Mehkurydiaries

I have a productivity problem that wears respectable clothes. Give me a research question or a piece of software refusing to behave, and three hours can be eaten alive before I notice the bones. Meanwhile, applications, emails and administrative work stand outside knocking like creditors. The embarrassing part is that I am not wasting time. I am working. That is what makes the deception convincing. Psychologists call one version of this productive procrastination: replacing an important task with another useful but less important one. The desk is busy. The priority is still starving. Research also describes flow as deep absorption in an activity—focused, rewarding and almost effortless. Flow can produce excellent work. It can also make time disappear with the efficiency of a trained kidnapper. The danger begins when we confuse absorption with discipline. The work I love offers immediate rewards. A stubborn bug can be defeated. A research problem can surrender a new idea. Pro...

Spend enough time with someone and they begin appearing in your mouth. A phrase arrives in their rhythm. Your face borrows one of their expressions. Their way of reacting to surprise quietly joins your nervous system. No meeting was held. No permission was signed. Human beings copy one another almost automatically. Psychologists call part of this the chameleon effect: people unconsciously imitate the posture, gestures and mannerisms of those around them. Research has also found that conversations produce linguistic style matching, sometimes down to small function words nobody remembers choosing. Apparently, even our grammar likes company. This is not merely weakness or poor originality. Mimicry helps people coordinate. It can reduce social distance, strengthen rapport and make an interaction feel smoother. Two bodies discover a temporary rhythm before either mind announces what it is doing. That is the beautiful side. The dangerous side is that we do not copy only laughter. We can in...

A lie once needed a convincing storyteller. Now it only needs a distribution budget. Say something false loudly enough, frequently enough and through enough familiar faces, and the mind may begin to lower its guard. Not because the claim has improved. Because it has returned. Psychologists call this the illusory-truth effect: repeated statements tend to feel more truthful than unfamiliar ones. Familiarity is processed more easily, and the brain can mistake that ease for accuracy. The lie has not acquired evidence. It has merely become comfortable furniture. This weakness is not reserved for fools. In a 2015 study, Lisa Fazio and colleagues found that repetition could increase belief even when participants possessed knowledge that contradicted the repeated claim. Knowing better helps, but the mind does not consult its library every time a familiar sentence walks through the door. Another study by Gordon Pennycook, Tyrone Cannon and David Rand found that even one earlier exposure to a...

“With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Isaiah’s image is more severe than it first appears. The well may be full, but fullness is not enough. Water still has to be drawn. There must be a vessel, a hand, and something strong enough to reach into the darkness and bring what is hidden to the surface. I have begun to suspect that inspiration works the same way. Ideas are not always absent when we feel empty. Sometimes they are simply deep. And joy, not noise, entertainment or the performance of happiness, may be one of the ropes by which we reach them. We usually put joy at the end of life’s equation. Work first. Struggle first. Survive the month. Finish the manuscript. Win. Endure. Then, if life is merciful, rejoice. But a mind trained to postpone joy eventually forgets how to receive it. Worse, we demand inspiration from the very state that has exhausted it: pressure. We sit before a blank page as though interrogating a suspect. We threaten the mind with de...