Decisions Through Confusion

There have been a lot of thoughts crowding my head lately, and I've been trying to figure out the best thing to do regarding a particular current situation in my life. My head and heart seem to tell me one thing, but a few people whom I repsect and trust are leading me to do another. What to do what to do...

Then I remembered an article I read a little while ago from the Harvard Business Review. It says that when there's confusion about a matter where we need to make a decision, the more we think and brood on it with our conscious minds, the more we assemble irrelevant information and get further away from the right solution. The author of this article refers to Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink', which proposes that even before we verbalise a decision, it's already been made in our subconsciousness. The verbalisation process simply confirms what we've already decided and finds the rationalisation for our decision. This is the power of our intuition.

So, says the author, the implication is to use your conscious mind to collect data regarding the problem/confusion, but don't consciously think about it to find a solution. Allow your unconscious mind to digest the information and then follow your gut feeling.

So I guess for me, it means to sit on this problem. Assemble information that relates to the issue but don't make a decision. Sleep on it and allow the decision to come to me. Okay, I'm going to try that now.

Shrek the Third

Monstrously fun, if not a little like the previous two. Okay, maybe not 'monstrously' fun, but it sounds so good considering Shrek's an ogre, right?

Generally, it was good, but I was tired. If it had been worse, I would've fallen asleep. But as it was, I ended up enjoying the movie and laughing along the way.


Rating: 7/10
As usual, there are laughs for kids and adults alike. Also as usual, there are good solid themes that shine through, like friendship, love, girl-power and anti-bullying.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

It's been weeks since I watched this movie so my review won't be very thorough. My main thoughts from this movie are:

- it was full of pretty good swashbuckling action but the plot got a little complicated sometimes;
- Johnny Depp was great as usual as the hilariously self-centred, self-serving and morally corrupt Captain Jack Sparrow;
- the relationship between Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley's characters didn't have the emotional pull the movie makers were aiming for - personally I just didn't care whether they made it or not. Oh, until the very end, then it was kind of sad and sweet;
- the absolutely eye-rollingly corny scene where Elizabeth Swan launches herself up on the side of the boat to give a 'they can take our lives but they can never take our freedom' type speech;
- the other extremely corny scene where they get married mid-fight;
- it was the first movie where I recognised Bill Nighy as Davy Jones;
- fantastic effects!

.... and that's it.

Rating: 6.5/10
It's a pretty good way to spend 2 lazy hours.