Posts by Hillary
Writer’s Block is Universal
Sheldon Levine at Sysomos used his company’s social media analytics platform to see how often people mention writer’s block online, and who is mentioning it. He got some interesting results, including: Of the 100 days I looked at, 54.7% of all the social mentions of writers block that I found came from the United States.…
Read MoreGuest Post: Tips for Thesis Writers: How to Get to the First Draft
Terrific advice for all writers from Ph.D. student Nolanne Chang, reprinted with kind permission. Here’s her blog. She sounds very empowered as she works to create a context that supports her writing productivity! – Hillary Previously in my posts I’ve outlined my feelings on the general structure of writing a science thesis, and what the…
Read MoreScrivener Word Processor 50% Off at Amazon
Scrivener is an excellent word processor for long-form writing in particular. It was designed from the ground up with writing efficiency in mind, and harkens back to the golden age of word processing when we had speedy and versatile tools like Wordstar, WordPerfect, Textra (my favorite!), etc. It’s currently 50% off at Amazon – $20.…
Read MoreWhy Shouldn’t You Strive for Happiness Late in Life?
My dad was an intelligent, creative, and incredibly thwarted guy who was miserable most of his life. I suggested a few times that he get therapy, and the answer was always, “What do you think I am? Nuts?” And so he never got happier. So I’m really happy to read that more elderly people are…
Read MoreArtist Sol LeWitt’s Productivity Advice: Create More by Focusing on the Work Itself
This short movie contains many F-bombs but offers valid productivity advice: The movie’s text is an F-bombed version of a letter from Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse, who struggled with self-doubt: Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping,…Stop it and just DO!……
Read MoreOn Being a “Good Enough” Parent
We live in an age of perfectionist parenting, but one mom was smart enough to bow out: I wish my new-mommy-self had been familiar with the philosophy of the “good enough” mother. Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst coined the term in the 1950′s while studying the interactions of mothers and their infants. He believed mothers…
Read MoreDavid Foster Wallace: Perfectionism as Paralysis
“My life…was often lived as performance art for invisible Simon Cowells”
A moving and wise essay on how one woman’s becoming less perfectionist helped her when she had to face cancer: Around 13 years ago, a confluence of events revealed to me how soul-sucking perfectionism was, and how much the futile striving for it was costing me in stress and anxiety. I began to understand that…
Read MoreWhy Rodin’s “The Thinker” Should be Renamed “The Perfectionist” (Plus, Bonus Balzac!)
Auguste Rodin’s famous “The Thinker” statue (1902) is, all by itself, probably responsible for many cases of perfectionism and procrastination. It’s such a forceful statement that some, looking at it, probably think, “So THAT’S what intellectual work is supposed to look like! A grinding inner struggle! I’d better aim for that, and if my work…
Read MoreCompelling Links: Racial Profiling, Rhino Sanctuary, Hillary Clinton’s Image Inspires Women to Speak Publicly
A really eloquent essay on how it feels to be racially profiled your whole life. Inspiring obituary of Anna Merz, who founded a rhino sanctuary. A new study finds women give longer and more confident political speeches when they are exposed to images of female role models. “Female role models eliminated the gender gap, though.…
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