves and their ability to change, and, thus, become less likely to ever successfully change in the future. If you want to change something, change it. If something is wrong and you know how to start fixing it, do it. Don't put it off until next Monday, after the holiday, or New Year's; just start working on it now.