Overload Best Quotes

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the "brain" of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of "other people," which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you.

When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard. When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done. When you work with Wu Wei, you have no real accidents. Things may get a little Odd at times, but they work out. You don’t have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them. [...] If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on you can look back and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…" Then you realize that even if you’d tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing. Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn’t the best time to do this. I’d better go that way." Like that. When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That’s just natural. It’s only strange when you don’t listen.

We all would like to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today's knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little.

After all, as Edward Tufte once said, “Overload, clutter, and confusion are not attributes of information, they are failures of design.

Traditional ways to deal with information--reading, listening, writing, talking--are painfully slow in comparison to "viewing the big picture." Those who survive information overload will be those who search for information with broadband thinking but apply it with a single-minded focus.

It turns out that having a best friend during adolescence is an important part of becoming a well-adjusted adult. Those without one are more likely to be bullied and marginalized and to carry these experiences into becoming disagreeable adults.

A popular myth is that learning is largely a matter of motivation. Increasingly, the key to effective learning in the information era is how you think, not how you feel.

When your brain is always engaged, when your neurons are always firing, when you find yourself in a continual mode of reacting and responding, instead of steering and directing, the best and brightest solutions that you are capable of producing rarely see the light of day.

the best-remembered experiences are distinctive/unique or have a strong emotional component.

Time is a most versatile resource. It flies, marches on, works wonders, and will tell. It also runs out.

It's not a good idea to cut back indiscriminately on what you read. The reason is that reading can save you time, because it gives you the opportunity to learn from other people's experience.

People are the best cameraman. They look at many angles when it comes to judge others mistake but look at the best angle when it comes to judging their own mistakes. Crazy people, crazy world

Have you been keeping count this entire time?' I ask frowning. 'Yeah, dude,' he says turning the screen of his phone towards me. 'I downloaded a period tracker app.' I blurt out a laugh, covering my mouth. 'Oh my God.' 'Nothing funny about it.' He shrugs. 'This is scientific info.

Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.

You fight your superficiality, you shallowness, as as to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untank-like as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong, you might as well have the brain if a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and them you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words, and then proposing that there word people are closer to the real thing than we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful consideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

The constant clamor of the booths and barkers served as an exhausting reminder that he had to choose a fate, and that no matter which fate he chose he could be certain that it would not be the best, that in other timelines rendered inaccessible with each spent coin, other versions of himself would be having more fun, or winning golden ribbons, or becoming taller. The thought was unbearable.

Moral for psychologists. -- Not to go in for backstairs psychology. Never to observe in order to observe! That gives a false perspective, leads to squinting and something forced and exaggerated. Experience as the wish to experience does not succeed. One must not eye oneself while having an experience; else the eye becomes "an evil eye." A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see; the same is true of the born painter. He never works "from nature"; he leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, to sift through and express the "case," "nature," that which is "experienced." He is conscious only of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case. What happens when one proceeds differently? For example, if, in the manner of the Parisian novelists, one goes in for backstairs psychology and deals in gossip, wholesale and retail? Then one lies in wait for reality, as it were, and every evening one brings home a handful of curiosities. But note what finally comes of all this: a heap of splotches, a mosaic at best, but in any case something added together, something restless, a mess of screaming colors. The worst in this respect is accomplished by the Goncourts; they do not put three sentences together without really hurting the eye, the psychologist's eye. Nature, estimated artistically, is no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps. Nature is chance. To study "from nature" seems to me to be a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism; this lying in the dust before petit faits [little facts] is unworthy of a whole artist. To see what is--that is the mark of another kind of spirit, the anti-artistic, the factual. One must know who one is. Toward a psychology of the artist. -- If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy. Frenzy must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong affects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction, the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one lends to things, one forces them to accept from us, one violates them--this process is called idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealizing does not consist, as is commonly held, in subtracting or discounting the petty and inconsequential. What is decisive is rather a tremendous drive to bring out the main features so that the others disappear in the process. In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever one wills, is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power--until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is--art. Even everything that he is not yet, becomes for him an occasion of joy in himself; in art man enjoys himself as perfection.

Not every customer is interested in your product. However, they are interested in themselves. Over-explaining the product may lead to information overload and losing the sale entirely. It’s best to focus on painting a mental picture of what the customer’s life may look like when they buy your product. Once they’ve mentally bought in, then provide all relevant information needed to succeed in using your product.

