Y. Karp? Why Not!

What Star Trek: The Next Generation gets right about work/life balance. Published on LinkedIn Yossi's Magazine: Everyone Needs One of These  www.ykarp.com/magazine Follow on Twitter:  @ykarp Subscribe to Y. Karp? Why Not! Add this blog to your  RSS  feed reader

I wanted to procrastinate today, but I'll push it off until tomorrow. There are many reasons why we purposefully delay doing the things we know should be done. Here are five ways to beat the procrastination blues. 1) Break it down If the task is too big and you don't know where to start, break it down into lots of smaller tasks. For example, don't tell yourself that you need to edit a 250-page manual. Instead, tell yourself that you need to edit chapter 1. When that is done, edit chapter 2. Similarly, when you need to clean a room, mentally divide it into sections and concentrate on cleaning area 1. When that is done, focus on area 2. In effect, you create small, achievable goals, which give you a sense of accomplishment as you cross each one off your list. 2) Start strong This is an interesting one because you could look at it in two opposite ways, both of which work, depending on your personality. Either start with the easy tasks, so that you get a bunch of things...

Leonardo da Vinci was obsessed with manned flight. He never successfully built a flying machine, although he did design a helicopter-like machine that would have worked, had he built it, and he was reported to have successfully tested the first parachute. But a working flying machine eluded him because he was fixated on flapping wings. Had he thought of fixed-wing aircraft, nobody would ever have heard of the Wright brothers. But you can't blame Leonardo. It is only natural that we look to our environment for clues. The practice of nature-inspired inventions is called biomimicry. Examples of biomimicry abound. Velcro, for example, is an invention inspired by plant burrs. The design of turbine blades is based on the shape of the flippers of humpback whales. Gecko Tape was invented by Manchester University scientists who observed how geckoes are able to climb along ceilings leaving little to no residue. Biomimicry is a brilliant starting point for inventions. It is a sort of challe...

The other day I was traveling to work and the conversation on the bus was more animated than usual, which means that there was conversation on the bus. One of my colleagues joked that although he is 40, he has a mental age of 17. In other words, he still thinks he's Superboy when he's actually more like the father from the Wonder Years. This got me thinking about what my mental age is. I also sometimes feel like I'm still a teenager. In fact, I cracked a joke the other day and my daughter's friend remarked that my jokes are just as good as Eitan's. Who'se Eitan? Her nearly-thirteen-year-old brother. The phrase "act your age, not your shoe size" would not really apply in this situation because using the  Australian shoe size chart , my joke was almost spot on, give or take 2.5 years. There are a number of ways I can measure my mental age: Self assessment Friend Psychologist I decided that none of these options would be accurate enough. For st...

Some have criticized HP and Blackberry for dragging their feet on updates to the Touchpad and Playbook, respectively. Although frustrating sluggish in their release schedules, they are not the slowest to issue the latest version of their product. For all of you who thought that chess was an anti-social game (although not as anti-social as solitaire), it's time for you to rethink your stereotypes because after about 800 years, chess version 2.0 has been released. This report on Slashgear showcases a three-person, circular chess game.  Chess clubs of the world, rejoice! Comments are most welcome! Follow on Twitter: @ykarp Subscribe to Y. Karp? Why Not! or follow on Facebook (see the side-bar). Add this blog to your RSS feed reader

I found that some of the most interesting TED talks are those on the subject of human behavior. Dan Ariely's lectures about motivation, choice and morality are fascinating. Which is why I was thrilled to receive Freakonomics   for my birthday. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner , the authors of this book, treat the world like one big social experiment. They talk about what drives people to behave like they do. They discuss causality - the real factors that lead to the result. What makes this book so interesting is that the authors often overturn common perceptions and widely-held beliefs about how people behave, react, change and, most importantly, how they are incentivized. The way I describe it makes this book sound like it was written by sociologists, rather than by economists (actually, one author is an economist, the other is a journalist.) The blurb on the back of the book explains: ...He studies the riddles of everyday life -...

What makes you happy? Sunshine? Ice cream? Watching YouTube videos of people hurting themselves ? Apparently, what really makes you happy is Facebook. According to a completely impartial study undertaken by none other than Facebook themselves: We discovered that the more people use Facebook, the better they feel and that those who share and communicate the most with their friends feel even better. So the more you post, the more you get involved with Facebook, the better you feel.  That's 500 million people who swallow the free and legal Facebook happiness pill every day. There's a bit of Facebook sunshine for most of us. Unfortunately, Facebook wasn't such a thrilling ride for Kamisha Richards who was stabbed and killed by her friend, Kayla Henriques, following a spat on Facebook over a $20 loan. Not such happy times. MoodViews , a Dutch company, doesn't track the mood of individuals. That would be too easy. They track the mood of the entire Internet . Their ...

