navigation

miete ("thought") + lause ("phrase")

count: 0

40 Ways To Live A Full Life By Age 30 (Ryan Holiday)

Accomplishments don’t change who you are.
page: 15
tags: achievement

There are lots of ways to make money, fewer real opportunities to learn.
page: 2
tags: learning

"Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but they annex every age to theirs."
page: 12
tags: philosophy

Be willing to call things when the diminishing returns set in, it's how you move on when others are stuck.
page: 23
tags: diminishing returns getting unstuck

Owning a home is having a home. It's somewhere I want to get __back to__. The center I revolve around.
page: 26
tags: home

Pouring yourself into something you believe contributes to the world is one of the best ways to feel content and accomplished.
page: 27
tags: contentment achievement

"Any fool can learn by experience; I prefer to learn by the experiences of others" is how Bismark put it.
page: 31
tags: learning

You have to know why you do what you do -- what you prize and what's important to you. Or you will be endlessly comparing yourself against other people, which will not only be a major distraction, it will make you miserable.
page: 35
tags: why purpose

A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Raph Koster)

Thinking is mostly memory, pattern-matching against past experiences.
page: 22

The brain is actively hiding the real world from us. Seeing what is actually there with our conscious mind is really hard to do, and most people never learn how to do it.
page: 18
tags: perception consciousness

The essence of much of art is forcing us to see things as they are rather than as we assume them to be.
page: 22

Noise is any pattern we don't understand. There's really next to nothing in the visible universe that is patternless. If we perceive something as noise, it's most likely a failure in ourselves, not a failure in the universe.
page: 24

Talks about the three levels of learning: conscious thought (logic, analysis, data), chunking (building approximations of reality), muscle memory (which is really autonomic nervous system reactions).
page: 28

The only real difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games.
page: 34

Games are a formal system, already abstracted and iconic, and ready for our brains to absorb without having to turn messy reality into patterns first.
page: 36

The map is not the territory.
page: 36

Books can't do as good a job at teaching as games can, because you cannot practice a pattern and run permutations on it with a book, and have the book respond with feedback.
page: 36

The house the cheese the rat the cat the dog chased caught ate lay in was built by Jack.
page: 38
tags: writing

If you keep playing games, you'll eventually grok wide swaths of their possibility space. In this sense, they are disposable, and boredom is inevitable.
page: 38

Boredom is the opposite of learning. When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored. Boredom is the brain casting about for new information. It is the feeling we get when there are no new visible patterns to absorb. This includes patterns that go over our heads.
page: 42

Games have to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of deprivation and overload, of excessive order and excessive chaos, of silence and noise.
page: 42
tags: games overload

The definition of a good game is one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing.
page: 46

Games are teachers. Fun is just another word for learning. Games teach you how aspects of reality work, how to understand yourself, how to understand the actions of others, and how to imagine. Learning is boring to so many people because the method of transmission is wrong.
page: 46

We learn through stories; we become who we are through stories.
page: 48
tags: stories

As we grow up, we don't actually put away the notion of "having fun." We just migrate it to other contexts. There are games all around us, we just don't call them that.
page: 50
tags: fun games

A reward structure alone does not a good game make.
page: 50

Exploring a possibility space is the only way to learn about it. Most games repeatedly throw evolving spaces at you so that you can explore the recurrence of symbols within them. A modern video game will give you tools to navigate a complicated space, and when you finish, the game will give you another space, and another, and another.
page: 56

Many of the things we have fun doing are in fact training us to be better cavemen.
page: 60

Farming simulator games are really just games about running a business, and not about learning how to actually grow food.
page: 62

Most games revolve around skill sets like resource allocation, force projection, and territory control.
page: 62

Games do very well at action verbs: controlling, projecting, surrounding, matching, remembering, counting, and so on.
page: 64

It's worth asking ourselves what skills are more commonly needed today. Games should be evolving toward teaching us those skills.
page: 66
tags: skills games education

Humans are tribal creatures. We not only fall readily into groups run by outsize personalities, but we'll often subsume our better judgment in doing so.
page: 68

Why are the most popular games the ones that teach obsolete skills (judging trajectory, recognizing danger patterns, running fast and hitting things), while the more sophisticated ones that teach subtler skills tend to reach smaller markets? Because it's easier, and allows us to stay in the unconscious thought/autonomic nervous system reaction mode, and avoid logical, conscious thought.
page: 72

Games typically look different because of their __content__ not their underlying lessons.
page: 76

Take a stagnated genre, like 2D shooters (centipede, robotron, defender, galaga) and find a new dimension to add to the gameplay.
page: 78
tags: game design

The fiction of word problems in math trains us to see past the story to the underlying math problem, and trains us to recognize real-world situations where that math problem might be lurking. A game is similar: you don't see the abstraction directly; there is misdirection; there are metaphors. Games and word problems train us to ignore the fiction wrapping the pattern.
page: 80

Non-gamers decrying games as too violent. But Deathrace does not teach you to run over pedestrians any more than Pac-Man teaches you to eat dots and be scared of ghosts. This is because gamers' brains see past the dressings and metaphors to the real lesson being taught by the game; they ignore the context. The context may be reprehensible, or not the best setting or staging for the game, but it's also not what the game is really about.
page: 84

Instead of dressing up a complex abstraction, we just sprinkle game obstacles throughout a mediocre narrative, forcing the player to perform certain actions to see more of the novel. This can be entertaining, and reach a larger audience of 'non- or casual gamers', but it overshadows and diminishes the learning we get from game systems. The stories for power-centric games (shooters) are generally power fantasies, which is pretty juvenile.
page: 86

Games are not stories, though players can create stories from them.
page: 88

Stories are one of humanity's chief teaching tools. Play is the other. Lecturing runs a distant third.
page: 88
tags: teaching stories learning

The eight types of fun per game designer Marc LeBlanc: sense-pleasure, make-believe, drama, obstacle, social framework, discovery, self-discovery and expression, and surrender.
page: 90

Positive emotions surrounding interpersonal interactions: schadenfreude, fiero, naches, kvell.
page: 92

Doing things for fun that don't help us grow is aesthetic appreciation. Delight, awe, mystery, harmony. Like fun, it's about patterns, but the different is that aesthetics is about __recognizing__ patterns, not learning new ones. For example: delight is when we recognize a pattern but are surprised by it, like the Statue of Liberty at the end of the Plant of the Apes.
page: 94

Fun is contextual. The reasons why we are engaging in an activity matter a lot. School is not fun because we take it seriously. It's not practice, and the conseqeunces (your grades, social status) are real.
page: 96

A shark only gets feedback for eating. Monkeys get feedback for helping others (naches and kvell), pushing the boundaries of their knowledge (fun), and strengthening their social networks and building communities and families that work together to improve everyone's lot (grooming, pairing, and feeding others).
page: 96

As we succeed in mastering patterns thrown at us, the brain gives us little jolts of pleasure. But if the flow of new patterns slows, then we won't get the jolts, and we'll start to feel boredom. If the flow of new patterns increases beyond our ability to resolve them, we won't get the jolts either because we're not making progress.
page: 98
tags: flow

Most of the cases where we typically cite flow relate to exercising mastery, not learning. Fun happens when we bump into and over the top edge of flow, and sometimes we need a little help (from such as the game system).
page: 98

Games are deliberate practice machines.
page: 100

Games as meditation (the repetitive behavior bit, which in meditation is a focus, mantra, or breathing pattern).
page: 100

Fun is about learning in a context where there is no pressure from consequence.
page: 100

Seven forms of intelligence: Linguistic, Musical, Logical-mathematical, Interpersonal, Bodily-kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Spatial.
page: 102

Not all people like all games equally because people are intelligent in different ways, and will tend to gravitate toward problems they think they have a chance at solving.
page: 102

The variation between individuals of either sex is greater than the difference between the sexes, but the differences are real. However, many of these differences are disappearing over time, which suggests that they are cultural rather than biological.
page: 104

Research shows that if people who have trouble with spatial rotation tests are given a video game that encourages them to practice rotation objects and matching particular configurations in 3D, not only will they master the spatial perception necessary, but the results will be permanent.
page: 104
tags: learning

"Centipede (78): One of the most charming shoot-'em-ups ever made, Centipede was notable for its extension of several key concepts from earlier games. It permitted full planar movement within a restricted area at the bottom of the screen, allowing enemies to inhabit the space behind the player. It made use of the same sort of barriers that space invaders had, only it characterized them as mushrooms and spread them across the entire screen. It had a wide assortment of enemies, some of which marched down the screen and some of which were dive-bombers. Finally, the control mechanism was a trackball, which gave players control over acceleration rather than just linear movement speed, employed by joystick-controlled shooters."
page: 253

Simon Baron-Cohen concluded that there are "systematizing brains" and "empathizing brains". Extreme systematizing brains are autistic and ones just slightly less so are Asperger's. Males are more likely to fall into these categories.
page: 104

The difficulty ramp is almost certain to be wrong for many people, and the basic premises are likely to be uninteresting or too difficult for large segments of the population.
page: 106

If people are to achieve their maximum potential, they need to do the hard work of playing games they don't get, the games that don't appeal to their natures. Taking these on may serve as the nurture part of the equation, counterbalancing the brains that they were born with or culturally trained to have.
page: 110

Once players look at a game and ascertain the pattern and the ultimate goal, they'll try to find the optimal path to getting there. This includes cheating, which isn't wrong, and is actually a sign of lateral thinking, also known as cunning, and is a skill that makes them more likely to survive. Knowing how to exploit a game and successfully doing so is a sign that the player fully groks the game.
page: 114
tags: lying cheating survival

Loophole: game system allows it, not violating the magic circle. Cheating: external techniques, hacking, modding, etc. Both can be considered poor form as they both allow the player to circumvent the skill or lesson the game is trying to convey.
page: 116

Humans like things that significantly reduce the odds of unpredictable things happening to them. But we also dislike tedium, so we allow unpredictable things inside the confines of predictable boxes, like games or TV shows or books. The purpose of games is to package up the unpredictable and the learning experience into a space and time where there is no risk.
page: 118
tags: predictability tedium risk experience

Games teach us things so that we can minimize risk and know what choices to make. Phrased another way, the destiny of games is to become boring, not to be fun. Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination.
page: 120

Successful games tend to incorporate the following elements: preparation, a sense of space, a solid core mechanic, a range of challenges, a range of abilities required to solve the encounter, skill required in using the abilities. They also: have a variable feedback system, deal with the Mastery Problem (bottom-feeding too easy encounters must not be too rewarding, but inexperienced players will be unable to get the most out of the game), and failure must have a cost greater than just the opportunity cost.
page: 122

Competition/head-to-head games are the easiest way to constantly provide a new flow of challenges and content.
page: 126

Mastery problem: competitive game-playing tends to squeeze out the people who most need to learn the skills it provides, because they aren't up to the competition and are eliminated in their first match. So people tend to prefer games that take no skill. Not requiring skill from a player should be considered a cardinal sin in game design. It also can't require too much skill, since players are always trying to reduce the difficulty of a task, and the easiest way to do that is to not play.
page: 126

The glory of learning and its fundamental problem: once you learn something, it's over. You don't get to learn it again.
page: 128

Humanity is engaged in a grand project of self-understanding, and most of the tools we have used in the past were imprecise at best. Over time we have developed better tools in the quest to understand ourselves better.
page: 176

Much of our view of the world is shaped by our perceptions and the way we filter information as it reaches us. Clarifying our understanding of that filter is reshaping our relationship to the world.
page: 178
tags: filter worldview perception

The obstacles to making games--trellises--that shape players in ways we choose are not mechanical ones. The primary obstacle is a state of mind. It’s an attitude. It’s a worldview. Fundamentally, it is intent.
page: 184

Against the Gods (Peter L. Bernstein)

Nobody takes a risk on the expectation that it will fail.
page: 12
tags: risk

Many irreversible decisions must be made on the basis of incomplete information, and once we act, we forfeit the option of waiting until new information comes along. Not acting has value. The more uncertain the outcome, the greater may be the value of procrastination.
page: 15
tags: action decisions

A penny saved is not a penny earned unless the future is something more than a black hole.
page: 18
tags: prediction

The successful business executive is a forecaster first; purchasing, producing, marketing, pricing, and organizing all follow.
page: 22
tags: prediction

"Decision theory is the theory of deciding what to do when it is uncertain what will happen."
page: 69
tags: ian hacking

Fear of harm ought to be proportional not merely to the gravity of the harm, but also to the probability of the event.
page: 99
tags: fear probability

Any decision relating to risk involves two distinct yet inseparable elements: the objective facts and a subjective view about the desirability of what is to be gained, or lost, by the decision. Both objective measurement and subjective degrees of belief are essential; neither is sufficient by itself.
page: 100
tags: risk decisions

The value of our expectation always signifies something in the middle between the best we can hope for and the worst we can fear.
page: 103
tags: fear expectation

The utility resulting from any small increase in wealth will be inversely proportionate to the quantity of goods previously possessed.
page: 105
tags: utility gain

Today, we view the idea of human capital--the sum of education, natural talent, training, and experience that comprise the wellspring of future earning flows--as fundamental to the understanding of major shifts in the global economy.
page: 110
tags: human capital

Utility is inversely proportionate to the quantity of goods possessed. The utility gain of wealth increase will be less than the utility loss of a wealth decrease of the same amount.
page: 112
tags: utility

American Gods (Neil Gaiman)

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness.
page: 429
tags: lying

All we have to believe with is our senses: the tools we use to perceive the world, our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.
page: 178
tags: lying senses

Answers (Quora)

Always remember, people are benevolent by nature. It's the situations which are bad.
tags: people

If I was medicated, I’d be just like the rest of you.
tags: adhd

https://qr.ae/TSUQ4R Rich Kosiba Apr 20 · 30 upvotes including Vladislav Zorov That was such a refreshing read! Them: There's a library that does that! Why reinvent the wheel? Me: Sometimes you aren't reinventing the wheel, you're just creating one that suits your purpose without having to buy a whole car with a wheel that can't be removed and used separately. Them: You're making this harder than it needs to be. Me: Is that necessarily a bad thing? You know, all your parents had to do is clothe you and feed you until you turned 18 but I'm guessing they made it harder than it needed to be. That seems to have paid off. Sometimes going the extra mile, designing your own wheel, or at least understanding what's happening “under the hood” so you can make educated decisions results in a much better finished product. Sometimes it's a simple matter of looking at how an open source project did something then making your own simpler, much more efficient version. Other times the libraries and frameworks are just fine. It's about knowing what to use and when to use it.

https://qr.ae/TSxH3Y

Articles (Pocket)

Developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do.
page: 1
tags: modeling

Of all the things on my to-do list, what are the 20 percent that will create 80 percent of the results? Of all the millions of books I could buy, which ones could really change my life? Which handful of people in my life give me the most happiness, the most meaning, and the greatest connection?
page: 1
tags: 8020

You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
page: 1
tags: modeling

Over-applying models is no different than a carpenter trying to build a house with one single hammer. All models, no matter how brilliant, are imperfect. The beauty of using multiple and diverse models is that many of the imperfections cancel each other out, allowing you to create a new “emergent” model that transcends all of the other models.
page: 1
tags: modeling

Education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think.
page: 1
tags: education

Don't deny that the customer/patient/student has a problem. If they think they have a problem, they have a problem. It might be that your job is to help them see (over time) that the thing that's bothering them isn't actually a problem, but denying the problem doesn't de-escalate it.
tags: problem-solving perspective

Articles (Medium)

Psychology research is teaching us that the image of ourselves that we carry is not a true representation of who we are. Rather, our self-image is an elaborate fiction: an oddly-shaped house constructed from biased perceptions and faulty memories hammered together to form a sense-making narrative.
tags: self-image

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb
page: 1
tags: regret investment action

“Self-improvement is meaningless if you don’t create something that’s designed to help somebody other than yourself.”
tags: improvement

The primary problem with the passion hypothesis is that all the attention is focused on the self. One of those [faulty] assumptions is that we as people have preexisting passions we need to “discover” and then follow.
tags: passion

What you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.
tags: motivation

Once you become comfortable, it’s hard to go back to the discomfort of learning and humility.
tags: learning

To write is to step away from the current moment. Or to step much deeper into it than you need. Either way, it is always to be one foot askew.
tags: writing

Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards."
tags: progress

The idea of spending entire days in someone else's office doing someone else's work did not suit my father's soul.
tags: dedication commitment

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere.
tags: attention

A life oriented to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death--the greatest leisure of all.
tags: leisure

"...who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal."
tags: solitude

I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.
tags: effort

"[Write] every day for a while. Do it as you would do scales on a piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things."
tags: commitment

Don't worry about doing it well yet; just start getting it down.
page: 4
tags: shipping

Some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.
page: 8
tags: writing

You don't care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn't know that, couldn't know that, until you got to it.
page: 9
tags: drafts

My son, Sam, at three and a half, had these keys to a set of plastic handcuffs, and one morning he intentionally locked himself out of the house. I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when I heard him stick his plastic keys into the doorknob and try to open the door. Then I heard him say, "Oh, shit." My whole face widened, like the guy in Edvard Munch's Scream. After a moment I got up and opened the front door.\n "Honey," I said, "what'd you just say?"\n "I said, 'Oh, shit,'" he said.\n "But, honey, that's a naughty word. Both of us have absolutely got to stop using it. Okay?"\n He hung his head for a moment, nodded, and said, "Okay, Mom." Then he leaned forward and said confidentially, "But I'll tell you why I said 'shit.'" I said Okay, and he said, "Because of the fucking keys!"\n
page: 13
tags: exploration experimentation

Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.
page: 16
tags: mental health

Write about only what you can see through a one-inch picture frame. "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." - E. L. Doctorow
page: 18
tags: focus scope

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.
page: 19
tags: writing growth

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
page: 22
tags: worldview

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.
page: 22
tags: drafts

Writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.
page: 26
tags: mental health

Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won't do what they want--won't give them more money, won't be more successful, won't see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your shitty first draft.
page: 27
tags: mental noise

Perfectionism, tidy writing, suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.
page: 29
tags: perfectionism drafts

Awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learning to be more __compassionate__ company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage.
page: 31
tags: mindfulness

We need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here--and, by extension, what we're supposed to be writing.
page: 32
tags: failure

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
page: 32
tags: vonnegut

Emotional acres. We all get an acre all to ourselves. We can do whatever we want with it. Plant flowers, a garden, turn it into a junkyard, a garage sale. If people come in and muck it up, we get to ask them to leave, because this is our acre. When writing a character, develop their acre first.
page: 44
tags: emotions characters

When we see someone and say "How are you?" we know that by no they may have another story to tell, or they may be in the middle of one, and we hope it is joyful.
page: 48
tags: joy stories

We all know we're going to die. What's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.
page: 51
tags: death

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.
page: 52
tags: writing lying

Your characters know more about themselves then you do. Stay open to them. It's teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It's that simple.
page: 53
tags: characters

You are not going to be able to give us the plans to the submarine. Life is not a submarine. There are no plans.
page: 55
tags: planning life

Characters should not serve as pawns for some plot you've dreamed up.
page: 54
tags: plot

