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Book Review: Brain Rules / 12 Principles for Pwning with Your Brain

The books is called Brain Rules, the reader is called Khatzumoto and the innocent bystander in all this is you!

Let the opinionating begin… :)

Title ブレイン・ルール / Brain Rules
Author ジョン=メディナ / John MEDINA
Language Japanese (translation of an English-language book)
Fiction/Non-fiction Non-fiction
Other Info The book has a really cool companion website
Pros
  • Clear, level-headed, while also optimistic. A refreshing break from the, I dunno, hype you sometimes get with personal development books
  • Comes with a DVD
Cons
  • Long-winded
  • Not enough formatting (bullet points, highlighting, etc.) to help you get straight to the point
  • A little too much reductio ad evolutionary psychology for my taste, but…that’s par for the course, I guess
  • DVD has no Japanese audio (English audio, Japanese subs)
  • Hardcover. That’s annoying. I cannot carry this spiel around. Dang, I can’t wait till Japanese books start getting the Kindle treatment.
Comments It’s good to get back to the basics now and then and to have a lot of what many people already knew/suspected about the brain and learning (sleep = good, repetition = good, stress = bad) reinforced in one, solid, authoritative place.

Fluffy newspaper articles written by people who don’t actually know what they’re talking about (often touting the latest poorly done research that somehow demonstrates that it may actually be better to avoid sleep, eat more chocolate and drink more alcohol) can get old fast.

Brain Rules
Medina’s passionate call for workplace and school reform (allow owls to work at night and larks to work in the morning; make information interesting and exciting to the senses; be kind and gentle to people – don’t use fear and intimidation; repeat important information) is a refreshing appeal to sanity and something that more people need to hear, take seriously, and actually implement.

I especially enjoyed Dr. Medina’s memory advice: “Remember to repeat. Repeat to remember.” His observation that there’s actually far too little repetition going on in schools really hit home for me. I wonder if the good doctor knows about SRS, because he should totally get all up on that.

Ultimately, I’m of the opinion that in many countries and in most cases, school does more harm than good and we’d be better off without it, or with a radically reduced, elective version of it. Certainly, we could do better than the glorified prisons we have now. Compulsory schooling: fail. Libraries: win. But…yeah, anyway.

The DVD was a great addition to the book. Simple and humorous, it was a gratifying example of someone actually following his own advice (“we don’t pay attention to boring things”, “[to learn better,] stimulate more of the senses”).

Like I said, the book was a bit long-winded for me: it feels like it could have gotten to the point much quicker than it did. Coming from me, that really is the pot calling the kettle black, so…deal with the irony as you will, hehe. Personally, I got the most out of the DVD and website. So if you do get the book, get it for the DVD. You could also get the audiobook (currently only available in English, AFAIK) and play it at high speed or something.

I’ve never actually read the English version of the book, so it could be that this is a case where the translator didn’t have time to chew the book down into smooth, fluid Japanese. Those who know, know that English can sound very belabored and heavy-handed when translated semi-literally into Japanese. (Translators are sometimes rushed into producing work that doesn’t reflect the full extent of their abilities: I speak from professional experience. I don’t think it’s a question of malice, it’s just that a lot of people — even within the translation industry — don’t realize that a good translator doesn’t simply convert text, but rewrites and re-interprets it).

Anyway, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing, hearing and reading more from Dr. Medina in the future. His is a voice that needs to be heard.

Random aside: my friend Eisuke and I were wondering why audiobooks aren’t as common in Japan as they are in the US. We concluded that it must be because so many people use trains here.

While people in rural areas move primarily by car, all Japan’s major urban centers have excellent public transportation networks up and running. You’ll notice that people in trains are always busy reading newspapers, manga, and bunkobons, so there’s simply not as much absolute need for non-text books.

Having said that, reading in a packed train can kind of suck a bit, even with a bunkobon. So I’m sure audiobooks would be a welcome development. I know I’d be all over it. I used to hate audiobooks, thinking they were for idiots who couldn’t read. And slow audiobooks still annoy the heck out of me, but high-speed audiobooks are right up there with kittens and tall women.

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    Ululation! QRG The Movie Is Here!

    The QRG video has arrived! The QRG video, nicknamed “QRG: The Movie” is a video supplement to the best-selling ebook of similar name — the quick-start, action-oriented, no-nonsense AJATT Quick Reference Guide (QRG).

