If you are taking a picture of your children, which is to say if you are holding a camera (…) and snapping a picture, then are you, in that moment, looking at them?

Or are you anticipating a moment in the future—it is sometimes ten seconds in the future but it could well be ten years—when you will be looking at this very moment?

via Saying Goodbye to Now.

As long as we keep rereading we never have the ultimate version of a book. Whether we go back again and again to a classic (and the ability to hold up to rereading is how a book becomes a classic) or pick up an old favorite to see how it has fared or dig deep into the treasures of our youth, rereading is an experiment that is bound to change us, and to change our impressions of the books we read. Rereading can certainly surprise, it can instruct, and it can make us feel safe.

Maybe it is not indulgent to reread a book, but a way to learn; and what is any sort of reading but a way to learn, whether it is something new about the world or just something new about ourselves?

via The Millions.

It’s not just limited to the United States, either. In the Netherlands, the average commute time in the early 2000s was about 28 minutes. Many European nations average about 35 minutes. What makes a half-hour so universal in terms of commuting?

Excellent discussion of the research at Per Square Mile.

The modern employment relationship generally increases the connection between time and money with important implications for people’s choices about how to use their time, including how much to work and how much to volunteer their time in unpaid activities. Although it may not have been consciously done, modern management seems to have created a hedonic treadmill in which people want to trade time for money and because of thinking of time like money cannot enjoy leisure activities as much.

…the social status of leisure versus work has changed over time so that working is now a status symbol, signaling people’s importance to their organizations—a change that itself may derive in part from how we view time.

via Business Insider.

The [2008] crash illustrates the first reason why management matters: when it screws up everyone suffers. But why it screwed up relates to its role as a carrier of ideas.

This derives from the built-in amplifier that is the power of expectation. Well known to social science as self-fulfilling prophecy, expectation has the power to create its own reality. If managers expect subordinates to perform well, expectations tend to lead to better performance. The reverse is also true.

The consequences are profound. In management and economics, the battle of ideas is decided not by which best explain the world but which most affect it and thereby become true as a result of their influence. Companies are the battleground.

Firms whose managers act on the principle that employees are self-interested opportunists who must be forced to do their job will tend to create just that. Conversely, a company that functions on the basis of trust and co-operation creates a system in which honest, co-operative people flourish. Self-fulfilling prophecy makes every company a force for either good or ill.

Since the 1980s, the assumptions baked into the management model are the pessimistic ones. In the crash of 2008 we can see where the template based on them (incentives, compliance with letter rather than spirit, rejection of ethical considerations) leads.

If the 21st century that management makes possible is to end happily, managers will have to absorb its most important lesson from the 20th: what matters most in management is not what you make but what you believe.

via Simon Caulkin.

Yo trabajo por la mañana, cuando el soporte biológico del escritor mejor funciona. Al lado de una ventana que da a un patio interior que se llena de luz y por el que oigo cantar a las vecinas, a los pájaros, incluso al perro.

Porque por la mañana todo es posible. Es cuando encuentras la clave de todos los problemas técnicos que de noche te han parecido insolubles.

via Javier Tomeo.

I think that working is part of life, I don’t know how to distinguish between the two…

Work is an expression of life for me.

h/t Brain Pickings.

A presentation by Andrew Rashbass, CEO of The Economist Group, calls the old publishing models of web and print “irredeemably broken,” with publishers requiring “urgent re-examination of everything that constitutes a media business.”

The concept of Lean Back 2.0 is relatively simple — the use of tablets and e-readers is growing at the expense of print and web use, with The Economist‘s iPad readers spending on average around 90 minutes with the app each week.

Unlike the desktop and laptop web experience, these devices are allowing users to read at their leisure.

Some key facts from the presentation:

• 42 percent of tablet users regularly read in-depth articles, with another 40 percent reading them occasionally
• Tablet users are three times more likely to read an article than watch a news video
• A user’s eye activity is far more focused on an iPad app than on a website
• Some users believe the content received in an app is even worth more than content received elsewhere, with a large majority saying they find it easier to learn new things and enjoy the news more when using apps
• The Economist projects a fall of over 50 percent in the preference for paper over other formats in the next 2 years, with tablet preference growing to over 20 percent.

The idea of keeping yourself on a digital diet will, I suspect, become mainstream soon. Just as I’ve learned not to stock my fridge with tempting carbs, I’ve learned to limit my exposure to the web – and to love it in the limited window I allow myself.

I have installed the programme “Freedom” on my laptop: it will disconnect you from the web for however long you tell it to. It’s the Ritalin I need for my web-induced ADHD.

I make sure I activate it so I can dive into the more permanent world of the printed page for at least two hours a day, or I find myself with a sense of endless online connection that leaves you oddly disconnected from yourself.

via Johann Hari.