"We tend to assume that pressure makes us more efficient. I work fastest when I’m on deadline. I stretch my grocery budget the most when my funds are running low. But in reality, it’s not that you’re working better when you’re stressed. It’s that the opposite situation, overabundance, often makes us less efficient."
It’s a fine balancing act: Overabundance makes us less efficient, but we need to reach a certain threshold of sufficiency before that effect kicks in.
“Abundant time can make us procrastinate. Deadline pressure makes us more efficient,” Mr. Shafir says. “What scarcity does is make you focus. When there’s no scarcity, you relax, you take it easy, and then you wonder, what happened to the day? You’re treating time the way the rich treat money.” (link to the whole article)
16 comments:
Funny.
It was just this morning that I googled "We do more before 9:00 a.m than most people do all day."
Can't remember why.
Speaking of wasting time, yesterday I watched -- tried to watch -- Spain vs. Chile.
God, did it freaking blow!
I don't think I made it to halftime.
I used to think this same thing about writing papers for school.
But the thing is, I was thinking about writing the paper the whole time. Not just worrying about it needing to get done, but thinking about what to write, what is important and what to leave out. I was organizing my thoughts about what to say as if I was speaking to someone. I was writing the paper already in my mind. And saving the actual writing to just before it was due actually was the best way to go. The only way to go back then.
Then at Regis I had to read a few books in a short time and write what I learned from them. I didn't matter so much that I learned what was intended, I would learn something so support whatever it was that I learned. That meant simply read like a m't'r f'k'r and just f'k'n write, BOOM "A." And all that reading and all that writing changed me permanently. It worked.
One thing: The rich do not ignore mine, that is why they are rich. It is the poor who never pay attention to money, till of course it is gone.
Americans slept more and worked less last year, reflecting an economy that remains groggy after the recession and an older population with more time to rest.
The saying "it's high time" is going thru some changes.
I'm rich in time in my retirement.
Plenty of time for Eric Holder to command the destruction of the hard drive.
Bipolar Psychotic Meds Guy says:
I have medications that make time move fast, and I have medications that make time move slow. I keep a secret stash of time in a shoebox under the bed because you never know: I trade minutes for side-effects. I see the same clouds you see but you do not see the spiders in the clouds: you will see the Truth when it rains, when it rains spiders you will see. The undeserving get what they deserve. This is very clear to me.
Take the example of sugarcane farmers between harvests, a group Mr. Mullainathan and Mr. Shafir followed in subsequent research. He may not have much money in the weeks leading up to harvest time, but he seems to have all the time in the world. Not so. “In a weird way, that’s the biggest false illusion people have,” Mr. Mullainathan says. “Those farmers sitting on the stoop aren’t doing nothing. They’re churning.” The farmers, in other words, aren’t sitting and relaxing. They are sitting and thinking hard about all of their obligations and how they will meet them.
"Plenty of time for Eric Holder to command the destruction of the hard drive."
plenty of money and time... little wander.
Bipolar Psychotic Meds Guy says:
In-between the flickers of light are ideas disguised as people that only I can see. I do not know these people and then they are not there: I am being visited by the future and sometimes the past. Eye contact explains the difference, I believe.
The thing I find, discovered? about thinking, worrying, or should I say the thinking and worrying that I've done lately as opposed to earlier when I had "more money" is that it's not as rushed and impulsive.
In a way that time has become more valuable not only because they have yielded better decisions it has also increased the quality of the work, the quality of the time spent doing it.
When people say "give time time" there is a mourning connotation attached to it that is a turn off.
But there is more to it... I think.
Bipolar Psychotic Meds Guy says:
Things do not come in threes. Things come in Ones, often followed by another One and then more after that. Sometimes these Ones add up to three, but they also add up to seven and eleven, it depends on when you start counting and when you stop. Sometimes they come in even numbers, but that is usually from stopping too early or stopping too late. Knowing when to start and stop counting brings us closer to Fate. My relationship with Fate is ambiguous.
Bipolar Psychotic Meds Guy says:
My pills are kicking in: I am a light-bulb and the day is my socket. I will make things better for you.
I'm waiting with high hopes that betamax3000 will channel the thoughts of Robotic Syphilitic White House Camel.
Lois Lerner took an ax,
gave her hard drive 40 whacks,
when they saw what she had done,
six others too joined in the fun.
Burma Shave
Betamax, life is just one thing after another. Sign posts on the road of life.
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