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Dr Jane Genovese makes the latest research on learning, productivity and healthy living accessible to students, parents and teachers.
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I’ve developed this story that I’m not the world’s best bag packer.
Every holiday, I tend to pack either too much or too little.
At the start of the Easter long weekend, I was overwhelmed by the task of packing for a four-day trip.
To be fair, other things were on my mind, such as the chaotic state of the world and the chaos within my home (i.e., the mess I would be returning to).
I know what you might be thinking…
“Stop your whinging, Jane. What a privilege to be able to pack your bag to go away!”
Indeed, it is! An absolute privilege.
Yet, rather than experiencing gratitude, anxious thoughts swirled through my mind.
“Have I packed enough socks and undies?”
“Do I have enough food to avoid going into the crowded shops?”
“Will the traffic be bad?”
“Will my husband insist on getting hot chips at the Service Station?”
“What books should I take?”
Among these packing questions, one stood out: what books should I take? This question weighed heavily on my mind and here’s why.
When it comes to packing books, I tend to go overboard.
I overestimate how much I can read in a single weekend. I’ll weigh down my backpack with several heavy books, only to find that I don’t end up reading any of them. Ugh.
You’d think more books equal more reading. Wrong.
More books mean more choice. And more choice usually results in decision fatigue and overwhelm.
Determined to change my usual approach this holiday, I told myself it was time to be in reality. I gave myself strict orders: I could only pack what I could realistically read in the time I would be away. That was one book.
Fifteen minutes before I was due to set off, I selected this book: Reasons not to worry – How to be stoic in chaotic times by Brigid Delaney.
I’d purchased this book several years ago, and for whatever reason, I stopped reading it after just 20 pages. I wasn’t ready for it. And when it comes to reading certain books, it’s all about timing. Every book has its time.
Now, I was finally ready to listen to what these Stoic philosophers had to say about living well in times of chaos.
How to live when the world is falling apart
We are living in unstable times. I don’t need to lay out what’s going on. You’ve seen the headlines.
It’s easy to feel powerless and unsure about what to do.
Where should you focus your limited time and energy during chaotic times? How can you focus and study for an exam when the future feels uncertain?
This is why I felt open to wisdom of the ancient Stoics. The Stoics, such as Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, had many great ideas for dealing with the challenges of everyday life and for facing life’s disappointments with grace. This is what I desperately needed!
On my trip, I read most of Reasons not to worry—a breakthrough in itself! Even more powerful, however, were the book’s ideas, which left me feeling calmer.
In this blog, I want to share the most powerful idea I learnt from the Stoics: the control test—a tool that helps you focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t.
Running things through the control test
The Stoics believed the secret to happiness and tranquillity was to focus on the things you can control and not worry about the rest. As Bridget Delaney writes in Reasons not to worry:
“The step the Stoics took first, before taking action, was to run everything through a basic test. Called the ‘control test’ or the Dichotomy of Control, the Stoics assessed what they could and could not control about a situation, and focused their attention on areas they could control.”
Delaney provides the following useful image to illustrate the control test.
This image shows that you have full control over three things: 1) your character; 2) your reactions; and 3) how you treat others.
If something relates to one of these three things, it’s within your control and you can take action.
Stoic philosopher Epictetus was a strong proponent of the control test. He believed knowing what you can control and what you can’t was the key to living a tranquil life. In his manual The Art of Living, he lays out what’s within our personal control:
“Within our control are our opinions, aspirations, desires, and the things that repel us. These areas are quite rightly our concern, because they are directly subject to our influence. We always have a choice about the content and character of our inner lives.”
In contrast, what other people think and do is out of our control. Epictetus believed that if we focus on trying to control or change these things, we will torment ourselves and waste our precious time and energy.
Applying the control test to my everyday life
Thinking back to the start of the Easter long weekend, I can see that if I had run my anxious thoughts through the control test, I would have felt a lot more relaxed.
Instead of telling myself, “You’re so bad at packing!”, I could have viewed packing as a skill, as something I could work at becoming better at.
For my next trip, I could make a packing list. I could also start packing my bag the night before or even two nights before. Those things are within my control.
It’s also within my control to lower my expectations about packing. Is it really the end of the world if I don’t pack enough socks and undies? Couldn’t I just wash them if I run out?
