The New Liberal Arts: Get a copy

The New Liberal Arts is a book in the style of a university course catalog – except that instead of the usual subjects like biology and sociology, the courses on offer are things like Micropolitics and Attention Economics. It started out as a blog post on Snarkmarket and grew into this project.

There’s 80 pages, with 21 new subjects being pitched in the book. I contributed a piece about folklore and ritual. The paper copy costs $8.99, and after 200 of those are sold they’ll release the PDF version for free.

It goes on sale officially tomorrow NOW so head on to Snarkmarket and get yourself a copy!

Alternatives to Amazon (please update!) #amazonfail

So today there has been a major storm over Amazon’s weird decision to remove the Amazon rank of books related to themes of GLBT sexuality, feminism, or sex education. There’s up to the minute updates (and flailing) through the Twitter hashtag #amazonfail and I particularly like Jezebel’s roundup of related links.

I like Amazon as a resource, and have kept extensive wishlists on there, though I’ve never really bought anything because shipping wasn’t very reasonable. There were some mentions of Amazon alternatives scattered around the Internet, but no collective resource, so I decided to start my own.

Fill up the Alternatives to Amazon Google Form

List of Alternatives to Amazon

Please share these links (those above, and to this post) and fill up the form! Hopefully this will be of help to anyone seeking other sources of books.

The Visualisation Misconception

I had just finished reading Made to Stick , a book describing how ideas take hold in people’s minds and lead them to action. Here’s a good summary.

The book was very interesting overall, but there was a section in there that stuck out to me. (I’m paraphrasing a bit here, because I’ve just returned the book to the library and can’t find online excerpts, but it should be roundabout page 209.) There was a recent study on what form of thinking can help people deal with their problems. The researchers took 3 groups of students who were facing problems in their life.

• One group, the “control group”, was given a short talk on general problem-solving skills.
• The second group was asked to visualise the events that led up to the problem in full detail, including their emotions and thoughts around those events.
• The third group was asked to visualise how they’d feel once the problems were solved – their relief, happiness, joy, etc.

The third tactic is particularly common amongst those who follow the Law of Attraction (Abraham-Hicks, The Secret, etc). It’s also pretty common with people that practice witchcraft and magick. You may be familiar with the hordes of advice on visualising success, the cheque in your hand, the ownership of your dream house, etc.

Which group turned out to be the most successful in dealing with their problems, and also a lot more emotionally positive?

The second group. And not just by a small margin – apparently they were doubly successful.

There goes every self-help book in the world!

The Heath brothers, who wrote Made to Stick, didn’t expand too much on why the second group, who examined the actual problem, were more successful. (If I still remembered the actual citation I’d look it up.) But here’s my theory: working through the problem has a rubber-duck effect. You tell a “rubber duck”, or your head, or a neutral party, what’s going on.

The process of explaining the problem helps in revealing the weak spots – often, as you tell the story, you work out what the matter is, and (without even a peep from your rubber duck) you figure out the solution.

It’s quite like looking for a lost item; you’re better off thinking about where you saw it last, then your feelings on finding the item. Compare it to a maths equation – thinking about how great the end result will be isn’t going to help you figure out 1+1.

Visualising the end result can help in gaining confidence, especially if it’s something out of your control. But it’s not going to lead you to action. On the flipside, brooding about the problem doesn’t do anything either. Both those methods require too much energy on how you feel about the issue – but our feelings usually stem from our thoughts, and they’re not always the best indicator of what to do next.

What the second group seems to be doing is examining their problem from a neutral standpoint, allowing them enough distance to objectively evaluate their situation. The neutrality and distance allows them to see things about their problem that they were blind to when they were emotionally involved. Ever had someone proofread your writing and find tons of errors that you missed? Similar principle.

What does that mean for advocates of the Law of Attraction or The Secret ? Well, there’s certainly no harm in thinking about the end result, especially if it gives you motivation to keep problem-solving. But solutions don’t drop out of trees (unless you’re wishing for leaves). To get the solution, we need to take action. We need to actually solve the problem.

(I made “Getting There” as a category for things related to productivity, inspiration, making your dreams come true, that sort of thing. How’s that for a category name?)