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Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
235 ~on happiness
IF YOU WANT TO BUY HAPPINESS YOU ARE MUCH BETTER OFF BUYING AN EXPERIENCE THAN A THING
“Why should we want to control our
futures?
It feels good to do so—Period.
Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes
us happy.”
Stumbling on Happinessis not a useful book on how to be
happy but one that describes what science has to tell us about how and how well
it can predict which of the futures it will most enjoy.
This book is divided into six parts: Prospection,
Subjectivity, Realism, Presentism, Rationalization, and Corrigibility.
The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future
Daniel Gilbert tells that if you were
asked to name the human brain’s greatest achievement, you might think first of
the impressive artifacts it has produced. But he thinks differently.
“In fact, there’s really only one
achievement so remarkable that even the most sophisticated machine cannot
pretend to have accomplished it, and that achievement is conscious experience.
The greatest achievement of the human
brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the
realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the
future.”
What is the conceptual tie that binds anxiety and planning?
“Both, of course, are intimately
connected to thinking about the future. We feel anxiety when we anticipate that
something bad will happen, and we plan by imagining how our actions will unfold
over time.
Planning requires that we peer into
our futures, and anxiety is one of the reactions we may have when we do.”
People
can be wrong in the present when they say they were wrong in the past
“Our experiences instantly become
part of the lens through which we view our entire past, present and future, and
like any lens, they shape and distort what we see.
This lens is not a pair of spectacles
that we can set on the nightstand when we find it convenient to do so but like
a pair of contacts that are forever affixed to our eyeballs with superglue.
Once we learn to read, we can never again see letters as mere inky squiggles.
If Lora and Reba were separated for a
few weeks, and if they told us that they were happier now than they used to be,
they might be right. But they might not.”
Can we believe we are feeling something we aren’t?
“Our brains are designed to
decide first whether objects count and to decide later what those objects are.
This means that when you turn your head to the left, there is a fraction of a
second during which your brain does not know that it is seeing a wolverine but
does know that it is seeing something scary.”
Daniel Gilbert explains how that can be.
“Research demonstrates that there is enough information in the very
early, very early stages of this identification process to decide whether an
object is scary, but not enough information to know what the object is.”
Why do we so often fail to know what will make us happy in the future?
Stumbling on Happiness says that imagination is a powerful
tool that allows us to conjure images from ‘airy nothing.’
“The best way to understand this
particular shortcoming of imagination (the faculty that allows us to see the
future) is to understand the shortcomings of memory (the faculty that allows us
to see the past) and perception (the faculty that allows us to see the
present).
The shortcoming that causes us to
misremember the past and misperceive the present is the very same shortcoming
that causes us to misimagine the future. That shortcoming is caused by a trick
that your brain plays on you every minute of every hour of every day—a trick
that your brain is playing on you right now.
Daniel Gilbert tells us the brain’s
dirty little secret.
“Our brains take millions of
snapshots, records millions of sounds, add smells, tastes, textures, a third
spatial dimension, a temporal sequence, a continuous running commentary—and
they do this all day, every day, year after year, storing these representations
of the world in a memory bank that seems never to overflow.
How do we cram the vast universe of
our experience into the relatively small storage compartment between our ears?
We cheat.
The elaborate tapestry of our
experience is not stored in memory—at least not in its entirety. . Rather, it is compressed for
storage by first being reduced to a few critical threads, such as a summary
phrase (‘Dinner was disappointing) or a small set of key features (tough steak,
corked wine, snotty waiter). Later, when we want to remember our experience,
our brains quickly reweave the tapestry by fabricating—not by actually
retrieving—the bulk of the information that we experience as memory. This fabrication
happens so quickly and effortlessly that we have the illusion (as a good
magician’s audience always does) that the entire thing was in our heads the
entire time.”
*****
Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself
freely.
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.
Copyright © 2014 by THE PYTHAGOREAN
STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.
Monday, March 31, 2014
234 ~on talent
TALENT IS OVERRATED
“Over and over the researchers found
few signs of precocious achievement before the individuals started training.”
InTalent is Overrated , Geoff Colvin tells how even though most people spend a great deal of hours working, they perform just okay—not awesomely, not amazingly, not world-class excellent.
When asked to explain why a few
people are excellent at what they do, most of us have two answers. The first
one is hard work. If you work hard, you’ll be fine. And those get along
perfectly acceptably but never become particularly good at it. Second, the
great good fortune to discover their natural gift (usually early in life).
But is that true?
New findings on great performance
Geoff Colvin shares some
conclusions—given by scientists around the world who have looked into top-level
performance in a wide array of fields, including management, chess, swimming,
surgery, jet piloting, violin playing, sales, novel writing, and many others—that
directly contradict most of what we all think we know about great performance.
“Some researchers now argue that
specifically targeted innate abilities are simply fiction. That is, you are not
a natural-born clarinet virtuoso or car salesman or bond trader or brain
surgeon—because no one is.
