When I’m pressured, I tell people I’m working on a pros and cons list.

If someone ever pressures you into a decision, a great delaying tactic is to tell them you’re working on a pros and cons list. I do this myself, though I’m rarely pressured into making decisions.

I wonder if anyone actually writes pros and cons lists before making decisions? I don’t think I ever have. If you’re so conflicted about a decision that you need to write a pros and cons list, you could probably make just as effective a decision by flipping a coin.

I’d also wager that most people making a pros and cons list, eventually decide on the “pro” choice. Why? Because you don’t need a list to tell you to say no to things. If you’ve invested enough psychic energy (toward a potential yes decision) to compel you to make list – you’ll probably say yes in the end anyway.

With the above in mind, creating a pros and cons list can actually be harmful. You’re delaying satisfaction by making a list, which ultimately will compel you to say yes in the end anyway. So why not just say yes now?

If you could memorize anything, what would it be?

Let's say you had unlimited amount of time and motivation and brain power to memorize anything in it's entirety. What would you memorize?

I found this a pretty hard question to answer. Besides foreign language vocabulary, I can't think of much I'd want to memorize. Things like the 50 states and their capitals fall into the parlour trick category.

Someone once told me they'd memorize all the street names and locations in their city, then 5 seconds later they changed their mind because they realized we have maps.

In fact, we don't need to memorize much of anything nowadays. But back to the question: it would be nice to learn how to memorize playing cards and their locations in a pack of cards. You'd quickly become an ace at most card games.

It would be nice to memorize a dictionary as well. Yet most of the words you would never use. What about 100 Shakespeare quotes? You'd be annoying to hang out with.

An encyclopedia? Again, seems a bit pointless. The Bible? Pointless and parlour-tricky.

What about one interesting fact about each every day object? For example, key. You could memorize a fact like "they used wooden keys in Egypt 4,000 years ago". Then you just collect a fact for say 1,000 objects.

I guess it would make you interesting to talk to.