Women's Liberation going backwards - 10 Reasons The Rest Of The World Thinks The U.S. Is Nuts

I just read this article on Huffington Post by Soraya Chemaly and am in awe of her logical reasoning and passion. I am in complete agreement with everything she says.

I do know that this is targeted towards US and it's issues currently with a few states introducing bills that are going backwards in Women's Liberation. However, I know that the arguments are just as applicable to the rest of the world (which may not have women aware and educated enough to fight for their rights yet or are simply not in the spotlight). This is not about culture, religion, morality or life. This is about respecting another person's choice to do what he/she wants with his body and his life.

This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they 'naturally' go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation.

I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.

Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

Mr. England, you and your friends do not get to trade these rights, while "dog and hog hunting," in return for a young man's chickens.

My human rights outweigh any you or the state corruptly and cynically seek to assign to a mass of dividing cells that will eventually turn into a 'natural' person. Personhood-for-zygote based bills and related legislation, like Georgia's and hundreds of others, bills and laws that criminalize pregnancy and abortion and penalize women for being women, violate my human rights.

Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean I cannot think clearly, ethically, morally, rationally about my body, human life or the consequences of my actions. Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean that I do not have rights when I am pregnant. I have responsibility but am powerless. You have power but are irresponsible with my rights.

By not trusting me, you force me to trust you. And YOU are not trustworthy.

I gestate humans, you do not. I know how it feels to be pregnant. You do not. I know what happens to a fetus in a womb. You do not. I have carried three fetuses to term. You have not. What I experience when I am pregnant is not empathy. It is permeability. The fetus is me. And the state is you, apparently. But, no matter what you say or do I have fundamental human rights. What makes you think that you, who cannot have this fully human experience, can tell me anything about gestation or how I experience it? Especially when you compare my existence and experience to that of brutish animals.

The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind. It's no wonder. Look at this list of frenzied misogyny:

1. Making women carry still-born fetuses to full term because cows and pigs do. This week, Mr England, you supported a bill, the net effect of which, taken tandem with other restrictions, will result in doctors and women being unable to make private, medically-based, critical care decisions and some women being effectively forced to carry their dead or dying fetuses. Women are different from farm animals, Mr. England, and this bill, requiring a woman to carry a dead or dying fetus is inhumane and unethical. By forcing a woman to do this, you are violating her right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment and tortured. And, yes, involuntarily carrying a dead fetus to term, although not torture to you or to a pig, is torture for a woman. It is also a violation of her bodily integrity and a threat to her life and as such violates her right to life.

2. Consigning women to death to save a fetus. Abortions save women's lives. "Let women die"bills are happening all over the country. There is no simple or pretty way to put this. Every day, all over the world, women die because they do not have access to safe abortions. Yet, here we are, returning to the dark ages of maternal sacrifice. Do really have to type this sentence: this is a violation of women's fundamental right to life.

3. Criminalizing pregnancy and miscarriages and arresting, imprisoning and charging women who miscarry with murder, like Rennie Gibbs in Mississippi or at least 40 other similar cases in Alabama or like Bei Bei Shuai, a woman who is now imprisoned, is charged with murder after trying to commit suicide while pregnant. Pregnant women are becoming a special class subject to "special" laws that infringe on their fundamental rights.

4. Forcing women to undergo involuntary vaginal penetration (otherwise called rape)with a condom-covered, six- to eight-inch ultrasound probe. Pennsylvania is currently considering that option along with 11 other states. Trans-vaginal ultrasounds undertaken without a woman's consent are rape according to the legal definition of the word. This violates a woman's bodily integrity and also constitutes torture when used, as states are suggesting, as a form of control and oppression. Women have the right not to be raped by the state.

