The 5 Myths of Terrorism---Why terror doesn't work

 

The 5 Myths of Terrorism—Including That It Works

Why terror doesn't work

By Michael Shermer

 

inShare12

Share on Tumblr

Image: Matthew Hollister

 

 

Because terrorism educes such strong emotions, it has led to at least five myths. The first began in September 2001, when President George W. Bush announced that “we will rid the world of the evildoers” and that they hate us for our “our freedoms.” This sentiment embodies what Florida State University psychologist Roy F. Baumeister calls “the myth of pure evil,” which holds that perpetrators commit pointless violence for no rational reason.

This idea is busted through the scientific study of aggression, of which psychologists have identified four types that are employed toward a purposeful end (from the perpetrators' perspective): instrumental violence, such as plunder, conquest and the elimination of rivals; revenge, such as vendettas against adversaries or self-help justice; dominance and recognition, such as competition for status and women, particularly among young males; and ideology, such as religious beliefs or utopian creeds. Terrorists are motivated by a mixture of all four.

In a study of 52 cases of Islamist extremists who have targeted the U.S. for terrorism, for example, Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller concluded that their motives are often instrumental and revenge-oriented, a “boiling outrage at U.S. foreign policy—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular, and the country's support for Israel in the Palestinian conflict.” Ideology in the form of religion “was a part of the consideration for most,” Mueller suggests, “but not because they wished to spread Sharia law or to establish caliphates (few of the culprits would be able to spell either word). Rather they wanted to protect their co-religionists against what was commonly seen to be a concentrated war on them in the Middle East by the U.S. government.”

As for dominance and recognition, University of Michigan anthropologist Scott Atran has demonstrated that suicide bombers (and their families) are showered with status and honor in this life and the promise of women in the next and that most “belong to loose, homegrown networks of family and friends who die not just for a cause but for each other.” Most terrorists are in their late teens or early 20s and “are especially prone to movements that promise a meaningful cause, camaraderie, adventure and glory,” he adds.

Busting a second fallacy—that terrorists are part of a vast global network of top-down centrally controlled conspiracies against the West—Atran shows that it is “a decentralized, self-organizing and constantly evolving complex of social networks.” A third flawed notion is that terrorists are diabolical geniuses, as when the 9/11 Commission report described them as “sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal.” But according to Johns Hopkins University political scientist Max Abrahms, after the decapitation of the leadership of the top extremist organizations, “terrorists targeting the American homeland have been neither sophisticated nor masterminds, but incompetent fools.”

Examples abound: the 2001 airplane shoe bomber Richard Reid was unable to ignite the fuse because it was wet from rain; the 2009 underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab succeeded only in torching his junk; the 2010 Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad managed merely to burn the inside of his Nissan Pathfinder; and the 2012 model airplane bomber Rezwan Ferdaus purchased faux C-4 explosives from fbi agents. Most recently, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers appear to have been equipped with only one gun and had no exit strategy beyond hijacking a car low on gas that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev used to run over his brother, Tamerlan, followed by a failed suicide attempt inside a land-based boat.

A fourth fiction is that terrorism is deadly. Compared with the annual average of 13,700 homicides, however, deaths from terrorism are statistically invisible, with a total of 33 in the U.S. since 9/11.

inShare12

Share on Tumblr

Finally, a fifth figment about terrorism is that it works. In an analysis of 457 terrorist campaigns since 1968, George Mason University political scientist Audrey Cronin found that not one extremist group conquered a state and that a full 94 percent failed to gain even one of their strategic goals. Her 2009 book is entitled How Terrorism Ends (Princeton University Press). It ends swiftly (groups survive eight years on average) and badly (the death of its leaders).

We must be vigilant always, of course, but these myths point to the inexorable conclusion that terrorism is nothing like what its perpetrators wish it were.

This article was originally published with the title Five Myths of Terrorism.

 

Detroit is your problem, too

SALON

Friday, Jul 19, 2013 5:12 PM UTC

Detroit is your problem, too

If the Motor City defaults on its general obligation bonds, governments everywhere will pay the price. Here's how

By Edward McClelland

Topics: Detroit, bankruptcy, Mitt Romney, Michigan, United States, U.S. Economy, Cities, Business News, Politics News
 

(Credit: Reuters/Rebecca Cook)

In 1990, Israeli-American author Ze’ev Chafets published a book entitled “Devil’s Night and Other True Tales of Detroit,” in which he interviewed Oakland County Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson, a suburban prosecutor who made his political bones by leading the fight against school busing to integrate Detroit and its suburbs. Oakland County, the auto executive bedroom community where Mitt Romney grew up, is one of the wealthiest suburban enclaves in the nation, with a per-capita household income twice as large as Detroit’s.

