Life is marked by symmetrical structures, from the arms of a starfish to the identical subunits of various proteins. Why this is the case is not understood. One hypothesis is that symmetrical structures are easier to encode and, hence, are likelier to evolve. It is possible that evolution acts as an algorithm with a bias toward simplicity.

Nature Is Symmetrical

The abundance of <a href="https://bigthink.com/13-8/matter-antimatter-asymmetry/">symmetry</a> in biological forms begs the question of whether symmetric designs provide an advantage. Any engineer would tell you that they do. Symmetry is crucial to designing modular, robust parts that can be combined together to create more complex structures. Think of Lego blocks and how they can be assembled easily to create just about anything.

The Advantage Of Symmetry

Nucleic acids and proteins are information-carrying molecules. They carry information not just about how to build an organism but also how it evolved to be. Many theorists have called information the currency of life.The origin of life is the origin of an information-processing system.

Information and Evolution

Protein subunits attach to each other via interface surfaces to form complex structures. The greater the number of possible interfaces, the more complex a protein is. When the researchers looked at existing structures in the Protein Data Bank, they noticed that most proteins had few interfaces. Overall, it is much more common for nature to produce proteins with low complexity and high symmetry than proteins with high complexity and low symmetry. Computer simulations produced a similar result.

The Simplicity of Symmetry

Modularity is another important feature of biological systems, and — just like Lego bricks — thrifty organisms often repurpose genetic or biochemical modules for new objectives. While there are different theories for why evolution selects for modular systems, this study shows that the simplicity of modular parts is a sufficient explanation. Recent work from other research groups also shows that <a href="https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008570">complex morphologies are rare</a>.

Evolution as An Algorithmic Process

Symmetrical objects are less complex than non-symmetrical ones. Perhaps evolution acts as an algorithm with a bias toward simplicity.

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Fashion & Beauty

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Technology & The Future

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Science & Nature

Simple is beautiful: Why evolution repeatedly selects symmetrical structures

These words quickly signal that a speaker needs to click the unmute button. But the phrase — often uttered by multiple people at once — has become notoriously grating. It also makes the person on the receiving end of the comment feel silly.A gentler, alternative, “If you’re speaking, I can’t hear you.” Instead of making the silent speaker feel silly, this reframing shows them that you truly want to hear what it is they have to say.

"You’re on mute"

Many of us have heard this metaphor in many a meeting. But what is the speaker actually saying about the initiative being described? Is it flying at so quick a speed that we can’t be expected to understand or question its flaws? Is this turn of phrase an excuse for haphazard execution? Perhaps we can be more specific by identifying the pieces of the project that we’ve figured out, what we’re still working on, what we don’t know yet, and how we plan to make adjustments based on what we learn.

"We’re building the plane while flying it"

Without a clear, quick mention of how and when this “offline” conversation will take place, this is a jargony way to dismiss someone’s idea and put them off indefinitely.
And since any meaningful follow-up will likely take place online, it also no longer makes sense. Why not go with something like this: “That’s an important topic that’s beyond the scope of this meeting. I’ll email you when we wrap up.”

"Let’s take this offline"

If meetings are well-structured, well-run, and surprisingly concise, we should celebrate the fruits of our collaboration and look forward to our next gathering.The next time you find yourself tempted to offer your teammates a few precious “minutes of their life back,” consider saying, “Wow. Because everyone was so productive, we’re done 10 minutes early. Thank you so much for your presence and participation. Have a great day.” This simple rephrasing has the power to reframe your work.

"I’m going to give you 10 minutes of your life back"

Often among the first words uttered by an online meeting host, this practice dishonors the time of those who joined on time and does nothing to establish a culture of punctuality for meetings.
At the same time, there are legitimate reasons why an individual may be late to a Zoom meeting (or an in-person one).
To make the most of those inevitable few minutes when you’re waiting for stragglers, one idea is to start with brief tone-setting exercises. For example, ask everyone to write down their intention or objective for the meeting.