5. Disabling women or sacrificing their lives by either withholding medical treatment or forcing women to undergo involuntary medical procedures. We impose an unequal obligation on women to sacrifice their bodily integrity for another. For example, as in Tysiac v. Poland, in which a mother of two, became blind after her doctor refused to perform an abortion that she wanted that would have halted the course of a degenerative eye disease. If my newborn baby is in need of a kidney and you have a spare matching one, can I enact legislation that says the state can take yours and give it to her? No. We do not force people to donate their organs to benefit others, even those who have already been born. One of the most fundamental of all human rights is that humans be treated equally before the law. Denying a woman this right is a violation of her equal right to this protection.

6. Giving zygotes "personhood" rights while systematically stripping women of their fundamental rights. There is too much to say about the danger of personhood ideas creeping into health policy to do it here. But, consider what happens to a woman whose womb is not considered the "best" environment for a gestating fetus in a world of personhood-for-zygote legislation: who decides the best environment -- the state, her insurance company, her employer, her rapist who decides he really, really wants to be a father? Anyone but a woman.

7. Inhibiting, humiliating and punishing women for their choices to have an abortion for any reason by levying taxes specifically on abortion, including abortions sought by rape victims to end their involuntary insemination, imposing restrictive requirements like 24 hour wait periods andempowering doctors to lie to female patients about their fetuses in order to avoid prosecution. In Arizona, Kansas, Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Arkansas and other states around the country bills that make women "pay" for their choices are abounding.

8. Allowing employers to delve into women's private lives and only pay for insurance when they agree, for religious reasons, with how she choses to use birth control. InArizona, which introduced such a bill this week, this means covering payment for birth control as a benefit only when a woman has proven that she will not use it to control her own reproduction (ie. as birth control). As much as I am worried about women and families in Arizona though, I am more worried about those in Alabama. You see, as recently revealed in a public policy poll in Alabama, conservative, evangelicals who support "personhood" related "pro-life" legislation and are fighting for their "religious liberty" -- 21 percent think interracial marriage should be illegal. So, what if they decide that an employee involved in an interracial marriage should not, by divine mandate, reproduce? Do they switch and provide birth control for this employee? Do they make contraception a necessary term of employment for people in interracial marriages? This violates a woman's right to privacy. My womb is one million times more private than your bedrooms, gentlemen.

9. Sacrificing women's overall health and the well-being of their families in order to stop them from exercising their fundamental human right to control their own bodies and reproduction. Texas just did that when it turned down $35million dollars in federal funds thereby ensuring that 300,000 low-income and uninsured Texas women will have no or greatly-reduced access to basic preventive and reproductive health care.

10. Depriving women of their ability to earn a living and support themselves and their families. Bills, like this one in Arizona, allow employers to fire women for using contraception. Women like these are being fired for not.

You presume to consign my daughters and yours to function as reproductive animals.

This is about sex and property, not life and morality. Sex because when women have sex and want to control their reproduction that threatens powerful social structures that rely on patriarchal access to and control over women as reproductive engines. Which brings us to property: control of reproduction was vital when the agricultural revolution took place and we, as a species, stopped meandering around plains in search of food. Reproduction and control of it ensured that a man could possess and consolidate wealth-building and food-producing land and then make sure it wasn't disaggregated by passing it on to one son he knew was his -- largely by claiming a woman and her gestation capability as property, too.

This is not about freedom of religion. If it were, we would, for example, allow Christian Scientists to refuse to pay for coverage of life-saving blood transfusions for employees. Religious freedom means I get to chose whether or not to be religious and if so, how. It does not mean that I get to impose my religion on others. Paying for insurance is part of the way we compensate employees, even when they use their insurance in ways we don't agree with and are in contravention of our own personal beliefs. I think that it is stupid, dangerous and immoral to chain smoke, especially around children whose lungs it irreparably harms. But, I still have to pay for an employee to have access to lung scans, nicotine patches and oxygen tanks. I do not get to say that my religious beliefs, which include keeping bodies as healthy as possible, make it possible for me to withhold payment of this employee's insurance. Guaranteed coverage of contraception and reproductive health care has overwhelming benefits for society, including reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortions. By inserting your religious beliefs so egregiously into government legislation and my life, you are imposing your religious beliefs on me. You don't like mandated insurance coverage for basic reproductive health humans with two X chromosomes? I don't like being bred by state compulsion like Mr. England's farm animals. I have a MORAL OBJECTION to being treated like an animal and not a human. You do not have to use contraception, you do not have to use birth control. But, that does not mean you have any right to tell me that I cannot if I chose. That is my right.

