"Skill is the result of deliberate, consistent practice, and in early-stage practice, quantity and speed trump absolute quality. The faster and more often you practice, the more rapidly you’ll acquire the skill."

Josh Kaufman starts by highlighting it is likely you have a skill you have always wanted to learn. For instance, maybe it’s competently playing the piano, doing well on the tennis court, or becoming conversational in French. Crucially, it is never too late to learn your chosen skill. One of the most common regrets is wishing one had pursued a skill earlier. Subsequently, humans will often quickly give up before even becoming familiar with the basics because they believe it’s too late.

Use Rapid Skill Acquisition to Learn Within 20 Hours

This is where we can use rapid skill acquisition to kickstart our experience. Through using this technique, you can become competent in various desirable skills by putting in 20 hours of work. These 20 hours will allow you to become acquainted with the basics, but skill mastery will require more than these initial 20 hours of investment.

The first few hours of learning something new are always the hardest, and this is where most people give up. However, if you break your initial 20 hours down into an hour of practice per day, you will rapidly improve. You will then find it considerably easier to continue building your skillset after you’ve completed the first 20 hours. Once you get through the first 20 hours, you’ll have a significant amount of practice under your belt, and further practice won’t be as difficult. Making the most of these initial 20 hours relies on adopting the ten principles of rapid skill acquisition.

<ol><li>Choose a lovable project.</li><li>Focus your energy on one skill at a time.</li><li>Define your target performance level.</li><li>Deconstruct the skill into subskills.</li><li>Obtain critical tools.</li><li>Eliminate barriers to practice.</li><li>Make dedicated time for practice.</li><li>Create fast feedback loops.</li><li>Practice by the clock in short bursts.</li><li>Emphasize quantity and speed.</li></ol>

Ten Principles of Rapid Skill Acquisition

"The trouble comes when we confuse learning with skill acquisition. If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it. If performance matters, learning alone is never enough."

There are probably many skills you’d like to acquire. Still, an essential first step of rapid skill acquisition is choosing to focus on one. Start by making a list of all the skills you’re interested in, and pick the one most exciting to you right now. This excitement will help you stay motivated through your practice.

Learn Your Chosen Skill By Focusing Your Energy

Don’t try to learn multiple new concepts at once because you’ll progress slowly, which is not motivating at all. Did you know you can achieve a magical “flow” state by spending more time focusing?Josh Kaufman explains that you should practice in 20-minute bursts so that you can focus all your energy on your chosen learning task. On top of this, these bursts should be characterized by deliberate and consistent practices. Hence, quantity and speed are more important than the quality of your learning. The faster and more often you practice, the more rapidly you’ll acquire the skill.

<ol><li>Research the skill and related topics.</li><li>Jump in over your head.</li><li>Identify mental models and mental hooks.</li><li>Imagine the opposite of what you want.</li><li>Talk to practitioners to set expectations.</li><li>Eliminate distractions in your environment.</li><li>Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization.</li><li>Create scaffolds and checklists.</li><li>Make and test predictions.</li><li>Honor your biology.</li></ol>

Ten Major Principles of Effective Learning

Deciding how talented you want to become at your chosen skill is the third principle in rapid skill acquisition. This is called your target performance level. It’s important because if you can envision the end goal, it’ll be easier to get there. Decide what level of skill is “good enough” for you. For example, if you’re learning to play an instrument, consider whether you want to play a few songs by heart or you want to jump into a jam session.

Choose Your Skill Level

As well as choosing your skill level, you also have to utilize smaller steps. Break your chosen skills down into bite-sized pieces you can tackle one by one. You don’t attempt to down an entire meal in one bite, and you shouldn’t try to learn a skill in one swing. By dividing up the work ahead of you, progress will be easier, and the steps you need to take to succeed will be more clear-cut.

Utilize Smaller Steps 

As well as defining the specific skill level you want to pursue, Kaufman also suggests you need to identify the tools you need to succeed at your skill level. These tools are the fundamental building blocks of your skill. For example, for Kaufman’s ukulele pursuit, the first tool he required was a working ukulele. Though this is a simple step, it is essential to find what materials and environments you’ll need to succeed in learning a new skill.

Acquire the Tools You Need

When learning a skill, there will always be barriers that interfere with your learning process. Therefore, consider any emotional roadblocks that may stand in your path, like fear or self-doubt, as well as distractions (like a ringing phone). After completing this process, try to eliminate any hindrances.

