Another motivation is money... Having spent thousands on dental work to correct the damage done by incompetent orthodontia, it behooves me to give it the proper maintenance. So yeah, I floss every day at least.

The same approach can be applied to any mammoth task facing you.

I used to build scale models. Some of the ideas I had for dioramas were so complicated I thought they'd take forever. But I'd just break the thing down into a whole bunch of little models that I built one at a time.

The same with writing books. First I start with an idea, then a basic outline, and then a chapter outline. I write down all the scenes I want to include (or information, in the case of nonfiction) and insert them into the proper chapter.

Then I fill in the empty spaces. At the end it's like, "How the hell did I write all that?"

By breaking it down into a lot of smaller tasks.

I happened to get the weekly newsletter from an organization. The editor mentioned that he recently read a book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. In it, Pressfield introduces the idea of Resistance. Yes, that’s with a capital “R.”

He writes, “Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. It’s aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

Basically the editor found that if he forced himself into an hour of quiet time every morning he was getting stuff done. He actually put it down to his staff to do three hours from 9 to noon. No desk visits, no cells, etc. and productivity has gone up noticeably.

I just forwarded the e-mail to you. It's easier that way.

"I learned that tooth decay can be associated with heart disease."

Has anyone here seen any data that establishes the causative relationship for this case?

I suspect they are both the result of a common behavior, not the one leads to the other.

Raddy needs to stop being such a niggling little pri---

Well, actually, I was thinking the same thing. You should floss, and tooth decay is something good to avoid. But I noted Lustig's comments a couple of weeks ago about how so many health problems are caused not by obesity per se, but in the vast number of inflammations which damage tissues stressed by poor diet, minor insults which can maim when suffered over a lifetime.

"Associated" is a wickedly promiscuous word. It'll hang out with anybody.

Do you know, the toothbrush was invented by a Southerner?
If it was invented by a Northerner, we'd call it a TEETHbrush!

Regarding the link to tooth decay and heart disease: Helicobacter Pylori is the bacteria known for causing gum disease and stomach ulcers. It's also being found in the arterial lesions of heart attack and stroke victims. Linus Pauling touted Vitamin C for promoting healthy arteries, preventing H Pylori from finding weak locations to take up residence.
Since my 6-tuple coronary bypass operation, I'm dismayed to find the doctors utterly un-curious as to what actually made my heart become so blocked.

"Has anyone here seen any data that establishes the causative relationship for this case?"

I've read a few reports about statistical correlations. But yeah, that's a long way from establishing cause and effect, and I don't know how they would go about eliminating confounding factors, for starters. Given that the source of tooth decay is bacterial, and that the mouth is a place where stuff can cross from the external enviroment to the bloodstream, it's plausible. But there remains a lot of work to be done.