The only thing in life that can limit you in life is YOU.Block out the noise of the world and find what you need in your life by looking within yourself

Live For Yourself

Especially to yourself The mind is a garden that must be cultivated for you to flourish.Talk t yourself as if you are your best friend -because honestly you are.

Be Kind 

Your body is the invention of human history. Powered by the mind which works like a computer that needs to be "refreshed" once in a while.Hit refresh with a dose of Meditation

Energize Your Life

Be grateful, even if what you are grateful for seems insignificant.This goes hand in hand with being kind.Being kind also allows you to be able to not only forgive yourself but others as well.

Cultivate Gratitude 

Someone is going to die today the fact that death didn't chose you is something to be grateful for.

An adage to live by: "You are what you think of yourself"This also ties in with being kind.A kind thought is a drop of honey for the mind.

Thoughts Are Powerful 

Being goal-oriented allows you to keep focus.Focus also helps eliminate procrastinationFigure out your why:Your WHY will help you get over any HOW

Live According To Your Goa

Notes from You're A Badass according to my understanding 

Packed with humor, inspiration, and advice, You Are a Badass is the #1 New York Times bestselling self-help book that teaches you how to get better without getting busted. In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up twenty-seven bite-sized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to: Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want, Create a life you totally love. And create it NOW, and Make some damn money already. The kind you've never made before. By the end of You Are a Badass, you'll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can't change, how to change what you don't love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

YOU ARE A BADASS IS THE SELF-HELP BOOK FOR PEOPLE WHO DESPERATELY WANT TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVES BUT DON'T WANT TO GET BUSTED DOING IT. In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up 27 bitesized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to: - Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviours that stop you from getting what you want. - Create a life you totally love. And create it NOW! - Make some damn money already. The kind you've never made before. By the end of You Are a Badass, you'll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can't change, how to change what you don't love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.

Jen Sincero is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Jen Sincero 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. Jen Sincero's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Jen Sincero

You Are a Badass

You Are a Badass®

All our lives, especially in our 20s, we feel we are the odd ones out.Everyone else has it figured.Everyone else is smart.Everyone else is so certain.There must be something wrong with us.Truth is - everyone feels the same way!

"I am a loser😔"

The 20s is the decade that the world tells us to settle.Finish your education.Get a job.Get married.Have kids.Buy that house/car.Settle!Truth is - the 20s is the decade to explore.To find out what you are good at and what makes you happy.To not rush.

"I need to settle🙅‍♀️"

Most of us, especially those who grew up with a lack of money, want to get rich. Quickly.We optimize for that.We run after money.Fall for short-term gains.Truth is - 20s is the decade to focus on your learning.Money is then a side effect.

"I need lots of money. NOW🤑"

You will fail.You will have self-doubt.You will suffer.You will experience pain.You will feel paralyzed.You will feel helpless. Truth is - you are not stuck.You can always take the smallest possible step to get you out of where you are right now.

"I am stuck😐"

You will compare yourself to others.Others' success will scare you, agonize you, mock you.You will look at where you are and feel you are nowhere. Truth is - in your 20s your position doesn't matter.Your direction does.

"I haven't achieved anything so far 😓"

You set targets for yourself.And then imposed timelines on them.Which were frankly desires and had no basis.So when you didn't hit them by the time you thought you would, you feel you have lost. Truth is - you have time!You're not old. You're early.

"I am already old🧓"

You want that phone, that car, that salary, that brand - to look good.You want people to talk highly of you. Truth is - people's opinions about you don't make you successful.Until you don't feel successful within!

"I want people to know I am successful🧑‍💼" 

I remember feeling this way every year in my 20s.This year is when I had to do it.Else I won't be able to.The story is repeated every year! Truth is - in an 80yr life no one year has the power to impact your life unless you allow it to.

"This year is make or break for me⌛"

We obsess over our passion.Expecting it to be lying in some corner, waiting to be discovered.And when we do, our life will never be the same again. Truth is - we do not find our passion. We grow our passion.And that's a long journey. For all.

"I need to find my passion👷"

In our 20s, we crave validation and acknowledgment.We attempt to please all because we believe that to be a way to win! Truth is - we can never be liked by all.Be yourself. The right people will come to you and stay.

"I have to be liked by all👍"

We pull out all-nighters. Sleep odd hours.Eat junk. Eat odd hours. Abuse our body.Because we believe there is a tomorrow when we will fix everything. Truth is - how we treat our body in our 20s is how our body treats us for the rest of our life.

"Health and sleep can wait😴"

We postpone things.Calling that friend.Quitting that toxic job.Going to the gym.Saying "I love you".Following our heart. We are in a hurry to win.So we postpone living. Truth is - life isn't a goal.It is a day passing by, every single day.

