Books

Surrounded by Idiots Summary

“Surrounded by Idiots” by Thomas Erikson provides a compelling exploration of human behavior and communication dynamics through the lens of personality types. The book introduces the DISC system, categorizing individuals into four color-coded personality types: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. Offering practical strategies for effective communication and interpersonal relationships, the author delves into tips for interacting with each personality type, understanding body language, managing stress triggers, and adapting to diverse behaviors. With valuable insights into navigating the complexities of human interaction, “Surrounded by Idiots” equips readers with tools to enhance their emotional intelligence and foster better connections in various contexts.

Surrounded by Idiots Notes

Foreword

• The feeling of people just not understanding you is common among everyone.
• There are groups of people we feel just get us and those that we feel don’t. The ones that get us tend to become our friends and the others we try to avoid
• These disparities occur due to differences in personality types

Chapter 1: Communication happens on the listener’s terms

• We can shift how we communicate with others so that we create a safe environment that suits them. They know how they want to be treated and if we can also understand that we can adjust our communication to meet their needs.
• Systems developed to “explain” human personalities and behaviors are never perfect. They cannot account for all the nuances that occur within a person. They just give a baseline from which to start
• There are two situations when we can truly be ourselves and not risk misunderstandings:
  • When we are alone
  • When we are with people who all think exactly like us
• As humans we naturally categorize. Categorizing others is something that we do even when we don’t mean to

Chapter 2: Why are we the way we are?

• We are influenced at a young age by our family and friends
• Influences can start in impact our core values which are central to who we are and rarely change
• Attitudes are perspectives impacted by opinions and perspectives. Over time they can change
• We modulate our behavior to fit the situations

Chapter 3: An introduction to the system

• The colors system is used by DISC to codify the values that help determine the characteristics of individuals in their behaviors
• 80% of people have two colors that dominate their behavior
• ~5% have only one color that dominate their behavior
• Everyone else is dominated by three colors

Chapter 4: Red Behavior

• Reds are driven and highly competitive
• They cannot sit idle. They have to consistently be moving on things
• They set ambitious and often un-reachable goals
• Reds often speak their minds
• They will tirelessly work on a project when others have given up
• Reds do not necessarily feel driven to win out of malice but that often can be the perception
• Reds hate inefficiency. This can come through in meetings that are doodling on instead of getting to the point.
• Reds can express their beliefs with so much belief and gusto that others will believe them as well even if they are wrong
• As culture has changed many reds have figured out how to control themselves a bit more to be more effective in changing environments and cultures. However this control usually breaks periodically

Chapter 5: Yellow Behavior

• Yellows create a sense of gravity toward themselves from others
• Yellows tend to react to “gut” instincts more than other colors
• Yellows create a sense of unrelenting positivity to those and others around them
• Yellows tend to provide answers to those around them even when questions are not asked
• Yellow are extremely social and tend to make friends wherever they are and wherever they go
• Yellows tend to be able to think in visual forms using images and can picture their ideas as they start to unfold
  • This tends to help them come up with creative solutions to problems that others could not come up with
• Yellows thrive on the success of those around them and the relationships that grow from those successes

Chapter 6: Green Behavior

• Greens are representative of a balance between reds, yellows and blues
• Because of the balance green behavior tends to stick out less than the others
• Greens also make up the largest portions of the population
• Greens are very reliable. When they say they will do something they will do it in a time frame that is very reasonable
• Greens are eager to help and to avoid conflict
• Greens are introverts and avoid talking for the sake of talking

Chapter 7: Blue Behavior

• Blues are analytical and often know a lot of facts about the things that interest them or are near to their interests
• Blues do not see the fuss in a lot of credit for their ideas. They have the right answers but usually won’t bring them up unless prompted
• Blues are extremely cautious. They must make sure everything is in order and are very unlikely to take risks
• For a blue they are interested in the all of the details and the journey to a destination rather than the destination itself
• Blues will pursue the right way to do things every time
• Blues live more as logical thinkers rather than emotional ones
• Blues rarely get taken advantage of in a sale because they know all the details

Chapter 8: No One is Completely Perfect

• Because behavior and understanding is so varied there are cases where being right does not inherintly mean that the other person or persons are wrong
• Reds are notorious rule breakers to get things done or moving more quickly
• Reds feel like they know what is best and will control those around them to achieve their vision
• Reds do not want a lot of detail to things they don’t have a lot of interest in. If they ask about something they are not interested in then they just want a short and concise answer
• Red have a hard time connecting with people because emotional problems are foreign to them and they cannot understand the feelings that people have
• Yellows get interpreted as selfish, superficial and self confident
• Yellows like to dominate a conversation and tend to have opinions or ideas on every topic that might be brought up.
• The things that a yellow says may or may not be well thought out or true as they seek to entertain and inspired rather than educate
• Yellows tend to dislike being controlled by systems. Thus they are terrible at planning and organization.
• Yellows are great at starting things but lack the focus and discipline to keep them going
• Yellows are bad listeners
• Greens tend to hold on to belief that they receive from a trusted individual or source. This is a form of [[confirmation bias]]
• Greens tend to be comfortable doing nothing
• Greens feel uncomfortable being direct or committing 100% to a though or idea
• Greens dislike change and need a lot of time to warm up to it
• Greens are bad at providing feedback because they want to avoid conflict but they will provide it to others in smaller groups
• Blues tend to take a long time to start anything because they need to work out all the details before they start
• Blues have a hard time feeling like they have completed anything because there is alway something more that can be done to approach perfection
• Blues have a hard time trusting you unless they know for fact that you are a expert or very knowledgeable in your field