As for concerns about the traffic being bad, this is out of my control! I can’t control how many cars are on the road or how fast they’re going. However, what I can control is my own driving ability (e.g., sticking strictly to the speed limit and taking regular breaks to recharge).
What about my husband buying overpriced hot chips at the Service Station? It is within my control to encourage him to buy a healthier snack, but ultimately, it’s my husband’s choice. If he wants hot chips, I can’t stop him. But it is within my control not to eat those hot chips.
Since reading Reasons not to worry, I’ve been applying the control test to my life several times a day. When I notice I’m feeling worried, upset, or unhappy about something, I ask myself, “Is this within my control?”
This simple practice has helped me to chill out, conserve my energy, and be less of a control freak. As a result, I feel better, and so does the rest of my family.
As Delaney writes:
“Used well, the control test will change how you use your energy and where you place your care and attention. Your energy should be focused on the first part of the equation: doing the thing well. And you should not direct any energy or worry to things out of your control, such as the outcome or people’s response to what you do, because that is wasted energy. You will only end up with your tranquillity disturbed”.
How can the control test help you prepare for tests and exams?
The control test can help us prepare effectively for tests and exams. You can’t control the way your grades are scaled, the exact questions you’ll be asked on the exam, what your exam timetable will look like, or if you’ll have back-to-back exams. Those things are externals, so the Stoics would say don’t waste your energy worrying about them.
But what you can control is how much you prepare for your exams, how much study you do, how much sleep you get, the strategies you use to learn the information, whether you refer to the syllabus, and how focused you are as you study.
How you prepare is within your control. And the more prepared you are, the better you will do in your exams.
Should you worry about the state of the world?
Does the Control Test mean you shouldn’t try to help others in your community or push for environmental, social, or political change?
Not at all.
Delaney writes:
“. . . Stoics were not passive people. Historically they were people of action: political leaders, emperors and soldiers. But they knew that even if they trained hard, acted with integrity, built alliances and put in a lot of effort, they couldn’t control the outcome. They could only control their own character, own actions (and reactions) and how they treated others.”
To sum up
The control test can help you to stop stressing about things that are out of your control and worrying about what other people think. In the spirit of the Stoics, focus your energy on doing your best work, being the best version of yourself, and treating people with kindness.
Earlier this year, I heard a teacher say something that gave me a jolt.
Just before I was about to start delivering a presentation, he said to his students:
“You need to sit still during this talk. Don’t fidget!”
It was one of those moments where I thought, “Do I say something about that? Or do I stay quiet?”
Not wanting to undermine this teacher, I held my tongue. Had I been more courageous in that moment, I would have said this to the students:
“Listen up, I’m okay with you fidgeting. If you need to get up and move at any point during this presentation, go for it.”
Look, I know what it’s like to be a fidgety student. When I’m forced to sit for long periods, I start to fidget too.
To keep fidgeting at bay, I’ve developed a range of simple strategies that I incorporate into my day.
Here’s what I’ve discovered…
My body needs to move every 20 to 30 minutes. If I can get up and move regularly, I feel calm and steady. My body and mind feel good.
But if I suppress my need to move, I become sad and sluggish.
Without consciously realising it, I’ve designed my life to avoid sitting. My environment nudges me to move.
These days, I hardly ever use a car, which I’m relieved about for several reasons. Yes, there’s the astronomical price of petrol due to Trump’s illegal war and the environmental impacts of driving. But most of all, I really dislike driving. It turns out, I’m not the only person who feels this way.
Research by Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that commuting to and from work in a car is one of the least enjoyable daily activities.
Instead of driving, I ride my bike and walk wherever possible. I also work from home and use a treadmill desk for several hours each day.
Building regular movement into my day and decreasing my sitting time has made a world of difference.
It’s a rare day when I feel a bit off. If I do feel a bit flat, it usually comes down to one of two things: a lack of movement or a poor night’s sleep.
If you’ve been feeling a bit sluggish, it may be that your chair is getting you down and keeping you down. According to Dr James Levine, you could benefit from a chair release strategy to regain your personal power.
Dr Levine encourages us to release ourselves from our chairs. He says when you escape the chair, you free yourself from “a sedentary psychological imprisonment that forbids self-propulsion, self-expression and self-fulfilment”.