"We’re going to wait five minutes for everyone to join"

“I’m going to give you 10 minutes of your life back,” and other unbearable meeting jargon.

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Remote Work

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Personal Development

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Corporate Culture

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Communication

Please Stop Using These Phrases in Meetings

People who suffer from shyness and imposter syndrome may find it very hard to speak in meetings without an invitation. It is key to share your growth, seek accountability and support from colleagues to help find your voice.

Speaking up in meetings

<ul><li>Realise your responsibility. You owe it to your team to share your perspective.</li><li>Ask for agenda items and the meeting's purpose to help you prepare.</li><li>Ponder on the topics, and find information in advance so that you can vocalise your expertise.</li><li>Speak with your body. Show that you are 100% invested in the discussion.</li><li>Say something stupid. If you don't, you're not sharing enough.</li><li>Stop taking notes. When you take notes, you speak less.</li><li>If you can't add to the conversation, ask more questions.</li><li>Consider how to serve meeting attendees.</li><li>If you can't share your thoughts, do so after the meeting.</li></ul>

Tips on how to show up in meetings

For someone who suffers from shyness and a healthy dose of imposter syndrome, speaking in meetings without an invitation is incredibly hard for me. Over the past few years, the one piece of constant…

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

The Introverts Guide to Winning Meetings: How I Learned to Show Up

When we gather, we often make the mistake of merging category with purpose. We outsource our decisions and our assumptions about our gatherings to people, formats, and contexts that are not our own.We get caught into the false belief that knowing the category of the gathering—the board meeting, workshop, birthday party, town hall—will be instructive to designing it. But we often choose the template—and the activities and structure that go along with it—before we’re clear on our purpose.

Gatherings: category vs purpose

<ul><li>Specificity is a crucial ingredient. The more focused and particular a gathering is, the more narrowly it frames itself and the more passion it arouses.</li><li>Uniqueness is another ingredient. Before you gather, ask yourself: Why is this gathering different from all my other gatherings?</li><li>A good gathering purpose should also be disputable. When the inevitable tensions arise—guest list, venue, one night versus two—your purpose won’t be there to guide you. A disputable purpose works like a decision filter.</li></ul>

Arrive at something worth gathering about

"In a world of infinite choices, choosing one thing is the revolutionary act. Imposing that restriction is actually liberating."

"Your opening needs to be a kind of pleasant shock therapy. It should grab people. And in grabbing them, it should both awe the guests and honor them. It must plant in them the paradoxical feeling of being totally welcomed and deeply grateful to be there."

"None of us shows up as a blank slate to anything."

Barack Obama's aunt once told him, 'If everyone is family, no one is family.' It is blood that makes a tribe, a border that makes a nation.The same is true of gatherings. The corollary to this saying: If everyone is invited, no one is invited—in the sense of being truly held by the group.

By closing the door, you create the room

Having a purpose simply means knowing why you’re gathering and doing your participants the honor of being convened for a reason.And once you have that purpose in mind, you will suddenly find it easier to make all the decisions that a gathering requires.

The purpose of a gathering

"I reminded them that it’s hard to build a movement if you don’t know who’s in it."

What’s wrong with someone who’s irrelevant to the purpose? The crux of excluding thoughtfully and intentionally is mustering the courage to shift your perception so that you understand that people who aren’t fulfilling the purpose of your gathering are detracting from it, even if they do nothing to detract from it.Particularly in smaller gatherings, every single person affects the dynamics of a group. Excluding well and purposefully is reframing who and what you are being generous to—your guests and your purpose.

How to exclude well

Isn’t exclusion in gatherings something we’ve been fighting against for years? Isn’t exclusion, however thoughtful or intentional, the enemy of diversity? It is not.When I talk about generous exclusion, I am speaking of ways of bounding a gathering that allow the diversity in it to be heightened and sharpened, rather than diluted in a hodgepodge of people.

