Evaluating the competition

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Jam Willem Doormembal - Two mandarines

It may look like the natural thing to do – in order to be creative, you should avoid seeing what others are doing.

If you really want to create something original, it may seem, you need to ignore the footsteps of your predecessors.

I’m 50-50 with this. I’m not sure of a 100% solution.

On one hand, it’s good to see what others have done before you, so you can improve on it, and not come up with a strange solution. If you don’t know what others have done prior to you, you risk doing a similar piece of work or coming up with something which feels out of place.

On another hand, if you want to be totally creative, it might help you not knowing what others have done. This solution is not applicable to agencies, where you need to know what others have created, so you don’t go into copying other people’s work.

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Ending world hunger

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Alessio Terzo - Mandorle

It’s a paradox that in some parts of the world, people try to lose some weight, while in other people don’t have enough food.

I’ll mention the “losing weight” people in this blog post because I tend to be more familiar with the situation.

“De ce îi este omului de astăzi foame? De iubire și de sens.”
Nicolae Steinhardt în Jurnalul fericirii

While Nicolae Steinhardt might refer to emotional hunger by saying that the modern person wishes for more love and meaning in life, I think that when you are hungry you tend to wish for things like pizza or chocolate, high in calories, and delicious food.

“In conclusion, even short-term fasts can lead people to make more unhealthy food choices, picking a lower quantity of high-calorie, relative to low-calorie, foods.”

Fattening Fasting: Hungry Grocery Shoppers Buy More Calories, Not More Food | Lifestyle Behaviors | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network

What’s the solution? I’ve found two solutions:

  • Let’s say it’s 8 in the evening, and you feel hungry. As a  preventive measure, you don’t have pizza or chocolate in the house, but there are other temptations. The first solution is to settle for less. OK, perhaps not pizza, but how about some food which you do find very tasty, but is much less taxing? I like some nuts & seeds, fish caviar, eggplant salad, and even combinations of milk/kefir and bread/polenta (some people don’t like this, while I most certainly do). Even if you eat some jam and bread, it’s not like you eat some chocolate in the evening.
  • The second solution is not to exaggerate the portions. Do you feel like eating some food? Go ahead, but don’t eat until you are 100% full, leave some food for tomorrow. You’ll surely live to see the new day.

With my solution, even if for the day perhaps you’ll eat more calories than in a typical day with calorie restrictions in place, you will not lose much time.

Second-best solutions can be great, too!

Minimize your losses.

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Boy meets world

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Melusina Parkin - Worlds 3

There’s a time in someone’s life when the young person meets the world.

You get to understand better some things in your life.

So, while in early childhood you’re very happy, at some point you get to understand some things.

The age can vary dramatically, there are some children who are forced to work at a very young age.

The thing is, while this process is a necessary step to adapt to the realities of the world, I don’t view it as a pleasant one.

From my experience, it was actually very hard and harsh, and the thing is life after that moment wasn’t ever the same.

If I were to pick, I’d make this transition as further away as possible.

Later edit: On another hand, this helped me grow. It wasn’t pleasant, but I was able to better face the world at a later stage in my life.

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Why you shouldn’t worry, at all

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Nick Kenrick - For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings

Why do people worry?

First of all, it’s easy. It seems like the natural thing to do. It’s within your reach.

Then, it’s a habit, you try not to, but you’re so used to it.

Does it have a good part?

Sure – it makes you prevent some possible failures.

How about the bad part?

It can give you anxiety, and a state of not feeling well.

What’s the solution?

Think of this chart, if you have no problems in your life, you shouldn’t worry. If you do have some problem, focus on solving it, and either you can solve it or not, you shouldn’t worry, cause just worrying won’t solve it.

Nice graph.

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Resurse despre emoji-uri / emoticoane în texte (subject line / meta descriptions)

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Elias Rovielo - Emoji esculptures, República Subway Station, São Paulo, Brazil

Găsiți mai jos câteva resurse despre emoji-uri / emoticoane în texte (subject line / meta descriptions):

Opinia mea despre asta?

  • Cred că a fost un tend vizibil ascendent când au început să fie folosite.
  • În prezent, sunt destul de neutru referitor la folosirea lor. Există nișe (produse destinate copiilor; site-uri axate pe umor) unde pot ajuta; există nișe (lucruri serioase, business-uri cu reputație) unde pot face rău.
  • În general, în prezent, le evit, dar dacă văd un text cu emoticoane nu consider neapărat că va afecta negativ rata de conversie

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Good student, bad student

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byronv2 - Book and Coffee

I’ve met some really good students in my life. All – better than me.

What was a bit surprising is that most of these students were good at multiple things at once. Sure, they had some ups and downs, but, all-in-all, they were good overall.

My opinion on this is that knowledge compounds – if you learn well in the first grade, you’ll learn easier in the second grade and so on.

On another hand, if you don’t learn well for a while, it’s harder to catch up.

This made me think – can you regain the lost knowledge?

Think of people going to prison for a long while (for example, in communist time in Romania). Did they recover from the lost time in prison?

Two opposite views on this:

  • First, I wouldn’t say time in prison, or time spent for a while not learning well academically is lost time. Sure, it’s not pleasant to be in prison, and sure, if you don’t do your tasks for doing well in school, you can be left behind. But time spent in prison and the time spent doing other activities than learning for school can be a formation period (more on this »). You can learn by reading, but you can also learn by doing things, by watching things on TV, by talking to others, by helping, or by asking for help. Life is a continuous learning period. You can learn quite a lot by reading (books, mostly), but learning is not 100% connected to reading books.
  • On another hand, I’d say “No, you can’t recover the time lost on a 100% level”. If you don’t learn for years, it’s harder to catch up.

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