Chapter 9: Learning New Things

Chapter 10: Body Language: Why how you move matters

• Body language contains roughly seven hundred thousand signals according to the author
• The personal zone refers to the general space between two acquainted people who are communicating
• The social zone refers to the general space between two strangers who are communicating
• Reds
  • Keep their distance from others
  • Have powerful handshakes
  • Lean forward aggressively
  • Use direct eye contact
  • Use controlling gestures
• Yellows
  • Are tactile
  • Are relaxed and jocular
  • Show friendly eye contact
  • Use expressive gestures
  • Often come close
• Greens
  • Are relaxed and come close
  • Act methodically
  • Tend to lean backwards
  • Use very friendly eye contact
  • Prefer small-scale gestures
• Blues
  • Prefer to keep others at a distance
  • Either stand or sit
  • Often have closed body language
  • Use direct eye contact
  • Speak without gestures

Chapter 11: A real life example

• Alcohol can change the characteristics of each of the different behavior profiles

Chapter 12: Adaptation

• [[Emotional Intelligence]] can be interpreted as the ability to adapt to the different behaviors of those around you to be able to communicate with them in an effective manner
• It is possible to completely be yourself and never change to meet a situation. This does limit the number of people who you will effectively get through to
• We have to be careful in how we express this knowledge to others. If you can completely understand and individual and categorize them based on their behaviors and they know that you are doing it then some people will become uncomfortable that they can be deduced to a set of actions and behaviors

Reds

• Reds desire quick results. Speak quicker and get to the point. Don’t flourish the discussion or meetings
• Start with the point and then add the details as requested
• Reds enjoy hard work and respect it in others
• Encourage a red not to leave others in the dust when they are needed on a project. Give the red examples of how others can contribute. Remind them that they can’t do it on their own
• Confront a red when they are being belligerent and remind them that you will not tolerate that kind of behavior

Yellows

• Yellows what everyone to have a good time so the best way to behave around them is to enjoy yourself
• Yellows get bored by the details. They don’t want to know how things work just that they do work
• Yellows operate on gut instinct a lot more than others
• Yellows like the latest and greatest
• Yellows are bad listeners but if you need them to respond to something or someone it is important to know exactly what you want to say and the response you expect. Also plan to follow up.
• Yellows are bad at estimating how long something will take and keeping track of time.
• To make a Yellow as prompt as possible either ensure they know the repercussions of lateness or ask them to be there 30 minutes earlier than everyone else
• Yellows are not good at making their own structure so you have to be willing to make it for them
• To provide a Yellow with negative feedback you need to create a friendly atmosphere and be persistent

Greens

• Greens strive for stability and resist anythings unknown
• Greens need a reasonable amount of time to do nothing because that is how they recharge
• Greens need to know the whole plan and all the details, but won’t be great at making the plans themselves
• Greens don’t like friction. When confronted with conflict they tend to freeze up and become silent
• Greens despise change and don’t handle it well
• Greens do not like having to be responsible to make decisions

Blues

• When a blue is interested in something they learn it inside and out. Because they do this they expect the same from others. If you don’t know something don’t tell a fib to a blue.
• Blues want to keep work at work and avoid personal conversations
• Blues thrive on realistic goals and aren’t very good dreamers
• Give blues as much information as you can
• Blues believe anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time
• Blues have a hard time trusting their gut

Chapter 13: How to deliver really bad news

• In order to provide bad news you first need to determine what color of behavior the person is
• Reds
  • Don’t try to sugar coat feedback with a red. Be direct
  • Expect a heated conversation
  • Give concrete examples to a red and explain consequences that impact the business
• Yellows
  • Plan to repeat your points multiple times as the yellow tries to navigate around it
  • Yellows can take criticism as an indicator that you don’t like them. You must clarify that it it the behavior and not the person you are trying to correct
  • Yellows will have to be reminded multiple times. Plan to follow up
• Greens
  • Greens respond well to emotional feedback
  • Be clear and don’t back pedal with a green
  • Clarify that you still like them and not the behavior
  • Ask Greens to repeat the feedback and plan to follow up
• Blues
  • Be prepared with tons of details before providing a blue with feedback
  • Blues like written feedback over conversation
  • Avoid the sandwich method with Blues. You will just confuse them

Chapter 14: Who gets along and why it works

• Greens and Blues naturally work well together. They are both introverts and get to work without talk. They may have trouble making decisions
• Reds and Yellows also get along well because they both work on instincts and momentum
• Blues and Reds are also a good combination. Reds can be blunt with Blues. Blues can provide the data based logic that Reds need to change their minds.
• Yellows and Greens can also get along. Greens provide Yellows with the stage they desire
• Greens and Reds can be an issue because the Reds will perceive the Greens as lazy. Likewise the Greens will perceive the Reds as overly aggressive.
• Blues and Yellows will clash the hardest. Yellows avoid details and Blues live for the details
• Most common color combinations in one person
  • Blue/Red
  • Red/Yellow
  • Yellow/Green
  • Green/Blue

Chapter 15: Written Communication

• Email communication tends to mimic in-person communications and behavior. It should be pretty easy to tell which color you are dealing with

Chapter 16: What makes us mad as hell

• Reds are short tempered
• Reds might erupt multiple time but their episodes of anger are short and to the point
• Yellows anger is easier to notice before it erupts. There are signs
• Yellows tend to be angry for longer than reds but will get over it in time
• Greens turn all emotion inward. Over many iterations of this a green could explode
• When a green explodes they will be at it for a long time. Everything is a target. They have so much pent up and it all releases in one go
• Blues also internalize things similar to greens. The primary difference is Blues vent in tiny amounts every day so that a blow-up never occurs

“Generally the more important something is to a person the bigger the reaction”