In many realms—chess, music,
business, medicine—we assume that the outstanding performers must possess
staggering intelligence or gigantic memories. Some do, but many do not. For
example, some people have become international chess masters though they
possess below average IQs.
Deliberate practice is not what most
of us do when we think we are practicing golf or the oboe or any of our other
interests. Deliberate practice is hard. It hurts. But it works.”
Talent is overrated
The
Mozart of Golf
“So here is the situation: Tiger is
born into the home of an expert golfer and confessed ‘golf addict’ who loves to
teach and is eager to begin teaching his new son as soon as possible. Earl’s
wife does not work outside the home, and they have no other children; they have
decided that ‘Tiger would be the first priority in our relationship,’ Earl
wrote. Earl gives Tiger his first metal club, a putter, at the age of seven
months. He sets up Tiger’s high chair in the garage, where Earl is hitting
balls into a net, and Tiger watches for hours on end. ‘It was like a movie
being run over and over and over for his view,’ Earl wrote. Earl develops new
techniques for teaching the grip and the putting stroke to a student who cannot
yet talk. Before Tiger is two, they are at the golf course playing and
practicing regularly”
What suggested that Bill Gates would become the king of all computer
geeks?
“It’s clear that Gates’s early
interests led directly to Microsoft. The problem is that nothing in his story
suggest extraordinary abilities. As he is the first to note, legions of kids
were interested in the possibilities of computers in those days. Harvard at
that time was bursting with computer geeks who well understood what a
technology revolution was happening.
So the answer is nothing in particular. On close examination, it was
probably not his software expertise that was most critical to his success. The
more relevant abilities were the ability to launch a business and then the
quite different abilities required to manage a large corporation. And Traf O
Data notwithstanding, one looks in vain for signs of those abilities in world-class
proportions, or at all, in the young Gates.”
The true role of intelligence in high achievement
“Besides prodigious memories,
high-performing businesspeople often seem to have tremendous intellects. Warren
Buffet is famous for doing complicated math in his head. He claims not to own a
calculator, and given his reputation for honesty, there’s no reason to doubt
him.”
*****
Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself
freely.
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.
Copyright © 2014 by THE PYTHAGOREAN
STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.
Monday, March 24, 2014
233 ~on plotting a novel
WRITE GREAT FICTION: PLOT & STRUCTURE
“Plot n.
1.
A small piece of ground, generally used for burying dead people,
including writers.
2.
A plan, as for designing a building or novel.”
James Scott Bell presents Write Great Fiction - Plot & Structure telling us how he has wasted ten
years of prime writing life because of the Big Lie. Because writing can’t be
taught. Until he himself discovered that the big lie was actually a lie.
The author of Write Great Fiction - Plot & Structuregives twenty fast, simple, and fun
ways to develop your own unique plot ideas. Here are some of them.
Jack M. Bickham counseled in The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes‘Don’t warm up your engines. Start up your story
from the first sentence.’ He warns of three beginning motifs that can stall
your story of the first page.
We all
have a core self
The LOCK system
James Scott says that after analysing
hundreds of plots, he has developed a simple set of foundational principles
called the LOCK system.
“L is for Lead.
Imagine for a guy on a New York City
street corner with a Will Work for Food sign. Interesting? Not very.
But what if the guy was dressed in a
tuxedo, and his sign said Will Tap dance for Food? Hmm, a little more
interesting.
The point here is that a strong plot
starts with an interesting Lead character. In the best plots, that Lead is
compelling, someone we have to watch throughout the course of the novel.
O is for Objective.
Back to our Will Work for Food guy.
What if he tossed down his sign, put a parachute on his back, and started
climbing the Empire State Building?
Interest zooms. Why?
This character has an objective. A
want. A desire.
C is for Confrontation.
Now our human fly is halfway up the
Empire State Building. We already know he’s interesting because he has an
objective, and with a little imagination, you can think up a reason why this is
crucial to his well-being.
Is there anything we can do to
ratchet up the engrossment level? Yes! New York City cops are trying to stop
him. They have plans to nab him around floor 65. Worse yet, a mad sniper across
Fifth Avenue has him in his sights. Suddenly, things are a lot more interesting.
The reason is confrontation. Opposition
from characters and outside forces brings your story fully to live.
K is for Knockout.
A great ending can leave the reader
satisfied, even if the rest of the book is somewhat weak (assuming that the
reader decides to stick around until the end). But a weak ending will leave the
reader with a feeling of disappointment, even if the book up to that point is
strong.
So take your Lead through the journey
toward her objective, and send the opposition to the mat.”
Ways to get hundreds of plot ideas
“1. The What-If Game.
The What-If game can be played at any
stage of the writing process, but it is especially useful for finding ideas.
Train your mind to think in terms of what-if, and it will perform marvellous
tricks for you.
2. Titles.
Make up a cool title, and then write
a book to go with it.
Sound wacky? It isn’t. A title can
set your imagination zooming, looking for a story.
3. The list.
Early in his career, Ray Bradbury
made a list of nouns that flew out of his subconscious. These became fodder for
his stories. Start your own list.”
