Thursday Three For All
It’s Thursday, kiddies: the day when I roll out a few things I’ve been reading over the past week. Three of ‘em, to be exact. Enjoy. (Remember: click on the bold print to read the entire article.)
How to Focus: 5 Research-Backed Secrets to Concentration. (via Eric Barker) Ironically, this excellent article on focus contains a plethora of supplemental hyperlinks to make you unfocused. But whatevs.
1. Focus is a muscle.
You bounce around between apps on your phone, email, TV and Facebook. We think those are just bad habits. But it’s a little more insidious than that. Citing the research of the late Clifford Nass (formerly of Stanford University), Georgetown professor Cal Newport explains that too much unfocused time degrades your ability to concentrate when you need to.
Why I’m Putting Ebooks on the Shelf for 2016. (via @michaelhyatt) We’ve had this conversation before, my friends. Try as I might, I can’t make the jump to ebooks. 100 pages is about as much as I can handle before I feel like I’m cracking under the pressure. Someone much smarter than me explains why he’s giving up…for now.
Even though I firmly believe that “leaders are readers and readers are leaders,” I have found myself reading fewer and fewer books with each passing year.
My goal for 2015 was to read twenty-six books. I ended up only finishing twelve. Worse, I actually bought 106 new books.
I realize I can’t blame my failure to read more all on ebooks, and I don’t want to. But I do think they were a contributing factor. Here’s why, and for me these eight reasons are why I’m going back to physical books this year.
Injured Iraq Vet Plows Snow for His Neighbors. (via @laughingsquid) Incredible. All I could think while watching this was the number of “good” excuses I have for not serving others. Join me as Justin Anderson shatters those for us.
