Survival Tip

Outside Magazine

my new favorite program

Strict Pomodoro Extension for Chrome

"The Pomodoro Technique for time management is simple: work hard for 25 minutes without distractions, knowing that a 5 minute break is soon on its way. This extension helps you stay focused while you work by blocking the sites that can so easily distract us.

We pre-loaded the extension with a handful of popular distracting websites, but you can easily add new sites to the list, or, if you're daring, you can even create a whitelist of the *only* websites allowed during a work session. You can also change the lengths of the work and break timers - though I'd recommend against it: these times are default for a reason, so only change them if you're certain that they will make you more productive.

When we say "strict", we mean it. Once a work timer starts, there's no stopping it without straight-up disabling the extension or restarting the browser. This is for your benefit: I wrote this extension with myself in mind, and I know how tempting it can be to just give up when work gets too frustrating. Therefore, Strict Pomodoro actively discourages this behavior, though you can always disable the extension in case of emergency.

Stay focused, and have fun!"

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/strict-pomodoro/cgmnfnmlficgeijcalkgnnkigkefkbhd/details

Imagination: Unleashed by Constraints

"The constant need for insights has shaped the creative process. In fact, these radical breakthroughs are so valuable that we’ve invented traditions and rituals that increase the probability of an epiphany, making us more likely to hear those remote associations coming from the right hemisphere. Just look at poets, who often rely on literary forms with strict requirements, such as haikus and sonnets. At first glance, this writing method makes little sense, since the creative act then becomes much more difficult. Instead of composing freely, poets frustrate themselves with structural constraints.

But that’s precisely the point. Unless poets are stumped by the form, unless they are forced to look beyond the obvious associations, they’ll never invent an original line. They’ll be stuck with clichés and conventions, with predictable adjectives and boring verbs. And this is why poetic forms are so important. When a poet needs to find a rhyming word with exactly three syllables or an adjective that fits the iambic scheme, he ends up uncovering all sorts of unexpected connections; the difficulty of the task accelerates the insight process. Just look at Dylan’s verb choice in the second stanza of “Like a Rolling Stone,” which contains one of the most memorable lines in the song:

                You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
                But you know you only used to get juiced in it.

Juiced in it? It’s an incredibly effective phrase, even though the listener has no idea what it means. It’s not until the next couplet that the need for juiced becomes clear:

                And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
                And now you find out you’re gonna have to get used to it

Dylan uses the surprising word juiced because it rhymes with used, which is part of the snarling line that gives the stanza its literal meaning. Nevertheless, the innovative use of juice as a verb is one of those poetic flourishes that makes “Like a Rolling Stone” so transcendent. It’s a textbook example of how the imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.”

-Jonah Lehrer
Imagine

Regret 'No Regrets'

"If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. 

The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… 

We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. 

Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better."

-Kathryn Schulz

Psychology of Regret TED Talk

Creativity in a Building

"Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing. You say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

So he had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. “If a building doesn’t encourage that, you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity,” he said. “So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.” The front doors and main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium, the café and the mailboxes were there, the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it, and the six-hundred-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” Lasseter recalled. “I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”"


-Walter Isaacson
 Steve Jobs

The Bigger Picture

"One day Jobs came into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, an engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain, but Jobs cut him off. 'If it could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?' he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year. 'Larry was suitably impressed and a few weeks later came back and it booted up twenty-eight seconds faster,' Atkinson recalled. 'Steve had a way of motivating by looking at the bigger picture.'"

-Walter Isaacson
  Steve Jobs

Ben Howard - "Old Pine"

Take a Risk

"I waited at home in my own comfort zone. Thought my life was planned out already set in stone. I ran from love with no goodbyes not even trying. So I crossed an ocean. Climbed the mountains. Quit some things in life and threw pennies in fountains. I fell in love. Told some goodbyes. Oh, now I'm trying.
 
Tell me you tried. Tell me you dropped out. Tell me your lies. Tell me you left town. Tell me you fell in love with a girl and you don't know why. Tell me you gave risk a try.

Now, I'm gonna travel all over. Play my love songs for her. Hold my child close to me while he weeps on my shoulder. So baby boy, please don't cry. You're the reason why I am giving risk a try.

Tell me you tried. Tell me you dropped out. Tell me your lies. Tell me you left town. Tell me you fell in love with a girl and you don't know why. Tell me you gave risk a try.

'So take the rocky road,
that leads you far from home.
The comforts now in life will only upset your soul.
Live your dream. Change your life.
Take a risk and try.'"

