Clipmarks | Kore7's Life collection

How To Think

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:52:35 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: With the internet saturating ever deeper into our busy lives, humans are navigating uncharted informational and attentional waters these days. MIT neuroengineer, Ed Boyden, put together these rules of thumb to managing brain resources in an age of complexity.

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

(Via Kottke.)

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent.

3. Work backward from your goal. Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not.

4. Always have a long-term plan. Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it.

6. Collaborate.

8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols. That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.

9. Document everything obsessively. If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world.

10. Keep it simple. If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it.

Tags: howto, guide, advice, think, brain, mind, goals, life

How to Write Aphorisms

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:43:09 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Delacroix, Eugene (France, 1798-1863)

To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty; to be a poet at forty is to be a poet.

According to James Geary, editor of the compendium Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, a truely memorable, quotable aphorism satisfies five laws:

It must be brief. It must be definitive. It must be personal — that's the difference between an aphorism and a proverb. It must be philosophical — that's the difference between an aphorism and a platitude, which is not philosophical....

And the fifth law is it must have a twist. And that can be either a linguistic twist or a psychological twist or even a twist in logic that somehow flips the reader into a totally unexpected place.

Now you know, so get to work!

Clip Source: www.npr.org

Hubbard, Frank McKinney (United States, 1868-1930)

A good listener is usually thinking about something else.

Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.

Roosevelt, Eleanor (United States, 1884-1962)

A woman is like a teabag — only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.

Tutu, Desmond (South Africa, 1931- )

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Bunsch, Karol (Poland, 1898-1987)

Honest conceit is better than false modesty.

Morandotti, Alessandro (Italy, 1909-1979)

The kiss is an ingenious invention that prevents lovers from uttering too many inanities.

You recognize a true friend by how he lies to you.

Chekhov, Anton (Russia, 1860-1904)

Any idiot can face a crisis. It is this day-to-day living that wears you out.

Sato, Issai (Japan, 1772-1859)

There are always people who make big declarations. These are always people of little consequence.

Tags: aphorisms, writing, history, quotes, pithy, how-to, be famous!

The Moral Instinct

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:05:11 GMT

clipped by: asphere

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines that trick the eye on cereal boxes and in psychology textbooks. Illusions are a favorite tool of perception scientists for exposing the workings of the five senses, and of philosophers for shaking people out of the naïve belief that our minds give us a transparent window onto the world (since if our eyes can be fooled by an illusion, why should we trust them at other times?). Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense. Moral intuitions are being drawn out of people in the lab, on Web sites and in brain scanners, and are being explained with tools from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary biology.

People are thus untroubled in inviting divine retribution or the power of the state to harm other people they deem immoral. Bertrand Russell wrote, “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell.”

Tags: morality, instinct, conditioning, illusions

The Soul of the Commuter

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 19:28:08 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods.

Until recently, I was one of these Americans. What started out as an invigorating drive through new urban environs eventually became repetitious and wearisome. Even though I was careful to fill my time with music, podcasts, audio-books, or phone calls, I don't miss this daily aggravation at all now, instead embracing the freedom public transportation confers. (Trains can be your friends...who knew? .)

The mental relaxation that comes with not being on constant heightened alert for all the unpredictable hazards is priceless and has returned a small measure of serenity to my life I thought I had lost.

What do clippers think? Are extended commutes worth their return? Given its finite supply, shouldn't most of us be valuing our precious time higher?

Clip Source: www.newyorker.com

Some take on long commutes by choice, and some out of necessity, although the difference between one and the other can be hard to discern. A commute is a distillation of a life’s main ingredients, a product of fundamental values and choices. And time is the vital currency: how much of it you spend—and how you spend it—reveals a great deal about how much you think it is worth.

Commuting is an exercise in repetition. The will to efficiency varies, but it expresses itself in the hardening of commuters’ habits, as they seek to alleviate the dissipation of time and sanity. Some people travel with coffee; they have a place to buy it, a preferred approach to not spilling it, a manner of discarding the cup.

You can spot the novice: he’s rifling through pockets in search of his ticket, coffee bubbling up out the pinprick holes of his flattop lid, leading him to wonder how it is possible for the coffee to be leaking when the top is on tight. He has no strategy for newsprint stain.

Tags: commute, career, work, sprawl, urban, cities, transportation, time, economics, planning

How to Brood

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:35:24 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Tom Chiarella might be my favorite author to clip, not only because of the originality of his topics but because of his pithy, honest terseness and his wry approach to modern life.

