My Too (Many) Cents

Introduction So, I recently watched the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once and though it's received widespread critical acclaim as a great movie, I didn't quite like it as much as I feel the myriad of people around me did. Now don't get me wrong, I think as a narrative it ties all the small ends it introduces masterfully, the humor though catered to an older demographic does land and the performances/music etc. were great (seemed great to me as a layman, I'm not knowledgeable enough to pick it apart). What I take issue with is the philosophy it pushes forward - optimistic nihilism. And just in case it wasn't clear, this opinion is entirely my own and you might disagree. Nihilism and Absurdism The movie makes the point accurately that we continuously undergo more Copernican shifts which displace us farther from our self conceptions of having a central place in the universe. At one point even explicitly stating this sentiment in dialogue. It gives Optimistic Nih...

Focus. Are you focusing right now as you read this blog? Focus is something which has been well documented to improve decision making, higher degrees of focus and presence correlate with higher levels of happiness and it intuitively makes sense to say that the more one concentrates on anything the better they will do at it.  Focus and concentration are also scarce. After all you have only 24 hours in the day and however many limited amount of years in your life. A rough estimate of the amount of focus can be the intensity with which you focus at something multiplied by the time you are working at it and it also intuitively makes sense that this quantity would be correlated with the progress you make at any task or any aspect of life. Focus is an important resource, perhaps the most important one an individual has to offer. Companies now operate in an economy of attention, coming up with better and bigger algorithms to keep us hooked onto these sites, to advertise to us, and to even...