    As is the custom here at AJATT, let me be the very first to tell you precisely and in no uncertain words:

    Why You Don’t Need The QRG Video And Why You Shouldn’t Buy It

    • No special effects
    • No hot chicks
    • No hot guys
    • No hot anything, really
    • My Mum says I’m handsome, but does that really count?
    • No 3D animation
    • No popcorn
    • In the background, you can still see the tape marks from when I used to try to prevent my cats opening doors (those clever motherlovers…)
    • No batteries included
    • I hadn’t shaved
    • My posture was bad
    • It’s a monologue
    • There’s virtually no Japanese in it.
    • Which is pretty funny for a site called “All Japanese All The Time”.
    • Wanna know what’s even more funny?
    • 日本語を全く解さない癖に一々「アイツのホームページはさぁ、やっぱ日本語足りないんだよね」とかホザいてる馬鹿野郎が
    • That’s what’s freaking funny.
    • 百年早いぞコノヤロー
    • There’s lots of mumbling and rambling. To quote Tolkien verbatim: things were mumbled that shouldn’t have been mumbled.
    • At one point in the video, I inexplicably feel the need to tell you that I read a lot of books — intellectual small man syndrome, hmmm?
    • I have a weird, hard-to-place, mid-Atlanticy accent thing going on that is neither here nor there, and thus, ultimately, hard for everyone to understand.
    • I then take this accent and mumble in it.
    • It’s full of unfunny jokes.
    • That I then laugh at.
    • Yes, I laugh at my own jokes.
    • You could just read the AJATT site.
    • You could just read the QRG ebook.
    • “They” (air quotes) don’t want you to have it.
    • A good number of fellow AJATTeers have put up free AJATT walkthroughs on YouTube. For free. For free, meng.
    • It comes with free membership in the AJATT cult wait…baby steps…baby steps…

    So Who Would Want To Buy The QRG Video?

    • People who bought, enjoyed and benefited from the QRG ebook
    • People who have enjoyed and benefited from previous AJATT videos
    • People who have read, enjoyed and benefited from AJATT articles
    • People looking for a lazy, “hands-free” but action-oriented overview of the AJATT “method”
    • People who prefer verbal explanations.
    • People who prefer watching a video to reading large amounts of text
    • People who want to get right to the AJATT “action” without wading through large amounts of interesting but “less action-oriented” individual.

    The AJATT site, this site, has grown into a compendium of brilliantly insightful articles written by an incredibly handsome man. This is a good thing. The one weakness is that, well, it’s all very large, and can tend to leave you wondering “OK, but what do I DO?”.

    The QRG series has been designed to fulfill the specific need to “get straight to the action”, without sacrificing the more universal and context-independent appeal of many of the articles you typically find here on the site.

    Some things are best read, some things are best heard, some things are best said and heard. The QRG video, in combination with the QRG ebook, covers all these bases for you. One of the coolest parts of the video, I think, is the oral walkthrough of the entire AJATT “philosophy” (AKA “mental tools”) section.

    Over and above that is the “greater than the some of its parts” effect, that inexplicable magic you get in a video that text can never quite replicate. This video is a lot like sitting with me, in my “Fortress of Solitude”, having a conversation. If that’s something you would enjoy, then I think you might enjoy this video as well.

    What’s In The Package?

    • A video file — digital download.
    • WMV format.
    • File size: Approx. 425MB
    • Running time: 81 minutes
    • All the points in the QRG are covered with sparkling wit and verve.

    For best results, I recommend you:

    • Get the QRG ebook as well, if you don’t already have it. This video is designed to be used in combination with the QRG ebook, and assumes that you already own it.
    • Be learning Japanese. This video, like the current QRG ebook, is quite specifically focussed in that direction.

    Own It Now!

    Your copy is waiting for you. But “they” may try to take it away! So panic. Buy now. Treat yourself. You deserve this. Do something for yourself for a change! Et cetera ;) .

    QRG Video StandaloneQRG Video Bundle

    No Likey? No Problem!

    As with all its predecessor products, the QRG video comes with a 100%, no-questions-asked refund guarantee. If you are in anyway unhappy with the product, just shoot me an email at qrg at ajatt dot com, and I will be happy to give you a full refund on your purchase.
    Even if I try to ask questions, you can be all “nuh-uh…no questions!”

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  • QRG: Your Suggestions Wanted! I Mean, Humbly Requested!
  • QRG Version 1.0 Is Here!
  • Books, KBL: Khatzumoto's Book List, QRG, Video
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    QRG: Your Suggestions Wanted! I Mean, Humbly Requested!

    Hey everyone.

    All this consulting and FAQing and emailing and commenting have taught me a thing or two. A lot of people have a lot of questions, particularly fine, detailed, low-level questions.

    My personal preference up until now has been to write at a more abstract level, both in order to stay more universal and also in order to not bog people down with minutiae. Moreover, I hate being told what to do, and a lot of AJATT comes down to “just go out there by yourself and play”.

    However, those action-level techniques do have a place and do have value. And, as you might expect, I’ve definitely accumulated my fair share of these over time.

    One other thing that I’ve observed is that some people (at least claim to ;) ) read through all the articles indexed over at the Table of Contents, but still come out confused as to what to do: “OK, so where do I start?” And, to be fair, I would probably be in the exact same position as them. There is enough information now on this site to fill hundreds, maybe even a couple thousand, pages of a normal book. There’s a lot to go through.

    So, in my boundless magnanimity, in my universal love for humanity, in my mother-like kindness, I have taken it upon myself to use these fingers and this computer, to create magic, to create…a QRG.

    QRG: an action-oriented, technique-focussed Quick Reference Guide to AJATT in the form of an ebook. How do you do the hirigana and the sentances and kanjis? How do you do the emersion? [sic]. How do you do use monolingual dictionaries? How do you sentence-pick? It’s AJATT condensed into a single package for AJATTeers at virtually every stage of the process, from beginners, to phase-transitioners to high-flyers looking for new games and challenges.

