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The "x" best lists of life

If you follow posts on the Internet, you know some of those most avidly followed posts have the titles related to:

The five best ways to nutrition
The best seven ways to finding a new job.
The ten most irritable things you can do on an interview.
Twenty ways you can improve your lifestyle.
Five keys to buying a house.
Eight easy steps to retirement.

Often the lists are far ranging.  Mostly they offer a fix to your putative "miserable" existence. Even worse are the "top ten" lists, where the order is significant.  This implies you need remember only one or two morsels of wisdom.

 For some reason we live in an era where numbered lists of items have a profound attraction. It seems as though we wish to quantify in finite and even in few numbers those quick fix items that will change our lives. We want to be successful,  happy,  find love, or simply to understand the world around us.  Lists provide this in our oversimplified world.  There are no longer essays, or books, or guidelines on self improvement or lessons of life.   Unless they are quantified. Indeed, they MUST be quantified.  Typically, the list has ten items, though it ranges from less to more.

Please examine your personal preferences on how many items satisfy.  This is an indicator of your sophistication, your needs, and your capacity to absorb. 

All-in-all, such lists are a tragic indicators of modern living.  We have time to read, to understand, to create, but we need guideposts to do so - and only a few will satisfy.   Each lesson must not exceed 15 minutes or thereabouts. That works!  How about you? Are you entranced by  lists?



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