I think Google + is what Facebook should have been. But it’s years too late. When I set up a G+ account, I figured several of my friends and family from FB would follow me on it, but only a few did. They are still using just FB and not posting on other social media sites.

I found G+ to be pretty interesting, at first, but now it’s sort of old hat … I don’t see anything on it that I didn’t see first on FB, techmeme, or Twitter. There are a few good discussions but they are buried amongst too much self-serving crap.

And then there is the annoyance of notifications. Everyday I get notified once or twice that 5 or 10 people have followed me. But a few days later my follow count is back to about what it was, suggesting that they only followed me to get me to follow them, and then unfollowed me when I didn’t. It’s the same follow game that’s played on Twitter, and it’s just annoying. I send all my Twitter notifications about new followers to the trash can — I began doing this sometime ago, after discerning that it’s just “spam bots” or social media “zealots” that are following. But, I can’t do that with G+, so I am just deleting it altogether.

I think quitting G+ will help me get a bit more focus in my life, along with deleting my posterous and tumblr accounts, and training myself to spend less time on the few social media sites I will keep (FB, twitter).”

Admittedly, the Tumblr and Posterous accounts were not actually distracting me, because I haven’t posted to them in a long while. They were experiments that didn’t pan out.

But, I suspect my subconscious still had to deal with the occasional question of “why not post to Tumblr/Posterous today?” So, hopefully deleting them frees my mind up a tad bit more.

Do you have any social media accounts that are more distracting than useful?

“She’s done. She’s been on this cross-country bus tour to promote her folksy ways, and now she has quit halfway through. This is a woman with a very short attention span and a complete lack of discipline and focus; she couldn’t complete her governorship, she can’t finish a bus tour, there’s no way she could cope with a grueling presidential campaign. And if, by some bizarre fluke, she were to actually get elected, I think she’d get bored halfway through the presidential oath of office and decide to go moose hunting, instead.”

I don’t worry about the impact of this on the political scene. I worry that this sort of behavior is representative of a growing segment of our society.

“That Keener sure did know a lot.”

With another friend saying

“Yes, but it would have been better if he known less and had done more.”

And another one said

“Yeah, he sure didn’t do much with all he knew.”

Ouch. Obviously my conscience was talking to me.

So, I thought over my actions of the past several months and found that I had been spending a lot of time on Twitter, using it to find links to a lot of articles to read. And, I had been spending a lot of time reading articles through my RSS feeds, and reading one book after another. Yet, I could not think of a single instance in which I had really enriched anyone’s life.

I had become an information addict. Acquiring information had become a focus in my life.

I had let what could be a strength (learning new things) turn into Resistance to Worthwhile Action. While you might not be an information addict, you too probably have resistance in your life, so I want to say a few words about it.

Steven Pressfield, in his highly acclaimed The War of Art, talks about resistance as if it were something external to us. In fact, he claims that demons, and even the devil, make up Resistance, noting that their aim is to keep you from accomplishing your destiny. (Scott Peck had some of this theme in one of his Road Less Traveled books, where he talked about how he had come to view his time as God’s time, and how he had become determined to not waste any of God’s time.)

A more prevalent view is one described by Seth Godin in his book Linchpin. He devotes an entire chapter to Resistance, and talks about how the oldest part of our brain (which he calls the lizard brain) fears change, and works to keep us from changing and from doing anything it doesn’t consider to be in our best interests.

I’m inclined to think there is some truth to both views. Regardless, I do believe it pays for us to look at where there is resistance in our lives. Pressfield would say that the areas where we encounter the most resistance are the most important ones, the ones most worthy of our attention and effort.

Of course it will do no good to just acknowledge that there are areas where you face resistance. Ultimately we have to do something to deal with it. In my case of information addiction, where it is causing me to spend time unwisely, I have taken the action of abandoning Twitter for at least a month. I’m also working on getting a handle on purchasing books, to cut down to something reasonable.

