“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.

philosophy

Philosophy

problemsolving

Problem Solving

books

Books

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.

Your eyes show the strength of your

You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.

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.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mindfulness

Mindfulness

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.

Paulo Coelho de Souza is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. His novel The Alchemist became an international best-seller and he has published 30 more books since then.

Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist

Here is an esoteric Zen story about a Master who explains Buddha's teachings to a disciple in a unique and seemingly strange way.

These are Bamboos – A Zen Story

A man who heard about Buddha's life started longing to reach higher states within himself just like the Buddha did. He met many masters and enquired about the Buddha, but he was not satisfied with their explanations. Then one person told him that there was a master living on the peak of certain mountain and that he knew everything about the Buddha. “Go ask him,” the person told him.

The Story (1)

So the man trekked up the difficult mountain path, finally reached the master's hut and entered. He noticed there were many disciples there already. The master was talking to his many disciples. When he saw this man, the master asked him to come closer and asked him, "What do you want?" The man said, "I am wandering in search of the Buddha's teachings. I have met many scholars, but nobody could fully answer my questions. I heard that you will be able to explain this better than all the others so I came to you."

The Story (2)

"Oh! Please be seated. I will tell you after all of them leave," said the Zen master. The man was satisfied. He concluded that this master must be really good for so many disciples to gather around him. The master spoke with each of his disciples and then sent them on their way. Finally, he came to the man and said, "Come with me!" He led the man across the slopes. After covering a certain distance, they came upon some vegetation before them. The master pointed to it and asked, "What is this?" The man replied, "Bamboo."

The Story (3)

The master then pointed to other bamboo shoots that were off to the side and asked, "When you look at these, what do you see?" The man said, "That bamboo is tall. This bamboo has not yet grown up and is short." The master said, "These are bamboos!" and started walking back to his hut.

The Story (4)

The conclusions people draw from their five senses are predominantly in comparison with something else. <ul><li><a href="https://isha.sadhguru.org/wisdom/article/when-okay-to-compare-to-others">Comparison </a>is only needed to conduct our affairs in day-to-day life. </li><li> Seeing things in comparison like this is not true <a href="https://isha.sadhguru.org/wisdom/article/a-perception-beyond-the-physical">perception </a>. </li></ul>

Interpretation Of The Story

If you want to perceive life in its true dimension, you must stop comparing and making conclusions that this is high or low, tall or short, beautiful or ugly.

If you touch something that is cold, it just means that your body is hot.

Whether it is Buddha's teaching or the basics of Yoga, it is just about perceiving life the way it is. For this to happen, you have to move beyond what is recorded by the five senses.

Key Take Away

Here is an esoteric Zen story about a Master who explains Buddha's teachings to a disciple in a unique and seemingly strange way.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

During the height of Ancient Greece’s influence, one could go to Delphi and visit the renowned Temple of Apollo. It was one of a series of temples built around 550 BCE. Unfortunately, it was destroyed under the influence of Roman emperor Theodosius I, around 390 CE.In one of the pillars in the forecourt of that temple were carved, 3 maxims — said to have been the best advice of the revered 7 sages of ancient Greece. They were:<ul><li>Know thyself.</li><li>Nothing in excess.</li><li>Certainty brings ruin.</li></ul>

Great Advice On Temple Inscriptions

Self-improvement is actually just ongoing, iterative self-discovery.We can’t improve what we don’t understand. And so many of us don’t understand ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. And it’s often during the process of trying to simply find out who we are that we stumble upon the very things that will propel us to incredible personal development.That’s why reflection is such an important part of the journey of self-improvement. But it also explains why so many people are frustrated by that journey.

Know Thyself

Because situations are constantly changing, we also change, knowing yourself is not a one-and-done achievement. Rather, you learn, revise, and rediscover things about yourself. Again, this is why reflection is so important. The less you really know yourself, the less you can trust in yourself to follow through on things. And if you can’t trust in yourself, you don’t have much going for you.