Limit Distractions

"If you rely on finding time to do something, it will never be done. If you want to find time, you must make time."

In today’s world, people are busier than ever. So, if you want to learn a new skill, you need to make time to practice. This is Kaufman’s seventh principle of rapid skill acquisition. Identify other activities in your life that you aren’t fond of, and work to cut those out to fill that time with practicing your new skill. Your goal is to free up 60-90 minutes a day to dedicate to practicing.

Give Yourself Time to Practice

You must get feedback on your progress. For instance, perhaps you are trying to learn Chinese. You should find a way to get fast feedback on your progress, so you’ll know if you’ve put a step wrong. After receiving this feedback, you can choose to approach your skill acquisition differently.  If you can, you should hire a coach to help guide you and give you feedback through the process. If you’re learning a new language, you can use a voice recorder to listen to yourself speaking. This will make it easier to hear mistakes in your own pronunciation or grammar.

Give Yourself Feedback

The author offers another example from his own life to highlight how he has used feedback. Kaufman received feedback when he was learning how to play the game Go. To do this, he downloaded a software called SmartGo, which gives the player feedback after every move. This software helped him identify his weak spots and made it simpler to progress.

Shortening your working periods helps mitigate the risk of working on difficult or tedious activities for extended periods. This is crucial as prolonged challenging work can be draining and often leads to inefficiency. When you first start learning, the hours of practice seem to drag on longer and longer. People tend to think they’ve actually spent more time working at the beginning of learning something new simply by how arduous learning the task is at the beginning.

Prioritize Quantity and Speed By Practicing in Short Bursts

Avoid this feeling from taking over by using a 20-minute time. The timer will let you know how long you’ve actually been practicing and, since you’ll know how long you’ve been working, you’ll be more motivated during that period. Your goal should be to do three to five of these 20-minute blocks of practice per day. If you do this, you’ll be shocked at how quickly you progress.

It’s better to recognize that you’re likely a beginner, and you shouldn’t expect yourself to be an expert from the start. So, focus on practicing quickly and often. By prioritizing quantity and speed, you’re less likely to get frustrated and subsequently demotivated during the initial stages of practice.

The First 20 Hours is a book about rapid skill acquisition: how to pick up new skills as fast as humanly possible.

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

productivity

Productivity

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

education

Learning & Education

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less?   Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare?   Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . .   In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well.   Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches:<ul><li>Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better.</li><li>Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first.</li><li>Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice.</li><li>Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve.</li></ul>Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

Josh Kaufman is an independent business teacher, education activist, and author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business.Josh's unique, multidisciplinary approach to business education has helped hundreds of thousands of readers around the world master foundational business concepts on their own terms, and his work has been featured in BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company, as well as by influential websites like Lifehacker, HarvardBusiness.org, Cool Tools, and Seth Godin's Blog.

Josh Kaufman

The First 20 Hours

<ul><li>What is life but growth, i.e. expansion, love?</li><li>Therefore, all love is life, it is the only law of life; all selfishness is death, and this is true here or hereafter.</li><li>It is life to do good, it is death not to do good to others.</li></ul>

Help vs selfishness

<ul><li>Be not afraid, my children.</li><li>Look not up in that attitude of fear towards that infinite starry vault as if it would crush you.</li><li>Wait! In a few hours more, the whole of it will be under your feet.</li><li>Wait, money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning.</li><li>It is love that pays; it is character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties.</li></ul>

Love will pave the way.

Those who are men and yet have no feeling in the heart for man, well, are such to be counted as men at all?

<ul><li>Duty is seldom sweet.</li><li>It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise.</li><li>How else could parents do their duties to their children, husbands to their wives, and vice versa?</li><li>Do we not meet with cases of friction every day in our lives? Duty is sweet only through love.</li></ul>

Duty is sweet only through love.

<ul><li>Love never fails, my son; today or tomorrow or ages after, truth will conquer.</li><li>Love shall win the victory... Believe in the omnipotent power of love.</li><li>Who cares for these tinsel puffs of name?... Have you love? -- you are omnipotent.</li><li>Are you perfectly unselfish? If so, you are irresistible.</li></ul>

Love yourself to love your work.

