Too Late to Day-dream?

I have not been blogging much during this family vacation at the beach.  Turns out I am doing something right.  This piece by a McGill prof identifies how we pay attention to stuff and how important it is to let our brains meander.

This has not been a particularly productive summer for me. Last summer, I wrote a new book (under review).  This summer, I started a new project and did not make much progress.  I did better un-stalling long moribund projects (conference deadlines are a beautiful thing, sort of).  One of my problems is that I have not followed the advice in this piece--to cordon off my time so that I don't do social media stuff when I am trying to do work.  Turns out that the world today is super-distracting!  Who would have thunk it?

Ok, so I was aware of that before.  But the importance of daydreaming/meandering highlighted here is suggestive.  I probably should listen to fewer podcasts when I am driving/exercising since podcasts mean focus and thus not much creative meandering.  Good thing I don't have a waterproof device for listening to podcasts in the shower.

The good news is that I have been pretty un-focused on this vacation--I have not done much in the way of academic work, I have not blogged, and I have not been on twitter/facebook much expect to post silly pics.

The better news is that this piece does justify something that I do regularly--naps FTW! 

The other key bit of news is that we should feel less guilty when we are not getting stuff done--because that is when we do get bolts of inspiration.  I surprised my relatives by discussing the relevance of guilt in the academic enterprise--they were horrified.  Like anything, perhaps not bad in moderation.   Distractions can be good:


On my last day of vacation, it is time for me to stop blogging and start doing the sunscreen thing.  See you on the other side (of the vacation).

Regret #27 Not Taking Psych

I wish I had taken psychology in college.  This science is really the art of @$#$% with people:


This one experiment demonstrates why politics can be so messed up--we are all about short term gratification.  I have no clue as to how valid or widely accepted this stuff is, as I am not going to read a heap of psych stuff.  I am just going to accept the youtube clip as valid social science.

and thanks to Grantland's youtube hall of fame of the week.

The Latest in McGill's Contribution to Knowledge: Fidelity Testing?

Interesting piece at the NYT: there is a apparently a genetic component to a happy marriage.  A certain variation in a gene is associated with men who are less likely to be married and are more like to have both serious marital problems and unhappy wives (sounds like Tiger and Elin, huh?).  The piece goes onto show that more than genes are involved:

Other McGill studies confirmed differences in how men and women react to such threats. In one, attractive actors or actresses were brought in to flirt with study participants in a waiting room. Later, the participants were asked questions about their relationships, particularly how they would respond to a partner’s bad behavior, like being late and forgetting to call.
Men who had just been flirting were less forgiving of the hypothetical bad behavior, suggesting that the attractive actress had momentarily chipped away at their commitment. But women who had been flirting were more likely to be forgiving and to make excuses for the man, suggesting that their earlier flirting had triggered a protective response when discussing their relationship.

Wow, psychology sounds like fun!

So, this leads to the following question: should women(since the study was done in men) ask their men to take a genetic test before marriage to see if they are likely to be a lousy husband?

HT to EJ for the tweet-link.