(토요모임) [Jan. 03, 2015] Saturday meeting topic

[*시에나*]

1. Just 8% of People Achieve Their New Year's Resolutions. Here's How They Do It.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2013/01/01/just-8-of-people-achieve-their-new-years-resolutions-heres-how-they-did-it/

Let me guess: You want to lose weight in 2015, or maybe just eat healthier. Perhaps you want to spend less money or spend more time with your friends and family.

I know I do.

Self-improvement, or at least the desire for it, is a shared American hobby. It’s why so many of us—some estimates say more than 40% of Americans—make New Year’s resolutions. (For comparison, about one-third of Americans watch the Super Bowl.)

But for all the good intentions, only a tiny fraction of us keep our resolutions; University of Scranton research suggests that just 8% of people achieve their New Year’s goals.

Why do so many people fail at goal-setting, and what are the secrets behind those who succeed? The explosion of studies into how the brain works has more experts attempting to explain the science behind why we make resolutions—and more relevantly, how we can keep them.

Keep it Simple

Many people use the New Year as an opportunity to make large bucket lists or attempt extreme makeovers, whether personal or professional.

That’s a nice aspiration, experts say—but the average person has so many competing priorities that this type of approach is doomed to failure. Essentially, shooting for the moon can be so psychologically daunting, you end up failing to launch in the first place.

So “this year, I’m keeping my resolution list short,” says Chris Berdik, a science journalist and the author of “Mind Over Mind. “I think my earlier laundry lists made it easier to abandon.”

And it’s more sensible to set “small, attainable goals throughout the year, rather than a singular, overwhelming goal,” according to psychologist Lynn Bufka. “Remember, it is not the extent of the change that matters, but rather the act of recognizing that lifestyle change is important and working toward it, one step at a time,” Bufka adds.

Make it Tangible

Setting ambitious resolutions can be fun and inspiring, but the difficulty in achieving them means that your elation can quickly give way to frustration. That’s why goals should be bounded by rational, achievable metrics.

“A resolution to lose some weight is not that easy to follow,” notes Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist.

“It is much easier to follow a plan that says no potato chips, fries, or ice cream for six weeks.”

And be specific. Don’t say you’re “going to start going to the gym” in 2016—set a clear ambition, like attending a weekly spin class or lifting weights every Tuesday or Thursday.

“We say if you can’t measure it, it’s not a very good resolution because vague goals beget vague resolutions,” says John Norcross of the University of Scranton.

Make it Obvious

Experts recommend charting your goals in some fashion, although there’s no universal strategy for success. For some, making a clear to-do list is enough of a reminder; others rely on “vision boards” or personal diaries.

An emerging tactic: share your goals with your friends and family. It’s another way to build accountability, especially in the Facebook era.

For example, after a woman named Anna Newell Jones ran more than $23,600 into debt, she made a New Year’s resolution to work her way out of it–and publicly. As part of that effort, Newell Jones launched a blog, And Then We Saved, to chronicle her attempt to go from shopaholic to spendthrift; in less than a year and a half, she’d paid off her debt.

My friend Rivka Friedman, who authors a cooking blog called Not Derby Pie, used a similar tactic several years ago: She posted her “kitchen resolutions.” You can still see them on the right-hand side of the blog, as Rivka either crossed off her accomplishments or hyperlinked to blog posts, like her efforts to learn how to “make kimchi” or “fillet a fish (properly).”

Sharing the resolutions “was a good way to hold myself to them,” Rivka told me. And “in our increasingly [public] lives, social media can be used as a motivator,” she argues.

Keep Believing You Can Do It

To be clear: Simply setting a goal does raise your chances of achieving that goal, significantly.

But within weeks or months, people begin abandoning their resolutions as they hit bumps in the road that throw them off their stride.

More often than not, people who fail to keep their resolutions blame their own lack of willpower. In surveys, these would-be resolvers repeatedly say that if only they had more self-determination, they would’ve overcome any hurdles and achieved their goals.

But writing at the Los Angeles Times, Berdik points to an emerging body of research that willpower is malleable. In one study led by a Stanford University psychologist, scientists gauged whether test subjects believed they could exhaust their willpower, and sought to convince them otherwise. The researchers found that people “performed better or worse [on tests] depending on their belief in the durability of willpower.”

