Matty's weblog of doom

I just realised I wrote this a few weeks ago and decided not to post it because I thought it was flawed, which is ironic considering my last post.

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Once upon a time, I remember someone telling me that the one thing that a lot of people fear more than dying is public speaking. Regardless of whether this is true or not, that fear is right up there.

Now, where will almost all people do some form of public speaking?

In class. School. University.

People will be scared of public speaking and refuse to do it anywhere else. Most people won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t consider Toastmasters an easy task, especially the first time. Yet, when you need to present a speech in class, almost everybody will do it.

Why?

You might be too naive to realise this as a child, but by university level, you will have (hopefully) realised that you actually have a choice in doing anything.

The truth is, you DON?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢T have to do assignments. You DON?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢T have to speak in class. You don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t even have to GO to class. In fact, some of the clever ones don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t even go to class anymore because they realise it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s all in their lecture notes and text books.

So it can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t be because you don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have a choice.

You could be at university because you really have a passion for what you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re doing. But I bet you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve experienced times when you really just couldn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t bother with some 5% assessment, yet did it anyway, maybe missing out on something good while doing it. The class journal you fill out every week, just for that 10%. You know, you could just not do it. If you did well in everything else, this wouldn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t really affect your grades significantly.

But you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll still try to get the 5% over going overseas for a week or whatever.

What am I on about here?

This is an example of a really strong frame. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll call it the education frame. When you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re in this frame, education is the most important thing, and you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll do anything to get that squiggle on a piece of paper. You?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll get up and speak, even if you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re scared of public speaking. You?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d go to class every week, just to sleep, and later ?¢‚ǨÀúcatch up?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ with lecture notes – just for the attendance mark. And you do this for the whole 13 weeks, instead of a pass mark of 6 or 7 weeks. You?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll suck up to teachers, to get better marks. Ad nauseum.

Is there any point to all this? Yes, but I won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t get into it here. I just find it incredibly interesting how frames work in everyday life.

- Matt

I am constantly suffering from a chronic case of procrastination. Every day, I fight the battle of work vs play, and most of the time I end up doing neither. Assignments are left undone and my play time is tainted with thoughts of what I haven?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t accomplished.

Even as I write this, I find myself checking facebook, as if something important and life changing was going to pop up at any moment (note: Nothing important and life changing popped up).

As I was procrastinating today, I stumbled across a thread on a forum, which was asking people for tips on how to be productive. I read the thread, because the original post was interesting enough to me: I was in the same boat. Then one post really stood out for me: it said that a lot of the time, people procrastinate because they are perfectionists. To summarise the idea, perfectionists want everything they do to be perfect, and because of this, some people never do anything because if they tried, the end result might not be perfect.

Does that make sense?

So I was thinking about this and seeing whether it applied to me. Admittedly, my standards aren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t the highest when it comes to work, but I do strive for perfection most of the time. I actually write a lot for this blog, but a lot of the posts that I write get scrapped because I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t think that they are perfect. A lot of the time, I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t go for what I want because I think, ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhy bother if I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll fail??¢‚Ǩ¬ù It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s not really a fear of failure, just a feeling of apathy for the lack of results.

I hadn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t set new goals since the last set of goals expired, so I decided that this would be the theme for the next period: Don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t be perfect, just DO. This runs until the 26th of June, 2009… Hopefully by the time I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m 23 this will be chipped away at.

Goals:

1. Procrastination = Perfectionism. Girls, work, etc – stop trying to be perfect and DO. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d rather be a do-er than be perfect.
2. 12-5 = work time. Work in the afternoons. Better than sitting around wondering what to do.
3. Read 2 books. There?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a few weeks of holidays before the 27th so I have plenty of time.

Done.

- Matt

I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m sick of this swine flu crap that I keep hearing about. Stories about people needing to store up food in case of a ?¢‚ǨÀúpandemic?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ are just ridiculous. Some people still have their heads screwed on right. Why does swine flu annoy me? Because most of our dinner time conversation of late revolve around this fear of the dreaded and deadly swine flu, while the facts really aren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t that fear inducing.

Lets see the facts:

Figures originally from here. Updated to 1st of May, 2009.

Hmm I see that there?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a total of 2620 people suspected or confirmed with having swine flu and 160 dead. That?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s just over a 6% death rate. But wait, what?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s this? 99% of the dead are in Mexico?! I wonder why that is. Tacos? Burritos? Maybe it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s just the poor access to health care in the country?

When was the last time another disease threatened to take over the world? Oh, I believe that would be SARS in 2002, with 8096 cases and 774 deaths (9.6%). Swine flu has a long way to go yet. And keep in mind, SARS wasn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t that bad either:

Mortality by age group as of 8 May 2003 is below 1 percent for people aged 24 or younger, 6 percent for those 25 to 44, 15 percent in those 45 to 64 and more than 50 percent for those over 65.

