Wisdom For Your Weekend: your weekly installment of things we’ve been reading around the web.
Infographic of the Week
How Powerful Is Your Passport? Ricky Linn, GOOD HQ. Not all passports are created equal. An American passport, for instance, will get you a lot more mileage than a Mongolian one. Ricky Linn created this infographic to show just which passports are the most useful—based on whether its holder can enter a country without a visa. Surprisingly, the U.S. passport doesn’t top the list (though we’re close). Unsurprisingly, Afghan and Iraqi passports occupy the bottom.
Articles of the Week
Why Audiences Hate Hard News—And Love Pretending Otherwise, Derek Thompson, The Atlantic. I’m as guilty of this as anyone: even though we claim to care about international news, the economy, and local politics, our browsing history reveals that we’d rather read Buzzfeed lists like “30 Signs You’re Almost 30” and “24 Photos You Need to Really Look At To Understand.” Why? In a world of information overload, learning new and difficult news is, well, difficult—so we revert to articles that are easy to digest. Even though we know veggies are good for us, we reach for the Sour Patch Kids instead.
The Myth of Sleepless Productivity, Michael Hyatt. “We act like sleep is a luxury or an indulgence; as a result, sacrificing sleep in the name of productivity has become routine. But the opposite’s true. Cheating our sleep is like maxing our credit cards. There’s a benefit now—at least, it feels like it—but the bill always comes due in the form of decreased health and mental ability.”
Learning Is No Easy Task, David Brooks, New York Times. This is an intriguing look into what it means to learn and succeed. As Brooks points out, moral activity actually makes a person more successful. But moral progress is one of the few areas in which you’ve got to “do down” and admit your own mess before you can ever “go up.” “You have to taste humiliation before you can aspire toward excellence.”
Eight Ways to Say “No,” David Murray. The ability to frequently and graciously say “no” frees us up to faithfully devote ourselves to what is truly vital. My favorite of these is probably “the awkward pause” – “When a request comes to you, pause, count to three, and let the awkward silence do its own work.”
On The Lighter Side
10 “Brilliantly Simple Intellectual Jokes”, 22 Words. Warning: not for the casually nerdy. This is top-shelf nerd-dom at its finest.