“In no sense are we dependent on Detroit,” Patterson told Chafets. “They are dependent on us. The truth is, Detroit has had its day. I don’t give a damn about Detroit. It has no direct bearing on the quality of my life. If I never crossed 8 Mile again, I wouldn’t be bereft of anything.”

(Patterson was the negative image of Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young, another racially divisive politician who began his 20-year mayoralty with a speech telling all the city’s thugs to “hit 8 Mile Road.” Instead, all the white people did.)

Patterson was just elected to his sixth term as Oakland County Executive, with the same down-on-Detroit rhetoric that has defined his career. (He recently called Detroit’s attempts to lure businesses from Oakland County “moving furniture around on the deck of the Titanic.”) But Detroit’s bankruptcy has finally proven him wrong. Detroit’s bankruptcy affects Oakland County, the state of Michigan, and really, every state, county and municipality in the nation. If Detroit defaults on its general obligation bonds, governments everywhere — but especially in Michigan — may end up paying more to borrow money, as the bond market responds to the precedent set by a major city returning pennies on the dollar to investors. When a state’s largest city goes bankrupt, it creates an increased risk for all the governments around it — including the state itself.

Detroit’s bankruptcy could result in interest rate hikes of a quarter of a point on the $19 billion of general obligations held by Michigan’s governments. That would cost the state’s taxpayers $47.5 million a year.

Michigan’s refusal to share responsibility for Detroit’s finances goes all the way back to the 1970s, when Republican governor William Milliken proposed a regional tax base — only to have the plan shot down by the state legislature. Had Milliken been successful, Detroit would not be in bankruptcy today. In the 2000s, the state cut revenue sharing to Detroit, costing the city $200 million a year. Detroit has run budget deficits ever since. The bond market has noticed Michigan’s neglect. Richard Larkin, director of credit analysis at Iselin, New Jersey-based Herbert J. Sims & Co., told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that Gov. Rick Snyder and other leaders are “washing their hands” of Detroit.

“Investors will begin exacting a premium from any borrower that has Michigan’s name on it,” Larkin said. “From this point, Detroit’s name in the muni market is probably mud.”


L. Brooks Patterson built a career out of telling his constituents that Detroit’s problems were not their problems. Now that they are, his constituents are going to pay for it.

Edward McClelland is the author of "Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President" and "Nothin' But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland." Follow him on Twitter at @tedmcclelland. More Edward McClelland.

What killed Detroit? Let’s not forget the ‘who.’

Washington Post

On Leadership

What killed Detroit? Let’s not forget the ‘who.’

By Jena McGregor, 

Published: July 19 at 12:35 pm

 

(Carlos Osorio/AP)

The finger-pointing for Detroit’s decades of decline usually starts with the 1967 race riots. High pensions for unionized workers get its share of the blame, as does the global economic trends that upended the auto industry. Meanwhile, racial politics and white flight to the suburbs rightly earn a place as a driver of the city’s blight.

But so much focus on what happened can leave behind the “who.” Yes, a confluence of economic and cultural forces unquestionably led to Detroit‘s decline and its filing, on Thursday, for the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States. But Detroit also failed as a city because of the leaders who failed Detroit.

Some names are obvious. There is former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who could face 20 years in prison after being convicted for crimes such as extortion, bribery and racketeering. Obviously, decades of decline preceded the “hip-hop mayor,” but the corruption of his tenure certainly didn’t help. While Kilpatrick was in office, Detroit’s credit ratings returned to junk status.

There is Coleman Young, the combative five-term mayor who led the city for what Daniel Okrent has called, in Time, a “corrosive two-decade rule of a black politician who cared more about retribution than about resurrection.” Though Young’s tenure is caught up in racial divisiveness that some believe make him misunderstood, it’s clear he stayed in office for far too long, did little to try and mend fences broken down along racial lines, and led the city when its debt rating first reached junk status. 

But it would be simplistic to point only to two elected officials. This is a city where, for decades, delusional auto industry executives ignored global economic forces, attempts at regulation, and consumer needs and tastes, refusing to evolve their business until it was far too late. It’s a city where union leaders have long held unrealistic and short-sighted goals which, combined with their unparalleled power, exacerbated the industry’s problems and the city’s employment prospects.

