Via
https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-students-forget-and-what-you-can-do-about-it

Which explains why the following learning strategies, all tied to research conducted within the past five years, are so effective:

1. Peer-to-peer explanations: When students explain what they’ve learned to peers, fading memories are reactivated, strengthened, and consolidated. This strategy not only increases retention but also encourages active learning.
2. The spacing effect: Instead of covering a topic and then moving on, revisit key ideas throughout the school year. Research shows that students perform better academically when given multiple opportunities to review learned material. For example, teachers can quickly incorporate a brief review of what was covered several weeks earlier into ongoing lessons, or use homework to re-expose students to previous concepts.
3. Frequent practice tests: Akin to regularly reviewing material, giving frequent practice tests can boost long-term retention and, as a bonus, help protect against stress, which often impairs memory performance. Practice tests can be low stakes and ungraded, such as a quick pop quiz at the start of a lesson or a trivia quiz on Kahoot, a popular online game-based learning platform. Breaking down one large high-stakes test into smaller tests over several months is an effective approach.
4. Interleave concepts: Instead of grouping similar problems together, mix them up. Solving problems involves identifying the correct strategy to use and then executing the strategy. When similar problems are grouped together, students don’t have to think about what strategies to use—they automatically apply the same solution over and over. Interleaving forces students to think on their feet, and encodes learning more deeply.
5. Combine text with images: It’s often easier to remember information that’s been presented in different ways, especially if visual aids can help organize information. For example, pairing a list of countries occupied by German forces during World War II with a map of German military expansion can reinforce that lesson. It’s easier to remember what’s been read and seen, instead of either one alone.

Via Eric Barker's blog

This is how to be your best self:

• "Treat yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping."
• To Make Better Decisions, Think Of Your Best Friend: Take the "outside perspective" and follow the advice you would offer a buddy in the same situation.
• For Health, Think About Fido: Look after your health the way people do for their pets, and you'll probably live to be 150.
• For Happiness, Think About Grandmom: Turn the critical voice in your head into a nurturing grandmother and be more self-compassionate.

Via https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2018/02/work-smarter-not-harder-2/
This is how to work smarter not harder:

• Do Less, Then Obsess: As Mark Twain quipped, “Put all your eggs in one basket — and watch that basket!”
• Use The Learning Loop: Push yourself now and your job gets easier later.
• Feel Passion & Purpose: You don’t have to play in the NFL or be the next Beyoncé to feel passionate about your job. And purpose can even involve elephant poop.

From https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/07/how-to-be-productive/

Here’s how to be productive:

• Prioritize: Use “fixed schedule productivity.” You won’t get everything done. You will get the right things done.
• Context: Distractions make you stupid. Find a place to hide or work from home in the morning.
• Habits: Use the “20 second rule” to make bad habits hard to engage in. Follow a plan.
• Stakes: For dull tasks, reward yourself. For complex tasks, ask why they are important to find purpose.
• Mood: Manage your mood, especially in the morning. Oh, and puppies, puppies, puppies.

from https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/10/out-of-control-kids/

Here’s what parenting specialists and FBI hostage negotiators say can help you deal with out of control kids:

• Listen With Full Attention: Everyone needs to feel understood. The big mistake is thinking kids are any different.
• Acknowledge Their Feelings: Paraphrase what they said. Don’t say you understand, show them you do.
• Give Their Feelings A Name: “Sounds like you feel this is unfair.” It calms the brain.
• Ask Questions: You want to resolve their underlying emotional needs, not get into a logical debate.

Best way to study

From : https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/10/whats-the-best-way-to-study/

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-BD427_WORKFA_G_20111025215707.jpg

Test yourself:

Chiefly, testing yourself repeatedly before an exam teaches the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory. The method is more effective than re-reading a textbook. If you are facing a test on the digestive system, practice explaining how it works from start to finish, rather than studying a list of its parts.

Sleep is vital:

Sleep also plays a role in test performance, but in two unexpected ways. Review the toughest material right before going to bed the night before the test. That approach makes it easier to recall the material later. And don’t wake up earlier than usual to study; this could interfere with the rapid-eye-movement sleep that aids memory.

What to eat:

Everybody knows you should eat breakfast the day of a big test. High-carb, high-fiber, slow-digesting foods like oatmeal are best, research shows. But what you eat a week in advance matters, too. When 16 college students were tested on attention and thinking speed, then fed a five-day high-fat, low-carb diet heavy on meat, eggs, cheese and cream and tested again, their performance declined.

You can’t multitask:

While many teens insist they study better while listening to music or texting their friends, research shows the opposite: Information reviewed amid distractions is less likely to be recalled later.

