Tag: psychology

Social Media and Distraction

Life catches up with you. Like a night out stumbling from one bar to another, social media can have no purpose and damage your life if you don’t pay attention. Facebook updates for giggles and laughs is not a long term strategy unless you are a comedian. Chasing likes and shares, while measurable, will not get you anywhere meaningful. It will distract you from making something useful and interesting.

I have gone through peaks and troughs with social media – After becoming disgusted with my online self, I purged all my accounts …and now slowly I am trying again with more purpose. Now I have reached some sort of balance with the following social/web presence to manage:

  • a personal Facebook profile
  • a personal Instagram profile
  • a Chimpwithcans Instagram profile (public – see link)
  • a Chimpwithcans Facebook page (public feed of this blog and Instagram – see link)
  • a Chimpwithcans Twitter profile (public feed of this blog – see link)
  • this blog (public)

Less distraction, more creativity, more intentionality (big word no?).

Hifi and sacrifice

If you listen to music, you have chosen not to do something else. Sacrifice.

In western culture today the idea of sacrifice is often over dramatized. The words conjure up images of lambs slaughtered, pain, blood, sweat, tears. What is not often explained or acknowledged is how sacrifice happens every second of every day. It is fundamental to achieving anything. It is something we should get our heads around and I think it is something many of us deny exists.

With music and Hifi this means we must choose what to sacrifice in the quest for audio quality and listening. Perhaps we need to eat beans and water for a few weeks to afford those new speakers. Perhaps we choose to listen to an album rather than play sport or talk to our kids. You can have your listening room in the house, but you’ll need to give up on the big social lounge.

Everything is a sacrifice of some sort. And that is the dance we are all doing! 🐵🎧

Hifi and science

On an anecdotal level, hifi music often overwhelms everything else I am doing. When I hear a song that I like, on equipment that i like, nothing else really matters. I am happy and absorbed, and ensconced in the sound.

On an evolutionary level, why do we humans enjoy music? Why do we dance? What is it about certain sounds that makes me feel like i do? What is the evolutionary function of music? Are these feelings and effects all just neural impulses? If so, to what end?

Luckily I am not the first person to think about these things. I have just come across a book that I hope will help me answer some of these questions, or at least explore some of these ideas.

Hook line and sinker

I have this old stereo amplifier. I bought it from a slick salesman. He linked the amp up to some INCREDIBLE speakers in his made-for-purpose listening room. I was blown away and handed over too much cash. I’ve been trying to patch together that same sound ever since.

The thing is, I WANTED this to happen. I wanted to hear the perfect set up, I wanted to hand over my money and yes deep down I even wanted the frustration afterwards of not quite getting the salesman’s sound.

We humans are strange animals. A quest is often more fulfilling than a destination. But demonstrating a destination is a powerful sales technique.

Hook line and sinker.

Real life vs. the internal conversations

Maybe it’s to do with my personality type, but I act out scenarios in my head a lot. My imagination then impacts on real life. I convince myself that everyone else has played out the same scenario in THEIR heads. I convince myself that I don’t need to explain anything because they already know!

Of course the probability of two minds being in sync is tiny and this can lead to misunderstandings.

The cure to all this is scary in its simplicity. Talk out loud to people, and ask hard questions even if you think you already know the answer.

Time is running out

So what shall we do with our 24 hours?

Today I played golf under the African sun. I then watched the sun go down with my two baby girls. It’s also my wedding anniversary so I bought my wife a present. We have a good marriage. 6 years now.

A day well spent. But the sun still reminds me of passing time.

Tomorrow needs exercise, communication, and creativity. It needs love.

Another one like today will do just fine. A good day.

Focus snuck up on me

Today was a good day in a good week. But I’m only realizing now after supper. Strikes me that it often goes that way.

When you are busy, focused and enjoying yourself, almost by definition you stop noticing time pass and stop analyzing what you are doing.

Only looking back now am I surprised at a good patch.

Here’s hoping for more blind, ignorant, closed off, unthinking good patches 😉

They don’t teach you calendars at school

Or maybe it was just that I wasn’t listening – either way, I think this should change.

Who doesn’t know how to keep a calendar? This sounds ridiculous, but it has taken me about 10 years to understand how to use and trust my computer’s calendar. At school, timetables were dished out at the beginning of term, pinned up on walls and referred to by everyone else around me. I could always ask my parents, teachers, friends what was coming up and what was due. I could remember a lot (well, enough) of what was important without needing a reference. The net result is that I never developed the skills to keep my own time. I have never trusted my computer calendars until very recently.

When you start using a calendar though, they build upon themselves. The more you use them, the more dependent you are on them, and then the more you will trust and use them again. You are invested, and that makes the whole system work. In this way calendars are a great example for projects in general. If you want to get a project started, then just start. The mental buy-in is what matters. The same thing seems to apply to relationships, exercise, blogging, working a job, keeping healthy.

That is what no school ever taught me – the importance of mentally buying into a concept, and that you can train yourself to do it in order to get something done.

Seems to me, this mental trick in and of itself is one of the most useful things in the world.

Denmark

I have never been to Denmark, but I have spoken to someone who moved there from sunny South Africa. The subject of Friday’s podcast is now freezing in Copenhagen, while we are sweltering in the Cape.

I went to Norway and Sweden once on a trip that culminated in a wedding near the arctic circle. Scandinavia is beautiful (in the summer) and I was curious on Rachel’s take after living through a couple of their winters.

Catch the chimpwithcans podcast on Friday to hear about Rachel’s story.

Moving is harder and more interesting than you think.