I’m smiling, doing my best to impersonate a person who doesn’t feel disoriented and sick. But my arms feel so heavy I can barely lift them, and I stay motionless, to reduce exertion. Every part of my body feels sore or shocked, or both. It’s like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they’re born.

More people than ever are being paid to think, instead of just doing routine tasks. Yet making complex decisions and solving new problems is difficult for any stretch of time because of some real biological limits on your brain. Surprisingly, one of the best ways to improve mental performance is to understand these limits. In act 1, Emily discovers why thinking requires so much energy, and develops new techniques for dealing with having too much to do. Paul learns about the space limits of his brain, and works out how to deal with information overload. Emily finds out why it’s so hard to do two things at once, and rethinks how she organizes her work. Paul discovers why he is so easily distracted, and works on how to stay more focused. Then he finds out how to stay in his brain’s “sweet spot.” In the last scene, Emily discovers that her problem-solving techniques need improving, and learns how to have breakthroughs when she needs them most.

The curse of the fall didn't affect only manual work, as we often seem to think. Excessive ambiguity that prevent us from figuring out how to navigate is really a form of confusion. Overload is one of the forms that frustration takes. The inordinate challenges we face in knowledge work can be traced to the fall just as much as the challenges in manual work. Send it especially lies behind the villain of lack of fulfillment. The reason we lack fulfillment is because we aren't fulfilling our true purpose, that is because we have sinned and deviated from God's path.

Making your boss look good means two things. Firstly, it means doing your job to the best of your ability. Clearly, if you produce high-quality work, it will make your boss’s job easier. Second, make sure your boss knows everything you know when she needs to know it. Keep the information flowing. Make sure your boss knows where you are, what you are doing, and what problems you may be having. At the same time, don’t overload her with information. Think about what your boss needs or wants to know. Use a well-structured e-mail or voice mail to convey the information.

More recently, Dallas Willard put it this way: Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all our needs; we are only at home in God. When we fall away from God, the desire for the infinite remains, but it is displaced upon things that will certainly lead to destruction.5 Ultimately, nothing in this life, apart from God, can satisfy our desires. Tragically, we continue to chase after our desires ad infinitum. The result? A chronic state of restlessness or, worse, angst, anger, anxiety, disillusionment, depression—all of which lead to a life of hurry, a life of busyness, overload, shopping, materialism, careerism, a life of more…which in turn makes us even more restless. And the cycle spirals out of control. To make a bad problem worse, this is exacerbated by our cultural moment of digital marketing from a society built around the twin gods of accumulation and accomplishment. Advertising is literally an attempt to monetize our restlessness. They say we see upward of four thousand ads a day, all designed to stoke the fire of desire in our bellies. Buy this. Do this. Eat this. Drink this. Have this. Watch this. Be this. In his book on the Sabbath, Wayne Muller opined, “It is as if we have inadvertently stumbled into some horrific wonderland.”6 Social media takes this problem to a whole new level as we live under the barrage of images—not just from marketing departments but from the rich and famous as well as our friends and family, all of whom curate the best moments of their lives. This ends up unintentionally playing to a core sin of the human condition that goes all the way back to the garden—envy. The greed for another person’s life and the loss of gratitude, joy, and contentment in our own.

Going without food for even a day increases your brain’s natural growth factors, which support the survival and growth of neurons. Evolution designed our bodies and brains to perform at their peak as hybrid vehicles. Metabolic switching between glucose and ketones is when cognition is best and degenerative diseases are kept at bay. As a recent paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience put it: “Metabolic switching impacts multiple signaling pathways that promote neuroplasticity and resistance of the brain to injury and disease.” So how do you do it? Not by overloading on glucose or ketones, but by altering the cadence of eating and letting the body do what it was designed to do during times of food scarcity.

Getting organized can bring us all to the next level in our lives. It’s the human condition to fall prey to old habits. We must consciously look at areas of our lives that need cleaning up, and then methodically and proactively do so. And then keep doing it. Every so often, the universe has a way of doing this for us. We unexpectedly lose a friend, a beloved pet, a business deal, or an entire global economy collapses. The best way to improve upon the brains that nature gave us is to learn to adjust agreeably to new circumstances. My own experience is that when I’ve lost something I thought was irreplaceable, it’s usually replaced with something much better. The key to change is having faith that when we get rid of the old, something or someone even more magnificent will take its place.