Calm yourself:

If you are still feeling anxious, set aside 10 minutes beforehand to write down your worries. She and a fellow researcher tested 106 ninth-graders for anxiety before their first high-pressure exam, then asked half of them to spend 10 minutes writing down their thoughts right before the test. The anxious kids who did the writing exercise performed as well on the test as the students who had been calm all along. But anxious students who didn’t do the writing performed more poorly. Expressing one’s worries in writing, unburdens the brain

How To Make Your Kids Smarter: via Eric Barker's blog

How To Make Your Kids Smarter: 10 Steps Backed By Science

1) Music Lessons
Plain and simple: research show music lessons make kids smarter:

Compared with children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater increases in full-scale IQ. The effect was relatively small, but it generalized across IQ subtests, index scores, and a standardized measure of academic achievement.

2) The Dumb Jock Is A Myth
Dumb jocks are dumb because they spend more time on the field than in the library. But what if you make sure your child devotes time to both?

Being in good shape increases your ability to learn. After exercise people pick up new vocabulary words 20% faster.

Via Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain:

Indeed, in a 2007 study of humans, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary words 20 percent faster following exercise than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated directly with levels of BDNF.

A 3 month exercise regimen increased bloodflow to the part of the brain focused on memory and learning by 30%.In his study, Small put a group of volunteers on a three-month exercise regimen and then took pictures of their brains… What he saw was that the capillary volume in the memory area of the hippocampus increased by 30 percent, a truly remarkable change.

3) Don’t Read To Your Kids, Read With Them

Got a little one who is learning to read? Don’t let them just stare at the pictures in a book while you do all the reading. Call attention to the words. Read with them, not to them. Research shows it helps build their reading skills:

…when shared book reading is enriched with explicit attention to the development of children’s reading skills and strategies, then shared book reading is an effective vehicle for promoting the early literacy ability even of disadvantaged children.

4) Sleep Deprivation Makes Kids Stupid
Missing an hour of sleep turns a sixth grader’s brain into that of a fourth grader.
Via NurtureShock:

“A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development,” Sadeh explained.

5) IQ Isn’t Worth Much Without Self-Discipline

Self-discipline beats IQ at predicting who will be successful in life.

From Charles Duhigg’s excellent book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business:

Dozens of studies show that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success… Students who exerted high levels of willpower were more likely to earn higher grades in their classes and gain admission into more selective schools. They had fewer absences and spent less time watching television and more hours on homework. “Highly self-disciplined adolescents outperformed their more impulsive peers on every academic-performance variable,” the researchers wrote. “Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

Grades have more to do with conscientiousness than raw smarts.

Via How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character:


…conscientiousness was the trait that best predicted workplace success. People high in conscientiousness get better grades in school and college; they commit fewer crimes; and they stay married longer. They live longer – and not just because they smoke and drink less. They have fewer strokes, lower blood pressure, and a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.

More on how to improve self-discipline here.

6) Learning Is An Active Process
Baby Einstein and braintraining games don’t work.
In fact, there’s reason to believe they make kids dumber.

Via Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five:


The products didn’t work at all. They had no positive effect on the vocabularies of the target audience, infants 17-24 months. Some did actual harm. For every hour per day the children spent watching certain baby DVD’s and videos, the infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than infants who did not watch them.

Real learning isn’t passive, it’s active.

What does Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code recommend? Stop merely reading and test yourself:


Our brains evolved to learn by doing things, not by hearing about them. This is one of the reasons that, for a lot of skills, it’s much better to spend about two thirds of your time testing yourself on it rather than absorbing it. There’s a rule of two thirds. If you want to, say, memorize a passage, it’s better to spend 30 percent of your time reading it, and the other 70 percent of your time testing yourself on that knowledge.
(More on how to teach your child to be a hard worker in school here.)

7) Treats Can Be A Good Thing — At The Right Time

Overall, it would be better if kids ate healthy all the time. Research shows eating makes a difference in children’s grades:

Everybody knows you should eat breakfast the day of a big test. High-carb, high-fiber, slow-digesting foods like oatmeal are best, research shows. But what you eat a week in advance matters, too. When 16 college students were tested on attention and thinking speed, then fed a five-day high-fat, low-carb diet heavy on meat, eggs, cheese and cream and tested again, their performance declined.

There are always exceptions. No kid eats healthy all the time. But the irony is that kids often get “bad” foods at the wrong time.
Research shows caffeine and sugar can be brain boosters:


Caffeine and glucose can have beneficial effects on cognitive performance… Since these areas have been related to the sustained attention and working memory processes, results would suggest that combined caffeine and glucose could increase the efficiency of the attentional system.