Find out what each character cares most about in the world because then you will have discovered what's at stake. Find a way to express this discovery in action, and then let your people set about finding or holding onto or defending whatever it is.
page: 55
tags: characters plot

I'm the person whose job it is to hold the lantern while the kid does the digging. I don't even know what the kid is digging for half the time--but I know gold when I see it.
page: 56
tags: writing

The basic formula for drama is setup, buildup, payoff--just like a joke. The setup tells us what the game is. The buildup is where you put in all the moves, the forward motion, where you get all the meat off the turkey. The payoff answers the question, Why are we here anyway? What is it that you've been trying to give?
page: 59
tags: drama jokes

"Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to then, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad."
page: 60
tags: characters

If you're a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold.
page: 66
tags: observation writing

You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should __confirm__ what you've observed in the world.
page: 68
tags: people

The unconcious mind is the cellar where a little boy sits who creates your characters, and he hands them up to you through the cellar door. He might as well be cutting out paper dolls. He's peaceful; he's just playing. You can't will yourself into being receptive to what the little boy has to offer, and you can't buy a key that will let you into the cellar.
page: 72
tags: creativity

I love to see people in gardens, I love the meditation of sitting alone in gardens, I love all the metaphors that gardens are. The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity. The other, of course, is the river. The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe. It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food. Its a competitive display mechanism, the greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses; it's about winning, about providing society with superior things, and about proving that you have taste and good values and you work hard. And what a wonderful relief every so often to know who the enemy is--because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph--and then everything dies anyway. But you just keep doing it.
page: 77
tags: gardening

You can see the underlying essence only when you strip away the busyness, and then some surprising connections appear.
page: 84
tags: insight

Everything is going to be okay, you just might not know exactly what okay is going to look like.
page: 87
tags: okay optimism

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
page: 93
tags: perfectionism

To be engrossed in something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind.
page: 102
tags: purpose

If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately.
page: 103
tags: finishing passion

You can't tell your truths in a sentence or a paragraph; the truth doesn't come out in a bumper sticker.
page: 103
tags: truth authenticity

When you start off writing, you may want to fill the page with witticisms and shimmering insights so that the world will see how uniquely smart and sensitive you are. But much of the drama of humankind does not involve witticisms and shimmer.
page: 104
tags: drama writing wit insight

A moral position is not a slogan, or wishful thinking. It doesn't come from outside or above. It begins inside the heart of a character and grows from there. Tell the truth and write about freedom and fight for it, however you can, and you will be richly rewarded.
page: 109
tags: morality truth freedom

Take the attitude that what you are thinking and feeling is valuable stuff, and then be naive enough to get it all down on paper.
page: 113
tags: thinking feeling

When you need to make the right decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don't know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.
page: 114
tags: decision-making

KFKD radio station: left inner ear is how much more open and gifted and brilliant etc you are, the right inner ear is self-loathing and imposter syndrome.
page: 116
tags: voices

You see the amazing fortitude of people going through horror with grace, looking right into the pit and seeing that this is what you've got, this disease, or maybe even this jealousy. So you do as well as you can with it. And this ravaged body or wounded psyche can and should still be cared for as softly and tenderly as possible.
page: 129
tags: coping

"I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing."
page: 130
tags: perseverance

One of the things that happens when you give yourself permission to start writing is that you start thinking like a writer. You start seeing everything as material. Grist for the mill.
page: 136
tags: material writing

Index card notes. You don't always have to DO something with what you write down. They're just memory triggers. Sometimes writing it down is enough.
page: 137
tags: triggers notes

You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it, too.
page: 156
tags: feedback criticism

My first response to criticism is never profound relief that I have someone in my life who will be honest with me and help me do the very best work of which I am capable. No, my first thought is, "Well. I'm sorry, but I can't be friends with you anymore, because you have too many problems. And you have a bad personality. And a bad character."
page: 166
tags: criticism

I don't think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect.
page: 170
tags: respect kindness

Writing is also about dealing with the emptiness. The emptiness destroys enough writers without the help of some friend or spouse.
page: 170
tags: emptiness

If you look around, I think you will find the person you need. Almost every writer I've ever known has been able to find someone who could be both a friend and a critic. You'll know when the person is right for you and when you are right for that person.
page: 171
tags: writing

If you're stuck, try telling part of your history (or part of a character's history) in the form of a letter. The letter's informality might free you from the tyranny of perfectionism.
page: 172
tags: inspiration

Writer's block isn't really a block. It just means you're looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.
page: 178
tags: emptiness

Breaking through the writer's block is like catching amoebic dysentery. You'll just be sitting there minding your own business, and the next minute you'll rush to your desk with an urgency you had not believed possible.
page: 180
tags: blocks

All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what's keeping things running right.
page: 180
tags: control

Write down everything that happens to you, then take out the parts that feel self-indulgent.
page: 193
tags: writing

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.
page: 198
tags: inner monster

We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in.
page: 198
tags: discovery self-analysis

Truth seems to want expression. Unacknowledged truth saps your energy and keeps you wired and delusional.
page: 199
tags: truth energy delusion

You cannot write out of someone else's big dark place; you can only write out of your own.
page: 199
tags: darkness

Find your room or closet or wood or cave or abyss that you were told not to go into. Go in and look around for a long while, just breathing and taking it all in. Then you will be able to speak in your own voice and stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.
page: 201
tags: prompts being present

You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward.
page: 203
tags: gifts

We are wired as humans to be open to the world instead of enclosed in a fortified, defensive mentality. So be open. Give.
page: 206
tags: receptivity

The real payoff is the writing itself, a day when you have gotten your work done. The total dedication is the point.
page: 215
tags: writing dedication

Quote from Cool Runnings: "If you're not enough before the gold medal, you won't be enough with it." Being enough is going to have to be an inside job.
page: 218
tags: being enough

Try to write in an emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.
page: 226
tags: emotion time

Truth is always subversive--it is a revolutionary act.
page: 226
tags: truth

Writing is like building sand castles out of words. We believe, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.
page: 231
tags: writing

People need writers to mirror for them and for each other without distortion. To say, "This is who we are."
page: 234
tags: writing

Maybe what you've written will help others, will be a small part of the solution. You don't even have to know how or in what way, but if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.
page: 235
tags: truth communication purpose

So why does our writing matter? Because of the spirit. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.
page: 237
tags: writing spirit heart isolation life soul

Clean Code (Robert C. Martin)

The first half and the last chapter (heuristics) are more useful than the rest, but overall it does a good job of hammering home the importance of naming and keeping things well-defined, small, and at the correct level of abstraction.
tags: review

Filament Games Podcast (FG)

Sacrifice rituals are always kind of a mixed bag for the sacrifice.
page: 12
tags: humor

Grit (Angela Duckworth)

Is she a genius? This is the wrong question.
tags: genius

Rising to the occasion has almost nothing to do with talent.
page: 7
tags: talent

It's the chase, as much as the capture, that's gratifying. We can be satisfied being unsatisfied.
page: 8
tags: satisfaction

(Grit scale test)
page: 9
tags: grit

Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.
page: 14
tags: potential

(Consider the importance of effort) When teaching a lesson that fails to gel, could it be that the struggling student needed to struggle just a bit longer?
page: 17
tags: effort

As a teacher, it is my responsibility to figure out how to sustain effort - both the student's and my own - just a bit longer.
page: 17
tags: effort

Insights didn't come to him in lightning flashes, but he was, instead, a plodder (Darwin)
page: 21
tags: effort darwin

Darwin was someone who kept thinking about the same questions long after others would move on to different - no doubt easier - problems.
page: 22
tags: persistence darwin

Superlative performance is really just a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole.
page: 36
tags: performance skill

Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.
page: 38
tags: greatness

(Read Nietzsche)
page: 39
tags: nietzsche

We don't want to watch them grow from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed (This is how we justify not trying. "Oh, he's a natural. I'll never compete with that.")
page: 39
tags: greatness

Great things are achieved by those whose thinking is active in one direction
page: 39
tags: greatness

Grit is doing what you love, but not just falling in love - staying in love.
page: 54
tags: persistence

Grit score: - overall: 4.1 - perseverance: 4.8 - passion: 3.4
page: 55
tags: grit

Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Effort not only builds skill, it makes skill productive. Effort factors into the formula for achievement twice. Talent only once.
page: 42
tags: effort talent achievement

You have to have a philosophy
page: 62
tags: drivers

One top-level professional goal is best. But to have that as the only life goal is extreme. Family matters to some, too, and there is no morally right single goal (career or parent)
page: 66
tags: goals

Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn't.
page: 51
tags: effort skill potential

Purpose: my work is important - both to me and to others
page: 91
tags: purpose

Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening
page: 103
tags: passion

A low-level goal is a means to an end; a top-level goal is an end in itself. These are connected in a tree hierarchy.
page: 62
tags: goals

Polygenic - trait influenced by more than one gene.
page: 82
tags: traits

Rush a beginner and you'll bludgeon their budding interest. It's very, very hard to get that back once you do
page: 108
tags: interest

Some people get twenty years of experience while others get one year of experience, twenty times in a row.
page: 117
tags: experience

Barry Schwartz thinks what prevents young people from developing serious career interest is unrealistic expectations.
page: 102
tags: barry schwartz expectations

Interests are not triggered by introspection, they are triggered by interactions with the outside world
page: 104
tags: interest

Social multiplier effect: we grow more skilled by being around slightly smarter people. Stand next to the smartest person in the room.
page: 84
tags: growth

Repeat until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence (break programming down into its component skills, then practice each one)
page: 123
tags: skill

Beginners find novelty in something they haven't seen before. Experts find novelty in nuance.
page: 114
tags: novelty nuance expertise beginner

Continuous improvement is not looking backward with dissatisfaction. It's looking forward and wanting to grow.
page: 118
tags: improvement

The initial discovery of an interest often goes unnoticed by the discoverer
page: 104
tags: interest

Deliberate practice is a behavior and flow is an experience. Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow.
page: 131
tags: deliberate practice flow

To practice command of language, translate poetry into prose and prose into poetry
page: 124
tags: language

Deliberate practice is for preparation, and flow is for performance
page: 132
tags: deliberate practice preparation flow performance

(cognitive psychology)
page: 118
tags: psychology

You develop a taste for hard work as you experience the rewards of your labor, making deliberate practice more enjoyable. (It's not the practice that is enjoyable, but the knowledge of the rewarding outcome)
page: 136
tags: hard work reward

Different kinds of positive experience: the thrill of getting better is one, and the ecstasy of performing your best is another.
page: 137
tags: experience

Deliberate practice: - A clearly-defined stretch goal - Full concentration and effort - Immediate and informative feedback - Repetition with reflection and refinement
page: 137
tags: deliberate practice

Wishing that you could do things better is extremely common during learning
page: 139
tags: learning

When you have a habit of practicing at the same time and in the same place every day, you hardly have to think about getting started. You just do.
page: 139
tags: practice

Book - Daily Rituals - Mason Currey
page: 139
tags: mason currey

There is no more miserable human being, than the one for whom the beginning of every bit of work must be decided anew each day.
page: 140
tags: work planning

We point out their (children's) mistakes. We frown. Our cheeks flush. We teach our children embarrassment, fear, shame when they fail. Let them fail. Encourage them to try, and fail again.
page: 141
tags: effort failure

Purpose: the intention to contribute to the well-being of others.
page: 146
tags: purpose

Hedonic vs eudaimonic happiness
page: 147
tags: happiness

Job: necessity of life; career: stepping stone for other jobs; calling: my work makes the world a better place
page: 150
tags: calling career

Looking for daily meaning as well as daily bread
page: 151
tags: meaning

How you see your work is more important than your job title.
page: 152
tags: perception

A calling is not some fully formed thing that you find. Ask how what you do connects to other people, to the bigger picture, and how it can be an expression of your deepest values.
page: 153
tags: calling values

Leaders and employees who keep both personal and prosocial interests in mind do better in the long run than those who are 100% selfishly motivated (and vice versa; you need both)
page: 160
tags: social intelligence

1) discover a problem that needs solving and 2) that you personally can make a difference
page: 162
tags: purpose

Improve your work by 1) Reflect on how the work you're doing can make a positive contribution to society. 2) Think about how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance it's connection to your core values 3) Finding inspiration in a purposeful role model. "Imagine yourself 15 years from now. What do you think will be most important to you then?" "Can you think of someone whose life inspires you to be a better person? Why?"
page: 166
tags: meaning

It isn't suffering that leads to helplessness, it's suffering you think you can't control
page: 172
tags: suffering helplessness control

Suffering without control reliably produces symptoms of clinical depression, including changes in appetite and physical activity, sleep problems, and poor concentration
page: 173
tags: suffering depression control

Optimists & pessimists are equally likely to encounter bad events. The difference is that optimists habitually search for temporary and specific causes of their suffering, whereas pessimists assume permanent and pervasive causes are to blame.
page: 174
tags: pessimism optimism suffering

Don't think in terms of disappointment. Think that everything that happens is something that can be learned from.
page: 175
tags: learning

The same objective event can lead to very different subjective interpretations
page: 176
tags: objective subjective

When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop, you don't.
page: 178
tags: continuous improvement

Failure is a cue to try harder rather than as confirmation that they lacked the ability to succeed.
page: 179
tags: failure ability

Each person carries around in their minds private theories about how the world works.
page: 179
tags: worldview viewpoint

Having a fixed mindset - that talent is innate and unchanging - make roadbumps much more difficult to manage.
page: 180
tags: fixed mindset

Watch for mismatches between words and actions
page: 184
tags: action

Name your inner pessimist
page: 184
tags: pessimism

A fixed mindset about ability leads to pessimistic explanations of adversity, which in turn leads to both giving up on challenges and avoiding them in the first place. In contrast, a growth mindset leads to optimistic ways of explaining adversity which in turn leads to perseverance and seeking out new challenges that will ultimately make you even stronger
page: 191
tags: ability adversity challenge perseverance

growth mindset > optimistic self-talk > perseverance over adversity
page: 192
tags: adversity growth perseverance

Think what you can do to boost each of the above steps
page: 192
tags: vague

There's never a time in life that the brain is completely fixed. It changes itself when you struggle to master a new challenge
page: 192
tags: brain challenge

You're acting in a parentlike way if you're asking for guidance on how to best bring faith, interest, practice, purpose, and hope in the people you care for. Y axis: Supportive/Unsupportive; X axis: Demanding/Undemanding. Supporting/Demanding = Wise; Unspportive/Demanding = Authoritarian; Unsupportive/Undemanding = Neglectful; Supportive/Undemanding = Permissive
page: 199
tags: parenting

Teens with warm, respectful, and demanding parents earned higher grades, were self-reliant, suffered from less anxiety and depression, and were less likely to engage in delinquent behavior
page: 213
tags: parenting

Don't pass judgment on how other parents treat their children. In most cases, you don't have enough context to understand how the child interprets the exchange, and, at the end of the day, it's the child's experience that really matters
page: 213
tags: parenting

Parenting assessment here. See book notebook #1
page: 213
tags: parenting

You can make a difference/impact on someone's life just by caring about them and getting to know what's going on
page: 222
tags: interest

Goeff Canada TED Talk: Harlem Children's Zone
page: 238
tags: ted

Hard Thing Rule 1) Everyone, including Mom and Dad, has to do a hard thing 2) You can quit, but not until a natural stopping point: tuition cycle, season over 3) You get to pick your hard thing, nobody else 4) In high school, must commit to at least one activity: something new or something they're already doing, for two years minimum
page: 241
tags: one hard thing

The way we do things around here and why eventually the way I do things and why
page: 247
tags: culture

I'm not going to fail because I don't care or I didn't try
page: 250
tags: failure

Thinking of yourself as someone who is able to overcome tremendous adversity often leads to behavior that confirms that self-conception
page: 252
tags: adversity

There is no effort without error and shortcomings
page: 254
tags: error effort

Do not let temporary setbacks become permanent excuses. Use mistakes and problems as opportunities to get better, not reason to quit
page: 254
tags: excuses mistakes quitting

Talent is common; what you invest to develop that talent is the critical final measure of greatness
page: 255
tags: talent investment greatness

George Bernard Shaw: "The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
page: 257
tags: george bernard shaw grievances complaining fortune

The origin of great leadership begins with the respect of the commander for his subordinates
page: 258
tags: leadership

Our opponent creates challenges that help us become our best selves
page: 262
tags: opposition challenge

Being early is about respect, the details, excellence
page: 267
tags: punctuality

Complacency has its charms, but none worth trading for the fulfillment of realizing your potential
page: 271
tags: complacency potential

Finishing whatever you begin without exception is a good way to missing opportunities to start different, possibly better, things.
page: 272
tags: finishing opportunities

Intrapersonal character: grit, self-control, self-management skills. "resume virtues"
page: 273
tags: character self-control grit self-management

Interpersonal character: gratitude, social intelligence, self-control over emotions such as anger. Help you get along with and provide assistance to other people. "moral character" "eulogy virtues", how people remember you.
page: 274
tags: gratitude social intelligence self-control character

Intelligence character: Curiosity and zest, encourage active and open engagement with the world of ideas
page: 274
tags: character intelligence curiosity engagement

Plurality of character operates against any one virtue being uniquely important.
page: 274
tags: character virtue

You're not practicing piano to be Mozart
page: 275
tags: practice

To be gritty is to fall down seven times and rise eight
page: 275
tags: grit

How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)

Part One: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People 1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain 2. Give honest and sincere appreciation 3. Arouse in the other person an eager want
page: 47
tags: appreciation stoicism

Part Two: Six Ways to Make People Like You 1. Become genuinely interested in other people. 2. Smile. 3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. 4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. 5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests. 6. Make the other person feel important -- and do it sincerely.
page: 105
tags: listening appreciation

Part Three: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking 1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. 2. ‎Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong." 3. ‎If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. 4. ‎Begin in a friendly way. 5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately. 6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. 7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers. 8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. 9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires. 10. Appeal to the nobler motives. 11. Dramatize your ideas. 12. Throw down a challenge.
page: 189
tags: arguing persuasion

Part Four: Be a leader: How to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment. 1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation. 2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. 3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. 4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders. 5. Let the other person save face. 6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise." 7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. 8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct. 9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
page: 236
tags: leadership praise criticism

(p) The word 'but' following praise and leading into criticism infers a failure and diminishes the praise. Change 'but' to 'and' to make the criticism more indirect and not diminish the praise.
page: 200
tags: criticism praise

...susceptible to improvement.
page: 203
tags: improvement

You've lived a unique life, how can you possibly expect others to have your viewpoint, your judgment, or your initiative?
page: 203
tags: judgment viewpoint

"I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime."
page: 214
tags: criticism

"Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise."
page: 215
tags: praise

...when criticism is minimized and praise emphasized, the good things people do will be reinforced and the poorer things will atrophy for lack of attention.
page: 217
tags: praise criticism

Everybody likes to be praised, but when praise is specific, it comes across as sincere--not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good.
page: 219
tags: praise

Abilities wither under criticism; they blossom under encouragement.
page: 220
tags: criticism encouragement

"The average person can be led readily if you have his or her respect and if you show that you respect that person for some kind of ability."
page: 222
tags: leadership

Let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do a thing, that they have an undeveloped flair for it, and they will practice until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.
page: 227
tags: perspective