Property, control, sex, reproduction, morality, defining what is human. Sounds a lot like issues surrounding slavery 170 years ago. It is no surprise that of the 16 states that never repealed their anti-miscegenation laws, but rather had them overturned by the Supreme Court in 1967 more than half have introduced personhood bills. Like anti-miscegentation laws, anti-choice laws and bills that humiliate women, that treat them like beasts, that violate their bodily autonomy, are based on ignorance, entitlement and arrogance. These laws are not about "personhood" but "humanity." That women of color are massively, disproportionately affected by these assaults on their bodies and rights should also come as no surprise - their rights and their bodies have always been the most vulnerable assault.

This is about keeping women's wombs public and in other people's control -- the exact opposite of private and in their own control.

And, yes, I do know how complicated the ethics, bioethics and legal arguments related to these decisions are. You, apparently, do not. If you were truly concerned with sustaining life and improving its quality or in protecting innocent children, you would begin by having compassion and empathy for living, born people that require and deserve your attention. You feed them, educate them, lift them from poverty and misery. You do not compound these problems as you are with twisted interpretations of divine will. Only after that do you have the moral legitimacy to entertain the notion of talking to me about myuterus and what I do with it. By then, fully functional artificial wombs should be available and you can implant your own, since you are so fond of animal analogies, as was completed with this male mouse. What you are doing is disgraceful, hypocritical and morally corrupt.

And, no, I am not crazy. I am angry.

Mr. Santorum, Mr. England and Mr. Brownback and Mr. Perry you should consider not clinging so dangerously and perversely to the Agrarian Revolution ideas. Birth control and safe abortions are life-saving technologies. These archaic bills and laws, wasteful of time, money and lives, obscure an enduring and unchangeable truth: safe and effective family planning is the transformative social justice accomplishment of the 20th century. They will not go away. This is a revolution, too.

In a 1851 speech in which she argued for equal rights for women, Sojourner Truth said the following: "The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble."

Do you, Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum and friends even know who Sojourner Truth is?

English Proficiency Test Rant

A few weeks ago, I was trying to sort out my student visa after getting accepted into a university in another country. It was like Déjà Vu since I had done most of the same things 3 years ago when I went to UK; except I’ll admit that although I did the research about universities and courses back then, my Dad did the rest. The cost estimates, visa processes, paperwork…all that jazz. Now that I’m 21, obviously I did these things on my own and I don’t resent the responsibility but like many people, I appreciate the effort it takes and can’t imagine how much harder and selfless it must be to do it for someone else (I guess parenthood is mainly about being selfless but that’s not the point).

1. 
   
   This really long-winded introduction is to get me to the point of the English Proficiency tests that both universities and embassies require. I can understand why a university wants a student to be proficient in English before they accept them to study in their classes where the medium of instruction is English.
   
   
   As a side note, I consider English my first language. Oriya is my mother tongue (quite literally, as it is the language my parents speak in) but even at home, we speak of mixture of English, Oriya, Hindi and Bahasa Indonesia (My sister and I also speak in Spanish because it’s easy to hide things from the folks that way.) I feel most comfortable in English and to have to take an English test as a FOREIGN language is very offensive. The SATs, on the other hand, were challenging and in hindsight, more enjoyable.
   
