How I Unsubscribed from Annoying E-Mail Lists

The other day Allison won tickets to a concert.  When she signed up for the promotion, she gave out her "alternate" e-mail address because she didn't want to receive annoying e-mails from them.  Unfortunately, she doesn't check her alternate account on a regular basis, so she got an "important" e-mail about the concert a couple days late.

In my Mr. Know-It-All way, I told her that it was easy to unsubscribe from e-mail lists.  I told her that all you have to do is click unsubscribe at the bottom of the e-mail and you stop receiving those e-mails.  I decided as an experiment, I would test out my words to see if I could unsubscribe myself from e-mail lists.  As of a couple weeks ago, I regularly received junk e-mail from several sources.  I hadn't taken action until now because I wasn't bothered by receiving the extra messages.  What happened was that I was able to get off of most e-mail lists by clicking unsubscribe.  The best e-mail lists have a simple unsubscribe button on the bottom of their e-mails which can be clicked and presto: unsubscribe successful!  It was easy to unsubscribe from things like Target, Office Depot, Amazon.com, and Kimpton Hotels, just to name a few.

The Worst Offenders

There were just a few, however, that kept coming even after I was sure that I had unsubscribed.  I was wrong in telling my wife that she could just click unsubscribe on all e-mail lists to stop getting those e-mails.

First, Ebay Daily Deals kept coming to my inbox.  When I clicked unsubscribe, it took several minutes to figure out what I needed to do to unsubscribe.  When I finally did that, it said that it would take up to two weeks to get my name off, as if they didn't have the computing capability to remove my e-mail address until then.

Next, I kept getting e-mails from Busted Tees, a website that sells funny t-shirts.  I have enjoyed their t-shirts, but I have been unable to unsubscribe from their e-mail list.  When I clicked unsubscribe on their e-mail list, it asked me to enter my e-mail address to finish unsubscribing.   Apparently didn't work, because in a few days I got another e-mail from them.  I did the unsubscribe again and once again it didn't work.

Finally, the most disappointing offender is Deseret Book.  After I unsubscribed, I kept getting just as many e-mails from them as ever (which is to say, pretty much every day).  When I would unsubscribe to one, it would say that I had unsubscribed from some obscure sublist of their overall list.  I gave them more benefit of the doubt then the other ones, but despite my best efforts I ended up still receiving daily e-mail from them.

I just don't see what's the point of forcing me to be on their e-mail list.  I read in a book the following sentiment: don't take no for an answer is the wrong attitude; people can't or shouldn't be forced to do anything; the right attitude is don't take maybe for an answer, because a maybe is waiting to be talked into a yes.  I think continuing to send me unwanted e-mails is taking no for an answer and not taking maybe for an answer.  I just feel like it actually makes me want to deal with them less for doing that.

Solution


My brother mentioned to me that I could just set-up an e-mail filter and stop receiving any unwanted e-mails. I went ahead and did this.  I am currently using Gmail as my primary e-mail service.  On each unwanted message, I clicked "More Actions" to drop down a list, and then clicked "Filter messages like these".  It sent me to a menu where I could fill in criteria or simply choose all messages from an e-mail address.  Once I did that, it gave me options of what I wanted to do with those messages.  I decided to choose to delete them all.  Problem solved.  Even better, I even have the ability to filter certain school e-mail lists which I am unable to unsubscribe from.

Update (01/21/11)


The filters solution is working well.  I have really reduced the amount of unimportant e-mail coming to my inbox.

I have peeked at my trash folder to see if these offending e-mails are still coming to me.  It looks like Ebay Daily Deals finally stopped; I just think it's annoying that it took so long.  Also, it doesn't look like I received anything else from Busted Tees after I unsubscribed from them the second time.  I am therefore not mad at them anymore and would like to say that they have some cool, funny t-shirts.  As for Deseret Book, I still don't understand why they need to keep spamming me.  What do they gain by antagonizing my e-mail inbox?

If you would correct my sentence fragment...

I have noticed that I have the tendency to say a lot of sentence fragments starting with "if" in place of asking questions or making direct requests.  For example:

• What I say: "If someone could pass me the butter."
  Proper English: "Could someone please pass me the butter?"
• What I say: "If you guys would do your homework."
  Proper English: "You guys should do your homework."

I noticed that lots of people speak like this.

Which is better: Classical Music or Today's Pop Music?