    The guide itself is basically written up and ready to go, but before releasing it, I would love to part-take of your wisdom, your advice, your experiences, your requests, your suggestions. What do you need to know? What do you wish someone had told you? What would/do you as a user-reader want out of a guide like this?

    Comments are wide open. Let your voice be heard, and cetera!

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    Book Review: The Way of Brain Success

    Hey there. Been a while. Actually I just got back from Taiwan (I’m saying this in a “we do a lot of travelling” middle-class-person-showing-off-voice, by the way…this is the one where you pretend it’s no big deal to you while at the same time trying to emphasize it; I’ve worked pretty hard on this voice so I’m kind of proud of it).

    As you know, I often project the image of a raving anti-Semite. But actually I hate people who are intolerant of other ethnicities. And the Basques.

    The Basques.

    Why is there a “q”? Why do they get the “special” language? Why is there Basque Freemason writing on the back of the American $5 bill?

    Made you look!…Haha…too much Internet for you!

    I’d like to Basque in the glory of this topic the whole day, but we have a book review to do, so let’s get started. The book is The Way of Brain Success: 猶太人の頭の中. The author is one Andrew J. Sutter. The Japanese translation is by his wife, 中村起子/NAKAMURA Kiko.

    猶太人の頭の中

    The Way of Brain Success

    • Title: ユダヤ人の頭のなか / ユダヤジンノアタマノナカ
    • Format: Non-fiction, Paperback
    • Author: Andrew J. Sutter
    • Furigana: Negatory.
    • Genre: Personal development.
    • Veracity: Non-Fiction
    • Color: Black and white
    • Illustrations: Essentially, none.
    • YesAsia

    Structurally, this book is quite interesting…it was written in English by the author (who’s Jewish, so…we have a good chance that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to “Jewish stuff”), but always with the intention of publication in Japanese; AFAIK, there is no English version bar Sutter’s original manuscript. TWOBS was intended from the start to be a Japanese book, and the translation was so good that it led one Japanese customer on Amazon.JP to comment that “it’s like it’s not even a translation”…if he knew the path to its publication, he would understand why he felt that way. So, in terms of style and audience, this is a purely Japanese book.

    While the government of Japan refused to partake in the anti-Semitism that was terribly en vogue in let’s just say certain parts of Europe in the 1940s (and, well, frankly…even today on certain European island nations beginning with B and ending in ritain — at least at my high school), Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style judaeophobic books do exist here, unfortunately. Before everyone goes freaking out, there are also more level-headed books, like 加瀬 英明/KASE Hideaki’s ユダヤの力/YUDAYA NO CHIKARA. But the crappy books needed to be answered and Sutter was just the chap to do it.

    But first, let’s get into:

    Why Khatzumoto was even interested in a topic as ripe for grief, libel, slander, misunderstanding, simple crudeness, scapegoatery, scapesheepery and appalling violence, as Jewish science, I mean, success?

    For the answer to that question, you need look no further than my undergraduate experiences.

    Experience number one. It was a computer science class in the computer science building with the best computer science professor in the world (Iowa, represent!). Outside, summer. Inside, dark. Room, dimly lit. Whiteboard, white but hard to see. Professor, really interesting as always. And he, that man, my sensei, said something that is probably common knowledge for everyone else, but hit me like lightning. He said that the source of the worldly success enjoyed by the Jews of Europe in the past 250 or so years, lies in the fact that the Jewish men of Europe could all do something that almost all the gentiles could not: read. Indeed, another name for the Jews is “the people of the book”. Also, “the people of the Nobel prize”.

    Experience number two. When I was a kid, I used to read and watch TV simultaneously. Often, I’d be reading two or sometimes even three books and watching the ‘levision. It felt entirely natural to me but a lot of people got on my case about it (Them: “Pick one!”, Me: “No!”). Then, in 2004 I’m at a college friend’s family house and her dad is in the kitchen with magazine on the table a novel in hand and a documentary on the telly and it was like everything was warm and fuzzy because finally someone understood me and it turns out he’s Jewish which tangentially connects it to this post.

    Indeed, these college experiences helped set the stage for my literacy “revelation”, which I very verbosely shared with you here. I got interested in how the Jews as a people — with exceptions, of course — had risen, literally from the ghetto, to success in so many fields. How they dealt with every ridiculous obstacle that was placed in their way. Can’t own land? Learn a trade. Trade guilds won’t let you in? Deal with money. No access to reliable customers? Provide consumer financial services for high-risk clients. WASP law firms won’t let you in or make you partner? Make your own and win crappy cases until the whole legal world knows you’re the best. Your country kicks you out because they say your science is different? Go and be Einstein somewhere else. Columbia University won’t allow you to attend because they have a “Jewish quota” (WTF?). Go to MIT and become Richard Feynman anyway (smooth move, Columbia).

