Nutrition experts state that we only need what's typically found in a routine diet. Industry representatives argue that we need supplements as foods don't contain enough. Yet, studies show that vitamin supplements increase the risk of cancer and heart diseases and shorten lives.

Vitamins cause damage

Linus Pauling is hailed as one of the greatest scientists ever. When Pauling was 65 years old, he mentioned at a talk how much pleasure he took in reading about scientific discoveries and hoped he could live another 25 years. A biochemist, Irwin Stone, who had been at the talk, wrote to Pauling that if he took 3,000 milligrams of vitamins C, he would probably live more than another 25 years. Pauling followed Stone's advice and began to feel livelier and healthier. In 1970, Pauling published Vitamin C and the Common Cold, urging people to take 3,000 milligrams of Vit C daily.

The man who won two Nobel Prizes but was spectacularly wrong

In 1942, a study concluded that there is no indication that vitamin C alone, an antihistamine alone, or vitamin C plus an antihistamine have any important effect on the duration or severity of infections of the upper respiratory tract. Other studies followed and also concluded that vitamin C didn't prevent colds. At least 15 studies have now shown that vitamin C doesn't treat the common cold. Other studies showed that the use of high-dose vitamin C doesn't treat cancer.

Studies on Vitamin C

<ul><li>In 1994, researchers found that subjects that took vitamin E and beta-carotene were more likely to die from lung cancer or heart disease.</li><li>A 1996 study found that vitamin A and beta-carotene increased the risk of dying from cancer and heart disease.</li><li>A 2004 study found that vitamin A, C, E, and beta-carotene seemed to increase overall mortality.</li><li>Several other studies came to the same conclusion.</li></ul>

Studies on Vitamin E and beta-carotene

The most likely explanation of why studies show that supplemental antioxidants are harmful is that free radicals aren't as bad as people believe. While free radicals can damage DNA and disrupt cell membranes, it's not always bad. Free radicals kill bacteria and new cancer cells. Large doses of antioxidants interfere with the balance between free radical production and destruction, causing the immune system to be less able to kill harmful invaders. This is known as "the antioxidant paradox."

Why studies show supplemental antioxidants are harmful

Nutrition experts contend that all we need is what’s typically found in a routine diet. Industry representatives, backed by a fascinating history, argue that foods don’t contain enough, and we need supplements. Fortunately, many excellent studies have now resolved the issue.

food

Food

health

Health

The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements

<ul><li>A growing online community championing quitting work before the age of 65 has emerged with hashtags like #EarlyRetirement, #RetireBefore30, and #FinancialIndependence.</li><li>The movement built on aggressive saving, investment, and frugality has found a new audience - and come up with new strategies for piling up cash.</li><li>You need to reach a net worth 25 times your annual cost of living to theoretically live off your savings for the rest of your life.</li><li>If you can bump up your savings and increase your income, you could get there even faster.</li></ul>

#RetireBefore30

<ul><li>People underestimate the length of their life.</li><li>Nursing homes and retirement communities are exorbitantly expensive.</li><li>Health care costs more as you age.</li><li>Family planning is difficult to predict.</li><li>Access to premium Medicare and pension funds depends on the number of years you work.</li><li>The market can be unpredictable.</li></ul>

Retiring Early Is Risky

<ul><li>College degree, no student debt.</li><li>Partner to share expenses.</li><li>No children or relatives to care for.</li><li>Access to health care.</li><li>Choice of where to live.</li><li>But all of this comes at a price.</li></ul>One example is the case of Taybeepboop, a 28-year-old post-production freelancer who paid off her college debt in under a year and eventually saved enough to buy a home. Her financial advisor encouraged her to share her financial story on TikTok, but it came at a high price.

The Advantages of Retiring Early 

The popular-on-TikTok movement claims with enough scrimping, sacrificing, and investing, you can quit work while you’re still young. But is it worth it?

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

What It Takes to Actually Retire by 30

The circle of competence model states that everyone has an area, or circle, of expertise. However, the circle of objective competence may be surrounded by a larger circle of subjective, and often over-inflated, belief in your ability. Your circle of competence represents what you really know, versus what you think you know.

The circle of competence

<ul><li>A circle of competence is a mental model that helps mitigate the risk of failure associated with overconfidence by having a realistic view of your strengths. The term was first coined by Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful financial investors. </li><li>Alongside his business partner Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett found success in only making financial investments in sectors that he had a comprehensive grasp of. In this way, Buffett avoided overconfidence in his knowledge or abilities, and instead relied on objective competence.</li></ul>

The circle of competence: a mental model

To determine your circle of competence, you have to understand where your true competence lies, without allowing subjective beliefs to create undue assurance in your abilities. To determine the breadth of your circle of competence, you need to have an honest look at your background, training, qualifications, or personal familiarity in a subject.