Regular readers may be wondering if I am now saying that we should not be constant learners. No, I am not saying that. In fact, I was pleased with my buddy Paul Stamatiou for his article yesterday on how he switched from WordPress to Jekyll … one of Paul’s motivations was to do this just so he could learn. (I also love that Paul shares what he learns.) Many has been the time when I have taken something on just so I could learn from it. I do not plan to stop doing that … it is part of my nature. And, I still strongly believe that we have to keep learning just to ensure our brains stay in shape and so that we can develop fresh insights, instead of remaining stale.

But, ultimately there must be balance, even in our efforts to learn. The clock is constantly ticking, and, in the end, it’s what we get done that will matter, not what we knew.

I suppose he’s serious about this. He’s stated many times his belief that he is lucky to have won the “ovarian lottery,” recognizing that he could have been born into poverty and could have died of starvation at an early age.

So, why doesn’t he just cut the US government a huge check? I’m not sure. Could be that deep inside he feels he might as well throw money down the toilet as to donate it to such an inefficient government.

Or, perhaps there is no way to really do it, which is why I propose a voluntary tax. This would enable an individual, or corporation, to cut a check to the Treasury Department that would be a voluntary tax, above and beyond the required tax.

Of course, there are disincentives. For example, how does one know how the tax would be used? What if it went to keep a war going, instead of to fund improvements in education? To overcome such a disincentive, perhaps the donor could specify how the funds are to be used (within some bounds). Or, perhaps all such proceeds could be directed toward paying off the national debt.

Your thoughts?

Skinner distinguished between fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement and variable-ratio schedules of reinforcement. Under a fixed schedule, a rat received a reward of food after it pressed the lever a fixed number of times—say 100 times. Under the variable schedule, the rat earned the food pellet after it pressed the lever a random number of times. Sometimes it would receive the food after pressing 10 times, and sometimes after pressing 200 times.

… Skinner found that the variable schedules were actually more motivating. The most telling result was that when the rewards ceased, the rats that were under the fixed schedules stopped working almost immediately, but those under the variable schedules kept working for a very long time [emphasis mine].

This seems to me to be pretty much what we see with Twitter and Facebook and RSS feeds: the vast majority of the entries are completely useless, even utter crap, but every once in a while, you’ll find something you consider of great value. Because it happens irregularly, and because the size of the “reward” is variable, our minds actually consider the reward more valuable than if we received an equivalent amount on a predictable basis. So we get hooked.

You can read more about this at Dr. Ariely’s full post.

And, David applies this possibilian philosophy to other belief areas as well. For example, instead of believing that there is or is not a God, he would mentally explore as many possibilities on that topic as he could think of.

A recent Killing the Buddha article further examines David’s views.

Conceptually, I like this philosophy, and I have tried to live it out, but can only do so for brief periods. For example, for years I have continued to waffle between believing that God does not exist and believing that there is some sort of God (sometimes my beliefs are more specific and take the form of Christian belief … at other times I am more of a Deist).

While I understand philosophically that there are some things we just cannot know, and appreciate how sensible the possibilian approach is for those things, my mind likes the comfort of settling in on something it can believe in (even if the beliefs change from time to time). Perhaps that is because I, like all humans, like the comfort of certainty, and try to minimize uncertainty by adopting beliefs in areas where there is uncertainty. (One neuroscientist said in an article I read a few years ago that we are belief machines.) Perhaps I’m just a nutcase.

Either way, I think you will agree that Dr. Eagleman’s philosophy is interesting. It would be interesting to see it applied more in the area of modern physics, where physicists seem to be in a sort of rut as far as coming up with any new insights on our world.

As I read through it today, the following paragraph particularly struck a note with me:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Our time is indeed limited. An article I recently read said that 41% of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives. But, even if you have another 50 years left, it will pass much more quickly than you may think. And the things you keep putting off, like finding your inner voice and following it, can be put off until it’s too late.