It’s a city where some of the region’s representatives in Washington have historically been so defending of those industries and their unions that they failed to diversify its economic base. Here’s Okrent again, admitting other politicians have done the same but reserving a special enmity for the country’s longest-serving Congressman, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.): “By so ably satisfying the wishes of the auto industry–by encouraging southeastern Michigan’s reliance on this single, lumbering mastodon–Dingell has in fact played a signal role in destroying Detroit.”

More recently, this is a city where there have been five police chiefs in five years. Where a report by the city’s emergency manager called Detroit’s operations “dysfunctional and wasteful after years of budgetary restrictions, mismanagement, crippling operational practices, and, in some cases, indifference or corruption.” Where one city council member walked away from his mortgage, mailing in his keys and abandoning yet another home in Detroit, while another was stripped of the council’s presidency after disappearing amid allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a teenager. (No charges have been filed, and the teen’s family has asked the police to suspend its investigation, but the former council president’s accounts are being audited.)

This is a city where leaders have failed it time and time again. One can only hope that its extraordinarily powerful emergency financial manager, Kevyn Orr; the next mayor of Detroit (its current one gets credit for some of his efforts, but has already said he won’t run for reelection); and any more of the Motor City’s other leaders do not in this time of great need.

Jena McGregor is a columnist for On Leadership.

Most Thieves Are White

Most Thieves Are White

Cross posted at Daily Kos. Please recommend this diary.

Posted on July 12, 2013


George Zimmerman called police 47 times between 2004 and 2012. Fifteen of those calls were for “suspicious activity.” Seven of those calls involved “suspicious” individuals. One of those individuals was white. Six were black.

In one of those calls, Zimmerman made his famous statement about “break-ins” which had occurred in the development. I will go out on a limb and speculate that he believed the thieves were “probably black.”

He would be wrong.

Here’s how I know. The State of Florida Department of Corrections has a website. On that website you can do huge searches by category of crime and race. You can also look by incarceration status — probation/parole, released from incarceration, and presently incarcerated. I looked at the raw numbers of everyone under the offense category “theft” for white, black, and hispanic offenders.

White thieves outnumber black thieves in the DOC database by 50%.





Interestingly, it seems the State of Florida hands out stiffer sentences to black thieves. This leads to the perverse result that more known thieves who are white are out on the street in even greater numbers.






This data destroys the most powerful motivator for white bigotry, namely fear of “black crime.” There is simply more “white crime.”

As for why Zimmerman was frustrated in his efforts to find the thieves in his gated community, we now have a really simple explanation.

He was looking for the wrong people.

If Trayvon Was White, Zimmerman Would Have Offered Him A Ride Home...

If Trayvon Was White, Zimmerman Would Have Offered Him A Ride Home...

~Michael Skolnik

When Trayvon Benjamin Martin was shot by a bullet through his heart, his dead body laid in the wet grass for over two and a half hours. Covered by a yellow tarp, the lifeless body of this teenage boy was comforted by nothing but his torn hoodie that had ripped apart by the heat of a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. Just six houses away from where he was staying, he never made it home that night. Checked into the morgue as a "John Doe," the Sanford Police Department didn't think Trayvon belonged in the neighborhood either, as not a single door was knocked upon asking if anyone knew this child. He was just SIX HOUSES away from his home. A different home awaited him on the evening of February 26th, 2012. Met by Malcolm and Martin, Medger and Emmett, Bobby and Jack, and four little girls, Trayvon was welcomed home by men and women whose lives drastically changed the course of American history.

Where were you on Saturday, July 13th at 9:59 p.m., when a six person jury in Sanford, Florida delivered a verdict of NOT GUILTY to the man who shot and killed Trayvon Benjamin Martin? The verdict brought back painful memories; of Amadou Diallo and Yusef Hawkins, both shot dead while unarmed. It recalled Medgar Evers, shot dead in his driveway 50 years ago this June, and Emmett Till, whose open casket forced a nation to face the shame of lynching. Horrific moments in history that moved a nation to tears. The verdict reemphasized the need for change in our country. The need to take a serious look at race relations; the need to rethink our gun laws, and the need for fairness in our police departments and our courts. But none of this will happen if we are silent.

