The label ‘pathological liar’ gets thrown around a lot, especially in the direction of politicians or celebrities. Although it isn't a formal psychiatric diagnosis, it is a recognised concept that psychologists and psychiatrists have been interested in for a long time, at least since 1891 when the German psychiatrist Anton Delbrueck coined the label ‘Pseudologia fantastica’ to describe several of his patients who told an astonishing amount of fantastical lies (other similar psychological terms include ‘deception syndrome’ and ‘mythomania’). So why do people do it?

Snake In A Suit

Worth noting is that while psychopaths and people with antisocial personality disorder can be inclined to excessive lying, most pathological liars are not psychopaths, nor do they necessarily have a personality disorder. Indeed, while psychopaths and people with an antisocial personality are typically manipulative and self-serving, pathological liars often lie for no apparent purpose.Another key feature of pathological lying, as opposed to being a common-or-garden compulsive liar, is that the lies are often particularly bizarre or far-fetched.

Spot The Fox

When it comes to coping with a pathological liar, it's perhaps worth remembering the likely cause of the person's tendency to tell so many far-fetched stories. While their behaviour might be irritating and even cause serious harm (especially when it comes to false allegations), if it's driven by a deep-seated insecurity, then you might be wise to see it as a call for help, and to resist the urge to confront the person too forcefully or without sympathy.

Dealing With A Pathological Liar

If the pathological liar in your life is someone you care about, perhaps you could help them find more productive ways to address their low self-esteem and anxiety, or even to come to terms with a difficult past, if that's relevant. Although research into effective treatments is largely lacking (partly because ‘pathological liar’ has yet to be recognised as a formal diagnosis), a sensible step could be to gently encourage the pathological liar you know to seek professional mental health support.

The Bottom Line

Rather than telling the occasional white lie, pathological liars habitually and regularly tell fibs, often painting themselves as a hero or a victim. Why?

Stashed ideas

Reality Check: What drives pathological liars and how should you deal with them? | BBC Science Focus Magazine

Invisible work is not unappreciated or uncompensated work. Instead, invisible work refers to the highly valuable components of our work process that aren’t trackable. Invisible work includes deep observation, listening, daydreaming, listening to our intuition, pondering questions about a challenge or opportunity after a meeting, then reframing those questions.

Invisible work is vital to work production

A 2021 report from Indeed found that 52% of workers are feeling burned out. That's 9% more than a pre-Covid study. At the start of this hybrid work world era, we have an opportunity to stop showing up to work where we cloak our physical selves in uniform and instead show up as our full authentic selves.

We have an opportunity to be our authentic selves

<ul><li>Incentivize it. Give your teams the money and the time to connect with strangers who will spark new conversations and questions and shed new light on old problems.</li><li>Get out of the building. The best engineers push away from their desks and walk the floor</li><li>Take breaks during the day, but also micro-breaks throughout the year.</li></ul>

Ways to make room for invisible work

Creativity strategist Natalie Nixon says that time spent thinking, wondering, or doing something else makes us more creative and productive and, ultimately, innovative. 


Your “invisible work” is key to your most productive self

One myth is that grandmasters can see ten or more moves ahead. The truth is that in just the first four moves, there are 318 billion moves you can make. This is too much even for grandmasters, so they use various techniques to be able to look ahead.

Grandmasters know how to look ahead

<ul><li>Take a group, a chess position, and see what possibilities can come from that group.</li><li>Pattern recognition, which is remembering a lot of positions that look similar and extrapolating truths from that.</li><li>The stepping-stone method is to take a position, freeze it in your mind, and guess the next position.</li><li>Retrograde analysis, which is, in order to look ahead, it pays to look backwards. </li></ul>

Chess techniques to look ahead

Grandmasters study the endgame to steer the position in front of them. This way, they know ten moves ago that they will win because they know where they were going. Take as an example the following sentence:  "After reading this sentence, you will realize that the the brain doesn't recognize a second 'the'." Most people will only catch 'the' the second time around. This is because the brain ignores anything that breaks with its logical stream. However, if you read the sentence backwards, you would easily catch it.

The usefulness of retrograde analysis

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/working-backward-to-solve-problems-maurice-ashley Imagine where you want to be someday. Now, how did you get there? Retrograde analysis is a style of problem solving where you work backwards from the endgame you want. It can help you win at chess -- or solve a problem in real life. At TEDYouth 2012, chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley delves into his favorite strategy. Talk by Maurice Ashley.