Define Your Options When people are spinning their rumination wheels about a particular problem, they often don’t concretely define what their options are for moving forward. To shift out of rumination and into problem-solving mode, concretely and realistically define what your best three to six options are. For example, imagine you’ve recently hired a new employee but that person is not working out. Instead of mentally slapping yourself around about why you made the hire, it would be more useful to define what your options are at this point: --Giving the employee more time --Shifting the employee’s responsibilities to simpler jobs --Giving the employee checklists of the steps needed to complete each task --Having another employee work with the individual --Firing the employee Defining your options relieves some of the stress of rumination and helps you shift to effective problem solving. Keeping your list of options short will prevent you from running into choice-overload problems. Research shows that if you consider more than three to six choices, you’re less likely to end up making a choice. Experiment: Practice concretely defining your best three to six options for moving forward with a problem you’re currently ruminating or worrying about. Write brief bullet points, like in the example just given. You can use this method for all sorts of problems. For example, a friend just used it to come up with ideas for how to have more social contact in her life. Note: If the word best is causing you to jump into perfectionism/frozen mode, write any three to six options.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair. Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn’t know how to teach because he’d been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn’t anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn’t someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they’d passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed? Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He’d never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn’t even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn’t know, he’d never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn’t been taught about kids’ yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional “difficult child” the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class load of them all yelling their sonofbitching heads off. What do you do with a kid who can’t read even though he’s fifteen years old? Recommend him for special reading classes, sure. And what do you do when those special reading classes are loaded to the asshole, packed because there are kids who can’t read in abundance, and you have to take only those who can’t read the worst, dumping them onto a teacher who’s already overloaded and those who doesn’t want to teach a remedial class to begin with? And what do you with that poor ignorant jerk? Do you call him on class, knowing damn well he hasn’t read the assignment because he doesn’t know how to read? Or do you ignore him? Or do you ask him to stop by after school, knowing he would prefer playing stickball to learning how to read. And knowing he considers himself liberated the moment the bell sounds at the end of the eighth period. What do you do when you’ve explained something patiently and fully, explained it just the way you were taught to explain in your education courses, explained in minute detail, and you look out at your class and see that stretching, vacant wall of blank, blank faces and you know nothing has penetrated, not a goddamn thing has sunk in? What do you do then? Give them all board erasers to clean. What do you do when you call on a kid and ask “What did that last passage mean?”and the kid stands there without any idea of what the passage meant , and you know that he’s not alone, you know every other kid in the class hasn’t the faintest idea either? What the hell do you do then? Do you go home and browse through the philosophy of education books the G.I bill generously provided. Do you scratch your ugly head and seek enlightenment from the educational psychology texts? Do you consult Dewey? And who the hell do you condemn, just who? Do you condemn elementary schools for sending a kid on to high school without knowing how to read, without knowing how to write his own name on a piece of paper? Do you condemn the masterminds who plot the education systems of a nation, or a state or a city?

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

Consider a reevaluation of the situation, assuming it exists a blockage of our mind. The "zero moment " of the conscience is not the worst situation, but the best possible.(...). Our mind is empty, with a hollow and flexible disposition of "beginners mind" (…) Think, for a change, that this moment should be appreciated, and not feared. If our mind is really blocked, then we may be in a better situation than when it was overloaded with ideas.

Overloaded with stress, we often make expedient decisions that may not be in our long-term best interest.