Linchpin (Seth Godin)

If you're not indispensable yet, it's because you have yet to make the choice to make an indispensable contribution to something you care about.
tags: contribution

Revolutions are frightening because the new benefits sometimes lag behind the old pain.
tags: pain revolution

If you have a job where you wait for someone to tell you what to do next, you've just given up the chance to create value.
tags: creativity value work

Linchpins don't work in a vacuum. Your personality and attitude are more important than the actual work product you create, because indispensable work is work that is connected to others.
tags: work art indispensability connection

The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
page: 1
tags: stability art genius culture

Stop asking what's in it for you and start giving gifts that change people.
page: 3
tags: give

The educated, hardworking masses are still doing what they're told, but they're no longer getting what they deserve.
page: 4
tags: work

Everyone has a little voice inside their head that's angry and afraid. That voice is the resistance--your lizard brain--and it wants you to be average (and safe).
page: 5
tags: resistance comfort

You weren't born a cog in the giant industrial machine. You were __trained__ to become a cog.
page: 6
tags: cog industrial machine

"Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, __say it__, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better."
page: 6
tags: candor

We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point.
page: 8
tags: passion change

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
page: 8
tags: art answers connections

The type of low-risk, high-stability jobs that three-quarters of us crave have turned into dead-end traps of dissatisfaction and unfair risk.
page: 8
tags: satisfaction

The key piece of leverage to get people to work factory jobs was this promise: follow these instructions and you don't have to think. In every corporation in every country in the world, people are waiting to be told what to do.
page: 9
tags: leverage people work instructions

If you build a business filled with rules and procedures that are designed to allow you to hire cheap people, you will have to produce a product without humanity or personalization or connection.
page: 11
tags: humanity business rules procedures

The people you're hoping will hire you, buy from you, support you, and interact with you have more choices and less time than ever before.
page: 12
tags: choice interaction

You can always succeed for a while with the cheapest, but you earn your place in the market with humanity and leadership.
page: 13
tags: success leadership humanity

These are the only two choices. Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human.
page: 13
tags: human

There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.
page: 14
tags: work

First you have interchangeable parts, then you have interchangeable workers.
page: 17
tags: interchangeability

We were all hunters. Then we invented farming, and we became farmers. And we were all farmers. Then they invented the factory, and we all became factory workers. Factory workers who followed instructions, supported the system, and got paid what they were worth. Then the factory fell apart. And what's left for us to work with? Art. Now, success means being an artist.
page: 18
tags: art

It's easy to buy a cookbook filled with instructions to follow, but really hard to find a chef book.
page: 18
tags: instructions

All your other employees are getting paid less to make up for the ones who contribute the least. The exceptional performers are getting paid a __lot__ less, which is why they should (and will) leave.
page: 26
tags: contribution performance

The only way to be indispensable is to be different. That's because if you're the same, so are plenty of other people.
page: 27
tags: indispensability

Take the risk that you might make someone upset with your initiative, innovation, and insight--it turns out that you'll probably delight them instead.
page: 29
tags: shipping

If you want a job where you get to do more than follow instructions, don't be surprised if you get asked to do things they never taught you in school.
page: 30
tags: challenge

You can't--or you don't want to?
page: 32
tags: can't

"Not my job" can kill an entire organization. Doing a job that's not getting done is essential.
page: 34
tags: work

Linchpins do more than they're paid to, on their own, because they value quality for its own sake, and they want to do good work. They __need__ to do good work. Anything less feels intellectually dishonest, and like a waste of time. In exchange, you're giving them freedom, responsibility, and respect, which are priceless.
page: 36
tags: work quality honesty

What the boss really wants is someone who can see the reality of today and describe a better tomorrow.
page: 38
tags: vision worldview truth

The network effect of schools helped create the consumer culture. Once one person had a second or third pair of shoes, you needed more, too.
page: 41
tags: networking consumerism

The difference between cogs and linchpins is largely one of attitude, not learning.
page: 43
tags: attitude learning

We teach people to stay within a tiny range. We don't want the lows to be too low, so we limit the highs as well.
page: 44
tags: mediocrity

The answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. Teach them just enough to get them to cooperate.
page: 46
tags: education

Schools should teach only two things: how to solve interesting problems, and how to lead.
page: 47
tags: problems leadership

Imagine an organization with an employee who can accurately see the truth, understand the situation, and understand the potential outcomes of various decisions. And now imagine that this person is also able to make something happen.
page: 50
tags: truth potential

Doesn't matter if you're always right. It matters that you're always moving.
page: 51
tags: progress

The law of linchpin leverage: the more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time, you're not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people do.
page: 51
tags: leverage work

If you've got no choice but to move the bricks, your opportunity is to think hard about how you can do even this mundane task, because almost any job can be humanized or transformed.
page: 52
tags: opportunity

The craft of the painting, the craft of writing that email, the craft of building that PowerPoint presentation--those are the easy parts. It's the art and the insight and the bravery of value creation that are rewarded.
page: 53
tags: craft art insight bravery creativity rewards

People who tell you that they don't have any good ideas are selling themselves short. They don't have ideas that are valued because they're not investing in their art.
page: 53
tags: ideas investment art

Organizing around average means that the organization has exchanged the high productivity of exceptional performance for the ease and security of an endless parade of average performers.
page: 54
tags: organization productivity performance security

Depth of knowledge is rarely sufficient, all by itself, to turn someone into a linchpin.
page: 55
tags: knowledge

Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth.
page: 56
tags: expertise insight

Every interaction you have with a coworker or customer is an opportunity to practice the art of interaction.
page: 57
tags: art interaction

Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works.
page: 58
tags: structure work path

If you can write a linchpin's duties into a manual, you wouldn't need them. But the minute you write them down, they wouldn't be accurate anyway. That's the key. Linchpins solve problems that people haven't predicted, sees things people haven't seen, and connect people who need to be connected.
page: 59
tags: art connection problem-solving

Assume before you start that you're going to create something that the teacher, the boss, or some other nitpicking critic is going to dislike. But you can't abandon technique merely because you're not good at it or unwilling to do the work. But if the reason they don't like it is that you're challenging structure and expectation and the status quo, do it anyway.
page: 59
tags: status quo expectation challenge

When you start down the path of beating the competition based on something that can be easily measured, you're betting that with practice and determination, you can do better than everyone else doing the same thing. Not just a little better, but a league-of-your-own better. And you can't.
page: 63
tags: competition determination practice

Fearless means unafraid of things one shouldn't be afraid of, the imagined threats. Avoiding that fear allows you to actually accomplish something. Put it aside. Doing this is a prerequisite for success.
page: 64
tags: success fear

As you get closer to perfect, it gets more and more difficult to improve, and the market values the improvements a little bit less. Perfection is not sufficient. Personal interactions don't have asymptotes. Innovative solutions to new problems don't get old. Seek out achievements where there is no limit.
page: 66
tags: perfection improvement interaction solutions problems achievements

There is no map, no step-by-step plan, and no way to avoid blame now and then.
page: 68
tags: planning

Good is bad, if bad means "not a profitable thing to aspire to." Good is repeatable and easy. Repeatable and easy is replaceable. Perfect is bad, because you can't top perfect. There's no room for growth. Either you're perfect or you're not. The solution lies in seeking out something that is neither good nor perfect. You want something remarkable, nonlinear, game changing, and artistic.
page: 70
tags: perfect art

It's damaging to have to put on a new face for work, the place we spend our days. It's damaging to build organizations around repetitive faceless work that brings no connection and no joy.
page: 71
tags: connection joy work

The very system that produced standardized tests and the command-and-control model that chokes us also invented the resume. If you don't have more than a resume, you've been brainwashed into compliance. Great jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes. Projects are the new resumes. Build a blog, a reputation, software that solves a problem. You are not your resume, you are your work.
page: 72
tags: work reputation compliance

If the rules are the only thing between me and becoming indispensable, I don't need the rules. It's easy to find a way to spend your entire day doing busywork. Trivial work doesn't require leaning. The challenge is to replace those tasks with rule-breaking activities instead.
page: 75
tags: busywork rules activities

If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you'll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.
page: 79
tags: nature work

Showing up unwilling to do emotional labor is a short-term strategy now, because over time, organizations won't pay extra for someone who merely does the easy stuff.
page: 80
tags: emotional labor

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. If it's easy and risk free, it's unlikely that it's art. It is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does.
page: 83
tags: art intent

The artist does not feel complete until they give a gift. This is more than refusing to do lousy work. It's an insistence on doing important work.
page: 87
tags: gifts art work

When you create a new use of a traditional system or technology, that's art.
page: 92
tags: art

You can say your lines and get away with it, or you can touch someone and make a difference in their lives forever
page: 93
tags: impact

Pinpoint your audience, or your end up making your art for the loudest, crankiest critics. Trying to please everyone results in mediocrity.
page: 94
tags: audience criticism mediocrity

What do I want to see in the world? Create that.
page: 95
tags: creativity

The moment you work for someone who not only pays you, but also tells you what to do, is the moment you stop being an artist.
page: 95
tags: work

The easier it is to quantify, the less it's worth.
page: 96
tags: worth

Artists think along the edges of the box, because that's where things get done. That's where the audience is, that's where the means of production are available, and that's where you can make an impact.
page: 102
tags: art thinking

The discipline of shipping is essential to the long-term path to becoming indispensable. Not shipping on behalf of your goal of changing the world is often a symptom of the resistance. Call its bluff, ship always, and __then__ change the world. The only purpose of starting is to finish.
page: 103
tags: shipping indispensability goals resistance finishing

Thrashing. Steve McConnell. Thrashing is the productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops. Every software project that has missed its target date is a victim of late thrashing. Thrashing is essential, but do it early. Involve everyone. At the end, don't thrash, involve few people.
page: 104
tags: thrashing brainstorming

Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you're avoiding the anguish and giving in to the resistance.
page: 107
tags: resistance art

The resistance makes people avoid learning to be more productive, because they're afraid that then maybe they'd actually have to do something. Same goes to the folks filling up notebooks with tips and tasks.
page: 115
tags: productivity note-taking resistance

You become a winner because you're good at losing. Successful people learn from the failure that the tactics they used didn't work or that the person they used them on didn't respond.
page: 115
tags: failure

The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there.
page: 116
tags: comfort

All creative people generate a slew of laughable ideas for every good idea. Solving the problem of finding bad ideas will make finding good ideas surprisingly easy.
page: 117
tags: ideas

The freedom of the new kind of work is that tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can spend an hour surfing the internet because no one knows if surfing the internet is going to help us make progress or connections. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.
page: 118
tags: work progress freedom

Don't fit in. Don't follow the score (music). Know the rules, but break them. Don't let the system and your resistance indoctrinate you into following instructions.
page: 119
tags: rules

The temptation to sabotage the new thing is huge, precisely because the new thing might work.
page: 122
tags: resistance

We're hitting a natural ceiling for how cheaply and how fast we can deliver uninspired work. Becoming more average, more quick, and more cheap is not as productive as it used to be.
page: 123
tags: efficiency

Public speaking involves three biological factors that work against us: we need to make an emotional connection, we are the focus of attention, and our perceptions are exposed to judgment.
page: 124
tags: emotion attention judgment

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do.
page: 125
tags: fear direction

Don't listen to the cynics; they're cynics for a reason. For them, the resistance won a long time ago. When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It's not an accident that successful people read more books.
page: 126
tags: criticism cynicism resistance

Once you're done you can throw it away. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. Destruction is a variant of done. Done is the engine of more.
page: 130
tags: failure shipping

What's the point of overcoming the pain the lizard brain inflicts if all you're doing is something that doesn't matter much anyway? Trivial art isn't worth the trouble it takes to produce it.
page: 133
tags: art

Zen Habits by Leo Babauta. Attempt to create only one significant work a year. Break that into smaller projects, and every day, find three tasks to accomplish that will help you complete a project.
page: 135
tags: project management progress

Reassurance doesn't address the issue of anxiety, it exacerbates it.
page: 138
tags: anxiety

Anxiety/shenpa: The very thing you are afraid of occurs, precisely because you are afraid of it, which of course makes the shenpa cycle even worse.
page: 140
tags: anxiety

People don't want to be around those in frequent cycles of pain and fear.
page: 142
tags: negativity

Sprint: go as fast as you possibly can. You can't sprint every day, but it's probably a good idea to sprint regularly. It keeps the resistance at bay.
page: 144
tags: sprinting

Set up a database for your project. Include words, images, sketches, and links to other items in the project. Write down every single notion, plan, idea, sketch, and contact. This is the very last chance you have to make the project better. Then, go through the database and build a complete description of the project. Then get sign-off, and DO. Ship it.
page: 146
tags: project planning

When we agree to define our success on others' terms, especially other people who don't particularly like us and aren't inclined to root for us, we're giving in to the resistance.
page: 147
tags: resistance success

Linchpin thinking is about delivering gifts that can never be adequately paid for.
page: 152
tags: gifts

Artists can't be easily instructed, predicted, or measured, and that's precisely what you are taught to do in business school.
page: 153
tags: art business

Any time you can say "(insert well-known style)-style", it has ceased to be art and started to be a process.
page: 153
tags: process art

An artist paints his painting without knowing if someone is going to buy it.
page: 154
tags: art

Gifts have been relegated to cash substitutes. If you give a gift, the only apparent reason is to get you to reciprocate. This ruins true gifts, since people always think you're expecting something in return.
page: 159
tags: reciprocation gifts

I will give you this __and__ you will do something for someone else. I will give you this __and__ my expectation is that you will change the way you feel. Change 'if' to 'and', and a trade becomes a gift.
page: 162
tags: gifts

Seeing the thing, hearing the thing, understanding the thing--that's enough for it to be art.
page: 163
tags: art

Metcalfe's Law: the value of a network is equal to the square of the number of nodes on the network.
page: 166
tags: networking

Artists don't give gifts for money. They do it for respect and connection and to cause change. They don't want a tiny gratuity or faux appreciation.
page: 167
tags: art gifts appreciation

The most successful and happiest artists embrace their art, they don't look for someone to applaud them. Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.
page: 168
tags: art motivation

The challenge of being the linchpin is to be aware of where your skills and gifts are welcomed.
page: 171
tags: skills gifts

If you want to repay a gift, do something difficult. Don't just circle the three 5s on the review sheet.
page: 172
tags: gifts

You have to know where you are and know where you're going before you can figure out how to go about getting there.
page: 174
tags: mindfulness self-assessment

Nobody has a transparent view of the world. We all carry around a personal worldview--the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world.
page: 174
tags: worldview

Seeing clearly means being able to do a job interview as though you weren't the interviewer or the applicant, but someone watching dispassionately from a third chair.
page: 175
tags: vision

Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else's is the first step in being able to see things as they are.
page: 176
tags: worldview

If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you'll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too.
page: 176
tags: human uniqueness effectiveness decision-making

It's not your job to change what can't be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.
page: 177
tags: change work

A sign of attachment is how you handle bad news. If bad news changes your emotional state or what you think of yourself, then you'll be attached to the outcome you receive. The alternative is to ask, "Isn't that interesting?" Learn what you can learn; then move on.
page: 178
tags: attachment bad news

Interactions in the real world often feel more complex than they actually are. We assign motivations and plots and vendettas where there are none. But it's not personal and it's not rational and it certainly isn't about whether or not you deserve it. It just is.
page: 178
tags: stoicism

When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose, because the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful.
page: 178
tags: work reaction response people

Attachment to an outcome combined with the resistance and fear of change are the two reasons seeing the future is so difficult. If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
page: 178
tags: attachment fear safety comfort

horizontal axis: passion (passive - to passionate +); vertical axis: attachment (attachment - to discernment +j). Q1: Linchpin, Q2: Bureaucrat, Q3: Whiner, Q4: Fundamentalist Zealot. One axis asks 'Can you see it?' the other asks 'Do you care?'
page: 181
tags: discernment passion attachment

When you defend your position, what are you defending? Are you defending your past, your present, or the future you are nostalgic about? Just because you want something to be true doesn't make it so.
page: 183
tags: truth defensiveness nostalgia

Scarcity creates value, and what's scarce is a desire to accept what is and then work to change it for the better, not deny that it exists.
page: 184
tags: scarcity

Artists can't get attached to the object of their attention. The attachment to a worldview changes an artist's relationship to what's happening and prevents him from converting what he sees or interacts with into something that belongs to him, that he can work with and change.
page: 184
tags: attachment worldview

It's human nature to defend our worldview, to construct a narrative that protects us from uncomfortable confessions.
page: 186
tags: worldview comfort human

We only get a certain number of brain cycles to spend each day. Spending even one on a situation out of our control has a significant opportunity cost.
page: 186
tags: opportunity control

The reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.
page: 188
tags: art

If you are working only for the person you report to according to the org chart, you may be sacrificing your future. It may cause you to alienate customers (internal and external), hide your best work, fit in, and become merely a cog in the system.
page: 193
tags: work

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn't lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?
page: 193
tags: agenda

You are either defending the status quo or challenging it. Playing defense and trying to keep everything "all right", or leading and provoking and striving to make everything better.
page: 191
tags: status quo

There's no doubt that environment plays a huge role. The right teacher or the right family support or the accidents of race or birth location are still significant factors. But the new rules mean that even if you've got all the right background, you won't make it unless you choose to.
page: 195
tags: environment

If you're going to go to all the trouble of learning how to play the guitar, and perform it, then SING IT. Sing it loud and with feeling and like you mean it. Deliver it, don't just hand it over like a bank teller.
page: 197
tags: deliver

The world given us control of the means of production (internet, personal computing, smart phones.) Not to master them is a sin. This also applies to software engineers and tools like vim, the command line in general, and git.
page: 198
tags: tools

A timid trapeze artist is a dead trapeze artist.
page: 199
tags: timidity bravery gusto

The stressful part is hoping. Hoping that the future will be what you wish it to be. The reason is your nostalgia for the future. You've fallen in love with a desired outcome. You're attached.
page: 204
tags: stress hope nostalgia attachment

Corporations are tempted to squeeze as much apparent productivity as the can out of each employee. This is fine for the assembly line, since it doesn't work without your presence. But the model has changed. The assembly line is gone.
page: 207
tags: productivity

If it's easy, it's already been done and is no longer valuable. What makes someone a linchpin is not a shortcut. It's the understanding of __which__ hard work is worth doing.
page: 207
tags: work

"He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances."
page: 208
tags: ralph waldo emerson

Five traits that are essential in how people look at us: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability.
page: 210
tags: traits

Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or manipulative, they fail.
page: 214
tags: interactions relationships

We can read between the lines and understand exactly when a boss is lying to us and when someone is disrespecting us, regardless of the words being used.
page: 214
tags: authenticity

Humility is our antidote to what's inevitably not going to go according to plan. Humility permits us to approach a problem with kindness and not arrogance.
page: 224
tags: humility kindness

Linchpin list: 1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization; 2. Delivering unique creativity; 3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity; 4. Leading customers; 5. Inspiring staff; 6. Providing deep domain knowledge; 7. Possessing a unique talent
page: 218
tags: creativity complexity knowledge talent

What happens when your art doesn't work? Learn from it. Make more. Give more gifts. The only alternative is to give up.
page: 224
tags: failure

