“It’s bad for the individual worker’s performance being online and available 24-7. You do need downtime, you do need periods in which you can actually reflect on something without needing instantaneously to give a reaction,” said Will Hutton, chair of the Big Innovation Centre at The Work Foundation.
Source : BBC
In experiments published in 2001, Joshua Rubinstein, PhD, Jeffrey Evans, PhD, and David Meyer, PhD, conducted four experiments in which young adults switched between different tasks, such as solving math problems or classifying geometric objects. For all tasks, the participants lost time when they had to switch from one task to another. As tasks got more complex, participants lost more time.
Source : APA
Routine is really important. However late you went to bed the night before, or however much you had to drink, get up at the same time each day and get on with it. When I was composing [the opera] Anna Nicole, I was up at 5 or 6am, and worked through until lunch. The afternoon is the worst time for creativity.
Source : The Guardian
Our consciousness is so subjective that our own experience of sentience is all we have to rely on to tell us that we exist. Any apparent modification of this – or even the possibility of something that might affect it negatively – challenges us to face who and what we are. And so, as Bell pointed out in parliament, new technologies get to the very heart of us. How we adapt to the new thing reminds us of our limitations as human beings.
It’s important to separate the web and technology from the way that we use it. Our literacy around technology is very limited so we use it like a hammer instead of a chisel. The web has only been main stream for the last 10 years. Such a short period of time to judge the effects and the value of something. Humans are addictive, just look at alcohol, drugs, smoking all bad for us and yet it as taken hundreds of years for us to adapt to a somewhat more moderate use of all of them. In small dosses that can all be great for us, just like the web.
KP
Source : The guardian
“Earn less, spend less, emit and degrade less. That’s the formula. The more time a person has, the better his or her quality of life, and the easier it is to live sustainably.”
Source :Yes magazine
It’s ironic that this global network reminds us how important non-technological solutions are to good working practice. The web makes it possible for some to do their jobs without being bound to a physical place, but technology isn’t going to replace face-to-face contact. In fact, it makes it more essential. How’s that for a growing pain?
Source : The guardian
A collection of thoughts around thinking, work and how to be in the present.
“Today is a gift.
That is why they call it the present.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“Finally, it is generally agreed that no activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied – no rhetoric or liberal studies – since the mind when distracted absorbs nothing deeply, but rejects everything which is, so to speak , crammed into it.” – Seneca
Distraction, Culture, Self
Source :On the Shortness of Life
“The commission gave me the a wonderful opportunity to test my favorite hypothesis about collective rationality, which is that if you put people of strongly opposing views in a room together, and infuse their discussion with data, background studies, and unhurried time for debate, it is possible to bridge seemingly irreconcilable positions among the members of the group.” – Jeffery Sachs
Thinking, Collaboration, Global, Facts
Source : The End of Poverty
“Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind
To arrive there is what you are destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for many years,
So you’re old by the time you reach the isle,
Wealthy with all you have gained on the way
And not expecting Ithaca to make you rich”-C.P Cavafy
Journey, Life, Culture
Source : The Age of Absurdity
“The man who can center his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist.” – Bertrand Russell
environment,global,policy
Source : The Conquest of Happiness
“An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him.” – Oscar Wilde
– Collected reading editorial note : This quote when taken on face value can seem silly. My interpretation of it is that individuals are not disconnected from society’s needs and as such understand them as part of their own reality. Therefore, by solving your own problems you also contribute to solving the issues of many fellow citizens through your own particular lens on culture.
Individuality, Creativity, Work
Source : The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
“It is the difference between the “organic” solution (solving the problem by returning to the purity of the original non-corrupted system) and the truly radical solution (identifying the problem as the “symptom” of the entire system, the symptom which can only be resolved by abolishing the entire system)”. – Living in the End Times – Slavoj Zizek
“Soda is still the most-consumed beverage in the U.S., with the average consumer chugging nearly 45 gallons of the fizzy stuff last year. So it’s no coincidence that three of the biggest measured-media budgets in the beverage category belong to soda brands.”
Culture, Health, Food
Source :Adage
“Many donors do care about how their money is spent. Brian Walsh, director of global social engagement at Liquidnet for Good, pointed to a recent study that showed 85 percent of donors say they care about performance. Nonetheless, only one third say they conduct research before they make a donation and only 3 percent say they make gifts based on a charity’s performance”
Nonprofit, Grants, Culture
Source : Philanthropy.com
““But maybe it should be. For me, a professional who is pushing every day to make a struggling museum relevant and sustainable, I find incredible joy in these simple visitor comments.”
Place, Culture, Museum
Source : Museumtwo
“Combined with Social Security benefit cuts, the rise of 401(k)s has led to growing retirement insecurity and an increase in the labor force participation of older workers. Still, workers with only 401(k)s are better off than the nearly half of full-time workers with no retirement plan at all.
Economics, Culture, Work
Source : EPI.org
“If we really want people to understand a given probability, then we have to play to the human brain’s strengths, and adjust how we present the information.”
Technology, Humans, Culture
Source : Arstechnica
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
“We weren’t just at the art exhibition – we were the art exhibition, the art incarnate and the sixties were really about people, not what they did. – Andy warhol”
“The group was founded in 1971 in Roslagen, Sweden, by environmental activists from France, Sweden, the UK and the US who saw the need for an organisation that would address wider environmental and social issues.”
Environment, Photography
Source :The Guardian
“The Dark Side of the Free and Open (For Artsworld Magazine)Geeks, programmers and computer scientists are very much in demand in society. Without them all infrastructure collapses. This is (unfortunately) not the case with artists. So far geeks have never had any problems securing an income, even if we take global outsourcing of their work into account. As a result they have little idea what happens if you transport the free and open mantras into other contexts where people are working under harsh neoliberal circumstances struggling to make a living.”
Internet, Work, OpenSource
Source : Network Cultures
““The USDA’s new plate icon couldn’t be more at odds with federal food subsidies,” says PCRM staff nutritionist Kathryn Strong, M.S., R.D. “The plate icon advises Americans to limit high-fat products like meat and cheese, but the federal government is subsidizing these very products with billions of tax dollars and giving almost no support to fruits and vegetables. Congress has to reform the Farm Bill to support healthy diets.”
Food, Poverty, Policy
Source : PCRM.org
“It’s ironic however that a product used to keep something as short-lived as a milkshake will last many thousands of years in the environment. Studies show that the material accounts for up to 15% of storm drain litter, and it’s the second most prevalent type of beach debris.Read more: California Senate Votes to Ban Styrofoam Containers! | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World”
Environment , Policy, Design
Source : Inhabit
“Every £1 invested in the arts produces £2 for the economy, and yet the arts and culture sector is currently suffering from disastrous local authority cuts, as well as the cuts that the Arts Council has had to make after its 30% cut from the government,” he said.”
Arts, Funding, Policy
Source : Lost Arts.org
Hope you like this collection. Please comment, share and most of all enjoy.
– Kaushik
Collected Reading 