<ul><li>A cannon-ball flying through the air goes a long distance and falls.</li><li>Another is cut short in its flight by striking against a wall, and the impact generates intense heat.</li><li>All outgoing energy following a selfish motive is frittered away; it will not cause power to return to you; but if restrained, it will result in development of power. This self-control will tend to produce a mighty will.</li></ul>

Passion with self-control will harness great will to do work.

<ul><li>Selfishness is the chief sin, thinking of ourselves first.</li><li>He who thinks, 'I will eat first, I will have more money than others, and I will possess everything'... is the selfish man.</li><li>The unselfish man says, 'I will be last... if by doing so I can help my brothers.'</li><li>This unselfishness is the test of religion. He who has more of his unselfishness is more spiritual.</li></ul>

If your needs are met, help others, selfishness is bad philosophy.

The degree of unselfishness marks the degree of success everywhere.

<ul><li>Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practise it.</li><li>It is more paying from the point of view of health also.</li><li>Love, truth and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech, but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power.</li></ul>

Unselfishness helps you more than selfishness.

Life is ever expanding, contraction is death.The self-seeking man who is looking after his personal comforts and leading a lazy life- there is no room for him even in hell.

<ul><li>He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva;</li><li>and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary.</li><li>He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Shiva in him, without thinking of his caste, or creed, or race, or anything,</li><li>with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.</li></ul>

I See God in People who need help of my strength.

Do you love your fellow men? Where should you go to seek for God - are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, Gods? Why not worship them first?

Do not pity the dead, Harry, pity the living. And above all, those who live without love. - Albus Dumbledore

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

Love and Unselfishness by Vivekananda

The last emperor of India’s Mauryan Dynasty, Ashoka became a patron of Buddhism after witnessing the suffering caused by his military conquest of Kalinga. Following this, he renounced violence in favor of “conquest by Dharma.”

Ashoka The Great Buddhist 

Ashoka adopted the Buddhist virtues of honesty, compassion, humility, & non-violence. As a ruler with perhaps the power to outcast minority religions, Ashoka nonetheless exercised & encouraged tolerance & respect for all spiritual alignments.

New Principles 

Ashoka appointed “Dharma Ministers,” public servants—especially attentive to gender & religious minorities—who also reported the state of the general citizenship to Ashoka frequently. Under his rule, the government constructed hospitals, veterinary hospitals, wells, & other public-serving structures.

Dharma Government 

The Emperor had stupas & monasteries built, along with pillars inscribed with his interpretations of just spirituality & philosophy. He sent his own children as preaching missionaries to Sri Lanka, & made personal efforts to settle disputes within the Sangha (or Buddhist community).

Patronage Projects 

Ashoka the Great was the ideal Chakravartin ruler, who used Buddhism as a template for just & benevolent governance. 

Ashoka, also spelled Aśoka,  (died 238? bce,  India), last major emperor of the Mauryan dynasty of India. His vigorous patronage of Buddhism during his reign (c. 265–238 bce; also given as c. 273–232 bce) furthered the expansion of that religion throughout India. Following his successful but bloody conquest of the Kalinga country on the east coast, Ashoka renounced armed conquest and adopted a policy that he called “conquest by dharma” (i.e., by principles of right life). In order to gain wide publicity for his teachings and his work, Ashoka made them known by means of oral announcements and by engravings

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Ashoka | Biography, History, Religion, India, & Buddhism

Om Mani Padme Hum. This is perhaps the most common mantra, said to embody compassion & the core of Buddhism— to skillfully alleviate all suffering. The Lotus is often a symbol of enlightenment, as the flower blossoms only amidst the mud.

Jewel Of The Lotus

Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha. The Green Tara is thought of as a motherly figure who will come to her child’s aid in any instance of distress. This mantra, like others, entails deliverance from suffering in favor of compassion.

Green Tara 

Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Shakyamuniye Svaha. The Buddha figure we most often think of is Shakyamuni Buddha, once Siddhartha Gautama. This mantra is a means of praising & remembering the historical Buddha’s wisdom & teachings.

Homage To The Historical Buddha 

Om Ami Dewa Hrih. Amitabha was so devoted to helping others achieve peace, he also hoped that reciting his name 108 times would grant rebirth in a Pure Land.

Amitabha Buddha 

A handful of Buddhist mantras for peace, protection, & spiritual discipline.  

4 Powerful Buddhist Mantras

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BCE to 180 CE. He was born in 121 AD Rome, Italy

Who is Marcus Aurelius?

