Materialistic Rewards
By Kevin
Having failed to secure a seat in Alain de Botton's public lecture in the LSE led me to check out his talks on TED.com which turned out to be wonderful. His insights into life and philosophy is extremely powerful and can indeed be applied to living well.
99 Percent?
By Kevin
With the influx of information in our everyday life, 99 Percent is quite a gem with great insights on modern life and 'modern living' in general. It speaks of ideas for personal motivation and lots about making your life better.
It features articles that really touches me, like this short great read.
Einstein’s 1%
By Kevin
Gliding on the waters
Best-selling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami talks about talent, motivation and most importantly, hardwork in his memoir 'What I talk about when I talk about running'. This point was well highlighted by 99%'s article on the book. That idea that talent is a pre-requisite is compelling, and that belief puts you at a higher level than most other 'smart' people who have given up on the way and become 'mediocre' or just 'ordinary'.
I sometimes believe that majority of people in life sail through life this way. We are all born with gifts that takes time to discover and develop. As we go through life, we discard these gifts as we found them to be either overly taxing (too much time and effort required to bring us to the next level), or uninteresting. An environment that encourage and fosters these talents are necessary not so much to 'discover' these talents but to develop them appropriately. And inspirations are, without doubt, important too.
Scott Barry Kaufman discusses the importance of inspiration in the blog entry and suggests ways in which inspirations can be made to come by more often. I'm not sure how incredible this appear to our readers but we must acknowledge that no idea comes independently and originally from the guy who mentions it despite the attribution. The mind works in curious ways and we might have simply picked up cues from those around us to eventually arrive at whatever we've got.
One Reality
By Kevin
Feeding Others or yourself?
The chapter on 'Efficiency' in my text begin with the following anecdote:
In my dream I came to a room where men sat in a large circle around a pot of soup. Each man held a long spoon, which he could dip into the pot. But the spoons were longer than the men's arms so they could not bring the soup to their mouths. The men were hungry, and cried out in their misery. "This is hell," said my guide.
Then he took me to another room, similar to the first. Once again men sat in a large circle around a pot of soup, once again each man's spoon was so long that he could not bring it to his mouth. But in this room the men were not hungry, because they were feeding each other. "This," said my guide, "is heaven."
There's only one reality. You and those around it makes it heaven or hell.
Motivational Psychology
By Kevin
Set it, and reach it
I never knew there was such thing as 'motivational psychologist' until I stumbled upon Heidi's article on HBR. She wrote a book about reaching our goals through better understanding of our own psychology. In this article, she detailed 9 traits that successful people appears to share. It is important that these are not character or personality and have got to do more with habits and conditioning. They do not necessarily require skills though intelligence and street-smartness helps.
Her list included the following:
- Get Specific
- Seize the moment to act on your goals
- Know exactly how far you have left to go
- Be a realistic optimist
- Focus on getting better, rather than being good
- Have grit
- Build your willpower muscle
- Don't tempt fate
- Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do
You realised that they are actions, things that you and I can constantly practice and perform in our lives. That's pleasing to know because many demotivated people find themselves helpless - they think that they are subjected to circumstances and conditions beyond their control. Being a realist, understanding what you can control and what you can't and then being hopeful by working hard on those areas where you can make a difference can be an extremely powerful thing to do. Take charge and play an active role in your life and some day, you'll be able to change it the way you want.
Being Wrong
By Kevin
Kathryn Schulz, a leading 'wrongologist', shares about her study of 'being wrong' on TED.com. It is something interesting to look into and embracing fallibility is becoming something rather in fashion after more than a decade of bringing the attempt to perfect ourselves to to the extreme (think plastic surgery, motivational courses, self-improvement hypes, etc). I'm not too sure about her underlying thesis that we all feel that we're right most of the time. I know of people (practically all Asians) who tread so carefully in life they naturally assume they are wrong until they gathered enough evidence to satisfy themselves that they are not wrong (which - they have to highlight - does not necessarily mean they are right).
I must say that Kathryn's style of presentation does make her appear like she believes she is right; at least enough for her to write a book about it.
Freedom & Responsibility
By Kevin
I often look into management books for inspirations on personal development. Essentially, while winning in corporate environments may not always be about abilities or qualities but these are important aspects HR look out for when hiring. Their favored traits are often manifestations of something more fundamental in one's attitude and beliefs.
I was delighted to stumble upon Netflix's slides on 'Freedom and Responsibility Culture' not so much because it is a good framework to create a successful culture for a creative, technology driven company but because it contains some wisdoms and elements about living life that we all should learn. I've included it here for all to look through.
I'm particularly drawn to the idea of how you should only give freedom when responsibility is demonstrated. That's not only valuable for firms but also as an advice for parents. Too many kids today are not demonstrating the maturity and responsibility and they get freedom that can be dangerous. Worst, parents are not giving kids the right incentives and showing how they can achieve what they want in the appropriate ways.