"I can always do that later🕔"

We all dream of something big, meaningful, and purposeful for our life.We pick that desire; make it into a goal. Only to be disappointed if it doesn't happen. Truth is - the ones who change the world never set out to do so. They realized they had.

"I am going to change the world🗺️"

We think there is an age when we suddenly grow up.And growing up means we have sorted everything out.We know the answers to all questions.We are in control. Truth is - we will never have all the answers. That is life.

"I will become an adult one day👨‍🦰"

You will dread losing your friends.You will dread being alone.You will dread growing apart.Even though you are not happy in those relationships anymore. Truth is - you will outgrow your friends. It is ok to move on.

"I should not lose my friends💑"

We are surrounded by the most people we have ever been surrounded by.And yet constantly feel alone.And at 42 I realize that a large part of the reason is these self-imposed beliefs we live our 20s by.A set of rules that we feel are fixed.They are not.This world will do its best to impose these rules on you.You have to do your best to not believe them to be all true.Instead, undertake this decade's journey to find out which ones work for you and which don't.

The 20s is quite a weird decade.

This is a twitter thread by Ankur Warikoo. I myself am in my 20s and have felt these things. And after reading this thread made me think differently about my life. It will help you guys.

habits

Habits

STOP saying these things to yourself, in your 20s🚫

“We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.”

To put it simply, mental models are a set of beliefs and ideas that we consciously or unconsciously form based on our experiences. They guide our thoughts and behaviours and help us understand life. They’re basically thinking tools—shortcuts for reasoning.

What are mental models?

Here are a few tips you can apply to master mental models, rather than being enslaved by them.<ul><li>Be aware of your thinking by <a href="https://nesslabs.com/good-questions">asking yourself provoking questions</a></li><li>Gather information to challenge your thinking with actual facts</li><li>Inquire into other people’s thinking and challenge their views</li><li>Resist jumping to conclusions and suspend your assumptions</li><li>Look for recurring thought patterns and <a href="https://nesslabs.com/learning-how-to-learn">unlearn them</a></li></ul>

How to use mental models

<ul><li>Observe people. One great way to develop your own mental models is to find inspiration in people.</li><li>Take note of nature. <a href="https://nesslabs.com/taking-note-of-nature">Nature</a> follows many rules that can apply to human decision making.</li><li>Ask for feedback. Ask a friend or a colleague to observe how you act and to help you identify behaviours that may not be obvious to you.</li></ul> Don’t limit yourself to constructive mental models. You will observe mental models which you’d rather not reproduce.

How to build your own mental models

If you want to read more about mental models, here are some books to further explore the topic. Not only I found these books useful, but I’ve seen them recommended over and over again on Hacker News and other places.<ul><li><a href="https://amzn.to/2MdADug">Thinking, Fast and Slow</a> (Daniel Kahneman)</li><li><a href="https://amzn.to/2JZHIvU">Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion</a> (Robert Cialdini)</li><li><a href="https://amzn.to/2SBXyAG">Metaphors We Live By</a> (George Lakoff)</li><li><a href="https://amzn.to/2GuBSBF">Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions</a> (Dan Ariely)</li><li><a href="https://amzn.to/2OxOs9Z">The Art of Thinking Clearly</a> (Rolf Dobelli)</li></ul>

5 great books about mental models

I have always been fascinated by mental models. The same way scientists are looking for a theory of everything, I sometimes wonder if there is a universal theory of the mind. An all-encompassing, coherent framework that would fully explain and link together all aspects of our biology and psychology.

Mental models affect how we see problems and people. Depending on how you use them, mental models can be incredibly constructive or destructive.

philosophy

Philosophy

problemsolving

Problem Solving

30 mental models to add to your thinking toolbox

Nayami sōdan is practised by Japanese Buddhist priests in community-facing temples throughout the countryside. Nayami means grievance or complaint, and sōdan means consultation or discussion with the desire to receive advice. The typical flow of nayami sōdan is casual greetings, some light refreshments, small talk, a revealing, one-sided venting of frustrations, understanding of the other party, more small talk, and final goodbyes.

The passive form of mediation

Nayami sōdan are successful because they are attuned to the realities of human relationships.  <ul><li>Human emotions fluctuate and opinions change. Nayami sōdan creates the space for people to express their inconsistent and dissonant experiences about human relationships.</li><li>People prefer to get along, but close-knit relationships breed tensions. Nayami sōdan provides a less confrontational means of addressing the conflict.</li><li>Community solutions solve community problems.</li><li>Business relationships form complex constellations of interdependent relationships that can be highly charged.</li></ul>

Nayami sōdan can facilitate employee experience management

Many employees are reluctant to talk to HR representatives or leaders about their experiences because they worry that candid conversations will lead to confrontations.  Employees often express a desire to maintain harmony as they don't feel comfortable with conflict. An indirect intervention can help to resolve internal strife.

