@Randem

Today I was inspired to have a look at some of recent history’s worst book titles. Here are some samples of what I found:

Fart Proudly (link)

How Green Were The Nazis? (link)

Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium (link)

How To Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? (link)

Damn. That last title was so funny we have to take a moment and read the book’s description:

I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.

The winner, as far as I’m concerned, is the children’s book depicted at the right.

I really love the internet. Where else can the unsung heroes of society really get an opportunity to exploit their talents, and have fun doing it?

Today’s unsung hero is the instructional poster artist. You know, like the guy that draws the pictures on that laminated card in the back of the airplane seat. Or, in this case, the web page illustrating how to steal the arm rest from the passenger next to you.

Yesterday’s 60-Second Science podcast at Scientific American discussed the “six basic rules of persuasion” that Joe Torre used to his advantage. The reason I find this particularly interesting is because this comes from the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which I am currently in the middle of reading.

In fact, it’s all the more fascinating, given that last night I read about marketing research companies sending money with their surveys, and then this morning my coworker mentioned that he just received money in an envelope that he was about to feed to the shredder.

A theme I love to go on about is how the things you own end up owning you. Material possessions can serve a purpose, but more and more they becomes suffocating.

Naturally, I took an interest in this Penelope Trunk’s recent entry at the Brazen Careerist, in which she offers five steps to taming materialism, including:

3. Understand the concept of aspirational clutter. Get reality and throw stuff out.
So much of what we hold on to is what we wish we were using — objects that commemorate a life we aspire to but do not have. The six books we bought a year ago and haven’t read, for example. We don’t want to admit that we’re not making time to read, so we save them. The treadmill is another object that is loaded because if you throw it out you’re admitting to yourself that you’re never going to use it. Keeping it, even unused, maintains your dream of getting into shape.

This is something I try to do often in my life. I take an inventory of the things around me and ask myself “am I really using that, or am I just holding on to an idea?” When I’m honest with myself (as I try to be) the reality of the answer is sometimes surprising.

I’m in stitches over here after watching an improv group of over 100 men mocking Abercrombie & Fitch. Just watch.

I often hear people try to encourage each other, offering the advice that you have to love yourself for who God made you. Mother’s tell this to their child who’s shorter than everyone else his age. Wives tell this to their balding husbands. Etc.

Well, to be frank, I think it’s a bunch of bullshit. We are our parents’ offspring. Our traits, our appearances, and even in large part our personalities are products of a genetic coupling process that is well documented and understood. If your mother had a dominant gene for brown eyes and recessive for blue, and your father had brown eyes with recessive for green, then you’re going to have a very high probability of having brown eyes, with a slight chance for green, and you will never have a chance at blue eyes.

That’s science. It’s not some random, magical experience. It’s not like you get pregnant, and then God sets up a workshop in your womb, playing games of chance for 9 months until a baby is born. If that were the case, white couples would be able to have black babies, and asian couples could have arabic babies. That doesn’t happen.

You are the product of genetics. And as such, there is no divine plan for who you are. Therefore, choosing to just take what life gives you is living by default. It’s refusing to take responsibility for yourself.

I say, stop living by default. Start living by design. Live where you live because you choose to live there. Look how you look because you choose to look that way.

You don’t like be overweight? or underweight? Stop whining about it. Stop blaming it on your McDonalds, or your wife’s excellent cooking, or the price of healthy food. Stop blaming God for making you a miserable fat person, or an insecure skinny person. Take responsibility. Change your diet. Start going to the gym. Design your body how you want it.

You don’t like being poor? You don’t like living week to week? You hate not having extra money to go out to dinner or spend a night at a hotel? Stop blaming your job, or your education, or your family’s expectations. Take responsibility. Look for a better job. Get more education. Change your spending habits. Be more frugal. Stop buying every cute singing fish that you see in the line at Wal-Mart. Design your finances how you want them.

Have you ever known someone who got plastic surgery done? A facelift, or a nose job, or a beast augmentation, or lyposuction? Sometimes the work looks natural, and sometimes you can tell it’s not. (Think Cher…) But I have never known someone who got cosmetic surgery and wasn’t happier for doing so. In fact, I remember seeing a piece on tv about a real life couple who had sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into cosmetic surgery to make themselves literally look like Ken and Barbie™, but even though their looks were obviously cosmetic, it didn’t stop the couple from being truly happy with themselves. Instead of being insecure, they are confident and outgoing.

You have the power to choose your life. Stop complaining about your situation. Stop accepting that you have no control. Stop being a victim and start being a cause. It’s very empowering when you choose to take responsibility for yourself. Instead of being miserable with the life you have by default, you can be truly happy with the life you have by design.

I love it when women talk about having “the balls” to do something. Even though it makes absolutely no sense, the point still gets made. And somewhere in the depths of my imagination, there’s a cartoonish moment of humor while I imagine the female who said it looking at herself in the mirror, admiring her ball sack…

Okay, this week I went 10 and 3, a serious improvement over the decidedly mediocre results I’ve been getting the past few weeks. And with Bears loss coming on a 55-yard field goal with 4 seconds left on the clock, I feel like I was within 4 seconds of going 11-2 for the week.

Vinny Testaverde really came to life for the Panthers, practically out of nowhere. I won’t be surprised if having him at quarterback marks a big turnaround for their season.

And Testaverde’s old team, the Jets, didn’t put up as much of a fight against the Eagles as I thought they would… but the fact that the Eagles only won by one field goal seems to be proof that my assessment of them was right.

Otherwise, for the rest of the teams in the rest of the games, it looks like everything shook out pretty much how I thought it would.

I posted two years ago about the Pareto Principle — also known as the 80/20 rule — pointing to an article by Richard Koch suggesting we can apply this business rule to our daily lives.

The Pareto Principle states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This effect is often noticed in business, where 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. Or, 80% of a project’s gains come from the first 20% of your development efforts.

The logical extension of this thought is that you burn 80% of the effort on the project finishing that last 20%.

So what if we applied this to our lives? What is the value proposition?

It’s not hard for me to imagine that 80% of my happiness comes from the things I do 20% of the time. And likewise, it’s not hard to imagine that 80% of my positive interactions come from that quality core — those 20% of people in my life who add value.

So the question naturally follows, what is that remaining 80% doing for me? What makes of that 80% of things I do, where I’m burning the majority of my energy to get a minimal positive return?

Are there frustrating, difficult, or unrealistic activities I’m participating in that are burning a lot of time and energy but not paying off? Are there people who are eating up the bulk of my time while returning very little happiness or positive interaction?

It’s pretty interesting when you look at your life through the filter of such fundamental economic business principles.

If you burn 80% of your effort on a measly 20% return, it seems theoretically sound that you could cut those activities completely, in favor of taking on four new projects, goals, or activities. If each new activity returned that same 80% benefit from an investment of 20%, your improvement would be an astonishing 320%.

Essentially, by trimming the costly negative activities and replacing them with a light interest in four new activities, your quality of life could be 16 times better!

It’s an interesting thought.

soporific
adj
1. causing or tending to cause sleep.
2. pertaining to or characterized by sleep or sleepiness; sleepy; drowsy.
3. something that causes sleep, as a medicine or drug

for example:
My coworker’s constant, apologetic droning has had a soporific effect on everyone involved in today’s meeting.