During that time, “Hurry up or we’ll be late” was commonly heard, either yelled from the kitchen or hissed while we scurried into the back row at church. There was too much to do in too little time. Life was a blur. And I thought everyone lived like this. That was until I read about “hurry sickness” in The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. My heart was skewered when I read that one of its symptoms is a diminished capacity to love. My children could have told you I had a problem. Only it wasn’t hurry sickness, it was hurry addiction. God dealt with my addiction to overload and hurry by taking it all away in a cross-country move. He made me go cold turkey as I said good-bye to working at my job, directing the children’s ministry, coleading the women’s ministry, being on the praise team, having my small group, leading Vacation Bible Study each summer, and more. God moved us 2,100 miles away—so far that I couldn’t even sneak back to lead a women’s event. I had no job, no church, and no friends, just lots of time. Since two of the boys were in school and the youngest had just started preschool, I had plenty of time to think and pray. And while there were lots of tears, I also experienced God in a new way. Very quickly, God connected me with Proverbs 31 Ministries. I started to learn that God had a better plan for my life than I did, and that I should look to Him for direction on my daily activities. I also learned that my first line of ministry was inside my home. I wasn’t completely cured of my hurry addiction yet, so I decided I would become the Best Homemaker Ever. And then I picked up a book called No Ordinary Home by Carol Brazo. And right in the beginning of the book I read something that brought about the biggest change in my life: If there were one biblical truth I wish I could give my children and lay hold of in my own deepest parts, it would be this one thing. He created me, He loves me, He will always love me. Nothing I do will change who I am. Being versus doing. The error was finally outlined in bold. I was always worried about what I was doing. . . . God’s only concern was and is what I am being—a child of His, forgiven, justified by the work of His Son, His Heir.[2] You know when you feel like an author has peeked into your living room window and knows exactly who you are? That’s what reading this was like for me. God wired me to be highly productive, but I hadn’t undergirded that with an understanding of my true identity. So in order to feel worthwhile and valued and confident, I was driven to take on more. More accomplishments equaled more worth. But it was never enough.

Delete it. The message isn’t important or it requires no response. The simplest action is to get rid of it. If you think it might be important, then you will put the message into an archive folder. Defer it. If a message requires a task that takes 5 or more minutes to complete, then defer it and schedule a date and time when you will do it. One of the main reasons people get bogged down is that they try to take action on emails that require you to complete a lengthy task. For emails like this, it makes sense to estimate the time required, write down the specific action into your calendar, respond back to the recipient with a date when they should expect it and then filter the email into your “Follow-Up” folder. You can use the items on your calendar to schedule the rest of your week. Another option for deferring an item is to use the Boomerang extension, which creates reminders for specific tasks. Delegate it. You may not be the best person to handle the task. If you have a team or subordinates, then delegate the task to the appropriate person. After that, create a reminder in your calendar to follow up and make sure it has been handled. Do it. If it takes less than 5 minutes to respond to an email or complete the required task, then take care of it immediately.

All it takes is for me to try and not think of Garrett, and suddenly, he’s consuming my every idle musing. Picking a radio station? Garrett only listened to NPR. Browsing the refrigerator for orange juice? Garrett likes the pulp style best.

I tell my first-year law students that they will be learning how to read. "Huh? We've known how to read since we were six!" Sure, that's true, in the sense that students come to law school knowing cognitively how to translate black-and-white marks on a page into words. But what I mean by read is different. It requires you to isolate phrases, then individual words, and then figure out as many interpretations of those words as possible. Once you have the various options on the table, you can start to prioritize the options and choose which is best---or at least how to argue for one over the other on behalf of a client. This is a skill, and one that is becoming increasingly rare in a world of information overload, texts, tweets, and sound bites.

It turns out that having a best friend during adolescence is an important part of becoming a well-adjusted adult. Those without one are more likely to be bullied and marginalized and to carry these experiences into becoming disagreeable adults.

another reason so many of us often feel overloaded is because of something called the planning fallacy.1 This describes the fact that we typically expect tasks to take less time than they actually do, because we base our estimates on one standout memory—our best past experience—rather than the average time it’s taken us to do similar tasks in the past.

When taken to extremes the Thieves of Time become corrupted. Drive becomes overdrive. Excellence becomes perfectionism. Information becomes information overload, and Activity becomes downright frenzy.

Before You Can Be Successful, You Need To Know What Failure Looks Like One of today’s best job search experts, Liz Ryan, described what failure looks like for a job seeker: The worst -- and most common -- interview mistake you can make is to be a forgettable applicant, and to leave the building without leaving any impression whatsoever on your interviewer. Managers are busy. They are overloaded with information the same way we all are. If you don't make your mark in your job interview, all traces of you will have left your manager's memory before you get home. Many job seekers believe they should just sit there, respond to a hiring manager’s questions and then ask one or two questions at the end. That is a recipe for failure.