So if kids are going to occasionally eat candy and soda maybe it’s better to give it to them while they study then when they’re relaxing.

8) Happy Kids = Successful Kids
Happier kids are more likely to turn into successful, accomplished adults.

Via Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents:
And what’s the first step in creating happier kids? Being a happy parent.


9) Peer Group Matters
Your genetics and the genetics of your partner have a huge effect on your kids. But the way you raise your kids? Not nearly as much.

So what does have an enormous affect on your children’s behavior? Their peer group.

We usually only talk about peer pressure when it’s a negative but more often than not, it’s a positive.

Living in a nice neighborhood, going to solid schools and making sure your children hang out with good kids can make a huge difference.

What’s the easiest way for a college student to improve their GPA? Pick a smart roommate.

Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work:


One study of Dartmouth College students by economist Bruce Sacerdote illustrates how powerful this influence is. He found that when students with low grade-point averages simply began rooming with higher-scoring students, their grade-point averages increased. These students, according to the researchers, “appeared to infect each other with good and bad study habits—such that a roommate with a high grade-point average would drag upward the G.P.A. of his lower-scoring roommate.”

(More on the how others affect your behavior without you realizing it here.)

10) Believe In Them

Believing your kid is smarter than average makes a difference.
When teachers were told certain kids were sharper, those kids did better — even though the kids were selected at random.

Via The Heart of Social Psychology: A Backstage View of a Passionate Science:

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. -Arthur Ashe

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”-Aristotle

Eleanor Roosevelt ;

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one can not be friends with anyone else in the world."

14. "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."

19. "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."

23. "You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give."

26. "Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you."

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Have convictions. Be friendly. Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs. Work as hard as they do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a great deal of thought into giving,” –

“Work is always an antidote to depression.”

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”

“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.”

“I never waste time looking back.”

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman do an excellent job of rounding up the latest research in their book, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children.

Here are my highlights:


1) Praise Kids For Effort, Not Smarts

Praise kids for something they can easily control — the amount of effort they put in.
This teaches them to persist and that improvement is possible.

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.” In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort.

“The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”


2) Make Sure They Get Their Sleep

Losing an hour of sleep reduces your sixth-grader’s intelligence to that of a fourth-grader.

A few scientists theorize that sleep problems during formative years can cause permanent changes in a child’s brain structure—damage that one can’t sleep off like a hangover. It’s even possible that many of the hallmark characteristics of being a tweener and teen—moodiness, depression, and even binge eating—are actually just symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation.

And staying up late on the weekends is problematic too. Weekend shift causes a drop of 7 IQ points — the equivalent of lead exposure.

Teens who received A’s averaged about fifteen more minutes sleep than the B students, who in turn averaged fifteen more minutes than the C’s, and so on. Wahlstrom’s data was an almost perfect replication of results from an earlier study of over 3,000 Rhode Island high schoolers by Brown’s Carskadon.


3) How To Raise Honest Kids

No, you don’t know when your kid is lying. That’s your parental ego.
Kids want to please you. Tell them that the truth makes you happy — not just the right answer — and you’re more likely to get the truth.

What really works is to tell the child, “I will not be upset with you if you peeked, and if you tell the truth, I will be really happy.” This is an offer of both immunity and a clear route back to good standing. Talwar explained this latest finding: “Young kids are lying to make you happy—trying to please you.” So telling kids that the truth will make a parent happy challenges the kid’s original thought that hearing good news—not the truth—is what will please the parent.

What’s a quick trick for getting your kid to be honest?

Say: “I’m about to ask you a question. But before I do that, will you promise to tell the truth?”

In Talwar’s peeking game, sometimes the researcher pauses the game with, “I’m about to ask you a question. But before I do that, will you promise to tell the truth?” (Yes, the child answers.) “Okay, did you peek at the toy when I was out of the room?” This promise cuts down lying by 25%.


4) Kids Need Rules

It’s a myth that being too strict causes rebellion and being permissive equals better behavior.

Pushing a teen into rebellion by having too many rules was a sort of statistical myth. “That actually doesn’t happen,” remarked Darling… “Kids who go wild and get in trouble mostly have parents who don’t set rules or standards. Their parents are loving and accepting no matter what the kids do. But the kids take the lack of rules as a sign their parents don’t actually care—that their parent doesn’t really want this job of being the parent.”

Parents who set ground rules and consistently enforce them were also the parents who were the warmest.

And their children lied less than most kids.

“Ironically, the type of parents who are actually most consistent in enforcing rules are the same parents who are most warm and have the most conversations with their kids,” Darling observed. They’ve set a few rules over certain key spheres of influence, and they’ve explained why the rules are there. They expect the child to obey them. Over life’s other spheres, they supported the child’s autonomy, allowing her freedom to make her own decisions. The kids of these parents lied the least. Rather than hiding twelve areas from their parents, they might be hiding as few as five.