Chapter 17: Stress factors and Energy thieves

• Our behavior color does not impact our stress thresholds
• Causes of stress for red
  • No authority
  • No results
  • No challenge
  • Waste of time and resources
  • Stupid mistakes
  • Being told to calm down
• Reds can manage stress by doing physical exercise or competing in events
• Causes of stress for yellow
  • Feeling invisible
  • Skepticism
  • Too much structure
  • Isolation from people
  • Being told not to joke
  • Preventing spontaneity
  • Continuous squabbling
  • Being publicly humiliated
• Yellows can manage their stress with a fun social event
• Causes of stress for green
  • Lack of security
  • Loose ends
  • Constant personal interaction
  • Quick changes
  • Being asked to start something over
  • Disagreements
  • Spotlight
• Greens can manage stress by doing nothing by themselves
• Causes of stress for blue
  • Criticism that is unfounded
  • Spontaneity
  • Pushing through risk
  • Surprises
  • Mistakes
  • Breaking rules or procedures
  • Overly emotional people
• Blues can manage stress by being given alone time to think and calculate

Chapter 18: Short reflection through history

• Ancient Greeks and Aztecs believe in four different behaviors in man. These behaviors are very similar to the colors

Daring Greatly Summary

In “Daring Greatly” author Brene Brown explores the power of vulnerability and its role in leading a fulfilling and authentic life. Brown emphasizes the importance of embracing vulnerability as a strength rather than a weakness, challenging societal notions that equate vulnerability with shame and inadequacy. Through personal stories, research, and practical advice, she shows how vulnerability allows us to connect with others on a deeper level, cultivate resilience, and foster meaningful relationships. The book encourages readers to let go of perfectionism and embrace their imperfections, enabling them to step into the arena of life with courage and wholeheartedness. Ultimately, “Daring Greatly” inspires individuals to embrace vulnerability as a pathway to living a more courageous, fulfilling, and authentic life

Daring Greatly Notes

• The mindset of never having enough is a leading cause of our shifting mindsets and our attitudes about everyone. Never mind having enough sleep, money, success, and time, it puts us in an impossible-to-catch-up negative state.
• Our benchmarks for which we compare ourselves are unobtainable and thus continue to drive us into a state of lacking.
• Fear thrives in a culture of scarcity. This fear turns us all into animals backed into a corner and ready to explode at anyone who threatens our beliefs. It also makes us susceptible to confirmation bias
• Being vulnerable is difficult because it is us putting ourselves out there and accepting the risks that come. However being vulnerable is how we grow and how we learn to be better and more empathetic people.
• We are only able to be vulnerable with those who we trust.
• Trust is built up over many small moments. Each time someone does something to show they care, it increases our trust in that person. Each time they do something too wrong, that trust is diminished or destroyed altogether.
• Addressing shame is a critical part of being vulnerable. Shame breeds in silence. It grows bigger and stronger. A business cannot cultivate a culture of innovation and growth with shame because ideas aren’t shared.
• A process for shame resilience is to respond to the voice in your head with the reasoning for why it is fine for you to behave in a specific way.
• As we grow up, around the time we are in middle school, we start to put on masks and armor to conform in order to fit in. As adults, we have worn these masks and armor for so long that we have gotten excellent at hiding the fact that they exist. Peeling away this armor is difficult and induces shame.
• Living in a state of expecting the worst lowers the joy we can experience from the happy moments in our lives. We convince ourselves that expecting the worst will prepare us. But when the worst actually happens, we will never be prepared for it anyhow, so life is better led by embracing the happy moments.
• Perfectionism is a form of shame where we try to avoid failure. However avoiding failure limits our ability to grow and in itself is a failure. We have to be willing to fail to learn.
• Our battle against Perfectionism is believing that we are enough. Being enough entails wholeheartedly accepting and embracing yourself and the flaws that make you one of a kind.
• When we pursue numbing agents or ways to take the edge off our life or our day, we avoid the real problems. Address the issues that make you feel like you need numbing in the first place. Many times, they can be corrected in one self.

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Brown, C. B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Gotham Books.

Building a Second Brain Summary

In the age of digital overload, it’s crucial to have systems that help us filter information and prioritize what matters most. “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte offers a solution: storing reference and planning data outside of our minds. By doing so, we free up our mental capacity and concentrate on important tasks that require our attention. However, we should be mindful not to hoard information but instead carefully curate knowledge that aligns with our top priorities. If the information doesn’t contribute to future creations, it’s not currently useful.

Building a Second Brain Notes

Introduction The promise of a Second Brain

• The content we are consuming right now likely only has a few ideas that are relevant and actionable at this point in time. However, there are also likely other ideas within that content that could be actionable in our future.
• Knowledge and content is not shrinking. The people who can learn to harvest and leverage knowledge and content will be more aligned to be high achievers in the future.

Part 1 The foundation

Chapter 1 Where it all Started

A personal turning point

• Tiagos story is that of undiagnosed affliction. His process of taking action and collection and curating every price of content on his affliction lead him to be able to manage and control his pain.
• Being able to take pride in being the only person in the room to remember and important detail about a project is something I relate to.

Another shift discovering the power of sharing

• Human capital is the knowledge and knowhow embodied in humans. This is an asset worth five to ten times more than physical capital.

Chapter 2 What is a Second Brain

• Information is an essential component to building anything. We need to know things in order to build them.
• As a society we spend so much time ingesting information and trying to remember where everything is that we lose track of being creative, building relationships, or focusing on our own well being. Information and reference storage is better offloaded to machines that were designed to handle that very thing.

The Legacy of Commonplace Books

• A Commonplace book was a place that educated people used in the industrial revolution era to collection and reorganize ideas to contribute to creative works and social settings

The Digital Commonplace Book

• Technology enables us to create a modern Commonplace book that is easily searchable and organizable to make information collection and recall much faster

Rethinking Note taking: Notes as Knowledge Blocks

• We must break notes down so that they aren’t disposable but instead easy to repurpose and reuse endlessly

Chapter 3 How a Second Brain works

The Superpowers of a Second Brain

Second Brain superpower #1 Make our ideas more concrete

• It is important to be able to get ideas or thoughts out of your head into a form that you can interact with them. Otherwise it becomes easy to lose that information in your minds limited resources.
• An idea or thought that you have now might not immediately be actionable. If you don’t collect it somewhere you might not remember it when it could be actionable in the future

Second Brain superpower #2 Reveal New Associations Between Notes

• Because the second brain allows for notes to sit together from seemingly different sources we are able to make connections from distinctly different ideas

Second Brain superpower #3 Incubate our ideas overtime

• It is not likely that our best ideas or ways to handle a task or project will be able to be pulled out of our brains in a moments notice. Instead with a second brain we are able to pull from months or even years of notes of ideas.