"Take a Risk"
by Sean Bruce
from his album Daytime Hopes

Lawyer -->Wilderness Instructor

"On New year's Day 2010, my two-year old son broke his femur in a skiing accident while we were vacationing in Lander. I spent eight weeks there while he recovered, thinking about life. For a decade, I'd been moving up the law-firm ladder in California and relegating what I really love - climbing - to the weekends. My husband and I decided to just stay in Wyoming, and I started looking for work with an organization whose mission matched my core values. I applied for a n internship with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as a blogger. Within a few months I was hired as a writer, and this summer I became the diversity-and-inclusion manager and trained to lead wilderness courses. NOLS is flexible with schedules, and we're encouraged to spend nice days skiing, climbing, or running. Some meetings happen on bycycles. I make a fifth of what I made as a lawyer, but I'm at least five times happier. I'm climbing four days a week, and I play with my son outside every day."

-Aparna Rajagopal-Durbin - as told to Michael Roberts
Outside Magazine (September 2011)

In Music...

Super 8

Experiences vs. Possessions

"The cheapskate next door knows something that numerous social scientists have confirmed, including Ryan Howell, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. Howell’s research not only supports the idea that spending to create life experiences, as opposed to accumulating more possessions, makes us happier; his findings also show that the relative amount we spend on those experiences doesn’t directly impact the level of happiness they provide. A $27 dinner, for example, can bring the same amount of happiness as a $400 weekend getaway.

So the important thing is not how much we spend on an experience – assuming it costs anything at all – but rather that we make the effort to have them. For that, of course, we need time. That’s why, as discussed before, the cheapskate next door values his time and what he can do with it more than money and the stuff he can buy with it.

When I speak to groups about the virtues of the cheapskate lifestyle, I like to ask the adults in the audience how many birthday and holiday gifts from their childhood they remember, and how many of those gifts they still own today. The answer is usually just a couple, at most, of the countless gifts most of us were showered with when we were kids.

Then I ask them how many memories from those same special occasions they remember and cherish even more with each passing year. You can see the light bulbs coming on. As the cheapskates next door know, possessions tend to disappoint and become less valuable over time, while experiences often retain or even increase in value with age."

Jeff Yeager
The Cheapskate Next Door

being human

But there does need to be a new realization that being human is something great, a great challenge, to which the banality of just drifting along doesn't do justice. Any more than the attitude that comfort is the best way to live, that feeling healthy is the sum and substance of happiness. There needs to be a new sense that being human is subject to a higher set of standards, indeed, that it is precisely these demands that make a greater happiness possible in the first place. There needs to be a sense that being human is like a mountain-climbing expedition that includes some arduous slopes. But it is by them that we reach the summit and are able to experience for the first time how beautiful it is to be. Emphasizing this is a particular concern to me."

-Pope Benedict XVI
Light of the World

Full Moon

"I wish to be like the moon . . .

A beautiful reflection of the Son."

Photo and Quote by Janenne deClouet

Reality of Progress

"Q: 'God saw everything that he had made,' the Book of Genesis says, 'and behold, it was very good.' It is frightening , then, what has meanwhile become of this dream of a planet. The question is this: Is the earth quite simply not sustaining the enormous developmental potential of our species? Is it perhaps not designed at all for us to remain here in the long run? Or are we doing something wrong here?
Answer:

Light of the World

Family Matters

“The home is (or should be) the primary and the most natural environment in which love is given and received. The love and unity of the family serves as the foundation for the growth of the children, providing a sense of identity, peace, trust, openness, and joy that will prepare them to take their place in society. Small acts of thoughtfulness to those closest to us make them feel welcome, accepted, worthy, and appreciated. The home offers ample opportunities for sharing joys, bearing hardships together, providing support in suffering, putting oneself at the disposal of others, seeking not to be served but rather to serve – all expressions of love. Where ‘tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule,’ the family, both parents and children, will grow in holiness.”

Where There is Love There is God

If i ever get the nerve to say hello in this cafe...

Black Rice

Getting your antioxidants from fresh berries can be pricey. A new report from scientists at Louisiana State University shows black rice is higher than blueberries in the powerful free-radical buster anthocyanin – while supplying more vitamin E and fiber. SWAP IT FOR: instant rice, white rice, or brown rice.  

Gethsemane

Every soul can at least dimly understand the nature of the struggle that took place on the moonlit night in the garden of Gethsemane. Every heart knows something about it. No one has ever come to the twenties – let alone to the forties, or the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies of life – without reflecting with some degree of seriousness on himself and the world round about him, and without knowing the terrible tension that has been caused in his soul by sin. Faults and follies do not efface themselves from the record of memory; sleeping tablets do not silence them; psychoanalysts cannot explain them away. The brightness of youth may make them fade into some dim outline, but there are times of silence – on a sick bed, sleepless nights, the open seas, a moment of quiet, the innocence in the face of a child – when these sins, like specters or phantoms, blaze their unrelenting characters of fire upon our consciences. Their force might not have been realized in a moment of passion, but conscience is biding its time and will bear its stern uncompromising witness sometime, somewhere, and force a dread upon the soul that ought to make it cast itself back again to God. Terrible though the agonies and tortures of a single soul be, they were only a drop in the ocean of humanity’s guilt which the Savior felt as his own in the Garden.

Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