Of the doctrines central to the Stoic worldview, perhaps the most important is the unwavering conviction that world is organised in a rational and coherent way. More specifically it is controlled and directed by an all-prevading force that the Stoics designated by the term logos. The term (from which English "logic" and the suffix "-logy" derive) has a semantic range so broad as to be almost untranslatable. In simple words, Stoicism is from the outset a deterministic system that appears to leave no room for human free-will or moral responsibility.

What is a Stoicism? 

If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged. In the same way, humans are responsible for their choices and actions, even though these have been anticipated by the logos and form of its plan. Every action is governed by the logos ( Active reason prevading and animating the whole Universe)

An example to understand Stoicism properly.

This is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.This book is literally Marcus himself journaling his principles.

Meditations

As a man, everyone should be known about the logos and Stoicism 

Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life. Few ancient works have been as influential as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor of Rome (A.D. 161–180). A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, it remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. Marcus’s insights and advice—on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others—have made the Meditations required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. For anyone who struggles to reconcile the demands of leadership with a concern for personal integrity and spiritual well-being, the Meditations remains as relevant now as it was two thousand years ago. In Gregory Hays’s new translation—the first in thirty-five years—Marcus’s thoughts speak with a new immediacy. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. Never before have Marcus’s insights been so directly and powerfully presented. With an Introduction that outlines Marcus’s life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work’s ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era.

books

Books

Meditations (Medieval Greek: Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, romanized: Ta eis he'auton, lit. 'things to one's self') is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the first book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the second book was written at Carnuntum.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known, noncontemporaneously, as the Five Good Emperors and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace, calmness and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD.

Marcus Aurelius

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.

To advance we must have faith in Ourselves first and then in God

Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it. That is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish.

<ul><li>By doing well the duty which is nearest to us, the duty which is in our hands now, we make ourselves stronger;</li><li>and improving our strength in this manner step by step,</li><li>we may even reach a state in which it shall be our privilege to do the most coveted and honoured duties in life and in society.</li></ul>

Small and consistent steps to improve self is an extraordinary plan! 

Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God.

When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the time being.

<ul><li>Even the lowest forms of work are not to be despised...</li><li>If you wish to help a man, never think what that man's attitude should be towards you.</li><li>If you want to do a great or a good work, do not trouble to think what the result will be.</li></ul>

Just do what is right. The rest doesn't matter.

<ul><li>Inactivity should be avoided by all means.</li><li>Activity always means resistance.</li><li>Resist all evils, mental and physical;</li><li>And when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come.</li></ul>

Be Active, deal with life, learn from failures! Leave no stone unturned. Calm comes only after it.

Doing work with cleverness and as a science; by knowing how to work, one can obtain the greatest results.

He, who always speculates as to what awaits him in the future, accomplishes nothing whatsoever. What you have understood as true and good, just do that at once.

Whatever you do sincerely is good for you. Even the least thing well done brings marvellous results; therefore, let everyone do what little he can.

Any action that makes us go Godward is a good action, and is our duty; any action that makes us go downward is evil, and is not our duty.

<ul><li>He who does the lower work is not therefore a lower man.</li><li>No man is to be judged by the mere nature of his duties,</li><li>but all should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform them.</li></ul>

Work, songs and life.

<ul><li class="ql-align-center">Each work has to pass through these stages - ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. </li><li class="ql-align-center">Each man who thinks ahead of his time is sure to be misunderstood.</li><li class="ql-align-center">So opposition and persecutions are welcome, only I have to be steady and pure and must have immense faith in God, and all these will vanish.</li></ul>

<ul><li>Do not try to be a ruler. He is the best ruler who can serve well. Be true unto death.</li><li>The work we want - we do not seek wealth, name or fame... Be brave ... Be perfectly unselfish, and you will be sure to succeed.</li></ul>

Help others unselfishly

Doing the duty of the time is the best way, and if it is done only as a duty, it does not make us attached.

<ul><li>We should never think that we can help on even the least thing in this universe. We cannot.</li><li>We only help ourselves in this gymnasium of the world. This is the proper attitude of work.</li></ul>

Helping others is helping yourself.

Whenever you promise to do any work, you must do it exactly at the appointed time, or people lose their faith in you.

Put yourself to work, and you will find such tremendous power coming to you that you will find it hard to bear. Even the least work done for others awakens the power within.