Second Brain superpower #4 Sharpen our Unique Perspectives

• Being able to develop and support our perspectives requires comfort and familiarity with information that supports these perspectives. Having a weath of information allows you to comfortably support your ideas with a backing of material to show why you have these perspectives.

Introducing the CODE Method: The Four Steps to Remembering What Matters

Capture: Keep What Resonates

• There is so much content out there to consume and not near enough time to keep up with it all. We must assume the role of curator in our own content libraries to ensure that the content that we end up consuming answers a need or interest that is important to us.
• Adopting a curator mindset allows us to free ourselves from FOMO because we have meticulously set up a system that allows for only the important bits of information to reach us.

Organize: Save for Actionability

• Tiago suggests organizing notes by actionability within your current set of projects. This makes me wonder if content eventually gets lost in the archive and is difficult to surface

Distill: Find the Essence

• It is important to be able to boil down an idea into it’s core concept. This is because later when you revisit a note it is much easier to read a summary than to read several pages of notes to get the core idea again.
• We take notes of books so that when that information again becomes useful we don’t have to re-read the whole book again

Express: Show your Work

• We all have a creative side. Being able to express from the ideas we have is the ultimate way to put the information we gather to use. Otherwise we are just data hoarders.

Part 2 The Method: The Four Steps of CODE

Chapter 4 Capture: Keep what Resonates

Building a Private Collection of Knowledge

Creating a Knowledge Bank: How to Generate Interest from Your Thoughts

• Knowledge and experiences are all assets that can be further analyzed or grown over time

What not to Keep

• Sensitive information you want to keep secure
• Files with special format
• Very large files
• Files you want to work on collaboratively with others

Twelve Favorite Problems: A Nobel Prize Winner’s approach to Capturing

• What you capture can be decided using a test against your twelve favorite questions. Does the content help you in answering any of those questions?

Capturing Criteria: How to avoid keeping too much or too little

• Curation of content involves digging into the individual sections from a source and finding the golden nuggets in the information. You don’t have to save an entire article to get the peices that will mean the most to you.

Capture Criteria #1: Does it Inspire me?

• Keep a collection of quotes, ideas, and stories that give you a boost when you need it most

Capture Criteria #2: Is it Useful?

• Much how a carpenter keeps around scraps, tidbits of information may not immediately be useful but they could have value in a larger project

Capture Criteria #3: Is it Personal?

• Thoughts and memories are unreplaceable

Capture Criteria #4: Is it surprising?

• If information doesn’t challenge or add to what you already know then there is no point in collecting it since you already know what is being provided

Ultimately Capture what Resonates

• Intuition is a powerful inner voice that can help us make good choices. When we listen to this inner voice it will help us determine which pieces of content are worth having around.

The Surprising benefits of Externalizing our Thoughts

• When we processing something into our own words more of our brains activates to understand what we are putting down.

Your Turn what would this look like if it was easy?

Chapter 5 Organize: Save for Actionability

• The benefits to keeping all project relates material in a single folder is that it is easy to move that folder around and remember the pieces that were important to that project. I think on just has to remember if you leave content in that folder how it might relate to other projects later.

The Cathedral Effect: Designing a space for your ideas

• Designing our digital space is just as important as designing our living space. Our digital space has to inspire us to do our best work. It has to make us comfortable. We have to know our way around at a moments notice.

Organizing For Action: Where 99 percent of note takers get stuck

• We must be wary of any system in which we spend so much time designing and organizing that we don’t have any time left for creating.

How PARA works: Priming your mind and notes for action

Resources: Things I want to Reference in the Future

• Resources will hold information regarding interests that are not currently actionable in a project or area. This can include subjects you are intrigued by

Archives: Things I’ve completed or put on hold

What PARA looks like a behind the scenes snapshot

Where Do I put this? How to decide where to save individual notes

Organizing Information like a kitchen–What am I making?

• We don’t organize all dried fruit, fresh fruit and frozen fruits into the same place. That is how many people approach note organization. Book notes don’t all belong together just because they are from a book

Completed Projects are the Oxygen of your second brain

• PARA changes the structure of the content you ingest and focuses on what you can immediately do with that content. If there isn’t actions that can be taken it should be archived.
• Even with a intuitive folder structure eventually all folders have some useful and some unnecessary content

Your Turn: Move Quickly, Touch lightly

• Don’t make the process harder than it needs to be. Difficulty causes indecision and procrastination.
• Focus first on creating folders for the projects you are currently making active progress on.

Distill–Find the Essence

Quantum note taking: How to create notes for an unknown future

Discoverability–The missing link in making notes useful

• Because our future selves may need information in an instant we need to plan our information structure in such a way that it it quickly found and quickly understood.

Highlighting 2.0: The progressive summarization technique

• Tiago suggests not bothering to provide a summary for every processed note. Only do this when you are revisiting your note many times and spending time reprocessing the highlights and bolded passages.