In defence of indirectness

The nayami sōdan works off the premise that effective conflict management does not need to be direct. However, the fear of confrontation can cause individuals to downplay or deny their experience. An individual can passively create organizational change without bringing conflict to a pitch.

Passive intervention

<ol><li>Create a space for employees to drop in and talk.</li><li>Make use of remote meetings.</li><li>Practice active listening. People sometimes need to blow off steam.</li><li>Empower employee agency. After listening and processing an employee’s conflict, let them plan the next steps. Ask questions like, “How do you want to handle this?” </li><li>Cultivate an atmosphere of openness. For example, invite guest speakers with diverse perspectives who specialize in conflict management. </li></ol>

Methods to accomodate indirect intervention

An anthropologist explains how a strategically-positioned individual, moving with empathy, can passively create organizational change without bringing the conflict to a pitch. 


communication

Communication

You don’t need to get in someone’s face. Here are 5 other ways to manage conflict and create change

Performance reviews are more difficult today, as some employees work entirely from home, others come to the office, and still others work a hybrid of the two. Employers and employees may face three challenges:<ul><li>Familiarity gap</li><li>Fewer observations</li><li>One review to rule them all</li></ul> While performance reviews will be a drag for many workers, they should be fair and not put anyone at a disadvantage.

Performance reviews

Creating a connection with your boss is one of the biggest challenges. Research shows the more familiar we are with people, the more we tend to like them. Employees who share the same physical space as their managers will have more opportunities to interact with them, giving them an advantage over a peer who works remotely. To even the playing field, employers can schedule short check-ins with remote workers throughout the day or create always-on chatrooms that all workers can use to communicate with supervisors.

Familiarity gap

The most accurate performance ratings are based on observable behaviours rather than subjective evaluations of traits. For example, the trait "creativity" cannot be defined. Shifting the focus of performance appraisal from behaviours to results ensures that managers do not have to worry about being unable to observe their direct reports on the job. In turn, employees can decide how they will complete their assigned tasks by being accountable only for the end result.

Fewer observations

Performance reviews based on results may not work for every job. For example, evaluating a teacher based solely on student test scores, since environmental factors such as poverty or lack of support may also play a part. It is vital to use only one type of review system to create fairness for all. If judging on results doesn’t work, an organization could try a behaviour-based system but revise it so that it doesn’t favour employees working in the office.

One review to rule them all

A professor of industrial-organizational psychology explains three challenges employers and their employees will face and ways to overcome them.


corporateculture

Corporate Culture

3 ways to make annual reviews suck less (especially for remote employees)

Change management done effectively, requieres us to integrate the hard and the soft

To deliver a smooth change, you need both side of approach done in balance. Hard side may include setting up a timeline, milestones, or clear deliverables criteria; getting your resources; establish a specific RACI matrix; and build a monitoring process. While the soft side may include approach to people impacted; having a clear, consistent, and truthful communication channels; listening people’s feedback and concern; and engaging people so they feel included.

Change Management is Balancing Hard and Soft Approach

Soft side mostly has challenge in facing people concern. Common concern from people impacted are: competence – what I need to learn after the change?; efficiency – is it gonna make me work longer?; security & stability – how about my take home pay?; status – how about my position?; relationships – how about my leaders/teams?While hard side mostly facing challenges in achieving organizational outcome. Common mistakes on hard side may include: unclear motivation, wrongly assessing the complexity, getting feedback from wrong people, over-optimistic timeline, too rigid as changes may need agility.

Challenges for Soft and Hard Side

Each milestone should be considered as a small win, which this will build momentums rolling towards your goal. When you achieve small wins and celebrate them, you convince people the project is a good idea, and you quiet naysayers. This is a very good implementation for soft side approach.

Making Small Wins Towards the Big Win

To set an achievable milestone, have a clear deliverables criterion, you need to have a deep dive analysis, especially form the stakeholders. You must keep away from not communicating truly with the those who in the end execute the initiative. Stakeholder evaluation means figuring out who the change will have an effect on, how it's going to have an effect on them and the way intensely the initiative will adjust their work lives.

Always Include Your Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis starts with a period of brainstorming and research. You ought to list everyone whom the change may affect. Consider stakeholder evaluation as a work in progress. If you find out an unnoticed stakeholder organization in the research process, add it to the analysis. From there, use their evaluation to tailor communications and education to the particular needs of every organization. Stakeholder analysis influences the hard aspect of change via way of means of keeping off costly mistakes, and the soft aspect via way of means of addressing stakeholders’ fears and concerns.

