Month: September 2019

What Separates Champions from ‘Almost Champions’

Posted on by motionblur

https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/what-separates-champions-from-almost-champions.html

Interesting article on what makes some people “champions” and others “almost-champions.”

Essentially the difference is that “champions” generally had these attributes:

  • They chose the thing they were most interested in, out of several options—it wasn’t ‘forced’ upon them
  • They found as much meaning in the “practicing and training” part, as in the “competing and winning” part
  • Their focus was on being better than they were before, not on being better than some external benchmark or on specific people or competitors
  • They felt supported and empowered by their mentor(s), rather than pressured and controlled

I suppose when it comes to really young kids—like, before they’ve really had the chance to “explore different interests”—or, for certain types of situations, you might have a bunch of “almost champions” all competing against each other, in which case you’ll get a “champion” produced from that group anyway …

Then again I guess that’s not really a recipe for long-term greatness in any field—eventually you’ll come up against people with actual “champion” mentality as measured by those standards and that’s presumably where these differences would show themselves.

“You’ll Still See Ads”

Posted on by motionblur

I don’t know why but this sort of thing REALLY BUGS THE SHIET OUTTA ME.

Whenever you go into the settings of pretty much anything—Facebook, IG, Apple devices, Google, basically anything that’s showing you ads, there’s a thing where you can “Opt out of relevant marketing” which is so obviously their attempt to try to make you feel bad about turning that off.

As in the above screencap, which is from Paypal.com, it’s this thing where they basically say “You’ll still see ads, but they’ll be less useful to you.”

REALLY?! Is anyone out there like, “OH SNAP, wait a second here!! yes you’re right I want the USEFUL ads!!”

ON SECOND THOUGHT LEMME LEAVE THIS ON, CAUSE I WOULD MUCH PREFER ADS I CAN USE!!

YES I WANT THE COMPANY THAT HAS THE BEST MARKETING BUDGET SHOWING ME WHAT I SHOULD BUY

SO HERE’S MY OUTRIGHT PERMISSION TO MAKE MONEY FROM MY PERSONAL INFO, AS IF YOU WEREN’T JUST GO AHEAD AND DO IT ANYWAY

Fuckers.

“What Matters is Whether You Matter to Others”

Posted on by motionblur

Thought this was interesting:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/200903/what-matters-is-whether-you-matter-others

Basically, there was a study done with 1500 Canadians to see whether a person feeling like they “mattered” correlated with having support from various groups of ppl (Friends, Family, Co-Workers, Spouse), and if so then how important was the support from each group to that feeling. There was also apparently a part of the study where the feeling of mattering was correlated to whether a person was depressed or not. 

Some takeaways that I got based on the article (since I haven’t actually reviewed the study itself!):

  • Not suprisingly, having support from those groups did correlate with the feeling of mattering, across the board
  • Men’s feeling of mattering relied quite a bit more on support from other people than for women
  • For both men and women, having support from FRIENDS appeared to be a lot more important to “mattering” than having support from one’s SPOUSE! And again, this was much more pronounced for men.
  • In fact, for women, having support from one’s spouse, family, or co-workers seemed equally important, with friends’ support much more important than all of those.
  • As for whether the feeling of mattering could be related to a lower likelihood of depression, it looked like this was directly true for women, BUT, for men you also had to include not just whether they thought they mattered, but also “their feelings of mastery,” i.e. whether their actions were consequential/made a difference.

Feels like yesterday …

Posted on by motionblur

The years do go by pretty quickly … I’ve got these yearly calendar reminders to commemorate when I first met certain people, or did so-and-so with someone, etc—and it’s always the same pattern: at about 4-5 years it’s sorta cool, that we’ve gotten to that mark. Then the years start adding on without that much happening, till the 10-year commemorative. “Wow, 10 years!”

Then, after that, it’s a slow trudge till the next 5-year or even next 10-year mark … because, again, not a whole lot happens in terms of the friendship or whatever, even if lots of things are happening in the individual lives.

Twenty years … thirty years … at some point it start being pointless to even keep track. And I start ignoring most of the yearly reminder notifications, unless it’s a major one (Multiples of 5 are probably worth mentioning! probably …)

I think it’s mostly because we pretty much all stay the same people inside … friends I met when we were teenagers, well, we really haven’t changed THAT much—I mean there’s age and the vissicitudes of living but the person is the same for the most part. We all become a little wiser—whatever that means to us—and more “mature” in our views and choices … but the connection is the same, so it doesn’t really feel like as much time has gone by as the numbers of years would suggest.

That’s probably also partly a function of selection bias (or some term like that)—in that the only people that I’d set up that sort of yearly reminder for would be people with whom I do retain that connection … and they are the very same people for whom the years would seem compressed in such a way.

In contrast, when considering someone with whom I might have once been close in some way, but who went on to live a life divergent from mine—there, 5 years might as well be 50, as whatever connection I had with that person has long dissolved, and, to me, their “essence” exists only in what feels like a distant past.