A “razor” is a rule of thumb that simplifies decision-making.Humans are wired to take shortcuts in our decision-making. These shortcuts can lead us astray—but when used appropriately, the shortcuts can be extremely valuable.Here is a list of powerful decision-making razors to help you make better decisions, faster than ever before.

The Razor

Complexity and jargon are used to mask a lack of deep understanding.If you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t really understand it.If someone uses a lot of complexity and jargon to explain something, they probably don’t understand it.

The Feynman Razor

When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger luck surface area.Much of what we call "luck" is actually the macro result of 1,000s of micro-actions. Your daily habits put you in a position where “luck” is more likely to strike.It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home—it’s easy to get lucky when you’re engaging and learning, physically or digitally.Spend more time on things that increase your luck surface area.

The Luck Razor

When faced with two paths, choose the path that puts you in the arena.It's easy to throw rocks from the sidelines. It's scary and lonely in the arena—but it's where growth happens.Once you're in the arena, never take advice from people on the sidelines.

The Arena Razor

When choosing who to spend time with, prioritize spending more time with optimists.Pessimists see closed doors. Optimists see open doors—and probably kick down the closed doors along the way.Remember: Pessimists sound smart, optimists get rich.

The Optimist Razor

Nassim Nicholas Taleb famously proposed this rule of thumb in his best-selling book, Skin in the Game.He talks about choosing between two surgeons of equal qualification and experience. One looks highly refined and one looks like a butcher. If forced to choose between two options of seemingly equal merit, choose the one that doesn’t look the part.The one who doesn’t look the part has had to overcome much more to achieve their status than the one who fits in perfectly.

Looking The Part Razor

When in doubt, choose to show MORE gratitude to the people who have mentored or supported you.Say thank you more. Tell someone you appreciate them. Not just on special occasions—every single day.Lean into gratitude daily and your life will improve.

The Gratitude Razor

Time is either *invested* or *spent*.Invested time—actions that compound:<ul><li>Reading</li><li>Physical activity</li><li>Mindfulness</li><li>Relationship building</li></ul>Spent time—actions that don’t compund.When choosing what to do, prioritize investing time, not spending it.

Spending Vs Investing Time

If you have a choice between entering two rooms, choose the room where you're more likely to be the dumbest one in the room.Once you're in the room, talk less and listen more.Bad for your ego—great for your growth.

Rooms Razor

When deciding whether to take on a new project, follow a simple two-step approach:Is this a "hell yes!" opportunity? If not, say no. If yes, proceed to Step 2.Imagine that this is going to take 2x as long and be 1/2 as profitable as you expect. Do you still want to do it? If no, say no. If yes, take on the project.Using this approach will force you to say no much more often—you'll only say yes to projects you are extremely excited about, which are ultimately those that drive asymmetric rewards in your life.

The New Project Razor

When faced with two options, choose the one that’s more difficult in the short-term.There are two paths:Easy now—hard later.Hard now—easy later.Naval Ravikant calls this making "uphill decisions”—overriding your pain avoidance instinct and choosing the path that looks more arduous.It's worth it—short-term pain typically creates compounding long-term gain.

The Uphill Decision Razor

When you're weighing alternative explanations for something, the one with the fewest necessary assumptions should be chosen.Put simply, the simplest explanation is often the best one.Simple Assumptions is greater than Complex Assumptions. If you have to believe a complex, intertwined series of assumptions in order to reach one specific conclusion, always ask whether there is a simple alternative assumption that fits.Simple is beautiful.

Occam's Razor

If you encounter someone with opinions or perspectives very different from your own, listen twice as much as you speak.Our natural tendency when we hear a view we disagree with is to respond and refute it.Instead, always default to Listen Mode. You'll learn way more that way.