THE SEVEN STEPS OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION Illumination is the act of shining the light of consciousness on the egoic forces that obstruct our minds, things such as defense mechanisms, illusions, and other intellectual structures that obscure our capacity to see ourselves and all around us as Sacred. We can think of this as removing lampshades that cover up our inner One Mind's Light. Submersion brings us into deeper self-awareness by wading into the waters of our unconscious, our inner One Thing, thus opening the door to a productive dialog between the conscious and the unconscious selves, which can be considered respectively as our inner One Mind and One Thing. Remember, it is the interaction between these two that gives power to all creation, so it is important to get these forces into a productive dialog within us if we want our soul to create life. Polarization is a process through which we increase our awareness of inner duality— our One Mind and One Thing — and explore the paradox of their underlying unity and separation ability. Just as we saw in the story of creation, these two internal forces can use their separation to create a polarity, such as charging a battery, and this battery enhances our creativity. Merging is the actual fusion of these opposing powers that can also be known as our active and reactive inner natures, the conscious and the unconscious, the mind, and the soul. Here we start to blend the best of both, giving birth to what Egyptian alchemists call the Intelligence of the Heart, thus overloading our internal battery and our creative abilities. Inspiration takes Merging's creative potential and animates it with the Divine breath of life, introducing new dimensions beyond our ability to plan or monitor. The element of surprise threatens the illusion of the ego-self that it is in control, so a part of Inspiration causes the self-deception to die and fall away so that we can be reborn into the Light of Truth. In other terms, our True Self can be remembered. Refining takes from the previous step the divinely inspired solution and further purifies it, removing any last traces of the ego that would otherwise cloud our ability to see our True Self. We lift our human consciousness to the highest possible level to reconnect with the One Self, and Reiki is a wonderful tool to do so as you will know in the near future. Integration completes the process by uniting our One Mind, and One Thing's distilled essence, allowing us to experience their inherent Oneness at a deep level. This can also be considered as the union of spirit, soul, and body with matter. Saying it pragmatically, we take this state of awakened awareness and incorporate it into the very structure of our daily lives; it's not something we feel only when we're on a couch of contemplation or in a class of yoga. And then we return to the beginning, like the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, but this time bearing to bear our newly created insight. These are the seven stages of self-transformation, in a nutshell, and now is the time to weave Reiki into the picture.

The Internet age has a dark side in our work: Advice Overload. It’s just so tempting and easy to seek our answers elsewhere that we find ourselves with far too many of them, far too quickly.

As Johnson explained to me, it takes time to figure out how best to structure the crazy inputs and interaction that surround most work processes. He’s diligent in making sure that everyone keeps prioritizing this. “You need time away from inputs to figure out how best to systematize those inputs,” he explained.

Here are a few notable things that can spark inflammation and depress the function of your liver: Alcohol overload—This is relatively well-known. Your liver is largely responsible for metabolizing alcohol, and drinking too much liquid courage can send your liver running to cry in a corner somewhere. Carbohydrate bombardment—Starches and sugar have the fastest ability to drive up blood glucose, liver glycogen, and liver fat storage (compared to their protein and fat macronutrient counterparts). Bringing in too many carbs, too often, can elicit a wildfire of fat accumulation. In fact, one of the most effective treatments for reversing NAFLD is reducing the intake of carbohydrates. A recent study conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and published in the journal Cell Metabolism had overweight test subjects with high levels of liver fat reduce their ratio of carbohydrate intake (without reducing calories!). After a short two-week study period the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Too many medications—Your liver is the top doc in charge of your body’s drug metabolism. When you hear about drug side effects on commercials, they are really a direct effect of how your liver is able to handle them. The goal is to work on your lifestyle factors so that you can be on as few medications as possible along with the help of your physician. Your liver will do its best to support you either way, but it will definitely feel happier without the additional burden. Too many supplements—There are several wonderful supplements that can be helpful for your health, but becoming an overzealous natural pill-popper might not be good for you either. In a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, it was found that liver injuries linked to supplement use jumped from 7 percent to 20 percent of all medication/supplement-induced injuries in just a ten-year time span. Again, this is not to say that the right supplements can’t be great for you. This merely points to the fact that your liver is also responsible for metabolism of all of the supplements you take as well. And popping a couple dozen different supplements each day can be a lot for your liver to handle. Plus, the supplement industry is largely unregulated, and the additives, fillers, and other questionable ingredients could add to the burden. Do your homework on where you get your supplements from, avoid taking too many, and focus on food first to meet your nutritional needs. Toxicants—According to researchers at the University of Louisville, more than 300 environmental chemicals, mostly pesticides, have been linked to fatty liver disease. Your liver is largely responsible for handling the weight of the toxicants (most of them newly invented) that we’re exposed to in our world today. Pesticides are inherently meant to be deadly, but just to small organisms (like pests), though it seems to be missed that you are actually made of small organisms, too (bacteria