    I bet the same idiots who whine about affirmative action now (can of worms! can of worms!) would have whined about “Jews winning all the university places” back when the Ivy League was busy rejecting Richard Feynman and anyone else who looked too smart and had a German-sounding name. Mediocre members of a majority ethnic group loooooove flapping lip about how some minority is ruining it for them; it happens in the US with ethnic minorities; it happens in Kenya with Desis; it happens in Malaysia with ethnic Chinese (my Malay friends are going to beat me up over this). Funnily enough, though, the smart kids of all ethnicities never whine: when you’re the best, you’re the freaking best.

    As Sutter explains, culture is everything (not genetics: Sutter says the evidence just isn’t there). The Jews built a religious culture founded on literacy and encouraging of learning: learning itself was considered worship. Sutter describes a traditional ceremony in which children were given honey as a reward in conjunction with some activity involving reading or memorizing parts of a certain religious text; the aim of the ceremony was literally to teach them that learning is sweet (reminds me of how I used to eat Jelly Bellies after each Chinese SRS rep); in terms of behaviorism, this is so many types of right it’s not even funny. So, when the Haskalah came and restrictions on secular activity were loosened, it was a matter of shifting the focus of that prodigious intellectual activity from the finer details of religious jurisprudence to whatever presented itself in the world outside. Not to mention the fact that the ever-present danger of being “asked to leave” led the Jews as a group to seek a portable, long-lasting, borderless asset — more valuable than land, cattle or bling and quite impossible to steal: knowledge.

    Sutter and Kase both recount various interesting fables passed down in the Jewish community, illustrating the value of brain over brawn in even the direst of situations. There’s one about a Jew who is brought to a magistrate in some European country in medieval times, accused of murdering a gentile’s child. The magistrate is a raving anti-Semite, but is also a gentleman, and so likes to give the appearance of fairness; he announces to the Jewish guy: “Look here, Greenbaum; I’m a fair man. Since there were no eyewitnesses and DNA forensic evidence tests haven’t been invented yet, let that God of yours decide your fate. In this hat are two pieces of paper, one says ‘guilty’ and the other ‘not guilty’. You pick. The paper shall be your fate”. Greenbaum knows that the magistrate reads too many shady conspiracy parchments, and is a thoroughgoing Jew-hater, and realizes that both pieces of paper say “guilty”; but there’s no way he could slander the town magistrate and live. Seemingly resigned to his fate, he mutters a prayer, reaches into the hat…pulls out a piece of paper…and eats it. Everyone goes into shock; his family is all screaming: “What are you Jewing?! Jew CRAYzay!”. And then he tells the magistrate: “the paper I didn’t pick is still there; you can check against it”. Greenbaum lives. Intellectual muscle saves the day. The end.

    Another Jewish fable for children (this time from Kase) tells of a ship, again in dayes of olde. On it were two merchants and a scholar. The two merchants sell i-Parchments, designer clothes, bling and all manner of other luxury merchandise. They’ve been on the ship a few days, and the topic of conversation comes to the scholar and what he sells. The scholar tells the merchants he sells the most valuable merchandise in all the world, better than bling, designer clothes and i-Parchments. The other merchants are curious but puzzled. Bored, they ask around the ship, looking for the scholar’s merchandise. Eventually they realize that the scholar has no merchandise, and they’re like: “that Greenbaum kid is an egit”. Days later a storm hits, the ship sinks and almost everyone dies. The merchants and the scholar float ashore, stranded in a strange new land. With no insurance and all their merchandise gone, the merchants become beggars. The scholar goes into town and becomes a consultant for the king, makes a lot of gold and eventually uses his wealth to help his former fellow passengers back on their feet. Once again, the day is saved thanks to intellectual muscle.

    Contrast this attitude to knowledge and its acquisition, with how many other cultures treat geeks and geekery. Think how most gaijin act towards Japanese-learning fellow gaijin. They call them names (“geeks”, “weebos”). They tell them to “stop pretending to read”. Tell them “they can do that at home”. They tell them to “stop acting Japanese”. Jock culture and sports heroes are lionized — and perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, it’s just that too many people forget that most sportspeople are in fact interchangeable pawns (always one injury away from being thrown away like so many used Kleenex) in a wider game played and run by the aforementioned geeks. Everybody wanting to be a gladiator when it would be safer and easier and far more profitable to be a stable owner instead…

    Fortunately for me, my mother listened to TONS of Barbara Streisand when I was a child. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing whatsoever. But she was always going on and on and on about the value of knowledge this and Barbara Streisand that and no one can take knowledge away from you and are you even listening and put down the Game Boy and this is my favorite Barbara song.

    My Japanese journey (and, even the Chinese one) had its fair share of opposition, but the early microculture of my nuclear family, the fact that our home was reader-friendly — this set a good example. Growing up it all seemed quite normal. But as an adult, I have met a few people who treat me like a freak who “reads all the time”; interestingly enough, their social station somewhat reflects this attitude to “booklurnin!”. It’s not like I’m an intellecual juggernaut (I want to be :D )…and it’s not like economics is everything — knowledge is valuable in and of itself. But, let’s be coldly realistic for a second: most manual labor is as unremunerative as it is taxing; while it is very valuable to society, quite frankly it is not valued by society at all. At all. On the other hand, intellectual labor is almost the total opposite — thinking up ways to do less (“laziness”, of a sort) wins extra credit. At least it seems like that to me.