Silence. Silence is an American tradition when it comes to race. A tradition as traditional as killers of black young men walking free out of court. A tradition as traditional as police departments believing that unarmed black kids are guilty even after they are killed. A tradition as traditional as profiling black teenagers as potential burglars instead of potential presidents. This silence has rained down on America like the rain in Sanford, Florida on the eve of Trayvon's death, making the trail to top of the mountain seem like it is impossible to climb.

However, if we are to reach the top of the mountain realizing that every young person, regardless of race, class, color or creed, has the right to walk safely home with a nothing but a bag of skittles and a can of ice tea in their hands, America, especially white America, must realize that Trayvon was our son too. A son born in Miami, Florida, trained in the American school system and buried in American soil. If Trayvon was white would we think that him and his friends come from a "different world?" Would the police department have believed that he might have actually lived in the neighborhood that he was shot dead in? Would the jury have related to his fears of being followed by a scary stranger? Or before any of this even happened, maybe George Zimmerman would have offered him a ride home to get him out of the rain?

It is our son that didn't receive justice on Saturday night, and we can no longer be silent. Many older, white Americans are content with being silent, because if they raise their voice, the new America just might pass them by. It is the silent cries and the silent yells from a new, multiracial generation that will create a new American tradition. A generation that is not content with being strangers to each other. A generation that who will create a tradition that never looks at a young, black teenager again as being suspicious when they are walking home in the rain with their hoodie up.

~Michael Skolnik

Michael Skolnik is the Editor-In-Chief of GlobalGrind.com and the political director to Russell Simmons. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Trayvon Martin Foundation.  Previously, Michael was an award-winning filmmaker. Follow him on twitter @MichaelSkolnik

More on: racism, Trayvon Martin

George Zimmerman Was Lying

Daily Kos

Conceptual GuerillaFollowRSS

Daily Kos member

Tue Jul 02, 2013 at 09:22 PM PDT

George Zimmerman Is Lying

by Conceptual GuerillaFollow

Cross posted at Working Man Radio.  Please recommend this diary.

Watching the Zimmerman trial, the images coming out of the courtroom seem to be convincing some media observers that Zimmerman's self-defense claim is colorable.

Zimmerman's case is that Martin jumped out some bushes, said "what's your problem," and then punched Zimmerman.  According to Zimmerman, Martin then jumped on top of Zimmerman and began slamming his head into the sidewalk ... leaving no blood, and causing no concussion.

This is becoming the media's narrative, making the case whether Zimmerman was in sufficient danger to warrant using deadly force.

There is just one problem with Zimmerman's defense.  He's lying about who was the aggressor in starting the fight.  He's lying, and the proof is right in front of everybody.

Let me just lay out the relevant facts and evidence.  It's very simple.
Trayvon Martin was on the phone when the fight started.  He was talking to Rachel Jeantel.

You don't have to believe Rachel Jeantel, there are phone records that show the call.  Furthermore, her description of the call are entirely consistent with the known facts.  Here is what she said about the call -- the only thing you need to know.

“Trayvon said, ‘What, are you following me for,’ and the man said, ‘What are you doing here?’ Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell. I called him again, and he didn’t answer the phone.

We know that Zimmerman was following Trayvon Martin.  

 So it is entirely believable that Martin would ask "why are you following me."

We know that Zimmerman suspected Martin of being a burglar or something.

 We know that Zimmerman complained about "these assholes always get[ting] away."

So it is entirely believable that Zimmerman said "what are your doing around here?"

And we know that Zimmerman and Martin fought each other .... making it entirely believable that Rachel Jeantel heard them scuffling.

That's all you need to know to make George Zimmerman a liar.  Phone records show Martin on the phone with Rachel Jeantel, and Jeantel testifies to facts that are entirely consistent with undisputed facts.

Trayvon was on the phone with Rachel Jeantel.  Which makes Zimmermans story about Martin jumping out of bushes so much hogwash.  It also disproves Zimmerman's claim that Martin threw the first punch.  Martin was talking on the phone.  Talking on the phone and starting fights are mutually exclusive activities.

And that's it.  Zimmerman's a liar. Whatever he says about any alleged attack, whatever he says about being punched in the nose, whatever he says about the "danger" he was in, whatever he says to make out his self-defense claim, George Zimmerman is a liar.  Beyond a reasonable doubt.

Do not underestimate the value of proving that George Zimmerman is a liar.  In order to acquit him, the jury must first believe him.

The video below summarizes the facts above . . . so I have omitted the transcript.  I do recommend it, because frankly, the video presentation is much more powerful than this cold written description.  And make sure you like it, subscribe to it, and share it.