You have as much willpower as you think you have, essentially. Which means that on some level, your journey toward self-improvement will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Questions

1. How much do you think you have achieved your New Year’s resolutions in 2015?

2. What are your New Year’s resolutions for 2016?

3. Do you have any strategies to realize them? And what do you think is the most effective way to achieve one’s resolutions? (Keep it simple/ make it obvious/ make it tangible/ keep believing you can do it)

2. 10 Signs Turning 30 Is Closer Than I Realize

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amber-hill/10-signs-turning-30-is-closer-than-i-realize_b_8882234.html

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of turning 27. Personally, I still feel like a hot, young babe. A very tired, jiggly hot, young babe who wears yoga pants on the reg. Regardless, I am definitely too youthful to be almost 30. Thirty is for old, boring people who watch the news and eat dinner at 4:00 p.m. I, being as buoyant and fresh as I am, do things like eat non-GMO cashew butter out of the jar and go on never-ending Netflix binges. I am clearly way too hip to be over the hill of my 20s.

Or so I thought.

Since my birthday, I have been faced with some eye-opening truths... turning 30 is closer than I realize. This whole youthful bit is turning into quite the facade... unfortunately. One afternoon, as I was alphabetizing our books, I was forced to accept reality. After I brewed some coffee and grabbed my fluffy fleece blanket, I curled up on my couch and really pondered my approaching old age.

Here are 10 signs turning 30 is closer than I realize.

1. I've started spending my time unwinding by pulling weeds in our flowerbeds. Like out in my front yard... on my hands and knees... pulling weeds... in plain view of my neighbors. #smh

2. If I am going to consume an alcoholic beverage, it'd better taste GOOD. This isn't a frat party -- I don't want to gag my drink down in hopes of being tipsy in under five minutes. I want to relax with a delicious red blend served in a wine glass, not a Solo cup.

3. I no longer buy pre-packaged meat products. When we want deli meat, hamburgers or seafood, I go straight to Ken the Butcher and request the ribeye five steaks down.

4. I just purchased my first eye cream. That's right... eye cream. Ain't nobody got time for dark circles and fine lines.

5. I worry over things like sunscreen, fragrance-free laundry detergent, and high-fructose corn syrup. I mean, seriously, why isn't that corn-starch-based sweetener banned yet??

6. I used to be saddened and question my coolness if I didn't have plans on Saturday night. But now I'm as giddy as a toddler on Christmas Eve if I get to be in my jammies by 8:00 p.m.

7. There is absolutely no way I can pull off saying words like "fleek" and "yolo." Don't even get me started on trying to nae nae. Can you say whiplash?

8. My new favorite place to shop is Costco. Who doesn't love free samples and buying 50 rolls of toilet paper for $12?

9. My idea of a "thrill" is when I pull off a flawless checkout at Target. I'm like Extreme Couponers, mom style. I've got multiple transactions, coupons, cartwheel, my REDcard, AND my credit card (gotta get those airline miles). All with a tired toddler and infant strapped to my chest.

10. For my birthday I ask for things like kitchen gadgets, house shoes, and new spandex.

Once I completed this fairly obvious list about how turning 30 is closer than I realize, I felt depressed. So, naturally, I was forced to open up a new bottle of Noble Vines and immediately delve into the next season of The Blacklist.

My dear friend, if you find yourself guilty of any of the above, then I'm afraid turning 30 may be closer than you realize.

If that's the case, I'll catch you at Costco -- I'll be the one standing next to the chicken salad samples.

 Questions

1. How have your attitude and mindset changed as you grew old?

2. What do you think is the biggest difference between those in their 20s and 30s in terms of lifestyles?

3. How do you want to grow as a person?

Uber for Breakups

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/can-you-dump-someone-over-the-internet-no-please-dont/415641/

You can now pay a stranger to end things with your significant other. Because of course you can.

The prices, it should be said, are quite reasonable.

