belief

Extend Your Credit (Georg Rockall-Schmidt 2nd preview interview)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Sometimes you get the credit and sometimes the credit gets you.  Whether we’re talking about university or book keeping is kinda unclear, because this word has roughly ten or so definitions, but we’re gonna roll with the punches and hope that all of my generalizations will bolster a sense of respect and confidence in my writing ability.

Now that I have your attention, let’s consider the following: credit can turn you into a slave.

I realize that the credit analogies are gonna run thin pretty quick here dear readers, so instead of making a bunch of references about credit history, how arcade games work hard to turn your hard earned fast food job money against you or why all movies in the future seem to favour that word over currency, I’m just gonna make a clean break and say that credit is one of those things that you should understand but not rely on. It’ll fuck up your mojo if you let it.

bankruptcy

I mean Georg gets it. That’s why he and I spent so much time discussing credibility and what it means to him as a full-time creator of YouTube Videos. You know Georg right? Same guy that I’m preparing to release a feature length interview with in the near future.

Now the see the thing about Georg is that he is a researcher, a writer and quite bright. We ended up talking back and forth for over two hours. Which is a lot of time to edit down an interview into a reasonable length. In fact, it’s almost double what a typical interview runs for me.

Georg Rockall-Schmidt has been an excellent first foray into the world of international interviewing, and I wanted to give him as much attention as I could, so I decided (at the last minute) to release another preview of us chatting about credibility. This time the focus question is – do you communicate all of the information you need to in order to be considered authentic?

And I bet you won’t be able to guess what his answer is.

Lucky for you, I have the interview question locked and loaded. So you don’t have many more sentences to wait until the reward is at your fingertips. Now sit down if you’re standing or stand up if you’ve been sitting all day and watch this short clip featuring my friend and fellow internet darling.

Now I’ve run the theories train into the station for the evening, friends. You’re gonna have to get off here cause it’s the end of the line. But I can promise you some sweet dreams, heck, even some countrified ones that’ll make a whole lot of sense when you come back tomorrow for my Miranda Lambert music review. With that cleared up, browse the timotheories.com som more, leave some comments, subscribe, and share this post with your creative friends.

Tim!

Master of None (Multi-Tasking Misery)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Remember that time when I wrote about the Pomodoro Technique?

That was definitely one of my favourite posts of the Life Hack series that we’ve had so far – it addressed time management and cutting out multi-tasking. But I know that a lot more can be written about both concepts, especially as solo posts, which is why I’ve decided to dedicate today’s post specifically to the topic of Multi-Tasking Misery.

In case you need a refresher, here is what I had to say the first time around when it came to … Multi-task misery. Learn to multi-task the right way, by cutting it out of your life. If you keep a million tabs open on your browser, you’re gonna have a bad time. Please remove distractions while you work and spend time with others. Turn off your phone, close your tablet, and focus on the task at hand.

If you do your homework on the topic of multi-tasking, you will discover rather quickly that there are a few schools of thought on the subject. For the sake of simplicity, we are going to break them down into two groups – believers and researchers.

Believers act as if.

The idea behind the phrase “act as if” is straightforward. It uses the Law Of Attraction, which is the idea that if we act as if something already exists for us, whether that thing is a physical or mental possession, we will somehow create conditions to have that thing be realized in our lives.

It’s a cool idea in theory, but I have to wonder how realistic that expectation is.

What I am getting at dear readers, is that believers act as if multi-tasking works and therefore they set up the conditions for them to accomplish multiple tasks at any given time. Whether this is good or bad, believers often get what they expect.

On the other side of the coin are the researchers. Researchers have used experience and testing to determine if multi-tasking is really the way to go. I’ll give you a hint as to the answer, I’m covering this group off second, and I was taught to end a point with your stronger argument.

Multi-taskers are in fact truly guilty of task-switching, because people cannot physically do more than one task at a time. What they are really doing is using up precious energy jumping between tasks, never really getting in the zone, and ultimately wasting important productivity. This loss comes in the forms of longer individual task completion time, error increases, and wasted brain power.