Zooming in and out of your map of knowledge

Four Examples of Progressive Summarization

Picasso’s secret: Prune the good to surface the great

• My culling process for photography is a form of Progressive Summarization

The Three most common mistakes of novice notetakers

Over Highlighting

Highlighting without a purpose in mind

• Don’t create a progressive summarization backlog. Only go through and progressively summarize a note when you have a specific creative project the knowledge can apply toward

Making Highlighting Difficult

Express Show your Work

How to Protect Your Most Precious Resource

• Our most precious resource is our attention

Intermediate Packets: The Power of Thinking Small

Assembling Building Blocks: The Secret to Frictionless Output

How to Resurface and Reuse your Past Work

Retrieval Method 1 Search

• Search works and a first level but cannot help when you don’t know what you are looking for specifically or you are looking for saved images

Creativity is Inherently Collaborative

• By sharing our work with others we are able to discover the work or expertise we have that resonates most with other people. Often times our most valuable work is not what we think it is

Part 3 The Shift Making Things Happen

Chapter 8 The art of Creative Execution

• When we take an approach of constant collection of ideas we are able to bring them together to build a better project that we would if we tried to build it from scratch

Divergence and Convergence: A creative balancing act

• In the early stages of exploration we diverge from a starting point. We branch our and collect information from various sources. When we are ready to hone that information into something concrete we converge and focus in on development

The Three strategies I use to bring creative work together

• As a recovering perfectionist I relate to the point Tiago makes about having trouble moving into convergence mode on my own. I always imagine there are more resources I can access to reinforce and idea before trying to express it.

The Archipelago of ideas: Give yourself Stepping Stones

• This is a method of outlining using sources and ideas you have around an idea.

The Hemingway Bridge: Use Yesterdays Momentum Today

• This method entails closing out a creative session with a clear idea of the next step. If you are writing a blog make sure that you know where you will pickup with when you return to continue writing.

Dial Down the Scope: Ship Something Small and Concrete

• When you are getting hung up you can dial back and produce something smaller. If you dial back save all the scraps you have cut from your final draft so that you can use them later for a larger project

Chapter 9 The Essential Habits of Digital Organizers

• There is upkeep to keeping your workspace organized so it becomes easier to enter your second brain and not fight to find content to support a project

The Miss-en-place way to Sustainable Productivity

• mise en place is a habit complete with cue and reward where you set up your workspace so efficiently that the work to product content is seamless because your tools work for you and your mind reacts
• We tend to avoid maintenance on our systems until they are failing and at that point we have to spend a full day setting the system back up or moving to a new system in hopes it won’t fail us like our previous system.

The Review Habit

• Tiago suggests saving all notes for the week into the inbox and then sorting them into their correct para folder and succinctly naming them at the weekly review

The Noticing Habit

• This habit allows us to notice when we have a idea and collect it rather than letting it go away. Similar to how I have been randomly thinking for tasks
• Organize as you go and don’t make your system so rigid that it is difficult to use

Chapter 10 The Path of Self Expression

• Our contributions have shifted from contributions of labor to contributions of thoughts and ideas

Your Turn

We tend to undervalue what we have to offer. However, what we offer is our own perspective which is unique and quite valuable

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Source:

Forte, T. (2022). Building a second brain: a proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential (First Atria Books hardcover edition.). Atria Books.

A More Beautiful Question Summary

Questioning is a primary component of success as described in the book “A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berger. We must be willing to move ourselves away from a perspective of acceptance of what is. Instead we can substitute a perspective of what could be. Each individual can develop core questions that either lead them for a period of time or for their entire lives. These kinds of questions are behind the success of nearly every innovative organization. The questions that are worth pursuing are the ones that keep coming back to our minds over time.

A More Beautiful Question Notes

Why Questioning?

• In our education and throughout our careers the skill of asking questions is never taught. Yet the ability to ask the right questions are a common factor in success.

The Power of Inquiry

• A tale of an innovative questioner is the inability to settle with the reality of a situation especially when they feel that there is something wrong with that reality.
• Outsiders are better questioners because expertise intends to prevent individuals from asking innovative questions.

Experts stop thinking because they know

What can a question do?

• The status level is irrelevant to asking a good question. It would help if you didn’t assume that someone else knows more than you. If you have a question, it can expand the thinking of others

What business are we in now — and is there still a job for me?

• Adaptability in the job market and the ability to pick up new skills have become a boon to anyone capable of doing so. However, to do this effectively, one must ask the right questions about what skills will be most fruitful to pursue.

Are questions becoming more valuable than answers?

• As information and knowledge become more widely distributed or available the real value comes from the knowledge needed to form valuable queries
• Due to the vast amounts of information available, we are becoming more ignorant due to our limited knowledge compared to the available information.
• As more information becomes available, we quickly become overwhelmed and find ourselves drawn into fallacies such as confirmation bias because it is hard to sift through new information than to find information that reinforces your current stance.
• Computers are great at answering questions but not at asking them. To become the technology, we must learn the most efficient ways to ask technical questions. By learning to ask the right questions, what-inevitably become better at our jobs.

Is Knowlege?

• As technology advances, there is less information That we have to store locally in our brains. We can focus our limited memory on the essential things to remember. This frees us up to master queries.

Why does everything begin with Why?

Questioning without action is philosophy, and Questioning with step is innovation.

How do you move from asking to action?

• By moving into a what if stage of thought we open our minds to the possibilities that exist.
• The worst thing you can do with a question is try to answer it too fast.
• We have to sit with a question in the what if stage and allow connections to be made. Often times the first solution we come up with is not the best.
• Once we move on to the how-to stage, we are now at the point in the process of putting our whys and what-ifs into action and creating the method with which to solve the problem or answer the question.

Why We Stop Questioning

Why do kids ask so many questions

• Once something has been categorized or filed away in our brains within our limited understanding, that thing is now known. Because it is known it limits our observation further, and we notice less
• In most examples of kids asking questions, if they feel the explanation satisfies their query, they will move on. However, if unsatisfied, they would ask the question again. So a cycle of whys is, in essence, the child trying to get to the bottom of something or not feeling like you understood their question

Why does questioning fall off a cliff

• Standardized testing and curriculum standards have forced schools and teachers to take their focus off unstructured inquiry and focus on providing as many answers as possible in a relevant topic area.
• Most schools are still operating as if in the stages of the industrial revolution and churning out workers rather than thinkers.

Who is entitled to ask questions in class?