SKIN PIGMENTATION. Pigmentation refers to skin coloring, which depends on specialized cells that produce melanin. Melanin is the pigment that imparts different shades and colors to the hair, skin, mucous membranes, and retina of the eye. Individuals with too little melanin production have fair skin, whereas those with high deposition have a darker complexion. Skin pigmentation problems arise when there is an excess of melanin production, resulting in dark spots, patches, or discoloration of the skin. It can change the color of the skin over time, resulting in an uneven skin tone. Whilst hyperpigmentation is not a dangerous illness, it may be a sign of another medical condition. As a result, a dermatologist should be consulted to determine the exact cause of the pigmentation. CAUSES OF SKIN PIGMENTATION. • Skin inflammation (post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation) • Drugs (such as minocycline, certain cancer chemotherapies, and birth control pills) • The disease of hormones. • Hemochromatosis (iron overload) • Sun exposure. • Pregnancy (melasma, or mask of pregnancy) • Certain birthmarks. or contact 0331 1117546

The best way to deal with it was to gorge on it, overload himself with the pain until it ceased to have any meaning, and not try to avoid it.

Simon wanted a word to describe not getting the very best option but one that was good enough.

Stuck with a pile of tumultuous feelings about her friend, your daughter handed those feelings off to you. Now she can go out and play happily, while you are the one with the overload of feelings. In his book Playful Parenting, Larry Cohen calls this the game of emotional hot potato. We are sitting ducks for this game because we are hardwired to empathize with our child. We have to make sure we don’t overreact because we were the last ones left with the potato.

A repetitive strain injury of the mind. How to exist in the 21st century and not have a panic attack Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Is that really in your best interests? Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui. Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain. Let it happen. If you feel panic rising the instinctive reaction is to panic some more. To panic about the panic. To metapanic. The trick is to try to feel panic without panicking about it. This is nearly—but not quite—impossible. I had panic disorder—a condition defined not by the occasional panic attack but by frequent panic attacks and the continuous hellish fear of the next one. By the time I’d had hundreds of panic attacks I began to tell myself I wanted it. I didn’t, obviously. But I used to work hard at trying to invite the panic—as a test, to see how I could cope. The more I invited it, the less it wanted to stay around. Accept feelings. And accept that they are just that: feelings. Don’t grab life by the throat. “Life should be touched, not strangled,” said the writer Ray Bradbury. It is okay to release fear. The fear tries to tell you it is necessary, and that it is protecting you. Try to accept it as a feeling, rather than valid information. Bradbury also said: “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get.” Be aware of where you are. Are your surroundings overstimulating? Is there somewhere you can go that is calmer? Is there some nature you can look at? Look up. In city centers, the

How to exist in the 21st century and not have a panic attack Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Is that really in your best interests? Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui. Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain.

The best approach when things are beyond your control is to shrug it off and trust God to work things out for your good (see Romans 8:28).

I cannot state strongly enough the need for regular exercise. Many people think they don’t have time to exercise, but the truth is if you don’t take the time now, you may lose more time visiting doctors and having to be inactive and unproductive because you feel bad. Exercise is one of the best sources of energy you can find!

While there is no formula for cognitive load, we can assess the number and relative complexity (internal to the organization) of domains for which a given team is responsible. The Engineering Productivity team at OutSystems that we mentioned in Chapter 1 realized that the different domains they were responsible for (build and continuous integration, continuous delivery, test automation, and infrastructure automation) had caused them to become overloaded. The team was constantly faced with too much work and context switching prevailed, with tasks coming in from different product areas simultaneously. There was a general sense in the team that they lacked sufficient domain knowledge, but they had no time to invest in acquiring it. In fact, most of their cognitive load was extraneous, leaving very little capacity for value-add intrinsic or germane cognitive load. The team made a bold decision to split into microteams, each responsible for a single domain/product area: IDE productivity, platform-server productivity, and infrastructure automation. The two productivity microteams were aligned (and colocated) with the respective product areas (IDE and platform server). Changes that overlapped domains were infrequent; therefore, the previous single-team model was optimizing for the exceptions rather than the rule. With the new structure, the teams collaborated closely (even creating temporary microteams when necessary) on cross-domain issues that required a period of solution discovery but not as a permanent structure. After only a few months, the results were above their best expectations. Motivation went up as each microteam could now focus on mastering a single domain (plus they didn’t have a lead anymore, empowering team decisions). The mission for each team was clear, with less context switching and frequent intra-team communication (thanks to a single shared purpose rather than a collection of purposes). Overall, the flow and quality of the work (in terms of fitness of the solutions for product teams) increased significantly.

