After wisdom there is peace,freedom, and focus. Before wisdom there is everything else.
Steven James Snyder, Techland’s resident movie geek, outlines the top 5 most under-rated sci-fi movies of all time. You can watch his video review here.
Here is his list, hyperlinked to the Internet Movie Database ( imdb.com ):
I saw both Gattaca and Serenity and I can say that those movies deserve a place on that list
Dr. Neil Fiore wrote what I thought was one of the best books on procrastination that I ever read.
I recently found this quote he posted on an email list concerning a study about procrastination.
Basically, people who feel more in control and more confident about their abilities are more likely to complete a task.
Dr. Fiore recommends keeping your attention focused only on starting, instead of finishing and focusing on only working for small amounts of time on a task to get yourself going. Once you get going, feelings of anxiety about the task will tend to disappear. Jump in the pool and the water will no longer feel cold.
Psychologist in Berlin’s Freie University, Ralf Schwarzer & Urte Scholz, found that feeling in control [perceived self-efficacy] is the opposite of [is negatively correlated with] procrastination at – .56 and with feelings of lack of achievement at -.75. They define Perceived Self-Efficacy as the belief that one can perform a novel or difficult task, or cope with adversity — in various domains of human functioning. So if you feel in control you’re less likely to procrastinate and your confidence about completing even difficult projects becomes stronger. You can feel in control/have self-efficacy by Choosing to Start at a specific time for 5, 15, or 30 minutes. When you actually show up at that chosen time you build Self-leadership neural pathways and discover that the overwhelmed, fearful parts of you are able to follow your lead and contribute to achieving your goals. Time Management can offer a structure—such as the Un-Schedule and Guilt-Free Play and Billable Minutes and 3 and 4-dimensional views of your goals—that require less will power or sense of being in control. I just tell my workers – my mind and body— WHEN to show up for 15-30 minutes to start on my top AAA priority task first [then choose when I will start again], follow it by a reward or by doing a simple B priority, mindless task such as
paying a few bills, preparing lunch or following up on emails.
I do not know anything about tea.
People who know a lot about green tea told me that I could get a lot better tasting green tea by ordering it directly from Asia.
That is partially because unlike black tea, green tea is a “perishable” product. Time, exposure to air and exposure to light degrades the quality of green tea. Appreciating tea can get as complex as appreciating wine. The green tea cognoscenti I conversed with told me that Asian tea farmers have the advantage of centuries of experience and the right kind of environment. Many of the Asian companies that ship green tea directly to customers refrigerate their tea after harvesting it, and then air mail the tea in vacuum packed envelopes.
I ordered a “green tea beginner’s kit” from one such Japanese company ( yes, Japanese tea has been tested by disinterested parties to be safe from radiation poisoning ). I ordered the cheapest of this better quality tea, “Sakura Sencha”, $6.76 for 50 grams ( about 1.8 ounces ). This tea is of high enough quality that you can use each serving of tea leaves 3 times. I also selected a fancy Japanese airtight tea jar and an 8 fluid ounce clay pot especially designed for making Japanese green tea.
When I finally got it all, the instructions on the tea envelope called for using 0.6 grams of tea per ounce of water. I knew that “a cup” is 8 fluid ounces. No problems there, but I had no idea how many grams of tea an American tea spoon holds. I wasn’t about to weigh out tea leaves every single time I wanted to drink tea, so I asked for an approximation on a web board devoted to tea aficionados. I got answers all over the map.
Enter the new scale:
According to wiki.answers.com a U.S. Quarter weighs 5.67 grams. This is where my directly out of box new scale is started from:
I had the intuition that shape matters. The Sakura Sencha green tea leaves are rolled into linear shapes and a round teaspoon may not fit as much as an oblong teaspoon. I did 3 weighings, one per each of these differently shaped teaspoons:
I started off with the cheapo, battered, round, white plastic teaspoon I use at work, where I do most of my tea drinking:
I got 1.72 grams per teaspoon:
Next, I moved on to a round steel teaspoon with a wider bowl:
I got 1.85 grams per teaspoon:
Finally, I moved on to a steel teaspoon with an oblong shape bowl:
I got the highest weight, with the widest teaspoon, at 1.93 grams per teaspoon:
So, to make a cup ( 8 fluid ounces ) of Sankura Sencha Green Tea using 0.6 grams of tea leaves per 1 fluid ounce of water, I would need 4.8 grams of tea leaves.
Dividing that by the 1.72 grams per my cheapo plastic work teaspoon I get 2.79 teaspoons.
That sounds about right. Before I got the scale I found 3 cheapo plastic teaspoons to be slightly too strong and 2 of those teaspoons to be just about right.
HTH