It is the worker who is attached to results that grumbles about the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached worker, all duties are equally good.

One of the greatest lessons I have learnt in life is to pay as much attention to the means of work as to its end... With the means all right, the end must come.

Do the best you can, do not wait to cross the river when the water has all run down... but actual work, my boys... is better than eternal scribbling and talking.

Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest ideal, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the truth.

This is one of the most intriguing Vivekananda post I read, wrote and read again. Just do what is right. The rest doesn't matter.

habits

Habits

Duty by Vivekananda

Recurrences take place due to ascertainable circumstances and chains of causality.An example is the phenomenon of multiple independent discovery in science and technology, . Indeed, recurrences, in the form of reproducible findings obtained through experiment or observation, are essential to the natural and social sciences; and, in the form of chance observations rigorously studied via the comparative method, are essential to the humanities. If history has lessons to impart, they are to be found par excellence in such recurring patterns. The reason why I like history.

The repetition of similar events in history

In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind." Discovery, like learning, is a phenomena that takes place in the human brain. The brain configures an event as a new pattern based on previous assumptions that were present at the onset of the event.

Chance Observation. 

History repeats itself. it's all about patterns. 

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

history

History

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Historic recurrences. 

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">People tend to care about something making sense more than they care about something being right.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">It’s why we’re bad at forecasting and easily persuaded and why the economy is driven by stories.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">It’s not your fault. The world is complicated and everyone’s trying to fit what’s going on into the context of their own life experiences.</li></ul>Two factors cause the gap between perception and reality.

Making Sense Is Better Persuasion Than Being Right

The most important events – things that are counterintuitive, disruptive, and swayed by emotion more than calculation – tend to share a few traits that make gathering a good sample of data hard:<ul><li>They’re rare.  </li><li>The data is hard to collect.</li><li>More data intuitively feels better.</li></ul>This is a big problem and there is no solution to it other than giving <a href="http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/surprise/">yourself room for error</a> in not only in your actions but your beliefs.

Factor 1: The Most Important Events Are the Hardest to Sample

History makes clear that the winner isn’t the person who discovers an idea, but the one who sells it most persuasively.Stories are more powerful than statistics because the most believable thing in the world is whatever takes the least amount of effort to contextualize your own life experiences.People go astray when forgetting that storytelling is like exponential fuel, so a great idea told poorly can be a fraction as powerful as a mediocre idea told persuasively.