Now pardon me while I mull over what all this implies about me, Clipmarks, and the entire history of humanity alone in a corner somewhere....

Some people are smart. They stay away. You might call this respect. Others are pathological in their worry. "Why so glum?" they ask. Or "How you doing, big guy?" And just because they won't honor my need to be alone in public, to stretch around inside the muscle of my worry, or respect the fact that a smile is sometimes just a tiresome, mawkish mask, I flat-out lie. I tell them I'm doing fine. Jim Dandy. Then I smile and wait for a good moment to turn back to my troubles -- which now include the fact that some jackass thinks it's okay to call me "big guy."

Clip Source: www.esquire.com

It's not quite moping, it's not quite dwelling. It's brooding. And sometimes it's exactly what a man needs to do.

I'd give you a list of my troubles, but then you'd e-mail me solutions, and I hate that. See, I think about my troubles. I sit in the corner of a coffee shop and think as hard as I can. Sometimes I'll do it at my desk or as I'm walking. I shut the world out. I brood. And I like it.

When people approach me, I stare at them in the most neutral way I can. Blank. This seems to offend some, mostly those who see every moment as some light socket of human engagement that you'd better darned-well stay plugged in to if you want to get the most out of life. But a deep brood lets me sink the grappling hooks into jealousy, anger, and bitterness before I speak again. New-agers tell you this stuff eats you up, so give me time to let it go, my way. I don't need forever. Just a few minutes.

Tags: brood, men, advice, life, howto, think, deep, thoughts

On Architecture and Elegance

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:58:35 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

[Maillart's] bridge is endowed with a subcategory of beauty we can refer to as elegance, a quality present whenever a work of architecture succeeds in carrying out an act of resistance—holding, spanning, sheltering—with grace and economy as well as strength; when it has the modesty not to draw attention to the difficulties it has surmounted.

From philosophical historian Alain de Botton's inimitable The Architecture of Happiness, itself a paradigmatic illustration of the aesthetic elegance of well-engineered minimalism (be it architectural or textual).

The NYRB's synopsis of de Botton's work makes note of this:

The simplicity of his writing is not the product of a simple mind....

In The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) he remarked that "there are...no legitimate reasons why books in the humanities should be difficult or boring; wisdom does not require a specialized vocabulary or syntax."

Clip Source: www.joelonsoftware.com

Both Robert Maillart’s Salginatobel and Isambard Brunel’s Clifton Suspension bridges are structures of strength; both attract our veneration for carrying us safely across a fatal drop—and yet Maillart’s bridge is the more beautiful of the pair for the exceptionally nimble, apparently effortless way in which it carries out its duty.

With its ponderous masonry and heavy steel chains, Brunel’s construction has something to it of a stocky middle-aged man who hoists his trousers and loudly solicits the attention of others before making a jump between two points

Clip Source: www.bristoljpg.co.uk

Clip Source: www.joelonsoftware.com

whereas Maillart’s bridge resembles a lithe athlete who leaps without ceremony and bows demurely to his audience before leaving the stage.

Clip Source: www.greatbuildings.com

Clip Source: www.joelonsoftware.com

Both bridges accomplish daring feats, but Maillart’s possesses the added virtue of making its achievement look effortless—and because we sense it isn’t, we wonder at it and admire it all the more.

Tags: architecture, elegance, bridges, bulidings, beauty, engineering, design, simplicity

How Do You Psyche Yourself? Up? Or Out?

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:37:44 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The moral of the story? No matter how high you jump, how fast you run or swim, how powerfully you row, you can do better. But sometimes your mind gets in the way.

“All maximum performances are actually pseudo-maximum performances,” Dr. Morgan said. “You are always capable of doing more than you are doing.”

From an article on how athletes trick their brains into letting them achieve what their bodies are capable of. I think this anecdote perfectly encapsulates what makes pushing one's personal boundaries so maddening yet rewarding. If I had more time, I would come up with some witty, insightful comments right about here, but I'm afraid I need to run (for work, unfortunately, not for pleasure). Anyone else have some thoughts?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

BILL MORGAN, an emeritus professor of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin, likes to tell the story, which he swears is true, of an Ivy League pole vaulter who held the Division 1 record in the Eastern region.

His coaches and teammates, though, noticed that he could jump even higher. Every time he cleared the pole, he had about a foot to spare. But if they moved the bar up even an inch, the vaulter would hit it every time. One day, when the vaulter was not looking, his teammates raised the bar a good six inches. The man vaulted over it, again with a foot to spare.

