Hi Friends-
My favorite links, listens, and longreads from the past week:
Phoning it in. On Hurry Slowly, I chat with Adam Greenfield about the startling ways the smartphone is changing our behavior, our awareness, and even our vulnerability: “There is the sense in which this device connects us to one another and keeps us immersed in a fabric of experiences. And, ordinarily, that’s wonderful, but it also means that we are completely porous and completely un-armored.”
The two-column, guilt-free to-do list. A simple, useful approach to task management: “I tend to be very overwhelmed and demoralized by what I have to do, so I created a system where I have a two-column list of things that require a lot of mental bandwidth and a list of things I can do at the end of the day when my energy is depleted. There’s an easy column and a hard one.”
Can you overdose on happiness? What happens when you can manipulate the brain to create happiness: “‘It’s hard to describe, like describing the difference between a smile and laughter. I suddenly sensed a sort of lift. I feel lighter. Like when it’s been winter, and you have just had enough of the cold, and you go outside and discover the first little shoots and know that spring is finally coming.’ Then, the electrode was turned off. And as soon as the electricity disappeared, the patient reported that her sense of springtime had vanished.”
Attention capital. Cal Newport with an interesting take on why companies need to start investing in their employees’ attention: “In knowledge work, the largest investment and most valuable resource is the attention capital latent within each worker’s brain — that is, their potential to process information into something more valuable. To optimize the return on this capital requires that you care about what helps the human brain best pay attention to what matters and think deeply about it.”
+ How to lock down your phone so it won’t distract you.
+ Everything you need to know about public speaking.
+ A new podcast investigating the gender pay gap.
+ A clean sheet of paper.
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SHOUT-OUTS:
Much appreciation to: SwissMiss, NextDraft, and Marginal Revolution for link ideas.
The finely-tuned drawings are from: Børge Bredenbekk, who is based in Oslo, Norway. Follow him on Instagram.
Show your support by: Forwarding this email to a friend, or leaving a review for Hurry Slowly on iTunes.
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Hi, I'm Jocelyn, the human behind this newsletter. I host the Hurry Slowly podcast — a new show about how you can be more productive, creative, and resilient by slowing down — write books that will help you reclaim your time, and give uncommonly useful talks.
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