Mental Perturbance and Insomnia in the Pandemic: Ideas and Strategies

Matt Galloway The Current

On Thursday, Dr. Elliot Kyung Lee, medical director of the Sleep Disorder Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and I were interviewed by Matt Galloway on The Current (CBC National radio) regarding the pandemic, insomnia and mental perturbance. You can listen to the episode on this CBC page which also includes an article about the interview.

In this blog post, I’d like to elaborate on the concepts of mental perturbance and insomnolence that were discussed. I’d also like to put the sleep tips in context.

Preamble: Replacing worry with curiosity

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Around the Web: Hook, the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking and More

My colleagues and I at CogSci Apps have put a lot of work into our cognitive tools to help people do deep work with knowledge (Hook software, my Cognitive Productivity books and a forthcoming book.) I’ve also recently had the pleasure of collaborating with over 24 other knowledge workers (developers, professors and podcasters) towards the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking. It’s always gratifying to read about our work being discussed around the web. I’d like to single out a couple of pieces in particular.

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Announcing the Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking: Professors, Developers, and Podcasters Unite for You to Be Able to Focus

Over 20 Mac app developers, professors and podcasters have jointly originated/signed The Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking, which will be published on Dec 6, 2021 EST ! This is a very significant development for everyone who values being able to access information with hyperlinks on any device.

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Offline Dictation on iPhone: False or Vague Promises by the Manufacturer ?

Way back in early 2012, I argued in favor of the benefits of dictation. At that point, I was not yet using (the then-recently-released) Siri. I’ve been pretty happy with Siri in last few years, except for when Internet is unavailable. Apple recently claimed Siri dictation is no longer dependent on Internet. However, even with iOS 15.1.1 ( dictation enabled of course), I am often told “Something Went Wrong Please Try Again?” This tends to happen where Internet is choppy and only when I am dictating via a verbal command (“create a new note”). I can understand that Siri might try to use the Internet, fail and give up trying to create the note (though, really, why not go offline [“on device] all the time for mere dictation requests?) But to fail several times in a row is rather inconvenient.

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The Reincarnation of the Touch Bar

I’m an avid Mac user but I don’t tend to blog about the latest Apple news. Nor do I publicly speculate about future Apple products. So, I don’t participate in 99% of what is written about Apple. However, 24 hours into using my new MacBook Pro M1 Max, I’m already missing the Touch Bar (as I expected). And I can no longer resist the temptation of discussing its demise and predicting its reincarnation.

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Mind Your Emotions! SnoozzZfest 2021 Keynote Address

Tomorrow, I will give the keynote address at SnoozzZfest™: All About Sleep International Virtual Conference (runs October 23-24, 2021). (Join the conference!) The title of my talk is “Mind your Emotions: Mental perturbance matters”.

Text

My talk is @ 1:10PM–1:55PM EASTERN Sunday.

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CUP’A and The Future of Text: On Assessing and Selecting Information

Earlier this week I submitted a brief chapter called “Beyond the CRAAP test and other introductory guides for assessing knowledge resources: The CUP’A framework” for publication in the 2nd edition of the Future of Text book edited by Frode Hegland. Here’s Table 1 of the chapter:

Table 1

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Layering in the Mind-brain and Why It Matters: An Exchange Between Paul Smolensky and Myself

Guillaume Pourcel emailed me recently saying

I’m quite sure I spotted you in a video at SFU (recognize your voice and your ideas!): https://youtu.be/GGuBz63snLU?t=2733 (45:35). It’s a nice talk on the integration of connectionists and symbolic ideas w/ virtual machines, something I’m quite interested and my PhD advisor did some really nice work on in this area.