I recently watched the movie Amadeus about Mozart.  One scene in the movie showed a clip from a four-hour-long opera.  The scene showed Mozart's rival Salieri riveted as he watched it.  I realized that musical consumption was much different back then.  In those days, they did not have record players, a Walkman, a CD player, or an iPod.  Music was less accessible, and there was no skipping tracks or fast-forwarding.

I realized that I would have a very hard time keeping my attention span fixed on a four-hour-long piece of music.  My music consumption lately has been the same as my Internet consumption: I skim over lots of songs and rarely have the patience to process anything complex.  I wonder if this is why pop music is so simplistic.  I would venture to say that the average person today would pick their favorite modern tunes over anything classical, but is it because (a) pop music is better or (b) they have a much different musical pallet?  I think it is probably (b).

My opinion is that top notch classical music is probably "better", but you have to have the pallet to enjoy it.

Why Can't I Read Books Anymore?

The Internet, that's why.  I recently read an article entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?".  It makes an interesting point that the Internet has changed the way our brains work (at least those of us who use it regularly). Instead of being able to sit for hours soaking in a long book, we get bored, we skim the book over, and we jump to the next thing.

I have been thinking about the contrast between skimming over information and diving deep for understanding.  These are really two complementary skills.  For example, in researching this subject, I did a Google search and sifted through information to find the most pertinent information.  As an example of "diving deep", in my experience mathematics is a subject that can only be learned through deeply studying it out.

I have been of the habit to do a whole lot of skimming as well.  Indeed, it is easy to get lost for large chunks of time just surfing the web, superficially absorbing tons of useless, or at least low value, information.  This is something I am going to be working on.

Studying the Scriptures Smarter, not Harder

Recently I had a post called "Study Smarter, not Harder."  Part of my inspiration for thinking about this is that I have been thinking about how I study the scriptures.

How Does Scripture Study Compare to Studying for School?

I have recently been analyzing scripture study and school study side by side for inspiration on how to improve my scripture study.

Goals and Plans

In school there is a strict plan (a syllabus) and explicit, measurable goals (get good grades).  In my scripture study there is no plan and there are no goals which are forced on me.  This makes school easy and studying the scriptures hard because I have to try that much harder to figure out what I am going to study and to keep myself motivated to study it.

Focus

I have an incentive to study focus 100% when I get into my studying for school (as explained in this post).  If I focus, I can get better grades in less time.  In my scripture study, when I am at my worst, my main goal is to do my scripture study for a "sufficient" amount of time.  When I focus only this goal, my incentive is to study while focusing as little as possible.  This requires less effort but still accomplishes my imperfect goal.

Activities and Results

In "Study Smarter, not Harder" post, I put forth the following theory:

Study Power = Quantity of Study X Quality of Study.

When I am studying for school, I have a natural incentive to have a low "quantity of study", i.e. I don't want to spend more time studying than I have to, while maintaining a high level of "study power", i.e. good grades, etc.  Therefore, according to my formula, I aim for a high "quality of study".  A big part of my "quality of study" is my choice of study methods.  I avoid study methods in which I learn slowly, and I replace them with methods in which I learn quickly.  Further, once I feel that I have sufficiently learned something for school, I will spend very little time reviewing it between when I have learned it and when I am tested on it.  My school study is very results-oriented.  I do things in the quickest, best way I know how.  I try to exploit the 80-20 rule as much as possible.

My scripture study, on the other hand, has been more activity-oriented.  In the past, I haven't thought as much about what is the quickest, best way of doing things because my incentive is not to finish studying the scriptures as quickly as possible, my incentive is just to do it like I am supposed to.

New Information

In school, I am typically given a constant stream of new information.  All I have to do in this case is understand the most important items.  If possible, I try to boil down a subject into a few overriding principles and then just focus on those principles.

In scripture study, I am not given a constant stream of new information.  By just doing an ordinary scripture study, I am likely to see large chunks of material that I have seen before.  In this way, scripture study is different from school study.

I compare this to my learning Portuguese.  During my first few months in Brazil, when I was just barely learning Portuguese, out of all of the things I did to learn, my Portuguese skills improved the fastest from simply talking to Brazilians in their language than anything else I did.  In speaking with the natives, I was given a constant stream of new words, new grammatical constructions, etc.  Practicing the language, in the beginning, was way more effective than studying vocabulary and grammar from a book.

As my Portuguese improved, I didn't learn as much of the language from talking to people.  I could now understand and talk to people effortlessly in Portuguese.  I was getting a stream of familiar words, familiar grammatical constructions, etc.  At that point, I improved more quickly by conscientiously studying grammar and vocabulary.