Any changes require employees to learn new things. Training people to adopt new process/system is an important aspect of any change. Therefore, training is an important part of the hard side of change management. Training matters also to the soft side of the change management due to the fact that change shakes people's feel of competence and self-assurance. If the employer instills self-assurance thru a well-established education program, people can construct a feel of self-warranty that contains throughout the current change initiative and into future initiatives.

Always Plan and Execute a Proper Training

To have a proper and success training, you should follow several best practices:1. Deliver it in small chunks – smaller pieces are easily to be digested2. Close each chuck with a small win – build momentum towards your training goal3. Consider having a ‘official training centre’ – it will help if some people may need in-class training instead of self-pace training4. Get your superuser – build a team of superuser who will help to answer in daily activity as they are closer to the people4. Reinforce the teaching – you may need to leverage your weekly calls with the people to refresh the teaching

Resistance can come from many levels. If people withinside the organization don’t help a change, they’ll withstand it intentionally or subconsciously. Sometimes the motives for resistance are obvious – for example, a change includes people movements, even layoffs, this will create a huge insecurity and resist.

Expect and Embrace the Resistance

The resisting people may show it through intentionally stalling the process, put less focus on the changes, find a workaround to ‘cheat’, or even totally avoid the change. Expect and embrace this as this naturally happens in every change, accept that some people will resist therefore you need to address it well especially on soft side approach.

During the deep dive and getting analysis from the stakeholders, you can determine who are your supporters and who most likely will resist. Group them based on their potential degree of resistance. Get these potential resistances into your supporter group.

Anticipate the Resistance

Give the resistance a voice early as seeking their input and feedback early in the process will eventually turned them as supporter. Sometimes a simple concession softened their resistance. Seek approaches to make amends for what employees may lose in a change. Human feelings don’t lend themselves to metrics and benchmarks, so addressing smooth emotions stays a critical venture in any new initiative. You should remember to acknowledge their concerns, encourage them to express their concerns and don’t react defensively.

What you need to know about leading people through periods of learning and uncertainty, understanding why some people resist change and how to manage it.

Change isn’t going anywhere. Learn how to manage it. We live in a wild world of volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity, with change seemingly as the only constant. Change can be difficult. It often induces resistance, panic, and fatigue. And, as you may expect or have experienced first-hand, many organizations aren’t handling change all that well, with many efforts resulting in failure. What you may not realize, however, is that some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes, rolling out smoothly and more easily embraced. Why do some change initiatives fail while others succeed? How can organizations and employees handle change better? In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof offers practices and approaches to help you and your organization roll out, receive, and manage change effectively. Namely, Zukof shows that you need to manage the process (or the “hard”) side and the people (or the “soft”) side of change and find the sweet spot between the two. She demonstrates that when you integrate both sides, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Successful change management means deploying sound project management techniques that increase the odds of achieving the outcomes of your change initiative. It also means helping employees understand the need and vision for change, so they feel less threatened by it and become excited and energized by what’s ahead. To deliver best results, you need to: • Define the change and how to get there—with project charters and plans. • Involve the right people in the right ways—from dedicated change teams to affected stakeholders. • Build support, understanding, and awareness—with communication, training, and resistance management plans. • Assess progress and adjust along the way—through action reviews and steps to tackle thorny issues. Capturing the inherently messy nature of workplace change—from technology implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and business transformations to office relocations and more—this book offers tangible insights to help you and your organization tackle change challenges. Follow the book’s tools and practices to lessen the messy and objectionable parts of change and actively give your change initiatives the best chance for positive outcomes.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

Change isn’t going anywhere. Learn how to manage it.We live in a wild world of volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity, with change seemingly as the only constant. Change can be difficult. It often induces resistance, panic, and fatigue. And, as you may expect or have experienced first-hand, many organizations aren’t handling change all that well, with many efforts resulting in failure. What you may not realize, however, is that some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes, rolling out smoothly and more easily embraced. Why do some change initiatives fail while others succeed? How can organizations and employees handle change better? In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof offers practices and approaches to help you and your organization roll out, receive, and manage change effectively. Namely, Zukof shows that you need to manage the process (or the “hard”) side and the people (or the “soft”) side of change and find the sweet spot between the two. She demonstrates that when you integrate both sides, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Successful change management means deploying sound project management techniques that increase the odds of achieving the outcomes of your change initiative. It also means helping employees understand the need and vision for change, so they feel less threatened by it and become excited and energized by what’s ahead. To deliver best results, you need to:•	Define the change and how to get there—with project charters and plans.•	Involve the right people in the right ways—from dedicated change teams to affected stakeholders.•	Build support, understanding, and awareness—with communication, training, and resistance management plans.•	Assess progress and adjust along the way—through action reviews and steps to tackle thorny issues.Capturing the inherently messy nature of workplace change—from technology implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and business transformations to office relocations and more—this book offers tangible insights to help you and your organization tackle change challenges. Follow the book’s tools and practices to lessen the messy and objectionable parts of change and actively give your change initiatives the best chance for positive outcomes.