Listen Mode

If you have the choice, always choose to sprint and then rest.Most people are not wired to work 9-5—long periods of steady, monotonous work. It's a remnant of the Industrial Age.Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. When you establish fixed hours to do your work, you find unproductive ways to fill it—you work longer, but get less done.If your goal is to do inspired, creative work, you have to work like a lion: Sprint when inspired. Rest. Repeat.

The Lion Razor

If your smartest friends are all interested in something, it’s worth paying attention to.If that something seems crazy, it's worth paying a lot of attention to.The passions and weekend projects of the smartest people in your circles are a looking glass into the future.

Smart Friends Razor

Make decisions that your 80-year-old self and 10-year-old self would be proud of.Your 80-year-old self cares about the long-term compounding of the decisions of today.Your 10-year-old self reminds you to stay foolish and have some fun along the way.When you make decisions with both of them in mind, you have a recipe for a productive, joy-filled life.

The Young & Old Test

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.You can determine a lot about a person by observing their habitual actions and characteristics.When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.

The Duck Test

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.In assessing someone's actions, we shouldn't assume negative intent if there's a viable alternative explanation—different beliefs, lack of intelligence, incompetence, or ignorance.Applies to politics, relationships, and general Twitter discourse...

Hanlon's Razor

Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.If something cannot be settled by reasonable experiment or observation, it's not worth debating.These will save you from wasting a lot of time on pointless arguments.

Hitchens’ Razor & Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword

Opinions are earned—not owed.If you can't state the opposition's argument clearly, you haven't earned an opinion. There's a natural human tendency to feel the need to have an opinion on absolutely everything. When asked about a topic you don't understand deeply, take pride in having no opinion. If it's important, do the work to earn one.

The Opinion Razor

If you're struggling to understand something, try writing it out.When you write, you expose the gaps that exist in your logic and thinking. Study to fill the gaps.Writing is the ultimate tool to sharpen thinking—use it as a "knife block" for life.

The Writing Knife Block

Truly successful people rarely feel the need to brag about their success.If someone regularly brags about their income, wealth, or success, it's fair to assume the reality is likely a small fraction of what they claim.If they consistently name-drop important people with no relevant context, it's fair to assume that fraction is even smaller than you originally thought.

The Braggers Razor

When deciding what to read, just read whatever grabs you. When it stops grabbing you, put it down.Avoid the trap of only reading “impressive" sounding books that bore you to death.Never establish reading vanity metrics as goals.

The Reading Razor

Too many people take on stress that has no upside.If something is going to be stressful, consider whether the reward is sufficiently outsized to justify the stress.If it isn't, don't take it on.

The Stress-Reward Test

The Curiosity Chronicle has quickly become one of the most popular newsletters for growth-minded individuals in the world. Each week, subscribers receive a deep dive that covers topics ranging from growth and decision-making to business, finance, startups, and technology. In addition, subscribers receive The Friday Five, a weekly newsletter with five ideas curated to spark curiosity headed into the weekend.

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Problem Solving

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Leadership & Management

The Curiosity Chronicle | The Most Powerful Decision Making Razors

Companies donate billions of dollars every year, hoping their generosity will not only help important causes but also attract socially conscious consumers to their brands.What companies might not realize is that people focus less on the total amount a company donates than whether the donation seems like a sizable portion of the firm’s earnings. In fact, consumers favour brands that seem to be giving a larger cut of their profits, even if the total dollar amount is lower compared to brands that give a smaller proportion of profits but larger total dollar amounts to charity.

Company Donations: The Premise

Consumers prefer brands that seem to be giving a larger cut of their profits, even if the total dollar amount is lower compared to brands that give a smaller proportion of profits but larger total dollar amounts to charityPeople focus less on the total amount a company donates than whether the donation seems like a sizable portion of the firm's earnings.

The New Findings On Company Donations

People's perception is that brands that sacrifice relatively more of their earnings seem more generous. There's some good will associated with that type of generosity and therefore, people are more likely to prefer those brands.The findings come as many companies-reassured by a growing economy-rethink their philanthropic efforts.

