There are many reasons why it is a good idea to keep a journal. I want to share four big ones with you.<ol><li>Remember details</li><li> Find old friends</li><li>Help process feelings and ideas</li><li>Preserve the writer’s history</li></ol>

4 Advantages of Keeping a Journal

As somebody who journals semi-regularly, I have seen its positive effects on my mental health. I hope this wonderful write-up by author Pamela Hodges helps others keep journals too. 

Many people wonder how to write a journal. This writer's clear tips will help you get started and encourage you to continue.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mindfulness

Mindfulness

writing

Reading & Writing

communication

Communication

How to Write a Journal: 6 Tips

<ol><li>Meta - learning: Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle.</li><li>Focus: Carve out time in your bday, and hack back distractions.</li><li>Directness: Practice the thing you want to learn. Learn by doing.</li><li>Drill the weakest point: Break down complex skills into small parts </li><li>Retrieval: Testing isn’t simply a way of assessing knowledge but a way of creating it.</li><li>Feedback: Know how to use it without letting your ego get in the way.</li><li>Retention: Understand what you forget and why. Learn to remember things.</li></ol>

9 Principles Of Ultralearning 

“For those who know how to use technology wisely, it is the easiest time in history to teach yourself something new.”

8) Intuition: Develop your intuition through play and exploration of concepts and skills.9)!Experimentation: Get outside your comfort zone by cultivating an experimental mindset

How upskilling helps businesses adapt to a rapidly changing labour market

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

career

Career

business

Business

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Upskilling: Preparing For The Future

Future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage by learning the skill necessary to stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way in this essential guide that goes beyond the insights of popular works such as Extreme Productivity, Deep Work, Peak, and Make It Stick. Faced with tumultuous economic times and rapid technological change, staying ahead in your career depends on continual learning—a lifelong mastery of new ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner. In this essential book, Scott Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Ben Franklin and Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymaths like Alexander Arguelles, who speaks more than forty languages. Young documents the methods he and others have used and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life. Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares the seven principles behind every successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and execute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs. Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple skills to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.

books

Books

Now a Wall Street Journal bestseller.Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education.In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner. The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention. Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French. Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life. Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs.Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.

Scott Alexander Young was a Canadian journalist, sportswriter, novelist and the father of musician Neil Young. Over his career, Young wrote 45 books, including novels and non-fiction for adult and youth audiences.

Scott Young

Ultralearning

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

Introduce some spice, some novelty in your daily routine: go with the uncharted route, explore life without a specific plan.You can find a new hobby, join a social group, even seek out some work in a different domain.

Do The New

Opt for actions and daily habits that naturally align with you, or are less of a challenge. Be realistic and commit for the long haul.If you regularly sleep at 1:00 AM then trying to wake up at 5:00 AM can be a self-defeating exercise.

Your Natural Instincts

We cannot keep self-sabotaging ourselves by failing at our unrealistic expectations.We can opt for consistency, understanding the impact of incremental progress. Opt for continuous effort towards a realistic, doable target.

Perfection is a Myth

It is important to measure your progress, reviewing every aspect of planning and execution. Track your time and progress with a good app on your smartphone.  Minimize distracted and zero-productivity time.

Weekly Reviews

To make time to accommodate what's important, we may have to say NO to certain commitments and remove certain areas from high priority.Deprioritize what is urgent but not important.

Letting It Drop

“The best book is the one you can’t put down. The best exercise is the one you enjoy doing every day. The best health food is the one you find tasty. The best work is the work you’d do for free.”

Life is unpredictable, but planning is still important. Use your phone's calendar and to-do list, or install an app to create daily and weekly plans:<ul><li>Plan even for small errands.</li><li>Keep in mind that things take longer than you expect.</li><li>Block chunks of time, or an entire day for a task.</li></ul>

Planning Ahead

Not everything requires manual, hard and laborious work, even if you are habitual or accustomed to doing things that way.For example, writing a check for rent every month can be automated with online payment.

Automate, Delegate

You should choose your wardrobe, your exercise routine, and your recreational habits according to you.For example: If you don't like reading, opt for podcasts or watch informing documentaries.