Working backward to solve problems - Maurice Ashley

Sometimes called guardianship (depending on the state), a conservatorship is a legal arrangement whereby a conservator (or guardian) is appointed to make decisions on the incapacitated person's, behalf when they are found unable to manage daily life without being a danger to themselves or others. Conservatorship mostly deals with the management of the conservatee's finances, whereas guardianship deals with everyday care, such as help around the home, with medical care, etc. Britney Spears's conservatorship allows for both.There are an estimated 1.5 million adults under guardianship in the U.S

 What A Conservatorships Is

<ul><li>If you want to understand the modern conservatorship, you have to go back in time—at least half a millennium: these provisions go back to medieval England, to when the Crown took over the estates of noblemen who were unable to manage them.</li><li>Conservatorships have changed in scope over the years. Whereas they have historically been all-encompassing more limited conservatorships are becoming an option.</li><li>Conservatorships aren't necessarily easy to obtain. In general, since the late 1960s, it has become more difficult to commit someone against their will.</li></ul>

Conservatorship: Medieval Roots

<ul><li>When anyone is put in charge of another's wellbeing, there's a risk for abuse, especially in the case of fame and fortune.</li><li> Without money or influence, the conservatee may struggle to prove that they are being abused by their conservator. Once you're deemed "mentally unfit," anything you say or do can be questioned. </li><li>Conservators are paid for providing care. Because of this payment, she says, some are going to try to push to keep the conservatorship in place.</li><li>Conservatorships are there for a reason. They provide care for people who cannot care for themselves. Think of someone with severe dementia who, without a conservator, might forget that they left the stove on.</li></ul>

Conservatorship: Dangers and Benefits

The #FreeBritney movement has gained traction since she spoke publicly about why she wants to end her conservatorship. Experts weigh in on what her case means.

What #FreeBritney Can Tell Us About Mental Health and the Law

Long-term thinking is more challenging than most people imagine. It is then also more lucrative than many people think.
The long run consists of a collection of short runs that you have to put up with: recessions, bear markets, meltdowns and surprises. Instead of assuming long-term thinkers don't have to deal with nonsense, the question is how you can endure all the short uphills.

Long-term thinking

"The future is much like the present, only longer."

Your investors, coworkers, spouses and friends have to sign up for the ride. Being right is one thing. But you also need to be able to convince those whose support you rely on.
An investment manager who loses 40% can tell his investors, "We're in this for the long run," and believe it. But the investors may not believe it and bail. Even if the manager is right, no one's around to benefit.
Or when you have a great idea that will take time to prove, but your boss and coworkers aren't as patient.

Your belief in the long run isn't enough

The world constantly changes, which makes changing your mind essential. Long-term thinking can become a crutch for those who are wrong but don't want to admit that something used to be true, but the world moved on from there.
Doing long-term thinking means identifying when you're patient or just stubborn. Know the few things in your industry that will never change and accept that everything else will need constant updating and adapting.

Patience is often stubbornness in disguise

You may feel that everything will be fine if stocks fell 30%. You may even see it as an opportunity.
But stocks fall 30% because there's a collapse, a terrorist attack, or a pandemic. In that context, you may instead switch to a survival mindset and not have the endurance you imagined.

It's hard to know how you'll react to decline

A long term horizon with a set end date is as reliant on chance as a short time horizon. You don't know what the world will look like in ten years' time.
A superior view has a flexible end date. It is true that time is compounding's magic. But the odds of success is deepest when you mix a long time horizon with an indefinite end date. The more flexibility you have, the less you need to know what is up next.