Let’s talk more about that wasted brain power. According to this article, research shows that while multi-tasking does slow you down, it also effects your IQ points. People can experience drops of 15 points from multi-tasking, which is equivalent to staying up all night or smoking marijuana. What this means is that your cognitive function goes down and your decision making ability is limited.

And there is also research that indicates that using your phone, laptop, and tablet while on another activity, say television for instance, can permanently reduce your brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, AKA the place where you experience empathy and emotional control.

So what’s a creative to do? Especially when we are so used to  jumping back and forth on multiple projects, emails, and visual stimuli? I have another article that will help, but below is a nice short list.

  1. Plan your day in blocks – which I’ve written about at length recently
  2. Manage your interruptions by taking a deep breath every time an external OR internal prompt comes up, then use 5 minutes to refocus
  3. Turn off computer notifications and flip your phone to be back side up
  4. If you have a wandering mind, especially in meetings, acknowledge the thought or thoughts, but quickly remind yourself where you are and get back to the task at hand
  5. Emergencies happen – instead of using the dreaded multi-task, stop and note where you were, especially what you were going to do next. Then deal with the problem at hand. Once done you can refresh the other task more easily.

Another life hack covered, and another tool to put on your belt my friends. But what do you think of this theory, is it whack or a great hack? Please share, subscribe, and comment if you’re up to the challenge. Otherwise, I’m theoried out for the day, so I’ll hit you back tomorrow with Nextfest.

 

Tim!

 

Sloth-like Behaviour (The Secret To Apathy)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I’m not a big proponent of statistics, dear readers; for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is that statistics are incredibly difficult to substantiate in the real world. The stats are always changing, and in general, I suspect a lot of people may not trust them. For that reason alone, I hesitate to use stats myself.

Unless it’s convenient or validates an already existing belief.

Then I can very easily see the need to jump on the statistics train. But so can most of us.

 

Which is why it’s so fascinating for me to witness cultural trends that either celebrate statistics like the “50% of married people get divorced” one, or that are ignored like “1 in 3 people experience depression in their lifetime” one. Because we will probably use this information to our advantage or simply ignore it, then we can continue along our path of non-resistance.

The other reason I am kind of against statistics is that the effort it takes to cite written sources (read: any sources) is already a lot of work, and with the Internet, what you say or do can come back to haunt you later. Sometimes mere moments later.

Wait a second timotheories, that last statement looks like you are saying it’s okay to just run on autopilot when it comes to fact finding… Sounds like you’re lazy.

Good point my friends, good point.

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This is why it’s fun for me to hide my references and ideas behind pop culture. We all recognize pop culture references, whether we love them or not is another matter. But it’s easy to recognize them and what they represent a la satire.

Take this one from the show Family Guy. I always found the scene below both really funny and really excellent, because it sums up almost perfectly the suffering most people put themselves through by simply not challenging themselves with a little bit more uncertainty and risk in life.

Hate to break it to you, but you’re gonna have to click on this 2 times to read it all. It’ll be worth it. I promise.

201935

We constantly do this to ourselves.

We go to bed with the best intentions, but never wake up when we say we will. We head home with the expectations that we’ll clean up the house and prepare for the next work day, but instead we plop down on the couch to a favourite show and order pizza. We avoid going out when invited because of the challenge to find a sitter or deal with people we don’t know, so we opt to stay in instead and say that we have the option to go out but are choosing not to exercise it.

Which is exactly what this TEDx talk by life coach Mel Robbins starts off by saying. Though I think she can speak more clearly for herself, so I’ll let you watch the clip yourself.

But for the sake of time and convenience, I’ll skip ahead to the part I am most interested in sharing with you. You can probably watch for 2 minutes, but the last ten minutes are great, and the full 21:39 are even better. Ready?

That’s the big secret.