• Kids from lower-class families tend to have less support at home to learn outside the classroom. Thus making it easier for them to fall behind. When the teacher is incentivized to get through many topics, they are not incentivized to stop for questions and essentially discourage those students from asking.
• Some teacher fear inquiry because they fear they will be asked something they don’t know the answer to

The Why, What if, and How of Innovative Questioning

Why do we have to wait for the picture

• To ask powerful questions we must
• Step back
• Notice what others miss
• Challenge assumptions (including your own)
• Gain a feeling understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry
• Question the questions we’re asking
• Take ownership of a particular question

Why does stepping back help us move forward?

• We live in a time when relentless productivity is thought to be the only way. Those who can actually take the time to pause and think about the why questions tend to notice the issues in a plan before they happen. I relate to this because I constantly feel like I am the only on in managers meetings with a focus on realistic productivity rather than relentless productivity.
• You have to be willing to accept the feeling of not knowing things to ask naive questions that inspire innovative answers.

Why did George Carlin see things the rest of your missed?

• Approach life with a sense of vuja de or beginners mind

Why should you be stuck withou a bed if I’ve got a extra air mattress?

• We don’t think to challenge the status quo very often. When we do, amazing things can happen

Why must we question the question?

• Five Whys is a method of repeated questioning to get to the source of an issue
• Anyone can ask a question but to decide to pursue an answer or solution takes a certain amount of imagination, determination and or despriation

How do you build a tower that doesn’t collapse

• The downfall to trying to plan our everything in advance is that you get far fewer opportunities to trial and error
• If you have and idea you don’t have to work on it in solitude. There are people who are happy to contribute. Open source proves this concept

Chapter 4 Questioning in Business

Why do smart business people screw up?

• Newcomers can enter into a low end of a market because they don’t already have an established product and quality expectation that established businesses do
• The thin that brought a business to a level of success likely won’t be what pushes them to the next level

How can we make a better experiment?

• Established businesses need to create a place for employees to experiment and test out new ideas

If we brainstorm in questions will lightening strike?

• When brainstorming sometimes it can be more effective to think of the questions rather than the solution
• Storm 50 questions and narrow down to the top 3. From thee the team can leave the meeting with a direction to research

Will anyone follow a leader who embraces uncertainty?

• An outsider can never successfully offer solution. They can simply provide another angle at which to view you issues.
• Mission statements when asked as a question provide direction when the organization makes any decision

How might we create a culture of inquiry?

• For interviews ask candidates to prepare open ended an ambitious questions that challenge industry culture or create potential what if scenarios.

Chapter 5 Questioning for life

Why should we live the questions?

• Giving in to uncertainty can open a lot of opportunity

Why are you climbing the mountain?

• What am I expecting at the top of this mountain?
• Is the climb helping me to be who I want to be?

Why are you evading inquiry?

• Inquiry is hard because it embraces the concept of being uncertain
• Inquiry has to be a part of habit and routine otherwise it just gets lost in our busy schedules

Before we lean in what if we steeped back?

• Taking the time to sit with a questions allows us time to think deeply about the question before we go to take action

What if we start with what we already have?

• We need to accept that some pursuits will never lead to happiness
• Find what you are good at or where you shine and try to incorporate more of that into you life

What if you made a small change?

• People obsess over making sure everything is just right before making a change. Sometimes this leads to paralysis of the analysis. In some cases it might be better to try.

What if you could not fail?

• In many cases failure is not complete or total. It is something we can come back from

How might we pry off the lid and stir the paint?

• Sometimes questions have to be asked a certain way to encourage thoughtful action instead of defensiveness

How will you find your beautiful question?

• Questions worth pursuing tend to stick with you. If is best to take time with these questions. Allow yourself to focus solely on these and let your others go for a bit.

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Source

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas . Bloomsbury USA.

Flow Summary

In “Flow”, the author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explores how to have optimal experiences. We all seek happiness and optimal experiences. The issue is that our methods for achieving happiness are completely wrong. In developed countries we try to achieve happiness through control of our environments and when that fails we turn to physical means of happiness including money, things, relationships, entertainment, etc. These methods are all fleeting and only provide temporary happiness.

The proven path to happiness is through optimizing our lives for experiences. We must find ways to root ourselves into experiences that bring us true joy. These experiences tend to materialize through activities that are challenging that take up nearly our entire consciousness.

A  symptom of an optimal experience is a sense of time loss. As we complete the activity or experience we lose all track of time. A large component to fewer people experiencing these kinds of moments is that we have been taught that anything that requires work must be a burden rather than joyful. If we can shift that perspective with the things that make us feel alive we have a greater chance of experiencing flow more often.

Flow Notes

Chapter 1 Happiness Revisited

Happiness revisited

• Over many years we have still not figured out the key to happiness. Material and physical health have never been higher, and they have not made us happier
• Happiness is not impacted by outside environment
• Optimal experiences occur when we have worked hard mentally or physically and we have a sense of a milestone being achieved
• Flow is the state of activity where nothing external to your activity matters. If just fades into the background

Overview

• There are ways in which we temporarily try to feel like we are in control. These provide a temporary sense of happiness. When that doesn’t work we turn to physical sources of happiness which are even more fleeting

The Root of Discontent

• The universe is developed for chaos. Everything will not always go your way. We must learn to accept that chaos.
• Even as our situations improve we are hit with an increase in wants

The Shields of Culture

• Materialism has increased significantly but our ability to have meaningful experience has not

Reclaiming Experience

• We must separate our reward structure from the social system. The social system reward focuses on continue output of production rather than experience

Paths of Liberation

• The reason why many people are unable to decouple themselves from the social system rewards is that it takes hard work and consistency equal to that of an athlete. This level of dedication is not something many are capable of

Chapter 2 The anatomy of Consciousness

• Those who have mastered their feelings and reactions tend to live happier lives
• Science has not been able to define consciousness yet
• There limits to our consciousness. We can tell when we are hungry but cannot determine the exact amount of blood sugar we have.

