Here’s a nice clean example of “preparation of emotion” – one of Anisle’s broad categories for counter acting our hyperbolic nature.

I have a friend who taught me a rule.  To chuckle quietly when every anybody says “just.”  As in “The job is just dealing with the machine crashes.”  It’s a good rule.  In particular the quiet part!

There is a curiousity.  It has two parts.  First, that people who don’t understand the work often underestimate it’s complexity.  So they say things like “We should just slap a new Ajax UI on this thing.”  Meanwhile, the people who are competent in a given craft can actually do magical things in short order; which oddly encourages the folks in the first bucket.

This is also a good example of one unfortunate side effects of all methods for impulse control.  They all suck the spontaneity out of life and turn you into an old fart.