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Great, albeit short, post over on lifehacker.

“One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now.”

Originally from Skelliewag

I first heard about this book by Gretchen Rubin in a Fred Wilson blog post from January 1st.  The topic of the post was New Year’s resolutions, which I don’t really find that interesting even though I force all 5 of you to read about mine, but something about it caught my attention.  See, what does interest me is why we think the way we do and how we can control how we act/feel.  You will see more of that as my reading list plays out because there will be a whole host of books that fall in to this genre.

My purpose behind reading about how the mind works is that I want to be able to use mine better.  I want to know why I’m angry or upset and be able to make those feelings stop.  I want to know how someone is trying to make me believe one thing and not fall for their tricks.  The crazies part is that almost all of these findings are the same no matter who you talk to.  It spreads across borders, across cultures, even across time.  There are fundamentally flawed systems in our brain that cause us to act in ways we don’t want to.  That’s fascinating!

But that’s not the topic for now so on to the book.  I really enjoyed this book and apparently so have a lot of other people as it’s up to #23 on the Amazon best seller list.  Since there are a lot of reviews out there that rehash the overall theme of the book I’m going to focus on the one piece I enjoyed most.  Not surprisingly it is from the November section of the book subtitled “Keep a Contented Heart” which is something I’ve been actively trying to do for the past couple weeks.  Quick tangent on that note: yoga, somehow both harder and easier than you’d think.

When I examined my reactions to other people, I realized that I do often view people who make critical remarks as more perceptive and more discriminating.  At the same time, though, it’s hard to find pleasure in the company of someone who finds nothing pleasing.

So there you go, discerning information for people who want to either be happier and make friends or become a world famous critic.

Just based on what I learned, I definitely recommend reading the book regardless of your current happiness level.  I think there’s a lot to be gained by simply understanding some of the underlying reasons for happiness.  And if nothing else, it’ll probably make you a lot more interested in someone like Benjamin Franklin, Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, or Samuel Johnson.  Click the link, buy the book.

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

OkCupid is a dating site, but they have an awesome blog that breaks down some really interesting demographics of its users.

They’ve done some really interesting research about things like

Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back
Rape Fantasies and Hygiene by State
and Flowchart to My Heart

but the one up now I really like and is called The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures.

It looks at users’ profile pictures compared to how many unsolicited messages they received and how often their initial messages were replied to.  This is basically the most interesting kind of research in the world to me, and I hope I can find a way to wrap this stuff up under the guise of “customer behavior” to get a cool job analyzing what makes people act on some things but not others.

Anyway, I won’t go in to all of the findings (they do a good job summarizing it all, give them the web traffic) but needless to say I’m pretty sure this MS Paint re-enactment would be the greatest profile picture of all time.

1. Looking off into the distance. Not smiling.  Not showing full face.  OMG SO MYSTERIOUS!!
2. Really ripped abs.  Obvious.
3. Animals. Girls dig animals apparently.
4. Silver medal.  What for?  No idea.  Shows your interesting and can talk about stuff.

There you go guys.  A fool-proof plan for scoring all the chicks you can imagine on OkCupid.

I’ve hesitated to install the wordpress app on my iPhone out of concern that I’d spend more time than I already do typing on this small keyboard. Clearly that didn’t last and I’ve given in to the temptation.

Hopefully this means that when I have some sort of interesting thought I can expand it to a full discussion rather than contract it to 140 characters for Twitter. It also means I will probably have a few more typos (typoes?) in my posts.

And yes, I did type this post on my phone.

As I said, I plan to read 50 books this year and this was #1.  Technically I did start the book before January 1, but it’s 700 freakin pages and I still read 300-something this year, so I’m counting it.

Simmons does a handful of cool things in this book which centers around his quest to rank the 96 best players of all time in order to fill out his hypothetical Hall of Fame.  The writeups for each player are enjoyable and well researched, so if you can get past the fact that he’s still a Celtics homer you should enjoy it.  Other fun wrinkles: the top 10 “what-ifs” of all time (What if Dr. J had never gone to the ABA?), the top 10 teams of all time (’96 Bulls got jobbed), his “wine-cellar team” (12 best players’ single years to making an unbeatable basketball team), and a fascinating few pages covering an interview with Bill Walton that makes me wish he was my grandfather.

Yeah it’s long, but it’s one of the best books out there if you want to learn more about professional basketball in America, and want to do it with some humor.

If you like basketball and have a few months to kill, definitely check it out.

The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy

So here we are, the first day of the last semester of my second college career and, unlike Calvin up there, I have come up with a few things to focus of this year to hopefully help me grow as a person. I started off with a pretty lengthy list but narrowed it down to 4 things that focus on different parts of my life. Also, I’m trying to focus on overall results, not necessarily using a certain path to get there. Hopefully that flexibility makes more a better learning experience.

1. Read 50 books
During my summer in NYC last year I started reading more often and probably got through 8-10 books. I found some stuff I enjoyed and now want to stay on that path by reading more. Also, since I’ve been so stuck on reading non-fiction books for the past few years when I have found time, I’m going to make sure that at least 10 of the books I read this year are fiction. I’ll try to put up some comments each time I finish one, but I can’t promise each book will deserve a full scale review.

2. Dunk a basketball
I used to be able to do this. I figured I could probably still get pretty close. I was wrong. Granted I was wearing jeans and dress shoes at the time, but still. I need to get in better playing shape.

3. Systolic BP below 120
Weird one, I know, but I’ve been battling unexplained high blood pressure for about 4 years now (seriously, they can’t find a single thing medically wrong) and even with medication I rarely dip below 135/78ish. This year, I will figure out what has to happen, whether through full scale diet change (but I like salt!), running a LOT more, or figuring out a way to stop stressing out over everything.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even manage to fight my way off the medication.

4. Start a stats website
I do way too much with statistics to not finally get a site set up for them. Which ones? That’s a good question. I figure that will sort itself out when it needs to.

See, I told you this was a good idea.

textPlus has a pretty cool take on the concept of group text messages.

As 2010 comes rolling in, I’m rolling out for a couple days.  My friend Gouda is getting married tomorrow so I’m going back to Peachtree City for that.  Then I’m leaving with a couple friends the next day to head down to Miami for the Orange Bowl and, hopefully, a Georgia Tech victory over Iowa.

It looks like this next year is going to be a busy one though, and I’m looking forward to a lot of different opportunities I have on my plate right now.  One will involve helping family members with a project that I can hopefully talk a little more about soon, and I’ve got a few ideas floating around with friends that we’ve started to move forward on so hopefully one of those takes off too.  Not to mention that I’m graduating from grad school in 5 months and will need a steady income again.

Should be an interesting time.