Shirley Jackson on the magic of writing
From Shirley Jackson's essay "How I Write," publishing recently in the collection Let Me Tell You: Once, however, when I had spent all one rainy day wrestling with
Exercise and the brains of tiny, buff rats
One of the most striking things I found when writing Rest was how many of the intellectuals, writers, scientists and mathematicians I was studying were serious athletes. Many
My CSCW ’16 talk on focus, mind-wandering, and connectivity
[This is a transcript, slightly cleaned up, of a talk I gave earlier today at CSCW 2016. I was asked by Gloria Mark to join a panel on
Judy Wacjman on technology and time pressure
There’s a great interview with LSE sociologist Judy Wajcman about her latest book, Pressed for Time: I have been skeptical about the story that acceleration is a purely
Americans “equate happiness with high intensity,” and we always have
Emma Seppala, whose new book The Happiness Something Or Other came out this week, is doing an admirable job of hitting the airwaves to promote the book. (I
The Bernice Eiduson longitudinal study of scientists and STEM subject snobbery
The Guardian has a piece by 16 year-old Orli Vogt-Vincent about “STEM subject snobbery,” and how the emphasis on science, technology, education and maths* leads us to both underfund
Habituation, attention, and distraction
We often regard a failure of focus as a failure of will, or a moral failure. But there’s also a physical and physiological foundation to our capacity to
Where I Write: Authors show that all writing spaces are pretty similar
This evening while trying to figure out what in the world Periscope is and whether I should use it to promote REST, I came across Where I Write
“College students who are addicted to the Internet report positive and negative effects on their family relationships”
Georgia State University researcher Susan Snyder is studying the impact of Internet addiction (or PIU, Problematic Internet Use, described as >25 hours/week of non-school or -work use) on family
“the power of resting”
This is one of my favorite quotes: The supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness. (J. R. Seeley,