How People Perceive Brands

When it comes to corporate donations for brand enhancement, bigger isn't necessarily better. Research from Elizabeth Keenan and Leslie John offers new insights for companies trying to win the hearts of socially conscious consumers.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Corporate Culture

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Marketing & Sales

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Product & Design

Giving Back: Consumers Care More About How Companies Donate Than How Much

The Pygmalion effect is where higher expectations lead to higher performance. Our beliefs about another person's abilities affect our actions towards that person. The action impacts the other's beliefs about themselves and causes the action of the other person toward us, which further reinforce our beliefs about that person.

Increased performance when it is expected

The Pygmalion effect is also known as the Rosenthal experiment, named after research of Robert Rosenthal at Harvard. In a test, Rosenthal challenged test subjects to coach rats through a maze. Half were told that the rats were very intelligent,  the other half were told that their rats were dumb. The rats were all the same. During an experiment, the "clever" rats outperformed the "dumb" rats.

The Rosenthal experiment

Rosenthal did the Pygmalion study in a school. At the start of the school year, a group of elementary school teachers were told that their new pupils were very talented, while they were really random average students.  By the end of the year, the students that were described as more talented had significantly increased their performance compared to the rest of the class. Rosenthal concluded that when "we expect certain behaviours of others we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behaviour more likely to occur."

The experiment at a school

The Pygmalion Effect = high expectations lead to improved performance.

The Pygmalion Effect is the phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to higher performance. The Pygmalion effect is also known as the Rosenthal Experiment, named after a research of Robert Rosenthal at Harvard. #learn #psychology #motivation Never miss a new video with our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dNU4BQ Join and support us! www.patreon.com/sprouts www.sproutsschools.com Read the entire script here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_W5bteMAIzRZ-EaVlDo11XIMWEoShj1dWxeizYyk6wU/edit Special Thanks to Avigail, Cedric Wang, Eva Marie Koblin, Gilad Karni, Julien Dumesnil, Mathis Nu, and all the others!!! You keep us going! Script: Selina Bador Artist: Pascal Gaggelli Voice: Mithril Creative Director: Jonas Koblin Made with MinuteVideos Sources: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED374096.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/2018/04/03/weve-been-here-before-the-replication-crisis-over-the-pygmalion-effect/ http://www.pseudoparanormal.com/2012/02/self-fulfilling-prophecy.html http://thebossshow.com/ https://hbr.org/2003/01/pygmalion-in-management

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Productivity

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Personal Development

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Videos

The Pygmalion Effect is the phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to higher performance. The Pygmalion effect is also known as the Rosenthal Experiment, named after a research of Robert Rosenthal at Harvard. #learn #psychology #motivation 

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Read the entire script here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_W5bteMAIzRZ-EaVlDo11XIMWEoShj1dWxeizYyk6wU/edit
 
Special Thanks to Avigail, Cedric Wang, Eva Marie Koblin, Gilad Karni, Julien Dumesnil, Mathis Nu, and all the others!!! You keep us going!

Script: Selina Bador
Artist: Pascal Gaggelli
Voice: Mithril
Creative Director: Jonas Koblin
Made with MinuteVideos
 
Sources:
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED374096.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/2018/04/03/weve-been-here-before-the-replication-crisis-over-the-pygmalion-effect/
http://www.pseudoparanormal.com/2012/02/self-fulfilling-prophecy.html
http://thebossshow.com/
https://hbr.org/2003/01/pygmalion-in-management

We make educational videos  about psychology, pedagogy and child development. We publish them on Creative Commons so students, teachers and parents can to use for free. To download our videos go to www.sproutsschools.com. To support our work go to www.patreon.com/sprouts

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The Pygmalion Effect

Many of us go through periods when we have to work intense and long hours and get very little time for rest. While this kind of overwork is not ideal, there are undoubtedly situations in which it becomes a necessity or makes sense. 
We need practical tips for surviving and thriving when we have to be fully committed. Here are some strategies that can help.