In most non-cog jobs, the boss's biggest lament is that her people won't step up and bring their authentic selves to work.
page: 226
tags: authenticity work

A cornerstone of your job is selling your boss on your plans, behaving in a way that gives her cover with __her__ boss, being unpredictable in predictable ways. You have to earn the confidence of the company.
page: 226
tags: work impact influence confidence

Poets who try to get paid end up writing jingles and failing and hating it at the same time.
page: 227
tags: motivation extrinsic

The pitfalls of monetizing the thing you love: 1. In order to monetize your work, you'll probably corrupt it, taking out the magic, in search of dollars; 2. Attention doesn't always equal significant cash flow. Do your art. But don't wreck your art if it doesn't lend itself to paying the bills. That would be a tragedy.
page: 227
tags: attention art work

The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
page: 232
tags: creativity

Repetitive, but has a worthy message. Break free of the indoctrination society thrusts upon us: get a degree, get a job, do your time, follow the instructions, don't make waves, stay safe, stay comfortable, retire. Instead, be indispensable. Forge connections. Create art. Give gifts. Rail against the rulebooks. Re-write the rulebooks. Draw your own map.
tags: review

Logical Fallacies (yourlogicalfallacyis.com)

strawman You misrepresented someone's argument to make it easier to attack. By exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable, but this kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate. Example: After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.
tags: argument

false cause You presumed that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other. Many people confuse correlation (things happening together or in sequence) for causation (that one thing actually causes the other to happen). Sometimes correlation is coincidental, or it may be attributable to a common cause. Example: Pointing to a fancy chart, Roger shows how temperatures have been rising over the past few centuries, whilst at the same time the numbers of pirates have been decreasing; thus pirates cool the world and global warming is a hoax.

appeal to emotion You attempted to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument. Appeals to emotion include appeals to fear, envy, hatred, pity, pride, and more. It's important to note that sometimes a logically coherent argument may inspire emotion or have an emotional aspect, but the problem and fallacy occurs when emotion is used instead of a logical argument, or to obscure the fact that no compelling rational reason exists for one's position. Everyone, bar sociopaths, is affected by emotion, and so appeals to emotion are a very common and effective argument tactic, but they're ultimately flawed, dishonest, and tend to make one's opponents justifiably emotional. Example: Luke didn't want to eat his sheep's brains with chopped liver and brussel sprouts, but his father told him to think about the poor, starving children in a third world country who weren't fortunate enough to have any food at all.

the fallacy fallacy You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong. It is entirely possible to make a claim that is false yet argue with logical coherency for that claim, just as it is possible to make a claim that is true and justify it with various fallacies and poor arguments. Example: Recognising that Amanda had committed a fallacy in arguing that we should eat healthy food because a nutritionist said it was popular, Alyse said we should therefore eat bacon double cheeseburgers every day.

slippery slope You said that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen. The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture. Example: Colin Closet asserts that if we allow same-sex couples to marry, then the next thing we know we'll be allowing people to marry their parents, their cars and even monkeys.

ad hominem You attacked your opponent's character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument. Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone's case without actually having to engage with it. Example: After Sally presents an eloquent and compelling case for a more equitable taxation system, Sam asks the audience whether we should believe anything from a woman who isn't married, was once arrested, and smells a bit weird.
tags: argument

tu quoque You avoided having to engage with criticism by turning it back on the accuser - you answered criticism with criticism. Pronounced too-kwo-kwee. Literally translating as 'you too' this fallacy is also known as the appeal to hypocrisy. It is commonly employed as an effective red herring because it takes the heat off someone having to defend their argument, and instead shifts the focus back on to the person making the criticism. Example: Nicole identified that Hannah had committed a logical fallacy, but instead of addressing the substance of her claim, Hannah accused Nicole of committing a fallacy earlier on in the conversation.

personal incredulity Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it's probably not true. Complex subjects like biological evolution through natural selection require some amount of understanding before one is able to make an informed judgement about the subject at hand; this fallacy is usually used in place of that understanding. Example: Kirk drew a picture of a fish and a human and with effusive disdain asked Richard if he really thought we were stupid enough to believe that a fish somehow turned into a human through just, like, random things happening over time.

special pleading You moved the goalposts or made up an exception when your claim was shown to be false. Humans are funny creatures and have a foolish aversion to being wrong. Rather than appreciate the benefits of being able to change one's mind through better understanding, many will invent ways to cling to old beliefs. One of the most common ways that people do this is to post-rationalize a reason why what they thought to be true must remain to be true. It's usually very easy to find a reason to believe something that suits us, and it requires integrity and genuine honesty with oneself to examine one's own beliefs and motivations without falling into the trap of justifying our existing ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us. Example: Edward Johns claimed to be psychic, but when his 'abilities' were tested under proper scientific conditions, they magically disappeared. Edward explained this saying that one had to have faith in his abilities for them to work.

loaded question You asked a question that had a presumption built into it so that it couldn't be answered without appearing guilty. Loaded question fallacies are particularly effective at derailing rational debates because of their inflammatory nature - the recipient of the loaded question is compelled to defend themselves and may appear flustered or on the back foot. Example: Grace and Helen were both romantically interested in Brad. One day, with Brad sitting within earshot, Grace asked in an inquisitive tone whether Helen was still having problems with her drug habit.
tags: argument

burden of proof You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove. The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever. However it is important to note that we can never be certain of anything, and so we must assign value to any claim based on the available evidence, and to dismiss something on the basis that it hasn't been proven beyond all doubt is also fallacious reasoning. Example: Bertrand declares that a teapot is, at this very moment, in orbit around the Sun between the Earth and Mars, and that because no one can prove him wrong, his claim is therefore a valid one.

ambiguity You used a double meaning or ambiguity of language to mislead or misrepresent the truth. Politicians are often guilty of using ambiguity to mislead and will later point to how they were technically not outright lying if they come under scrutiny. The reason that it qualifies as a fallacy is that it is intrinsically misleading. Example: When the judge asked the defendant why he hadn't paid his parking fines, he said that he shouldn't have to pay them because the sign said 'Fine for parking here' and so he naturally presumed that it would be fine to park there.
tags: ambiguity politics

the gambler's fallacy You said that 'runs' occur to statistically independent phenomena such as roulette wheel spins. This commonly believed fallacy can be said to have helped create an entire city in the desert of Nevada USA. Though the overall odds of a 'big run' happening may be low, each spin of the wheel is itself entirely independent from the last. So whilst there may be a very small chance that heads will come up 20 times in a row if you flip a coin, the chances of heads coming up on each individual flip remain 50/50, and aren't influenced by what happened before. Example: Red had come up six times in a row on the roulette wheel, so Greg knew that it was close to certain that black would be next up. Suffering an economic form of natural selection with this thinking, he soon lost all of his savings.

bandwagon You appealed to popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation. The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity. If it did, then the Earth would have made itself flat for most of history to accommodate this popular belief. Example: Shamus pointed a drunken finger at Sean and asked him to explain how so many people could believe in leprechauns if they're only a silly old superstition. Sean, however, had had a few too many Guinness himself and fell off his chair.

appeal to authority You said that because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true. It's important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However, it is entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not. Example: Not able to defend his position that evolution 'isn't true' Bob says that he knows a scientist who also questions evolution (and presumably isn't a primate).
tags: argument

composition/division You assumed that one part of something has to be applied to all, or other, parts of it; or that the whole must apply to its parts. Often when something is true for the part it does also apply to the whole, or vice versa, but the crucial difference is whether there exists good evidence to show that this is the case. Because we observe consistencies in things, our thinking can become biased so that we presume consistency to exist where it does not. Example: Daniel was a precocious child and had a liking for logic. He reasoned that atoms are invisible, and that he was made of atoms and therefore invisible too. Unfortunately, despite his thinky skills, he lost the game of hide and go seek.

no true scotsman You made what could be called an appeal to purity as a way to dismiss relevant criticisms or flaws of your argument. In this form of faulty reasoning one's belief is rendered unfalsifiable because no matter how compelling the evidence is, one simply shifts the goalposts so that it wouldn't apply to a supposedly 'true' example. This kind of post-rationalization is a way of avoiding valid criticisms of one's argument. Example: Angus declares that Scotsmen do not put sugar on their porridge, to which Lachlan points out that he is a Scotsman and puts sugar on his porridge. Furious, like a true Scot, Angus yells that no true Scotsman sugars his porridge.

genetic You judged something as either good or bad on the basis of where it comes from, or from whom it came. This fallacy avoids the argument by shifting focus onto something's or someone's origins. It's similar to an ad hominem fallacy in that it leverages existing negative perceptions to make someone's argument look bad, without actually presenting a case for why the argument itself lacks merit. Example: Accused on the 6 o'clock news of corruption and taking bribes, the senator said that we should all be very wary of the things we hear in the media, because we all know how very unreliable the media can be.

black-or-white You presented two alternative states as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist. Also known as the false dilemma, this insidious tactic has the appearance of forming a logical argument, but under closer scrutiny it becomes evident that there are more possibilities than the either/or choice that is presented. Binary, black-or-white thinking doesn't allow for the many different variables, conditions, and contexts in which there would exist more than just the two possibilities put forth. It frames the argument misleadingly and obscures rational, honest debate. Example: Whilst rallying support for his plan to fundamentally undermine citizens' rights, the Supreme Leader told the people they were either on his side, or they were on the side of the enemy.

begging the question You presented a circular argument in which the conclusion was included in the premise. This logically incoherent argument often arises in situations where people have an assumption that is very ingrained, and therefore taken in their minds as a given. Circular reasoning is bad mostly because it's not very good. Example: The word of Zorbo the Great is flawless and perfect. We know this because it says so in The Great and Infallible Book of Zorbo's Best and Most Truest Things that are Definitely True and Should Not Ever Be Questioned.

appeal to nature You argued that because something is 'natural' it is therefore valid, justified, inevitable, good or ideal. Many 'natural' things are also considered 'good', and this can bias our thinking; but naturalness itself doesn't make something good or bad. For instance murder could be seen as very natural, but that doesn't mean it's good or justifiable. Example: The medicine man rolled into town on his bandwagon offering various natural remedies, such as very special plain water. He said that it was only natural that people should be wary of 'artificial' medicines such as antibiotics.

anecdotal You used a personal experience or an isolated example instead of a sound argument or compelling evidence. It's often much easier for people to believe someone's testimony as opposed to understanding complex data and variation across a continuum. Quantitative scientific measures are almost always more accurate than personal perceptions and experiences, but our inclination is to believe that which is tangible to us, and/or the word of someone we trust over a more 'abstract' statistical reality. Example: Jason said that that was all cool and everything, but his grandfather smoked, like, 30 cigarettes a day and lived until 97 - so don't believe everything you read about meta analyses of methodologically sound studies showing proven causal relationships.
tags: anecdotal argument

the texas sharpshooter You cherry-picked a data cluster to suit your argument, or found a pattern to fit a presumption. This 'false cause' fallacy is coined after a marksman shooting randomly at barns and then painting bullseye targets around the spot where the most bullet holes appear, making it appear as if he's a really good shot. Clusters naturally appear by chance, but don't necessarily indicate that there is a causal relationship. Example: The makers of Sugarette Candy Drinks point to research showing that of the five countries where Sugarette drinks sell the most units, three of them are in the top ten healthiest countries on Earth, therefore Sugarette drinks are healthy.

middle ground You claimed that a compromise, or middle point, between two extremes must be the truth. Much of the time the truth does indeed lie between two extreme points, but this can bias our thinking: sometimes a thing is simply untrue and a compromise of it is also untrue. Half way between truth and a lie, is still a lie. Example: Holly said that vaccinations caused autism in children, but her scientifically well-read friend Caleb said that this claim had been debunked and proven false. Their friend Alice offered a compromise that vaccinations must cause some autism, just not all autism.

Lyrics (.)

When the house goes up in flames, no one emerges triumphantly from it.
tags: destruction loss

I don't wanna know who I am without you.
tags: lies comfort zone

I was just a boy striking matches upon your heart. I couldn't get no spark.
tags: love

Can't start a fire without a spark

And if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones

I don't have a choice, but I still choose you.
tags: atag

For all of the innocent things that I doubt...

Oh, but I don't wanna be the center of anything, Just a part of something bigger.

You could still be what you want to, What you said you were when I met you. You've got a warm heart, you've got a beautiful brain, But it's disintegrating from all the medicine.

But who am I if I'm the person you become, if I'm still growing up
tags: growth self self-awareness

This mess was yours, Now your mess is mine

I saw the part of you that only when you're older

And if the clouds are gathering, it's just to point the way To an afternoon I spent with you when it rained all day

Made to Stick (Chip Heath)

"A friend of a friend..." Have you ever noticed that our friends' friends have much more interesting lives than our friends themselves?
page: 4
tags: telephone game urban legends

Is it possible to make __true, worthwhile__ ideas circulate as effectively as false, more inherently interesting, ideas?
page: 5
tags: ideas

Not every idea is stick-worthy, but the ones that are, we want to stick in a way that themes and ways of thinking endure long after the individual factoids have faded.
page: 9
tags: themes ideas

If you have to tell someone the same thing ten times, the idea probably wasn't very well designed.
page: 9
tags: design ideas

Most of the time, you only get one shot to get an idea to stick. So how do you know, __in advance__, which way will stick?
page: 10
tags: ideas

1. To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. We must create ideas that are both simple __and__ profound.
page: 16
tags: conveying ideas

2. To get our audience's attention, we need to violate their expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We just generate interest and curiosity. Open gaps in their knowledge, then fill those gaps.
page: 16
tags: conveying ideas

3. Speak concretely to make your idea clear, in terms of human actions and sensory information. Use concrete images. "A bird in the hand..."
page: 17
tags: conveying ideas

4. Give the audience something to consider for themselves rather than passing ideas down from on high. Ask a question intended to make them consider and weigh and judge.
page: 17
tags: conveying ideas

5. Use their emotion. Make them feel something. Disgust, anger. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstract ideas.
page: 17
tags: conveying ideas

6. Tell stories. Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, providing us with a catalog of others' experiences, and preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.
page: 18
tags: conveying ideas

One of the main problems with trying to get an idea to stick is the curse of knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. It becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.
page: 20
tags: knowledge

There are only two ways to beat the curse of knowledge: don't learn anything, or take your ideas and transform them by following the sticky ideas checklist. (conveying ideas tag, 1-6)
page: 20
tags: knowledge ideas

"All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
page: 23
tags: happiness family

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
page: 28
tags: design perfection

Simple doesn't mean easy, dumbed down. It means elegance and prioritization.
page: 30
tags: simple prioritization

The first sentence of a news article should contain most essential elements of the story. This is called a lead. The information gets gradually less critical further in the story. This is the inverted pyramid structure. This means a reader with a short attention span will get most of the information someone with a longer attention span would and also makes editing for brevity easier, as you can just lob off the bottom of the piece without losing critical information.
page: 30
tags: leads story

Smart people recognize the value of all the material. They see nuance, multiple perspectives--and because they fully appreciate the complexities of a situation, they're often tempted to linger there. This tendency to gravitate toward complexity is perpetually at war with the need to prioritize.
page: 32
tags: prioritization complexity

If you say three things, you don't say anything.
page: 34
tags: focus prioritization

Giving someone two alternatives to something, rather than one, paradoxically makes them less likely to choose either.
page: 37
tags: choice

The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be.
page: 46
tags: ideas

Someone wants to add a new feature. Other engineers in a team don't particularly care about the feature, but they don't care enough to stage a protest. This slowly and quietly leads to feature creep.
page: 49
tags: feature creep

When we remember complex subjects, it's because we have already done the heavy lifting of learning and organizing the data in our minds, and all we need to access it is a pointer to that information. To make an idea stick, you tap the existing memory terrain of your audience, and use what's already there.
page: 52
tags: notes

Rather than electrons orbiting nuclei, it's more accurately described as a probability cloud. But we teach sixth graders the orbit model because it nudges them closer to the truth rather than clouds which are impossible to understand. The choice is between accuracy and accessibility, but if a message can't be used to make predictions or decisions, no matter how accurate or comprehensive it is, it is without value. An accurate but useless idea is still useless.
page: 56
tags: accuracy accessibility

An accurate but useless idea is still useless. People are tempted to tell you everything, with perfect accuracy, right up front, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more.
page: 57
tags: accuracy

A great way to avoid useless accuracy, and to dodge the curse of knowledge, is to use analogies. Analogies derive their power from schemas. They make it possible to understand a compact message because they invoke concepts that you already know.
page: 57
tags: curse of knowledge analogies

The most basic way to get someone's attention is to break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Consistent sensory stimulation makes us tune out.
page: 64
tags: attention patterns adaptation simulation

Surprise makes us want to find an answer--to resolve the question of why we are surprised, why our schemas failed--and big surprises call for big answers. If we want to motivate people to pay attention, we should seize the power of big surprises.
page: 69
tags: surprise motivation

To be surprising and impactful, an event can't be predictable, but it MUST be post-dictable: it has to make sense if you think about it, but not something you would have seen coming.
page: 71
tags: surprise impact

If you want an idea to stick, you have to break someone's guessing machine (surprise them), and then fix it by producing insight by targeting an aspect of your audience's guessing machines that relates to your core message.
page: 71
tags: surprise insight

The Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience. Present a mystery, then help the reader solve it.
page: 81
tags: experience

Curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge. Domains like movies and novels intentionally create this gap to keep readers engaged. To convey knowledge, first convince your audience that they need that knowledge by opening a gap for them. Shift your thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?"
page: 84
tags: knowledge curiosity

If people believe they know everything, it's hard to make the gap theory work. You have to disable their overconfidence. Make them commit to a prediction that you can prove false. Overconfident people would also be more likely to recognize a knowledge gap when they see that others disagree with them.
page: 88
tags: overconfidence

If curiosity arises from knowledge gaps, we might assume that when we know more, we'll become less curious because there are fewer gaps in our knowledge. But Loewenstein argues that the opposite is true. He says that as we gain information we are more and more likely to focus on what we don't know.
page: 89

There is value in sequencing information--not dumping a stack of information on someone at once but dropping a clue, then another clue, then another. This method of communication resembles flirting more than lecturing.
page: 93
tags: information communication sequencing

Trying to teach an abstract principle without concrete foundations is like trying to start a house by building a roof in the air.
page: 106
tags: abstract

Your brain is like Velcro; it has a staggering number of tiny loops on its storage compartments. An idea that has more hooks will adhere better to this storage.
page: 111

Novices perceive concrete details as concrete details. Experts perceive concrete details as symbols of patterns and insights that they have learned through years of experience. Experts want to talk about strategy and philosophy, not implementation and rules.
page: 114
tags: atag

It can feel unnatural to speak concretely about subject matter we've known intimately for years.
page: 115
tags: speaking concreteness

The pitch is generally delivered by the expert, who needs to use concrete, not abstract, terms to communicate with the audience, who are the novices (and probably the ones with the money).
page: 118
tags: pitch communication audience

We trust the recommendations of people whom we want to be like.
page: 134
tags: credibility

It can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities on a subject.
page: 137
tags: authority honesty credibility

Urban legends (and other things) acquire a good deal of their credibility and effect from their localized details.
page: 138
tags: credibility

