Procrastination

Interesting piece on a new study on a subject almost everyone is familiar with...procrastination. Interesting take-away for me were that technology, instead of being the savior of productivity, is apparently the culprit causing chronic procrastination. Most procrastination is caused by temptation. Temptations that are more pervasive and accessible because of technology (tv, videos online, the internet, cell phone, iPods, etc.)

The other take-away was that people incur more credit card debt when doing last-minute Christmas shopping, due to procrastination. Sort of an obvious observation, but worth noting the added economic impact of procrastinating.

Best quote:

"That stupid game Minesweeper— that probably has cost billions of dollars for the whole society."

Your laptop has free will...

...by one definition anyway. Interesting NYT article explores the concept of free will.

If by free will we mean the ability to choose, even a simple laptop computer has some kind of free will, said Seth Lloyd, an expert on quantum computing and professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Every time you click on an icon, he explained, the computer’s operating system decides how to allocate memory space, based on some deterministic instructions. But, Dr. Lloyd said, “If I ask how long will it take to boot up five minutes from now, the operating system will say ‘I don’t know, wait and see, and I’ll make decisions and let you know.’ ”

Something to think about next time you boot up.