Daily Reads-2020: Article-83

Article Title: Why Your Brain Hates Slowpokes

Article Summary

This article is an interesting mix of science, research, psychology, and personal behavior and thoughts. The author does a wonderful job of bring all of these in a single article and more importantly, while reading, there is seamless experience in jumping from one of these areas to the other.

The subject of the passage is ‘slowness rage’. The author of the passage discusses how, human beings as a species, are growing more and more impatient as time passes by. He starts with an example of walking with a friend on a sidewalk and how his slow speed irritated him. He then goes on bring cognitive scientists and psychologists into the picture, in order to explain why we are impatient. In short, the history of mankind and how we have to evolve to our current state of impatience has been discussed.

The author talks about how our impatience leads to making decisions which are not optimal; how do we react to slow technology; how our cycles get worse and how rage comes into the picture. The author weaves all these topics into one, and then talks about how we could deal with this using willpower (which he does feel is effective), meditation and most importantly, including feelings of gratitude in our daily lives. The author ends on a sarcastic note by mentioning how he tried the above but his rage simply shifted from his friend’s slow walk to another topic.

Article Link: Click here to read the full article

Words to learn from this Article:

Sashayed: To walk with a lofty proud gait, often in an attempt to impress others
Vanquished: Come out better in a competition, race, or conflict
Skyrocketed: Shoot up abruptly, like a rocket
Perplexed: Full of difficulty, confusion or bewilderment
Hurtling: Move with or as if with a rushing sound
Gratitude: A feeling of thankfulness and appreciation