Discovering your circle of competence

If your goal is to avoid risk, you should stick to your circle of competence; however, if your goal is to innovate, you will be better off stepping outside of your circle so you can come up with non-obvious solutions.Never stepping outside the boundaries of your circle of competence may stunt your creativity and ability to discover new ideas.

Stepping outside of your circle of competence

To take advantage of your circle of competence is to find a balance between honestly acknowledging your capabilities, and strategically striving to expand your knowledge and horizons.<ul><li>Ensure predictable progress. Define the limits of your circle of competence to ensure progress. </li><li>Push your boundaries. Acquire new skills, set ambitious goals, offer your help on a project you are unfamiliar with. </li><li>Reassess your circle of competence. By leaving your comfort zone for just one-fifth of the time, there is potential for learning, growth, and behavioral change.</li></ul>

Make the most of your circle of competence

Should you stick to what you know, or is it wiser to broaden your abilities? Maybe you should only take on projects that fall within your circle of competence, or maybe you should get out of your comfort zone.

philosophy

Philosophy

problemsolving

Problem Solving

creativity

Creativity

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Your circle of competence: should you stick within it or step outside of it?

Every person possesses a certain amount of wisdom that we can share with ease. However, we share without end and then some more so that even the wisest can sound like a windbag. Therefore, knowing when to pause is a valuable skill. The Blowhard Curve is plotting the progression of this excessive sharing.

The Blowhard Curve

<ol><li>The cave of near-silent wisdom. People in this section have a wealth of knowledge but mostly keep it to themselves. </li><li>Brilliance hill. Some people speak selectively, but what they say is a revelation. </li><li>Salience summit. The ideal point is where people are masters of knowing when to speak and when to decline speaking opportunities.</li><li>The pundit's segment. They accept all invitations and speak about topics outside of their expertise.</li><li>Blowhard territory. They believe their wisdom will help them in unknown territory, thereby losing the authority they've built up in their field.</li></ol>

The Five Stages of the Blowhard Curve

Find yourself and your organization on the curve.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

The Blowhard Curve: When To Lead Thoughts Or Leave Them.

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.”

It’s a type of cognitive bias whereby people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence in it. This is why a person, despite his lack of knowledge or experience in a specific domain, can still think he’s amazing at it.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

“Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”

You are a student of life for life. Your knowledge is expanding, but so is your ignorance, for as you continue to learn, there will always be so much more for you to further explore. Why you should create your own map:<ul><li>It helps you identify your knowledge gaps in the areas that actually matter to you. </li><li>It highlights your strengths. The closer you are to mastery, the more strengths you have in the specific area of discussion.</li><li>It gives you a holistic view of where you stand today so you can phase out the steps for what’s ahead. </li></ul>

The Expanding Map of Knowledge and Ignorance

"The scientific revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The greatest discovery that launched the scientific revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions."

You become wiser as you embrace your own ignorance and diminish that gap, 
as you develop yourself into a lifelong self-learner, and as you begin to 
see yourself as a student of life for life. And how do you do that? You 
create your own map of knowledge and ignorance. Create your own map, fill 
its empty spaces with all the knowledge of what you know, and identify all 
that you don’t.

education

Learning & Education

The Expanding Map of Knowledge and Ignorance (And Why You Should Create Your Own) — OMAR ITANI

Passive reading is when we read for pleasure and get lost in the book, enjoying the complete experience. This is applied in fictional works. Acquiring knowledge demands a different way to read: Active reading.
Great books require time and attention, needing to be chewed and digested properly for an in-depth understanding.

Active And Passive Reading

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”

There is an even more active, complex and profound way to read: Analytical Reading.
It involves questioning the text you read, highlighting key points, taking notes, summarizing or curating key ideas, and thinking deeply about what the author is trying to say.

Acquiring Knowledge Using Analytical Reading

Reading helps us connect existing thought patterns and upgrade our mental models.
To read deeply and critically, we have to engage with the written text differently:
<ol>
<li>Read slowly, making each page a learning process.</li>
<li>Take notes, preferably using a pen and paper.</li>
<li>Try to explain the main idea in a notebook, asking critical questions and raising doubts.</li>
<li>Teach the content to others, summarizing the book lessons in a presentable format. If we can explain it in simple language, we must have understood it well.</li>
<li>Choose the books carefully.</li>
</ol>

How To Read Analytically

If you are reading for pleasure, you want to enjoy the experience, lose yourself in the book and follow the journey with the author. I’m not good at that. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction books. I…

If You Are Reading to Acquire Knowledge, Learn to Read Analytically

... is the ability to regulate and alter responses in order to avoid undesirable behaviors, increase desirable ones, and achieve long-term goals.

