Is Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a workafrolic?

Showing all posts about psychology

Is Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a workafrolic?

22 October 2008

Workafrolic is the latest buzzword of a neologism to pique my curiosity and it will no doubt lead to an obsession in due course. Richard St. John author of Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and Rich defines a workafrolic in a recent interview with The Telegram…

Successful people work hard, but they love it. They’re “workafrolics”, St. John says, because they have fun working.

Australian graphic designer Sonya Mefaddi provided a slightly more real life definition in an article in the SMH MyCareer liftout last weekend (18-19 October 2008, page 3):

If I am out at a club with friends, I often think I’d rather be at home working.

Never thought I’d say this, but her words strike a definite chord with me. At this point in time anyway.

Update: The Telegram article is no longer online.

Originally published Wednesday 22 October 2008.

So, this is why there are so many spammers

7 October 2008

While email systems make a breeze of distributing spam messages en masse, the medium has another not so apparent benefit, it makes being deceptive or untruthful far easier. Something, seemingly, not so simple to accomplish in face-to-face, or even in handwritten, communications.

Experts have long known that it is easier to lie in writing than in real life, where deception is made more difficult by physical prompts such as eye contact. But psychological tests conducted by business professors at Rutgers, Lehigh and DePaul universities in the US found people are significantly more likely to lie in emails than in handwritten documents.

I mean, could you look someone in the eye and tell them “your pills could augment their extension”, for example? No: better you send them an email.

Originally published Tuesday 7 October 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

What is worth failing for is what is worth striving for

4 January 2004

New year, new start. A time to consider new opportunities. It’s been said a million times already, and it’s only day four of 2004.

Most of us though are afraid to try something new or different for fear of failing. One statistic suggests 98 per cent of people will never realise their loftiest ambitions. How alarming. It seems to suggest we are all settling for second best in life. Or less.

So frightened are we of inevitable doom, we won’t take a chance, and peruse our dreams. I could insert lashings of rhetoric here. You only live once. There are no rehearsals in life. Just do it. I’ll spare you the drivel though.

Jugglezine’s* latest article The Pain and (half) Pleasures of Rejection (Wayback Machine link), written by Todd Pitock, suggests that in order to succeed, we need to find a cause or goal worth failing for. Something so fundamental and intrinsic to our beliefs, that failure will not ultimately matter.

It’s almost another way of saying that failure is a signpost found along the road to success. Falling down is all part of the process. And the importance of being focussed and motivated cannot be overstated.

Aside from our own inhibitions, the criticism we receive from those closest to us is the next biggest stumbling block. Sometimes our own doubts are overweighed by the negative perceptions of friends and family. Their disapproval can cut the deepest. It’s often enough to dissuade many people from ever having a go.

But it’s mind over matter. If our dreams and ambitions are worth failing for, they must be worth pursuing. Where would any of us be otherwise? If everyone were too afraid to take a chance and try a new idea? Still living in caves perhaps?

Hmm, how affirmative. I really should listen to myself more often.

*Jugglezine is no longer being published.

Originally published Sunday 4 January 2004.