Kathryn Zukof

The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management

Is being a woman a matter of biology, a product of an inner identity—or something in-between? A range of women, including a former Supreme Court judge, a biologist, an anthropologist, a linguist and a feminist campaigner give us their verdicts.

What is a woman?

I am a lawyer, and in law there are two sorts of woman: a person who was born a woman and has not transitioned to become a man under the Gender Recognition Act 2004; and a person who was born a man and has transitioned to become a woman under the same Act. But in practice there are people who were born either a woman or a man and experience gender dysphoria but have not yet completed the legal transition to the other gender. The current law requires them to live in the other gender for two years before their transition can be recognised in law.

Brenda Hale, former president of the Supreme Court

There are other people who are driven to live in the other gender, even if they do not intend to complete a legal transition. For practical purposes, people who live as women in this way are women.Genuinely trans people are among the most vulnerable and marginalised of groups in our society and deserve our understanding and support. They are not to be confused with men who like dressing up as women, any more than people who live as men are to be confused with women who like dressing up as men.

Nor are they to be confused with men who are not genuinely trans but who pretend to live as women in order to gain access to women’s spaces for ulterior reasons. I do not know how common this is and I understand how deeply concerned some women, especially those who have suffered abuse at the hands of men, are about that risk. It is, quite simply, bad behaviour and should not be tolerated. The difficulty lies in knowing which is which.

First, get the science right. Most born women have XX chromosomes, men XY. Intersex individuals can have other combinations. In the US, it is estimated that 1.4m people—or around 0.6 per cent of the population—want to change in social role from male to female or from female to male, though all the political excitement is about males to females. A little girl who says “I’m a boy” from age three onwards, refusing to wear dresses, is probably going to be happier as a boy. If he changes his mind, he can transition back.

Deirdre McCloskey, professor of economics, history, English and communication at the University of Illinois

Practically no one I know has regretted the decision. “Ecstatic” would be a better description of their state of mind. On the other hand, prevent it and you get deeply unhappy people.Second, get the politics right. Take the high road. In a free society, people get to make harmless choices. We are not classified permanently at birth as barristers or ploughmen, barmaids or accountants. The freedom of which most of us approve requires equality of permission. No castes, please: we’re British.

People raise objections. The bathroom issue. Come, come, I go to the loo to pee. What do you do? The sports debate. ­Alright, let’s be reasonable and ­polite, and not have XY people with massive male muscles compete against XX people. I don’t know: maybe a test of muscle mass? Yet some of the XX people have a lot of that.Whether Ukraine is essentially Russian is a big issue. Whether people are essentially free adults is still bigger. Whether I am essentially a woman is not.

I believe that what defines a woman is her biological sex. The binary biological categories of male and female are a material reality even if there are variations of sexual development in-between. Throughout the world and throughout history, women have been and are subject to systematic subjugation on the basis of their sex; a subjugation that is legitimised through patriarchal power embedded in the institutions of the state, community and family. In many cultures, a woman’s destiny is mapped out the day she is born and, in some cases, while still in the womb.

Pragna Patel, former director of Southall Black Sisters

To those who argue that sex is not a biological but a cultural and social construct, I would say that this cannot wholly explain why women and girls are the targets of many forms of harm throughout their lives: female foeticide (sex-selective abortion), female infanticide, FGM and reproductive coercion are just some of the harms that are perpetrated against women and girls on the basis of their biological sex. Feminists across the world have challenged these and many other abuses in the struggle for the right to female autonomy, including bodily autonomy.

Women need single-sex spaces to make sense of their shared biological and social experiences and to stay safe from the harms that they face.To those who say that this view can make feminism a natural ally of the religious right, I say that fighting for sex-based rights must lead us into necessary contestations with the religious or far right. Today, these forces represent one of the greatest threats to women and girls as well as to people who are same-sex attracted, other sexual minorities and those deemed to be non-conforming.

The Iranian fundamentalist regime, for example, is willing to pay for sexual reassignment surgery because it sees the existence of gay men and lesbians as the greater threat to the patriarchal contract. Everyone has the right to live as they wish in security and dignity and without fear of discrimination and stigma, but this cannot be achieved by hitching feminism or indeed other social justice movements to regressive ideological projects.

A woman is someone who identifies as an adult female human being. The word is in flux so no wonder politicians, who want to be all things to all people, find it so tricky to define. Usually language evolves gradually. But “woman” is changing fast, helped by social media, meaning we can watch its morphing definitions in real time.