And if you like a good, hard hitting audio podcast, check out Working Man Radio.  Available on iTunes.

http://www.youtube.com/...

10:26 AM PT: It is always an honor to make the rec list.  In this case, I am a little surprised.  The diary didn't seem to be doing that well.

I also appreciate the spirited, but mostly civilized discussion, in the comments.

Originally posted to Conceptual Guerilla on Tue Jul 02, 2013 at 09:22 PM PDT.

Also republished by Trial Watch.

Tags

Uncover and Manipulate Your Triggers to Optimize Your Work and Life

lifehacker

 

Uncover and Manipulate Your Triggers to Optimize Your Work and Life

 

 

Thorin Klosowski

 

5/10/12 8:00am 5/10/12 8:00am

 

 

 

You're surrounded by all types of triggers. You see a vending machine and your stomach growls; the sight of a stapler invokes all the stresses of work; looking at that one book always gives you ideas. These triggers prime a response in your brain for all types of habits. Giving your environment an overhaul—with your triggers in mind—can make you more productive, happier, and goal oriented.

 

Here's how.

 

We're talking about the simple, external triggers you run across every day. These triggers can influence your decisions, make you recall memories, or even cause stress. These external, environmental triggers have an affect on your day, and it's possible to use them to your advantage. In short, you can remove the bad triggers and spotlight the good ones. We'll show you how to find and categorize the triggers around you, but let's start with a basic look at how your brain reacts to what you see before we move on to a step-by-step process for optimizing your environment.

How Your Brain Responds to Triggers from Objects, Ideas, and Advertising

 

 

When you look at an object, you're not just seeing the optical qualities of it. Your brain is also processing a ton of information to comprehend what the object is, even building your history with an object or idea. Sometimes when you see something, that object also triggers an emotion or thought and then re-fires your brain in a new way to prime a response. In effect, a trigger is essentially an external influence that directly precedes an action, emotion, or habit.

 

You see an object or idea that reminds you of an action and then you take that action. Your actions can be positive, negative, or neutral. The triggers aren't inherently good or bad, they just exist, but you can manipulate your triggers so you're weighted toward a more positive outcome.

 

For instance, if you keep cookies on the counter, you're probably going to eat more cookies. If you surround yourself with objects that trigger creative responses (books, pictures, quotes, whatever works for you) you could see an increase in your idea generation. In the case of advertising, triggers are the essence of how products get sold to you.

We've talked before about how ads manipulate you, and one of those manipulative tactics is to trigger a need to purchase something you didn't know you wanted. This is done in all sorts of ways, from glorified price dropping ("Buy now, one day only!" or "Buy One Get One Free!") to actually triggering an emotional response that makes you want to buy something.

The truth is ads use the same tactics you do to yourself. Your environment is filled with positive and negative triggers—the knick knacks on your desk; the rotten banana in the fruit basket; the unused running shoes—all of these things have a slight impact on your decision making on a daily basis.

What really matters is that you can control these triggers to a point. As Psychology Today points out:

[E]ven the slightest outside stimuli—such as a sound or a smell—can trigger changes in the firing rate of neurons in a way that changes the flow of information between different parts of the brain and alters one's perceptions.

With that in mind, let's start tracking and labeling your personal environmental triggers.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Tracking the Triggers in Your Environment

Since most triggers are entirely subconscious you have to make a mental effort to find where they're coming from. This means you have to dedicate time where you're mindful of your environment and your habits. The end goal is to remove as many of the negative triggers as possible (you can't get them all) and try to find your positive triggers so you can accent your environment with more of them.

Step 1: Track Your Triggers

 

 

The first step is to find, track, and think about your triggers. This is a lot harder than you'd think and it's not possible to get them all. Still, a little work now can make it so you can optimize your environment in the future.

Start by keeping basic notes of your habits, random (but useful) thoughts, and even odd emotions. Keep an eye out for: memories, ideas, habits, and tasks triggered by objects. Write them down in a notepad with as much information as you can. Include the following:

• Location
• Time
• Your Emotional State
• The Action Preceding it
• Result
• Any Additional Notes on the Environment (weather, smells, sounds, etc)

Don't worry about rationalizing any of this data right now. The first step is just collection. Chances are that more often than not you're not going to recognize a trigger, but if you track all the right information you'll start to form a bigger picture.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Notes and Figure out the Real Triggers

Triggers are not an exact science, and everyone has different triggers with different reactions. The trick now is to take a look at your data and try to find what triggered a reaction. If your notes are anything like mine, they're partly nonsense. You'll have seemingly worthless bits of information like:

• Location: Stairway
• Time: 8:15
• Emotional State: Anxious
• Preceding Action: Bathroom
• Result: Suddenly felt anxious
• Any Additional notes: None

If you didn't find a trigger at the time, return to the scene, take a look around, and see if you find something new. In my case, standing in my stairwell and actually paying attention revealed a framed picture that I forgot was there. After thinking about it I realized the picture was likely the cause of the anxiety.