   
   However, once accepted, the embassies require you show them the same thing to grant you a student visa. Let me be honest here, I did the TOEFL in 2008, so that’s 3 and a half years ago and the TOEFL is only valid for two years. Because obviously everyone forgets how to communicate in a language after two years; during which time, they were attending university in the place that English originated from: England. I have high SAT scores in the Reading and Essay section. I have been studying in English from the time I was 3, so that’s 18 years but that was in Singapore and Jakarta (where I attended an American International School) instead of Canada, UK, Australia or USA. It’s amazing the amount of restrictions an embassy will place on you just to make you pay $250 to take a test that insults your intelligence, wastes 5 hours of your time, all spent in vain for a piece of paper that is only valid for 2 years. I don’t understand how someone’s English can deteriorate in two years (from a near perfect score, I might add) to the point that they are dumb enough to not be allowed into your country? By the way, I’m going to your country to study, with no guarantees of a skilled job in the future and paying international fees which are 3-4 times that of local students. If that isn’t a risky investment, I don’t know what is.
   
   
   Of course I wasn’t annoyed that I had to take an exam the first time I took it; it’s one of the most effective ways to gauge someone’s skills. However, for the reason that they have given me: validity…I am fuming. Their expensive tests are obviously not perfect, which testing system is? Anyone who has been to university has met those belligerent villagers from small towns who have somehow received entry into the country with the language skills of a monkey. I’m not referring to accents but to the type of people who legitimately don’t understand when a lecturer is speaking to the class, those who take notes on Human Anatomy in their mother tongue. How do you translate hypothalamus or coccyx? It’s ridiculous. I’m not denying that there are certain things you might understand better in your own language but since you will take your final exam in English, I suggest you practice throughout the year.
   
   
   If they want to check on my English, I besiege them, read my blog. I assure you, not only will you learn something but you will be more than pleased with my standard of English. If that is still not enough and you think I might have a scribe hidden somewhere, interview me. I swear, if you are not impressed with my diction, pronunciation and command of the English language within 3 minutes, I will take every bloody test you throw at me.

   
   

   Update: Finally did the TOEFL and Got a 118 out of 120. Better than my scores 3 years ago (116) so must've learnt something from the English and my blog-writing.

   
   

   And to clarify, this is about why it is required from someone with my language background; it's a complete insult to have to take a test that measures the skills of English as a foreign language, when it's my first language. It's about the US$500 and my 8h spent in the testing room. If time and money isn't valuable, what is (in this context)?

6 Space Myths that Hollywood movies have promoted - Debunked!

A layman’s knowledge of space is very similar to their knowledge of science and history…It’s usually based on what we’ve picked up from movies, not research-based awareness of the world around us. I’m not underestimating laymen but there are a good many people who just assume they know the truth and have not sought it – so here’s another mythbuster: Outer-Space-style!

Asteroid belts are deadly.

Myth: Remember in The Empire Strikes Back, Hans Solo (temporarily hyperdriveless) had to navigate through a chaotic asteroid field while trying to evade the Empire. Obviously, all of the Empire starships were destroyed while Hans succeeded in doing what C-3PO said the chances were slim to none. But that’s what an asteroid belt is right? A stampede of millions of huge murderous space boulders instead of pissed off buffalos…

Reality: Wrong! The asteroid belt in our solar system looks like the picture below (scroll down…got it?) It looks very similar to the one in Star Wars. Yes, there are about half a million asteroids that we know of, in there but no picture of space can convey the real distances. There are miles and miles inbetween those hunks of rock, to the point that when NASA sent a probe through the belt, scientists said the odds of colliding into a meteorite was one in a billion!

So basically, Hans could’ve blindfolded himself and steered through the belt with his knees and his odds of colliding with an asteroid wouldn’t be much more than hitting one driving to the grocery store. Once upon a time, our belt had a thousand times more asteroids in it and even then, each asteroid had (wait for it…) 400,000 square miles to itself. No jokes.

