Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Crucial Difference Between Success and Mastery by Maria Popova The lost art of learning to stand “where we would rather not and expand in ways we never knew we could.” “You gotta be willing to fail… if you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far,” Steve Jobs cautioned. “There is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction,” Oprah counseled new Harvard graduates. Female archers, lantern slide, c. 1920. Lewis begins with a visit with the women of Columbia University’s varsity archery team, who spend countless hours practicing a sport that requires equal parts impeccable precision of one’s aim and a level of comfort with the uncontrollable — all the environmental interferences, everything that could happen between the time the arrow leaves the bow and the time it lands on the target, having followed its inevitably curved line. Mastery requires endurance. Thomas Edison This is why, Lewis argues, a centerpiece of mastery is the notion of failure. The word failure is imperfect.
The Value of Grey Thinking One of the most common questions we receive, unsurprisingly, is along the lines of What one piece of advice would you recommend to become a better thinker? The question is kind of cheating. There is, of course, no one thing, and if Farnam Street is a testament to any idea, it’s that you must pull from many disciplines to achieve overall wisdom. No truly great thinker is siloed in a small territory. But a common experience tends to occur as you rid yourself of ideology and narrowness, as you venture deeper and deeper into unfamiliar territory; and it’s worth thinking about it ahead of time. It goes by many names, but a fair one might be Grey Thinking. The Black-and-White Swan Children love torturing their parents and teachers with the relentless Why? If you’re a parent, you’ve probably had this experience. As we get older, we start to get rigid. And so on. But the fact is, reality is all grey area. This fundamental truth is easy to grasp in theory and hard to use in practice, every day.
How to Use Deep Work to Kill Distractions and Boost Productivity Deep work, as defined by author and professor Cal Newport in his best selling book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, is a concept born out of the difficulty many people have today in handling distractions caused by the boom in digital communications. These distractions prevent us from focusing on work that matters and contributes towards us feeling overwhelmed and overworked every day, yet at the same time, leaving us feeling we are not doing work that really matters. We are reacting rather than being proactive. Deep work prevents us from reacting by scheduling time for focused work where we turn off all our notifications and devices for an hour or two and sit down in a quiet place, undisturbed, to focus on work that matters. It allows us to focus without distraction as we practice moments of digital minimalism. It works, and it is something I have been using for years when I need to get a book finished or I have an important project to complete. Less Stress 1.
Wisdom from a MacArthur Genius: Psychologist Angela Duckworth on Why Grit, Not IQ, Predicts Success by Maria Popova “Character is at least as important as intellect.” Creative history brims with embodied examples of why the secret of genius is doggedness rather than “god”-given talent, from the case of young Mozart’s upbringing to E. B. White’s wisdom on writing to Chuck Close’s assertion about art to Tchaikovsky’s conviction about composition to Neil Gaiman’s advice to aspiring writers. In this short video from the MacArthur Foundation, Duckworth traces her journey and explores the essence of her work: We need more than the intuitions of educators to work on this problem. In the exceedingly excellent How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (public library) — a necessary addition to these fantastic reads on education — Paul Tough writes of Duckworth’s work: Duckworth had come to Penn in 2002, at the age of thirty-two, later in life than a typical graduate student. The problem, I think, is not only the schools but also the students themselves.
The right way to be introspective (yes, there’s a wrong way) Valery Lemay It was Tuesday evening around 11pm. Holed up in my dark office, I sat staring at a set of freshly analyzed data. A few weeks earlier, my team and I had run a study looking at the relationship between self-reflection and outcomes like happiness, stress and job satisfaction. But to my astonishment, our data told the exact opposite story. We can spend endless amounts of time in self-reflection but emerge with no more self-insight than when we started. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’d stumbled upon a myth about self-awareness, and one that researchers are only beginning to understand. Why does this matter? Introspection is arguably the most universally hailed path to internal self-awareness. Introspection can cloud and confuse our self-perceptions, unleashing a host of unintended consequences. But my study results, along with Grant’s and others, appear to show this kind of self-reflection doesn’t necessarily help people become more self-aware. Asking “why?”
Clever Goal setting achieves I’m going to tell you the secrets on how to start taking action on your dreams. When you decide to turn thoughts into action, there are specific, actionable steps you can take to move forward. The first thing I want you to do is think back to when you were a child. Our childhood selves hold many of the secrets to realizing our real life dreams. Think about what you loved to do most and how you told yourself it was possible without worrying about what might get in the way. By taking the following steps, you’ll do some playing and storytelling to reveal your dreams and start making them come true. 1. Your life story is unique and has brought you here today. Finding out what our future lives and dream lives might look like can be done effectively through the eyes of our childhood selves. Can you remember what you loved to do most as a child? You can use the instincts, passions, and skills you had as a child to fuel your progress toward your adult dreams. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Enlightenment’s Evil Twin Exploring the Shadow Side of Meditation In 1974 Hans Burgschmidt was sixteen years old, living in the Canadian Prairies, working in a photography studio darkroom, elbow-deep in chemicals all day long. “Is this what life is about?” he asked a high school friend. “An infinite ocean of peace and love and happiness awaits you,” said the radiant Maharishi, with his flowing hair and his garland of flowers. Soon after he began his meditation practice, exactly as advertised, he found himself transported from his parent’s basement into a shimmering inner space of light and colour and bliss. Hans was hooked. But somewhere along the line Hans became disenchanted. Thus began Hans’ long career as an itinerant spiritual seeker. “I found it invigorating,” says Hans. Everything was fine, until three weeks after his first retreat, when, in Hans’ words, “something changed.” Hans was at home making his bed, when the room suddenly appeared “very far away.” But once in a while, something goes wrong.