<ul><li>Groups of 6: Groups of this rough size are wonderfully conducive to high levels of sharing.</li><li>Groups of 12 to 15: 12 is small enough to build trust and intimacy, and large enough to offer a diversity of opinion and constructive unfamiliarity.</li><li>Groups of 30: It starts to feel like a party, whether or not your gathering is one. Groups of this size are generally too big for a single conversation.</li><li>﻿Groups of 150: It’s the tier at which, “intimacy and trust is still palpable at the level of the whole group; higher up, the group becomes an audience.”</li></ul>

Magic numbers in groups

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

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Books

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Society, Arts & Culture

The Art of Gathering

Remote working has only exacerbated the problem of excess meetings, with casual deskside chats replaced by default half-hour Zoom calls. Analysis of employees' meeting invitations at 21,500 global companies by Harvard Business School revealed that although meetings were on average 12 minutes shorter versus pre-pandemic, people were attending 13% more of them, with the number of invitees rising by 14%.
More meetings, for more employees, mean more fragmented workdays – which impacts on productivity. Zoom fatigue creeps in, the risk of burnout spikes.

Excess meetings

Humans are inherently social beings; our instinct to meet in order to strategize and share ideas predates modern civilization, let alone office culture.As knowledge work boomed in the mid-20th Century, businesses gradually moved away from command-and-control style leadership towards collaboration. Meetings became the best process to allow the coming together of ideas, inspiring innovation.Once video-conferencing technology became more sophisticated, meetings were no longer constrained by room size or office hours.

How meetings bloomed

"It’s become too easy to take someone’s schedule away from them. People don’t think – they just click ‘yes’ to the invite"

Meetings can enable teams to brainstorm, align thinking and take decisive action, but without clear goals, they lose focus. They often bloat – what should be a quick one-on-one conversation becomes an hour-long call requiring entire teams. Bad meetings have knock-on effects that spill into the workday, as well as depriving workers of their time: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191111-blame-your-worthless-workdays-on-meeting-recovery-syndrome">Meeting recovery syndrome</a>, where workers ruminate post-meeting, can dent productivity. Constant context switching comes at a cost: it’s a form of multitasking, which our brains aren’t built to handle.

Good meetings, bad meetings

Some companies have banned meetings, either permanently or for specific days each week.
Many tech-related start-ups, which often employ remote workers in different time zones prioritize efficient asynchronous communication rather than live calls.

Banning meetings

<ul>
<li>A common pitfall is that the unproductive Zoom calls are simply pushed to either side of the meeting-free day. Worse, time-stretched managers sometimes ignore company policy: they see a yawning gap in workers’ schedules on a no-meeting day and set up an hour-long call. Employees, meanwhile, presume the meeting must be important and feel obliged to attend.</li>
<li>There can be other unintended consequences, too. Meetings can be a surprisingly efficient way of exchanging information. Without alternatives in place, a quick question during a morning catch-up can be replaced by email ping-pong.</li>
</ul>

The struggle with implementing the "no-meeting" trend

The no-meeting trend is fairly new: there's little concrete data to support whether it works and what gets lost. It’s why most of the discussion around it is anecdotal. However, it seems that without addressing pre-existing issues, an outright meeting ban simply moves the problem elsewhere.
The goal isn’t to eliminate meetings, it’s to eliminate the bad ones. You need to do the hard stuff – changing meetings and the ecosystem in which they sit so they’re more effective. Just banning them on an afternoon isn’t enough.”

Reform, don't remove

Some companies are weeding calls out of calendars to boost worker productivity. The idea is good in theory – but how about in practise?

Does banning meetings help workers get back their time?