We are never going to feel like doing the thing that is the most important thing in order to make a positive change. Activation energy is incredibly difficult to put together, and according to Mel, all of these decisions are determined within the first five seconds.

We have to say yes to the impulse within the first 5 seconds, otherwise we won’t make the change. And we have this problem from the time we are children to the time we expire. Parents understand this concept, but may not be able to articulate it properly.

You see, parents make you do everything you are supposed to do, but when you become an adult, you stop having someone there to tell you to do it.

So what’s an adult to do, especially if they want to do something difficult like starting an art project, getting into the recording studio, or sitting down to write the fifth chapter of their novel?

It’s simple,
(but not easy):
FORCE Yourself
OUT Of Your Head
PAST Your Feelings
OUTSIDE Of Your Comfort Zone

You have to stand up, fight that impulse within the first five seconds and get going, and always remember, you are never going to feel like it.

But hey, that’s just a theory right? Some food for thought. What do you think though? Have you tried this? Do you want to? Please leave some comments, and subscribe to the feed. See you tomorrow friends, with something timely.

Tim!

Blue? Boycott The Red Carpet and White Folk? (88th Annual Academy Awards Night)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Anyone familiar with apologetics? It’s this concept that reasoned communication in support of a theory, belief or doctrine (usually spiritual) will help win people over to that belief, and the idea behind it is that this method of discussion is actually more useful than the typical debate format.

Now don’t get too far ahead of yourself dear readers. I suspect some of you may already be thinking to yourselves… Here we go, we know the topic is the Academy Awards, and the title is referencing the decision-making process behind it. Oh timotheories, you small, silly, social savant, you are about to tell us why the Academy Awards are really actually quite good and that we shouldn’t scrutinize an American institution which is biased “white washing” and ignoring people of minorities.

And you wouldn’t be wrong to say that I am going to address this, because quite frankly it’s out there, and it seems like my Facebook feed and half the articles I’ve seen on other social media are discussing this topic. So let’s get topical, because it’s important.

The Oscars are almost 100 years old, and they are run by mostly American filmmakers. I cannot stress the importance of that word enough. American. Look at what Wikipedia has to say about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) –

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academy’s corporate management and general policies are overseen by a Board of Governors, which includes representatives from each of the craft branches.

The roster of the Academy’s approximately 6,000 motion picture professionals is a “closely guarded secret.”[2] While the great majority of its members are based in the United States, membership is open to qualified filmmakers around the world.

The problem is inherent. You ask someone to rate something and they will do the best they can given their knowledge and experience. And that’s in a vacuum. But when you make that rating system important, segmented, and secret, it creates inbreeding of the worst kind. The authors of these votes are hidden, they cultivate a look and feel for their event, and they want to keep it that way.

After all, that’s what we’ve come to expect.

Someone might say to you, don’t blame the Academy members, they are only voting based on what they know. And I would agree that it’s true that the Academy is working to maintain it’s position whether it’s consciously destructive or not. But that root issue is whether the institution should be allowed to continue to operate the way it does or whether it needs competition and possibly a replacement. Obviously it’s more complex than just wanting one of those outcomes, but change needs to start somewhere.

Because even if we were to overlook the fact that this is an American organization that puts on an award show for films (mostly American films), the United States is made up of more than just Caucasian males, so American movies should be awarded based on a representation of the American population. On the other side of the coin, if you have supported the institution you can’t get mad at it because it’s been defined by it’s public support over the last 87 years.

Think about that for a minute. People watch the show.

Millions of people around the world tune in to watch an American film awards ceremony and complain that it’s flawed. No shit, really? Well we live in a time when democracy, free will, and striving for equality are on everyone’s lips. Subversion and evolution is slow-going, unless enough change happens quickly and at the same time to force a shift in priorities, this won’t change, and we’ll continue to complain about it for decades.

So we have to decide something as individuals. Do we boycott the Oscars? Do we complain about the Oscars on social media and traditional media, through petition? Do we fund organizations that support diversity and quality of film rather than very specific criteria based on opinions dictated by a hidden membership?