A placebo button is a button that, when pushed, does nothing other than make the button pusher feel like he has effected change. A famous example is the "close door" button in an elevator. Does pushing it actually close the doors, or do the doors close according to their programmed cycle, anyway? Certainly, pushing the button makes you feel like you have done something, but whether you actually have or not can only be determined by experimentation. The Museum of Hoaxes blog busts the myth that all cross-walk buttons are placebos. Some are, some aren't, some never were but are now. This whole thing got me thinking: What other things do we do that are really just placebos, dummy deeds we do to make ourselves feel in control? Just how much of our lives is rigged? Are we all being manipulated? Is there some great super-governmental force out there giving us the illusion that our opinions count? Here's a few things that might really be placebos: Half the operations we do ...

I just want to know when I am entitled to have a mid-life crisis. Is it possible to actually calculate how long I am going to live and then time my crises to occur exactly at middle age? According to Wikipedia : Middle age is the period of life beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings. So I looked up the average life-expectancy of males and found that in Israel, that age is 76.46, at least according to the CIA World Factbook Estimates, 2008, as quoted in Wikipedia . So that schedules my mid-life crisis at between 38-57 years old. I don't know if I can wait that long. I'm quite stressed out now and only 35. Actually, it's worse than that. Since I am from Australia, where the average life expectancy of males is supposed to be 77.8 years, I shouldn't have my mid-life crisis until I'm between 39-58 years old. So this begs the ques...

A non-exhaustive list of flatulence-causing foods. Add more in the comments! Looks like nothing is safe! Source: The Internet Apricots Artichokes Asparagus Baked beans Bananas Bagels Bean salads Beer Beets Black-eyed peas Bog beans Bread Broad beans Broccoli Brussel sprouts Cabbage Carrots Cauliflower Celery Cereals Cheese Chickpeas Chili Corn Cucumbers Dressings Eggplant Field beans Fruits Garlic Ice cream You fall within the normal scale if you produce between 1 to 4 pints of gas per day. Kohlrabi Leeks Lettuce Onions Parsley Peppers, sweet Seeds Lentils Lima beans Mung beans Peanut butter Peanuts Peas Pinto beans Most individuals release a little burst of air through the rear quarters approximately 14 to 23 times each and every day. Potatoes Pretzels Prunes Raisins Red kidney beans Sauerkraut Sodas Soybeans Barley Breakfast cereals Granola Oat bran Oat flour Pasta Pistachios Rice Rice bran Rye Sesame flour Cows actually burp and toot so frequently that they are responsible for about...

In the movie " The Pursuit of Happyness " [sic] the protagonist describes a period of his life as "Riding the Bus", where he seems to constantly be going somewhere on the bus or chasing after it as it pulls away from the curb. Right now I am writing this blog while on a bus. And I am also running up against a deadline - my battery is only at 17% and I have to finish this before the battery light flashes orange and the short, determined beeps signal an imminent shutdown. But is forcing a shutdown so bad? Sometimes, during the hectic life I seem to lead, it is good to "shutdown" once in a while. By that I don't mean collapsing in a heap on the couch, unable to move because every bone in your body aches. Nor do I mean the type of shutdown that comes at the end of one's life. I'm talking about the type of shutdown that is followed by a "restart". Thinking about it, it is probably a good idea to turn off, once in a while; to detach yoursel...

I went kayaking the other day. Although the circumstances around how the boat capsized may be entertaining, I will keep them aside in my dubious collection of heroic stories to tell my children and grandchildren. But the truth of the matter is that the kayak overturning took me completely by surprise. One moment I was quite happily paddling along in a boat with a crew of four and the next moment I found myself under the water. Thinking back on that event, I realize that when accidents happen you really are quite unprepared for them. Let's analyze my little dip in the river. Firstly, I remember very clearly that the boat was suddenly no longer underneath me, the place where it was supposed to be. In a few microseconds my brain processed the fact that I was under water and so my eyes shut automatically, like "shields up" on the Starship Enterprise. I held my breath and I kicked my legs, expecting to surface. I shot myself upwards, my head colliding with the upturned boat. T...