Long term is more about flexibility

Long-term thinking is easier to believe in than accomplish. Most people know it’s the right strategy in investing, careers, relationships – anything that compounds. But saying “I’m in it for the long run” is a bit like standing at the base of Mt. Everest, pointing to the top, and saying, “That’s where I’m heading.” Well, that’s nice. Now comes the test. Long term is harder than most people imagine, which is why it’s more lucrative than many people assume. Everything worthwhile has a price, and the prices aren’t always obvious. The real price of long term – the skills required, the mentality needed – is easy to minimize, often summarized with simple phrases like “be more patient,” as if that explains why so many people can’t. To do long term effectively you have to come to terms with a few points. 1. The long run is just a collection of short runs you have to put up with. Saying you have a 10-year time horizon doesn’t exempt you from all the nonsense that happens during the next 10 years. Everyone has to experience the recessions, the bear markets, the meltdowns, the surprises and the memes at the same time. So rather than assuming long-term thinkers don’t have to deal with nonsense, the question becomes how can you endure a neverending parade of nonsense. Long-term thinking can be a deceptive safety blanket that people assume lets them bypass the painful and unpredictable short run. But it never does. It might be the opposite: The longer your time horizon the more calamities and disasters you’ll experience. Baseball player Dan Quisenberry once said, “The future is much like the present, only longer.” Dealing with that reality requires a certain kind of alignment that’s easy to overlook: 2. Your belief in the long run isn’t enough. Your investors, coworkers, spouses, and friends have to sign up for the ride. An investment manager who loses 40% can tell his investors, “It’s OK, we’re in this for the long run,” and believe it. But the investors may not believe it. They might bail. The firm might not survive. Then even if the manager turns out to be right, it doesn’t matter – no one’s around to benefit. The same thing happens when you have the guts to stick it out but your spouse doesn’t. Or when you have a great idea that will take time to prove, but your boss and coworkers aren’t as patient. These are not rarities. They’re some of the most common outcomes in investing. A lot of it comes from the gap between what you believe and what you can convince other people of. Intelligence vs. storytelling. People mock how much short-term thinking there is in the financial industry, and they should. But I also get it: The reason so many financial professionals stray towards short-termism is because it’s the only way to run a viable business when customers flee at the first sign of trouble. But the reason customers flee is often because investors have done such a poor job communicating how investing works, what their strategy is, what they should expect as an investor, and how to deal with inevitable volatility and cyclicality. Eventually being right is one thing. But can you eventually be right and convincing to those whose support you rely on? That’s completely different, and easy to overlook. 3. Patience is often stubbornness in disguise. Things happen almost daily now that would have been inconceivable just a decade ago (budget deficits, interest rates, meme-stock valuations, retail investor participation, etc.). The world changes, which makes changing your mind not just helpful but crucial. But changing your mind is hard because fooling yourself into believing a falsehood is so much easier than admitting a mistake. Long-term thinking can become a crutch for those who are wrong but don’t want to change their mind. They say, “I’m just early” or “everyone else is crazy” when they can’t let go of something that used to be true but the world moved on from. Doing long-term thinking well requires identifying when you’re being patient or just stubborn. Not an easy thing to do. The only solution is knowing the very few things in your industry that will never change and putting everything else in a bucket that’s in constant need of updating and adapting. The few (very few) things that never change are candidates for long-term thinking. Everything else has a shelf life. 4. It’s hard to know how you’ll react to decline. If I say, “How would you feel if stocks fall 30%?” you probably picture a world where everything is the same as it is today except stock prices are 30% lower. And in that world it’s easy to say, “That would be fine, I’d even see it as an opportunity.” But the reason stocks fall 30% is because there’s a terrorist attack, or the banking system is about to collapse, or there’s a pandemic that might kill your whole family. In that context, you might feel different. You might switch from an opportunistic mindset to a survival mindset. You might not have the endurance you once imagined. 5. Long term is less about time horizon and more about flexibility. If it’s 2010 and you say “I have a 10-year time horizon,” your target date is 2020. Which is when the world fell to pieces. If you were a business or an investor It was a terrible time to assume the world was ready to hand you the reward you had been patiently awaiting. A long time horizon with a firm end date can be as reliant on chance as a short time horizon. Far superior is just flexibility. Time is compounding’s magic whose importance can’t be minimized. But the odds of success fall deepest in your favor when you mix a long time horizon with a flexible end date – or an indefinite horizon. Ben Graham said, “The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.” The more flexibility you have the less you need to know what happens next. And never forget Keynes: “In the long run we’re all dead.” More on this topic: Good Ideas Can’t Be Scheduled Last Man Standing Getting Rich vs. Staying Rich

Problem Solving

How to Do Long Term

Many companies use the insights of financial managers and external consultants to manage their risk. A one-size-fits-all solution is not yet in existence when it comes to risk management.
These companies usually use derivatives like forwards, options, swaps and futures to offset their risk, but without a clear set of risk-management goals, the use of derivatives can increase the risk substantially.

Risk Management In Organizations

Top-level managers and financial engineers must work in tandem to develop and execute a strong risk-management strategy. The three basic premises for this corporate strategy are:
<ol>
<li>Creating corporate value by making good investments.</li>
<li>Generating cash internally to fund the investments.</li>
<li>Having a strong cash flow.</li>
</ol>
The single goal for this strategy is to have enough cash available to make value-boosting investments.

