Slacker Method for Sounding Smart (Please Don’t Use Big Words)
Posted by Jacques - February 5, 2009
I do not consider myself to be smart. People like Tim Ferris, Warren Buffet, and Leonardo Da Vinci are the truly smart people. I’m content just appearing to be smart (relative to others).
Sounding smart is an important skill to have nowadays. While this isn’t something you can master in a day, there’s definitely a few shortcuts you can take short of actually knowing everything. Pretending to be smart, as it turns out, is a lot easier than actually being smart.
Sounding smart is useful because it means people will listen to you, you’ll get promotions, you’ll get your way, and you won’t be ridiculed. I know you’re going to roll your eyes at some of these so called “tips” but I promise you, if you can employ all of the strategies I list here, people will perceive you to be at least one standard deviation above the average intelligence (see what I did there?!). These can be used at work, or when having conversations with friends or potential business partners.
Continue reading Slacker Method for Sounding Smart (Please Don’t Use Big Words)…
Why do we procrastinate?
Posted by Jacques - November 24, 2008At this very moment I am delaying a long list of tasks that I could be doing right now. At some point, people will tell me that I’m procrastinating. But at what point does postponing become procrastination? Is it a period of time? Is it the importance of the task at hand? Some people would say it’s a combination of both. Many dictionaries would define procrastination as needless or unnecessary delay or postponement. Still others who are somewhat more intelligent would add, that people who delay doing things because they are inconvenient, annoying, loathed or feared would be procrastinating. By that definition a delayed birth isn’t biology, it’s procrastination!
But who can judge whether something is needless or unnecessary? Who decided that the task is delayed simply because I chose not to have a huge buffer between the day I completed the task, and the final day that task was due?
What I’m trying to get you to understand is that procrastination is an arbitrary label placed on slackers by society. True, some people will avoid taking out the trash or doing their work because they are lazy. But those aren’t really the kind of slackers I’m talking about nor the type of people who read this blog. I purposefully and intentionally choose not to perform tasks for two reasons. First, I know that I will use more time if more is available to me to perform a task. Secondly, I’m not always in the mood to do certain things and when I force myself to flow against my karmic energy, I will get moody.
Yes, I said karmic energy, but there’s no other way to explain why sometimes I feel like working and sometimes I don’t. The moodier I get, the less efficient I work, and eventually I will not be able to work at all. So, stop telling me I’m procrastinating, and just understand that this is the way tasks flow through my pipeline. We are not straight pipes, we have twists and turns, feelings and emotions, so sometimes we will work hard and sometimes we won’t. Sometimes we’ll begin tasks as soon as they are available to do, and at other times we will simply wait until there is not much time left to do them in.
I just want everyone to know that this is okay and that in the end, our accomplishments do not balance out the harsh reality of life, they do not help us overcome ourselves, and we can’t take them with us where we are all eventually going.
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