Once you have an idea of what the triggers are it's time to decide if they really matter.

Step 3: Categorize and Grade the Triggers

You can't control the entire world. Instead, you can decide where to reduce the effect of certain negative triggers and then look at how to integrate more positive triggers with a simple 1-10 scale.

Grab your spreadsheet and categorize each trigger as actionable (the picture on the wall, the cookies on the table), or non-actionable (the bad weather, the morning commute). For the actionable tasks, rate them on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is a positive trigger and 1 is a negative trigger. The top and bottom numbers on the list are what you really care about. Say you notice your kitchen is filled with a bunch of triggers that bring out a lot of bad behaviors. That means you need to work on that area of the house. Let's take a look at how to take action on your results and optimize your space accordingly.

Optimize Your Environment with the Information You Gather

Now comes the fun part. It's time to get rid of all the triggers that create negative habits or emotions and fill up that space with the positives. You can't force ideas with objects, but you can prime your subliminal and give your willpower a break by creating a good environment. The end goal is to create an environment that reflects what really matters to you and get rid of the rest.

Revise Your Home and Workplace

 

Start by taking out your list and visiting the places where those negative triggers primed you for bad habits or memories. Throw everything in a box (or away, if need be). When you're done, you'll probably have a lot of empty space to fill.

 

Now take a look at your positive triggers. Ask yourself one question: are they located in places you go often or are they hidden away? If they're hidden away, you should move them to fill in those negative spaces.

 

For myself, a lot of this work was done in the kitchen. I moved certain types of pots that were hidden away to a pot rack so I remembered they existed. I picked up a fruit basket so I'd remember to eat my fruits. I completely rearranged my little pantry closet so I'd stop forgetting what was in there.

I took small steps like moving my running shoes by the door so I'd remember I like jogging. I also moved a couple instruments out of my little studio so I'd remember to play around every day. Photo by Alexander De Luca.

Revise Your Digital Workspaces

Of course, the real world is just part of your environment. Chances are you also spend a good amount of time staring at a screen. You can use these same ideas for your computer or phone as well. Our guide to a minimal desktop is a great place to start if you're always distracted by different programs or websites on your computer. Start with a minimal desktop and then add programs as you need them. If keeping Photoshop in your dock reminds you that you need to learn Photoshop, do so.

Additionally, I'm a huge fan of minimizing the amount of apps on your phone, a process we've shown you how to do before. Doing this systematically gets rid of all the useless junk on your phone that triggers bad behaviors and leaves just the apps that are useful to you.

Triggers are also a great way to manage your to-do lists. As Fast Company points out, it's a trick used by Getting Things Done author David Allen:

He advises people to avoid a single master to-do list; instead, he recommends a series of context-dependent lists (such as a "calls list," so when you phone a potential customer, you're also reminded to call your A/C repairman and your sister for her birthday). The lesson: If you have something you don't want to forget, don't scrunch up your brain and try really hard to retain it; just install an environmental trigger to do the remembering for you.

The idea is the same as the environmental approach: plant ideas in your mind by using lists and objects that trigger a reaction.

 

The last big subliminal trigger is ads online. You can use these to your advantage as well. Sure, you can easily block ads with Adblock Plus, but an even better solution is to replace those ads with a positive triggers. Adlesse and Overapps are both cross-platform extensions that allow you to replace ads with widgets. These widgets include art, famous quotes, or random facts.

---

By the end of all this you'll have a comfortable workspace or home that reflects your real goals. If all goes well, it's a place where your positive triggers—the things that keep you on track for goals—are easily accessible, and the bad ones—the triggers that keep you from those goals—are gone.

After doing this for a week myself it's astounding how many things I got rid of or moved around even though I never thought of certain things in my home as negative triggers. I took down pictures, moved others to new places where I would actually see them, and completely rearranged my kitchen. It's hard to say how long this will work, but I imagine a yearly review will keep things fresh and interesting.