That doesn’t mean you should be a Tiger Mom.

Parents that are too controlling = kids that are bored. And bored kids are the ones who drink and do drugs

Even the really busy kids could be bored, for two reasons. First, they were doing a lot of activities only because their parent signed them up—there was no intrinsic motivation. Second, they were so accustomed to their parents filling their free time that they didn’t know how to fill it on their own. “The more controlling the parent,” Caldwell explained, “the more likely a child is to experience boredom.” …The Mod Squad study did confirm Linda Caldwell’s hypothesis that teens turn to drinking and drugs because they’re bored in their free time.


5) Arguing With Teens Is Normal — And Healthy

Moderate conflict with teens produces better adjustment than none.

More than 3/4 of daughters felt arguments with their mother strengthened the relationship.

But only 23% of the daughters felt that their arguments were destructive. Far more believed that fighting strengthened their relationship with their mother. “Their perception of the fighting was really sophisticated, far more than we anticipated for teenagers,” noted Holmes. “They saw fighting as a way to see their parents in a new way, as a result of hearing their mother’s point of view be articulated.”


6) Fighting In Front Of The Kids Can Be Good

Fighting with your spouse in front of the kids can be a good thing — if the children see the argument resolved in front of them.

Fighting and sending the kids away before it’s resolved — that’s what causes problems.

What was this magical thing? Letting the child witness not just the argument, but the resolution of the argument. When the videotape was stopped mid-argument, it had a very negative effect. But if the child was allowed to see the contention get worked out, it calmed him. “We varied the intensity of the arguments, and that didn’t matter,” recalled Cummings. “The arguments can become pretty intense, and yet if it’s resolved, kids are okay with it.” Most kids were just as happy at the conclusion of the session as they were when witnessing a friendly interaction between parents…

…being exposed to constructive marital conflict can actually be good for children—if it doesn’t escalate, insults are avoided, and the dispute is resolved with affection. This improves their sense of security, over time, and increases their prosocial behavior at school as rated by teachers. Cummings noted, “Resolution has to be sincere, not manipulated for their benefit—or they’ll see through it.” Kids learn a lesson in conflict resolution: the argument gives them an example of how to compromise and reconcile—a lesson lost for the child spared witnessing an argument.


7) A Gratitude Journal Works Magic

I’ve posted before about the incredible benefits of keeping a gratitude journal. It works for kids too.

Students who kept a gratitude journal were happier, more optimistic, and healthier.

In one celebrated example, Dr. Robert Emmons, of the University of California at Davis, asked college students to keep a gratitude journal—over ten weeks, the undergrads listed five things that had happened in the last week which they were thankful for. The results were surprisingly powerful—the students who kept the gratitude journal were 25% happier, were more optimistic about the future, and got sick less often during the controlled trial. They even got more exercise.

From https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2014/02/happy-kids/

Happier kids are more likely to turn into successful, accomplished adults.
Step 1: Get Happy Yourself
Because laughter is contagious, hang out with friends or family members who are likely to be laughing themselves.

Step 2: Teach Them To Build Relationships
(Just saying “Hey, knock it off” when kids don’t get along really doesn’t go far in building essential people skills.)
It doesn’t take a lot. It can start with encouraging kids to perform small acts of kindness to build empathy.
This not only builds essential skills and makes your kids better people, research shows over the long haul it makes them happier.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who were trained to provide compassionate, unconditional positive regard for other MS sufferers through monthly fifteen-minute telephone calls “showed pronounced improvement in self-confidence, self-esteem, depression, and role functioning” over two years.


Step 3: Expect Effort, Not Perfection
Note to perfectionist helicopter parents and Tiger Moms: cool it.
Relentlessly banging the achievement drum messes kids up.
Parents who overemphasize achievement are more likely to have kids with high levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse compared to other kids.

The research is very consistent: Praise effort, not natural ability.
Why? Dweck explains: “When we praise children for the effort and hard work that leads to achievement, they want to keep engaging in that process. They are not diverted from the task of learning by a concern with how smart they might — or might not — look.”


Step 4: Teach Optimism
Author Christine Carter puts it simply: “Optimism is so closely related to happiness that the two can practically be equated.”


Step 5: Teach Emotional Intelligence
Thinking kids will just “naturally” come to understand their own emotions (let alone those of others) doesn’t set them up for success.

A simple first step here is to “Empathize, Label and Validate” when they’re struggling with anger or frustration.


