This Will Challenge Your Beliefs In A Way You Never Expected Bias and prejudice are formed in our mind unconsciously. When we act, we don’t even realize there may be bias behind it. We simply take in different opinions and make them become our beliefs that we don’t ever challenge. Take a moment and think about the thoughts you have, what makes you think this way and what effect you have to the world by thinking this way? “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” - Maya Angelou It’s good to think critically, but don’t just think critically about others, think critically about your own ideas too. When you think, take reasoning, empathy and humility into account. TIM MINCHIN: Be hard on your opinions | ZEN PENCILS
How To Stay Sane: The Art of Revising Your Inner Storytelling | Brain Picki “I pray to Jesus to preserve my sanity,” Jack Kerouac professed in discussing his writing routine. But those of us who fall on the more secular end of the spectrum might need a slightly more potent sanity-preservation tool than prayer. That’s precisely what writer and psychotherapist Philippa Perry offers in How To Stay Sane (public library), part of The School of Life’s wonderful series reclaiming the traditional self-help genre as intelligent, non-self-helpy, yet immensely helpful guides to modern living. At the heart of Perry’s argument — in line with neurologist Oliver Sacks’s recent meditation on memory and how “narrative truth,” rather than “historical truth,” shapes our impression of the world — is the recognition that stories make us human and learning to reframe our interpretations of reality is key to our experience of life: Our stories give shape to our inchoate, disparate, fleeting impressions of everyday life. Perry concludes: Artwork by pennylrichardsca
How To Waste Time Properly - Issue 7: Waste Ever since Frederick Winslow Taylor timed the exact number of seconds that Bethlehem Steel workers took to push shovels into a load of iron ore and then draw them out, maximizing time efficiency has been a holy grail of the American workplace. But psychologists and neuroscientists are showing us the limits of this attitude: Wasting time, they say, can make you more creative. Even seemingly meaningless activities such as watching cat videos on YouTube may help you solve math problems. Brent Coker, who studies online behavior at the University of Melbourne in Australia, found that people who engage in “workplace Internet leisure browsing” are about 9 percent more productive than those who don’t. Schooler gave participants a series of “unusual uses tasks” (UUTs), which asked them to invent as many different uses as they could for a mundane object. People who engage in “workplace Internet leisure browsing” are about 9 percent more productive than those who don’t.
How to stay sane | Brain Pickings “I pray to Jesus to preserve my sanity,” Jack Kerouac professed in discussing his writing routine. But those of us who fall on the more secular end of the spectrum might need a slightly more potent sanity-preservation tool than prayer. That’s precisely what writer and psychotherapist Philippa Perry offers in How To Stay Sane (public library), part of The School of Life’s wonderful series reclaiming the traditional self-help genre as intelligent, non-self-helpy, yet immensely helpful guides to modern living. At the heart of Perry’s argument — in line with neurologist Oliver Sacks’s recent meditation on memory and how “narrative truth,” rather than “historical truth,” shapes our impression of the world — is the recognition that stories make us human and learning to reframe our interpretations of reality is key to our experience of life: Our stories give shape to our inchoate, disparate, fleeting impressions of everyday life. Perry concludes: Artwork by pennylrichardsca
To scan or not to scan, that is the question… Starting on the road to a paperless lifestyle can be a little overwhelming. Of course, there are some tools that can help to make it easier. There are things you can do to better organize your digital documents. Do I scan this or not? I tend to think in frameworks (an occupational hazard, I’m afraid) and when I got started going paperless and knew I was going to have to pick and choose the documents to be scanned, I tried to think about what documents were worth scanning and what documents were not. 1. Imagine a spectrum that runs the gamut of frequency of use for any given document. When you are considering scanning a document, consider how frequently you’ll actually use it in electronic format. I say rough guide because there are always exceptions. 2. Again, there is a spectrum you might imagine that looks something like this: Figure out where you are on the spectrum and that will also help guide you in deciding what to scan. Deciding what to scan Click to enlarge And good luck!