Change Is Always Happening

There’s a theory that dates back to the days of Aristotle that says that any virtue is simply the midway point between two extremes. An excess of something or a deficiency in it ends up being a liability.While people tend to understand that you shouldn’t have too much of anything, they tend to forget that the opposite is true as well. We can get into mindsets where we believe the answer is to impose harsh restrictions on ourselves. No more eating this. No more drinking that.  But this mindset is also an example of excess. It can very quickly backfire on you, even with the best of intentions.

Nothing in Excess

All things being equal, we humans crave certainty. We don’t tend to take risks regularly, and we long for sure things. But anyone who’s thrown down the yokes of comfort to pursue serious personal growth can tell you what happens when you cling to the sure things: stagnation. That stagnation comes by way of dependence.The way it happens is: You get dependent upon the comfort of the sure things. And after a while, you close yourself off to anything that seems to risk that comfort.

Certainty Brings Ruin

For all the ways the world has changed in the last 2,500 years, there are principles from that time that still represent the best advice for modern living. The 3 discussed here are by no means all-encompassing. But they’re at the very least universal.Many of the principles and values we adopt can be derived from these three. Alternatively, following these principles can be gateways to finding the specific values and principles that drive our individual lives forward.

The Bottom Line

During the height of Ancient Greece’s influence, one could go to Delphi and visit the renowned Temple of Apollo. It was one of a series of temples built around 550 BCE. Unfortunately, it was…

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

The 2,000 Year Old Temple Inscriptions That Sum Up How Self-Improvement Works

The philosopher Carl G. Hempel, in his 1965 essay “Studies in the Logic of Confirmation,” brought to light a central paradox in the scientific method as it is commonly understood. This is called Hempel’s Ravens Paradox, and it deals with inductive reasoning, which is the first step in any scientific method: Observing and forming a hypothesis.

Hempel’s Ravens Paradox

Suppose you see a raven, and you note that it is black. “Hmm,” you say, “that raven was black.” Sometime later you notice a couple more ravens, and they also are black. “What a coincidence,” you remark, “those ravens are black too.” Time goes by and you see many more ravens. And it happens that all the ravens you see are black. “This is beyond coincidence,” you might reasonably think, and with the instincts of a good and observant scientist you form a hypothesis: All ravens are black.

Inductive Reasoning

There are always limits to an experimental apparatus, even if the apparatus is just a matter of observing as many ravens as possible to check their colour. Nonetheless, we feel justified in saying that each new observation of a black raven tends to confirm the hypothesis, and in time, if no green or blue or otherwise non-black ravens are observed, our hypothesis will eventually come to have the status of natural law.

The Limitation

Logically put, our hypothesis “all ravens are black” has the form of a conditional, that is, a statement of the form “if A then B.” In short, we are saying that if a given object is a raven, then that object is black. According to the laws of logic, a conditional is equivalent to its contrapositive. That is, a statement of the form “if A then B” is equivalent to the statement “if not B then not A.” This rule of logic is incontrovertible.

The Flaw In Our Logic

Our hypothesis “all ravens are black” therefore has the equivalent form “all non-black things are non-ravens,” or more precisely, “if an object isn't black then it is not a raven.” Consequently, if every sighting of a black raven confirms our hypothesis, then every sighting of a non-black non-raven equally confirms our hypothesis.

The Illogical Conclusion

Very well, you might say, but maybe every sighting of a non-black non-raven really does confirm, even if only to an infinitesimal degree, the hypothesis that all ravens are black. After all, if we could, somehow, check every non-black object in the universe, and if none of them were ravens, our statement that all ravens are black would be proved.

productivity

Productivity

Hempel’s Ravens Paradox | Platonic Realms

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Associate only with people who improve you.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

Value your time more than your possessions.

Death is not in the distant future. We are dying every day.

5 Stoic lessons from Seneca

Legality/illegality is a bad tool for analysing human institutions. Too much moral pathos, too little substance. Much better concept is procedurality. Policies may not be legal, but they absolutely are procedural. Maybe states make illogical decisions, except it's not human logic, it's procedural logic, logic of a machineAs Kafka observed, when we're dealing with the state we are not dealing with humans, but with a machine. It's working procedurally, according to a certain algorithm which is ofcourse full of bugs. Which can be exploited.