You could argue that this particular galaxy and this particular asteroid belt in the Star Wars universe could be superdense but that’s impossible due to the laws of physics. Over time, they would HAVE to disperse due to all the collisions; they would go flying off outside the belt into outer space, free from the bounds of the belt’s gravity.

So to get hit by an asteroid, you’d have to have a hell of space pilot with a hell of a deathwish!

Black holes are cosmic vacuum cleaners.

Myth: Out of all the horrible things out there in space, black holes are one of the worst. They are ominion, invisible, huge and hoover everything within lightyears into their incomprehensible void. Due to this tendency, black holes are pretty much contractually obliged to appear in every sci-fi epic. From the planet-Vulcan-destroying black hole in Star Trek to Doctor Who, the black hole is portrayed as an inescapable vortex of destruction, slurping our universe through a straw.

Reality: Say tomorrow we woke up to find someone had replaced our sun with a black hole of the same mass. What would happen? Nothing. Well, we would freeze because our sun is gone but other than that, neither would we get sucked into or fall into space. Black holes are not as frightening as other people believe them to be. As big as they are, they still have mass and that means they have a finite amount of strength (Force =Mass x Acceleration of Gravity). So, black holes are like any other object subjected to the laws of physics meaning that this black hole would have the same gravitation pull as our sun – no more, no less.

The sun is yellow.

Myth: If you grab a crayon now and you drew anything other than a yellow sun, you would be a smartass or failing kindergarten. The sun is yellow, pretty much the first thing a child learns, right after it is hot. It’s even classified as the yellow dwarf.

Reality: Sorry to crush all the memories of art class, the sun is not yellow, nor is it engulfed in wavy flames. Doesn’t look like anything much, except perhaps an intergalactic cue ball. The sun appears yellow-tinted due to the Earth’s atmosphere and at 6,000 Kelvin, any thing can only be one colour: white. Pretty boring white, too.  Yes, the sun looks like the moon, but without the face or interesting dents.

I'm not kidding. That's actually our sun. (Courtesy of NASA)

We aren’t dependent on our eyes for the rest of our solar system either. For example, Mars, we’ve got pictures right, straight from the Mars rover landed on the ground, taking pictures of the red planet from inches away? It’s not even NASA’s fault - extraterrestrial photography is tricky, and the pictures that result do not necessarily represent the most accurate version of the subject. Instead, the scientists involved in the process tend to go for the combination of colors that help their work the most.

 Basically, all those awesome pictures space research has been throwing our way for years are nothing but black and white images colored in to show how much science each part of the picture features. And NASA will run it through filters to approximate what the full color version would look like if you were actually there sitting on the rover:

(Left: What the Mars Rover sent back. Right: What we coloured in.
All pictures courtesy of NASA)

But then you have to remember that Mars gets less than half as much sunlight as the Earth, and that said light is shining down through an atmosphere full of dust made of iron oxide (rust) particles. What we're saying is, the question of "What color is ________?" never has a simple answer when you're talking about outer space.

Meteorites are hot.

Myth: Say, a meteorite were to land in your backyard right now. You run out and see it sitting in its very own crater. Do you touch it? Hell-to-the-no, right? Not till it cools down? I mean, we’ve seen it in a million movies like Armageddon where the fiery meteor shower bombard NY, exploding stuff on impact.

Seriously...would you touch this? I wouldn't choose to be anywhere within 100km.

Reality: Sorry, wrong. These chunks of rock have been in space, 3 degrees above absolute zero, which is -270degC for billions of years. Due to their extreme speed, they are only in the atmosphere for a few minutes. They have NO time to become scorching hot before impact and likely to be just lukewarm.

So where does that giant fireball image come from, in those meteor showers? In fact, the fireball is not from the actual physical meteor but from the air in front of the meteor being compressed at incredibly fast speeds. That layer of air, creates a shock wave all the way to impact and heats up to point of catching fire!

Of course, the fire would heat up the outer layers of the meteor in those few minutes but it doesn’t matter since those always get blown off on impact. So if you’re around when a meteor lands, just pick it up. Great souvenirs for when the alien conspiracy fellas turn up!