What It's Like to Live in a Universe of Ten Dimensions | Brain Pickings by Maria Popova What songwriting has to do with string theory. What would happen if you crossed the physics of time with the science of something and nothing? You might get closer to understanding the multiverse. For a taste, here is a mind-bending explanation of ten dimensions might mean: The project began as a set of 26 songs, exploring the intersection of science and philosophy. Before launching into the additional dimensions, Bryanton also breaks down the familiar three: A kind of scientific expressionism and creative exploration of curiosity, Imagining the Tenth Dimension might not rewrite the theories of Stephen Hawking, but it is certain to give you pause. HT It’s Okay To Be Smart Donating = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount: Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. Share on Tumblr
how-to-be-productive_530adf38cc928_w1500 This is Part 2. Part 1 is here. Part 2: Taming the Mammoth Some people are born with a reasonably tame mammoth or raised with parenting that helps keep the mammoth in check. Others die without ever reining their mammoth in at all, spending their whole lives at its whim. Most of us are somewhere in the middle—we’ve got control of our mammoth in certain areas of our lives while it wreaks havoc in others. Whatever your situation, there are three steps to getting your mammoth under your control: Step 1: Examine Yourself The first step to improving things is a clear and honest assessment of what’s going on in your head, and there are three parts of this: 1) Get to know your Authentic Voice This doesn’t sound that hard, but it is. There are cliché phrases for this process—”soul-searching” or “finding yourself”—but that’s exactly what needs to happen. 2) Figure out where the mammoth is hiding Most of the time a mammoth is in control of a person, the person’s not really aware of it. No. So like…
Six Emotional Leadership Styles - Leadership Training From MindTools Choosing the Right Style for the Situation Find out how emotional leadership styles can affect your team's happiness. © iStockphoto/Kuklev Imagine that you work with a positive, charismatic leader. She's excited about the future of the organization, and she shares this excitement with her team. She makes sure that people understand how their efforts contribute to this future, and this inclusion sparks loyalty and intense effort in the team. Generally, morale and job satisfaction are high, because team members feel that they're making a difference. However, some people in her team don't respond well to this style of leadership. She could be more effective by varying her approach to leadership, depending on the situation; and she could do this by using "six emotional leadership styles," each of which is useful in different circumstances. In this article, we'll look at these six emotional leadership styles. The Six Emotional Leadership Styles Note: We'll now examine each style in more detail. 1. 2.
25 Killer Websites that Make You Cleverer It’s easy to forget that we have access to a virtually limitless resource of information, i.e. the Internet. For a lot of us, this is even true at our fingertips, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and an ever-increasing push for online greatness by tech engineers all over the world. As a result, there are countless websites out there that are geared to make you smarter and more brilliant for either a low or no cost. Here are just 25 killer websites that may just make you more clever than ever before. 1. This isn’t the first time I’ve recommended this language-teaching website (and app), and it certainly won’t be the last. 2. Have you ever wanted to pick up a subject you’re not well-versed in, but you didn’t have the money to invest in a college course? 3. Guitar is one of the few instruments out there that’s actually pretty easy to learn if you’re a little older, making it one of the most accessible instruments. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
How To Motivate Yourself: 3 Steps Backed By Science You make goals… but then you procrastinate. You write a to-do list… but then you don’t follow through. And this happens again and again and again. Seriously, what’s the problem? Why are we so good at thinking of what to do but so terrible at actually doing those things? The problem is you’re skipping an essential step. The Mistake Every Productivity System Makes Productivity systems rarely take emotions into account. We can’t ignore our emotions. And we can’t fight our feelings. Via The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking: …when experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event, but then instructed to try not to feel sad about it, they end up feeling worse than people who are informed of the event, but given no instructions about how to feel. So what does the unavoidable power of feelings mean for motivation? In their book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath say that emotions are an essential part of executing any plan: Focus on emotions. 1) Get Positive It’s optimism.