Home Page Marc Verlinden

"Het leven" is een supercomplexiteit (WELLICHT buiten huidig begrip), een simpele uitleg kan dus nooit - zelfs geen tipje van de sluier - een verklaring zijn voor gelijk welk onderdeel van "dit leven" dat om verklaring vraagt. Elke uitleg moèt derhalve complex zijn opdat die uitleg een bepaalde vorm van waarheid wilt bieden, of compleet wilt zijn (MV).

Simplicity at the expense of reality

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

-Cicero, 55 BC.

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Vandaag, in het jaar....:

1945: Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley--who achieved stardom by blending early ska, rock steady, and reggae forms into an electrifying rock-influenced hybrid--was born.

Economic Sanctions Are Overrated

An insightful piece by Ivan Eland on the uses and limitations of economic sanctions against nations. Sanctions — an economic means to achieve a political end — don’t work.

Frequent practitioners of economic warfare—especially the United States, which is the most aggressive user of such methods in the world—often confuse the economic effects of sanctions with the political. Sanctions are economic means that attempt to achieve political ends. Even if sanctions bite deeply on the target economy, they often have little or no effect in compelling it to bend to the sanctioning nations’ political will, especially if the goal is ambitious. For example, sanctions are not good at achieving regime change or the abandonment of a nuclear program—objectives that directly affect the security of the target nation or its ruling regime. In the case of Iran, economic pressure is designed to help achieve both of these lofty but unrealistic goals.

Even when most of the world’s countries agree to sanctions, it becomes a game with misaligned incentives. Arguably, each enforcing nation would be better off in the end if all enforcing nations held tough to the sanctions. However, each individual nation would be better off looking the other way while their corporations do business with the embargoed nation.

“Evasion of sanctions is usually rampant,” Eland writes, “because big money can be made selling to an embargoed nation that is willing to pay a premium to get banned goods. And evasion usually increases over time because both the target and the illicit exporters learn new ways of skirting restrictions.”

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Ivan Eland is the author of the new book, No War for Oil: U.S. Dependency and the Middle East.

7 Things Highly Productive People Do

If you read the seven habits of highly ineffective people, you might want to read seven things highly productive people do:

1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.

2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).

3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.

4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.

5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead.

6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day.

7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012

‘Email’s variable interval reinforcement schedule is basically a slot machine for your brain’

1. Responding Like a Trained Monkey. Every productivity expert in the world will tell you to check email at periodic intervals — say, every 90 minutes — rather than clicking “refresh” like a Pavlovian mutt. Of course, almost no one listens, because studies have shown email’s “variable interval reinforcement schedule” is basically a slot machine for your brain. But spending a month away — and only checking email weekly — showed me how little really requires immediate response. In fact, nothing. A 90 minute wait won’t kill anyone, and will allow you to accomplish something substantive during your workday.

2. Mindless Traditions. I recently invited a friend to a prime networking event. “Can I play it by ear?” she asked. “This is my last weekend to get holiday cards out and I haven’t mailed a single one. It is causing stress!” In the moment, not fulfilling an “obligation” (like sending holiday cards) can make you feel guilty. But if you’re in search of professional advancement, is a holiday card (buried among the deluge) going to make a difference? If you want to connect, do something unusual — get in touch at a different time of year, or give your contacts a personal call, or even better, meet up face-to-face. You have to ask if your business traditions are generating the results you want.

3. Reading Annoying Things. I have nearly a dozen newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the result of alluring specials ($10 for an entire year!) and the compulsion not to miss out on crucial information. But after detoxing for a month, I was able to reflect on which publications actually refreshed me — and which felt like a duty. The New Yorker , even though it’s not a business publication, broadens my perspective and is a genuine pleasure to read. The pretentious tech publication with crazy layouts and too-small print? Not so much. I’m weeding out and paring down to literary essentials. What subscriptions can you get rid of?

4. Work That’s Not Worth It. Early in my career, I was thrilled to win a five-year, quarter-million dollar contract. That is, until the reality set in that it was a government contract, filled with ridiculous reporting mechanisms, low reimbursement rates and administrative complexities that sucked the joy and profit out of the work. When budget cuts rolled around and my contract got whacked, it turned out to be a blessing. These days, I’m eschewing any engagement, public or private, that looks like more trouble than it’s worth.

5. Making Things More Complicated Than They Should Be. A while back, a colleague approached me with an idea. She wanted me to be a part of a professional development event she was organizing in her city, featuring several speakers and consultants. She recommended biweekly check-in calls for the next eight months, leading up to the event. “Have you organized an event like this before?” I asked. “Can you actually get the participants? Why don’t you test the demand first?” When none materialized, I realized I’d saved myself nearly half a week’s work — in futile conference calls — by insisting the event had to be “real” before we invested in it. As Eric Ries points out in his new book The Lean Startup, developing the best code or building the best product in the world is meaningless if your customers don’t end up wanting it. Instead, test early and often to ensure you’re not wasting your time. What ideas should you test before you’ve gone too far?