Women, Willpower, and Thanksgiving

Hey you! Yes, you–the one with all those balls in the air! Before you take another bite of pumpkin pie, read this. A couple of new books–Willpower, by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, PhD and New York Times reporter John Tierney, and The Willpower Instinct by Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD–dig into the science [...]

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Good Grief!

This one’s a taboo buster, people, buckle up. So, last week, the Santa Barbara independent published a couple of excerpts from Undecided as its (incredibly illustrated!) cover story. One was long; one was medium; one was wee—just one lonely paragraph. But an important one. Despite the fact that I picked it (and, you know, wrote [...]

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Sucked in by the Noise

On this day of dreary election post-mortems, I couldn’t help reflecting on an article from Bloomberg News that I read  last week.  It reminded me of the ways in which the constant noise messes with our ability to think for ourselves. I’ve got a larger point here, but indulge me while I take a detour: [...]

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Beware the Echo Chamber

Is this the trouble with girlfriends?  They tell us what we want to hear? That’s what controversial writer Lori Gottlieb (she of “Marry Him: The case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” fame) suggests in a piece in the July issue of Marie Claire that I came across the other day.   She’s writing mainly about [...]

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Happy Birthday, Undecided

What goes around,  you know, comes around.  That’s what came to mind yesterday when someone sent me a link to this post on College Candy wherein Charlsie, a new college grad, charts the difference between choosing a major and, sigh, choosing a life.  Let’s look: Looking back, college didn’t require a lot of serious decision [...]

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Killing Your Darlings

Here’s something you might not know: a writer generally spends as much (or more) time cutting words as writing them. And it can be heartbreaking–once you finally have your thoughts out and onto the page in clear, organized, rhythmic form, the last thing you want to do is commence a blood bath. But, assignments usually [...]

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A Thought Question for Groundhog Day: What if you had it to do all over again?

And again and again and again and again…. Undoubtedly, you’ve asked yourself this very question more than once in your life, wished for a replay, a do-over, a little taste of what Bill Murray was forced to endure in the 1993 flick Groundhog Day–giving an entirely new meaning to the term while he was at [...]

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Zen and the Art of Multitasking

There’s this charming story, about a Zen student and his teacher, trying to impart the lesson of mindfulness. “When drinking tea,” the teacher told his student, ”just drink tea.” How often do you just drink tea? Such a beautifully simple idea. Be Here Now. Focus. Breathe. So quaint… and yet, so hopelessly impossible. At the moment, [...]

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No Fear…

“If life is just a series of decisions, then making smart ones is paramount, especially now.” So begins a piece from this month’s Elle magazine, entitled “Analyze This: Should you go with your head or your heart?” In it, writer Louisa Kamps goes on to explore the ways in which fear — which, she implies, [...]

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Dear Internet, What Should I Do With My Life?

So it’s come to this. “This” being Hunch.com, the website that “helps you make decisions and gets smarter the more you use it.” Whatever you’re struggling with–where to live, what kind of job to have, what cocktail to make your signature–it’ll tell you what to do. It’s kind of 1984, doncha think? Are decisions really [...]

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