In his book Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, Dr Levine argues that we didn’t evolve to sit for long periods. He states:
“The goal of sitting is to give our bodies a break from standing, which is the way the human anatomy and physiology is designed. Human design is to be upright for most of the day: walking to work, walking and nurturing our young, walking while inventing, walking while gathering our food, running on the hunt. Sitting, we know from studies in rural populations, is supposed to be undertaken in short batches to break up the motion of a dynamic day.”
In short, our bodies are designed to move.
It may come as a surprise to learn that for centuries, chairs were luxury items that signalled status and power. Only the elite owned chairs.
Fast forward to today: there is no shortage of chairs. Chairs are everywhere and for everyone. They dominate our landscape and our lives.
It seems completely normal to sit all day. Sitting doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it as smoking does.
Chairs: “Agents of Death”
Dr Levine refers to chairs as “agents of death” because of the harm they can inflict on our minds and bodies. I have to admit, at first, I found the characterisation of chairs as “agents of death” a little over the top. But as I learnt more about the science of prolonged sitting, I understood why Dr Levine took such a strong position.
According to multiple studies, prolonged sitting shortens our lifespan. This study found that for every hour we spend sitting, life expectancy decreases by 22 minutes.
All those hours of sitting add up. I crunched the numbers and discovered that 8 hours of sitting each day for a year reduces a person’s lifespan by 44 days. Over 10 years, you’ve shortened your lifespan by 446 days. Let me put this in context . . .
Over 100 years, instead of living to 100, you’d live to approximately 90.
But it’s not just about lifespan. It’s about healthspan (i.e. the number of years spent in good health) and your overall wellbeing. Regular physical movement adds years to your life and life to your years.
Sitting for long periods is clearly harmful, so why is it that so many ‘fidgety’ students who feel the need to move are medicated and made to feel like they are defective?
When I was a high school and university student, I found myself thinking, “Why can’t I sit still like everyone else? Why do I feel the urge to jump out of my chair and do some karate kicks and star jumps?”
But it turns out, we’re not defective. The problem is the way our modern environment is designed. The modern environment is completely out of whack and out of sync with what our bodies need.
Hypersensitive to ‘Move-it’ signals
Dr Levine’s research found fidgeters are super sensitive to ‘Move-it’ signals.
What’s a ‘Move-it’ signal?
It’s a signal we receive from a tiny area in our brain called the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothamalus. This signal tells us to move.
Dr Levine explains that our body sends us these ‘Move-it’ signals when we’ve been sitting for too long. Some people ignore these signals, while others (i.e. fidgety people) are super sensitive to them.
When we receive one of these signals, fidgety types take action. They move their bodies in whatever way they can. It could be a leg tapping under the desk or spontaneously getting up to go for a walk.
The problem is that our society is designed to suppress this pulse to move. Our challenge is to find ways to move in environments designed for sitting.
I know it’s not easy to move in most workplaces, classroom settings, and home offices, but it’s not impossible. I’m living proof that it can be done.
Simple ways to incorporate more movement into your day
Below I list a number of strategies I use to avoid prolonged sitting.
Just to be clear, I still use chairs (I use them when my legs need a break, when I mind map, eat dinner, etc). But movement is the main meal and sitting is more of a condiment!
1. Create a habit of exercising first thing
I always start my day with some form of physical activity. Before I touch my work or study, I do at least 20 minutes of physical exercise (e.g., running on a treadmill and riding a bike). Creating a habit of morning movement is key.
Once the habit is established, you’re starting your day with power and giving your brain the boost it needs to learn new ideas.
2. Use a walking pad or treadmill desk
When I’m writing or performing admin tasks, I use a treadmill desk. It’s been an absolute game-changer.
You don’t have to fork out thousands of dollars for a treadmill desk. I made my own using a treadmill my friend no longer wanted and a plank of recycled wood.
Technically, using a treadmill desk is a form of multitasking (I’m walking and working at the same time), but I’m walking at a slow, steady pace, which doesn’t require a lot of cognitive resources. This means my mind is freed up to focus on other tasks.