Self-Control

<ul><li>A 2011 survey found that 27 % of respondents identified a lack of willpower as the primary factor keeping them from reaching their goals. </li><li>One study found that students who exhibited greater self-discipline had better grades, higher test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a competitive academic program. </li><li>The study also found that when it came to academic success, self-control was a more important factor than IQ scores.</li><li>A health study found that people who were rated as having high levels of self-control during childhood continued to have high levels of physical and mental health in adulthood.</li><li>Research has found that self-control is a limited resource. In the long-term, exercising self-control tends to strengthen it.  </li></ul>

Research on Self-Control

A lack of willpower is not the only factor that affects goal attainment.<ul><li>There needs to be a clear goal and the motivation to change. Having an unclear or overly general goal and insufficient motivation can lead to failure.</li><li>You need to monitor your actions daily towards the achievement of the goal.</li><li>You need to have willpower.</li></ul>

Motivation and Monitoring

<ul><li>Avoid temptation. </li><li>Plan ahead. If you are faced with temptation, what actions will you take to avoid giving in? </li><li>Practice using self-control. Think of self-control as a muscle. While hard work may exhaust the muscle in the short-term, the muscle will grow stronger over time as you continue to work it.</li><li>Try focusing on one goal at a time. Once you turn the behaviors needed to reach a goal into habits, you will not need to devote as much effort toward maintaining them. </li></ul>

Improving Self-Control

Self-control is the ability to regulate and alter responses in order to avoid undesirable behaviors, increase desirable ones, and achieve long-term goals. Research has shown that possessing self-control can be important for health and well-being. Common goals such as losing weight, exercising regularly, eating healthy, not procrastinating, giving up bad habits, and saving money are just a few worthwhile ambitions that people believe require self-control.

habits

Habits

How to Improve Your Self-Control

Our self-esteem is vital for personal well-being and happiness. People with higher self-esteem are more satisfied with their lives. 
But sometimes, life doesn't give us any reasons for self-love. We get fired, or a relationship ends. Under the influence of bias from self-interest, we may change the facts so that they become acceptable. In some cases, this can grow harmful.

Our self-esteem and human misjudgment

A person with a strong self-serving bias may have little capacity to assess a situation objectively.
In his speech, The psychology of human misjudgment, Charlie Munger considers the tendencies of serious criminals in Tolstoy's novels.
The criminals defend themselves in one of two ways:
<ul>
<li>They are either in denial of committing the crime.</li>
<li>They think that the crime is justifiable in light of their hardships.</li>
</ul>

The Tolstoy effect

Denial happens when we have a serious thought about reality but decide to ignore it. For example, discovering a dark spot on your skin that you want to ignore. Later, it becomes darker, and eventually, you may visit the doctor. Some denial may serve as a buffer to absorb the information, but once denial becomes the default coping mechanism, it can amplify our problems and cause harm.
The psychological effects of drug addiction and alcoholism can lead people to believe that they have remained in a respectable condition with good prospects even if they continue to deteriorate.

Avoiding reality by denying it

We go to great lengths to preserve our self-image, even when we engage in behaviours that are inconsistent with our inner self-image. We may use phrases such as "not telling the truth is not lying", "I didn't have the time" to justify our actions.
The drive to save face is so strong that it often overrules and contradicts the effects of rewards and punishments. We may ignore our moral compass and instead find rationales for the bad, but fixable, choices that we repeat when it suits us.

Rationalising our choice

When we face a decision whose consequences are morally ambiguous, the first choice starts the process of entrapment. It leads us to justify our actions, which leads to further action in the wrong direction, which increases the intensity of our choice. This causes a vicious cycle of self-justification.
The implication is that if we don't draw the line, our habits and circumstances will do it for us.

The vicious cycle of self-justification

We will do dumb things. However, we are not doomed to live in denial or keep trying to justify our actions. We can choose to correct our tendencies when we recognise them.
We can break the self-justification habit by reflecting on our behaviour and the reasons for our behaviour. Resisting the urge for self-justification is not easy, but it is much better than letting it cripple the integrity of our behaviours.