Making Choices

We all have habits ingrained in our lives. Most of our good habits (if any) take us to eventual long-term success, and our bad habits take our time, health, happiness and money. Make a list of what all you do as a habit daily and see which ones are good and which ones are not.
Habits like spending hours on social media, binge shopping, and lying on the couch are a few examples of bad habits.

Developing Habits

In our pursuit of perfection, we neglect balance by doing what's urgent over what matters. This can lead to stress, burnout, and feeling drained and lethargic:<ul><li>Avoid spending too much time at work</li><li>Prioritize physical activity</li><li>Try meditation or just simple writing</li><li>Unwind on a good movie or spend time with friends</li><li>Get a good amount of sleep.</li></ul>

Finding Balance

Too much stuff around you means too much to think about, too much to do, leading to chaos.Just like a to-do list takes care of our mental chaos, we should clean and declutter stuff around us, so that we are able to think better.

Declutter and Simplify

We all are juggling life's important areas: work, office, home, health and fitness, our finances and relationships.
It is not easy to juggle so many things all at once, and some areas may get neglected.

Organizing our Lives

Most of us keep doing seemingly urgent work (answering a phone, replying to an email, etc.) but this only gives an illusion of productivity.Real productivity is a distraction-free high-impact work that you must find time to do daily.

Dive Deep in Deep Work

Keeping life organized often feels like a juggling act. Just as swiftly as you move to catch one ball - say finances, family commitments, or fun with friends - the next one is hurtling towards you.

productivity

Productivity

habits

Habits

timemanagement

Time Management

Organize Your Life: 10 Simple Rules to Stay Organized Every Day

<ol><li>Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.</li><li>State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.</li><li>Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole.</li><li>Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve.</li></ol>

The 4 Rules To Analytical Reading

In analytical reading, you must identify the keywords and how they are used by the author. This is fairly straightforward. The process becomes more complicated now as each author has probably used different terms and concepts to frame their argument. Now the onus is on you to establish the terms. Rather than using the author’s language, you must use your own. In short, this is an exercise in translation and synthesis.

2. Bringing the Author to Terms

Reading is all about asking the right questions in the right order and seeking answers.There are 4 main questions you need to ask of every book:<ol><li>What is this book about?</li><li>What is being said in detail, and how?</li><li>Is this book true in whole or in part?</li><li>What of it?</li></ol>***

Becoming a Demanding Reader

I bet you already know how to read a book. You were taught in elementary school.But do you know how to read well ?There is a difference between reading for understanding and reading for information.If you’re like most people, you probably haven’t given much thought to how you read. And how you read makes a massive difference to knowledge accumulation.A lot of people confuse knowing the name of something with understanding.

Reading For Understanding And Reading For Information

It’s presumptuous to expect we’ll find a single unchallenged truth to any of our questions. Our answer is the conflict of opposing answers. The value is the discussion you have with these authors. You can now have an informed opinion.

5. Analyzing the Discussion

We’ve been taught that skimming and superficial reading are bad for understanding. That is not necessarily the case. Using these tools effectively can increase understanding. Inspectional reading allows us to look at the author’s blueprint and evaluate the merits of a deeper reading experience.Inspectional reading gives you the gist of things.There are two sub-types of inspectional reading.

2. Inspectional Reading

Mortimer Adler literally wrote <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671212095/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=farnamstreet-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0671212095&linkId=95f640336f1079ee3b5acafcc3a34a84">the book on reading</a>. In How To Read A Book, Adler identifies four levels of reading:<ol><li>Elementary Reading</li><li>Inspectional Reading</li><li>Analytical Reading</li><li>Syntopical Reading</li></ol>Before we can improve our reading skills, we need to understand the differences in the reading levels. They are thought of as levels because you can’t move to a higher level without a firm understanding of the previous one — they are cumulative.

The Four Levels of Reading

“Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.”

A useful heuristic: Anything easily digested is reading for information. Consider the newspaper, are you truly learning anything new? Do you consider the writer your superior when it comes to knowledge in the subject? Odds are probably not. That means you’re reading for information. It means you’re likely to parrot an opinion that isn’t yours as if <a href="https://fs.blog/2013/04/the-work-required-to-have-an-opinion/">you had done the work</a>. This is how most people read.