If someone can mentally see the vivid details attached to the story, they are more likely to believe the story, even if the details are irrelevant to the story.
page: 139

The most important thing to remember about using statistics effectively is that they are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. Statistics will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It's more important for people to remember the relationship than the number.
page: 143

If members of a soccer team had the same views of the goal as employees of companies do, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.
page: 144
tags: human scale principle

Drop in the bucket effect. If people feel overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, their contributions seem meaningless.
page: 166
tags: impact effectiveness problems meaning

Thinking analytically reduces our capacity to feel while doing so.
page: 167

When associations to certain terms are drawn repeatedly--sometimes with precision, sometimes with crudeness--the effect is to dilute the power of the terms and their underlying concepts. When everyone paints with lime green, lime green no longer stands out.
page: 173
tags: semantic stretch

We make people care by appealing to things that matter to them. What matters to people? People matter to themselves. One reliable way of making people care is by invoking self-interest. Spell it out for them. Do the heavy lifting so they have time to absorb your point.
page: 177
tags: self-interest

It may be the tangibility, rather than the magnitude, of the benefits that makes people care. It may be enough to promise reasonable benefits that people can easily imagine themselves enjoying.
page: 182

While self-interest can be used to motivate, it may be trumped by what someone identifies as something someone like them would normally do in a given situation.
page: 190
tags: motivating self-interest group behavior identifying

Abraham Maslow, motivation pyramid (mostly junk, it's not a pyramid). Bottom 4 are Physical, Security, Belonging, Esteem. Next 4 are less concrete: Learning, Aesthetic, Self-actualization, Transcendence.
page: 183

Using stories allows people to follow along and imagine what they would do in the same situation. Stories are part entertainment and part instruction.
page: 208
tags: storytelling

Simulating past events is much more helpful than simulating future outcomes.
page: 211

When we imagine events or sequences we evoke the same modules of the brain that are evoked in real physical activity. Mental practice alone produces about two thirds of the benefits of actual physical practice.
page: 212
tags: practice simulation

Stories put knowledge into a framework that is more lifelike, more true to our day-to-day existence.
page: 214
tags: stories knowledge

We don't always have to create sticky ideas. Spotting them is often easier and more useful.
page: 224

When you make an argument, you're implicitly asking people to evaluate your argument--judge it, debate it, criticize it--and then argue back, at least in their minds. But with a story you engage the audience--you are involving people with the idea, asking them to participate with you. Tell a story that elicits a second story from the little voice in their heads.
page: 234

The problem with trying to convey the edifice of all of your knowledge is that you can't fit it all in one 90-minute presentation. At best you can pluck a few building blocks from the roof, which results in meaningless recommendations and platitudes and inauthentic one-liners.
page: 236
tags: knowledge speaking

Stories have the amazing dual power to simulate and to inspire. And most of the time we don't even have to use much creativity to harness these powers--we just need to be ready to spot the good ones that life generates every day.
page: 237
tags: writing stories

The world will always produce more great ideas than any single individual, even the most creative one.
page: 242
tags: ideas creativity

People who are captivating speakers typically do no better than others in making their ideas stick--it's the stories that stick, regardless of the speaker.
page: 243
tags: ideas stories speaking

One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we're tempted to share it all. We bury the lead.
page: 243
tags: lead

Curse of Knowledge. Knowing a lot helps us get to the answer, but hurts us when telling others the answer. We tend to communicate __as if our audience were us__. There's a curious disconnect between the amount of time we invest in training people how to arrive at the answer and the amount of time we invest in training them how to tell others.
page: 245

SUCCESs easy reference guide.
page: 253

as a writing exercise, go through the clinics

Man's Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)

It is spiritual freedom--which cannot be taken away--that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
page: 76
tags: spiritual choice

But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
page: 76
tags: meaning

Time experience of provisional existence: someone without a clear end to their current situation, a release, cannot plan for the future. Examples of this are imprisonment of unknown duration, unemployment, or terminal illness.
page: 79
tags: planning

...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
page: 75
tags: attitude choice

Mindset (Carol Dweck)

Afraid you're not good at something? Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. You can't know without a lot of effort. If you have the passion for it, put in the effort and see.
page: 107
tags: passion effort

Key weapons of the fixed mindset: blame, excuses, stifling of critics and rivals
page: 117
tags: fixed mindset

Minimalism (Documentary)

Technology encourages us to maintain the addiction of wanting more.
tags: addiction

Mistborn (Brandon Sanderson )

Don't worry that you aren't giving people what they want. Give them who you are, and let that be enough.
page: 302
tags: worthiness

Trying to guess what people wish of you will only lead to chaos. You cannot please them all.
page: 399
tags: people-pleasing mind-reading

A man can only stumble for so long before he either falls or stands up straight.
page: 409
tags: failure

Moonwalking With Einstein (Joshua Foer)

A wide shotgun blast of the neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of memory, with a few detailed deep dives; enough interesting anecdotes to keep the pace strong.
tags: review

Movies (.)

Just because you're hurt doesn't mean you're broken.
tags: resilience pain

Nudge (Richard Thaler)

Small interventions and even coincidences, at a key stage, can produce large variations in the outcome.
page: 63

Oathbringer (Brandon Sanderson)

Have you ever considered that bad art does more for the world than good art? Artists spend more of their lives making bad practice pieces than they do masterworks, particularly at the start. And even when an artist becomes a master, some pieces don't work out. Still others are somehow just wrong until the last stroke. You learn more from bad art than you do from good art, as your mistakes are more important than your successes. Plus, good art usually evokes the same emotions in people--most good art is the same kind of good. But bad pieces can each be bad in their own unique way. So I'm glad we have bad art.
page: 603
tags: failure growth

He felt good lots of days. Trouble was, on the bad days, that was hard to remember. At those times, for some reason, he felt like he had always been in darkness, and always would be.
page: 690
tags: darkness

The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone.
page: 789
tags: failure

Sometimes, a hypocrite is nothing more than a man who is in the process of changing.
page: 967
tags: change

That a thing is hated is not proof that it's great, but the lack of hatred is certainly proof that it's not.
page: 1229
tags: greatness

Do better.
tags: improvement

Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)

I am not my childhood. I hate these replays. I can't turn them off, can't change the subject, can't leave the room. I need more inner discipline.
tags: mindfulness

Then they could tick off the terrific parenting checklist they carted around in their heads. It wasn't the bad stuff they did that made him angry, it was the good stuff. The stuff they patted themselves on the backs for. They knew nothing about him, what he liked, what he hated, what he longed for. They thought he was only what they could see. He wasn't a washout, knock on wood. Knock on wood, as if he was bound to fuck up, wander off the tracks, but he just hadn't gotten around to it yet. About the different, secret person living inside him they know nothing at all.
page: 1
tags: parenting

Toast was a pointless invention from the dark ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it to regurgitate in verbal form the sins and crimes of their past lives. Toast was a ritual item devoured by fetishists in the belief that it would enhance their kinetic and sexual powers. Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast.
page: 2
tags: language

People in Matt's Life (Matt)

If there are duties in your work you'd prefer not to become an expert in due to the dull nature of the duty, don't neglect learning it. Instead become proficient enough that you are able to perform when called on, then strive no further in your expertise of that duty.
page: 20171007
tags: proficiency expertise

Quotes (Misc)

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
tags: kindness tolerance judgement

When you compromise and you fail, it really hurts. It hurts even more than failing at what you love. I've learned that you can fail at what you don't love, so you might as well do what you love. There's really no choice to be made.
tags: compromise passion

Seen on quora: "Journaling is like whispering to oneself and listening at the same time." - Mina Murray
tags: writing

"Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom, which itself has such a calm and sedate nature, can have such a capacity to initiate motion. The effect that boredom brings about is absolutely magical, but this effect is one not of attraction but of repulsion." Soren Kierkegaard
tags: boredom kierkegaard

If we write ourselves off as idiots, then why bother examining the way we live? If we have no control over our behaviour, what’s the point of trying to change?

When feeling trapped causes me pain, it is because I am unable to find the bars of my cage.
tags: trapped cage

being kings of the hill in a frankly quite flat landscape

Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)

“What happens when you die? Well, we’re not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You’re just dead, your brain stops working, and then you’re not around to ask annoying questions anymore. Those stories you heard? About going to a wonderful place called ‘heaven’ where there is no more pain or death and you live forever in a state of perpetual happiness? Also total bullshit. Just like all that God stuff. There’s no evidence of a heaven and there never was. We made that up too. Wishful thinking. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you’re going to die someday and disappear forever. “Sorry.”
page: 16
tags: death

Reality is Broken (Jane McGonigal)

The goal of history is uncovering the moral problems and moral truths in the concrete data of experience.
page: 6
tags: history truth

The people who continue to write off games will be at a major disadvantage in the coming years.
page: 11
tags: games

When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.
page: 21
tags: games

The freedom to enter or leave a game at will ensures that intentionally stressful and challenging work is experienced as a safe and pleasurable activity.
page: 21
tags: eustress

Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
page: 22
tags: obstacles

Freedom to work in the most logical and efficient way possible is the very opposite of gameplay.
page: 23
tags: work logic efficiency gaming

In a good computer or video game you're always playing on the very edge of your skill level, always on the brink of falling off. When you do fall off, you feel the urge to climb back on. This is the state of flow. Both quitting and winning are equally unsatisfying outcomes.
page: 24
tags: flow

Competition and winning are not defining traits of games--nor are they defining interests of the people who love to play them. May gamers would rather keep playing than win--thereby ending the game.
page: 24
tags: winning

In most computer and video games today, players begin each game by tackling the obstacle of not knowing what to do and not knowing how to play. A well-designed game should be playable immediately, with no instruction whatsoever.
page: 27
tags: game design

'The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression.' When we're depressed, we have a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity.
page: 28
tags: depression inactivity pessimism

When we don't choose hard work for ourselves, it's usually not the right work, at the right time, for the right person. It's not perfectly customized for our strengths, we're not in control of the flow, we don't have a clear picture of what we're contributing to, and we never see how it all pays off in the end.
page: 29
tags: work

All of the neurological and physiological systems that underlie happiness--our attention systems, our reward center, our motivation systems, our emotion and memory centers--are fully activated by gameplay.
page: 28
tags: happiness

Seeking 'relaxing fun', such as watching TV, is our way of balancing the negative stress we encounter. But most often, this relaxing fun moves us too far in the other direction, to slight depression, making us less motivated, less engaged, and less confident overall.
page: 32
tags: confidence engagement motivation stress

The failure of schools, offices, factories, and other everyday environments to provide flow is a serious moral issue, one of the most urgent problems facing humanity.
page: 36
tags: school flow morality problems humanity

Our most pressing problems--depression, helplessness, social alienation, and the sense that nothing we do truly matters--could be effectively addressed by integrating more gameful work into our everyday lives.
page: 36
tags: depression meaning gameful work

"This was a whole different business, nothing like I'd ever known, like night and day... Thirty seconds of play, and I'm on a whole new plane of being, all my synapses wailing."
page: 40
tags: games

We can't experience flow all the time. It uses up our physical and mental resources. So we have to find ways to enjoy the world and relish life even when we're not operating at our peak human potential. Too much flow can lead to happiness burnout.
page: 42
tags: flow energy potential burnout

Found happiness--happiness we get from external rewards, such as money, material goods, status, or praise--doesn't last very long. We build up a tolerance for our favorite things and start to want more. It takes bigger and better rewards just to trigger the same level of satisfaction and pleasure.
page: 45
tags: hedonism

We are wrong in believing that we need life to be a certain way in order for us to be happy, and that the easier life is the happier we are. The relationship between hard work, intrinsic reward, and lasting happiness has been verified and confirmed through hundreds of studies and experiments.
page: 46
tags: work happiness

Every time we engage in autotelic activities, the very opposite of hedonic adaptation occurs. We wean ourselves off consumption and acquisition as sources of pleasure and develop our hedonic resilience.
page: 46
tags: hedonism autotelic resilience

These are four common themes that contribute to your happiness in intrinsic ways: We crave: satisfying work; the experience, or at least the hope, of being successful; social connection; meaning.
page: 49
tags: intrinsic rewards

Gamers aren't escaping their real lives by playing games. They're actively making their real lives more rewarding.
page: 51
tags: rewards gaming

Blissful productivity is the sense of being deeply immersed in work that produces immediate and obvious results. The clearer the results, and the faster we achieve them, the more blissfully productive we feel.
page: 53
tags: productivity results

There's nothing wrong with having interesting problems to solve, but it doesn't necessarily lead to satisfaction. In the absence of actionable steps, our motivation to solve a problem might not be enough to make real progress. Well-designed work, on the other hand, leaves no doubt that progress will be made.
page: 56
tags: problems satisfaction motivation work

The fastest way to improve someone's everyday quality of life is to "bestow on a person a specific goal, something to do and to look forward to." When a clear goal is attached to a specific task, it gives us an energizing push, a sense of purpose.
page: 57
tags: goals purpose

Until and unless the real work world changes for the better, games like WoW will fulfill a fundamental human need: the need to feel productive.
page: 60
tags: productivity

We turn to games to help us alleviate the frustrating sense that, in our real work, we're often not making any progress or impact.
page: 62
tags: work

In casual games, there is no greater purpose to our actions--we are simply enjoying our ability to make something happen.
page: 62
tags: control success

A well-designed game helps players develop exceptional mental toughness.
page: 65
tags: mental toughness

In real life, it's rare to feel sincere, unabashed hope in the face of daunting challenges. But in games, the opposite can be true, so long as we have agency, the feedback is clear, and the game is fair. We know we could overcome that goal with just one more shot at it.
page: 67
tags: hope agency challenge

Being really good at something is less fun than being not quite good enough--yet.
page: 68
tags: flow

Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain.
page: 68
tags: skill

Flexible Optimism: continually assessing our abilities to achieve a goal, and intensifying or reducing our efforts accordingly. When practiced, we see more opportunities for success, but don't overstate our abilities. and we don't overestimate the amount of control we have over the outcome.
page: 68
tags: optimism self-assessment goals effort opportunity success ability control

We reduce our optimism when we get feedback that we're pursuing unattainable goals or operating in a low-control environment. We recognize that our time and energy would be better spent elsewhere.
page: 70
tags: energy optimism time goals work

When we have no clear way to make productive progress, our neurological systems default to a state of low energy and motivation.
page: 70
tags: progress motivation

When we don't pay attention to our real skills and abilities, don't put efforts toward the goals we are capable of achieving, and are distracted by extreme dreams (fame, fortune, glory), our evolutionary mechanism, depression, kicks in, signaling our ill-fated efforts.
page: 70
tags: depression goals

Teasing each other is one of the fastest and most effective ways to intensify our positive feeling for each other.
page: 85
tags: teasing

When we see success or failure as an entirely individual affair, we don't bother to invest time or resources in someone else's achievements.
page: 88
tags: failure success resources

Meaning is the feeling that we're a part of something bigger than ourselves. It's the belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual lives.
page: 97
tags: meaning purpose

Our ability to feel awe in the form of chills, goose bumps, or choking up serves as a kind of emotional radar for detecting meaningful activity. Whenever we feel awe, we know we've found a potential source of meaning.
page: 99
tags: awe meaning emotion

The more we focus on ourselves and avoid a commitment to others, the more we suffer from anxiety and depression.
page: 113
tags: avoidance anxiety depression

It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.
page: 114
tags: goals purpose

Having specific positive actions to take increases the odds of doing something that will break the cycle of feeling negative stress or depression.
page: 139
tags: action

Trying to improve an already enjoyable activity by adding points, levels, and achievements has its risks. Offering people an extrinsic reward for something they're already doing--and already enjoying--actually makes them feel less motivated and less rewarded. However, having measurable feedback can help us improve our skill in performing the activity.
page: 153
tags: feedback reward extrinsic

Having systematic positive feedback based on your behavior will help keep you motivated.
page: 162
tags: feedback motivation

Monitor writing stats. "Writing+". Achievements based on things like days in a row, most words written in a day personal best, complexity of writing--words per sentence, sentences per paragraph. Use the data to improve clarity of writing and vary its structure.
page: 163
tags: writing

"The pervasive belief that happiness is inauthentic is a profound obstacle" to putting positive psychology into action.
page: 185
tags: martin seligman

There are almost no good ways to be happy alone for long.
page: 186
tags: solitude happiness

It is only when we shake free our fear of death that we can truly enjoy life.
page: 203
tags: death

Touch is one of the fastest ways to build social bonds--holding hands, touching someone's back, and patting a shoulder all release the oxytocin chemical that makes us like and trust each other.
page: 205
tags: trust

One of the most vital powers of gameplay is that it gives us explicit permission to do things differently.
page: 206
tags: permission

We have to set concrete goals, and in the pursuit of those goals, we capture happiness as a kind of by-product. We have to approach it sideways, like a crab. We can't let it know we're coming. We just kind of sneak up on it from the side.
page: 214
tags: goals happiness

If we are paid to do something we would otherwise done out of interest--such as reading, drawing, participating in a survey, or solving puzzles--we are less likely to do it in the future without being paid.
page: 242
tags: enjoyment

Positive emotions are the ultimate reward for participation.
page: 243
tags: emotion participation

To truly engage, the experience of participation should be rewarding on its own merits, and not through some extrinsic compensation.
page: 245
tags: engagement participation extrinsic

The emphasis must be on making the content and experience intrinsically rewarding, rather than on providing compensation for doing something that would otherwise feel boring, trivial, or pointless.
page: 245
tags: rewards

Gamers who have grown up being intensely engaged by well-designed virtual environments are hungry for better forms of engagements in their real lives.
page: 245
tags: engagement

We don't have an endless stream of opportunities to do something that matters right now, presented with clear instructions, and finely tuned to our moment-by-moment capabilities. That makes it hard to get epic wins.
page: 249
tags: opportunity capabilities

Gamers practice shared concentration and synchronized engagement. They actively focus their attention on the game, and they agree to ignore everything else for as long as they're playing.
page: 269
tags: engagement attention

Typically, we think of practice as moving us from a zero-skill level to basic competency and then, if we keep practicing, to proficiency and ultimately to mastery.
page: 277
tags: practice mastery competance

Principle of emergence: bigger isn't more, it's different. It's impossible to predict what will happen at scale until you get there, and it's likely to be vastly more complex than you expected.
page: 278
tags: emergence complexity

Taking the long view: working at scales far larger than we would ordinarily encounter in our day-to-day lives. Players of god games have to consider the impacts of their actions across the entire game.
page: 297
tags: decisions

Ecosystems thinking: a way of looking at the world as a complex web of interconnected interdependent parts. A good ecosystems thinker will study and learn how to anticipate the ways in which changes to one part of an ecosystem will impact other parts.
page: 297
tags: ecosystems

Pilot experimentation: designing and running many small tests of different strategies and solutions in order to discover the best course of action to take, and then scaling what works.
page: 298
tags: scaling experimentation

"The human imagination is an amazing thing. We're able to build models of the world around us, test out hypothetical scenarios, and, in some sense, simulate the world. I think this ability is probably one of the most important characteristics of humanity."
page: 300
tags: humanity imagination modeling simulation

"Most of the really bad stuff that's happening right now is the result of very short-term thinking."
page: 301
tags: planning

Our collective inability to focus on negative futures is our culture's biggest blind spot. We are very good at positive thinking, but we tend to avoid articulating worst-case scenarios, which unfortunately makes us more vulnerable to them and less resilient if they occur.
page: 309
tags: planning optimism

By turning a real problem into a voluntary obstacle, we can activate more genuine interest, curiosity, motivation, effort, and optimism than we can otherwise. We can change our real-life behaviors in the context of a fictional game precisely because there isn't any negative pressure surrounding the decision to change.
page: 311
tags: motivation effort optimism change obstacles

"Games are the most elevated form of investigation."
page: 313
tags: investigation

Future self questions: 1. Where do you live? 2. Who do you live with? 3. What do you do? Where do you work? 4. What matters to you most? 5. How did you get to be this person? Was there a particular turning point for you in the past ten years? 6. What do you know more about than most people? Tell us about your skills and abilities. 7. Who do you know? Tell us about the communities and groups you belong to, and what kinds of people are in your social and professional networks.
page: 323
tags: self-assessment

Games are a way of creating new civic and social infrastructure. They are the scaffold for coordinated effort.
page: 350
tags: social structure

The closer we pay attention to the real and completely renewable rewards we get from games, the better we understand: games are a sustainable way of life.
page: 350
tags: rewards games

The great challenge for us today, and for the remainder of the century, is to integrate games more closely into our everyday lives, and to embrace them as a platform for collaborating on our most important planetary efforts.
page: 354
tags: collaboration

Whenever you play more than twenty-one hours a week, the benefits of gaming start to decline sharply.
page: 366
tags: gaming

Children who play video games at home with their parents report feeling much closer to them, and demonstrate significantly lower levels of aggression, behavior problems, and depression.
page: 367
tags: depression parenting gaming

Any game that makes you feel bad is no longer a good game for you to play.
page: 368
tags: gaming

This book has good messages and good ideas, and I gleaned some useful insight into why I feel what I feel about games. However, the middle to late sections didn't really land with me, and most of the solutions proposed and implemented are either now defunct or changed completely. I would be interested in reading followup coverage of the topic to see any long-term studies and impacts of the implementations mentioned in this book. There was a heavy emphasis on social engineering and interaction and how we can use both to leverage the gaming community into solving real world problems. The focus almost seemed to be around how we can coerce people who play video games for fun into working for free without realizing they are doing work. My cynical side says there will always be someone there to turn that free work into a profit and corrupt any goal of leveraging this creative bandwidth in the first place.
tags: review

Roma (Steven Saylor)

In politics, reality and appearance are of equal importance. You cannot attend to one and neglect the other. A man must determine both what he is, and what others believe him to be.
page: 505
tags: perception

Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut Jr.)

Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.
page: 77
tags: meaning

So Good They Can't Ignore You (Cal Newport)

In most types of work--that is, work that doesn't have a clear training philosophy--most people are stuck. The knowledge-worker field is without clear training philosophies. If you can figure out how to integrate deliberate practice into your own life, you have the possibility of blowing past your peers in hour value, as you'll likely be alone in your dedication to systematically getting better.
tags: work training deliberate practice dedication

TED Talks (Chris Anderson)

Public speaking is the literal alignment of multiple minds into a shared consciousness.

Your goal is not to be Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela. It's to be you.
page: 10

Ideas are always provisional. But once an idea is formed in our minds, no one can take it from us without our consent.
page: 11
tags: ideas

Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners.
page: 12
tags: speaking mind

Yesterday you saw a sequence of things and experienced a sequence of emotions that is, quite literally, unique. You are the only human among 7 billion who had that exact experience.
page: 14
tags: experience emotions unique

Language causes us to link concepts we already know in a new pattern. Speaking allows us to cause this to happen in other people's brains.
page: 18
tags: patterns schema speaking language

You can only use the tools your audience has access to. If you start only with your language, your concepts, your assumptions, your values, you will fail. So instead, start with theirs. It's only from that common ground that they can begin to build your idea inside their minds.
page: 18

Reputation is everything. You want to build a reputation as a generous person, bringing something wonderful to your audiences, not as a tedious self-promoter. The key principle is to remember that the speaker's job is to give to the audience, not take from them.
page: 23
tags: atag

Inspiration has to be earned. Someone is inspiring not because they look at you with big eyes and ask you to find it in your heart to believe in their dream, but because they have a dream worth getting excited about.
page: 28

A throughline should be encapsulated in no more than fifteen words, and those fifteen words need to provide robust content.
page: 31
tags: throughline lead

What is it that you want your audience to have an unambiguous understanding of after you're done?
page: 32

When your audience knows where you're headed, it's much easier for them to follow.
page: 33

You can only gift an idea to minds that are ready to receive that type of idea.
page: 34

Overstuffed equals underexplained. Don't try to summarize important concepts just to fit them into the timeframe.
page: 35

"Great writing is all about the power of the deleted word." - Richard Bach. The secret of successful talks often lies in what is left out, too. Leave space and say less.
page: 36

What aspect of me should I focus on for a little more depth? (2 minute speech introducing myself)
page: 39

Throughline checklist.
page: 42

If you speak to a demographic, you will not sound like you are speaking to a human being.
page: 43

Knowledge can't be pushed into a brain. It has to be pulled in.
page: 47

People have evolved weapons to protect against dangerous knowledge polluting the worldview they depend on: skepticism, mistrust, dislike, boredom, incomprehension.
page: 47

At the start of a talk, before you speak, make eye contact with a couple people, smile, then begin.
page: 50

Is sharing done in service of the work or is it a way to work through our own stuff? The former is powerful, the latter damages the confidence people have in us. Don't share parts yourself that you haven't yet worked through. A story is only ready to share when the presenter's healing and growth is not dependent on the audience's response to it.
page: 53

Laughter blows open someone's defenses, and suddenly you have a chance to truly communicate with them.
page: 54

Humor is a skilled art, and not everyone can do it. Ineffective humor is worse than no humor at all. What you're looking for instead are hilarious-but-true stories that are directly relevant to your topic or are an endearing, humorous use of language.
page: 55

Be yourself. The worst talks are the ones where someone is trying to be someone they aren't. If you are generally goofy, then be goofy. If you are emotional, then be emotional. The one exception to that is if you are arrogant and self-centered. Then you should definitely pretend to be someone else.
page: 57

Ego emerges in a lot of ways: name-dropping, stories that seem designed only to show off, boasting about your company or your company's achievements, making the talk all about you rather than an idea others can use
page: 58

Stories are instant generators of interest, empathy, emotion, and intrigue. They can brilliantly establish the context of a talk and make people care about a topic.
page: 59

The test for authenticity is whether you would tell this story to a group of old friends. You're a human. Your listeners are human. Think of them as friends. And just reach out.
page: 61

Stories expand people's ability to imagine and dream and understand the minds of others.
page: 65

If you're going to tell a story, make sure you know __why__ you're telling it, and try to edit out all the details that are not needed to make your point, while still leaving enough in for people to vividly imagine what happened.
page: 67

A good personal story without a wraparound of an idea is an opportunity missed.
page: 67
tags: story idea

Don't pin your happiness on the future. "If we can't feel content here, today, now, on our journeys, amidst the mess and the striving that we all inhabit, the open loops, the half-finished to-do lists, the could-do-better-next-times, then we might never feel it." Ben Saunders
page: 69
tags: happiness contentment

Gaining or losing something has far less impact, intensity, and duration than people expect them to have. If it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness. This is because humans have a system of (largely nonconscious) cognitive processes that help them change their views of the world so they can feel better about the worlds in which they find themselves.
page: 75

For an explanation to be satisfying it has to take puzzling facts and build a connection from them to someone's existing mental model of the world.
page: 76

Overcoming the curse of knowledge may be the single most important requirement to becoming a clear writer.
page: 78

Long-term memory depends on coherent hierarchical organization of content--chunks within chunks within chunks.
page: 79

If you imagine the structure of an explanatory talk as a central throughline with other parts connected to it--anecdotes, examples, amplifications, digressions, clarifications, etc--then overall the structure may look like a tree. For understanding to take place, it's crucial the listener knows where she is on that tree.
page: 80

Make everything as simple as it can be, but no simpler.
page: 82
tags: simplicity

Before you try to build your idea, consider making clear what it __isn't__.
page: 82

If explanation is building a brand-new idea inside someone's mind, persuasion is a little more radical. Before construction, it first requires some demolition.
page: 87

Modern media have an incentive to lead with stories of drama and violence, regardless of whether those events are representative of real life as a whole. By this mechanism, we plausibly overestimate the actual levels of violence present in the world.
page: 87

Instead of imagining that genius is part of some people's makeup and you either have it or you don't, think of it as something that you may __receive__ from time to time as a gift, if you make yourself ready for it.
page: 88

Many of the most revered passages of philosophical writing are not reasoned arguments, but powerful intuition pumps like Plato's cave or Descartes' demon.
page: 90

When you prohibit failure, you kill innovation. In the case of nonprofits, if you kill innovation in fundraising, you can't raise more revenue, then you can't grow, then you can't possibly solve large social problems.
page: 91

To make something persuasive, help your audience feel like they've gone on the same learning journey as you have. Instead of just telling them facts, invite them to join the process of discovery. This will naturally lead to greater engagement of their minds.
page: 93

To make a talk truly persuasive, it is not enough to build it out of watertight logical steps. Most people are capable of being convinced by logic, but they aren't always energized by it, and without that, they might quickly forget the argument and move on.
page: 94
tags: logic argument speaking

A robust argument, even if it is not immediately accepted by everyone, will gradually gather new adherents until it becomes unstoppable. Reason is not a fast-growing weed, but a slow-growing oak tree.
page: 96

Dreamscape section indirectly talks about remembering the future. Kennedy speech, MLK jr speech.
page: 106

Paradigm and dialectic are not technical terms like DNA that specialists can't avoid. They're metaconcepts--concepts about other concepts, rather than concepts about things in the world. Academese, bizspeak, corporate boilerplate, and art-critic bafflegab are tedious and incomprehensible because they are filled with metaconcepts like approach, assumption, concept, condition, context, framework, issue, level, model, perspective, process, range, role, strategy, tendency, and variable.
page: 100

Don't just show the finished works. Show the mistakes and dead ends and how you got from there to the final product. That allows everyone in the room to learn something from it. Lifting the lid on your process is one of the key gifts of any creative talk.
page: 100

Humans have the ability to pattern the world in their minds and then re-pattern it to create a world that doesn't actually exist but someday might.
page: 105

If you can turn an endeavor fraught with peril and uncertainty into a dream of future heroism, you can give your listeners a trip into the future to read the narrative that will eventually be told about that endeavor.
page: 107

There are two keys to sharing a dream effectively: 1) paint a bold picture of the alternative future you desire, and 2) Do so in such a way that others will also desire that future.
page: 107

"Art and design are not luxuries, nor somehow incompatible with science and engineering. They are in fact essential to what makes us special."
page: 109

Slides move at least a little bit of attention away from the speaker and onto the screen. If the whole power of a talk is in the personal connection between speaker and audience, slides may actually get in the way of that.
page: 113

Having no slides at all is better than having bad slides.
page: 114

Limit each slide to a single core idea. Some speakers seem to have the unconscious operating assumption that they should minimize the number of slides, therefore cramming a ton of data onto each one.
page: 115

When slides are complex, the audience member's brain has to decide whether to focus on your words, your slides, or both, and it's mostly involuntary. So you must design where attention is going and make sure a high cognitive load on a slide doesn't fight with what you're saying.
page: 116

Those classic PowerPoint slide decks with a headline followed by multiple bullet points of long phrases are the surest single way to lose an audience's attention altogether. This is because the audience reads ahead of the speaker, and by the time the speaker covers a specific point, it feels old hat.
page: 116

The main purpose of visuals can't be to communicate words; your mouth is perfectly good at doing that. It's to share things your mouth can't do so well: photographs, video, animations, key data.
page: 118

Don't use built-in templates of bullets, letters, and dashes for your slides. Your presentation will look the same as everyone else's. Start with a totally blank slide. If using photos, use a black background.
page: 120
tags: presentations

Use medium-weight sans-serif fonts like Helvetica or Arial. Don't use excessively thin fonts as they are hard to read, especially on a dark background. Use 24 pt or higher. Use __at most__ three sizes of your chosen typeface per presentation, and there should be a reason for each size. Large: headlines, medium: main ideas, small: supporting ideas.
page: 120

Simple and contrast. Black on white, dark color on white, white or yellow on black. One color of font per presentation.
page: 121
tags: contrast

What not to do. Bullets belong in the Godfather, avoid them at all costs. Dashes belong in the Olympics, not at the beginning of text. Don't underline or italicize. Bold is OK.
page: 122

Use slide builds, don't show all the elements at once. This focuses people's attention on one idea at a time.
page: 122

Pictures of your team matter to you but not to your audience. If you must have one, depict your team in context during the presentation.
page: 123
tags: teams audience

A badly produced video will have your audience thinking more about its poor quality than about its content. Video should only be used to explain something that can't be explained by images.
page: 124

Avoid transitions like the plague. If there is no reason for one, don't use one. Your transition should never call attention to itself. (Dissolve and cut might be OK, but that's it).
page: 124

Try your talk and slides out on family and friends who are not in your field. Ask them afterward what they understood, what they didn't, and what further questions they have.
page: 126

Never give a presentation unless you've walked through your slides, especially videos, on the equipment that will actually be used to show them.
page: 126

In all things with graphics, less is more.
page: 128

One of the first key decisions you need to make is whether you will: write out the talk in full as a complete script (to be read, memorized, or a combination of the two), or have a clearly worked-out structure and speak in the moment to each of your points.
page: 132
tags: speaking

Being read to and being spoken to are two very different experiences. In general, audiences respond far more powerfully to the latter.
page: 134

Human-to-human communication is a dynamic process, unfolding in real time. We can sense that someone truly means what they're saying in the moment, and that helps give us permission to embrace that meaning.
page: 133

When the words are read, they may feel impersonal and distanced. It's a bit like watching recorded sportscast with voiceover sportscasters.
page: 134

Uncanny valley - where the technology of animating human-like characters is super-close to seeming real but is not __quite__ there, and the effect is creepy. (this is the point in memorization where you know what to say, but you sound like a robot, because you're so busy pulling the sentences out of your data store that you aren't able to add meaning to them.)
page: 137

If you can give a talk while the cognitive load is high on your system, like making brownies, you can give it well while focused on stage.
page: 138

Practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes imperfection livable.
page: 138

Spoken language is best, because it sounds real, like it comes from the heart, and has meaning for you. One technique of speechwriting is to talk into a recorder first, then transcribe it, and use that as an initial draft of your speech.
page: 139

We don't seek the painful experiences that hew our identities in the wake of painful experiences. We cannot bear a pointless torment, but we can endure great pain if we believe that it is purposeful. Ease makes less of an impression on us than struggle. We could have been ourselves without our delights, but not without the misfortunes that drive our search for meaning.
page: 140

It is important to distinguish unscripted from unprepared. There's no excuse for the latter. They result in half-baked explanations, non sequiturs, key elements missed, and rambling overruns.
page: 141

Pitfalls of unscripted: Suddenly you can't, in the moment, find the words to explain a key concept; you leave out something crucial.
page: 142

Every word you speak that someone has already seen on a slide is a word that carries zero punch. It's not news anymore.
page: 142

Aim to tease the arrival of a slide before revealing it. "And that brings us to the future of cities [click]", is much more powerful than "[click] Ah, yes. Next I want to talk about the future of cities."
page: 143

Memorization is something like a soldier's combat training; when the moment of battle comes, you want to be operating by instinct, not by conscious thought.
page: 144
tags: elizabeth gilbert memorization

"You know how when you give a talk, you like certain parts more than others? You have to love every single sentence. You actually have to go through your script and your slides and ask the question, 'Is this essential to advancing my message, and is this interesting, really interesting? Do I love saying this line?' and put every single sentence and slide through the test. If anything lands in the maybe pile...it's out."
page: 144
tags: pam meyer memorization message meaning

Don't memorize your talks, precisely because the audience can hear memorized text very clearly, and it takes away from the spontaneous, engaged nature of speaking to a live audience. Also, when memorized speech fails, it fails catastrophically.
page: 145
tags: steven johnson memorization speaking

"When I walk on stage, I always know what I want to have said before I walk off again. But I also want to connect with these people in this room today. It doesn't matter how many rooms I've spoken in before, today's audience is always new and different."
page: 145
tags: sir ken robinson audience speaking

A great talk is both scripted AND improvisational. It is precisely like a great jazz performance: First, the opening and closing are always completely scripted; second, the general structure is fully determined before the first horn blows; but third, what makes jazz interesting and captivating is that in the middle of a tune there is always some point in which the player can go off script and spontaneously create something that captures the mood of that particular audience in that particular room at that particular moment in time.
page: 146
tags: dan gilbert memorization improvisation

Practice your speech in front of someone who knows nothing about your work. The best feedback will be from people who can tell you where there are gaps in your narrative or where you are making assumptions that people will know x, y, z.
page: 149
tags: rachel botsman rehearsing

Deliver the speech at least 5 times in your bedroom, paraphrasing the core ideas. Finish even if you mess up. The value of practice is less about memorization than about making you comfortable and less stressed. If you are confident and at ease, everyone will have a better time.
page: 150
tags: salman khan rehearsal

There's a kind of unintentional memorization that develops naturally from repetition. Memorization feels safer, but a little risk is good. Fear is energy, and you want some of that running through your wires.
page: 150
tags: mary roach rehearsal memorization

Prepare for a talk by talking. I start with a basic idea, figure out an introductory sentence or two, and then just imagine myself explaining it to people who care about the idea.
page: 150
tags: clay shirky memorization rehearsal

When people think a talk sounds rehearsed, the problem is not too much rehearsal, it's too little rehearsal. The speaker is stuck in the Uncanny Valley.
page: 152

Saying it out loud, you come up with phrases that work well. Memorize those, then use them as anchors, or landing pads to touch down on. Don't memorize the whole talk--that can sound pretty fake--but memorize the structure and those few landing pad phrases, and that will make the talk tighter and better.
page: 152
tags: tracy chevalier memorization

Things to ask your audience during or after rehearsals. It's a big list.
page: 153

It's very important to rehearse multiple times, preferably in front of people you trust. Work on it until it's comfortably under your allocated time limit and insist on honest feedback from your rehearsal audience. Your goal is to end up with a talk whose structure is second nature to you so that you can concentrate on meaning what you say.
page: 155
tags: speaking rehearsal

By the end of the first paragraph of your talk, something needs to land.
page: 158

I study the human brain, the functions and structure of the human brain. And I just want you to think for a minute about what this entails. Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity.
page: 162
tags: v. s. ramachandran brain neuroscience

Start a talk by saying: "Let me show you something."
page: 164

In the opening sentences your sole goal is to give your audience a reason to stop away from their comfort zone and accompany you on an amazing journey of discovery.
page: 166

It's very important to indicate where you're going and why. You don't have to show the shark, but we do need to know it's coming.
page: 166

People may remember an event very differently from how they experienced it, and when it comes to remembering, your final experience is really important. In short, if the ending isn't memorable, the thing itself may not be.
page: 168

