An overview of some of my writings
Who Said Daydreaming at Work Is Bad?
Science finds that daydreaming carries significant creative and problem-solving benefits at work. Published on Illumination (August 27, 2020).
Your mind meandering on the job is often thought to be nothing but wasting time. Daydreaming is generally considered detrimental to work. However, a recent study finds that daydreaming can be a significant asset for problem-solving. Published on the prestigious Academy of Management Journal, the study tested more than 300 professionals across a spectrum of industries using cutting-edge techniques. It found that daydreaming carries significant creative and problem-solving benefits, especially for those who identify with their profession and care for the work…
Science finds that daydreaming carries significant creative and problem-solving benefits at work
Your mind meandering on the job is often thought to be nothing but wasting time. Daydreaming is generally considered detrimental to work.
However, a recent study finds that daydreaming can be a significant asset for problem-solving. Published on the prestigious Academy of Management Journal, the study tested more than 300 professionals across a spectrum of industries using cutting-edge techniques. It found that daydreaming carries significant creative and problem-solving benefits, especially for those who identify with their profession and care for the work they do.
How does daydreaming at work help?
Daydreaming, or a wandering-thought process, is highly creative. It disconnects you from the immediate task at…
EVERYDAY TECHNOLOGIES AND INVISIBLE INVENTORS
Margaret Knight: The female hero who invented mass market flat-bottomed paper grocery bags
OUR everyday lives are full of mundane technologies that are so ubiquitous that we do not even recognize them as innovations anymore. The case of paper grocery bags is one such. The square-bottomed paper bag we use to carry groceries from the store, packets from the gift shop, or pack sandwiches is the result of the astute inventiveness of a young woman from the late-nineteenth century. To this day, they are manufactured using updated versions of an invention of this working-class woman who barely had any formal education!
Adam Smith and America’s most famous nineteenth-century female inventor
Margaret E. Knight (1838–1914) might not have had read the story of…
DIGITAL FOOTPRINT
Disclosure: This is not a paid article and it has no affiliate links.
The life of an internet minute
Sixty seconds on the internet are insane in human terms.
Even if your grandfather was the most accurate futurologist, he would not have predicted the amount of screen time you spend on finding a match, binge-watching your favorite series, or asking the profound questions you ask on Google.
Here’s the stats of an internet minute — entire humanity’s digital footprint in a minute — as per the Statista Trend Compass 2020. …
EVERYDAY TECHNOLOGIES AND INVISIBLE INVENTORS
In 1888, Ellen Eglin sold the rights of her mechanical clothes wringer because ‘White Ladies’ would not buy an invention by a ‘Negro Woman’.
Clean, dry clothes are normal for most privileged people in today’s world. It is so normal that the resources, infrastructures, and technologies that make it possible are completely black-boxed.
However, in the late-nineteenth century, the invention of a mechanical cloth wringer to dry the clothes was a leap forward. Not only was the invention unique. The inventor too — a woman. A Black woman.
Disclosure: This is not a paid article nor has any affiliate links.
Ellen Eglin: An Unsung Hero
Ellen F. Eglin, a Black woman who made her living as a housekeeper and later as a clerk in the census office in Washington…
MAHATMA GANDHI’S VIEWS ON RACE, ESPECIALLY BLACKS
A contextual review of the book: How I Began to Dislike Gandhi: The Story of My Disillusionment With The Truth-God
Note: Gandhi’s quotes from the book are ‘highlighted like this’ with single inverted commas.
Among the statues that Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters are taking down, some are Gandhi’s.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more famously called Mahatma Gandhi, is a minor figure in the pantheon of anti-black historical figures. In fact, being the patron saint of non-violent, civil disobedience politics, he is even an unusual one to be there. He is the man who Martin Luther King Jr. called the little brown saint. Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) has inspired many including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Barack Obama.