    Currently, all intellectual life depends on literacy. Not, I think, because straight text is a superior medium (quite the opposite), but because it’s been around longer, boasts the highest quality and quantity of content, and has been chosen as the primary medium of intellectual discourse in the society we live in (of course, oral-centric intellectual cultures have existed — Celtic civilization and Ancient Greece are good examples). Today, a good-sized bookstore or library (link to pictures of 誠品/Chengpin, a really nice bookstore in Taipei…I spent a whole night reading at their 24-hour branch :D …) simply has more and better information in it than the most premo premium cable. Thus, to cut yourself off from literacy is to cut yourself off from text is to cut yourself off from the bulk of intellectual activity and from the highest-quality information in the world. As a foreigner in a bibliocentric country like Japan, this means you are restricted to one of three roles: (1) sheltered expat, (2) cultural ambassador, (3) exploited manual labor. There is no middle ground.

    The moral of the story is: don’t be a schlemiel; learn to read and keep reading — it’s fun and there’s a future in it. And get this book for the full story, because anything I say must be tainted and watered down quite a bit. Anyway, the massive worldwide Basque blogging conspiracy won’t let me make this post any longer, so…goodbye for now.

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    Book Review: 怨み屋本舗 / URAMIYA HONPO — Revenge By Proxy

    It’s been a while since the last edition of Khatzumoto’s Book List. Maybe it’ll be a monthly list again, maybe seasonal, maybe just “whenever”. Funnily enough, I’d kind of felt guilty about recommending books to people; I felt like I’d become a “book pusher” of sorts. But, you know what, screw that; it’s not like people are being forced to by them. Plus, kids keep sending me email after email asking me to recommend them books, and I know I enjoy getting opinions on books before buying them, and my friends are tired of hearing me talking about the books I like, so…why not post about it.

    Rather than recommend books in one large post, I’d like to try just focussing on one book at a time. There’s enough say about each book that this approach makes sense.

    怨み屋本舗

    Uramiya Honpo

    • Title: 怨み屋本舗 / URAMIYA HONPO
    • Format: Manga (Serialized), Paperback
    • Author: 栗原 正尚/ KURIHARA Showshow
    • Furigana: Unfortunately, none whatsoever.
    • Genre: Somewhat beyond classification; in Japanese the work around which the story centers is called 復讐代行業 — “Revenge By Proxy“, if you will.
    • Veracity: Fiction
    • Color: Black and white
    • Illustrations: it’s a manga, champ
    • Notes: Multi-volume series, 20 volumes total (AFAIK, the series is over now).
    • YesAsia: Manga | TV Drama

    This is one of the least well-known and most underrated manga of all time, especially considering that it runs a solid twenty volumes. It’s somewhat like the Ben Stiller of manga — it’s good and it’s been good for a long time, it even gets distributed through mainstream channels, but somehow it’s never at the top of public consciousness.

    怨み屋下手The artist’s drawings are amateurish in the bad sense of the word — LOOK AT THOSE LEGS!! WHAT THE LONG HAPPENED TO THOSE LEGS!? AND WHY DOES SHE HAVE MAN HANDS?! In a way, it’s kind of inspiring that one could suck so hard at drawing and still be a real mangaka/漫画家. However, his stories are da bomb: Kuri can write. I am, quite literally, addicted to this series. It’s weird because structurally, every story is quite simple: revenge is taken at the request of a client. So, you kind of know the general destination. However, the journey there is one heck of a ride. Spinning twist after twist after turn after twist, Kurihara never does what you expect him to; every story leaves you thinking “NO…WAY!”. The violence, the coldness and the plausibility of the stories are just…as Dave Chappelle might phrase it: “too real for you, Billy”.

    This may sound a bit weird but I actually find this series quite…educational. There’s plenty of casual discussion of civil and criminal law, and even the structure of the police force. The book doesn’t set out to educate, it’s just that you’ll pick up a thing or two as you read on. Also, the violence is actually indirectly critical of violence; no one ever comes out and says it explicity, but the ultimate implication is that hate only breeds more hate and that we should all just be nice to each other. You may need quite a high level of Japanese to fully enjoy it all, but, like I’ve said before, focus more on your interests than your “level”.

    Another strong point is the fact that while there is an overarching plot, each individual story more or less stands alone; where American TV and comics have traditionally tended to have a shortage of sequentiality, Japanese comics (I think) have slightly too much of it; once in a while, it’s nice to have a manga that you can jump into from anywhere.

    怨み屋本舗テレビドラマFinally, there is also an equally engrossing live-action TV drama adaptation composed of twelve 30-minute episodes plus two movie-length specials (AFAIK, the specials are not included in the main DVD box set: the first special is available here, the second won’t be out on DVD until Marchish but can be reserved). The TV show follows the manga quite faithfully — but of course with some necessary omission, as well as some very skilfull compression and mixing of separate stories from the manga into the feature-length specials.