The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to the voiceless people, but we're now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless. Let's not do that.
page: 171
tags: public shaming jon ronson

Teaching and learning should bring joy. How powerful would out world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion? Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best they can possibly be.
page: 172
tags: rita pierson education learning joy champions self-actualization

Today in the West, most of us are going to have two or three relationships or marriages, and some of us are going to do it with the same person. Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create the second one together?
page: 173
tags: esther perel marriage relationships growth

To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee...to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, 'Can I love you this much? Can I believe in you this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?' just to be able to stop...and say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, I'm enough, then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.
page: 174
tags: brene brown vulnerability

Many of us understand that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. That we cannot be fully evolved human beings until we care about human rights and basic dignity. That all of our survival is tied to the survival of everyone. That our visions of technology and design and entertainment and creativity have to be married with visions of humanity, compassion, and justice. And more than anything, for those of you who share that, I've simply come to tell you to keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
page: 174
tags: bryan stevenson hope compassion justice humanity technology holding on

If you are going to be standing on a stage, addressing an audience, it means someone, somewhere decided you had something of import to impart to others.
page: 184
tags: anxiety

When faced with self-doubt, focus as much as you can on the message to deliver, instead of the messenger. When you feel nervous or unsure, simply steel yourself and try to self-reason that all you can do is your best...and that if you can reach one person with your message and help just one person feel less alone in their experience of shame and humiliation, it will be worth it.
page: 185
tags: self-doubt nervousness shame

Use your fear as motivation. That's what it's there for. It will make it easier for you to truly commit to practicing your talk as many times as it takes. In doing that, your confidence will rise, your fear will ebb, and your talk will be better than it otherwise would have been.
page: 185

Find "friends" in the audience. Early on in the talk, look out for faces that seems sympathetic. If you can find three or four in different parts of the audience, give the talk to them, moving your gaze from one to the next in turn. Everyone in the audience will see you connecting, and the encouragement you get from those faces will bring you calm and confidence. (Speaking with friends will help you find the right tone of voice, too.)
page: 187
tags: speaking audience

Nerves are not a curse. They can be turned to great effect. Make friends with your nervousness, pluck up your courage--and go!
page: 188

When someone's looking at a screen, we unconsciously associate that with their being disconnected from us.
page: 193

They want your mind there with them. A written speech can be emailed. (on teleprompters)
page: 194

"[The teleprompter is] negative because it's a sign of inauthenticity. It's a sign that you can't speak on your own two feet. It's a sign that you have handlers behind you telling you what to say."
page: 196
tags: fred davis public speaking authenticity

Think of a talk as two streams of input running parallel. Words are processed by your brain's language engine, which operates in much the same way when you're listening as when you're reading. But layered on top is a stream of metadata that allows you to (largely unconsciously) evaluate every piece of language you're hearing, determines what you should do with it, and how you should prioritize it. There's no analog to this in reading. It can only happen when you're watching a speaker and hearing their voice. Included: connection, engagement, curiosity, understanding, empathy, excitement, conviction, action.
page: 199

Somewhere inside you there is an algorithm for trust. An algorithm for credibility. And algorithm for how emotions are spread from one brain to another. They break down into two categories: what you do with your voice, and what you do with your body.
page: 199

If your talk is scripted, try this: Find the two or three words in each sentence that carry the most significance, and underline them. Then look for the one word in each paragraph that __really__ matters and underline it twice more. Find the sentence that is lightest in tone in the whole script and run a light wavy pencil line under it. Look for every question mark and highlight them with a yellow highlighter. Find the biggest single aha moment of the talk and inject a great big black blob right before it is revealed. If there's a funny anecdote somewhere, put little pink dots above it. Then read your speech again. Smile at the pink dots, pause for the big black blob, speed up a little for the wavy pencil line.
page: 201

The point is to start thinking of your tone of voice as giving you a whole new set of tools to get inside your listeners' heads. In addition to wanting them to understand you, you want them to feel your passion. And you do that by showing them your passion.
page: 202
tags: tone voice presenting

For great examples of the right use of voice, check out talks by Kelly McGonigal, Jon Ronson, Amy Cuddy, Hans Rosling, and Sir Ken Robinson.
page: 203

I ask people to imagine they've met up with friends they went to school with and are updating them on what they've been up to. It's that kind of voice you're looking for. Real, natural, but unafraid to let it rip if what you're saying demands it.
page: 203

In general, understanding outpaces articulation. In other words, it usually takes the speaker's brain circuits more time to compose than the listener's to comprehend (except for complex explanation moments, where you __should__ slow down). Don't go much slower than your normal conversational voice.
page: 203

Oration is capable of conveying passion and urgency and outrage, but it struggles with the many more subtle emotions. If you were speaking to a single person, you would not orate. You could not build a day-long conference program around oration.
page: 205
tags: passion speaking emotion

Constant pacing can be tiring to watch. Pacing punctuated by stillness can be powerful.
page: 207

As with your wardrobe choice, once you've found a presentation style that works for you, don't overthink it. Don't try to be someone else. Focus on your content and your passion for it... and don't be afraid to let your own personality shine through.
page: 208

"Say it like yourself. Don't mimic someone else's style or conform to what you think is a particular "TED way" of presenting. That's boring, banal, and backward. Don't try to be the next Ken Robinson or the next Jill Bolte Taylor. Be the first you.
page: 208
tags: dan pink voice style

Substance matters more than style. Ultimately, it's all about the idea.
page: 223

That it was possible to own your future. No matter what life had served you, you could find a way to shape it, and in so ding make a difference for others too.
page: 230

For my entire entrepreneurial life, my mantra had been to follow the passion. Not my passion--other people's. If i saw something that people were truly, deeply passionate about, that was the big clue that there was opportunity there. Passion was a proxy for potential.
page: 231

If you imagine a vast spiderweb of knowledge, you can't really understand the intricate knots in any small part of that web without pulling the camera back to see how the strands connect more broadly. It's only by looking at the larger pattern that you can gain actual understanding.
page: 232

Many of our assumptions about the value and purpose of knowledge and how to acquire it--including the structure of our entire educational system--are leftovers from the industrial age. In that era, the key to success was for a company, or country, to develop massive expertise in production of physical goods. This required deep specialist knowledge.
page: 233

Instead of ever-greater amounts of ever-more-specialized knowledge, we're going to need contextual knowledge, creative knowledge, and a deeper understanding of our own humanity.
page: 235

A deeper understanding of our own humanity comes not from listening to your parents or your friends, nor to psychologists, neuroscientists, historians, evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, or spiritual teachers. It comes from listening to __all__ of them. This knowledge can only be assembled from a massive variety of sources.
page: 236

Public speaking is entering a renaissance, because we're entering an era where we all need to spend a lot more time learning from each other.
page: 237

Almost every human born at almost every place and moment in history has had their potential capped by a single fact over which they had almost no control, namely, the quality of the teachers and mentors they had access to.
page: 242

Youtube is a shining example of crowd-accelerated innovation. By far, the most exciting application of this type of innovation is the world of ideas.
page: 244

Halfway through a riveting talk on the power of memes, Dennett said this: "The secret of happiness is: find something more important than you are, and dedicate your life to it."
page: 246

We're strange creatures, we humans. At one level, we just want to eat, drink, play, and acquire more stuff. But life on the hedonic treadmill is ultimately dissatisfying. A beautiful remedy is to hop off it and instead begin pursuing an idea that's bigger than you are.
page: 247

"[A talk is] not about being right, or safe--it seems to me--so much as about having a staggering opportunity to create something that will breed further ideas."
page: 248
tags: bruno guissani ideas talks

When we say "Be reasonable," we're saying, "Please look at the issue from a broader perspective."
page: 251

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin)

That which is not honest cannot be truly useful.
page: 10
tags: honesty usefulness

If you desire instruction and improvement from others, you should not at the same time express yourself fixed in your present opinions. Modest and sensible men, who do not love disputation, will leave you undisturbed in the possession of your errors.
page: 20
tags: discourse

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
page: 46
tags: reason

(p) Take care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to also avoid appearances to the contrary.
page: 91
tags: appearance perception productivity frugality

Virtues: 1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation. 2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing. 6. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries, so much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. 11. Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity: . . . . 13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
page: 104
tags: virtue benjamin franklin

(p) The habit of prattling, punning, and jesting only makes one acceptable to trifling company. Observe silence. Learning is accomplished through listening, not speaking.
page: 105
tags: learning

(p) Though one may never arrive at perfection, one's hand is mended by the endeavor.
page: 112
tags: perfection perfectionism

Vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful.
page: 114
tags: action

In reality there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
page: 116
tags: pride

"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged."
page: 129
tags: kindness

That as we enjoy great advantage from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
page: 151
tags: service

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.
page: 167
tags: happiness

"Look round the habitable world; how few know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!"
page: 172
tags: self-awareness

...but common sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions.
page: 193
tags: reevaluation

...if I were to vow at all it should be to build a light-house.
page: 220
tags: service

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X)

He said that the Negro had been trained to dissemble and conceal his real thoughts, as a matter of survival. He argued that the Negro only tells the white man what he believes the white man wishes to hear, and that the art of dissembling reached a point where even Negroes cannot truthfully say they understand what their fellow Negroes believe.

The Negro problem, which he had always said should be renamed "the white man's problem," was beginning to assume new dimensions for him in the last months of his life.

The only Negroes who really had any money were the ones in the numbers racket, or who ran the gambling houses, or who in some other way lived parasitically off the poorest ones, who were the masses.
page: 5

She went out of her way never to let me become afflicted with a sense of color-superiority. I am sure she treated me this way partly because of how she came to be light herself.
page: 8

I remember well how my mother asked me why i couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
page: 8

If you see somebody winning [at gambling] all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating.
page: 16

We children watched our anchor giving way. It was something terrible that you couldn't get your hands on, yet you couldn't get away from. It was a sensing that something bad was going to happen.
page: 19

Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business--you know they're doing something that you aren't.
page: 20

I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.
page: 22

"The main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle." - Freddie
page: 48

The Diary of Anne Frank (Anne Frank)

Mr. Frank: "All children must look after their own upbringing." Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
page: 234

...keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if... there weren't any other people living in the world.
page: 241

The End of Leadership (Barbara Kellerman)

In the beginning we had gods and goddesses. Hero-leaders. They are part of our collective psyche, and they serve a psychological purpose.
page: 3
tags: leaders

Like all histories, the history of leadership is one of intrusions and interruptions. It does not follow a linear path.
page: 10
tags: leadership history

If the Age of Enlightenment was about anything, it was about casting doubt on what previously had been presumed our proper place here on earth and in the kingdom of heaven.
page: 13
tags: doubt

Rudeness to children counts as rudeness.
page: 30
tags: behavior

To keep a house in which every object, down to the smallest bibelot, is in perfect taste is in shocking taste.
page: 30
tags: tidiness

Why does technology exonerate the kind of foul expression that you would not tolerate anywhere else?
page: 63
tags: technology behavior

In this day and age, for reasons of culture and technology, charisma is difficult to sustain. Charisma depends on the leader's personal capacity to attract, even enthrall, groups of followers.
page: 70
tags: charisma

Merit is the basis of the exchange between the presumably estimable leader on the one hand, and the presumably pliable follower on the other.
page: 71
tags: merit

Leadership is judged on only two criteria: ethics and effectiveness. A good leader is presumed to be effective and ethical, and a bad, not.
page: 72
tags: leadership ethics effectiveness

The leadership industry also needs to focus on teaching people how to follow with integrity, which can mean refusing to follow, refusing to go along with leaders who are ineffective or unethical or both.
page: 172
tags: integrity ethics

Approach them with dignity and they will be respectful. Be yourself a good son and a kind father, and they will be loyal. Raise the good and train the incompetent, and they will be zealous.
page: 177
tags: leadership

The agreement on what exactly constitutes good character remains elusive.
page: 179
tags: character

There is too wide a gap between professed commitments to ethical integrity and actual workplace practices.
page: 179
tags: ethics integrity

In our zeal for efficiency, and in our belief that almost anyone can and should learn to do almost anything as quickly and expeditiously as possible, we have condensed and contracted learning to lead to meet the demand for instant gratification, characteristic of the twenty-first century.
page: 179
tags: learning efficiency

Both the servant leader and the transformational leader have merit that is intrinsic and both include followers in the process of creating change.
page: 182
tags: merit leadership

Most of the pedagogies are concerned only with maximizing good leadership, as opposed to minimizing bad leadership, an imbalance that can be explained only if you follow the money.
page: 183
tags: leadership

What if the kind of learning becoming a leader entails is as much art as science, requiring immersion in, among other things, the liberal arts--subjects such as history, philosophy, and literature, and for that matter music and art?
page: 194
tags: leadership

Followers matter; they have always mattered and they matter more now than before. To exclude followership from the leadership curriculum is theoretically indefensible and practically irresponsible.
page: 194
tags: followers

We should encourage learning how to follow--how to engage; how to collaborate and compromise; how to serve and support good leaders; how to challenge and even take on bad leaders; how to speak truth to power.
page: 194
tags: following

The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design (Mike Selinker)

A compelling game mechanic only makes sense in context. Transplant that mechanic into another game, and there is no guarantee that it will work. You can't just throw a bunch of random watch pieces together and expect them to tell time. You must have a plan.
page: 2

People buy watches to express who they are, even if who they are is summed up as "I bought a cheap watch because I don't care to express who I am through my choice of watch."
page: 3
tags: signaling expression

You can't learn to create a new game by smashing an old game and measuring the pieces.
page: 4

If you're a gamer who wants to be a game designer, you have to re-learn how to think. Let yourself be passionate. Don't second-guess every idea. Be a child.
page: 4

People who wish to design games should play games. Lots of them. Don't make the decision to showcase your personal design talent at the cost of the game's quality by developing it in a vacuum.
page: 7
tags: design game design games

If you don't like a game that is popular, you should take responsibility for figuring out why people like it.
page: 8
tags: popularity

Just because it may look like nothing is original doesn't validate the conclusion that all designs are unoriginal.
page: 8

A designer should take the responsibility for making sure that every significant departure from the norm is worth the player's time to learn.
page: 9

We remember things about the world in the form of dramas writ small, writ large, or writ in-between. The player experiences gameplay as the story of what he did.
page: 11

There's little that makes an audience crankier than when their expectations about the kinds of things that are supposed to be happening at this point in the story aren't being met.
page: 13
tags: expectations stories

In the very best games, there will many opportunities for different players to trade what looks to all of them like the leading position. A game that at any point looks like a foregone conclusion isn't fun.
page: 15
tags: competition

A player's successes and failures in the second act should obviously be the massive determining factor in whether he's the third act's frontrunner for victory. If that's not the case, the game is poorly designed.
page: 16
tags: game design

A game without mechanics isn't a game. It's a story. Or possibly a thought experiment. A game without a metaphor isn't a game. It's a math problem. Maybe a puzzle. Or a toy.
page: 20

A good set of mechanics can be used in conjunction with all sorts of metaphors.
page: 20

[Game name] is a [category of] game in which [the players or their avatars] [do or compete for something] by [using tools the game provides them].
page: 21
tags: templates

Any part of the game that fails to support the game and make it better--whether metaphor or mechanic--should be cut. It doesn't matter how enamored you might be of a particular mechanic or a clever bit of story. If it doesn't fit, let it go.
page: 22

One of the best things about an idea is that it doesn't spoil if you leave it out. It has an infinite shelf life. You can always use it somewhere else later, in a project that suits it better than the one you're working on at the moment.
page: 22

Think about how many things in your life you share with others because of your own limitations. Don't imagine your game design is free from those.
page: 24

If you can't see why a publisher would want to publish your game as is, it's probably because they don't. But they still might want it, and you still might like the results.
page: 28

If you can put words to the idea and make sense of those words later on, you still may find that the idea wasn't as brilliant as you thought it was when you got out of bed at 3 a.m. to write it down because it seemed brilliant and you didn't want to forget it. Then again, it might just be that great idea you otherwise would have lost.
page: 37

The most important member of your target audience is yourself. You have to be willing to play your own games ad nauseum if you are going to succeed, and you'll be miserable if the games you invent are not truly games you enjoy playing yourself.
page: 37
tags: games game design audience

Trying to write rules down is a great way to show you the holes in your design.
page: 38

If someone says "Let's play again" immediately after losing a game you designed, it's fun enough.
page: 39
tags: fun design play games

At every state, ask yourself "Is this element really working, and what happens if I get rid of it?"
page: 40

Rules shouldn't explain a game; they should only confirm what the rest of the game tells you.
page: 42

A game is an interactive mathematical system (mechanics and rules), made concrete (pieces and graphics), used to tell a story (theme).
page: 43

An elegant, easy-to-understand concept or mechanic that accomplishes 95% of what you want is much better than a clunky, obtuse mechanic that gets you 100%.
page: 45
tags: mechanics games design

Make your design as clean as possible, meaning all the mechanics are related and necessary.
page: 44
tags: design

Don't fall in love with a fringe element of your game.
page: 45

A bunch of notes on intuitive game piece design.
page: 46

If a player is losing but has no chance to gain ground, it will take away from the experience.
page: 52
tags: experience fun games

I'm a fan of mechanics that force players to make hard choices. If you do only one thing well, and you can do it all the time, you never make any choices.
page: 57
tags: choice game design

Pushing the boundaries of the game helps make sure that there are no "groupthink" strategies. As games are being designed, they are often played repeatedly by the designer and his or her game group. As they are all familiar with the game, their group may develop habits or tendencies in how they approach the game. The risk is that there may be strategies or situations that did not come up in the designer's playtesting, which can be exposed when someone is intentionally trying to break the game or when a complete newbie plays it without any preconceptions of the "right" way to play. In either event, the developers need to examine the game from all angles to make sure that the game doesn't break down when the unexpected happens.
page: 76
tags: design

The Power of No (James Altucher)

when you have a tiny, tiny piece of crap in your soup, it doesn't matter how much more water you pour in and how many more spices you put on top. There's crap in your soup.
page: 27
tags: crap in your soup

Say no to anything that gets in the way of your daily practices, no matter how important it pretends to be
page: 32
tags: daily practices

Don't argue with people. Just say "you're right" and move on.
page: 32
tags: arguing

Treat yourself like someone you love
page: 35
tags: love

Catch yourself. Anger never accomplishes what you want it to
page: 35
tags: anger

Work the idea muscle every day. Articles to write, businesses to start, games to make. Write them down.
page: 38
tags: ideas

Exercise spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health every day
page: 39
tags: health exercise

List all the people you engage with more than 5 times a week. Rate how you feel after your interactions with those people
page: 41
tags: engagement

Write down the things you loved to do as a child. The things that let you forget the passage of time.
page: 51
tags: interest

Find the areas in your life where you have enough and list them. This is where you are abundant. Find the areas where you need to define how much enough is.
page: 70
tags: enough

Write down ten ideas for your job that you think will add above-and-beyond value. Write down the next ten steps for those ideas. Write down the ten people you need to share those ideas with. Write to those people. Don't be afraid. The worst they can do is say no.
page: 75
tags: value