If It’s Easily Digested, It’s Reading For Information

This is meant to be a quick check of the book by 1) reading the preface; 2) studying the table of contents; 3) checking the index; and 4) reading the inside jacket. This should give you sufficient knowledge to understand the chapters in the book, pivotal to the author’s argument. Dip in here and there, but never with more than a paragraph or two. Skimming helps you reach to a decision point: Does this book deserve more of my time and attention? If not, you put it down.

2.1 Systematic Skimming

You’ll probably notice that while the rules above sound pretty easy, they involve a lot of work. Luckily the inspectional reading you’ve already done has primed you for this.After an inspectional read, you will understand the book and the author’s views.But that doesn’t mean you’ll understand the broader subject. To do that, you need to use syntopical reading to synthesize knowledge from several books on the same subject.

A First Look At How The Levels Come Together

The goal of reading determines how you read. Reading the latest Danielle Steel novel is not the same as reading Plato. If you’re reading for entertainment or information, you’re going to read a lot differently (and likely different material) than reading to increase understanding. While many people are proficient in reading for information and entertainment, few improve their ability to read for knowledge.

How You Read Matches Why You’re Reading

There are 5 steps to syntopical reading:<ol><li>Finding the Relevant Passages</li><li>Bringing the Author to Terms</li><li>Getting the Questions Clear</li><li>Defining the Issues</li><li>Analyzing the Discussion</li></ol>

The 5 Steps To Syntopical Reading

If you’ve asked a clear question to which there are multiple answers then an issue has been defined. Opposing answers, now translated into your terms, must be ordered in relation to one another. Understanding multiple perspectives within an issue helps you form an intelligent opinion.

4. Defining the Issues 

You need to find the right books and then the passages that are most relevant to filling your needs. So the first step is an inspectional reading of all the works that you have identified as relevant.

1. Finding the Relevant Passages

This is the level of reading taught in our elementary schools. If you’re reading this website, you already know how to do this.

1. Elementary Reading

This is also known as comparative reading, and it represents the most demanding and difficult reading of all. Syntopical Reading involves reading many books on the same subject and comparing and contrasting ideas, vocabulary, and arguments.This task is undertaken by identifying relevant passages, translating the terminology, framing and ordering the questions that need answering, defining the issues, and having a conversation with the responses.The goal is not to achieve an overall understanding of any particular book, but rather to understand the subject and develop a deep fluency.

4. Syntopical Reading

Francis Bacon once remarked, “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”You can think of analytical reading as doing that chewing and digesting. This is doing the work.Analytical reading is a thorough reading.If inspectional reading is the best reading you can do quickly, analytical reading is the best reading you can do given time. There are 4 rules to analytical reading.

3. Analytical Reading

Rather than focus on the problems the author is trying to solve, you need to focus on the questions that you want answered. Just as we must establish our own terminology, so too must we establish our own propositions by shedding light on our problems to which the authors provide answers. It’s important to frame the questions in such a way that all or most of the authors can be interpreted as providing answers. Sometimes we might not get an answer to our questions because they might not have been seen as questions by the authors.

3. Getting The Questions Clear

This is when you just read. Don’t ponder the argument, don’t look things up, don’t write in the margins. If you don’t understand something, move on. What you gain from this quick read will help you later when you go back and put more effort into reading. You now come to another decision point. Now that you have a better understanding of the book’s contents and its structure, do you want to understand it?

2.2 Superficial reading

Learning something insightful requires mental work. It’s uncomfortable. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not learning. You need to find writers who are more knowledgeable on a particular subject than yourself. By narrowing the gap between the author and yourself, <a href="https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/">you get smarter </a>.

If It Takes Effort, It’s Reading For Understanding

Goals of reading. Understanding inspectional, analytical and syntopical reading.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

How to properly read a book

We’ve all heard or said that “reading is hard work”. Well, we don’t know the half of it. 

