Book Review: The Lazy Way to Success

How to do nothing and yet accomplish everything – with my Protestant work ethic, I was too intrigued to not pick up a book with such a title – how can one be lazy and say it out loud? I honestly thought the book was a joke, but I ended up writing an article about it – life is so surprising.

After a short introduction on human innovations caused by the need to avoid work -  I got hooked on this book until the very end.According to it, processing huge amounts of data in college is not going to make a difference in the quality of your brain – aka your intelligence – so what increases it then? The author found the solution in transcendental meditation – the ultimate in doing absolutely nothing!

Meditation does improve attention span – but you still need the basic resources of being smart – which is the knowledge itself – and that’s where education – formal or not – is a great complement!

(You can get the book right from the author’s website).

 

Higher education – a privilege or a right?

Studying on your own can be more efficient in terms of money and time spent, but you can’t display that amount on knowledge – and some professions are required by the government to prove such credentials – which do cost money, even if you’re attending tuition-free colleges.

 

The knowledge divide

English: Top Languages on Internet Source: Internet World Stats (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may not be aware of this on your first day at school, but what you’re experiencing is a privilege not witnessed by many – even if you think being a nerd is uncool:)

Why do so many people lack access to abundant knowledge? I ask myself this question many times a day – especially when I am among people with more financial resources than the average.

Apart from being born in an educated family and getting good nourishment, I would say there are two main causes:

1 – these people don’t speak English

2 – they have no interest towards using the Internet (most of them even have a phobia towards everything PC-related)

Why are these so important for gaining access to quality education?

Since resources are limited – and by resources I mainly mean money, time and neurons – it is most efficient to find desired information in the language that is spoken by most (civilized) people in this world – and that is English – the commonly used language in sciences and computing.

Secondly, people have gained access to skills through printed books for a long time, but there is nothing that can match the speed of Internet – if you limit yourself to the written word, you lose a lot of things you didn’t even know existed, so how can you search for them in a regular encyclopedia?

Having a PC at school where the administrator is responsible for everything doesn’t cut it – you need to have your own device to learn efficiently. Only this way will you make mistakes and hopefully learn from them – it’s like having your own space for software, books, music and so on.

Just because something is not published in English or on the Internet – it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist – but the stakes are pretty high that you’ll find an answer to your questions if you search it in English and if you make good use of any computing device!

 

On the psychology of Romanian people

English: Stamp of Moldova; Ion Luca Caragiale (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Doesn’t it feel strange to easily find words in English compared to your native language? It feels even weirder to admit this to strangers …although I’m sure I’m not unique in that…

Yet some weeks ago I was browsing the library’s shelves and as all good things in life, I found – and read by now – an interesting book on the psychology of Romanian people – and it was painfully true! (I recognized myself in most of the descriptions)

I was surprised when other people of my ethnicity knew Greek or French much better than Romanian in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a natural side effect of getting your education in a foreign language when your native one is not that used in some areas of knowledge…

Although it was written in 1904 (by D. Draghicescu) – the book is just as actual today as it was then.

Any foreigner visiting Bucharest (or any other city/town/village of Romania) will be perplexed by the lack of unity of its architecture – no wonder, in a country whose people are so obsessed by freedom that nobody can truly rule them and so uncertain on their future that they don’t build anything lasting.

English people are just as individualistic, but they never had to fight for their freedom – their country is an island surrounded by waters – so giving that their property rights were respected by natural borders, they could use this freedom on the long-term.

Yet when you’re always threatened with extinction, you won’t bother to work that much – “dolce far niente” could be said by Romanians just as well” – and cheating and lying became important skills for survival.

I was always amazed how come Romania turned out to be the most religious country in the European Union, yet it’s also one of the most corrupted! Now I get it – religion here is mostly about ritual – whose purpose is to have the “good connections” for the afterlife:)

Just like Egyptian pharaohs built pyramids for their own soul, so did Romanian rulers built monasteries and churches in which they were buried.

What is the favorite word of Romanians? Liberty – promise that and you gain political power;)

I was amused by the critical depictions of fatalism – that’s so Romanian – yet if there’s anything we are good at that’s sarcasm and critiquing – as an example, check out Ion Luca Caragiale – I don’t know how he sounds in English, but in original, he’s damn funny and painfully true at the same time!

Oh – and for the curious ones – here is the original book on psychology (in Romanian).

 

Is there a college bubble?

American Education is in the Dumpster (Photo credit: brewbooks)

I admit: I live in Europe – my formal education was partly paid by taxpayers – that’s the tradition here and I’m happily paying for other people’s education now. Not only this, but even if you’d get private education, it would still be cheaper than USA.

Even after all these years of school, I am at the beginning of my career – if by that you mean salaried work experience – and watching this documentary on the so-called college bubble kinda shocked me.

I am shocked because my patients are all seniors – and it is only during the old age one can notice the cumulative effect of daily decisions – reading a book instead of watching TV, choosing salad and veggies instead of pork belly and cake every meal, going to the library instead of the smoke-filled clubs, having a lifetime partner instead of sleeping around, taking a walk in the park instead of playing a video game – and education is the best medical drug by far – because educated people control their diseases a lot better – while taking the same receipt from their physician!

Yes – a degree can be hyped and it takes work to go through that hype – especially when you’ll pay it by debt! That’s why you need to train your brain all the time – even before going to college – and choose wisely!

No, education is not worthless – it may not be all about money, but life quality greatly increases – so if you wanna go the formal way, choose a field where you really need that piece of paper – like medicine, law, engineering, police, firefighting – and gain some work experience in the field before you embark on this road – ESPECIALLY if you’re gonna pay it out of your own pocket with(out) any additional income!

Would you do college again if you could turn back time?

 

Civilization and resources

English: The United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) rankings for 2010. For full details, see List of countries by Human Development Index (en.wikipedia) Very High High Medium Low Data unavailable (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Switching between the developed and the developing world last year has made me more aware on the innate differences among people – while currently reading “The Starvation Experiment” – a study on 36 male volunteers who restricted their daily calories and the short-term and long-term consequences of their act -  I came to realize how much does civilization depend on the abundance of resources.

Justice and so-called equality among people can only exist in rich countries – as survival itself is a social thing – once resources drop, competition increases and violence take its toll – why else would ghettos be so unsafe?

 

Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning

A classic tribute to hope from a physician who has experienced the Holocaust, – this book became a bestseller – indirectly proving that this subject matters to us all.

The book starts with the depiction of life in the Nazism prisoner camp – how the only thing that mattered was survival – thus explaining the newly-formed hierarchy among prisoners themselves.

It vividly describes the pains of hunger, coldness, physical work and the emotional poverty – as nobody knew how much time would it all last, how would it all end and whether their beloved ones were still alive – somewhere far away.

In the midst of this experience, Dr. Frankl has sketched various snippets on small pieces of paper on what would become the third psychology school of Vienna – logotherapy – and in the later editions of this book, he explained his theory in the book’s second chapter.

Life meaning is unique to every human being – and it dynamically varies, as our life changes too. He identified three manners of finding meaning in life:

1 – by creating values or accomplishing some actions

2 – by contemplating – nature, the truth, beauty, beloved ones

3 – life means suffering and surviving it means finding meaning in suffering

You can read the book at your closest library in English – since I’m currently learning German, I promised myself I would read this masterpiece in the original language too

Why does life matters? Why do you continue to wake up every morning?

I’m looking forward to your comments!