You are entitled to three nos for every yes in your life
page: 97
tags: no

Excuses are leaks in a boat. When you cover one, another pops up, and it's even bigger. It's hard to keep the boat repaired and get safely to shore if you have an excuse mindset.
page: 100
tags: excuses mindset

Burn your excuses (literally write them down and burn the paper. Or just light a candle and throw the paper way, to burn them symbolically)
page: 101
tags: excuses

If you're too busy complaining, you might not hear that someone is trying to share with you a better way
page: 103
tags: complaining

The no complaints diet
page: 104
tags: complaining

The source of many problems in relationships is that everyone wears masks at first in order to be liked
page: 105
tags: relationships

Use your assertive no, but sleep on it, be honest, delay, be loving, and surrender to the outcome
page: 107
tags: assertiveness

Do no harm. Will your action harm anyone (including yourself)?
page: 107
tags: harm

Exercise compassion. Everyone has their own struggles. Don't feel pity, but also don't waste time with blame.
page: 108
tags: compassion blame

When someone attempts to manipulate you, Acknowledge, Boundary, Close. "I see that this is a problem for you, but here is my limit." Then follow through.
page: 114
tags: manipulation

Abusive people: try to make you feel guilty, angry, afraid, wrong; make themselves the victim; turn others against you; sound clever and reasonable to anyone who listens
page: 115
tags: abuse

Treat everyone else as if it's their last day
page: 127
tags: respect

Life is a series of failures punctuated by brief successes
page: 128
tags: failure

Think about someone you dislike. Write down the traits about that person that repel you. Recognize that they live in you too. "Where am I in this?"
page: 134
tags: dislike

Write down your routine list
page: 142
tags: routine

Keep a things-I-did list every day
page: 142
tags: lists

Make a wish list for the day that just happened
page: 144
tags: lists

Count your blessings. Literally.
page: 138
tags: blessings

Write down your fears. Then think the opposite.
page: 146
tags: fear

Luck = diversification + persistence
page: 150
tags: luck persistence

Pauses in a conversation indicate love and respect
page: 151
tags: conversation love respect

Let them finish. Don't say yes in the middle. Don't nod your head. Count to two, then respond. Real communication happens in the silence between the words.
page: 152
tags: conversation communication

Before, during, and after you think, say, or do anything, determine if it will harm someone
page: 177
tags: harm speaking

Say no to your history, your upbringing, your things, your dramas, your relationships. Give up control of these things.
page: 191
tags: history control

There are 3 types of mentors: Direct, Indirect (200-500 books), Everything you encounter
page: 197
tags: mentors

It takes 5 years to reinvent yourself 1. Flail and read everything and start to do 2. You know how you need to talk to and network with. You're doing every day 3. You're good enough to start making money 4. You're making a good living and can quit your day job 5. You're making wealth
page: 199
tags: reinvention

Physical (stomach, sick/die/pain), emotional (anger, depression, resentment), mental (dull, bitter, uncreative), spiritual (not worthwhile, scarcity complex)
page: 145
tags: illness

Anger and depression are like the mirror cravings of a lonely soul.
page: 161
tags: anger depression

Your brain is just a tool you use. That's what failure is about.
page: 200
tags: tool brain failure

I can't read 500 books. What one book should I read for inspiration? A: Just give up.
page: 203
tags: reading

Someone who is reinventing always has spare time. Part of reinvention is collecting little bits and pieces of time and carving them the way you want them to be.
page: 202
tags: reinvention

If you plan on being alive in 5 years, you might as well start today.
page: 204
tags: planning

Networking levels - Yourself - Your family - Online community - Meetups/Coffees - Conferences and thought leaders - Mentors - Customers and Wealth Creators
page: 205
tags: networking

If you get depressed, sit in silence for 1 hour a day
page: 206
tags: depression

The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius (Mark Forstater)

When you are upset by a man's despicable conduct, immediately ask yourself, "Is it possible for despicable people not to exist?" "No, it's not possible" Then don't expect the impossible. For this is just one of many depraved people who must exist in this world.
page: 101
tags: anger

Adapt yourself to the life you have been given; and truly love the people with whom destiny has surrounded you.
page: 107
tags: acceptance

Every person lives only in the present moment, and can lose only this.
page: 109
tags: presence

When you have done a good deed that another has had the benefit of, why do you need a third reward--as fools do--praise for having done well or looking for a favor in return?
page: 110
tags: doing good

Stop talking about what the good person should be, and just be that person.
page: 113
tags: doing good

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson)

Great read. The relationship advice was unexpected, but not unappreciated.
tags: review

The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design (Flint Dille)

Sometimes the act of creating is more important than what is created.
tags: creation

Games are about empowerment, and creating a situation in which the narrative conceit of the game puts the player in a subservient role is not a winning formula.
page: 17
tags: games players

You should always be aware of how many times the hero is being nagged, or ordered, or bossed around in the game.
page: 17
tags: game design

Copy all the action items
tags: todo

Words matter, and dialogue should be used to give the player direction. Prioritize their actions wherever possible.
page: 25
tags: dialogue actions

Types of conflict.
page: 26
tags: conflict

Fragmented and not very interesting in itself. Would be a useful resource during development of specific portions of the story. As it is, it is probably too much information all at once for a beginner (unless you're really devoting a lot of time to it and the action items within). There are too many other tasks to accomplish, and a lot of this would probably be forgotten before it could be put to use. The best approach is to note interesting references in each section and refer to the book as a resource later in the process. This is actually slightly humorous, because as I wrote that this was probably more information than I needed, the book goes on to talk about player expectations: "Avoid long expository speech like a wise old wizard who tells us lots of interesting things that we never get to see." Although, ultimately, maybe chapter 2 is just exceptionally dry and this review is unfair. We shall have to wait and see.
tags: review

Don't tell what you can show. Don't show what you can play. Backstory is only important if it has direct relevance to the narrative.
page: 32
tags: narrative

(paraphrased) Someone who anticipates questions or expectations and develop a strategy for answering them has become a storyteller.
page: 36
tags: stories storytelling questions

We're in a medium that demands a lot of repetition, and our job as dramatists is to conceal this fact. We do this by writing alts. 20 different ways of saying the same thing, so we have a variation to use in each place that thing is needed to be said.
page: 37
tags: alts drama story

If you are going to have backstory, it should only exist to propel your story and your characters.
page: 38
tags: story

Game success should never feel like the cessation of frustration. We want the player to feel victorious, not relieved. We are in the entertainment business, not the frustration business.
page: 40
tags: entertainment success

The fifth time you hear the same wisecrack form the same character, the game feels stale.
page: 42
tags: dialogue game design

Sometimes you can create interesting characters by simply avoiding cliches.
page: 44
tags: cliches characters

When you play a criminal in Grand Theft Auto is that because you want to be a criminal or is it because you think it would be kind of fun to be something wildly different than what you are?
page: 47
tags: simulation

The Wikipedias (thatguy)

Simon used satisficing to explain the behavior of decision makers under circumstances in which an optimal solution cannot be determined. He maintained that many natural problems are characterized by computational intractability or a lack of information, both of which preclude the use of mathematical optimization procedures.
tags: satisficing

Thinking in Systems (Donella H. Meadows)

Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals
page: 10
tags: purposes behavior goals

the purposes of subunits may add up to an overall behavior that no one wants
page: 10
tags: behavior purpose

a system generally goes on being itself, changing only slowly if at all, even with complete substitutions of its elements--as long as its interconnections and purposes remain intact
page: 16
tags: systems purpose

because land, factories, and people are long-lived, slowly changing, physical elements of the system, there is a limit to the rate at which any leader can turn the direction of a nation.
page: 17
tags: change

To Sell Is Human (Daniel Pink)

[Selling isn't always about sales. At its core, it is] persuading, convincing, and influencing others to give up something in exchange for what we've got.
tags: selling persuasion influence

In any effort to move others, we confront an ocean of rejection.
tags: rejection influence

When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)

Literature provides the best account of the life of the mind.
page: 30
tags: mind

There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living.
page: 35
tags: experience

Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job, not a calling.
page: 69
tags: calling purpose lifestyle

What's better: an easy death or persist despite being unable to struggle?
page: 87
tags: death

The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.
page: 132
tags: death living

The defining characteristic of the organism is striving.
page: 143
tags: striving

Maybe, in the absence of any certainty, we should just assume that we're going to live a long time. Maybe that's the only way forward.
page: 162
tags: uncertainty death

Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.
page: 172
tags: knowledge relationships

Winning (Jack Welch)

Integrity is just a ticket to the game. If you don't have it in your bones, you shouldn't be allowed on the field.
page: 14
tags: integrity

An effective mission statement basically answers one question: How do we intend to win in this business?
page: 14
tags: mission

Effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible.
page: 15
tags: mission

Setting the mission is top management's responsibility. A mission cannot be delegated to anyone except the people ultimately held accountable for it.
page: 16
tags: mission

If you're at a company that welcomes debate, shame on you if you don't contribute to the process. You should feel obligated to contribute.
page: 18
tags: contribution

Too many people instinctively don't express themselves with frankness. They keep their mouths shut in order to make people feel better or to avoid conflict, and they sugarcoat bad news in order to maintain appearances. They keep things to themselves, hoarding information. It spawns bureaucracy, layers, politicking, and false politeness.
page: 25
tags: candor

We are socialized from childhood to soften bad news or to make nice about awkward subjects. You don't insult your mother's cooking or call your best friend fat or tell an elderly aunt that you hated her wedding gift. You just don't. Candor just unnerves people.
page: 29
tags: candor

Not being candid is actually about self-interest - making your own life easier. When you tell it like it is, you can so easily create a mess - anger, pain, confusion, sadness, resentment. To make matters worse, you then feel compelled to clean up that mess, which can be awful and awkward and time-consuming.
page: 29
tags: candor

When people avoid candor in order to curry favor with other people, they actually destroy trust, and in that way, they ultimately erode society.
page: 30
tags: candor

The majority of people in most organizations don't say anything because they feel they can't--and because they haven't been asked.
page: 55
tags: silence

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.
page: 61
tags: success leadership

Rule 1: Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.
page: 63
tags: leadership evaluation

Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.
page: 67
tags: praise confidence

Your job as a leader is to fight the gravitational pull of negativism. This means you display an energizing, can-do attitude about overcoming them.
page: 71
tags: attitude

Trust happens when leaders are transparent, candid, and keep their word.
page: 71
tags: trust candor

When a tough call spawns complaints or resistance, your job is to listen and explain yourself clearly but move forward. Do not dwell or cajole.
page: 72
tags: resistance

You are not a leader to win a popularity contest--you are a leader to lead. Don't run for office. You're already elected.
page: 72
tags: leadership

When you are an individual contributor, your job is to have all the answers. When you're the leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.
page: 74
tags: leadership

Questioning is never enough. You have to make sure your questions unleash debate and raise issues that get action.
page: 74
tags: questioning

"I knew it" and "I told you so" are worth nothing. Second-guessing does not absolve you from responsibility when things go wrong. It might make you feel better, but what does it matter? If you don't make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn't count.
page: 75
tags: responsibility

How can you appraise people smarter than you? Learn from them. In the best-case scenario, all your people will be smarter than you. It doesn't mean you can't lead them.
page: 78
tags: leadership

Does the person seem real? Does she openly admit mistakes? Does he talk about his life with equal measures of candor and discretion?
page: 83
tags: integrity

Intelligence means the candidate has a strong dose of intellectual curiosity, with a breadth of knowledge to work with or lead other smart people in today's complex world.
page: 83
tags: intelligence

Mature people can withstand the heat, handle stress and setbacks, and, alternatively, when those wonderful moments arise, enjoy success with equal parts joy and humility. Mature people respect the emotions of others. They feel confident but are not arrogant.
page: 84
tags: maturity

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.
page: 86
tags: decision-making

Why a person has left a job or jobs tells you more about them than almost any other piece of data.
page: 96
tags: interviews hiring

When hiring, friendship and experience are never enough. Every person you hire has to have integrity, intelligence, and maturity.
page: 96
tags: hiring

There is hardly anything more frustrating than working hard, meeting or exceeding expectations, and discovering that it doesn't matter to your company. You get nothing special, or you get what everyone else does.
page: 107
tags: rewards

Charged relationships: stars (indispensable, swaggering, egotistical), sliders (once good, previously accomplished, now ossifying, bitter, resentful), disruptors (incite opposition)
page: 110
tags: relationships

Assume the problem is worse than it appears.
page: 149
tags: assessment crises

Assume there are no secrets in the world and that everyone will eventually find out everything.
page: 149
tags: crises secrets

People instinctively hedge their bets, even as they place them. Ironically, hedging can doom a new venture to failure. When launching something new, you have to go for it. "Playing not to lose" can never be an option.
page: 206
tags: bets

If you want to enjoy work, don't act like a victim. Get behind the deal, think of ways to make it work, adopt the biggest, most can-do attitude you can muster.
page: 240
tags: attitude

Swallow your pride, prove your worth, and start again. You and your bad attitude can be replaced.
page: 242
tags: attitude pride

Stretching doesn't, and shouldn't, just happen at the beginning of a person's career.
page: 261
tags: growth

When interviewing, the best thing you can do is tell your true story. While you're telling your true story, act like your true self. The company should know what it's getting, and you should show them, so you see how they react. Authenticity may be the best selling point you've got.
page: 270
tags: authenticity

Don't quit. It's easier to get a job from a job. You should work harder. Nothing will get you a new job faster than terrific performance in your old one.
page: 271
tags: performance

Don't point fingers. Take ownership for why you left your last job. It is infinitely more appealing than the typical defenses such as "My boss was difficult" or "it was all politics".
page: 274
tags: ownership

If you really want to find a great job, choose something you love to do, make sure you're with people you like, and then give it your all.
page: 275
tags: moving on

Things happen that make you ask "Why should I even try?" Don't go there. In the long run, luck plays a smaller role in your career than the factors that are within your control.
page: 279
tags: attitude

Do deliver sensational performance, far beyond expectations, and at every opportunity expand your job beyond its official boundaries. Don't make your boss use political capital in order to champion you.
page: 280
tags: performance

The most reliable way to sabotage yourself is to be a thorn in your organization's rear end. This forces your boss to use political capital to defend you.
page: 282
tags: political capital

It's very hard to champion someone over the clamor of objecting coworkers.
page: 287
tags: perception

When the time comes for your promotion, the best thing employees can say about you is that you were fair, you cared, and that you showed them tough love.
page: 289
tags: promotions performance

The best mentors help you in unplanned, unscripted ways. Relish all that they give you in whatever form they come.
page: 294
tags: mentors

Nobody likes to work under or near a dark cloud, even if the "cloud" is very smart.
page: 294
tags: attitude

A positive attitude does not always come easy. If it's natural for you, fantastic. If it isn't, fight to find it and wear it all over yourself. You can win without being upbeat, if every other star aligns, but why would you want to try?
page: 295
tags: attitude

Seeing yourself as the victim is completely self defeating. It's an attitude that kills all your options. It can even be the start of a career death spiral.
page: 301
tags: attitude

People generally overrate their performance on the job and their popularity with the team, most often by a factor of two or more.
page: 303
tags: assessment

When you get a bad boss, first find out if you are the problem. In many cases, a bad boss is just a disappointed one.
page: 310
tags: attitude

Your company also feels the impact of your choices and actions. Work-life balance means making choices and tradeoffs and living with their consequences.
page: 320
tags: attendance

Your boss has a big game to win, and they can't do it effectively with absentee players.
page: 320
tags: attendance

Despite all the technology that makes virtual work possible, most managers are simply more comfortable promoting people they've gotten to know in the trenches, people whom they've seen in meetings and hallways or lived with through a really tough crisis.
page: 323
tags: attendance

Constantly asking for work-life balance accommodations makes a statement to your boss: "I'm not really into this."
page: 330
tags: political capital

The more you blend your life, the more mixed up, distracted, and overwhelmed you feel and act. Compartmentalize. Keep your head in whatever game you're at.
page: 332
tags: compartmentalize

You can look at a situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents. Pick the latter. You can't win by wringing your hands.
page: 345
tags: challenge

Words ()

Tessellate
tags: math

Worldview (Matt)

I want what everyone else wants: autonomy to make my own choices, to affect change to improve my environment, and to feel that my contributions are valued.
page: 20180110101037
tags: meaning

Whether something makes your life better or worse depends on the scale of time involved.
page: 20180118074700
tags: life

In large group meetings in a business setting, most people clam up. Why risk judgment? That's the default response. But judgment is worth risking if you have something valuable to contribute. Some people still auto-filter everything regardless of the contribution value.
page: 20180123140800
tags: judgment filtering

Problem sentence affinity grouping is very interesting. The sheer volume of ideas is astounding when you give people the freedom to air grievances without having to, in the same thought stream, think of root causes or solutions or how to implement those solutions.
page: 20180123020900
tags: problem-solving

On Writing And The Fear Of Judgment: We are all complex creatures, so our work is merely one aspect of our character at a specific point in time.
page: 20180127105400
tags: worldview

"In my opinion, many of those close to us are the very worst people to help us with our writing. You need objective help from people you don’t care about – they’re called editors! They can help you make the book better – whatever stage you’re at. http://www.thecreativepenn.com/editors/ You can also join critique groups online to work through your book, but personally, working with paid editors has been the best way to improve."
page: 20180127105600
tags: editing

It's a fine line between wanting to help them avoid the problems by using the right things first and just wanting them to learn. Case in point: learning VBA was painful, but now I know firsthand that VBA is painful and subsequently listen to advice about painful things
page: 20180205145100
tags: learning teaching

everything is equally possible and meaningless on a long enough timescale
page: 20180205145200
tags: meaning possibility

The details of a person's opinions are less important than that person's willingness to examine and refine those opinions.
page: 201803020900
tags: opinions reflection

Not not interested is not interested enough.
page: 20200121102700

Worse Is Better (Richard P. Gabriel)

http://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html and https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

Simplicity: the design must be simple, both in implementation and interface. It is more important for the interface to be simple than the implementation.
tags: design simplicity

Correctness: The design must be correct in all observable aspects. Incorrectness is simply not allowed.
tags: correctness design

Consistency: The design must not be inconsistent. A design is allowed to be slightly less simple and less complete to avoid inconsistency. Consistency is as important as correctness.
tags: consistency

Completeness: The design must cover as many important situations as is practical. All reasonably expected cases must be covered. Simplicity is not allowed to overly reduce completeness.
tags: simplicity completeness software

Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses.

Both early Unix and C compilers had simple structures, are easy to port, require few machine resources to run, and provide about 50-80% of what you want from an OS and programming language. One expects that if 50% functionality of Unix and C is satisfactory, they would start to appear everywhere.
tags: virus

Worse-is-better software first will gain acceptance, second will condition users to expect less, third will be improved to a point that it is almost the right thing.
tags: acceptance conditioning improvement

Diamond-like jewel: The right thing takes forever to design, but it is quite small at every point along the way. To implement it to run fast is either impossible or beyond the capabilities of most implementors.

Big complex system scenario: The right thing needs designed. Then it needs implementation design. Then it needs implemented. It has nearly 100% functionality and takes a long time to implement. Very large and complex. Requires complex tools. The last 20% takes 80% of the effort. Only runs on the most sophisticated hardware.
tags: design implementation functionality systems

The idealism of money is often different than the idealism of system design.