In How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler teaches us the four levels of reading to become a more effective reader. Learning how to read is more than just picking up a book and starting to read.

education

Learning & Education

How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler

Family environment, family dynamics, and the way our parents raised us combine with our personality and our experience of the world to shape our belief system and give us a sense of who we are as a person. This means that what you learned as a child influences how you see and experience things now, and these childhood experiences shape your approach to life.
Nature and nurture are not separate – each has an impact on the other. Your personality type interacts with your experiences and has an effect on the world’s response to you.

The Psychology of Feeling Like a Fraud

You may feel like an imposter, but that doesn’t mean you are one. Your thoughts and feelings are useful, but they only form part of the picture, especially when it comes to anything imposter syndrome-related.When you hear the voice, remind yourself that the imposter's voice is a thought, not a fact. There’s always more than one perspective. When you feel discomfort remind yourself that this is just how you feel, not how things are.

Thoughts Aren’t Facts

<ul>
<li>Overworking. The feeling that you are a fraud inspires greater effort and conscientiousness because you imagine that everyone else is more capable and intelligent than you.</li>
<li>Avoidance. When you aspire to such high standards and have an overwhelming fear of failure, it’s no wonder that sometimes you avoid doing what you need to do, procrastinating when you just can’t face the effort that starting involves or stopping halfway through when finishing seems too difficult.</li>
</ul>

Overworking and Avoidance

You decided a long time ago that you were a fraud and for years you’ve been building an argument in support of this in your head, ignoring any information that doesn’t fit and operating a strong bias against yourself. This unwavering belief is one of the biggest reasons you’re unable to move forward.Constructive criticism, negative feedback, and mistakes are all proof that you’re not good enough. You go over them in your head and replay them in micro detail.

Imposter Syndrome Is An Example Of Confirmation Bias

A few examples:
<ul>
<li>"I got lucky or it was a fluke"</li>
<li>"I’m a good actor, I fooled them"</li>
<li>"It’s because they like me, they’re being polite, or it’s a social courtesy"</li>
<li>"It sounds more impressive than it is"</li>
<li>"I had a lot of help"</li>
<li>"If I can do it anyone can I was in the right place at the right time"</li>
<li>"They have low standards"</li>
<li>"They felt sorry for me"</li>
<li>"No one else wanted to do it"</li>
<li>"It’s only a matter of time before I’m found out"</li>
<li>"I had connections."</li>
</ul>

How We Downplay Our Success

<ul><li>Imposter syndrome can be triggered by any achievement or approval-related task or as a result of feeling insecure about your knowledge or skills, particularly when you work in a competitive atmosphere and when responsibilities increase.</li><li>It tends to be more intense during times of transition or change, or when you are faced with new challenges (a new job, project, or being accepted into higher education). This pushes you out of your comfort zone into new routines and puts you under increased scrutiny.</li><li>The syndrome can also occur when you feel different from the core group you are part of.</li></ul>

What Triggers The Imposter Syndrome

These are the internal rules that people with imposter syndrome generally follow:<ol><li>Perfectionists set excessively high standards for themselves and believe they should deliver always a perfect performance.</li><li>Natural Geniuses strive to master any new skill quickly and with little effort.</li><li>The Soloist defines competence as being able to do something on their own and believes that achievement only counts if it is unassisted. </li><li>The Expert needs to know it all and believe true competence means knowing absolutely everything.</li><li>The Superwoman/man ‘measures competence based on “how many” roles they can excel in.</li></ol>

The Competence Types

Imposter syndrome normally occurs when there is a tension between two views: the standards you set yourself and how you assess yourself as doing.
The high standards you set yourself are a large part of the problem, as is the negative internal voice you use to motivate yourself. You expect that you need to be the best and do everything flawlessly in your career, relationships, and personal life.