Factor 2: We Underestimate how Much More Powerful Stories Are than Statistics

People tend to care about something making sense more than they care about something being right. It’s why we’re bad at forecasting and easily persuaded and why the economy is driven by stories. It’s not your fault. The world is complicated and everyone’s trying to fit what’s going on into the context of their own life experiences. Two big things cause the gap between perception and reality. 1. The most important events are the hardest to sample, so extrapolating their lessons can be misleading. There have been two world wars in the last century. But no one would say, “the average world war lasts five years,” or “the average world war kills 60 million people.” No forecaster would say we’re overdue for a world war based on historic trends. A sample size of two can’t tell us what to expect next. The point may be obvious with world wars. But use a slightly more common case and people start drawing all kinds of false conclusions. Studying things with inadequate samples causes more delusion than intentional deceit. That’s because the ease of explaining things based on what’s readily in front of you meets the intellectual cover of using statistics. The most important events – things that are counterintuitive, disruptive, and swayed by emotion more than calculation – tend to share a few traits that make gathering a good sample of data hard: They’re rare. Ask an economist how many recessions they wish they had to study and they’ll say “ten thousand.” But there have only been 11 recessions since we started systematically collecting good data in the 1940s. That is nothing. If we had as much recession data as we wanted we’d likely realize that half of what we think we know about recessions is wrong. The data is hard to collect. Big surveys are expensive to produce. Gathering a classroom of grad students is cheap and easy. So which do you think happens more? And even when you survey people they often either don’t know the answer but give you one anyways (How much red meat did you eat last year?), or they know the answer but won’t tell the truth (Will you vote for this controversial politician?). This is partly why most studies can’t be replicated. More data intuitively feels better but things change over time, so more data can add in past trends that tell you nothing about what to expect in the future. If something is rare, the tendency is to go way back in history to gather as many examples as you can. But the further back you go, the more likely you are to study a world that operated in a different paradigm. We can study the financial crisis of 1873, but the modern banking system lives in a totally different universe than it did then. Daniel Kahneman is one of the best social scientists of our time. Yet he once admitted: Like most research psychologists, I had routinely chosen samples that were too small and had often obtained results that made no sense. I taught statistics and knew how to compute the sample size that would reduce the risk of failure to an acceptable level. But I had never chosen a sample size by computation. Like my colleagues, I had trusted tradition and my intuition in planning my experiments and had never thought seriously about the issue. That is terrifying. Two things happen when we don’t have good samples for important events. One is that we fool ourselves and are surprised when the world works differently than our data suggested it would. The second is that we can easily fool others, because if you look hard enough you can find a flawed set of data that shows whatever you want it to show. This is a big problem and there is no solution to it other than giving yourself room for error in not only in your actions but your beliefs. 2. We underestimate how much more powerful stories are than statistics. A friend once complained that everything Nassim Taleb has written is a rewording of a Philosophy 101. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m not bothered if it is because Taleb has done a better job explaining concepts than any Philosophy 101 author before him. And history makes clear that the winner isn’t the person who discovers an idea, but the one who sells it most persuasively. Stories are more powerful than statistics because the most believable thing in the world is whatever takes the least amount of effort to contextualize your own life experiences. People go astray when forgetting that storytelling is like exponential fuel, so a great idea told poorly can be a fraction as powerful as an OK idea told persuasively. The CEO who understands everything about their field except the most important thing – rallying employees behind a mission and vision. The financial advisor who aced the CFA exam but can’t maintain clients’ faith during a downturn. The doctor who knows the cure but can’t get patients to stick to a plan. Even contrarians eventually need to be persuasive. James Grant said: “Successful investing is about having people agree with you … later.” A flaw that frustrates many people is not realizing that virtually every job is a sales job, especially as you move up the ladder: Most careers turn into sales jobs when you get senior enough.— Sam Altman (@sama) December 20, 2017 More on this topic: The Full Reset The Theory of Maybes It’s Hard to Predict How You’ll Respond to Risk

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

computerscience

Computer Science

Making Sense vs. Being Right

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

“Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.”

Humans can take a small amount of data – a “thin-slice” – and draw conclusions from it using a combination of experience and intuition.Thin-slicing allows us to make smart decisions based on little information with minimal deliberation.

The Theory of Thin-Slicing

“Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend – or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet – understands this implicitly; you can learn as much – or more – from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.”

Only make decisions when you have at least 40% of the relevant information, but never wait until you have more than 70%.This is called the 40-70 rule and it describes the ideal relationship between time and information, ensuring you act fast, but not uninformed, without waiting until making a decision eventually becomes moot.And in most situations, focusing on very few, but crucially important facts, while blocking out all the rest, is enough to do so.

The 40-70 Rule

Your unconscious is the best and fastest information filtering system in the world. When first confronted with new information, it sifts through all of it, instantly tossing out the less important factors, judging the few big ones in a split second, and presenting you with the solution.However, even your unconscious gets it wrong sometimes. Stress can temporarily lead your gut down the wrong path.

The World’s Fastest Filter of Information

It happens when we alter our behavior in measurable ways due to certain stimuli, such as images, words, and culture.We are being subconsciously “primed” in different ways every day. If our brain believes our environment favors this or that type of personality, then we start behaving more like our environment.

Priming

“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.”

Trying to explain and rationalize decisions prevents us from making good intuitive decisions.This process is called verbal overshadowing.

Verbal Overshadowing

As important as it is to trust our intuition, it’s also important to question it.Snap judgments can often be more accurate than our thought-out ones, but they can also be a result of a subconscious racial, socioeconomic, or appearance-based bias.

When Should We Trust Our Instincts?

From the #1 bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia, the landmark book that has revolutionized the way we understand leadership and decision making. In his breakthrough bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant--in the blink of an eye--that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work--in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"--filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

From the #1 bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia, the landmark book that has revolutionized the way we understand leadership and decision making. In his breakthrough bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant--in the blink of an eye--that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work--in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"--filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers—The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers.

Malcolm Gladwell

Blink

And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

﻿Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.

When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

Optimistic quotes from The Alchemist for when you’re hopeful!

A special 25th anniversary edition of the extraordinary international bestseller, including a new Foreword by Paulo Coelho. Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

The Alchemist

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