How to Get Through an Extremely Busy Time at Work

Premack’s principle: Use an easier behaviour like running an errand as a reward for a harder behaviour like writing a complex report.This approach can help you pace yourself during your workday, ensuring that you get regular breaks during which your mind can shift into a more relaxed gear, while still being productive. Think of it like recovering from bursts of running by walking instead of stopping.

Use Premack’s Principle

Compartmentalize: When engaged in tasks or parts of tasks you actually enjoy, make sure to focus on them exclusively. If you know the task is important and you’re approaching it efficiently, allow yourself to enjoy it. For recurrent hard assignments, think about the parts of it you like best at the beginning, middle, and end stages.

Compartmentalize

When you’re very busy, it’s tempting to try to cram productive activities, like responding to email or thinking through decisions, into any small crack of time. This could be when you’re standing in line at the supermarket, waiting for a presentation to start, or in the five minutes between finishing one thing and joining a meeting. When you’re slammed, it can seem essential to work during these moments. However, you can try not to fill every minute; save small scraps of time for mental rest.

The Small Scraps Of Time 

Add physical decompression rituals to your day, perhaps when you wake up, go to bed, or take a bathroom break.Try using context triggers — deciding which moments in the day you’ll use to physically decompress. For instance, maybe you can take some slow breaths whenever you go to the bathroom, or just after you wake up or just before you get into bed.

Physical Decompression Rituals

You can buffer yourself against the stress of feeling rushed and overloaded if you recurrently pair simple sources of pleasure with particular activities you’re not as excited to do. Pair pleasure experiences, like a favorite snack, with ones that feel more stressful.

Pair Pleasure Experiences With Other Activities

What to do when working less isn’t an option.

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Time Management

Pretend that you got out of bed one morning feeling disappointed, and you don't know why.
The first thing to do is facing that negative feeling and not suppressing it. While it may feel uncomfortable for a day, suppressing your emotions will take much longer to overcome.

Coping with  disappointment

Once you've sat with your negative feelings for long enough, doing some mental health hygiene can help to create a more positive mental outlook. <ul><li>Start the day by reading something inspiring or meaningful to help you escape doom-scrolling.</li><li>Find a positive statement and stick it where you can see it.</li><li>Also consider gratitude diaries, exercise, expressive writing, a good night's rest and music.</li><li>Consider what your disappointment will look like 50,000 years from now. </li><li>Imagine yourself from a third-person view.</li></ul>

Acts of mental health hygiene

Sorrow and disappointment are a big part of pandemic life – and England football fans are now feeling them keenly. But there are ways to deal with these distressing emotions

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Mental Health

Good grief: how to get over a bone-crushing disappointment

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Reading is one of the best sources of continuous learning. It allows your mind to grow, change and make new connections.
Highly successful learners read a lot: Elon Musk grew up reading two books a day, according to his brother. Bill Gates reads 50 books per year. Mark Zuckerberg reads at least one book every two weeks. Warren Buffett spends five to six hours per day reading five newspapers and 500 pages of corporate reports.

Reading and continuous learning

Learning is a journey, not a destination. It's a process of self-discovery, fueled by curiosity.
Learning is an investment that usually pays for itself in increased earnings. And in a fast-changing world, the learning skills quickly is becoming a necessity.

Learning as a process

Adopting an adaptable mindset (or growth mindset) means cultivating the belief that you can improve intelligence and performance because they are not fixed features.
This will have a significant impact on your motivation and on the process of searching for new opportunities in life.

The adaptable mindset

"We all have enough brainpower to master a new discipline — we use the right tools, approaches, or apply what we learn correctly. Almost anyone can learn anything — with the right technique. Better learning approaches can make the process enjoyable. "

Research shows that we retain approximately 90% of what we learn when we explain it to someone else or use the new information immediately.
Sharing with others what you've learned is one of the most effective ways to learn, and it also tests your knowledge, by assessing your capacity to transfer it to another. This process is called the “retrieval practice”.