3. Set up a little exercise corner in your office/study space
In the corner of my office, you’ll find a rack of dumbbells, an exercise bike, a yoga mat, and various other pieces of gym equipment. Most of this equipment I purchased secondhand for an absolute bargain.
Setting yourself up with some simple gym equipment at home means there are fewer barriers to movement and lots of cues to move. It’s also a huge time saver. When I started training at home, I went from spending 30 minutes a day driving to and from the gym down to zero.
4. Stand up
Standing is better than sitting. If you’re up on your feet, you’re more likely to move. This is why I recommend using a sit-stand desk if you’re not quite ready to try a treadmill desk or walking pad.
5. Always be looking for opportunities to move
I make it a personal challenge to look for opportunities to move wherever possible.
For instance, when I catch the train into the city, I always take the stairs instead of the escalator (it’s fun to see if I can beat the people going up the escalator). If I’m watching a webinar or video, I’ll walk on my treadmill while listening and learning. I find that when other participants look like they are dozing off or checking their emails, I’m still sharp and focused.
6. Finished a work task? Get up and move
When you’ve completed your work and have a few minutes to spare, get up and go for a walk before you start the next task. This is a great way to replenish your mental energy.
7. Make your breaks and meetings active
When it’s morning tea or lunch time, get up and walk, kick a football, shoot hoops, etc. Even five minutes of walking around the block or schoolyard will work wonders for your mind and body.
You could also suggest walking meetings where you walk and talk. A research study called Give your ideas some legs from Stanford University found that people have significantly more creative ideas when they walk compared to when they sit.
8. Use your hands to doodle
I even find that something as simple as moving my hands by drawing pictures to capture ideas during a lecture helps to release some energy and keep my mind focused on the task at hand.
9. Use a timer to trigger movement
Immediately after I sit down at my desk, I set a timer for 20 minutes. As soon as that timer goes off, I’m up and moving. I usually hop on my treadmill or my stationary bike for a five minute exercise snack.
10. Listen to your ‘Move-it signals’
Many of us have learnt to ignore our innate pulse to move. Start paying attention to your ‘Move-it’ signals and acting on them whenever you can.
For me, when a ‘Move-it’ signal strikes, I first sense it in my legs. That’s my cue to get up and move. If I can’t get up and walk, I’ll engage in micro-movements, such as tapping my foot or changing my seat position.
11. Swap passive activities for active ones
The more you move, the more you want to move. These days, instead of sitting and bingeing a Netflix series, I find I want to engage in more physical activities, such as going for bike rides and bush walks with friends.
12. Reframe travel time as ‘breathers’
Travelling from one place to another can feel like a drag, so naturally, we want to speed it up by taking the car. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I view riding my bike to the shops or walking to the post office as great opportunities to take a mental break and get some movement in.
In his book Time Surfing, Zen Monk Paul Loomans states:
“…travelling can be far more than purely functional. Take advantage of the fact that you’re out and about for a while. You’re in the fresh air and can feel the sun, rain or wind on your skin. You meet people, you see the cherry blossoms, you hear a blackbird singing – the world is full of delights to draw your attention. And best of all…you’re with yourself!”
13. Get a fidget toy
Fidgeting with a paper clip, some silly putty, or anything that feels good in your hand can help us feel more alert and a bit more playful. In the book The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul explains that this sense of playfulness induces a positive mood, which helps us to learn more effectively, boosts our creativity, and makes us more flexible in our thinking.
To sum up
Moving our bodies is an essential ingredient for living a happy and healthy life. It also gives us the edge when it comes to learning and generating creative ideas.
So, get yourself a spunky bike, some exercise equipment for your study or office space, and invest in some comfy walking shoes. Trust me, this will be money well spent.
By adding more movement to your day, you’ll experience energy, happiness, and a sense of freedom like never before.
Last year, I started lifting heavy weights.
After falling out of the habit of weight training, it feels good to pick up my weights and challenge my body.
At a time of increasing uncertainty, this simple practice helps me to feel strong and powerful. As Professor BJ Fogg says:
“When you feel physically stronger, this feeling ripples out into many other areas of life.”
My muscles were growing, but one part of my body was slowly getting weaker.
What part am I talking about?
I’m talking about my brain, specifically my ability for deep learning and thinking.