Setting Unrealistic High Standards

Having compassion for yourself is really no different from having it for others. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes and it’s OK to feel stressed or sad. Pain and suffering are part of our shared human experience; they are just a reaction to what’s going on in our life.
Self-compassion has three main components:
<ul>
<li>Recognizing when we’re stressed or struggling without being judgemental or overreacting</li>
<li>Being supportive, gentle and understanding to ourselves when we’re having a hard time</li>
<li>Remembering that everyone makes mistakes and experiences difficulties at times.</li>
</ul>

Compassion: The Antidote to Self-Criticism

When you see yourself as completely responsible for making everything go well, you take responsibility for anything that goes wrong.Don't forget about the other people involved and their shared responsibility. And no matter how hard you try, there’s no route through life that is pain-free and in trying to prevent anything ever going wrong you’re causing yourself much greater stress. Things do sometimes go wrong, but you will get over it and see that often the outcome is even better.

You Can’t Control Everything

You need to see that this is not your voice, but the voice of your fears.
The better you get at spotting the imposter voice in action, the more successfully the strategies will work

Externalize the Imposter Voice

Confident people do feel this discomfort and do experience some of the same fears. But they come to a different conclusion and this allows them to override their feelings.Instead of interpreting their discomfort as meaning that they are imposters, they see it as a fear associated with doing something new and stepping out of their comfort zone. The discomfort is caused by anxiety and non-imposters recognize it as just that, seeing it as a sign that they’re unsure or they worry that they won’t do well – again, all very human and all very normal.

How Confident People Approach Discomfort

<ul><li>Imposter syndrome was first described by two clinical psychologists in 1978. </li><li>They coined the term ‘imposter phenomenon’, a condition in which people believe they are not worthy of success and have a persistent belief in their lack of intelligence, skills, or competence.</li><li>Imposter syndrome involves much more than just feeling fraudulent and it presents itself in a long list of different ways. It may appear as insecurity, self-doubt, fear of failure, and perfectionism. Or as self-criticism, low self-esteem, an inability to accept compliments.</li></ul>

The Imposter Phenomenon

Imposters fear being found out or not being good enough so strongly that they do not question their fear. If what you believe is true, then you’re right to be scared: being found out, failing, the humiliation that comes with what you imagine – these are terrifying. Fear puts an anxious filter on everything we do. But there’s a fine line between feelings and facts. Our feelings can trick us into believing that things are worse than they are.

Imposter Syndrome Is All About Fear

To really believe that how you feel is no different from the way other people feel you have to start talking more openly about what’s going on.
This is the only way for you to be sure that when others look confident and capable they may not feel that way all the time.

Talk to Other People

Steps to overcome the feeling that you don't belong where you are, and you only got there through dumb luck.

The Imposter Cure

A solution-based self-help book that explores the psychological impact of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is a phenomenon in which people believe they are not worthy of success. They convince themselves that they have done well due to luck and are terrified their shortcomings will eventually be exposed, making it impossible to enjoy their accomplishments. You've Got This explores the psychological impact of imposter syndrome and exposes the secrets fears and insecurities felt by millions of men and women. Dr Jessamy Hibberd provides sound expert advice to help the reader better understand theproblem and overcome it, so they think differently, gain self belief and learn to see themselves as others do. Filled with case studies to bring the concepts alive and packed with strategies to increase confidence, this book is a must-read for anyone who has struggled with their achievements.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

A solution-based self-help book that explores the psychological impact of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is a phenomenon in which people believe they are not worthy of success. They convince themselves that they have done well due to luck and are terrified their shortcomings will eventually be exposed, making it impossible to enjoy their accomplishments. You've Got This explores the psychological impact of imposter syndrome and exposes the secrets fears and insecurities felt by millions of men and women. Dr Jessamy Hibberd provides sound expert advice to help the reader better understand theproblem and overcome it, so they think differently, gain self belief and learn to see themselves as others do. Filled with case studies to bring the concepts alive and packed with strategies to increase confidence, this book is a must-read for anyone who has struggled with their achievements.

Dr. Jessamy Hibberd is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Dr. Jessamy Hibberd has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Dr. Jessamy Hibberd's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

How to Write a Journal: 6 Tips

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

Organize Your Life: 10 Simple Rules to Stay Organized Every Day

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler

CURATED BY

How to Write a Journal: 6 Tips

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

Organize Your Life: 10 Simple Rules to Stay Organized Every Day

It's time to Read like a Pro.

How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler

CURATED BY

It's time to
Read like a Pro.