Teaching what you know

Our brains naturally decline if we do nothing to protect them. With the right diet, we can slow the decline process.
The health of our brain can significantly change how your record, process and retrieve information.

Keep your brain healthy

<div class="insight_content">“Everyone thinks you need to ‘practice, practice, practice’ when learning something new. Instead, we found that resting, early and often, maybe just as critical to learning as practice.”</div>

Handpicked sources to help you adapt to the mindset of lifelong learners

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Health

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Communication

Lifelong Learners

Becoming a super learner is one of the most important skills you need to succeed in the 21st century. In the age technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education - a lifelong mastery of new models, skills and ideas.

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Habits

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Learning & Education

Habits of Super Learners

The term "deliberate practice" is mostly attributed to Karl Anders Ericsson, an influential figure in the field of performance psychology. Deliberate practice turns amateurs into professionals. It creates top performers in any field.
Doing something regularly but mindlessly is not the same as practicing it. Deliberate practice means repeatedly performing a set of activities with the intention of improving the specific skill.

Defining deliberate practice

While engaging in deliberate practise, we are always looking for errors or areas of weakness. Once we identify it, we establish a plan for improving it. If one approach does not work, we keep trying new ones until it does.
In using deliberate practice, we can overcome many limitations we might see as fixed. We can go further than we ever thought possible.

Deliberate practice aims at constant progress

Deliberate practice is a universal technique employed in any area you're trying to be the best at or get a little bit better at. 
For example, competitive fields with clear measurements such as music, dance football, horse riding, swimming, or chess. But we can also improve performance in fields such as teaching, nursing, surgery, therapy, programming, trading, writing, decision-making, leadership, studying, and communication.

Fields where we can improve performance

Our nature is to choose the easiest thing. When we practice something a lot, we develop habits that make the task almost effortless. While it may be helpful, it can interfere with our improvement. 
Deliberate practice means finding the weak areas that impact your overall performance and then target those.
<ul>
<li>Break the skill you want to improve into the smallest possible parts.</li>
<li>Then work through them in a logical order, starting with the fundamentals.</li>
<li>Put your practice sessions on your calendar.</li>
</ul>

Deliberate practice is structured and methodical

Most often, deliberate practice is repeated frustration and failure. Similar to a baby learning to walk, we will often fall for every step we take. That is the point. Since deliberate practice targets our weakest areas, it means doing the stuff we're not good at. We will get frustrated. 
Set a short, ambitious goal once a month, not impossible, then challenge yourself to it.

Deliberate practice is challenging and uncomfortable

Deliberate practice is very challenging and impossible to do all day long. At the high end, top practitioners rarely spend more than three to five hours per day on deliberate practice. More hours often result in diminishing returns. One hour per day is enough for substantial improvements, especially when it's consistently done over a long period.
Enough rest and recovery are vital. During deliberate practice, we need to switch to relaxing activities to feel refreshed.

Deliberate practice requires rest and recovery time

Practicing something without knowing if you are getting better is pointless. 
<ul>
<li>Identify the most important metrics related to performance. Keep a record of them each time you practice.</li>
<li>Be careful of vanity metrics. For example, if you use deliberate practice to improve email marketing skills to get more customers for your business. An increase in email subscribers is a vanity metric; the number of paying customers is a useful metric.</li>
</ul>

Deliberate practice involves constant feedback and measurement

Deliberate practice is most effective when used with a coach some of the time to give feedback, point out problems, suggest techniques for improvement, and provide vital motivation.
A coach can see your performance from a different perspective. If you don't have access to a coach, built the skill of metacognition (knowledge about your own knowledge), where it becomes possible to coach yourself systematically.