In school, I am always on the first phase where there is lots of new information; this is the easiest phase.  In scripture study, I am on the second phase; I have simply crossed a plateau where I am not receiving new information organically; I feel "comfortable".

Note Taking

In school, I (sometimes) take notes.  All I have to do is get one notebook per class and take notes.  I write down the date each class period so that my notes are in a nice logical order.  When I need to refer back to them, it is easy to find information.  When I finish a class, then I have a completed set of notes for that class.

In scripture study, it takes more work to get a logical order out of my notes.  Currently I am exploring digital alternatives to old-fashioned methods of notebooks, filing systems, and scripture marking.  I mentioned this here.

Filling a Requirement vs. Learning

In school, I am at my best trying to learn something, but at my worst what I do is only to fulfill a requirement.  As mentioned, I exploit the 80-20 rule in that I spend 20% of the effort to learn 80% of what the class has to offer.

In scripture study, I am not bound by requirements.  I can design it to meet my needs.  This aspect is easier than school work because I can work on the things that I am motivated to work on. 

Study groups are overrated

This post is a continuation of my thoughts on quality study.  In my previous post "Study Smarter, not Harder", I talked about how I discovered the following relation:

Study Power = Quantity of Study X Quality of Study.

I mentioned that one habit I have is to focus intensely.  I have mentioned other things in previous posts as well.  Here is another one of my ideas on "quality study".  Some of my ideas on this topic are unconventional and therefore a lot of people will disagree with them.  However, I know that they have worked for me.

Study groups are overrated

Collaboration is important in many endeavors. However, when I am trying to learn something complex, it is important to me to learn it for myself.   There are many arguments for working in study groups.  I have attended study skills talks where I was told that study groups are an important study skill.  Despite this advice, I don't see how people can learn complex concepts without intense, alone study.

Don't skip the hard problems 

When I do a homework assignment for a class that requires problem solving, I commit to doing all of the assigned problems on the assignment.  I realize that most people don't do this.  Most people give up on the hardest problems and go over these problems later in study sessions, recitation sessions, in office hours, etc. or simply don't do them at all.  Being that most people don't do as I am doing, most will disagree with my opinion that it's better to do all the problems.

I have the most effective studies when I am trying to figure out things that I don't know how to do.  By doing all the problems, I figure out how to do all the problems.  Therefore, when I finish my homework for a class, I don't need to study hard for my exams; I already learned the concepts.

That Sounds Too Hard

Some people would argue that they are not good at (fill in the blank) or not smart enough to do this.  To that I have a couple points.  

Don't Give Up


Especially in graduate school, I have had assignments where it seems like I am not going to be able to finish because there are problems which I am just not getting.  In these moments, I have learned no to give up.  With more work, I always am able to do all of the problems.  In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he brings up a point that studies show that those who don't get frustrated by learning math slowly but stick to it are able to learn it.  There is no royal road to learning mathematics or any other complex subject.

Have Confidence

Being good at school subjects has more to do with "I can" than IQ.  For example, a student in the class I assist in brought a problem to me.  She had done most of the steps in the problem, but had stopped when she got to a "hard" step.  She said that she wasn't good at the concept which was required for the step. When I looked at it, the hard step had nothing to do with the thing she said was hard for her.  It just required doing the same stuff as the other problems, just with a hard-looking thing.  If she had pressed on instead of giving up, she would have for sure succeeded at the problem because she was able to do the other identical problems.  She made the problem harder than it needed to be.

Go Back and Review to Fill in Holes

When there are things that I don't understand as well or that I learned but forgot, it is not that hard to fill in those holes in my knowledge.  When I am in this situation, I Google things or look them up on Wikipedia.  Going back to the example in the previous paragraph, when the student said, "I am not good at (fill in the blank)," she could have taken the time to figure out how to do (fill in the blank).  Her specific topic could have easily been found on Wikipedia.  Another more heavy-duty solution have been to pick up a book at the library to review (fill in the blank) more heavily.  Doing this will take more time in the short run than to ask someone the answer, but in the long run it will pay off in terms of both time saving and in better grades.

Procrastination


I see this subject like procrastination.  If I eat something, put my dish in the sink, and then wait to wash it, it is going to take more work to clean it later than it would have been to clean it immediately.  If I do a load of laundry and then wait a long time to fold and hang it, my clothes are going to get wrinkled and I will have to do the extra work of ironing them.  If I am doing homework for a class, and I avoid figuring out a hard problem, I am going to have to put in more work to make up for it.