Making smarter choices

On a personal level, Charlie Munger suggests we should face two facts:
<ol>
<li>Correctable, but unfixed bad performance is bad character and may make more of itself and cause more damage.</li>
<li>In demanding places, like sports teams, excuses and bad behaviour will prevent progress.</li>
</ol>
On an institutional level, Munger suggests:
<ol>
<li>Building a fair, meritocratic culture and methods of handling people that build up morale.</li>
<li>Separate the worst offenders when possible.</li>
</ol>

Making things easier

An introduction to bias from self-interest, which affects everything from how we see and filter information to how we avoid pain and distort reality.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

communication

Communication

Mental Model: Bias from Self-Interest

These are usually long-winded, boring documents that are purely written for academic rather than entertainment value. These are usually found in textbooks, case studies, business reports, financial analysis reports, and many more.
<ol>
<li>Find a good place to read - your reading environment has a huge impact on how much text you cover and how much information you retain. It's best to have a well-lit, quiet, and comfortable reading environment</li>
<li>SQ3R Reading method - stands for survey, question, read, review, and recite</li>
<li>Learn to Speed Read</li>
<li>Read Backwards - not lietrally, but it can be easier for you to locate the important topics when you read the conclusion or the context summary before reading the rest of the chapter</li>
</ol>

Wading Through Dry Texts

Reading through page after page of dry text is a challenge, but there are tricks that can get you through required reading quickly and efficiently.

Tips for Wading Through Dry Text Quickly

Is a linear method of taking notes that proceeds down the page, using indentation or bullets to denote major and minor points.Pros: it records content relationship in a way that is easy to review.Cons: difficult to go back and edit information written in this system.
Works for: recording terms, definitions, facts and sequences, when taking notes on slides or readings.

The Outline/List

The goal is to jot down your thoughts as quickly as possible. Format is kept to a minimum: every new thought is written on a new line. Pros: Is like free writing for notes.Cons: lack organization and notes can be hard to understand.Works for: meetings or lectures that lack organization; when information is presented very quickly.

The Sentence Method

<ul><li>Skim the material for bolded text, images, summaries, to produce a list of headlines;</li><li>Each headline is then written in the form of a question;</li><li>Record your “answers” to the reading questions under each corresponding header;</li><li>Once you’ve finished reading the text, write a summary of the material from memory—this is the “recite” part of the process. </li><li>Finally, review your notes to make sure you’ve completely grasped the concepts.</li></ul>Works for: dense written material.

SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review)

A nonlinear system of note-taking that resembles a tree and root structure: ideas stem from one major concept and are connected by lines (or “branches”).Pros: works well for visual learners; is tool for analytical-thinkers, because it outlines connections.Cons: Time consuming; can get complex, doesn't work in every circumstances.Works for: big-picture brainstorming sessions, planning essays and recording meetings.

Visual mapping

Instead of taking notes in full sentences, you record only keywords and place them in a chain that maps the thought process, written on a web-like grid, starting in the 1 o’clock position and working clockwise. Pros: allows you to take notes in “real time”.Cons: few sources for learning how to use it.Works for: meetings and lectures; dyslexic learners.

Smart Wisdom

A continuum of dates and events. However, timelines need not be limited to two-dimensions. Timelines can be multidimensional (i.e., date, relevant event, another event). Work for: recording history or biography, but they can also be used to compare and contrast similar events.

Timelines

Represented by individual steps that start from a problem and lead to a solution. Each step is denoted by a different kind of shape which symbolizes whether the note requires action or decision. Unlike the timeline, a flow chart can veer in multiple directions, leading to different scenarios.

Flow-chart

Usually comprise overlapping circle that represent sets. A set includes items that all share a specific characteristic. Although there is no limit to the number of sets you compare, complicated Venn diagrams can be difficult to interpretWorks for: comparing and contrasting notes.

Venn diagram

<ul><li>Identify the main problem (effect) and write this in a box center left of the page. </li><li>Draw a thick horizontal arrow pointing to this box - the head and spine of the fish. </li><li>Then brainstorm categories of causes that could lead to this effect. </li><li>For each of these causes, draw a line branching off of the main arrow. </li></ul>Works for: marketing, manufacturing or service industry for product design and quality defect prevention.

Fishbone diagram

Different types of information demand different styles of note-taking. There are lots of reasons to take notes: to retain information, to capture ideas, to problem solve or brainstorm, to visualize complex systems or concepts etc.
But what works for outlining a blog post might not work so great for brainstorming new ideas.

Adapting to context

No matter what your profession, there are lots of reasons to take notes. You take notes to retain information from things you hear - like meetings and presentations. You take notes to capture facts or ideas (e.g., interviews, itineraries, something said in passing, etc.). You take notes to problem solve or brainstorm.

The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements

What It Takes to Actually Retire by 30

Your circle of competence: should you stick within it or step outside of it?

The Blowhard Curve: When To Lead Thoughts Or Leave Them.

The Expanding Map of Knowledge and Ignorance (And Why You Should Create Your Own) — OMAR ITANI

Weston A.