And the entire concept of a detox diet or a cleanse to help achieve long-term health is plain nonsense. (The liver and kidneys already perform this function, and the best way to help filter toxins is to not overload the body with processed foods and excess kilojoules in the first place.)

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.

The Thieves of Time ASSET RISK DRIVE OVERDRIVE EXCELLENCE PERFECTIONISM INFORMATION OVERLOAD ACTIVITY FRENZY They appear in our lives like this: We mindlessly accept a meeting invite, because we are driven. We overtweak a presentation, because we want to be excellent. We go too deep into dashboards and data, because we want to be informed. We impulsively grab the next to-do on our list, because we feel we should always be active.

He nodded, his nose brushing my face. “Feeling better,” he breathed. “Good, even. Especially when I…” he broke off. Then he tilted his hips and bore down. “Right there,” he panted. “There’s nothing like it.” Biting the corner of his lip, he picked up the pace. It was magical. Every thrust thrilled me. And the knowledge that Josh was riding me, taking pleasure from my body was just incredible. It was sensory overload of the very best kind. “Love you,” I gasped. Josh put more weight on the headboard, and moaned. He moved his hips faster now, fucking himself on me with more urgency. I slid a hand around to cup his ass. The muscle under my hand was contracting rhythmically. Damn that was sexy. I wasn’t going to last much longer. So I took Josh’s cock in hand and started to stroke. I tipped my head back, trying to hold myself together. “Need you to come for me,” I panted, skimming the pad of my thumb over his slit. “Shoot all over my chest,” I begged. Josh shivered. Dirty talk always made him hornier. I loved that. I loved to shock him a little. “I’m going to come in your ass,” I threatened. “You’re going to feel my hot seed inside you. Probably for the rest of the day.” His moans got louder, and I stroked him harder. But it was just all too good. The sights and sounds of our fucking were more than I could bear. “Gotta come,” I growled. My hips began to shake, and then I was shooting, and shooting again. I gave a shout against Josh’s pecs. He whimpered, then froze, and I worried that something was wrong. But then he drenched my hand with his seed. “Mmm,” I crooned, milking him until he finally sagged against my chest.