Football Strategy

In the same spirit as the Jeopardy! posts, there are some outside-the-box strategies for (American) football.

• This article talks about a high school team that never punts.  Their rationale is by looking at the numbers, the gain of punting (gaining a number of extra yards of field position) is outweighed by the loss of punting (when you go for it on 4th down, you possibly will get a first down, which means you keep the ball and have a possibility to score).  
• Here is an academic paper on NFL teams and the decision to go for a 4th down.  It shows that based on simple probability, NFL teams are more conservative than they should be with this decision. 
• Here is a post from the Freakonomics blog which talks about the NFL draft.  Essentially it says the best pick to have in the NFL draft is not the 1st pick but a later pick.  This is because the highest picks in the draft are paid, on average, much more than they are worth whereas later picks are paid more in line with what they are worth, if not less than they are worth.  If a team chooses not to pay a high pick a large salary, than that pick will holdout, and the team is left with nothing.  Here is an academic paper which supports this thought.
• Here is a Wikipedia page which talks about the A-11 offense.  It was devised by a high school team.  Instead of having one quarterback and five eligible receivers, in the A-11 offense there are two quarterbacks and every player is an eligible receiver.  It is a cool idea to see the basic elements of football strategy turned on their heads.

Study Smarter, not Harder

This has been a topic which has been on my mind a lot lately.

• I recently came across the website Study Hacks. It has some interesting insights into how to study.  Specifically, it aims to show people how to study smarter, not harder.
• I realized today that one of my study habits is that I focus on a problem in short spurts without being distracted.  When I have math homework, my mode of attack has been in the past to take an assignment and work on it until I have completed it.  In my single days, this involved me secluding myself from the outside world and studying as intensely as I could.  Now that I am married, I notice that when I am doing a homework assignment, I don't take being bothered well.  I get irrationally irritable when even my wife asks me a question while I am doing homework.  I have taken to calling this state "being in the zone".  I simply lack the extra brain power in these moments to respond to anything not related to my task at hand.  I have been trying my best, therefore, to limit my intense study times to hours when my wife is not around.
• For some reason, when I think of being a "good student", in the past I always equate it to one variable: how many hours one studies.  Lately, however, I see that effective study is perhaps a two-variable equation.  That is:
  
  Study Power = Quantity of study X Quality of study.
  

  I have always compared my quantity of study to others, and when I see someone who has a higher quantity of study than me, I always consider them better students.  However, lately I have come to realize that there is no shame in studying smarter, not harder.  For example, if instead of having an intense focus on my study I had a 75% focus on my study, it would take me 33% longer to finish my homework.
• I am trying to figure out all the ways in which I can study more efficiently, not only to do my math homework faster, but to learn a bunch of things I am interested in in a more efficient way.

Jeopardy Strategy, Part 2

I have also wondered about the betting strategy on Daily Doubles.  Once I saw a game with a dominant contestant, i.e. he was answering most of the questions (or is it providing questions to most of the answers?)  When he landed on Daily Doubles, instead of betting a modest amount (which is common) he would go ahead and "make it a true Daily Double," i.e. he would bet everything.  At first I was shocked by his strategy, but after thinking about it it made sense. (He won the game, even though he missed a Daily Double.  He was just a lot better than his challengers.)

After thinking about it, if a player has a large lead, it may not be wise to make such a large bet on a daily double.  It actually decreases one's chances of winning to do that.  By winning, they are allowed to play on the next show.  In the olden days where there was a five-show limit, however, it was justifiable for a contestant to bet big in order to maximize his or her earnings.

For a player who doesn't have a large lead, he or she should think about betting bigger.  For example, digging around on Youtube led to this clip.  By going for a true Daily Double and making it, this contestant put himself in a great position to win: he more or less assured himself of leading going into Final Jeopardy! and gave himself a great chance of either being out of reach (meaning he won) or having the 2/3 rule (see my previous post on Jeopardy!).  If he had missed a modest Daily Double, there wasn't enough time to reasonably climb into first place.  If he had made a modest Daily Double and inched into the lead, his lead would have been very shaky  The other contestants could reasonably catch him by answering just one more $2000 question.  From that point of view, what he did looks smart.