    One more thing — there is a spinoff/sequel manga series now in serialization: 怨み屋本舗 巣来間風介/ URAMIYA HONPO SUKURAMA FUUSUKE. I haven’t read it yet…

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    Why Do People Who Have All the Time in the World Get Nothing Done?

    I’m not sure how directly this relates to AJATT. I mean, it relates. But I’m not sure that it relates to everyone doing AJATT. In fact, I know it doesn’t. But, it is an issue that affects me and that affects some AJATT readers. In fact, now that I think about it, it affects everyone who ever has longish stretches of free time that just seem to slip through their fingers despite the best of intentions going in. So, yeah, it’s relevant.

    The Big Question

    OK, enough introductizing…the question at hand is this: “Why Do People Who Have All the Time in the World Get Nothing Done?” Why is it that you had a whole week to do catch up on your classwork over Thanksgiving Break, but not only did you not finish it, you didn’t even start it?! You didn’t even crack open the book! WHY? All you did was sit on your butt, eat dead, rotting bird and watch every episode of Robot Chicken released to date. And when you ran out of that, you reached for Gilmore Girls. Wow, this post is going to sound sooooo dated in 15 years.

    Do we need management? Do we need bosses? Do we need stress or at least eustress to get anything done? Do we need the threat of pain and suffering to get our butts in gear? Do we need something to fear? Is an idle mind Dick Cheney’s workshop? I say yes and no.

    If we had been left alone as kids, this would not be an issue. Young kids who have not yet undergone that much processing, and unschooled kids seem to do fine getting stuff done.

    OK, but forget about kids. Stupid kids thinking they’re our future. I’m the future, you vertically challenged motherlovers! Let’s bring it back to us. So, why do people who have all the time in the world never get anything done? Why…do people who have all the time in the world never get anything done? WHY do people who have all the time in the world get absolutely nothing done? Chris Rock’s stand-up style is affecting my writing.

    Lottery Winner/Windfall Syndrome

    I don’t freaking know why. But I have a wacky Khatzumoto hypothesis about it. I call it lottery winner syndrome hype o’thesis.

    We all know those stories of lottery winners who, like, were totally poor, and then they won the lottery and overnight became decamillionaires, but then overnight became po’ again. The New Age PD people will spin you a tale about the “Law of Attraction” and how they weren’t a “vibrational match” for the money.

    Mmmmyeah. This is what is known in linguistics as “bollocks”. It’s a special kind of bollocks, though, because it’s actually correct at many levels, but it’s bollocks because it’s the same as saying “the Sky Deity is urinating” instead of “it’s raining”, or “Remote Desktop hates me” instead of “I forgot to open port 3389″, or…yeah…or that.

    What I mean is, we can accurately describe and predict the same phenomena (effect of attitude and knowledge on life experience) without going all southern California about it and trying to sell people a seminar. Did I mention I hate personal development seminars? Yeah, but that’s just my two cents. PD books are cool, though.

    Dang, dude, far too many asides. Where were we? Oh yeah — lottery winner syndrome. Yeah, it totally happens, man. Totally. In fact, it happens so often I want to give it a new, more general name: the “windfall syndrome hypothesis“, whereby:

    People who have been in a state of impoverishment with respect to a given resource, are very likely to completely misuse and exhaust the resource if and when they abruptly come to have it in plentiful supply.

    Corollary: People who gradually acquire more of the resource tend not to do so.

    I and two Japanese friends of mine who live nearby have left the so-called “normal” company life that most adults currently live. We work from home. We set our own hours. We are basically free to do whatever we want whenever we want. In the common parlance, “we have a lot of free time on our hands”. We are timewealthy. We timerich, be-arch.

    But, for a while there, we weren’t nearly as productive as we want to be. In fact, we had become less productive when free than when we were company serfs (and everything but company work was a side project that had to be done on the commuter train). Dude, there are only three podcasts up right now. I haven’t produced a Dick and Jane comic since my Sony days. KhatzuMemo went a year almost untouched. Fortunately, that’s changing now, due to reasons and discoveries I’ma going to a-discuss-a a-here.

    OK, so the windfall hypothesis so far is saying what happens and when it happens but not why. Like so many things, it does come down to psychology, to philosophy, to state of mind, baby (I’m doing the touching-my-temples-with-both-index-fingers thing, and I’m saying “mind” in a near-whisper). State of miiiind, maaan.

    Innumeracy
    Innumeracy, Japanese Version
    Why? Because of a subtle subspecies of a disease called innumeracy (a great book, by the way). Innumeracy can affect even people who otherwise like numbers and math of the matics. Innumeracy is the reason people will drive across town to Kroger to save 50 cents on roasted peanuts, but will not blink at a $50,000 difference in house price because their being semi-conned into focussing on the low/no-down-payment and the monthly cost of the mortgage (another great book). As if the $50,000 somehow matters less because it’s being siphoned off over time (plus interest, son!).

    The innumeracy at work in the windfall syndrome can actually be expressed verbally — without numbers — it is already in the title of this post:

    “Why Do People Who Have All the Time in the World Get Nothing Done?”