Molly: “I am SO SO SO MAD AT YOU.”
Me: “You are mad at me, very mad at me. Tell me about that. Are you also feeling disappointed because I won’t let you have a playdate right now?”
Molly: “YES!! I want to have a playdate right NOW.”
Me: “You seem sad.” (Crawling into my lap, Molly whimpers a little and rests her head on my shoulder.)
Relate to the child, help them identify what they are feeling and let them know that those feelings are okay (even though bad behavior might not be).

More on active listening and labeling (and how hostage negotiators use this) here.


Step 7: Teach Self-Discipline

What’s a good way to start teaching self-discipline? Help kids learn to distract themselves from temptation.


Step 8: More Playtime

Researchers believe that this dramatic drop in unstructured playtime is in part responsible for slowing kids cognitive and emotional development… In addition to helping kids learn to self-regulate, child-led, unstructured play (with or without adults) promoted intellectual, physical, social, and emotional well-being. Unstructured play helps children learn how to work in groups, to share, negotiate, resolve conflicts, regulate their emotions and behavior, and speak up for themselves.

No strict instructions are necessary here: Budget more time for your kids to just get outside and simply play.


Step 9: Rig Their Environment For Happiness
What’s a simple way to better control a child’s surroundings and let your deliberate happiness efforts have maximum effect?
Less TV.
…research demonstrates a strong link between happiness and not watching television. Sociologists show that happier people tend to watch considerably less television than unhappy people. We don’t know whether TV makes people unhappy, or if already unhappy people watch more TV. But we do know that there are a lot of activities that will help our kids develop into happy, well-adjusted individuals. If our kids are watching TV, they aren’t doing those things that could be making them happier in the long run.

From "How to get a private school education in a public school :

Rebecca said. She learned how to make friends because her Army Family relocated so often. She picked out a few kids she wanted to get to know, each of whom seem to act like her, even look like her. Within a week, it started, nations with each of them: About a classmate, classroom activity, teacher, homework. In all her early interactions, plead what the other kids wanted to play, talked about what they wanted to talk about, knowing that was a time later for the other kids to accommodate her. Within a month, rebecca had a network of friends. Perhaps more important than what Rebecca did what she didn't do: Teasing, being too sensitive two teasing, acting aloof, appearing too anxious to make friends, resizing others, into serious, giggly, showing off, acting silly,. Oh weird, dressing unconventionally or otherwise straining to get attention.

The three question chat: What's the problem? What should we do about it? How will we know it's getting better?

If you could get rid of one subject what would it be? Why?

You may want to consider just living with the problem because you incur costs every time you contact the teacher about a problem. each contact can move you down the scale from interested parent to pushy parent to hell with her parent. Each time you ask the teacher to give your child an extra, you use one up, don't waste an extra on something unimportant.

If your child has a choice, he should sit in a power seat. Everyone knows that it's easier to pay attention in the front seat, but teachers tend to focus on the seeds that are about 25% of the way back and slightly to one side of Center these power seats are the places to be power seats are also great if your child needs help paying attention. it's hard to Chat,doodle, were the teacher's eyes beaming. Teachers appreciate the child who says thank you for helping me. teachers need lots of support because they're never sure how well they're doing . if you let her teacher know you're on his side he will appreciate and remember you

When problem children are unavoidable, it's probably best if you are mildly cordial, friendly not to arouse anger but not so friendly so as to think they're your best friend.

Bullies have told us that humor can offer Define best, especially the target makes himself the butt

Basic investing checklist

Basic investing checklist

1)  Activate System 2 thinking ?  Have you read a company's latest annual report and latest quarterly reports and the annual reports of competitors?

2) How is the income, cash flow compared to debt. Is Debt < 3-4 times cash flow/income? Debt not more than 3-4 times normal income.

3) Debt/pensions and liabilities comparable to cash at hand ?

3) EV/FCF 9-10

4) No more than 7% of portfolio.

5)  Will the company be around in 20 years? Demographics (internet threat, more energy needs - profitable without subsidies. Baby boomers retiring, special living facilities, diagnostics and treatments.)
6) What is the short interest?

7) Is it good for the consumer or are there better substitutes ?

8) What is the ROIC/gross/net compared to competitors?

Best time from Eric Barker's blog

Here’s the best time to get stuff done:

• Think-y stuff in the morning: If you’re reading this at midnight, you’re breaking my heart.
• Afternoons are sluggish — but insightful: Creativity peaks when you aren’t thinking straight.
• Night owl? Strike that — reverse it: I wrote this post during the evening, but don’t worry — I’m a night owl. Hoot. Hoot.
• The two types of breaks: Vigilance breaks are when you take a step back and review your checklist before an important moment. Restorative breaks are when you relax to recharge your dwindling batteries.