The Limits of Consciousness

• We are only able to process a certain amount of information in a given time period. The upper limits of what we can process is 126 bits of information per second
• Because what we can process is so limited we have to be careful with what we allow into our consciousness
• People who are high achievers in their field have determined how to focus their attention so that all of their consciousness is used to address the specific issues or projects

Enter the Self

• Attention impacts self until self drives attention

Disorder in consciousness: Psychic Entropy

• Information can disrupt our goals to the point that it can impact our sense of self

Order in consciousness: Flow

• Flow occurs when information confirms the goals we hold. It occurs without a sense of worry or any feelings of being inadequate
• Sometimes if the goals we set do not get us in a state of flow we know they are not our true goals

Complexity and the growth of the self

• Complexity is often associated with negative. However there are cases where complexity just refers to a many systems machine or process working in harmony
• Complexity requires both differentiation and integration. Differentiation to strive for uniqueness and integration to avoid self-centered egotism

Chapter 3 Enjoyment and Quality of life

• There are two main strategies to improve quality of life
• Change external resources to align with your goals
• Influence others to change their ways to allow you to achieve your goals
• Change your perceptions to make goals easier to achieve
• Lower your standards to allow you to achieve your goals

Pleasure and Enjoyment

• Pleasure helps restore us, but doesn’t inherently increase happiness
• Enjoyment is pushing forward and creating something new
• Enjoyment requires focus, pleasure can occur even when we are not focused

Elements of Enjoyment

• Enjoyment described by individuals, regardless of who or where tends to have similar descriptions
• There are eight components to an enjoyable activity

A challenging activity that requires skill

• A challenge has to be just challenging enough so that we don’t get board or anxious
• We have to have some experience with the activity

The merging of action and awareness

• In flow all of our attention is required because all of the skills we have are needed to keep moving forward
• Work in flow cannot happen without effort

Clear goals and feedback

• Feedback is an indication that an action is or is not accomplishing the desired outcome
• We can respond to feedback to make corrections so that the results will accomplish our goals

Concentration on the task at hand

• Because flow requires our full attention we are unable to focus on any unpleasant aspects of life
• Flow create or implies order

The Paradox of control

• We have a sense of control over the situation
• Possibility versus actuality of control
• The perception of control can become addicting

The loss of self consciousness

• When we are in a flow state we no longer have the capacity to be self conscious
• The only sense of self that remains are the components needed for the job

The transformation of time

• Flow experiences tend to have an element of time dilation when time tracking is not a pivotal component of the activity

The autotelic experience

• Flow occurs most often in cases where the activity is the reward. We don’t do it for external praise or rewards. We do it because we enjoy it
• Crime occurs when individuals seek autotelic experiences but do not have the means for them to occur through less nefarious means
• Flow can have both positive and negative outcomes. The goal is to approach positivity and control negativity

Chapter 4 The Conditions of Flow

• Flow instances rarely happen by happen stance

Flow activities

• We must have the right balance of skill and challenge

Flow and culture

• Cultures and time periods offer different levels of happiness through ability to openly pursue optimal experiences
• If life becomes too easy it lacks challenge and meaning
• When a culture embraces flow for some, it is possible that comes that the expense of others
• With greater access to leisure activities we see a drop in optimal experience

The autotelic personality

• There are social and psychological hinderances to optimal experiences or enjoyment

Neurophysiology and flow

• Evidence tends to suggest that the ability to concentrate is something that we can learn
• Those who can concentrate easier also have an easier time achieving flow

The Effects of Family on the autotelic personality

• Families can impact children’s ability to have optimal experiences
• Five characteristics
• Clarity – Clear expectations, goals, feedback
• Centering – perception of interest in the child here and now
• Choice – possibilities to choose from even negative choices with the consequences that follow
• Commitment – trust to set aside defenses and pour entirely into interests
• Challenge – parents dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities
• Ill treated children tend to grow up to be adults who seek pleasure instead of enjoyment

The people of flow

• Even in the face of adversity optimal experience can be found with a perspective shift and an unwavering drive to remain positive and focused

Chapter 5 The Body in Flow

• When we do not use our bodies they atrophy. Opportunities to challenge the body allow us to develop flow opportunities

Higher, Faster, Stronger

• We can create optimal experiences out of physical activities by setting challenging goals and measuring our progress toward those goals

The Joys of Movement

• Dance is a form where flow can happen for individuals on many levels. Flow can occur in dancing even when you are not a professional. Professionals pursue dance perfection.

Sex as Flow

• Sex can become boring if we are not trying new things and challenges to keep things exciting

The ultimate control: Yoga and the martial arts

• Balance between spiritual and materialism
• Yoga in the East has several levels each with a different aim that more easily contributes to flow that that of the West.
• Martial arts in the East are less about physical performance and more about mind and body alignment

Flow through the senses: The joy of seeing

• Flow can occur when we take a moment to be completely occupied with a visual stimulous
• I experience flow when doing portrait photography

The Flow of Music

• Flow opportunities through music can occur in listening or creating music

Chapter 6 The Flow of Though

The Mother of Science

• Memory is required to have a knowledge of arts and science that is passed through generations.
• Rote learning is often considered less desirable. However, the ability to memorize facts or snippets relevant to your work or interests can come in handy

The Rules of the games of the Mind

• Skills and knowledge develop system in our minds that allow us to be comfortable with our thoughts in silence. Without that comfort we turn to outside stimulus to keep our minds from wandering into negativity

The play of words

• Finding flow requires being able to be the source of your own flow. You cannot rely on others to create it for you
• Puzzles, conversation, poetry, and writing are all ways that we can use words to find flow

Befriending Clio

• Understanding history or trying to capture elements of our own history can become a flow experience

The delights of science

• Science is a series of puzzles that anyone with enough interest can enjoy

Loving Wisdom

• Specialization in a broad focus area is inevitable. However don’t let specialization take the original joy out of the activity

Amateurs and Professionals

• Being an amateur is not a bad thing. It means you pursue a activity or knowledge because you love it. You aren’t ready to completely pursue it to the level of professional though.