Sarah Ogilvie, linguist, University of Oxford

We know it means something different for Caitlyn Jenner, Kimberlé Crenshaw, JK Rowling, Cara Delevingne, James Charles, Beyoncé, Pope Francis, Lia Thomas, the Queen, Malala Yousafzai, an incel, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Miriam Margolyes, or a man who buys a “non-bio woman” (an AI-enhanced sex doll which may cost up to $25,000 depending on which distinguishing features you choose).New senses of the word “ have appeared over time: woman as wife or a form of address (13th cent.), woman as a sexual partner or in contrast to a “lady” (15th cent.), woman as the embodiment of femininity (17th cent).

Some terms for woman have been positive and heroic (virago, Zamazim, Amazon); ­others decidedly pejorative (strumpet, wench, malkin); some have died out (unchaghe, mot, kittock); others die hard (hussy, minx, skirt).Slang terms for a woman outnumber slang terms for anything else, more even than crime, alcohol, sex or race, and certainly men. Green’s Dictionary of Slang has 10,000 terms for a woman and thousands more referring to female body parts (1,500 words alone for vagina but only 27 for ­clitoris—clearly a woman’s pleasure is not a priority in slang).

New spellings of woman have also emerged, some of them naturally occurring (Old English wifmann, Middle English wuman); others, especially in the 1970s, constructed to reflect a political stance (wimmin, womyn, womxn).Our definition of woman is not fixed. Language reflects culture, and culture changes over time. What is derogatory and offensive now won’t be to future generations. Some artists and activists try to force that change.

In The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler repeats the word cunt over and over until it (nearly) loses its shock value. The designer Suzi Warren makes t-shirts reclaiming negative words for woman: Sandi Toksvig chose crone, Mary Beard chose witch, I chose blue-stocking. If only it were that easy.

It is uncontroversial to name an adult female sheep a “ewe” or to know that our scrambled eggs come from “hens.” Humans have long used nouns that denote individual animals by their species and sex (and often stage of maturity), including in relation to our own species: a “woman” is an adult female ­human.The least controversial of this triplet is “human.” Nobody disputes that the word “woman” applies uniquely to humans. And (almost) equally uncontroversially, “adult” denotes an individual who is fully developed and no longer dependent on others.

Emma Hilton, developmental biologist, University of Manchester

Much of society has deemed that a human becomes an “adult” during late adolescence.So it is “female” that is the source of controversy. Yet in biology and medicine, in the hundreds of thousands of textbook references and papers, it is no more controversial than “human” or “adult.” Almost all animals reproduce sexually, via the fertilisation of an egg by a sperm, and 95 per cent of animal species—including all mammals and birds—are divided into two reproductive classes of individual who, in the absence of illness, injury or disease, produce either eggs (females) or sperm (males).

Like other animals that give birth to live young, female humans also provide their developing baby a safe space in which to grow during gestation.To describe as “female” a ewe that (just like a woman) has ovaries, a uterus and a vagina, who (just like a woman) produces eggs and gives birth does not attract handwringing analysis of what “ewe” means and whether some rams might be counted as one. It is a peculiarly human and almost religious practice to distinguish our own species from the rest of the animal kingdom, in this case with regards to sex.

But the answer to the question “what is a woman?” is—like the answer to “what is a ewe?”—an almost mundane description of age, sex and species, albeit one with human significance in life and law, sport and data, and single-sex spaces and services. Just as a “ewe” is an adult female sheep, a “woman” is an adult female human.

What is a woman? What makes someone a woman? I should know. Shouldn’t I? I’m a cisgender, straight woman.My birth certificate says “female.” Is that what makes me a woman? No, it’s not that simple. A six-letter word—female—on a birth certificate or any other official document does not always determine womanhood.My reproductive organs played a large part in gifting me two children, and my breasts serviced them for months on end. But reproductive organs, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, breasts and breast-feeding don’t always define womanhood or make one a woman.

Dawn Starin, anthropologist

For the most part, social and political institutions divide their populations into females and males. I easily fall into the female category in this gender binary system. Yet this system is not universal. There are many other ways we humans have organised genders; both in the past and present, three or more genders have been seen as a very natural way of being and being identified. Historically, people have often transcended binary ideas of gender. In India, the history of the Hijras, a third gender community, stretches back to ancient times.

Since pre-Hispanic times in southern Mexico, there have been three ­recognised genders: muxes, females and males. Today, muxes are accepted and celebrated within their indigenous Zapotec community.Official documents, officialdom, sexual and reproductive organs, biology, external rules, laws, society and body parts (except for the one big one, the brain) cannot always automatically define one’s personal gender. Gender and therefore womanhood are probably determined by the self. And, just as there are no two identical women, there are no two usable identical definitions of womanhood.