Well, shit. I guess you’ve made it this far, so you must want to know what timotheories really thinks about it. We support the rights of representation by population. Organizations should exist to support the majority. Which means that Canadian films should be supported at Canadian awards shows, American films at American ones, and so on, and so forth. What we all should be supporting at the end of February every year is a global award show that showcases the best in film internationally.

So long story short, I think you should watch the Academy Awards, so that you can understand what is wrong with it, and then speak out about it and know what a film awards ceremony should look like. Please also support organizations which are young, so that older institutions like AMPAS have to evolve or die. That’s the only way to see real change.

For you Edmontonians, one way to enjoy this experience is by heading over to Garneau Theatre and joining Metro Cinema as they guest host the event from the comfort of your local independent movie theatre. Metro Cinema is an amazing organization which supports diversity of film and grass roots change is really the best place to start. As I’m sure you already know, dear readers, this event called the Oscars usually takes more than 2-3 hours to complete, so the organizers at the theatre have prepared something special for you to get yourself in the mood and on par with the festivities. Check it out, you just might see me there.

But what do you think? Am I off my rocker? Too much of an idealist, not enough realist? Am I cynical? A white male moron? Please leave some comments and subscribe. I wanna get better.

Those are all of the theories I’ve got for today dear readers, I’ll see you on Sunday with something stimulating!

Tim!

A Time To Make Wages (Artist Fees)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

What a strange world we live in, my dear readers.

Human beings have a wonderful capacity to either create or destroy, to build up or break down, to protect or attack, to love or hate.

That statement I just made isn’t a new one, in fact, lots of us have heard it before through various channels. Probably one of the most famous comes from this passage of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

A Time for Everything

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Now, don’t misconstrue my intent here.

I recognize that sharing literature from a personal belief can create all sorts of obstacles in learning and I am not interested in converting people over to that particular belief system nor am I interested in getting into debates over belief systems. I want to stick to concepts which are universal and valuable for people either interested in the arts or directly involved in them, no matter what principles guide their lives.

Back to my original theory.

We have always liked to speak in universals and this particular passage I just shared describes dichotomies very well.

It also proves that dichotomies have existed for thousands of years. I mention this primarily because we find it easier (in general) to identify concepts and life in uniform ways. I covered this exact principle in one of my very first posts which addressed common sense.

I have left this link here in case you want to read in detail, but I will share quick summary of the problem too.

The roots of common sense statements are based on our individual experiences and a combination of culture hierarchies. The phrase that something “is common sense” is problematic because common sense relies on an idea of what is “obvious.” It’s not supported by evidence or rational research based results.

So what does that have to with today’s post my friends? A lot actually.

Being an analytical type, or so I’ve been told over and over by friends and loved ones, I can appreciate the value of a deal and will spend time breaking down risks versus rewards for fun. Especially when it comes to things which I love, and which are loved by lots of other people too. (Read: albums, movies, graphic novels, and nonfiction books)

But it really bothers me when I witness people undervaluing the effort of those who create artwork, no matter what form it takes.

There are a number of reasons it bothers me, one of them being that by purchasing work for a fraction of what it is worth, that decision not only dilutes the effort of the artist but of the community overall and one of the consequences of that decision is that we don’t have as much variety available to us.

For example, a photographer who is just starting out should be charging less for their services than an established one, because quite frankly they don’t have as much experience or command of their skill, and as they test their mettle, they will be able to charge higher rates to their clientele.

But by charing significantly less to get immediate payment, the marketplace gets messed up, and attitudes crop up which are wrong, but make sense given the circumstances.

And website services like 99 designs are just as bad. Holding a “contest” where a bunch of artists all bid on a project by offering up one or two designs, means that the work that gets chosen at the end of the day isn’t even representative of the business or individual who needed services.

I can expand on this idea even more so in a future post, but if you want more of a taste take a look at this article. What do you think of that theory?

Tim!