Fave bits from Adam Grant's "Originals"

​

Originals

• How to maximize your odds of creating a masterpiece? The answer is to come up with a large number of ideas original simply produced a greater volume of work which gave them more variation and a higher chance of origin already.Most eminent creators like Shakespeare Mozart Beethoven they created a lot of work but considered unremarkable by experts.

You got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. in fact frog kissing was one of his mantras he encouraged his engineers to try out many variations to increase the chances of stumbling on the right one.

• The best way to get better at judging your ideas is to gather feedback. Put a lot of ideas out there and see which ones are praised and adopted.

That is one group of forecasters that doesn't come close to attaining mastery- fellow creators evaluating one another's ideas. Most accurate predictor of whether a video would get like shared what peers evaluating one another instead of attempting to access our own originality.

• The evidence helps to explain why many performers enjoy the approval of audiences but covet the adoration of the peers.
• Comedians often say that the highest badge of honor is to make a fellow comics laugh.
• But Berks research suggests that we are also drawn to Peer evaluations because they provide the most reliable judgments.

Just spending six minutes developing original ideas made them more open to novelty improving their ability to see potential in something unusual.

If we want to increase the odds of betting on the best original ideas we have to generate our own ideas immediately before we screen other suggestions. It's best to be a creator in the domain you're judging.

Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience and when you spend your studying handbags intuition can beat analysis because your unconscious mind excels at pattern recognition.

• If you stop and take the time to think it's easy to lose the forest for the trees. And dealing with unfamiliar products you need to take a step back and assess them.

He excelled at creating brilliant solutions to problems identified by others, not in finding the right problems to solve.

Every project should begin with the right question

You saw how meticulous Jerry was at his work. That's the passion you're looking for.

Power involves exercising control over others; status is being respected and admired

One power hold of you learned of the peers look down on them, they retaliated by setting up some humility toward humiliating tasks. Exercising power without status elicited increasingly negative reaction.

Status cannot be claimed it has to be earned all granted the way to come to power is not on always community challenge the establishment but first make a place in that and then challenge and doublecross the establishment. As Medina gain respect for these efforts she accumulated idiosyncrasy credits And I latitude to deviate from the groups expectations idiosyncrasy credits a coop respect not rank the beast and contributions professors have higher status if they have beards.

When people present a dropbox or disadvantages I would become an ally. And so sending me they've given me a problem to solve. Babu selling itself to Disney top out next line

The court challenge of speaking up with an original idea is that it's a tune that only you hear in your head you wrote the song it's like typing out a well-known know she rhyme when no one else can hear it.

Eminent psychologist Robert called the The exposure effect: the more often we encounter something the more we like it. Whether you're unhappy with your job marriage you have a choice between exit Weiss existence I neglect

• 
  

1 Accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions

2  establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult

3 being financially independent from parents

4 deciding on beliefs and values independently of parents and other influences

The cultivation of a willingness to defy or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition for intellectual and emotional freedom.

Favorite bits from Barking up the wrong tree

• Many people aren't sure what their strengths are. Drucker offers a helpful definition: What are you good at that consistently produces desired results? 

• Research by Gallup shows that the more hours per day you spend doing what you're good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you're being treated with respect. 

• Without an existing passion and being so eager to please, valedictorians often head in the wrong direction when they are finally free to choose. 

• If someone is too nice, people figure they must be less competent. In fact being a jerk makes other see you as more powerful. Feeling powerless actually makes you dumber. 

• Managing what your boss thinks of you is far more important than actual hard work. 

• Why do jerks succeed? they're assertive about what they want, and they're not afraid to let others know about what they've achieved. 

• Always worrying about being cheated or killed makes transactions too costly, preventing efficient dealings. You need rules and cooperation, and that means trust. 
• Economists  call it the "discipline of continuous dealings". When you know what trust someone, it makes the transaction smoother and faster. The longer the time the anticipated we be dealing with someone, better the behavior we can expect. 
• 
  
• Never betray anyone initially. But if a person cheats you, don't be a martyr. 

• The people who surround us, often determine who we become. Studies show that your boss has a much larger effect on your happiness and success then the company at large. 

• When people do too much and don't ever push back they get taken for granted. A mere two hours a week of helping others is enough to get maximum benefits, no need for guilt and no excuse for saying you don't have time to help others. 

• So what's a good balance? Every Friday send your boss an email summarizing your accomplishments for the week. 

• So to the best of your ability, make things longer term. Build more steps into the contract. The more things seem like a one-off, the more incentive people have to pull one over you. 

• Research shows that even a feeling of control kills stress. Even when you just feel you have control, stress plummets. 

