Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with repetition

Whoa oh oh. Listen to the music. All the tiiiiime.

TheSecretDecoderRing — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:43:57 -0800

Are you forced to listen to the same music every day at work or elsewhere, and do you like it, dislike it, or just not notice it? Mainly, I'm curious how you manage to deal with it, or if I'm really that sensitive to repetitive music. Or are you the one playing the same station out loud every day? Have you had any incidents arise from it from co-workers/colleagues? And is Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" really that addictive... still? So a couple of office co-workers, whom I otherwise get along with, have taken to playing the same contemporary pop station at work five days a week, nine hours a day. My headphones block it out as long as I'm not listening to talk radio, which I still have to do at times. I may be a victim of particularly sensitive "peripheral" hearing. And if I have to get up and walk around, it's better for me to take the headphones off.

While I've hinted that I'm not a big fan of hearing Kelly Clarkson wail her same three big hits throughout the day, or hearing the chorus of "Keep Bleeding Love" until it makes me want to slit my wrists, it's still something that I (and a couple others) have had to put up with. And this is after having a previous job for five years where the management insisted on playing a similar station for the customers, leading me to develop the ability to recognize certain bad songs after hearing the first fraction of a second.

The only solutions are likely to be either to confront them or tattle to the boss and risk coming off as a jerk (which I have an extreme fear of), or to be a jerk and play my own music out loud, but I doubt I'll do either.

So... yeah. My question remains what's above the fold.

(I had no idea whether to post this under human relations, society & culture, work & money, or media & arts. Or health & fitness.)

Never fight a land war in Asia

Hargrimm — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:30:08 -0800

What are some good examples of failing to learn from history? I was having a discussion with a friend, and I brought up the trope that "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it." I was challenged to provide some examples, but all I could come up with on the spot was that America goes through a similar bubble and burst economic breakdown every twenty years or so. So I'm looking for more concrete examples of when a person/society made a mistake that could have been avoided by looking at history. Something like Hitler making the mistake of invading Russia in the winter, which has been proven to be foolhardy in the past by Napoleon, among others.

How to Integrate "Repeating Tasks" Into a Text File To-Do System?

WCityMike — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:46:41 -0800

I recently switched over to a plain text file as my to-do list; I can structure it the way I want, it is an absolute cinch to access in any one of a hundred zillion different ways, it's crossplatform, and so on. However, I am running into one methodology I can't figure out how to translate into the "plain text" world, and that is repeating tasks. I am wondering how people who also keep their to-do lists in text files handle repeating tasks. I'd like to specifically exclude the solutions of loading repeating tasks into a calendaring program or employing a third-party application to create them (i.e. Taskpaper & AppleScript, or Remind). I'm really looking more for how you handle it in simply in the world of plain text.

Also, to open it up a little, I'm curious as to what little mechanisms or mindhacks or systems you may employ within your text-file to-do list, so please feel free to share that, too (although I am primarily interested in the repeating tasks question).

Thanks!

The beets did really weird stuff to me, like to my poop and stuff. Anyway, red wine does seem to be all I drink these days, but that's ok, because....

TheManChild2000 — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:35:30 -0800

I say and write the word 'Anyway' too often as a bridge between a previous thought and the next one. I knew I did this on the page a lot but didn't realize I was saying it too. It's clear that I've got some reason why I can't just start into the new thought. How can I stop?

Should I be worried about my friend's forgetfulness?

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:07:43 -0800

I know many people, including myself, mistakenly repeat events in our lives to the same individual. However, I have a friend who constantly tells me same things repeatedly. Not nag me to do things, but tell me things that we’ve already discussed at length either verbally or through email. For instance, his car was broken into and his radio was stolen. He told me the day it happened and gave me all the facts. Then a week later, he raised the case again saying he had to go to the store and look for a new radio because his was stolen and he repeated all the facts. Then in an email the other day he told me that he bought a new radio for his car because a few weeks ago, his was stolen. He brings it up as if I’ve never heard it before. He doesn’t just do it with negative events. He does it if he gets a cool gift, or promotion, etc. I’ve told him before that he does this. I started feeling that I wasn’t important enough in his life for him to remember our interactions. I mentioned it to another friend and they laughed and said that he does it to them too which started to get me worried. Is there a psychological/medical reason that my friend does this and should I be worried about their health?