I’ve made some smart decisions over the years. I’ve made some that were really stupid, and that had irreversible consequences (many of life’s decisions do have irreversible consequences). One of the things that I did too often was to try to lead someone else’s life. It’s great to have people you want to emulate, but it’s more important to know what your inner voice is and to live in accordance with it. Too often, I let that inner voice get drowned out.

These days it can be hard to hear that inner voice because so many things distract our attention. In fact there are those that say that we go through life with continuous partial attention, with nothing really getting our full attention. Thank email, Twitter, websites, TV, Facebook, BlackBerrys, iPhones, Droids, and endless other attention-grabbers.

But, as Mr. Jobs noted, it is important for us to listen to our inner voice. I urge you (and me) to shut the noise out long enough to hear it. You can begin to find it by identifying your values.

One point of clarification: Mr. Jobs did not say “don’t listen to other people.” He said don’t let their views drown out your inner voice. It is vital that you get other perspectives, for you generally cannot make the best decisions until you’ve looked at differing views. One reason this world is in such a mess is that so many people don’t do this often enough. Hence, never stop learning, but don’t drown out your heart’s voice.

Chances are someone in your family, or someone else you care about, has or had cancer. My Dad died from cancer. My late wife was afflicted with uterine cancer when she was only 24. A few of my friends have died from brain cancer, and I lost an uncle to it. Many children suffer from this terrible disease. It’s brutal, and it is important that we rid our world of it.

Although a lot of progress has been made in treating cancer, there is a long way to go before our society is freed of the death and misery it can cause. Past successes do show, though, that our donations matter.

(Note that Tony’s book is not available until June 7, but those who make the donation noted above will have the book shipped to them on that date.)

Join me in making this important donation today.

By the way, here are some interesting cancer stats (number of people having and dying from each type). The data are for the UK, but are probably representative of US numbers, at least in percentages (although probably not actual numbers).

I asked the receptionist if everyone had trouble with their cell phones there, and she replied that a lot did, but some didn’t. I tried to find out if Verizon did any better, but she didn’t know. I was perfectly willing at that point to switch to another carrier if it would give me better service. My love of the iPhone became irrelevant. I calmed down, though, when I found that my iPhone worked a few feet down the hall.

Then I thought “This is nuts. Absolute nuts. Warren Buffett doesn’t even have a cell phone, and here I am fretting over my mine for not having service for a little bit.”

Later that evening I found that Advertising Age had an article entitled Apparently That Text Can’t Wait — Not Even During Sex. Now, that is just f**king crazy (pun intended).

Then I thought more about it. How is it that I can’t seem to do without my cell phone, while Warren Buffett doesn’t even need one, despite being one of the busiest people on earth? Easy enough answer: his staff knows where he is at all times. If there is any sort of emergency requiring his attention, they get in touch with him. But with me, nobody knows where I am half the time, and I really don’t want to feel like I have to let anyone know where I am and what I’m up to. So, comparing with Warren Buffett’s situation is like comparing apples and oranges.

Maybe we have reached the point where our cell phones are part of our extended mind. Perhaps I should not be surprised at this, since I am among those who believe that mind and machine will be melding into a new type of human within the next 50 years or so. Not only are we now dependent on our mobile phones, we will become dependent on AI and the internet and our phones to the point that they will become part of us, connected directly to our brains, extending the pretty limited abilities of our frontal cortex.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel too dependent on your mobile phone and/or other technology? Do you also believe our dependency is only going to increase?

I took care of the mental part, reading a ton of books, working on the computer, and doing some consulting. In fact, I probably overdid the books, in that I filled my head without a lot of stuff that I no longer care about.

But, I neglected the physical part. I figured piddling around the house would provide enough exercise for me. It didn’t.

Three and a half years after retirement, I am finding out that some activities that were routine now pose a bit of a challenge. You can’t just set around on the computer day after day and not pay a price for it. Muscles need to be exercised to keep their abilities up, and walking through the house and occasionally shopping do not provide sufficient exercise.

Fortunately I can recover by exercising regularly, and I actually look forward to it, now that I know what doing without exercise can do to you.

Take care.