Deliberate practice: Using a coach or teacher

"…A critical part of self-evaluation is deciding what caused those errors. Average performers believe their errors were caused by factors outside their control: my opponent got lucky; the task was too hard; I just don’t have the natural ability for this. Top performers, by contrast, believe they are responsible for their errors."

Persisting with deliberate practice needs a lot of motivation. However, the motivation needs to come from within, not from external rewards or to avoid a negative consequence. We need to enjoy getting better for its own sake.
<ul>
<li>Make a list of reasons you want to work on a skill and the benefits you've experienced.</li>
<li>Keep a "motivation diary" for one week, scoring your motivation level every fifteen minutes during each pratice session.</li>
<li>Find a cheerleader to help sustain motivation.</li>
</ul>

Deliberate practice requires intrinsic motivation

<ul>
<li>Deliberate practice tends to fast track progress, but truly mastering a skill is a lifelong process. </li>
<li>There are no examples of people labelled as prodigies that did not put in enormous amounts of deliberate practice.</li>
<li>Creative genius tends to come after ten years of studying relevant knowledge and developing skills, research found.</li>
<li>Those who eventually gain recognition produce an enormous quantity of less remarkable work.</li>
</ul>

Deliberate practice takes time

The deeper we focus during deliberate practice sessions, the more we get out of them.<ul><li>If you can pay your full attention for only five minutes in practice, then take a break every five minutes. Increase your focus time as you get better.</li><li>Figure out which practice activities have the biggest potential to increase your performance. Plan to do them first before considering activities that offer marginal gains.</li></ul>

Deliberate practice requires your full attention

The spacing effect refers to how we can better remember information if we learn them in multiple sessions with increasingly longer intervals between them. It is nearly impossible to practice something once and expect it to stick.
Every time you're learning a new part of a skill, make a schedule for when you'll review it. Typically, it involves going over information after an hour, then a day, then every other day, then weekly, then fortnightly, then monthly, then every six months, then yearly.

Deliberate practice leverages the spacing effect

Deliberate practice is more complex and nuanced than we like to believe.
<ul>
<li>Deliberate practice is necessary but insufficient. Once you reach a high level for any skill, everyone at that level is engaging in a lot of deliberate practice. Then more luck and randomness, innate talents or physical advantages matter.</li>
<li>Practitioners miss out on other parts of life as they devote most of their time to practice.</li>
<li>Sometimes, we can practice past the point where it serves us. We need to know when to pivot.</li>
</ul>

Limitations of deliberate practice

Deliberate practice is the key to expert performance in writing, teaching, sports, programming, music, medicine, therapy, chess, business, and more. But there’s more to it than 10,000 hours. Read to learn how to accelerate learning, overcome plateaus, turn experience into expertise, and enhance focus.

The Ultimate Deliberate Practice Guide: How to Be the Best

Design thinking is a methodology to innovate new designs into products and services and can be applied to many other problems in our lives, including how we live them.
Designers who get stuck in various design problems, complications and unforeseen situations try to find innovative solutions and work on their problems in a creative way. This is because what they are doing hasn’t been done before.

Design Thinking And Our Life

Getting stuck in obstacles is a constant, common process in life, and while building any new design. We can get unstuck by doing what designers do: Reframing our beliefs, assumptions and situations.

Getting Stuck

Dysfunctional people, who are stuck in an old belief pattern will say things like:
<ul>
<li>We must know our passion.</li>
<li>We should know what to do by the time we are out of college.</li>
<li>We should keep optimizing to be at our best.</li>
</ul>
All of these belief patterns assume that life is a linear, logical process, which it is definitely not.

Old Belief Patterns

We all want life to be meaningful and purposeful. When we connect the dots of life, trying to find out who we are, what we believe and what we do, our life story, however crooked, begins to take shape.
We can jot down our life views, our work life views, our relationships, and try to experience life in the way it gives us meaning.

