Overload

In, "A Few Thoughts on Cognitive Overload," David Kirsh, Cognitive Science professor at UCSD, identifies one source of stress that hit close to home today:

"And no matter what we have found so far,  most people harbor a lingering belief that even more relevant information lies outside, somewhere, and if found will save having to duplicate effort."

Moderation

The man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly not only preserves his health the longest, but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work.
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776

Complaining

We all need an occasional reminder. Here's a clever one.

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

Lou Holz

Edison

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-Thomas Edison

Edison made his fortune as a result of his willingness to get his hands dirty and get to work.  He was in New York, looking for ways to make money to help his ailing mother.  He noticed a group of people gathered around a broken stock ticker, and was probably astonished at their inability or unwillingness to try and fix it.  He stepped up, examined it, replaced a loose spring, and voila!  The owner of the ticker was so impressed he offered him a job to maintain all their mechanical equipment, for a hefty salary of $300 per month.  According to this inflation calculator, that's roughly the equivalent of $5,000 per month in today's dollars.  Not bad!  Moreover, this new foray into stock tickers led to the sale of one of his stock ticker patents for $40,000.  That's $665,000 in today's dollars!  That chunk of capital funded his invention factory that changed the world.

Biographical and quote sources: biography.com and thomasedison.com.

Entreleadership

Henry Ford:
"Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do."

Monologue

When you think, you think in a particular language. English, for instance. When you reason with yourself or plan out your day, you say to yourself, without speaking, "I need to get my clothes on after I shower, and be out of the house by 7:00am so I can be at work by 7:30." There is a voice in your head. And not the crazy, you-belong-in-a-sanitarium-type voice that tells you to do such and such. I mean a voice that articulates your own will to yourself. What is unique about this voice, however, is that you both speak it and listen to it at once.

Before you speak out loud to another, you often speak to yourself, running routines of phrases past your own internal judge to decide whether your plan is appropriate, how it will be interpreted, whether it communicates what you intend to communicate.

The part of your mind, then, that formulates speech, must be a different part from that which interprets it. And they communicate to one another by this artificial form of speech, wherein the rest of your body does not participate.

But is the purpose of the internal voice only to formulate what will soon be said, or are there alternative purposes? I sometimes think to myself without ever planning to speak to another. I use my language to analyze my other experiences, and to weigh decisions internally. Language and this internal voice, then, are a vital part of my conduct. Through this internal voice, I perform rational operations.

The voice may be expressed in written form, as it is here in this blog. Or it may be expressed in spoken language. Does it play a part, though, in other forms of internal expression? Is Picasso's work an expression of his internal voice? Did he verbally reason with himself about the colors, texture, or form of his work?