energy

Description

http://www.happiness-project.com One of my idiosyncrasies is a compulsion to take notes. I'm always copying down quotations, making odd lists, gathering examples in strange categories. I have a huge document in my computer: "Notes." It takes a lot of time and energy, and I used to discourage this impulse in myself. It seemed pointless and self-indulgent. But following my first commandment to "Be Gretchen," I started to let myself take notes--and take pleasure in it. One reason to allow myself to do it is that I enjoy it. For some reason, I like acting like I'm working on a permanent research project. Also, taking notes helps me read better, with more focus and retention. The crazy thing is that once I said to myself, "Okay, Gretchen, take all the notes you want, it doesn't matter if you need those notes for anything," I realized for the first time how USEFUL these notes have been. How had I convinced myself otherwise? My first book, Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide, grew out of my huge body of notes on these subjects. When I had a chance to write Profane Waste about my obsession with people's destruction of their possessions, the only reason I could pack it full of fascinating examples was that I'd been taking notes for years. So I'd been very foolish to tell myself that I was wasting my time. Note-taking just didn't look "real" to me, so it didn't register as valuable, despite the ample proof that it was. Here's an example of the kind of notes I take. One section of my notes is a reaction to an observation by physicist Niels Bohr: "There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true." I started playing with this idea. --Out of sight, out of mind. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. --Birds of a feather flock together. Opposites attract. --You're never too old to learn. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. --"Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well." Lord Chesterfield "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." G. K. Chesterton Then I took some of my favorite "truths" to see what their opposite would hold. --"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy. --"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:21. --"It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light." G. K. Chesterton. --"There is no love, there are only proofs of love." French saying? (That's what I remember, but haven't been able to track it down.) --"Happy wife, happy life." And look, I've found another way to use my notes: for my blog. Zoikes, why is it so hard to "Be Gretchen"?