Design Your Life: Connecting The Dots

Gravity problems are the things that you cannot change. You cannot do anything but accept gravity, and some problems are just there, whether we acknowledge them or not.
A work through or a work around strategy is required to handle a gravity problem.

Design Your Life: Recognizing Your Gravity Problems

An Odyssey plan or a rubric is when you have to ask certain questions with different sets of base standards, omitting certain parameters or constraints and imagining the result. It generates many ideas out of one idea. 
Imagining different life designs and the outcome can trigger new ideas that didn’t exist before due to mental constraints.

Design Your Life: Brainstorming Using A Rubric

We can use new learning experiences to build a prototype of what we need in our minds. It can be a prototype conversation or experience.
Example: If we want to know how something works, we can intern there for a week to get hands-on knowledge with real-world experience.
Likewise, If we have a feeling of uncertainty and doubt about how something works, we can check it out as a demo, and find more in-depth details for the same.

Design Your Life: Build Prototypes

<ul>
<li>We need to make the right choice, as with every choice there is lost opportunity (called opportunity cost) and a time, energy and resource commitment.</li>
<li>Making the perfect choice is arduous and will consume a lot of time, while still not feeling satisfactory, due to regret, second guesses and even Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) where we need to check and understand everything that is happening around us. </li>
<li>A good enough choice which is not changeable will make you happier and relaxed.</li>
</ul>

Design Your Life: Life Choices

Feel like your life could use an overhaul -- or a few tweaks -- but don't know where to begin? Designers specialize in coming up with better products and better worlds, and you can use their mindset to help you re-envision and revise, says design professor Bill Burnett.

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Career

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Business

How to use design thinking to create a happier life for yourself

According to the Falsification Principle of Karl Popper, we cannot prove the validity of a hypothesis. We can only disprove it. 
However, we can get closer to the truth by improving our knowledge, using inductive or deductive reasoning. Both are based on evidence, but provide different ways of evaluating the facts.

How to improve your knowledge

Inductive reasoning involves looking for a trend or a pattern, then using the observations to formulate a general truth. For example, "When I eat peanuts, my throat swells up and I have difficulty breathing. Therefore, I'm likely allergic to peanuts."
Limitations: 
<ul>
<li>Inductive reasoning leads to uncertain conclusions as there is no way to prove the veracity. </li>
<li>Inductive reasoning can also lead to wrong conclusions. We may mistake correlation with causation, or apply the particular to the general.</li>
</ul>

Inductive reasoning: From observation to theory

Deductive reasoning starts from established facts, then applies logical steps to reach a conclusion. For example, "Bachelors are unmarried men. Jack is unmarried. Therefore, Jack is a bachelor."
Limitations:
<ul>
<li>If the premise or the logic applied is flawed, deductive reasoning can lead to the wrong conclusions. For example, "All dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore, all dogs have four legs," is false because injury or species characteristics mean not all animals have four legs.</li>
<li>It is impractical to use on a daily basis, as it requires a factual premise to start from, which we don't always have access to.</li>
<li>Building a premise on an outdated hypothesis can lead to the wrong conclusion.</li>
</ul>

Deductive reasoning: From theory to confirmation

Depending on the nature of the task, inductive and deductive reasoning can be used in combination. 
Researchers use inductive reasoning to formulate theories and hypotheses. Then they use deductive reasoning for evaluating their theories in specific situations.

Combining inductive and deductive reasoning

While both inductive and deductive reasoning are based on evidence, they provide different ways of solving problems, making decisions, and evaluating facts.

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Philosophy

Inductive versus deductive reasoning: how to make stronger arguments

The instructions tell a computer how to transform a set of facts into useful information.
The facts are data. The useful information is knowledge for people, instructions for machines or input for another algorithm. Typical examples are sorting sets of numbers or finding routes through maps.

An algorithm is a set of instructions

A close look at how you decide what clothes to put on in the morning can help you understand how computers work.