All stats are taken from Wikipedia. STFU. I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢m making a point.

To further highlight the ridiculousness of this ?¢‚ǨÀúepidemic?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢, lets look at normal flu stats:

Every winter, tens of millions of people get the flu. Most are only ill and out of work for a week, yet the elderly are at a higher risk of death from the illness. We know the worldwide death toll exceeds a few hundred thousand people a year, but even in developed countries the numbers are uncertain, because medical authorities don’t usually verify who actually died of influenza and who died of a flu-like illness.

From WHO via Wikipedia

Did you know that the normal flu kills a few hundred thousand people a year?

A few deaths in some poor country shouldn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t amount to worldwide fear.

-Matt

PS. Now karma will kick my ass and I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll probably end up with swine flu…

Haven’t written one of these thinky things for a while.

Frames are everything. When you understand frames, it is like seeing the matrix; you understand how everything really works. Just so you know what I mean by frames, here is a brief explanation:

You walk into a store, looking for something to buy. Right now, as you walk into the store, you are automatically in a customer frame. As a customer, you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re allowed to do some things and not allowed to do others. You can ask store workers for help, look at things, buy things, etcetera. You can’t go behind the counter, steal things, order employees around, fire employees, etcetera. Now, if you walked into the store as the manager, you would have a whole different set of behaviours allowable to you…

Now I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve only listed two ways in which people can enter a store, but hopefully you get the idea. There?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a million other possible frames. And that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s only in a store context.

What about in a social context? What if a stranger comes up to you and starts talking? I gets even more complicated.

In the world of frames, status and value can be created. Say for example… you see an average asian guy, dressed averagely, walking around. How would you react to him if he was loud and confident? How would you react to him if he was quiet and shy?

How this person behaves would determine how the frame is set. He shapes the people around him depending how strong into his frame he is.

So this is it for ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThe World that Frames?¢‚Ǩ¬ù, and if I can be bothered, I?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll write more on this subject later… like how this ?¢‚Ǩ?ìglitch?¢‚Ǩ¬ù in the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìmatrix?¢‚Ǩ¬ù can help you with stuff.

- Matt

In the last week there’s been two events that have stuck out in my mind that have been pretty assholeish to me. Like, cognitively, I consider these things asshole behaviours, yet… there’s perfectly rational explanations in my mind that makes it okay for me to behave these ways. I suspect my values have changed.

The first one happened in a club. Without getting into too much back story, whenever I am in a club, inevitably, someone I know will come up and talk to me. I’m not bragging, this is fairly normal for anyone who goes out. Anyway, whenever this happens I’m usually talking to a girl. In the past, I would have let this go because the people who come up to me are my “friends” and I shouldn’t be an asshole to them. This annoyed me.

So then I started to ignore people when they came up to me. At first I’d give them blatant hints. And then I’d straight up ignore them. Then if they started to be more pushy then I’d straight out ridicule them. One example of this was a few weeks ago, when I was talking to a girl and one of these “pick up” dudes came up to say hi. And then he started “trying” to pick up my girl. So I watched. And I waited. As soon as he made his mistake (as he inevitably would have), I whispered to the girl, “isn’t he entertaining?” and backturned him. Bitches, don’t annoy me.

That alone was pretty assholeish, but the particular event that happened was this last weekend when one of my good friends came up to me when I was talking to a girl, and wanted my attention. I straight out ignored him, thinking he was just telling me that he was around, but then he got annoyed. Which got me thinking: is this really acceptable for close friends? I should know that my friends know my boundaries and that they wouldn’t do this, so I shouldn’t have ignored him.

The second event kind of hit harder. I invited a long time friend out clubbing, and as we left his place, I checked his shoes and was unsure about whether he’d be able to get into the club. He thought it’d be fine so I let it drop. Went around and picked up another mate, hit the club and he wasn’t allowed in. He managed to locate another pair of shoes so we went around a 25 minute round trip to get them, but he still wasn’t allowed in. At this point I was pretty pissed already about having to drive around heaps so I was rude and told him he was on his own. He had to make his own way home.

So I have no excuse for that kind of behaviour, yet in my mind (at the time) it was simple time issues. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t drive anywhere for this guy (I have, and would if he asked), it was that my time was being impinged on and I didn’t like it. In my mind, I had allocated that time for fun and clubbing, and not some crappy shoe drama, so I got annoyed and cut the interaction like that. This is pretty asshole behaviour, yet, where do my values lie in this situation?

Interesting.

- Matt