Maybe asking “what is a woman” is an impossible question because there are any number of ways of being a woman.Perhaps all I can say is what makes someone a woman is simply a piece of unique, amorphous self-identity floating around in one’s brain, saying: “you are a woman.” Or, to put it more succinctly, paraphrasing an established principle from the trans rights movement: womanhood is what’s inside your head, between your ears.

In most cases, the question that troubles people is not what is a woman, but what is a “real” woman. "Real” women are defined very differently in different periods and places. It is one of the paradoxes of gender that we are so often told it is in our nature to be women, as if biology is indeed destiny, and yet an enormous amount of effort is put into getting us to conform to whatever is the current paradigm.Others find the labels so incompatible with their sense of themselves that they choose to live in a different gender, undergo surgical or hormonal interventions, or redefine themselves.

Anne Phillips, professor of political theory, London School of Economics

Babies are identified as male or female on the basis of their genitals—though in a small number of cases the observations are inconclusive—and are then set off on the long process of acculturation into their assigned categories, learning the appropriate ways of holding their bodies, engaging in the world and envisaging their futures. Some of us accept the label, but resist the baggage attached to it, and try to practise a different version of what it is to be a woman.

These all strike me as different ways of responding to the coerciveness of our current gender order. While the ones that involve changing one’s gender or transforming one’s body throw up sometimes taxing problems regarding access to women-only services or how much prior counselling is appropriate before embarking on possibly irreversible change, I cannot see any one of them as more legitimate than any other. The body matters, shaping how others see us and how we see ourselves. Most of us will change something about our bodies in the process of changing ourselves—but the body is not destiny.

Women are made to be loved not to be undestood

What is a Woman?

There are many people claiming the pandemic will result in “the death of the office.” However, for many jobs, specifically collaborative, high-skill, and high-value roles, working from home doesn’t cut it. Working from home has its benefits—freedom and flexibility being just a couple of them—and so it may not become a thing of the past entirely. One solution for the future is an organized hybrid model that recognizes the benefits of flexibility on the productivity and overall well-being of employees.

Back To Office

77% of managers would take action if workers do not come back to the office, and 2-thirds of U.S. and U.K. workers who experienced more work flexibility during the pandemic want employers to prioritize work-life balance moving forward.The hybrid model may be the future for many organizations, but they will have to work at creating a healthy culture that supports different types of roles and employees

Managers May Fire People Who Don't Return To Office

Going forward, organizations will do well to teach people how to create work—to learn how to make the time in the office beneficial for themselves as well. It’s almost an entrepreneurial mindset that needs to come in. If an entrepreneur is forced to spend time in a certain place, they are allocating much of that time to networking, building business, and sharing ideas. Senior people in organizations understand this and are doing it.

Be An Entrepreneur In the Office

Leaders are weighing the benefits of some forms of remote schedules against company-wide efficiency.


remotework

Remote Work

career

Career

Why your boss might fire people rather than allow remote work

Two things determine how life turns out – luck and the quality of your decisions. You can’t affect luck, but you can affect the quality of your decisions. By improving the quality of the decisions, you increase the odds of good things happening to you.The future is inherently uncertain, so good decisions cannot guarantee outcomes. They just make good outcomes more likely.

Why You Should Care About Making Better Decisions

People generally find it hard to distinguish a good quality decision from a decision that turned out well. Instead of assessing the decision-making process, they just tend to look at the result of the decision. Psychologists call this “outcome bias”.The idea that the result of a decision tells you something about the quality of a decision is extremely powerful (but wrong). You can give someone the same exact facts describing a decision but their view of whether the decision is good or bad will usually change depending on how the decision turns out.

Assessing the Quality of Past Decisions: Outcome Bias

In the case of any single decision, good quality decisions can still turn out bad and a bad quality decision can still turn out good. This is due to the role that luck plays. In the long run, however, higher quality decisions are more likely to lead to better outcomes.The paradox of experience is the idea that experience is necessary for learning, but individual experiences often interfere with learning. This is because of various cognitive biases that hinder our ability to view decisions accurately.

The Paradox Of Experience

Most people are likely to blame bad luck for a bad outcome and credit skill for a good outcome. This is motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is the tendency to process information to get to the conclusion we want (rather than the truth). Motivated reasoning might be comforting, but it hinders your ability to learn from your experiences and make better decisions. In the long run, it’s better to be accurate in how you perceive the world, so that you can make better decisions.