Hook
readers with your first page
“1. Excessive description. If
description is what dominates the opening, there is no action, no character in
motion.
2. Backward looks. Fiction is
forward moving.
3. No threat. Good fiction starts
with someone’s response to threat.”
How do you know what obstacles to throw?
“The first step is to conceive an
opposition character. I use this term rather than ‘villain’ because the
opposition does not have to be evil. The opposition merely has to have a
compelling reason to stop the Lead.
Three keys will help you come up with good opposition:
1. Make the opposition a person.
2. If it’s a group, select one person in that group to take the lead role
for the opposition.
3. Make the opposition stronger than the Lead.”
“It is the product of many things
over the years—our emotional makeup, our upbringing, our traumas and
experiences, and so on.
And we will do what we can to protect
this core because, by and large, people resist to change. So we surround that
core with layers that are in harmony with our essential self. Working from the
core outward, these layers include: 1. Beliefs; 2. Values; 3. Dominant
attitudes; and 4. Opinions.
If you think about it, these layers
get ‘softer’ as they move away from the core. Thus the outer layers are easiest
to change. It is much easier to change your opinion, for example, that one your
deeply held beliefs.
But there is always a ripple effect
when a layer experiences change. If you change an opinion, it will filter
through the other layers. Initially, there may not be much effect. But change
enough opinions, and you start to change attitudes, values, and even beliefs.”
*****
Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself
freely.
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.
Copyright © 2014 by THE PYTHAGOREAN
STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
232 ~on introverts
THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP
TALKING
“I am a horse for a single harness,
not cut out for tandem or teamwork... for well I know that in order to attain
any definite goal, it is imperative that one person do the thinking and the
commanding.”
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking presents exciting discoveries
on the dichotomy between introverts and extroverts. Many psychologists have been
arguing over these two antagonistic concepts since Carl Jung stated the central
building blocks of personality in Psychological Types.
The author of Quiet explains that the extrovert ideal is
not a modern invention.
Susan Cain tells us that one out of
every two or three people you know are introverts, and that some of our greatest
ideas, art, and inventions came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to
tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.
Our personalities also shape our social styles
The author warns us not to fall into
the trap of defining an introvert as a hermit, and describes how our
personalities shape our social styles.
“Extroverts are the people who will
add life to your dinner party and laugh generously at your jokes. They tend to
be assertive, dominant, and in great need of company. Extroverts think out loud
and on their feet; they prefer talking to listening, rarely find themselves at
a loss for words; and occasionally blurt out things they never meant to say.
Introverts, in contrast, may have
strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while
wish there were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social
energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than talk,
think before speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in
writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror
of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.”
The extrovert ideal
“America had shifted from what the
influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a
Culture of Personality—and opened up a Pandora’s Box of personal anxieties from
which we would never quite recover.
In the Culture of Character, the
ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so
much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private.
But when they embraced the Culture of
Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They
became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining.”
The
Myth of Charismatic Leadership
Susan Cain visited Harvard Business School, a
place once called the ‘Spiritual Capital of Extroversion,’ to search for an
introvert with interesting outcomes.
“Even at Harvard Business School
there are signs that something might be wrong with a leadership style that
values quick and assertive answers over quiet, slow decision-making.
In one study, groups of college
students were asked to solve math problems together and then to rate one
another’s intelligence and judgment. The students who spoke first and most
often were consistently given the highest ratings, even though their
suggestions were not better than those of the less talkative students.”
What do introverted leaders do differently from—and sometimes better
than—extroverts?
“Introverted leaders create a
virtuous circle of proactivity. Extroverts, on the other hand, can be so intent
on putting their own stamp on events that they risk losing others’ good ideas
along the way and allowing workers to lapse into passivity.
Studies have shown that, indeed, introverts are more likely than
extroverts to express intimate facts about themselves online that their family
and friends would be surprised to read. The same person who would never raise
his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or
two million, without thinking twice. ”
When collaboration kills creativity
Quiet tells how from 1956 to 1962, the
Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of
California conducted a series of studies on the nature of creativity.
“One of the most interesting
findings, echoed by later studies, was that the more creative people tended to
be socially poised introverts. They were interpersonally skilled but ‘not of an
especially sociable or participative temperament.’ They describe themselves as
independent and individualistic. As teens many had been shy and solitary.
These findings don’t mean that
introverts are always more creative than extroverts, but they do suggest that
in a group of people who have been extremely creative throughout their
lifetimes, you’re likely to find a lot of introverts.
But there’s a less obvious yet
surprisingly powerful explanation for introverts’ creative advantage—an
explanation that everyone can learn from: introverts prefer to work
independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation.
In other words, if you’re in the
backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the
patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head. (Newton was one
of the world’s great introverts.)”
*****
Click to order I say Who, What, and Where!
Click to order Deconstructing INFATUATION
an inspirational novel about the courage to be oneself
freely.
a thought-provoking novel about infatuation.
Copyright © 2014 by THE PYTHAGOREAN
STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.
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