<ul>
<li>Saying "go ahead" when you're overlapping with someone. Going out of your way to let other people speak is a good thing, and so is following up to make sure everyone’s been heard.</li>
<li>Schedule time for socializing. People should be encouraged to show up a few minutes early for a meeting, maybe, or there could be time for conversation on the agenda. </li>
<li>Accept multitasking. Maybe workers in the office should have the option to call in to auditoriums and conference rooms, or maybe we should just normalize people who aren’t core to a conversation working on their laptops during meetings. </li>
<li>Maybe have fewer meetings. Meetings can eat up a lot of time, and it’s worth considering whether that time is well invested—or if you could accomplish the same thing without a meeting.</li>
</ul>

4 lessons from remote meetings

Zapier’s Justin Pot says as people start transitioning back into the office, I hope they’ll take some of the lessons they learned from online meetings to improve the in-person ones.


career

Career

4 lessons from remote meetings we should definitely bring back to the office

If you've heard the phrase "my life flashed before my eyes", it's pretty self-explanatory what life review means.
For over a century, life reviews were well reported but there aren't much studies about it. There are two theories as to why this happens:
<ul>
<li>The first theory is that life events may exist as a continuum in our minds, and may come to the forefront in extreme conditions of psychological and physiological stress;</li>
<li>The second is that our memories "unload" themselves when we're on the brink of death like cortical disinhibition, but usually serene and ordered, not chaotic.</li>
</ul>

Explaining Life Reviews

Ever since Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, may people now argue that we live in a "static block universe" wherein time is spread out like a panorama where the past, the present, and the future all co-exist simultaneously.Other proficient people such as Carlo Rovelli, a modern physicist, also holds the view that time is not linear. This is somewhat like a reflection of Immanuel Kant's perception of time as well; that it is simply a product of our minds.

Spatial Time Thinking

The experience of one's life, both the past and sometimes future, flashing before one's eyes has a long history. Many survivors of near-death experiences report the same: a hurried vision of significant moments in their life, or sometimes even what is yet to come. A psychologist looks at why in this article.

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Health

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Problem Solving

Why does life flash before your eyes in a life-threatening scenario?

In most scenarios, you don't need to follow a structured intermittent fasting plan in order to reap its benefits.Skip meals from time to time when you're inclined to do so because you're not that hungry or too busy to cook. It's spontaneous but make sure to eat healthier during the other meals.

Spontaneous meal skipping

This diet was popularized by fitness expert Ori Hofmekler. It involves consuming small amounts of raw fruits and vegetables during the day and having one huge meal at night.

The Warrior Diet

This type of intermittent fasting has several different versions but the gist of this is that you fast every other day. On some days this diet will leave you going to bed hungry and it's not a pleasant feeling so it's most likely unsustainable as a long-term diet plan.Be mindful that this may seem rather extreme so this is not suitable for beginners.

Alternate-day fasting

The Eat-Stop-Eat diet plan was popularized by Brad Pilon, a fitness expert.This type of diet involves a 24-hour fast twice a week. It's a fairly difficult type of intermittent fasting but you are not obligated to do a full-on 24 hours right away. It's fine t start from 10-14 hours and then moving upward from there.Like any other types of intermittent fasting, water, coffee, or any other zero-calorie drinks are allowed.

Eat-Stop-Eat

The 5:2 Diet, also known as the Fast Diet, was popularized by British journalist Michael Mosley.This type of intermittent fasting involves eating normally 5 days of the week and then restricting your calorie intake to 500 (women) and 600 (men) for 2 days of your choosing.

The 5:2 Diet

The 16/8 method is the most popular type of intermittent fasting. This was also known as the Leangains protocol that was popularized by fitness expert Martin Berkhan.This method basically means that you fast for 14-16 hours a day and then restricting your eating window to 8-10 hours per day. You can easily fit in three meals within that window.However, it is important to keep in mind that this will not work if you consume an excessive amount of calories and don't eat primarily healthy.

The 16/8 Method

Intermittent fasting is an effective way to lose weight and improve health. This article lists the 6 most popular intermittent fasting methods.

food

Food

6 Popular Ways to Do Intermittent Fasting

Yeast-free alternatives:
<ul>
<li>Chapatis </li>
<li>Rye bread from sprouted wheat</li>
<li>Tortilla bread from corn</li>
</ul>
Gluten-free flour alternatives:
<ul>
<li>Rice</li>
<li>Chickpea</li>
<li>Soy</li>
<li>Bean</li>
<li>Corn</li>
</ul>

Baking bread: Yeast-free and gluten-free alternatives

The best way to keep homemade bread fresh is to bake it, let it cool, then place it in the freezer.The reason why we need to put it in the freezer is that the moment we take the bread out of the oven it starts to lose its moisture.Starch retrogradation is the chemical reaction that changes the structure of starch molecules and forces water out of the bread.