By contrast, in a recent episode I watched, a trailing contestant landed on a Daily Double near the end of Double Jeopardy!.  She was hovering just over half of what the 1st place contestant had.  She made a modest wager and got the question right.  By doing that, she stayed in 2nd place.  She ended Double Jeopardy in second place.  The Final Jeopardy was a question which both her and the 1st-place player got right.  She lost the game.  In that situation, I wanted her to bet big.  If she had bet most/all of her money and got it right, she would have probably finished in first place and by correctly answering the Final Jeopardy! question she would have won.  If she had lost such a bet, she would have lost the game; she lost the game by getting it right and betting small; further, if she missed the Daily Double after betting so small, she (and the 3rd-place contestant) would have likely ended the game with less than half of the leader's total, which would have guaranteed defeat.

I think a part of the uneasiness to wager so high is that the contestants are playing for real money.  If it was all for fun, I think contestants would be more aggressive.  However, I think that even though the prize is real money, contestants should risk more so that they can win the game.  They don't get to keep their score in money if they lose the game.

Jeopardy Strategy

I wife and I have recently been watching Jeopardy!, which can be done quickly with a DVR.  I have been interested in the betting strategies.  It has seemed to me that some players don't use optimal strategies.  For example, there was an episode where a player who was leading correctly answered the Final Jeopardy! question, but lost because she failed to wager enough money.  I dug a little deeper to see what others had to say.

In Final Jeopardy!, the players each make a wager before answering a question.  They may wager any dollar amount between $0 and the total they have gained through the episode.  I want to know if there is a sure strategy for how much one should wager.

If one player has won more than double the other opponents, then he is assured of winning as long as he picks a wager so that even if he gets the question wrong, he would still have more than double what the other opponents started with.  If he wants to maximize his expected winnings, then he should bet as much as safely possible if he thinks he has a better than 50/50 shot at answering correctly, and he should bet 0 otherwise.

If one player does not have more than double the other opponents, then she may possibly lose.  I found through my Google search (I'm not including links, but there are many sites that talk about this) the 2/3 rule.  Suppose that the player in the lead has more than 1.5 times her nearest opponent, but less than or equal to 2 times her nearest opponent.  Then the best play is to bet so that if she gets it right, she will have more than double what the nearest opponent started with.  In mathematical formula terms, suppose the leader has $A and the 2nd-place player has $B, and that 2 B >= A > 1.5 B.  Then the leader should bet an amount $x so that A-B > x > 2B-A, which is possible since A-B > 2B-A is equivalent to A > 1.5 B.  If the leader gets it right, she wins.  If she gets it wrong and the 2nd-place player gets it right and bets big, she loses, but that would have happened regardless of what she had bet.  If both players get it wrong, then the leader wins because she still has more than what the 2nd-place player started with.  In this situation, the 2nd-place player might as well bet as big as possible, unless he is concerned about the difference in prize between him and the 3rd-place player.

If the leader is ahead by less than 1.5 times his nearest opponent, then the situation is trickier.  My search said that the leader will always have the same betting strategy: bet so that he has barely more than double of what the 2nd place person started with.  This is not because it is the most proven strategy per se, it is just because that is what you see on TV.  The case then is that the 2nd-place player needs to assume this and bet so that she just beats out the leader in the case that he gets it wrong and she gets it right.  One link for this his here.
This however doesn't sit well with me because the proper strategy for the 1st place player can't be to always bet big.  For example, in the scenario that the 2nd-place wagers a very small amount, if the 1st place player bet $0, he would beat the 2nd-place player no matter what.  In this scenario, there is no fool-proof bet that either player can make (i.e. there is no Nash Equilibrium, as named for the guy from A Beautiful Mind.)  If the 1st-place player doesn't like his chances in getting the Final Jeopardy! question right, why not bet small instead of the standard leader bet?  Why is that a bad strategy?  (I do note, however, that it is most often the case that some or all of the contestants get Final Jeopardy! right.)

A Better Way to Study

I recently read the free ebook Holistic Learning from this site. It talks about a way to study which is different from brute-force memorization. I thought it was interesting because it describes how I naturally study. In retrospect, because I studied this way, I feel like I have cut down on the amount of time I have had to study many times over. I have observed many friends and acquaintances who have studied very hard for things, whereas for some reason I have always had a lot of free time. When finals came around especially, I studied very sparingly while others slaved over their work. When grades came out, I did well whereas my friends didn't always do well.

I have wondered about this from time to time. How do such hard working people not figure out how to get an A? This book implies that it is not necessarily because they weren't smart, it is because they didn't know how to study. Actually, I know many people who I know to be very smart who for some reason spend a lot more time studying than I do but who probably go about their studying the wrong way.

I feel like if those friends only knew that there's an easier way they would have a much less stressful life.

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