YAY! All for meeee!

People explode in the vacuum of space.

Myth: In countless movies and sci-fi shows (the low-budget 0nes), we’ve seen it time and time again; if you go into space without a spacesuit, you will explode! The pressure inside you compared to the pressre outside will turn you inside out in a gruesome way immediately. Even Bart and Homer Simpson died this way (although I’m not sure we can expect accurate science from The Simpsons).

For example a balloon in the upper atmosphere, the pressure outside is greater than the pressure inside the balloon, the balloon will go splat! So this part is indeed correct. But why not humans?

Reality: Well…we’d like to think that we’re more complicated than balloons! We have our skin and circulatory system! The skin contains and protects our body so well that it can negate the effect of explosive decompression. The circulatory system is so adaptable that instead of boiling, the blood keeps going. Even freezing isn’t an immediate issue despite the cold environment, as there’s not much matter in space to absorb your body heat. The fact is that the main dangers of not having a spacesuit are oxygen-related: breating and holding air in your lungs, which leads to lung-inflating trauma.

Of course, if you just decide to hang around in space in a bikini and a respirator, it will kill you. Just won’t be as hilarious to watch.

There is a permanent dark side on the moon.

Myth: The moon has a dark side that doesn’t receive much sunlight, resulting in a freezing, dark wasteland, complete opposite to the other side where there is warmth. Thus, the dark side of the moon has become a place of myth, mystery and fear in popular culture, such as hiding ancient Transformer technology.

Reality: There’s no such thing, just like there’s no dark side of the Earth. Of course, only one side of the moon faces the Earth at any given time, just the Earth, not the sun! Besides eclipses and other anomalies, both sides of the moon get exactly the same amount of light as the face side, at different times though. On Earth, scientists refer to this phenomenon as ‘night’ :D

Just because we don’t see the far side of the moon doesn’t mean it’s bathed in darkness. It’s like applying the same logic as the baby game, Peekaboo: ‘Can’t see my face? Not there!’

Yes, I'm obsessed with Memes. I almost added one with the Win Baby :)

So there you go...Now you can watch Star Wars and point out more flaws...than usual. Thanks Shrusti and George Lucas :) 

Source + Pics from Google Images mainly...It's too annoying to list sources for pictures.

Psychology and History behind To-Do Lists

So...what do you do when you are completely stuck? I have been having writer's block for a month. It's BAD! The lack of inspiration is not for lack for trying. I'm still reading plenty of articles, bookmarking what I find interesting as possible future blogposts; but I can't get around to writing them. I've been working on ONE post for what seems like 2 weeks. Anyways, so instead of making some grand return to the blogosphere, I'm going to ease my way in with articles I have enjoyed and don't see any purpose in redoing it as it is very interesting by itself!

Written by: Maria Popova at BrainPickings

“The list is the origin of culture,” Umberto Eco famously proclaimed. (Leonardo da Vinci,John Lennon, and Woody Guthrie would have all agreed.) But the list, it turns out, might also be the origin of both our highest happiness and our dreariest dissatisfaction. So argues New York Times science writer John Tierney and psychologist Roy F. Baumeister in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. While the book is fascinating in general, its third chapter, titled “A Brief History of the To-Do List, From God to Drew Carey,” is particularly interesting. In it, Tierney and Baumeister dissect the sociocultural anatomy of our favorite organizational tool, from the storytellers who crafted the Bible and wrote the Genesis myth with its six-step world-creation plan, to Benjamin Franklin’s fastidious pursuit of virtue bound by goal-setting lists, to comedian Drew Carey’s quest for supreme personal productivity.

These anecdotes and pieces of cultural mythology are interwoven with ample psychology experiments from the past century and, ultimately, distilled into insight on how to make the to-list a tool of fulfillment rather than frustration.