The Good Stuff about Your Bad Stuff Do you ever feel anxious and then worry about the anxiety? In other words, do you have anxiety about your anxiety? Many times after feeling a negative emotion, we then beat ourselves up over it. Science answers this question with a resounding NO! Why Mindset Matters In a large-scale study conducted in 1998, approximately 28,000 Americans were asked (1) how much stress they experienced in the previous year, and (2) if they believed that stress was harmful to their health. More than half the respondents said they experienced “moderate” to “a lot” of stress the previous year. I propose the importance of mindset extends to all emotions. Emotions are Filled with Purpose Every emotion has a purpose, and even negative emotions have an upside. Anger: Research shows that anger can spur your problem-solving abilities. Instead of viewing emotions as good/bad or positive/negative, let’s call them what they really are: communication tools. More references on the advantages of “negative” emotions:
7 Most Important Cognitive Skills for Fast and Successful Learning One of the biggest problems with the traditional education model is it works on the premise that one size fits all. As we now know, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work well in a universal education system as we all possess different cognitive skills. At the basic level, there are 4 learning types: visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic, and each of us are dominant in one or more of these types. Visual learners learn better in an environment where there are a lot of visual stimuli. However, on top of these basic learning types, there are also cognitive skills related to the way our brains process information. Understanding where we are strong and where we lack skills helps us improve what and how we learn. One of the advantages we have over our ancestors is the almost limitless access we have to free education. However, with those almost limitless possibilities, you will not learn anything effectively unless you know and understand what kind of learner you are. 1. 2. 3.
The Psychology of Getting Unstuck: How to Overcome the “OK Plateau” of Performance & Personal Growth by Maria Popova “When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend.” “Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself,” William James wrote in his influential meditation on habit, ”so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances.” As we’ve seen, one of the most insidious forms of such habitual autopilot — which evolved to help lighten our cognitive load yet is a double-edged sword that can also hurt us — is our mercilessly selective everyday attention, but the phenomenon is particularly perilous when it comes to learning new skills. In the 1960s, psychologists identified three stages that we pass through in the acquisition of new skills. Color restoration of archival Einstein photograph by Mads Madsen The Mozart family on tour: Leopold, Wolfgang, and Nannerl.
Why It’s So Hard to Speak Up Against a Toxic Culture Executive Summary Frustrated by the behavior of some men in their workplace, a group of women working at Nike anonymously surveyed other women colleagues a few months ago about their perceptions of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the company. The results painted a clear picture of a workplace where women often felt marginalized, disrespected, and discriminated against. Frustrated by the behavior of some men in their workplace, a group of women working at Nike anonymously surveyed other women colleagues a few months ago about their perceptions of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the company. The gesture by the Nike workers may seem dramatic, but it was the result of women being ignored by HR as they voiced their concerns. Stories like this one about Nike’s toxic workplace culture remind us that speaking up about injustice and being heard in an organization can create positive change. One reason people don’t speak up is the significant risk of doing so.
A System for Remembering What you Read One year I read 161 books cover-to-cover. And that doesn’t include the ones that I started to read and put down. In the process, I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work. Here’s some of what I’ve learned that works for non-fiction books: Learn How to Read a Book.Deciding not to read the book is OK. Not all books deserve to be read.You can read multiple books at the same time as long as they are different genres. One thing that most people don’t appreciate enough is that what you read makes a huge difference in how well you remember things. We fail to remember a lot of the stuff we read because it’s not building on any existing knowledge. A better approach is to build a latticework of mental models. If you’re looking to acquire worldly wisdom, time is your best filter.
Coffee vs. beer: which drink makes you more creative? — What I Learned Today I didn’t know what I was going to write about today. When this happens, normally I grab a coffee to help get the ideas flowing, but for the last few days in Montreal, no one’s been allowed to drink the water due to a bacteria leakage, which also means, no coffee. So instead, I grabbed the next best thing to help me get going - a beer. This got me wondering about coffee and beer and which one would actually help me be more creative and get work done. Hopefully, this will help you decide when it’s best to have that triple shot espresso or ice cold brew. What is creativity really? From a scientific perspective, creativity is your ability to think of something original from connections made between pre-existing ideas in your brain. These connections are controlled by neurotransmitters like adenosine, which alerts your brain when you’re running out of energy and reacts by slowing down the connections made between neurons by binding to adenosine receptors. Your brain on coffee The result?
The Paradox of Behavior Change The natural tendency of life is to find stability. In biology we refer to this process as equilibrium or homeostasis. For example, consider your blood pressure. When it dips too low, your heart rate speeds up and nudges your blood pressure back into a healthy range. When it rises too high, your kidneys reduce the amount of fluid in the body by flushing out urine. The human body employs hundreds of feedback loops to keep your blood pressure, body temperature, glucose levels, calcium levels, and many other processes at a stable equilibrium. In his book, Mastery, martial arts master George Leonard points out that our daily lives also develop their own levels of homeostasis. Like your body, there are many forces and feedback loops that moderate the particular equilibrium of your habits. That is, until we try to make a change. The Myth of Radical Change The myth of radical change and overnight success is pervasive in our culture. On the surface, these phrases sound inspiring.