Now that firms are learning how to teach and train their employees better, doesn't mean parents can cease doing a good job...
Rethinking Groupthink
By Kevin
You sure that works?
Finally, after years of bashing the notion of brainstorming, there is research indicating its usefulness. As a matter of fact, people do consistently come up with better ideas on their own when they think hard and deep rather than spending half the time listening to the ideas of others and the other half just waiting around for ideas to pop up. There is, what the researchers call 'evaluation apprehension' - so there's a natural tendency to hold back your ideas when ideating in a group as compared to when doing it on your own. Having led countless project teams and committees at meetings and sessions when we need to come up with ideas for a variety of different sort of stuff, I guess I have a pretty good idea how useful group-brainstorming is.
I was introduced to brainstorming when I was 11, where I attended a course on WITs (Work Improvement Teams) and subsequently represented the school in a WITs competition organized by one of the polytechnics in Singapore. Subsequently, I picked up individual ideation techniques from the Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats course when I was in Secondary school. I found it much easier to come up with lots of ideas when you don't feel like you're at risk of being judged.
And books I read about thinking, group work, and management agree with me on that and emphasized the need to create a space for thinking and ideation that suspends judgment completely. And it's not just about verbal judgment, it goes beyond that. Participants must truly believe that they are not being assessed, judged or perceived negatively in that group thinking environment. It works well in a setting with people who are already extremely familiar with each other but may be more difficult amongst strangers.
So why not designate group thinking sessions as meetings where people already came up with lots of individual ideas and then are asked to reconcile them. As mentioned in the research, this 'brainwriting' technique appears to work much better. It is surprising then, that it hasn't quite been used that extensively in work and project settings.
A hint then, for those of you working on PW and frustrated with your teammates who may be 'social loafing'.
Deep Optimism
By Kevin
As any good young person in his 20s should know, optimism versus pessimism is not simply about half-glass full or empty sort of thing. In a recent FT article in 'Recruitment', research suggests that optimist tend to get the best jobs. They mentioned the concept of a 'deep optimist', whose optimism is not the simple foolish concept of 'looking on the bright side'. It is something that goes deep into the personality and thinking of these people:
In fact, psychology suggests that an important way in which deep-rooted optimism does good is through better coping strategies. The deep optimist has the strength to see obstacles more realistically and resourcefully, not less. And drink and drugs are deep optimism’s enemies, not its friends.
In other words, being cheerful and bubbly is more of a by-product of optimism though the reverse can often help to improve one's ability to adopt that deep optimistic approach to thinking. And Matt Ridley provides a very sophisticated demonstration of what it takes to be a deep optimist, although he tends to also exhibit the cheery personality that can be 'faked', it takes a remarkable deep optimist to stand up and tell everyone around him to snap out of the gloom.
I personally believe that a deep optimist does not ignore problems or negative aspects of issues but sees the opportunity to eradicate them. He seize the day and take action to realistically right things. And it is these actions, this attitude that you can strive and achieve that provides them with outcomes that might differ from everyone else.
Mode of Doing
By Kevin
Take Action!
After spending 15 years in education, I spent a brief two and a half year or so working (2 years in the military and then 6 months in the private sector). I returned to education after that; almost completing my first year of education since the hiatus. So I guess I know a thing or two about studying, or at least learning. Of course, everyone have different styles of learning but from my experience with people around me (who have mostly done remarkably well in the education system back in Singapore), studying/revising for school work almost definitely involves some form of active 'doing' rather than passive stuff (like plain reading).
The trick to absorbing new materials and learning in general is to involve as many senses as possible. This is a concept I explored a while back in 'Remembering Stuff'. It is then, more sensible to draw mindmaps while reading, to do underlining, annotations, taking notes while going through materials. When I go through my Economics notes, I often have to try deriving the equations myself because if I don't walk myself through the equations using my own interpretation of the logic of the theory, I will never be able to internalize the materials. This true for all the hard sciences (granted, economics is not exactly a hard science but when it comes down to the equations and formulas, we can reasonably assume it takes on that slice of nature of hard sciences).
But what about social sciences and humanities? It helps to draw mindmaps, basically to make connections between things that are studied. And the best part about mind maps is that it allows you to make many different complex connections. Although at the end of the day you might not actually find the stuff you drew particularly useful, the mindmap is really more of a tool to pin down your thinking of the connections than a visual representation of the actual concepts (especially true when you're doing revision) so it's fine. Getting in the mode of 'doing' activates your kinesthetic self and enlist the help of your muscles to 'remember' stuff for you. It's not that the muscle cells helps you to remember stuff but that the motor neurons help to provide another channel by which the new material enters your brains.
All that busyness also keeps you engaged and focused, especially if you're like me, dozing off easily as I stare at my materials. So for those who are studying out there, preparing for examinations, plainly trying to be consistent, don't waste your time staring blankly at your notes. Take some action and learn something.