About six months ago, it dawned on me that my brain had seen better days. When I confided in my husband about this, he said he felt the same way about his brain.
It wasn’t always like this.
When I was a university student, it was normal to spend several hours each day reading and mind mapping.
Most days, I’d feel confused about a new concept or how one idea was connected to another. I didn’t know the answers to a lot of questions. But I sat with the discomfort, knowing it was a normal part of the learning process.
By the time I submitted my PhD thesis (nearly 10 years ago), I was at the peak of my mental fitness. My brain was sharp and strong.
These days, it feels much harder to think and learn. Too often, I notice that I’m impatient like a toddler. I want the answers quickly.
What’s changed in the last 10 years?
While learning has never been easy for me, deep learning felt easier 10 years ago because:
- I had a basic flip phone that could only make calls and send texts (I resisted getting a smartphone for as long as possible).
- I had lots of time and space to learn.
- I was surrounded by other people who were constantly learning (other PhD students and academics).
Contrast those conditions to the modern environment most of us find ourselves in today:
- We carry smartphones in our pockets containing addictive social media apps that hijack our attention.
- This tech leaves us feeling increasingly isolated and disconnected from one another.
- Many of us have been repeatedly infected with an airborne virus (COVID-19) that has been shown to cause cognitive impairment and damage to our immune systems.
- Then there’s the new kid on the block: generative AI. Instead of being used as a study tool, generative AI is doing the work for us.
If you wanted to create a recipe to undermine a person’s ability to learn and think deeply, those would be the perfect ingredients.
Students today find themselves in an environment that actively works against deep learning. In this environment, we are pushed to learn in superficial ways, if at all.
A Guardian piece explored how AI is having a negative impact on students’ ability to study. Survey research conducted in the UK found a staggering 62 per cent of students agreed with the statement, “It’s too easy to find the answers without doing the work myself.”
Only 2 per cent of students said they did not use AI.
In another study, Dr Rebecca Winthrop and her colleagues interviewed hundreds of students and educators about how they were using AI to learn. They found AI was interfering with students ability to learn and undermining cognitive development.
In an interview on Your Undivided Attention, Dr Winthrop said AI was causing cognitive stunting in students. She stated:
“. . . when you assign an essay to a child, a student, they have to think through, what is the data? What is the evidence? Ooh, how does it stack up? Is there a side of the argument that data sits on that isn’t? How do I make a persuasive argument that uses this data and have a position? Those are hugely difficult skills to develop, and they come through practice.
And if you stick in a couple sentences into a chatbot and have it write the essay for you, kids aren’t just merely skipping a couple steps in their homework and being more efficient, they are missing the opportunity to develop their own personal independent thinking skills.”
AI has become a crutch for many people
As humans, we tend to live for the short-term. Thinking about the future and long-term planning are not strengths for most of us, especially teenagers whose brains are still developing.
Now, imagine you’re a young person who finds high school incredibly boring. You’re a little insecure, and you lack confidence in your ability to learn. To make matters worse, you can’t see the point of your subjects and how what you’re learning is going to help you later in life.
Suddenly, a free tool appears in your world that can help you avoid the pain, suffering, and potential humiliation of failure with your school subjects. It can also save you a lot of time.
This tool effortlessly pumps out an essay within seconds when it would take you many hours to write.
Would you be able to resist using this tool?
I’m almost certain I wouldn’t have been able to as a young person.
ChatGPT is incredibly seductive. It’s hard to resist. But resist we must because too much is at stake, especially for young people.
Resisting the temptation of AI
Many people I respect and admire speak enthusiastically about generative AI. There’s this palpable sense that if you don’t get on board the AI train, you’re going to be left behind.
But not everyone thinks this way.
A number of people, including Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology and Dr Rebecca Winthrop from the Center for Universal Education, argue that those who become too dependent on AI for support and validation may suffer in the long run.
The use of AI is resulting in unbuilt skills remaining that way (i.e. cognitive stunting) and already built skills diminishing.
For example, a group of researchers from MIT recently released a working paper called Your Brain on ChatGPT. This study took 54 students and asked them to perform a specific task over four sessions: writing an essay.