A Coherent Risk Management Strategy

Future markets are nothing new, and before the stock market, they existed in many places in the form of crop trade, back in the middle ages.
Farmers would hedge their risks by selling their crops to consumers at preset prices on a predetermined future date. This provided assurance to a risk-averse farmer that his crop price would not fluctuate in the future.

Hedging In The Middle Ages

Corporations managing risk themselves face a fundamental question: why do they need to do it? Individuals and investment groups can manage the risk on their own. Making good investments seems like a better option.
Hedging bets are mostly fictional transactions that don’t affect the value of any operating asset of the company, making it a loss-making proposition if the transaction costs and other overheads are added up.

Modern Finance: Corporate Risk Management

Risk management through hedging allows companies to borrow from themselves, transferring funds to where they are needed the most.<ul><li>The main objective of risk management is that the company should have cash available for making value-enhancing investments.</li><li>Companies prefer to fund their investments with internal, retained earnings, and not through any outside equity. External financing is seen as a costly affair.</li><li>Multiple studies on companies managing risk using hedging strategies reveal that it is almost a zero-sum game and does not insulate them from all kinds of risks.</li></ul>

The Need For Hedging

Top leaders and managers can benefit from these broad guidelines on risk-management issues:
<ol>
<li>Companies in the same sector need not necessarily have the same hedging strategies.</li>
<li>Companies can benefit from risk management strategies even if they don’t have any major investments in assets or real estate.</li>
<li>No-debt companies having lots of cash can also take advantage of various hedging strategies.</li>
<li>Multinational companies (MNCs) need to recognize that foreign exchange risks affect both the company cash flow and investment opportunities.</li>
<li>Companies should pay attention to what strategies other companies, especially their competitors are devising.</li>
<li>Senior managers should not delegate risk management completely to financial specialists, as it can be misaligned with the company's broader vision.</li>
</ol>

Guidelines For Managers

In recent years, managers have become increasingly aware of how their organizations can be buffeted by risks beyond their control. In many cases, fluctuations in economic and financial variables such as exchange rates, interest rates, and commodity prices have had destabilizing effects on corporate strategies and performance. Consider the following examples: In the first half […]

A Framework for Risk Management

Our emotions are obsessed with the present moment because it’s difficult to look past our immediate fears and anxieties. And this prevents good decision-making.
The sweet spot in decision-making is to find the short-term failures that enable huge long-term successes to happen in the first place.

Our emotions are short-term biased

<ul>
<li>Propose “moonshot” ideas, knowing that 90% of them will get shot down, but that if one of them gets accepted, it will be a huge boost to your career.</li>
<li>Be excessively bold in your dating life, stating exactly who and what you want. </li>
<li>Buy difficult books expecting that most of them won’t be useful to you, but also that, occasionally, one will completely change your life. </li>
<li>Say yes to every invitation knowing that most of the events/people will be boring, but that occasionally you’ll meet someone really interesting.</li>
</ul>

“Risky” behavior you should consider

Most of us are afraid of messing thing up. But we rarely ask, “Would I regret that failure?” If the answer is “no,” then that is absolutely a risk you should pursue. 
Sometimes, the right decision becomes crystal clear when put into these terms.

Optimizing life for fewer regrets

The act of writing forces you to organize your brain.
Vague feelings become structured and measured. And rereading what you write reveals your own logic (or lack thereof). It also reveals new perspectives you hadn’t considered.

Writing stuff down for clarity

It will be perfect. Because not only will the hall itself be a bad decision, but anyone who ever attempts to visit it will clearly be making a bad decision as well. Inside the hall, we will have exhibits for all of the worst decisions ever made.

Principles for Making Better Life Decisions

When we look at situations, we prefer to look for what is distinct. Instead, we should pay attention to the similarities.
The four words "this time is different" makes us incorrectly think that differences are more valuable than similarities. When your reasoning and plans are based on the differences, you are probably speculating.

The importance of focusing on the similarities

When we focus on the differences, we lose touch with the evidence that the similarities point out. The history of a matter provides context.
<ul>
<li>Consider investors and the dotcom bubble. People saw it as unique. We reasoned that everything would change, and everyone who owned internet companies would prosper. Suddenly profits didn't matter, nor revenue. We thought it would come in time. Market share mattered regardless of the cost to acquire it.</li>
<li>We got caught up in the differences and forgot to look at what was the same. Had we looked at the massively transformational industries, such as automobiles, we would've seen that of all the 70 different auto manufacturing operations in the United States, only 3 survived.</li>
</ul>

What happens when we see only the differences

This Time is Different: The Four Most Costly Words Ever Spoken

Sleeping 8 hours a day and taking a time-out to rest is crucial.Give yourself time to recuperate, in order to perform better at any task, and to recall better what you have studied.