Procedural, not legal

In 1937 the Great Purge and mass arrests started in Russia. One guy in St Petersburg belonged to hereditary nobility & he knew he'd be arrested. He knew they'll be extorting confession & torture him to death. That's suboptimal.He acted smarter. During the night he went to a store, broke a window. Got inside, filled his bag with valuable stuff and waited for police to come. They came, arrested him. He got 5 years of jail for robbing a store *as a regular criminal*. Regular criminal track was so much better than a track of a spy/counterrevolutionary. That's how he survived the Great Purge.

Hacking the system to avoid the gulag

The rich usually know they're not dealing with humans but with a procedural mechanism. It's one think they found through education :)  The system can and must be hacked, you just need to find a bug. Rich kids don't get to the trenches no matter what is written in the law. Why? Well because smart people don't give a fuck about the law. For a smarter, successful person the law is not a moral imperative, but a stupid algorithm to be hacked. And they'll figure out how to hack it.

The rich hack the algorithm

Some people read Kafka and get depressed. Other look at his work as a guidebook for success. 

@kamilkazani: Captain Farid Chitav and 11 his subordinates from Russian National Guard (Росгвардия) refused to go to Ukraine. Their regiment from Krasnodar was ordered to Ukraine and they objected. They said that th...…

politics

Politics

The law is for stupid people

Managers are in meetings all the time & yet nothing gets done. That's because we treat all meetings the same. According to McKinsey there are 3 types of interactions with different prescriptions:<ol><li>Decision making, including complex or uncertain decisions (for example, investment decisions) and cross-cutting routine decisions (such as quarterly business reviews)</li><li>Creative solutions & coordination (for example, developing new products) and routine working sessions (such as daily check-ins)</li><li>Information sharing, including one-way (video, text) and two-way communication (such as town halls with Q&As)</li></ol>

3 Types of Work Interactions

<ul><li>Face to face, live, old-school meetings are a must when tackling important decision making or when brainstorming</li><li>Remote video-calls work for routine decisions or working sessions.  </li><li>One way information sharing would be async and no meeting should be required. Too much time is spent on sharing ideas. </li></ul>

How to interact at work?

Are you in meetings and always busy. McKinsey think we should use different techniques for different work interactions. 

career

Career

education

Learning & Education

On work interactions

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.

The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever com

I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.

Sylvia Plaths The Bell Jar quotes for when you’re in that slump and for whatever reason you’d like to sink deeper into that bottomless hole which you’ve become so familiar with 

The story, scarcely disguised autobiography, covers six months in a young girl's life, beginning when she goes to New York to serve on a fashion magazine's college-editorial board. It ends when she emerges from a mental hospital after a breakdown.

Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar

“Man fears the darkness, and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire.”

You saw his work in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Comic Tribute...depicting the truth about Rei with great sensitivity...wait, that's not the right word. What's the opposite of "great sensitivity"? Well, whatever it is, Tony Takezaki's got it, in this collection of all-new stories satirizing both the Evangelion you saw on TV, as well as some scenes that apparently never got aired! SEE! Eva as a 1960s TV show! SEE! Kaworu and Shinji's standup comedy career! SEE! Ritsuko's days as Gendo's student intern! SEE! Eva Units, flinging dookie! You'll see all that and more, because this is Tony Takezaki's Neon Genesis Evangelion!

movies

Movies & Shows

You saw his work in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Comic Tribute...depicting the truth about Rei with great sensitivity...wait, that's not the right word. What's the opposite of "great sensitivity"? Well, whatever it is, Tony Takezaki's got it, in this collection of all-new stories satirizing both the Evangelion you saw on TV, as well as some scenes that apparently never got aired! SEE! Eva as a 1960s TV show! SEE! Kaworu and Shinji's standup comedy career! SEE! Ritsuko's days as Gendo's student intern! SEE! Eva Units, flinging dookie! You'll see all that and more, because this is Tony Takezaki's Neon Genesis Evangelion!

Tony Takezaki

Tony Takezaki's Neon Evangelion

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