Wriggling out of his grasp she braced herself on his shoulders and tried to stand. Next thing she knew, he had her around the legs and took her down to the mattress in some sort of super-fast ninja move. She screamed and laughed, and he was laughing every bit as hard as he came down on top of her. And, oh God, his laughter was a sweet and sexy rumble that lit her up inside. “You fight dirty, Easy,” she said around her chuckles. “I haven’t had this much fun in so long.” She caressed his face with her fingers. “Me neither. Between overloading on classes and my epilepsy, I often feel like a little old lady trapped in the body of a twenty-year-old. All I need is some cats.” “Cats are awesome,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to sneak stray cats into the house, just for a night or two. I’d keep them in my room and bring up bowls of milk and cans of tuna for them.” “Aw, you were a sweet little boy, weren’t you?” she asked, loving how he was opening up to her. The closeness, the sharing, the way his big body was lying on her legs and hips, leading him to prop his head up on her lower stomach—both her heart and her body reacted. “Maybe for about five minutes.” He winked. “Mostly, I was a hell-raiser. Growing up, we didn’t live in the best neighborhood. Drug dealers on the corner, gang activity trying to pull in even the younger kids, crack house one block over. All that. Trouble wasn’t hard to find.” He shrugged. “Army straightened me out, though.” “Well, we lived in a nice neighborhood growing up and here my father was the freaking drug dealer on the corner. Or close enough, anyway.” Jenna stared at the ceiling and shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get serious.” His thumb stroked along her side, sliding the cotton of her borrowed shirt against her skin in a way that almost tickled. “Don’t apologize. Our histories are what they are, you know?” She nodded and gave him a little smile. “Yeah.” Shifting off her, Easy stretched out alongside her and propped his head up on his arm. “I’m thirty, Jenna,” he said out of nowhere. And he was telling her this because? He thought their age difference was too great? He thought she was too young? He was worried she would think he was too old? Probably D) all of the above. Thing was, all she saw when she looked at Easy was a guy she really freaking liked. One who’d saved her life, helped make her sister safe, and gave her a sense of security she hadn’t felt in years. He was hot as hell, easy to talk to, and one of the kindest guys she’d ever known. Maybe some of that was because he was older. Who knew? “And I need to know this because?” she asked, resting her head on her arm. The muscles of his shoulders lifted into a shrug, but his face was contemplative. “Because there’s clearly something going on between us.” Heat rushed across her body. She held up a hand, and he laced his fingers between hers. “When I look at you, I don’t see a bunch of differences, Easy.” “What do you see then?” Warmth flooded into Jenna’s cheeks, and she chuckled. He’d said that she was beautiful, after all, so why couldn’t she give him a compliment in return? “A really hot guy I’d like to get to know more.” A smug smile slipped onto his face, and she might’ve rolled her eyes if it weren’t so damn sexy. “Really hot, huh?” “Well, kinda hot, anyway.” “Nuh-uh,” he said, tugging her hand to his chest. “Can’t take it back now.” Cheeks burning and big smile threatening, she rolled onto her side to face him. They lay there, side by side, her chest almost touching his, looking at each other. Tension and desire and anticipation crackled in the space between them, making it hard to breathe. “What do you see when you look at me?” she whispered, half-afraid to ask but even more curious to hear what he’d say. Did he mostly see someone who was too young for him? Or a needy girl he had to save and babysit?

Overload, clutter, and confusion are not attributes of information, they are failures of design.”45

I can’t help it. I’m on emotional overload. All hyped up like Jessie Spano that time she took caffeine pills. Nervous. Excited. Freaking out. I am all the things.

Discipline When the child loses control, avoid punishment. Loss of self-control is scary enough; punishment adds guilt and shame. Comment on the child’s negative behavior, not on the child: “Your yelling makes me angry,” rather than “You infuriate me!” Help the child find a quiet space, away from sensory overload, as a technique to regain self-control. Let him decide the length of the time-out, if possible. Set limits, to make a child feel secure. Pick one battle at a time to help him develop self-control and appropriate behavior. Be firm about the limits you set. Show him that his feelings won’t change the outcome; a rule is a rule. “I know you’re mad because you want to play with the puppy, but it is suppertime.” Discipline consistently. Use gestures and empathy to explain why you are disciplining him. (Discipline means to teach or instruct, not punish.) After you tell him what you are going to do, then do it. Determine appropriate consequences for misbehavior. A natural consequence is best, because it is reasonable, factual, and you don’t impose it: “If you skip breakfast, you will be hungry.” A logical consequence, in which the child is responsible for the outcome of his behavior, is second best: “If you throw food, you must mop it up.” An applied consequence, in which the punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime, is useful when nothing else works: “If you spit on the baby, you may not play with your friends,” or “If you hit me, you may not watch TV.” Reward appropriate behavior with approval.

You are in the perfect position to exercise the new function of marketing: making decisions easier for your customers. You know the lay of the land better than anyone else. You also have a better perspective on what it takes to find, learn about, sort out, try, buy, and use your product than anyone else. You know best how your product fits into the marketplace. In fact, you could be the best guide through the burdensome decision-making process. In this Age of Overload, that’s exactly what the customer needs. The raw information she can get elsewhere. But what information does she need, when? What’s the sequence? What are the best sources of information from a customer’s point of view?

beauty has become a modern-day superdrug, that with filtered and face-tuned social media, retouched models on advertisements, and rampant pornography, we’ve overloaded the senses so that our natural instincts can no longer recognize or react to real beauty anymore. And it’s making us confused and miserable, both in how we judge ourselves and how we judge others.

People are the best customer. A Swamiji does his business by promising to change your karma. A businessman does his business by promising to change your fate. A politician does his business by promising to change your life. Crazy people, crazy world

People are the best briber. God does not seek your money to bless you, either he has the idea of selling the planet to you for money. Crazy people, crazy world