When his teammates confessed, the pole vaulter could not believe it. But, Dr. Morgan added, “once he saw what he had done, he walked away from the jumping pit and never came back.”

After all, Dr. Morgan said, everyone would expect him to repeat that performance. And how could he?

Tags: psychology, sports, life, achievment, brain, mind, thinking, how to, running

Why Your Decisions are Always Right

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 09:56:20 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Why are humans so good at fooling themselves? now thats a question!

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Life is full of choices, sometimes too many choices.

Should you buy the SUV or the gas-saving hybrid car? Should you have the artery-clogging cheeseburger or the lean turkey sandwich? Sometimes we make the "right" choices, but other times we make the choices of fools. Oddly enough, those foolish choices don’t usually bother us for long. Instead, they are quickly rationalized until the guilt goes away.

Why are humans so good at fooling themselves?

Our brains, then, weren't so much designed to make choices as to pretend, no matter what, that we made the right choices. The goal seems to be mental peace; as we all know too well, the time from bad choice to righteousness is very uncomfortable and so the sooner we justify our decisions, the better.

This kind of shilly-shallying is, in fact, so prevalent in human behavior that it must have some evolutionary basis. That is, it must be advantageous. Embarrassing and annoying, but advantageous. How?

Tags: life, choices, evolution, peace, mind, rationalization, brain

Where to Put Your Money

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:10:27 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: From an article on the author of Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment, a summary of professor and star investor David Swensen's advice for how individuals should be investing in markets driven by full-time professionals like him. While perhaps unconventional, Swensen would certainly seem to have the authority to advise on such matters.

Yale University recently announced a 23 percent return on its investments, swelling its endowment to a whopping $18 billion. The man behind that investment success is David Swensen, one of the most gifted investors in the world. He's made an average 16 percent annual return over 21 years — better than any portfolio manager at any other university.

Clip Source: www.npr.org

Beware of the Mutual Fund Myth:

for-profit mutual funds have an inherent conflict of interest. They make money by charging fees that suck profits away from investors in the funds. In fact, over time -- when you factor in the fees, taxes and other costs -- he says your odds of beating the market in an actively managed fund are less than one in 100.

Invest in Nonprofit Index Funds:

mutual funds that are organized on a not-for-profit basis don't have the same conflict of interest as for-profit funds, and they charge lower fees.

Pick the Right Investment Mix and Keep Your Money There. Don't Move It Around!

Don't, for example, try to decide when to buy U.S. stocks and sell a lot of bonds, in an effort to predict which way those markets are heading. If you do that, he says, you're going to lose over time, because you'll be competing directly with professionals like him.

Rebalance Your Portfolio:

Adjust Your Portfolio as You Near Retirement:

Where to Put Your Money

Tags: investment, market, mutual funds, advice, fees, personal, finance, portfolio, risk, money

He’s Happier, She’s Less So

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:14:29 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Latest studies say American men's average happiness level has been going up while womens' have stayed the same, largely due to both increasing social demands from women as well as increasing economic ambitions by them.

A big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago — despite far more discrimination — is probably that they had narrower ambitions, Ms. Stevenson says. Many compared themselves only to other women, rather than to men as well. This doesn’t mean they were better off back then.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.

Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.

Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past.

What has changed — and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends — is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents). They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Tags: happiness, happy, emotions, career, satisfaction, life, men, women, gender, sociology

How to Get From a 7 to a 10

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:48:53 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: What's your 7? Do you want more? Is a 10 even possible? Sometimes you need to step down first to find that next step up.

Getting past a 7 is hard. It can take more effort to get past a 7 than it takes to reach a 7 in the first place. Some people would complain that it takes too long to get past a 7. But the truth is that the time is going to pass anyway. Even if it takes 5-10 years, you might as well get yourself to a higher level within that time, since the years are going to pass anyway.

Whenever I feel I’ve gotten stuck at a 7, I stop and ask myself: What would a 10 look like?

Clip Source: www.stevepavlina.com

How to Get From a 7 to a 10

How many times do people get stuck at a 7 and remain there for years? Is your job a 7? Your health? Your relationship? Your family life? Your self-esteem? Is it likely to improve much if you keep heading down the same path you’ve been on for the past year?

A 7 is pretty good. At this level you feel generally content. It’s OK, fine, acceptable, satisfactory.

A 7 is above average. Compared to most people, you’d say your 7 isn’t bad at all. You feel like you’re ahead of the pack.

