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Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

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Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#151

Post by SilasX »

dade_ wrote: post #85
blooalien wrote: post #24

Re; This particular quote from the article… > "Stop confusing productivity with laziness. While no one likes admitting it, sheer laziness is the No. 1 contributor to lost productivity." I was taught growing up that if it's something you must do anyhow, then true laziness is finding the simplest and most effective way to do a given task quickly and correctly the first time so that you don't have to waste time and effo…

My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since. I explained this isn’t about exerting less effort, but that for the same effort we get a heck of a lot mo…

> My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since.

Bojack Horseman: “Are you gonna sail around the cape like a real man, or are you gonna cut through the Panama Canal like a Democrat?”

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#152

Post by scubbo »

petercooper wrote: post #66
veltas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pain is French for bread. I hate this joke. There's a bakery I used to drive past called the "House of Pain".

Ah, they did one of my favorite wraps. Baguette up, baguette in..

Oh, well done.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#153

Post by beefield »

Loughla wrote: post #139
beefield wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?

I'm not trying to guess why you would say that (and by that, I mean the fact that you would avoid writing because it's trying to preach to you), and I do want to say that Lewis is, overall, very close to proselytizing in his writings (generally it's pretty explicitly stated that's what he wants to do). But. Avoiding something because it disagrees with your worldview, or because it is 'too close to [insert literally a…

Well, I consider myself being relatively open to all kinds of new ideas. But at some point you need to realize that certain genre is not going to give you any new insights and it's better to move on. For example, I have read total of three books published by CATO Institute, and and by standard Bayesian rules, it is going to take a lot of convincing to give them one more chance.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#154

Post by BrianOnHN »

wnolens wrote: post #143
nicbou wrote: post #63

The topic is nice, but above all I thoroughly enjoy the writing. I feel like I get a lot more done precisely because I don't like to eat frogs. I sleep until I'm rested. I don't touch my computer until I've had tea on the balcony. I work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as it feels right. If the weather is nice, I'll hop on my bicycle and forget about work. But when something sparks my interest,…

> work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as it feels right How have you achieved this? I once had a setup like this, but eventually the work which permitted that freedom got boring, and I was so void of responsibility that I felt a pain of meaninglessness. Climbing out of this hole was via a feast of frogs.

One way is to minimize your responsibilities and requirements to maintain your lifestyle.

Most people get indoctrinated into a 1:1 relationship with what they make and their lifestyle cost.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#155

Post by stephenhuey »

themaninthedark wrote: post #123
yodsanklai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's quite rare. I tried once because a friend was visiting from the US and wanted to try. With a bit of research, I found a restaurant specialised in frog, but yes, they aren't common.

Frog's legs are eaten in Appalachia in the South East of the US. Not so much in restaurants but I was invited to a friends house and that was part of the meal. Tasted kinda like chewy chicken wings, not bad.

I’ve had them several times along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Like the alligator eaten here, it’s part of the joke of the long list of things that tastes sorta like chicken.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#156

Post by jrochkind1 »

istinetz wrote: post #37

I strongly disagree with the author. What brings me pleasure is playing strategic computer games. I was addicted to playing dota. I was playing 12-16 hours a day, which left no place for socializing, career, family, even basic self-maintenance suffered. Anything meaningful, art, self-improvement was cut. It's a disgraceful, shameful life. The meaning of life is not the blind pursuit of pleasure. We are humans precise…

I think addiction is it's own thing -- which is not about a lack of pleasure either.

The main thing I think is missing from the OP (which I liked very much) is discussion of the concept of meaning. (and perhaps social connection).

I think what most "frog-eaters" are missing is meaning, not pleasure. People will gladly do hard things that seem meaningful.

I think addiction is primarily about a lack of meaning (and social connection) as well -- rather than being about a surfeit of "pleasure" or lack of "discipline". It's an attempt to deal with a lack of meaning. (It is noteable to me that you point out that your 12-16 hours a day of playing, while (you claim) was "pleasurable", was not in fact "anything meaningful").

I think OP is really talking about a lack of meaning, control, and social connection in our lives. It's this same lack that is part of what leads to addiction. And in fact the solution is not "just try harder to do the things that seem meaningless and without joy, you need more discipline" -- that's the message I get from OP, and I think in fact it applies to addiction too. "Trying harder to be more disciplined" is not a great strategy for escaping addiction.

> But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with their relationship and their pond, because they don’t get enough love to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies. So they end up reading articles about how to love things they don’t love that much and how to feel full without eating enough.

This seems so relevant to addiction to me.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#157

Post by ttyprintk »

nicbou wrote: post #96
taneq wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds nice to either have no real outside demands upon your time, or to sufficiently lack emotional attachment to anything you do such that it can’t exert pressure on you. That said, I don’t know if I’d actually want to live that dispassionately.

That's a very uncharitable take. What part of my comment makes you think that I live dispassionately? The whole point is that my work is almost single-handedly defined by passion. When that runs dry, I take a break and do other things. It's easier to do good work with a well-rested mind full of ideas.

I think what people envy is that not everyone get to achieve your set of options. This article is by an academic advisor for students at an elite university. I have a feeling that GP was a post that didn’t need to be made, but to achieve your set of options, a lot of things have to go right. You can’t have kids too young, you can’t take on disabled family members, you can’t make certain career choices because you have to pay for aging parents. Some people have to pick up and move everything because of politics. And drug and gambling addiction add at least a frog a day.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#158

Post by tartoran »

veltas wrote: post #39
dewey wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would eating bread in the country with one of the best bakery cultures be painful? Edit: It's too early, thanks to the more awake commenters to point out the pun ;)

Pain is French for bread. I hate this joke. There's a bakery I used to drive past called the "House of Pain".

Well, OP messed up the pun a bit, pain is bread in French but painful means nothing in French. But still a good one, first time I hear it.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#159

Post by pnf »

latexr wrote: post #126
vanderZwan wrote: post #38

> For legal reasons, I’m not saying the people who write this stuff are literally Lucifer in human skin. It’s just that, if I wanted to maximize human misery, I would 100% try to convince people to spend more time doing things they hate When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fe…

> my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly Pretty sure it was written by Gaiman. I’m not finding the interview where he said this, but (if memory serves) Gaiman wrote that part of the story and had shelved it when Pratchett contacted him: — Do you have plans for that thing you sent me? — Not really, why? — Because I know what happens next. So either sell me the righ…

This joke was originally written by CS Lewis in The Screwtape Letters.

Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs

#160

Post by vanderZwan »

latexr wrote: post #126
vanderZwan wrote: post #38

> For legal reasons, I’m not saying the people who write this stuff are literally Lucifer in human skin. It’s just that, if I wanted to maximize human misery, I would 100% try to convince people to spend more time doing things they hate When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fe…

> my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly Pretty sure it was written by Gaiman. I’m not finding the interview where he said this, but (if memory serves) Gaiman wrote that part of the story and had shelved it when Pratchett contacted him: — Do you have plans for that thing you sent me? — Not really, why? — Because I know what happens next. So either sell me the righ…

Unless I misunderstand you I think you're talking about the story (or perhaps that chapter) as a whole, and I'm talking about one particular passage in that story
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