Take time out to rest

Make focus a regular part of your lifestyle, by practicing it progressively on a daily basis.This means making a commitment to stop using your smartphone for a few hours daily, or not checking it first thing in the morning.

Make focus a lifestyle choice

“Don’t take breaks from distraction. Instead take breaks from focus.”

A routine will ensure your time is well utilized and you have less unexpected distractions.Get yourself comfortable in your study table or a cafe where you will not be disturbed, and can tune-out the music or noise to focus on your study work.

Find and develop a routine

Commit to what you want to study on a particular day, or for a few hours. Limit the number of tasks/distractions/subjects so that you keep your intense focus and actually complete the tasks you started.

Doing one thing at a time

Get rid of shallow, low-intensity work and stuff like checking social media on your smartphone, while you focus on your study work. Keep yourself distraction-free at least for the few hours you are studying.

Protecting your blocks of focus

While focusing on one topic in a day, it helps to have a weekly plan to organize yourself and map your study hours.

A weekly plan

Our brains are wired to work on tasks serially, and not in parallel. This means that we are not wired for multitasking - we are good at focusing on one thing at a time.The problem is, there are so many distractions these days that we've unconsciously trained our brains to not be good at focusing.

The way our mind works

C.I.G. is supported in part by its readers. If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read more here. In The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield introduces a concept he calls Resistance: "Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.

How to Study with INTENSE Focus: 6 Essential Tips

The triple constraint theory tells us that every project operates within the boundaries set by three constraints:
<ol>
<li>Time (the deadlines)</li>
<li>Scope ( the features)</li>
<li>Cost (the budget)</li>
</ol>
These constraints are inter-connected. If you change something about one of them, the other two will be impacted as well. A manager has to find the best combination of these three constraints.

The triple constraint factor

Each task and process in the project have a scheduled time allocated for their completion.
Steps for managing the schedule of the project development process:
<ol>
<li>Plan schedule management.</li>
<li>Sequence all of the different activities.</li>
<li>Define all of the activities that will be performed in the project.</li>
<li>Estimate the usage of all of the resources that are going to be used in the project.</li>
<li>Estimate the time durations related to each activity.</li>
<li>Develop a proper schedule after analyzing the first five points.</li>
<li>After creating the schedule, control/manage the schedule to ensure that your project is on track.</li>
</ol>

Time constraints in project management

The budget processes related to the project include estimating the cost of all the little parts.
Methods to estimate the cost of the project.
<ul>
<li>Use historical data. Track and analyze a project similar to yours, which have been developed in the market over the past years.</li>
<li>Determine the resource costs. Track the costs of the goods and labor that are going to be used on a per-unit basis.</li>
<li>Use different parameters. Measure different stats from the old and new data found in previous and on-going projects.</li>
<li>Use bottom-up approach. Track the lowest to highest budgets spent on previous projects.</li>
</ul>
Other methods for budget estimation are vendor bid, reserve, and quality analysis.

Cost constraints in project management

The scope of the project is defining the tasks and activities that are being done in the project development process. 
The scope document includes:
<ul>
<li>All the details of the project development process from start to finish.</li>
<li>A trajectory in which the project will travel.</li>
<li>Information about the potential risks and scope creeps.</li>
</ul>

Scope constraints in project management

In recent years, constraints beyond the triple constraint factor have been discovered. They are:
<ul>
<li>Quality. The project should be developed according to the quality agreed in the project scope.</li>
<li>Risk. Risk and scope creeps are "silent" killers when the development team and managers are not expecting any threat from them.</li>
<li>Benefit. The benefit of the project element is a great motivator to keep the project development process on track.</li>
</ul>

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Paul
@paupau

Reality Check: What drives pathological liars and how should you deal with them? | BBC Science Focus Magazine

Your “invisible work” is key to your most productive self

Working backward to solve problems - Maurice Ashley

What #FreeBritney Can Tell Us About Mental Health and the Law

How to Do Long Term

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Paul @paupau

Reality Check: What drives pathological liars and how should you deal with them? | BBC Science Focus Magazine

Your “invisible work” is key to your most productive self

Working backward to solve problems - Maurice Ashley

What #FreeBritney Can Tell Us About Mental Health and the Law

How to Do Long Term

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Paul
@paupau