• What's a system that will work when you're trying to turn dreams into reality? How do you know what to quit and what to stick with? One researcher came up with a shockingly easy system. It's called woop. 

• Not only the dreaming not bring you your desires; dreaming actually hurts your chances of getting what you want. It turns out that your brain isn't very good at telling fantasy from reality. When you dream, that gray matter feels you already have what you want and so it doesn't marshall the resources you need to motivate yourself and achieve. Instead, it relaxes. And you do less, accomplish less, and those dreams stay mere dreams. Are you dreaming about how svelte you'll look in that swimsuit after the diet? Women who did that just lost 24 lb fewer than those who didn't. Fantasizing about getting that perfect job? Those who dwelled on it on it sent Fewer applications and ended up getting fewer offers. 

• If dreaming is so bad, why do we do it? Because it's the mental equivalent of getting drunk: It feels really good right now but doesn't lead to good things later. Fantasizing gives the reward before we've accomplished the task and sap's the energy we need to realize it.

• To balance grit and quit use woop : Wish, outcome, obstacle, plan. 

The cool thing is that this process doesn't sap your drive the way just fantasizing does.. But there's an even bigger and benefit to whoop one thats key when you're thinking about Grit and quit. It's like a personal litmus test for feasibility. when your goal is unrealistic you will find yourself less energized and you know it 

• That's what you need: A plan. Most of us don't take the time. We are reactive, like the tribes of the steppes. 
• You need a plan, or you're always going to feel like you're not doing enough. We have so many options these days, that we end up being Pickers, not choosers. 

• Being reactive doesn't just hurt your chances of getting what you want; it also reduces your chances of real happiness. Research shows we often don't choose to do what really makes us happy; we choose what's easy. e.g. TV

• Without a plan, we do whats passive and easy- not what is really fulfilling. The most effective method for reducing stress was having a plan. When we think about obstacles ahead of time and consider how to overcome them, we feel in control.. That's the secret to really getting things done. 
• A feeling of control motivates us to act. When we think we can make a difference, we're more likely to engage. Things aren't as scary when we have our hands on the wheel. 

• The most interesting part - is that it is not actually being in control that causes All these changes, it's just the feeling of control. 

• When you're stressed out, you literally can't think straight.

Checklist Manifesto notes

1 Accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions
2  establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult
3 being financially independent from parents
4 deciding on beliefs and values independently of parents and other influences

The cultivation of a willingness to defy or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition for intellectual and emotional freedom.

There are good checklists and bad, bad check list are vague and imprecise. They're too long they're hard to use; they are impractical. They turn people's brains off rather than on.
 good checklist on the other hand are precise. Theyre efficient, to the point and easy to use evenin difficyllt  situation.  they dont try to spell out everything instead they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps.

When you're making a checklist, you must Define a clear pause point which the checklist is supposed to be used.

 you must decide whether you want or do-conFirm checklist or a do-read Checklist. with a do-confirm checklist he said team members perform their jobs from memory and experience, but then they stop. they pause to run the checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done. with a read-do checklist on the other hand people carry out the tasks as they check them off it's more like a recipe.
 so for any new checklist you have to pick the type that makes the most sense for the situation. the checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it between 5 and 9 items which is the limit of working memory.

You want to keep the list short by focusing on what he called the killer items - the steps that are the most dangerous to skip and sometimes overlooked.
the wording should be simple and exact and use the familiar language of the profession. Even the look of the checklist matters ideally it should fit on one page. It should be free of clutter and unnecessary colors.

Instead they chose to accept their fallibilities - The Simplicity and power of using a checklist. Indeed against the complexity of the wood we must - there is no other choice. When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination. We know the patterns, we see the costs. Its Time to try something else. Try a Checklist

• petesouzaPresident Obama greeting people affected by an F5 tornado in Joplin, Missouri that killed more than 100 people in 2011. “But that does not mean we are powerless in the face of adversity,” he said. “How we respond when the storm strikes is up to us. How we live in the aftermath of tragedy and heartache, that’s within our control. And it’s in these moments, through our actions, that we often see the glimpse of what makes life worth living in the first place."

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYbL0cNFsMC/?hl=en&taken-by=petesouza

Quotes from Pride and Prejudice

Quotes from Pride and Prejudice that spoke to me particularly. I haven't included context, but fans of the book can guess which scenes these lines are from.