Keeping bread fresh

The Maillard Reaction is the name of the chemical reaction that happens between amino acids and sugars. This chemical reaction also requires moisture and heat in order to happen.The brown crusty top is the result of the chemical reaction stated above. If you want your bread to have it you can do either of the two:<ul><li>spray the dough with water a few times while it is cooking; or</li><li>fill a baking tray with ice cubes and place it in the bottom of your preheated oven.</li></ul>

Crusty top bread

Once your dough has doubled its size, press the dough with your finger -- if it bounces back then that means it is ready to be baked. Anything otherwise means that it needs more time to be proved.

Finger test your dough

Proving activates the yeast in the dough. You don't need proving cupboards in order to perfect making bread.Although cupboards provide constant temperature and humidity, they can be done just by covering your dough with a tea towel. It is also possible to cold prove the dough at room temperature or you can leave your dough in a warm oven.

Proving cupboards

When you put salt in the dough that has yeast in it, it absorbs moisture that aids in controlling the fermentation process. The reason why salt does that is that salt is hygroscopic so it attracts water.

Forget me not: Salt

Bakers use one species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae that means "sugar-eating fungi."Yeasts are single-celled organisms that help make the bread light and bubbly.Bread connoisseurs prefer live yeast but dry yeast has a longer shelf life. If you're open to a yeast recommendation, instant yeast is the way to go. It's way dehydrated than dry yeast and it works on the bread quicker and has a longer shelf life than the already dry yeast.

Know your yeast!

Kneading your dough lines up the messy strands of gluten and makes your bread stronger.

Knead, knead, knead

If you don't want heavy and dense bread, make sure to use strong flour. Strong flour has high amounts of protein in which contains glutenin and glian that makes gluten when water is added into the mix.The gluten gives it its elasticity and enables the dough to rise with a good structure.

Use strong flour

Archeological artifacts that are discovered many years ago prove to us that bread has and always will be comfort food to most of us. Natufian hunter-gatherers were making flatbreads from wild cereals from over 12,000 years ago but it's possible that baking could have started even earlier.

Our relationship with bread

With life still in lockdown, more people than ever are turning to baking. Here’s how to bake the perfect loaf, with nutrition scientist Haleh Moravej.

A scientist’s guide to life: How to bake bread brilliantly

The inner voice can keep us trapped in a hell of our own making. But it can also be one of our greatest strengths - if we can control it.
From time to time, we are all fixated on something that happened. We voice in out heads replay it over and over in our heads. I shouldn't have snapped at Dad when he is always so patient with me. We ruminate, we worry, we catastrophize.

Describing mental chatter

There is a difference between a normal stream of consciousness and going into a chatter spiral. 
When you find yourself rehearsing the same thing repeatedly without trying to come up with an objective solution, and the negative thoughts start to prevent you from doing other things, you are experiencing chatter.

Negative mental chatter

<ul>
<li>Do distanced self-talk. We can coach ourselves through our problem like we're talking to another person. Use your name to address yourself. "Jim, you could do this."</li>
<li>Take nature walks. Walking in nature subtly draws our attention to interesting things and gives our attention the ability to recharge. It gives you a sense of perspective.</li>
<li>Find people who can help you when you're struggling with something.</li>
</ul>

How to quiet your mind chatter

We’ve all been there. Stuck in our own heads, fixated on a two-minute conversation from three days ago. We replay it over and over.&#8230;

Simple is beautiful: Why evolution repeatedly selects symmetrical structures

Please Stop Using These Phrases in Meetings

The Introverts Guide to Winning Meetings: How I Learned to Show Up

The Art of Gathering

Does banning meetings help workers get back their time?

Maria