I remember that when I was a kid we were honored by a visit from an encyclopedia salesman. One evening he came to our house and sat himself at our dining room table. I remember thinking that he was a young fellow, or at least he seemed so. Clean cut, jacket and tie, pearly white smile and shiny black brogue shoes. I also remember that he was a smooth talker. He was a great salesman. Pitching the Encyclopedia Britannica couldn't be easy, but it was the 1980s and Wikipedia didn't yet exist. He spoke with great honesty about all the benefits of the 20-volume set to a family with teen and pre-teen kids. "And what would you use it for?" he asked me as I leaned awkwardly against the piano, fidgeting the way a 9-year-old does. "For school work, I guess". The salesman smiled and spread out his hands, palms open, gesturing at the children. He beamed. I'm sure that my parents didn't hear the spiel. I'm positive that they were oblivious to the salesman'...

G-d is playing with my mind. A few months ago my wife and I decided to buy a lottery ticket. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. What irked me was knowing, not so very deep in my heart, that I was flushing money down the drain. I mean, what are the odds? According to this site on Lottery Math, The odds of a "Lotto" style lottery can be found with the formula: n! / (n - r)! r! where n is the highest numbered ball and r is the number of balls chosen. This is called in math a combination . An easier way to think about it is if there are 40 balls and 6 are chosen, there are 40 possible numbers that can come up first, leaving 39 that can come up second, then 38, 37, 36, and finally 35 on the final number. To find out how many numbers that is you multiply 40 ×39 ×38 ×37 ×36 × 35 = 2,763,633,600 making the odds 2 and a half billion to one. Two and a half billion to one?! The money spent on the ticket could easily have gone to purchasing at least one bottle of beer with a 100% cha...

Life wasn't meant to be easy. It really wasn't. Well, not for most people. There are those people ( who don't really exist, because you don't know any and you don't know anyone who knows any ) who have charmed lives. The concept of a charmed life is just that, a concept. Like winning the lottery and paying off your mortgage are concepts. If one seems to have a charmed life, they should be living in fear of the inevitable difficulty or tragedy which will uncharm their charmed life. It happens all the time in books and movies, which are reflections of real life. The princess lives a happy, care-free existence in the glittering palace. The attendants take care of her every need. Even the elephants in the nearby forest seem to trumpet in tune with each other. Birds, butterflies, sunshine and all that. Then, while she is taking tea on the north balcony, the monster sneaks up behind her and devours her alive. It's going to happen. No surprises there. If its going well...

I'm scared of heights, so it's good I'm not a professional hang-glider. That knocks out one profession. Given that there are possibly hundreds and thousands of different professions, and variations thereof, I suppose it isn't really practical to decide your future career by process of elimination. There are other ways to choose the direction of your career. I like straight lines, so it's good I don't design modern office buildings. I guess the easiest way to decide what career you want to have is to create categories of professions and strike out the categories that don't suit your personality or abilities. This way you can eliminate entire blocks of careers. For example: outdoor jobs, indoor jobs, computer jobs, scientific jobs, jobs involving animals, community jobs, finance jobs and so on. I faint at the sight of blood, so it's good I'm not a professional hit-man. So once you have knocked out the categories of jobs you don't like, you can then...

I have been mulling over the question of whether or not we eat too much. Do we really need three meals a day, or will one or two suffice? Even if we eat healthily, are we being wasteful by eating too frequently? And is there too much emphasis on food in our lives? Do a quick Google search for "eat too much" and you will find all sorts of sites about eating too much meat, not eating enough meat, eating too much salt, and not eating enough salt. It seems like every few years something on the "do not eat" list becomes healthy and vice versa. So don't despair, in ten years scientists will announce that gorging oneself on salty, oily, sugary, snacks is good for you - only, gorge in moderation. A rather long article in Time magazine boils it all down to society and culture: " We eat together when we celebrate, and we eat together whe n we grie ve; we eat together when a loved one is preparing to leave, and we eat together when the loved one returns. We solve our...

I have to confess that although I don’t mind working, the thought of going on a really, really long vacation is very appealing. I’m talking about taking at least a year off to travel the world and just enjoy life. Sounds idyllic? Read on. My dream is to buy a luxury bus, outfitted like a first-class hotel suite: plush carpets, mahogany trim, marble bathroom, leather seats, comfy couches and all that. Then I’d drive the bus around the world, never needing to worry about packing, unpacking, checking in or checking out. I’d go where I wanted and enjoy hot showers, home-cooked meals and top-rate comfort in the middle of the city, desert, rainforest or mountain peak. For that I’d need a bus license, a whole bunch of free time and a lazy $250,000 to purchase the vehicle. It is not a dream out of range, assuming I sold my house, quit my job, took a loan and sent my kids to live with an elderly wart-ridden aunt in a dilapidated mansion on the top of a dark, distant hill in a wooded forest. Oka...