    Can you see it? I’ll point it out for you: “all the time in the world“. This is the innmueracy of large numbers — innumeracy of infinites. Governments use it all the time, wangling a billion dollars here and there. Regular, schooled-and-therefore-innumerate taxpaying folk are so bamboozled that they swallow all these budget tricks.

    So, in short the problem is: we (tend to) have a very poor understanding of the concept of infinity: we fallaciously conflate it with any sufficiently large-seeming number. Just like those rags-to-riches-to-rags lottery winners who think that the money is infinite — it could never run out — only to discover that, yes, one hundred million dollars can, in fact, be exhausted.

    It’s not just the fault of the lottery winners. The people around them play a role, too. Get considerably richer than your friends and watch their behavior change. You don’t even have to wait for it to be six figures…just start making about twice as much money as your friends and watch them act differently; watch them act as if your money is inexhaustible.

    Like Cuba Gooding, Jr. once said on Oprah, when you become a millionaire, and an old friend/acquaintance asks you for $10,000 and you say no, and they say that you suck and wealth has changed you…it’s not you that has changed; it’s them: they never would have asked you for that kind of cash before, but suddenly they act as if you’re a never-ending fountain of no-strings-attached grant money. In fact, they more or less believe you are. (Similar things happen where people who have less steal from people who have more, thinking “it’s so little; they won’t notice”).

    Timewealth and Timepoverty

    OK, let’s bring it back to time. People  who have a lot of free time certainly have a lot more than most. Many salarymen (サラリーマン) in Japan have, on a good weekday, maybe two hours of discretionary time — if that. In contrast, someone not living the reeman (リーマン/salaryman) lifestyle — even a housewife — arguably has 24 hours a day free, right? Which means they have, say, 12 times as much time as a reeman (リーマン). Right?

    Wrong. As with money, there is “time tax” in a sense. First of all, we all need to sleep maybe, I dunno, 6 to 10 hours a day to stay healthy and sane. Some people more, some less. So, strike off 8 hours for sleep. That leaves 16 hours. SIXTEEN FREE HOURS! That’s still 8 times more than our fictional reeman (リーマン), right?

    Wrong. Personal maintenance — eating, showering, getting ready, let’s give it two hours. Which leaves 14 hours, right?

    Wrong. Let’s say exercise and travel combined take 2 hours, leaving 12 hours. And then let’s just say “various” other tasks involving care and maintenance of things other than one’s person — housework, childcare, petcare, and play-breaks (since (1) virtually no one can work on something without breaks indefinitely, (2) many people have these kinds of maintenance responsibilities). That leaves 8 hours for some real work.

    Eight hours is still a good amount of time. But you know what? It certainly isn’t infinite. My figures are all kind of fudged and estimated and made-up; it’s probably hard to be truly general since except maybe Japanese housewives, people are going to have very unique life patterns. Maybe with some timehacks people can squeeze out an extra two hours, bringing us back to 10.

    So, this person with “all the time in the world” is really only 4 to 5 times timericher than a reeman (リーマン). In the US, where I’d hazard a guess that regular-a$$ employees have 4 hours a day of truly discretionary time, this means that the timerich are only maybe twice as rich as “regular” folk.

    Unlike money, time can’t be created; it can only be “reallocated”. And there’s a hard limit — the day is only 24 hours long for any of us. Add in all that natural overhead (“tax”), and a timerich person just isn’t that rich.

    Now, the problem is that not only do many of the timerich think they’re far richer than they actually are, so do the timepoor cling-ons. You know, those people who ask you to do something because “come on, maaan, it’s not like you don’t have the time”. “Why don’t you respond to every email that ever comes into your inbox, be-arch? Come on, man — YOU HAVE THE TIME”. “Back up my files for me! Come on, maaan! You have a terabyte!”. “Buy me a house, Bill Gates — come on, man — YOU HAVE THE MONEY” (actually, he doesn’t: a lot of that net worth is stock and there are rules preventing him from selling it…plus, if he were to sell it, it could be taken reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally badly).

    So, the timerich are not only bombarded by infinite requests for their “infinite” time, they also put infinite demands upon themselves. (And, like I said, a timerich person is anyone who has considerably more discretionary time than the so-called norm; many people experience sudden temporary timewealth in forms like Thanksgiving Break and summer holidays, even public holidays). Not because they are stupid but because they are in fact following a code of ethics. By this simple, invisible code, it would be wrong for an infinitely wealthy person to be stingy. It would be wrong for a person who has infinite time to not do infinitely good work: one’s fundamental sense of morality would not allow it.

    GTD, Japanese VersionAccording to David Allen of Getting Things Done, this is why people who already have too much to do often keep taking on more stuff — without some kind of management system to tell them otherwise, they may feel busy and burnt-out, but they have no way of telling for certain that they have far too much going on and they need to start saying no outright — so they keep taking on more projects, often until they fall apart from the strain of it all (i.e. go physically/mentally bankrupt, like unto a lottery winner). Those projects can be as simple as taking on too many books to read. Only when you have something like a single, (visibly jam-packed) “to read” box do you realize that, in fact, you have too much to read and this pamphlet’s just gonna have to go suck it. Without a visible spillage, they may just think that their glass is heavy but that they should keep pouring in more water.