The students were split into three groups:
- LLM (large language model) group: They were allowed to use ChatGPT to write their essays
- Search engine group: They could use a search engine to write their essays
- Brain-only group: They had to rely on their brains to write their essays
The researchers examined students’ brain activity as they worked on their essays to assess cognitive engagement and cognitive load. They found that the brain-only group had higher levels of neural connectivity, which was associated with stronger memory and firmer ownership of the written work.
The researchers stated in the discussion section of their working paper:
“[AI tools] may unintentionally hinder deep cognitive processing, retention and authentic engagement with written material. If users rely heavily on AI tools, they may achieve superficial fluency but fail to internalize the knowledge or feel a sense of ownership over it.”
The researchers did something really interesting in the fourth and final essay writing session: they switched the groups.
The students in the brain-only group could now use ChatGPT to write their essays and the LLM group had to rely on their brains (no more ChatGPT for them).
How did each group do?
The brain-only group performed better when using ChatGPT. These students had already engaged with the ideas more deeply and therefore seemed able to critically examine the information ChatGPT brought up.
In contrast, the LLM group struggled when it came to just using their brains after using AI to write their essays for the first three sessions.
The lead researcher of this study, Dr Nataliya Kosmyna, summed it up nicely when she said in a TV interview, “Use your brain”.
What I take from this working paper is that if you want to have a deeper learning experience and create more original work, it’s best to avoid using generative AI. But if you must use AI, hold off on using it in the early stages of a writing project.
Freeing yourself from AI dependence
If you feel like you’ve become dependent on AI, it’s not too late to turn things around.
The human brain is incredibly resilient. You can learn to work differently. You can learn how to learn.
In the book The Disengaged Teen, Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop state:
“More than ever before, what kids need now is to become better at learning. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating rapidly, and everyone agrees that the pace of change will continue to be dizzying. Uncertainty is the new norm. No one knows exactly what shifts in jobs and society are in store. What can best protect and prepare our kids? Rose Luckin, a British professor and AI expert is blunt: Make them “good at learning.” The only thing that can insulate them from rapid change and give them the confidence to move forward is the ability to learn and adapt.”
It’s not too late to reclaim your cognitive power. But you’ll have to push your brain to the point of discomfort without using AI.
Just like you can’t build muscle by getting an exoskeleton to lift heavy weights for you, you’ll have to do the work and resist the temptation to outsource tasks to generative AI. But it’s important to get clear on why you want to build cognitive power and resist the allure of AI.
My reasons for building cognitive power and resisting AI
When a man I used to train at the gym with told me he was using AI to write his blog posts, my first thought was, “Why would you want to do that?”
I refuse to use generative AI to write any of my blogs. Why? Because for the most part, I get a lot of satisfaction from writing.
Yes, it can be frustrating and painful to write.
Yes, I usually always feel awkward and clumsy as I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.
Yes, it can take a lot of time to write an article.
But writing is a form of thinking. It helps me to make sense of the world. It also gives me a sense of purpose.
When I put a piece of my own writing out into the world, I feel good about it. I wrestled with ideas and, as a result, learnt something new.
If I offload all of my work to ChatGPT, I’ve robbed myself of a valuable opportunity to think, learn, and grow.
As Dr Nancy Colier states in her book The Power of Off:
“We are conditioned to believe that easier means better, that the less we have to do, the happier we will be. But often this is not in line with people’s actual experiences. We feel good when we are productive and engaged, which requires effort.”
To sum up
It’s only natural to be amazed by the things AI can do. But it’s also important to be fully aware of what this technology could do to our brains, relationships, and the quality of our lives. AI can stunt our growth in many ways.
Based on the research I’ve read so far, I’m not convinced that this technology, the way it is currently being rolled out, is good for young people to use. It’s too easy to become dependent on generative AI, to fall for its hallucinations, and to have cognitive skills atrophy or fail to develop at all. Let’s also not forget how energy-intensive all those data centres are.
This is why I’m resisting using generative AI as much as possible. In fact, I recently quit ChatGPT as part of the grassroots boycott #QuitGPT.
If you care about your brain, people, the health of the planet, and all the things that make life rich and wonderful, stop and think twice before turning to an AI chatbot. Be brave: use your brain, build your skills, and trust your thinking.
Image Credit:
Toddler (featured in image 2): “Skeptical” by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.