• think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
• If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be as happy as you. Till I have your disposition , your goodness,I never can have your happiness.
• And this said she, " is the end of all his friends anxious circumspection! Of all his sisters falsehood and contrivance! The happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!"
• If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. 
• And in the imprudence of anger
• But perhaps he may be a bit whimsical in his civilities. Great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him at his word about fishing, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off his grounds.
• Respect, esteem and confidence had vanished forever.. she endeavored to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible.
• Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.
• One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it
• She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before.
• She tried to recollect some instance of goodness , some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence. But no such recollection befriended her.
• He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world 
• Mrs Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of raising expectations which might only end in disappointment.
• She likes the distinction of rank preserved.
• Every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty behind.
• Where does discretion end and avarice begin?
• A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe.
• All was joy and kindness 
• Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
• There are few people I love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.
• The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke. Certainly replied Elizabeth-there are such people but I hope Iam not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.
• To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.
• The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor , and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
• Of a fine healthy love it may- every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

My fave bits from "How Children Succeed" by Paul Tough

-The reason the teenage
-The growth mindset : Dweck found that students who believed intelligence was malleable did much better than students who believed that intelligence was fixed.
-It seems that what Stefl was trying to convince her students that not just their intelligence and their character but their very destinies were malleable; that their past performance was not an indication of their future results.
-GPA was cumulative all through high school.
-High school grades reveal much more than mastery of content. They reveal qualities of motivation and perserverence - good study habits and time management skills
-The best predictor of college completion was a student's high school GPA.
-standardized test scores were predicted by scores on pure IQ tests and GPA was predicted by tests of self-control.
-grit - self discipline wedded to a dedicated pursuit of a goal.
-Flow - When a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile

-The incentive processing system makes you more sensation seeking, more emotionally reactive, more attentive to social information. The second is called a cognitive control system, allowing you to regulate all those urges. The reason the The teenage years have always been such a perilous time, is that the incentive processing system reaches its full power in early adoloescence, while the cognitive control system doesn't finish maturing until you're in your 20s. So far a few tennage years, we are all madly processing incentives without a corresponding control system to keep our behavior in check.

It's uncomfortable to focus so intensely on what you're bad at. The following day she would reconstruct the games on the practice boards, Analyzing exactly where a player had gone wrong, what he could've done differently, what might've happened if you had made the better move, and playing out these counterfactual scenarios for several moves before returning to the moment of error. You go over the mistakes you made, all the mistakes you keep making – are you trying to get to the bottom of why you made them. Spiegel tries to lead her students down a narrow and difficult path, to have them take responsibility for the mistakes and learn from them - NOT obsessing over them or beating themselves up for them. When one keeps making mistakes you have to find a way to separate yourself from your mistakes or your losses. I tried to teach my students that losing is something you do not something you are.

When I asked him what was so fun about a year of complete immersion in the chess, he replied it was mostly the feeling of being intellectually productive so much of the time. I feel like I'm not really challenging myself are pushing myself just kind of wasting my brain. I never feel like that when I'm playing or teaching chess. He devoted almost a year to the study of chess eliminating everything else from his life, no parties ,no Facebook, no ESPN , no unnecessary socializing - just hours and hours of chess.

Metacognition as many psychologist call it. -Takes place in the pre-frontal cortex. slowing down, examining impulses and considering more productive solutions to the problem then yelling or shoving.

Two seconds is not slow enough. Look if you make a mistake that's OK. But you do something without even thinking about it? That's not OK I'm very very upset to see such a careless and thoughtless game

The next stop to a successful outcome is creating a series of implementation intentions – specific plans in the form of if-then statements that link the obstacles with ways to overcome them - such as - "if I get distracted by TV after school then I will wait to watch TV until I finish my homework".

When you're making rules for yourself you're enisting the prefrontal car tax as your partner against the more reflexive appetite driven parts of your brain. By making yourself a rule, you can sidestep the painful internal conflict between your desire fried foods and you're welcome for determination to resist them . Rules provide structure preparing us for encounters with tempting stimuli and redirecting attention elsewhere. Before long the rules become as automatic as the appetites they are deflecting.

What private school offers parents about all else is a high probability of non-failure.

For both rich and poor teenagers, certain family characteristics predicted children's maladjustment, including low levels of maternal attachment, high levels of parental criticism, and minimal after school adult supervision. Amongst the affluent children, the main cause of distress was excessive achievement pressures and isolation from parents both physical and emotional.

From: http://www.businessinsider.de/warren-buffetts-investment-manager-ted-weschler-the-recipe-for-financial-success-2016-6?IR=T

BI: And which newspapers do you read on a regular basis?

TW: I have a tradition. I always start each day with reading the local paper of the town I wake up in. Then next one would be USA Today. That gets you a general feeling for the Zeitgeist. They package the news for the

entire population. From an investing standpoint it is relevant to understand what everybody is thinking. Then I generally move up to the New York Times, then the Wall Street Journal and then I end with the Financial Times. And actually I recently just started reading the Handelsblatt global edition.