Franklin, for instance, demonstrated one of the greatest pitfalls of the to-do list: trying to do too much at once, letting different goals come into conflict with one another:

Franklin tried a divide-and-conquer approach. He drew up a list of virtues and wrote a brief goal for each one, like this one for Order: ‘Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.’

…

When, as a young journeyman printer, he tried to practice Order by drawing up a rigid daily work schedule, he kept getting interrupted by unexpected demands from his clients — and Industry required him to ignore the schedule and meet with them. If he practiced Frugality (‘Waste nothing’) by always mending his own clothes and preparing all his own meals, there’d be less time available for Industry at his job — or for side projects like flying a kite in a thunderstorm or editing the Declaration of Independence. If he promised to spend an evening with his friends but then fell behind his schedule for work, he’d have to make a choice that would violate his virtue of Resolution: ‘Perform without fail what you resolve.’”

The result of conflicting goals is unhappiness instead of action. But deciding on the right goals can be a daunting task.

Tierney and Baumeister recount a revealing experiment: When a psychologist was invited to give a talk at the Pentagon on managing time and resources, he decided to warm up the elite group of generals with a short writing exercise. He asked them all to write a summary of their strategic approach limited to 25 words.

The exercise stumped most of them. None of the distinguished men in uniform could come up with anything.

The only general who managed a response was the lone woman in the room. She had already had a distinguished career, having worked her way up through the ranks and been wounded in combat in Iraq. Her summary of her approach was as follows: ‘First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three down.’”

Unscrupulous, perhaps, but the authors argue this is a simple version of an important to-do list strategy for reconciling the long-term with the short-term, or “the fussy with the fuzzy.”

Comedian Drew Carey took a different approach to mastering his to-do list — he outsourced his strategy to productivity guru David Allen, author of the cultish, modern Bible Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, who taught him how to adhere to specific next steps rather than abstract larger goals. The latter loom in the back of our mind like a nagging mother, never fully silenced until specific actionable steps are taken.

In fact, our brain appears to be wired to nag about unfinished to-do list items as uncompleted tasks and unmet goals continue to pop up into our minds. This is called the Zeigarnik effect and explains phenomena like earworms — when you hear only a portion of song, the song is likely to run through your mind at odd intervals as your brain struggles to finish it. Originally, the Zeigarnik effect was believed to be the brain’s way of ensuring goals are eventually accomplished, by prodding you into urgency until they are. But recent research has shed new light on the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious in our cognitive to-do lists.

[It] turns out that the Zeigarnik effect is not, as was assumed for decades, a reminder that continues unabated until the task gets done. The persistence of distracting thoughts is not an indication that the unconscious is working to finish the task. Nor is it the unconscious nagging the conscious mind to finish the task right away. Instead, the unconscious is asking the conscious mind to make a plan. The unconscious mind apparently can’t do this on its own, so it nags the conscious mind to make a plan with specifics like time, place, and opportunity. Once the plan is formed, the unconscious can stop nagging the conscious mind with reminders.”

The moral, then? Unless you are Woody Guthrie, keep your to-do list to a few very specific, actionable, non-conflicting items, then go fly your kite in peace.

I love this for multiple reasons.

1. LISTS are amazing! They are neat, organised and highly productive if used efficiently.
2. The fact that the only person who managed to eke out her strategic approach was a woman! (Yes, I'm a feminist. Sue me!)
3. It's nice to see that even Benjamin Franklin was sooo busy he couldn't get his lists to work towards his advantage at times.
4. The Zeigarnik effect, not only has a cool name, but explains the way your conscious and subconscious mind interacts. The earworm (classic problem). Not being able to focus on anything nowadays, yes there are more distractions, but at the same time, we also have more to do, which means we are spread thinner. So if we don't have a plan to tackle these things, we can never get a single thing done right. Great explanation.

Thanks for reading...Sorry for the long hiatus (if you missed me at all). I promise I'm going to try harder.