For $10, you can buy a text sent to your significant other informing him or her of the cessation of your affection. For the same amount, you can buy an email version of that note. For slightly more—$20—you can buy, if you are feeling traditional or especially official about it, an actual letter announcing the breakup. Custom missives will run you a little more: $30 for a letter that features names, explanations, and other details that will help to drive home the facts that 1) this is over, and 2) this is not a joke.

It is, to be clear, totally not a joke. These breakup offerings are offered by the new service The Breakup Shop. Which is an actual thing. And which is exactly what it says it is:

The items for sale on the site, however, include not just writing-based notices. If you’re feeling like your text and/or email and/or letter might leave room for understandable and actually probably inevitable confusion on the part of their recipient, you can also hire a breakup phone call, placed at the time of your choosing. (It’ll cost you $29, with prices increasing for rush orders.)

That call will be made, at this early point in The Breakup Shop’s history, by one of The Breakup Shop’s two founders.

It will include select details, provided by the breaker-upper, of what the break-up-ee has done to be broken up with.

It will also include, at the end of the proceedings, an offer for the freshly dumped individual to visit The Breakup Shop’s online gift emporium, which includes such time-tested sadness solutions as a Blu-Ray of The Notebook ($25), a set of two 18-oz. wine glasses ($15), and a box of Chips Ahoy! Rainbow Cookies ($5).

We know all this because the Motherboard writer Emanuel Maiberg recently tested the service out on his girlfriend of five years, arranging for a breakup call that cited for its existence, among other deal-breaking flaws, her love of makeup and her distaste for helping out in the kitchen. (The call was, fortunately, an actual test: Maiberg warned her in advance that the call was coming, and the breakup was enacted for stunt purposes only.)

And: The results of the breakup call were just as awkward as even more awkward than you’d expect. The Breakup Caller paused at inopportune moments. He dutifully cited the reasons for the breakup, clearly reading from a list. He suggested, at the end, that the dumpee take solace in that online gift shop. The whole thing was terrible and horrible and haunting on pretty much every level imaginable.

The Breakup Shop may be efficient and, to a degree, even useful. But: Is it a system fit for humans?

So. Yes. Anyway. Here is the argument for the existence of a service like The Breakup Shop: Closure. The avoidance of the confusion and the anxiety that can come when an official breakup is skipped in favor of a drawn-out process of ghosting. MacKenzie, one of the founders of the service, in fact got the idea for The Breakup Shop when he was ghosted upon by a girl he was seeing casually: Rather than telling him that they were done, she simply cut off communication with him. And “the least you can do is break up with someone and give them that closure,” Evan, The Breakup Shop’s other founder, noted. Which is extremely true.

But, then, here are the arguments against a service like The Breakup Shop: Empathy. Human decency. The fact that your mom raised you so much better than this.

And the fact, too, that this is probably not the kind of thing we, as a society, want to do with our new technologies. Last week, in an essay for The Atlantic, Robin Sloan argued against the sometimes dehumanizing efficiencies that the app economy is bringing about. “We are alive,” he wrote, “at a time when huge systems—industrial, infrastructural—are being remade, and I think it’s our responsibility as we make choices both commercial and civic—it’s just a light responsibility, don’t stress—to extrapolate forward, and ask ourselves: Is this a system I want to live inside? Is this a system fit for humans?”

The Breakup Shop may be efficient and, to a degree, even useful. But: Is it a system fit for humans?

It’s revealing that the cofounders of The Breakup Shop—MacKenzie and Evan, who are brothers, based in Canada—offer many, many justifications for their service. It’s even more revealing, though, that they asked Maiberg not to share their full names with his readers. They wanted, they explained—though, really, no explanation was necessary—“to protect their identity.”

 Questions

1. What do you think about this application “The Breakup Shop”? Do you think it is useful?

2. What do you think is the best way to inform your significant other of the cessation of your affection? Do you think it is okay to break up over text message or e-mail?

3. If you are an app developer, what kind of app do you want to make?

[*시에나*]

2015년이 다 끝났네요...ㅜㅜ 때가 때이니 만큼 새해 결심에 대한 이야기와 나이드는 문제?에 대한
토픽을 준비해 봤습니다. 2016년에 만나서 즐겁게 이야기해요~!! ^^

[Ray`]

매년 초마다 이야기 하기 좋은주제네 ㅎ