From an Interview between Shane Parish of Farnam Street and Barbara Oakley who has recently written a book on the subject backed by years of academic research. How can we learn new things optimally? (This applies to both abstract ideas like math and physical skills like playing music) The distinction we draw between rote learning … Continue reading Learning how to learn
I like to collect great questions, they motivate me towards deeper thinking and insights. The questions you ask can drive change in your life. So I will be adding a more regular set of question posts to this blog to remind myself of the interesting questions I come across that I want to ask myself. … Continue reading Great questions #2
[The Tim Ferriss Show] Catherine Hoke — The Master of Second Chances This is an inspirational podcast. Catherine runs an organisation called Defy that works with prisoners in the US to give them a second chance through an intensive training program and then, after their release, support. I am not going to try to summarise … Continue reading Catherine Hoke and the need for Second Chances in society
Adam Grant is an organisational psychologist who has published a book on this concept of the way individuals operate and how they then function in organisations. Organisational citizenship behaviour is the field of organisational psychology focused on behaviours that are not relevant to the task at hand but critical to the success of the effectiveness … Continue reading Givers, Takers and Matchers
Here is a facinating conversation between Shane Parish of Farnam Street and Rory Sutherland, the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Group, one of the largest advertising companies in the world. Rory started the behavioral insights team at OM and spends his days applying behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology to solve problems for their clients. The conversation … Continue reading Human behavioural motivations and insights with Rory Sutherland
There are a lot of reasons I am interested in this question: 1. It’s probably the most complex machine nature has evolved. Yet it runs on the power of a 20watt lightbulb when an equivalent computer would require 24 million watts of power! 2. My dad has dementia. There is a whole lot of research … Continue reading How do our brains work?
So I admit it, I am a pretty good procrastinator. I work well when a deadline is looming and I need to get a job done. Tim Urban, a great blogger is also a master procrastinator and has spent some time thinking about why this is and what the implications are. He says it better … Continue reading Procrastination
The foundation of all healthy relationships is trust. The foundation of being able to have good, honest and open debates that make our business better is trust. It’s the foundation for being able to get an honest assessment of business partners. So being able to build trust is an essential skill. Robin Dreeke is a … Continue reading Building trust
If you are interested in trying out a different, very counter intuitive but pretty revolutionary approach to swimming try taking a look at Terry Laughlin’s Total Immersion swimming. He is a passionate man, inspiring in his pursuit of mastery, and after listening to a podcast with him and watching some videos on YouTube I have … Continue reading Improving your swimming
Picking up on a theme from the last blogpost: that one of the worst things for relationships is a great sense of self-righteousness, a lot of self-righteousness comes from our own sense of moral compass. The world seems more and more polarised in political views. Are you liberal or conservative? Many of these views seem … Continue reading The psychology of liberal and conservative values and crossing the great divide
Here's something that inspired me... 