    I, my friends, and everyone who’s ever put off coursework for the weekend or Thanksgiving Break “when I’ll have a whole week to catch up” (as if all 168 hours could be spent lump sum, en masse, nonstop on the work you hadn’t been doing all semester), all thought we had infinite time. So we tried to do infinite work. And we didn’t just end up only doing “a leetle bit of work” — we did virtually no work. No manga produced, no website put up, no KhatzuMemo updates. Because we were paralyzed. We’d spend days and weeks just THINKING CRAP UP, because we (subconsciously) felt we had to because, after all, we had the time. And, yeah, if you had an infinitely long life, then 70 years spent just playing with ideas for your Great American Novel would be no problem. But you know what? Not only do you not have an infinite life, you have pretty durn short days.

    So, yeah…this is why short, winnable games work…they bring us back into finite reality. This is why giving a kid a dollar and teaching her not to spend all of it will help her if she ever suddenly has a kajillion of them. In short “a lot” of anything, really isn’t that much.

    The 80-20 Principle

    Remember when I hinted at “discoveries I’ma going to a-discuss-a a-here.”? My big “discovery” was the 80-20 Principle. In fact, I’m reading a whole book about it. It is fascinating stuff, man. And liberating. These kind of ideas used to upset me, kind of like how certain people (hippies) always lament at the rich growing richer — it’s called feedback, motherlover; wouldn’t it suck if getting more of something made you lose it? The idea that the vast majority of effects stem from a minuscule minority of causes can seem unjust…but think about it — the next time you make a to-do list at your computer, know that for every 10 items about 2 will actually be really worth it. Rather than stress out about all 10, focus on those 2, and then, if there’s still time, try to fit in some of the other 8. It’s like that object lesson about trying to fit pebbles and rocks into a jar. If you put in the pebbles, there’ll be no room for the rocks. Put in the rocks, and let the pebbles fit around them.

    I used to try to get everything done. I was the perfectionist. And it was killing me; I was getting symptoms of all those middle-class neuroses (what “pretty white kids with problems” collectively refer to as “issues”) — panic attacks, OCD-like behavior, watching Gilmore Girls. OK, it never quite got that bad, but you see what I mean.

    Many days, I would avoid doing anything, just so I could evade the self-imposed duty to be perfect, complete and infinite. But thanks to all these books, I have a whole box of tools to help me work with that. Eat That Frog and Getting Things Done taught me how to slice up my work so small that even complex, dirty duties (who likes filing their taxes?) could be as emotionally neutral as the proverbial flipping of burgers.

    This was a major step forward, but by itself it was not enough. The Now Habit taught me to let go of being perfect and just get on with it. And the 80-20 Principle taught me to look for and zero in on the very least — the one or two widget-making/burger-flipping tasks — I could do to achieve the very most. I feel good. I knew that I would, now.

    Example from Real Life:

    Yesterday I had a list of changes to make on AJATT. And I started making the changes, then I thought  up yet more ideas and I started working on them. In about two minutes I was literally working on ten things at once (those books, as good as they are, don’t won’t can’t change your behavior for you, rather, they lead you to observe it and show you what to do, then you change it). I was trying to be at all points in space and time at once, kind of like in Star Trek: Voyager (buy the Japanese version, motherlover!) when Tom Paris went to warp 10; I was flying at warp 10 with no inertial dampers, shields down, broken deflector…I was going to get crushed by the enormity of my own thoughts.

    Then I stopped. First, I wrote down what I wanted to do. Writing it down is something many of the PD peepz recommend — it helps you judge things in their true context, against everything else that needs to be done (when it’s just in your head, everything can seem important). As David Allen has hinted, the purpose of a list of tasks is not necessarily to do all of them, indeed a lot of it is a matter of choosing tasks to not do.

    Anyway, I wrote down all the tasks. Then I numbered them in order of “easiest to do and greatest long-term benefit”; I like easy. I noticed one of the tasks wasn’t a task at all, but a nebulous, amorphous, undefined, unwinnable project: “update/streamline Table of Contents”. I deleted it and went with “add recent (= October/November) articles to Table of Contents”. Oh yeah — like the pebbles fitting in around the rocks, I also picked up some of the lower-numbered tasks “on the way”, quite unintentionally. Which, funnily enough, led to an overall update/streamlining of the Table of Contents.

    Which all seems very petty, but…if you’d been there, you’d have felt the realness.

    Like the SRS once taught me about memory, 90-95% right is good enough. The remaining 5-10% is almost never worth going for (pretend for a moment that the long tail doesn’t exist; I don’t know how to fit it in) — too much work, too much pain, too little gain.

    In Closing

    So do you need a boss? Only if you don’t know this stuff. That’s what bosses and editors and producers do for employees/writers/artists — they make these task-splitting, get-’er-done, 80-20 decisions. This work is valuable, but most of it wouldn’t be necessary if more people were (allowed and placed in a position to learn) to do this for themselves.

    Anyway, I don’t know if I’m actually right or not about any of this but…it seems to explain what I’m seeing. What’s your experience? Share!

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