Biases: Motivated Reasoning

Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe that the way something turned out was inevitable or at least predictable. A common example is when people say “I should have known”, “I can’t believe I didn’t see that coming”, or “I told you so (especially if they didn’t)”. Hindsight bias can distort your memory of what you knew at the time you made the decision.Resulting and hindsight bias can also make you less compassionate. It can make you more likely to blame people for bad outcomes even when the bad outcome wasn’t their fault.

Hindsight Bias

Confirmation bias – The tendency to notice and seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs.Disconfirmation bias – The tendency to be more critical of information that contradicts our existing beliefs.Overconfidence – overestimating our own skills, intellect or talent.Availability bias – overestimating the frequency or likelihood of events that are easily available (e.g. more vivid events are easier to recall, so are more available).Recency bias – believing that recent events are more likely to occur than they actually are.

Common Cognitive Biases

A decision tree is a useful tool for evaluating past decisions and improving the quality of new ones.Before a decision, the different potential outcomes of that decision are like the many different branches of a decision tree. There are many possible futures but only one past. Once the outcome of a decision is known, resulting(outcome bias) and hindsight bias causes us to mentally “chop off” branches that never happened. You should consider the counterfactuals – i.e. the outcomes that could have happened but didn’t. The counterfactuals will put the actual outcome into context.

Handling Biases: Make A Decision Tree

“Reasonable” is the key word here. You don’t have to try and account for every possibility. Some outcomes are so unlikely it’s not useful to include them in your decision process.These outcomes can be general scenarios or more focused on particular aspects that you care about. For example, if you’re hiring an employee and the most important thing to you is staff turnover, your possible outcomes could be whether they will leave in < 6 months, between 6-12 months, between 1-2 years, etc.

Steps to Make Better Decisions: Identify the Reasonable Set of Possible Outcomes

To what degree do you like or dislike each outcome, given your values? This is a personal question that can vary between individuals. The simplest way to do this is to list potential outcomes on the tree in order from most preferred to least.You should also think about the magnitude or size of each preference – i.e. how good or how bad is each outcome? If you don’t consider the size of the payoffs, you can’t figure out if going for a potential upside worth risking the potential downside. Size is easy to measure when the payoff is in money, but can be trickier if it’s in something else.

Identify Your Preference Using the Payoff for Each Outcome

It’s important to make an estimate, even if you’re unsureMost people are uncomfortable estimating the likelihood of something happening in the future because they don’t like being wrong. Since you don’t have perfect information, you can’t give an objectively perfect answer.Thinking there is only “right” and “wrong”, with nothing in between, is one of the biggest obstacles to good decision-making. You almost always know something that is relevant to assessing the probability, and something is better than nothing.

Estimate the Likelihood of Each Outcome Unfolding

One way to make higher quality decisions is to get more information – often from other people. If you’re using these ambiguous terms with other people, it’s harder to uncover disagreement (and disagreement can help you get relevant information). Precision uncovers disagreement. For example, say you think something has around a 30% chance of happening, and your friend thinks it has a 70% chance. If you tell them you think it has a 30% chance of happening, your disagreement is revealed immediately.

Use an Explicit Probability Rather than An Ambiguous Term

Through a blend of compelling exercises, illustrations, and stories, the bestselling author of Thinking in Bets will train you to combat your own biases, address your weaknesses, and help you become a better and more confident decision-maker. What do you do when you're faced with a big decision? If you're like most people, you probably make a pro and con list, spend a lot of time obsessing about decisions that didn't work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly seek other people's opinions to find just that little bit of extra information that might make you sure, and finally go with your gut. What if there was a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess yourself less, and ultimately be more decisive and be more productive? Making good decisions doesn't have to be a series of endless guesswork. Rather, it's a teachable skill that anyone can sharpen. In How to Decide, bestselling author Annie Duke and former professional poker player lays out a series of tools anyone can use to make better decisions. You'll learn: • To identify and dismantle hidden biases. • To extract the highest quality feedback from those whose advice you seek. • To more accurately identify the influence of luck in the outcome of your decisions. • When to decide fast, when to decide slow, and when to decide in advance. • To make decisions that more effectively help you to realize your goals and live your values. Through interactive exercises and engaging thought experiments, this book helps you analyze key decisions you've made in the past and troubleshoot those you're making in the future. Whether you're picking investments, evaluating a job offer, or trying to figure out your romantic life, How to Decide is the key to happier outcomes and fewer regrets.

How to Decide

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Nuts!

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Read like a Pro.

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STOP saying these things to yourself, in your 20s🚫

30 mental models to add to your thinking toolbox

You don’t need to get in someone’s face. Here are 5 other ways to manage conflict and create change

3 ways to make annual reviews suck less (especially for remote employees)

The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management

What is a Woman?

Why your boss might fire people rather than allow remote work

How to Decide

Nuts!

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.