#WritingOutput/Newsletter
Random Walk Newsletter, Issue 31#
Observations & Insights#
Health
Recently, there has been a flu outbreak, and my daughter caught it at kindergarten. Unfortunately, I couldn't escape it either. In all my life, I've never had two fevers within three months (the last one was during the pandemic), and this time it was quite troublesome. When the symptoms first appeared, I immediately took Oseltamivir and felt fine after two days, so I didn't continue taking it. However, after three days, the fever returned, and it was even higher than the previous one. So this week, I persisted in taking a full course of medication, and the problem should be resolved now.
Usually, I'm always troubled by various things and overthink a lot. But when I get sick, I don't expect anything else except to recover quickly. Last time, I had dinner with a colleague who happened to have a medical check-up that day because she had been experiencing migraines. During the check-up, the doctor mentioned that there seemed to be a small shadow and suggested getting an imaging test. At that time, she was worried about being laid off (we all know about the wave of layoffs that started last year). After the check-up, while we were having dinner, she told me that while waiting for her report to be printed, she just wanted to focus on work and not think about anything else, as long as her health was okay.
Nostalgia
Recently, when reading newsletters from other authors, a passage struck a chord with me. "Technology is constantly advancing, but behind these advancements, our human lives are 'regressing.' In the past, we used to walk to work to save money, but now, to save time, we drive to work every day and then complain about not having time to exercise. In the past, when we were bored, we would read books or flip through magazines, but now, all we do is scroll through short videos and then complain about not having time to read."
We should seek some nostalgic habits in our lives, or at least not let technology dictate how we live.
This also reminded me of a topic: technology is not inherently good or bad; it depends on how people use it. For example, I once heard about the dark web in a book. The initial intention of creating the dark web technology was to avoid surveillance and enjoy freedom. However, it was later exploited by some criminals. Another example is the recent hype around chatgpt, which is undoubtedly an astonishing technological advancement. But some people have been using it to complete their academic papers (reportedly making plagiarism detection difficult) or engage in unethical activities, which creates unfair competition for those who work diligently. However, technological development is inevitable, and how to control its impact in the future is the most important question to consider.
Audiobooks & Reading#
Your Brain Likes to Hear You Say This
Lately, I've deliberately increased the amount of audiobooks I listen to. Without input, there's nothing to write. I'd like to share this book with you, which mainly focuses on some characteristics of the brain, such as multitasking.
Multitasking is something we all know about from a young age. We know that we need to pay attention to learn, just like the concept of flow. Achieving a state of flow means being completely absorbed in a task. However, there was an example in the book that surprised me. The author mentioned that so-called multitasking is just switching between tasks, and the reason we should avoid multitasking as much as possible is that the cost of task switching is too high (it's quite similar to humans and computers). The cost can be divided into three categories: time, accuracy, and memory.
Let's talk about time here. We all know that drunk driving is dangerous because alcohol slows down our reaction time. For example, a normal reaction time is 1 second, but after drinking, it becomes 1.15 seconds. But what about multitasking? For example, texting while driving. The reaction time in this case is actually 1.3 seconds, which is twice as long as being drunk.
The author also mentioned why we shouldn't include too much text in PowerPoint presentations. My initial thought was that there's just too much text, which makes it unfriendly for the audience and hard to read. However, the book explains that when we present a PowerPoint, if the audience is simultaneously listening and reading the text on the slides, these two processes will interfere with each other. If you want others to understand better, you should convey your message through a single channel.
That's all for this issue of the newsletter. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. Thank you for reading.