Mind-Manual

Maybe Being Too Happy Makes You Less Productive

Research out of the University of Toronto (my school!) suggests being in good moods lead to a more global, forest-seeing perspective rather than focusing on the trees. Choice quote:

“Under positive moods, people may process a greater number of objects in their environment, which sounds like a good thing, but it also can result in distraction,” said Taylor Schmitz, a graduate student of Anderson’s and lead author of the study. “Good moods enhance the literal size of the window through which we see the world. The upside of this is that we can see things from a more global, or integrative perspective. The downside is that this can lead to distraction on critical tasks that require narrow focus, such as operating dangerous machinery or airport screening of passenger baggage. Bad moods, on the other hand, may keep us more narrowly focused, preventing us from integrating information outside of our direct attentional focus.”

Personally I’ve noticed that I work the best/most when I am a little bit serious rather than my normal happy self. Maybe I can start depressing myself a bit before I sit down to work.

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Star Trek: Review

Possible spoiler alert! I just wanted to do a quick review highlighting some things I found interesting in the new movie.

• It’s better than Terminator Salvation. I saw it after Salvation and Star Trek is by far the better movie.
• The opening scene is amazing. Within a few minutes, I almost had tears in my eyes over the death of Kirk’s father.
• The story is really well told and I cared about the characters. That may not sound like a lot, but Salvation missed that mark.
• According to Peterson (whom I love and have written about extensively before), “reality” can be divided up into the explored territory, unexplored territory and the thing that explores. A lot of myths are subtly about this interplay and stories that are built on these mythical structures seem to just grip us more than they “should”. Star Trek is pretty explicitly about exploring the unknown, and the explorers are the main characters. The known is represented by culture/the Great Father in stories and Star Trek is no exception. You will hear the refrain, “your father would be very proud of you”. Meaning, your culture is proud of you, and adversary is defeated. Very mythical story.
• As Peterson says, science fiction is where people who cannot stand traditional belief structures get their mythology.

I tend to rate movies by:

• whether I’d pay to see them again,
• whether I would pay to see them once (and not really pay for more times than that),
• movies I’d pay for once and not want to see again,
• movies I wouldn’t pay for to watch,
• movies I wouldn’t watch.

Star Trek is a movie I feel I would pay to see again. Terminator Salvation, on the other hand, I wouldn’t pay to see if I was you.

PS sorry for the hotlinking.

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