People often get to a 7 and then coast for a long time. At a 2 or 3, you know something is very wrong, and you’re probably driven to action. But a 7 is like a warm bath. It’s cozy and non-threatening. You feel fairly safe at a 7.

So why are you stuck there? Are you waiting for everyone else to catch up?

Tags: life, advice, tips, 7, 10, growth, personal, courage, fear, self

The Courage to Live Consciously

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 15:03:58 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: I wasn't sure which was better, Steve Pavlina's article on living your live with courage, or the quotes he used to illustrate his ideas. Either way, worth reading.

How would you live if you had no fear at all? You'd still have your intelligence and common sense to safely navigate around any real dangers, but without feeling the emotion of fear, would you be more willing to take risks, especially when the worst case wouldn't actually hurt you at all? Would you speak up more often, talk to more strangers, ask for more sales, dive headlong into those ambitious projects you've been dreaming about? What if you even learned to enjoy the things you currently fear? What kind of difference would that make in your life?

Clip Source: www.stevepavlina.com

The Courage to Live Consciously

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
- Helen Keller

What Is Courage?

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
- John Wayne

Raise Your Consciousness

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
- Amelia Earhart

Move From Fear to Action, Even if You Expect to Fail

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
- Orison Swett Marden

Tags: courage, fear, action, life, advice, inspiration, success, satisfaction, meaning, passion

How to Haggle

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:36:59 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Tom Chiarella's adventure into the art of negotiating the un-negotiable, starting with the price of a hot dog on the streets of New York. With practice and expert advice, he finds there basically is no such thing as a firm price.

"You're offering them less money," [Cohen] says, "without giving them anything in return." He holds a finger straight up in the air and wags it at me. "You always have something to offer. Loyalty. Future business. Increased volume. Whatever. You have to think about their needs. You have to create an offer that gives something rather than takes it away."

Clip Source: www.esquire.com

What if I opened every transaction to a haggle? What if I made my own bid on a TiVo? A counteroffer on dry cleaning? What if I treated the list price for a dress shirt as merely a suggestion? Could I insert myself into every transaction so that price wasn't so much of an absolute? I wanted to know. For three months, I would haggle everything that came my way, insisting to everyone who would listen that price was a fluid force, a matter of argument.

Within weeks I discovered that restaurants will typically give you four desserts for the price of three if you ask for a sampler. That a draft beer is generally good for a free refill with a little prodding. That you can get an extra 20 percent off at Ikea by pressing past the cashiers, past the floor salespeople, up into the bottommost managerial rungs, by comparing the price of one perfectly well priced dresser with its slightly less well priced but better-sized counterpart one floor down.

Tags: howto, life, advice, price, shopping, shop, money, haggle, negotiate, hot dog

Don't Try to Be the Best (Top 25% is Good Enough)

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:44:46 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: A little diversification of your top skills can go a long way in life when you combine them. True?

Clip Source: dilbertblog.typepad.com

Career Advice

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.

Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix.

It sounds like generic advice, but you’d be hard pressed to find any successful person who didn’t have about three skills in the top 25%.

What are your three?

Tags: career, job, success, skills, life, advice, howto, best

It's Not All About You

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 02:28:37 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Most people are too busy worrying about their own personal problems to notice yours.

In a 2000 study, Gilovich and colleagues reported that students also badly overestimated how well their own gaffes and clever arguments were noticed by others in discussion groups. "The fact is that others do not notice us nearly as much as we think they do," Gilovich said. Contrary to every instinct, our nervousness, our sadness, even our lies are largely lost on most observers, he said.

Clip Source: homepage.psy.utexas.edu

Chances are, others aren't judging you as harshly as you think, if at all.

Oh, things sure took a bad turn. Mortifying, that's what it was. Such a big party -- friends, co-workers -- and you dumped that drink! How can you live with being such a klutz? Who there will ever forget it?

Take a deep breath. Stop obsessing. It probably wasn't as bad as you think. Not nearly.

A growing body of research shows that far fewer people notice our gaffes than we believe as we pace the floor in private, going over and over the faux pas. And those who do notice judge us less harshly than we imagine. In a series of groundbreaking studies over the last two years, psychologists have shown that the "spotlight effect," as they call it, is a universal experience that distorts our egocentric notion about the degree to which people in groups, like parties and work gatherings, pay attention to us.

Learning to recognize this self-deception can soothe the anxiety that surrounds social interactions.

Tags: you, spotlight effect, perception, social, psychology, advice, life, ego, deception, consciousness