David Given Schwarm

Procrastination, I think, gets a bad rap. To start a project and see it through to completion, we need the pressure and sense of urgency procrastination provides. Sure, in the midst of a frantic all-nighter to get a paper or report done, it feels horribly dysfunctional. But I see procrastination as a terrifically functional way…

An anthropologist named Victor Turnere added a new wrinkle to the disciplines canon in the 1950’s when he wrote about the importance of something called limen. Translating roughly as “threshold,” limen refers to those times like adolescence when we’re caught between two life phases. In these neither-here-nor-there periods, he wrote, levels of energy and disorder…

One of the most useful office products in the world, the Post-It(r) Note, began as a total failure. A scientist at 3M was trying to brew up a batch of super-strong adhesive. One particularly miserable attempt produced a substance that could barely hold two pieces of paper together. It took four years for the company…

A few years ago, my car’s rearview mirror dropped off the windshield and landed in my lap. Freaked out, I headed over to an autoparts store where they assured me it happens all the time, and sold me a kit to glue it back in place. But after I got used to the mirror’s absence,…

A recent study on exercise and music had some curious results. It turns out that people who work out while listening to music temporarily increase their verbal fluency compared with those who work out in silence. Today, swing by the CD store (or music download site) and pick out a couple of disc that might…

One of the nicest side effects of a huge creative challenge like a monthlong novel is the way it breaks routine, altering the overly familiar time-tables of our daily lives. As you head toward the fourth week of the escape, you’ve likely created a host of new schedules and routines to help cram writing time…

Hippocrates, the philosophical founder of modern mediciine, inspired many good things, including an oath that makes doctors promise not to kill their patients. One of his lesser-known tips to doctors, though, is that doing nothing can also be the perfect remedy for some of their patients’ afflictions. Maybe you’ve come to see some aspect of…

The Billboard Liberation Front is a group of pranksters who monkey with high-profile billboards posted around the San Francisco Bay Area. The BLF’s intricate changes to the signs, done in fonts and colors identical to the ads they’re altering, often take place in broad daylight, yet the group is rarely caught. The secret: Members wear…