The Challenge of lifelong learning

• Beyond school if you can continue pursuing research and learning in areas that interest you. You will experience many opportunities for optimal experiences

Chapter 7 Work as Flow

Autotelic Workers

• Generally, work is considered a burden to bear
• Work is more challenging that doing nothing
• Work can be enjoyable
• Perceptions of work enjoyment can vary between generations
• If you can find or create joy you are in a much better place than someone whose joy is derived from vices.

Autotelic Jobs

• A job can be made to be enjoyable if the right environmental factors are present. These factors are consistent with the ones required for flow
• People who don’t enjoy their jobs tend to become less and less productive
• Often those in a position to make a job more enjoyable prioritize the wrong things

The paradox of work

• People reporting being challenged and happy at work but also report a desire to be at work less. This may be due to perspectives that work is a burden and must be negative

The waste of free time

• We long to leave work for free time, but once we have it we don’t know what to do
• Work has structure, goals, and feedback. Free time does not
• Leisure guided toward challenging hobbies or creation provide us with the ability to enjoy free time. Media consumption does not

Chapter 8 Enjoy solitude and other people

The conflict between being along and being with others

• Because we rely on other their approval or disapproval means more to us
• We are genetically programmed to seek out belonging. It is a tribal instinct that drives us to belong because without that we are less likely to survive

The Pain of loneliness

• Many people cannot stand to be alone. When solitude arrives many look for external entertainment
• A healthy, well rounded individual needs to be able to sit with their thoughts and learn to use solitude for deep though or learning

Flow and the Family

• We are more likely to help siblings that cousins due to a greater amount of genes in common and a genetic disposition to preserve the genes
• Relationships require a repositioning of individual goals to function
• Teenagers need parents with hobbies. Tis sets and example and helps prevent teens from getting involved in finding other areas of optimal experience

Enjoying friends

• Because our friends are usually groups of people we have commonalities with we don’t have to change who we are with them
• When teenagers feel cared for and loved at home it empowers them to take control of their friendships
• Friendships in adulthood are harder to come by. They take more work to foster because common interests are harder to find

The wider community

• Those who try to make life better for others without getting control of themselves first will make life worse for everyone in the long run

Chapter 9 Cheating chaos

• Flow is not limited to those who have no outside stressors such as wealth and health
• Even those who are in terrible circumstances can find flow

Tragedies Transformed

• Survivors of tragic events report a clearer sense of purpose and set of goals than they had previously

Coping with stress

• Our ability to cope hinges on three factors
• External support
• Psychological resources
• Coping strategies

The power of dissipative structures

• Being able to find the energy in an otherwise destructive force can turn a bad thing into something good
• There are complexities that we cannot control. If we shift our focus instead to the aspects we can control it gives us the power to take action

The Autotelic self: A Summary

• If we limit our interpretations of the world through the lens of what we already know we handicap ourselves from growth or seeing different perspectives

Chapter 10 The Making of meaning

• Life itself has no specific goal for us. Thus we have to create meaning for ourselves

What meaning means

• Three senses of the word “meaning”
• End, purpose, significance of something
• Refers to a persons intentions
• Refers to ordering information

Cultivating purpose

• Purpose can be established and cultivated on four different levels

Forging resolve

• When we are lead strictly by goals we can get to a point where we lose track of ourselves and what really matters

Recovering harmony

• Animals are driven by instinct. When they are hungry they hunt, when they are tired they sleep. Animals have fewer choices and thus have a much easier time finding harmony and flow
• Human tribes without access to technology have an easier time finding flow because they have fewer choices

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Source

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. New York, Harper & Row.

Four Thousand Weeks Summary

Considering that the average life span of 80 years translates into four thousand weeks, it highlights how short our lives really are. Many of us pursue relentless productivity to make a substantial difference in our limited time.

In “Four Thousand Weeks”, Author Oliver Burkeman addresses our limited lives and how we might use our time to live a more fulfilled life. The constant pursuit of productivity focuses on controlling time. However, because time is uncontrollable and we are unable to accurately predict the future, this attempt is futile. As we get more done in less time, more busy work piles up to keep us busy. There is no escape.

Instead, we should focus less on time and more on experiences that make time fall away. We should spend time doing things we love. Activities or work that allow us to lose ourselves in time. We should also focus on impacting the lives of those we are closest to rather than trying to make an impact on the world.

We can approach our decisions better by realizing we can never experience everything. Fear of missing out is inevitable because there are things that we just will never have the time to accomplish or participate in. Accepting and embracing this limitation again helps us to make decisions that will have the greatest impact on our lives.

Burkeman mentioned that content in life and decision-making can be approached by focusing mostly on the next most necessary or right thing to do. Everything else after that falls into line so that you are only focusing on the things you can immediately impact.  

Four Thousand Weeks Notes

In the long run, we’re all dead

• Living to the age of 80 gives us four thousand weeks of life.
• Productivity is seen by many as a way to get more things done rather than make time to experience more of the world.

Life on the Conveyor Belt

• Because our time is limited, we get frustrated by “wasting it.”
• As we get more efficient at things, we figure ways to fill the extra time with more activities. Constantly chasing the next level. This creates an endless cycle of busyness that never abates

On Getting the Wrong Things Done

• Even as we engage in this busyness, we experience a sense of things we could be doing that have more meaning. However, we fail time and time again to follow that sense.
• Task lists and productivity become a barrier to us getting to that meaningful time.

Choosing to Choose

The Limit Embracing Life

• The problem is not that our time is limited but that we have been trained to misuse our limited time.

Time before Timetables

• In modern days our sense of time has become heightened so much. Our calendars, clocks, etc., constantly make us aware of time and its passing.
• In medieval days task orientation was the only sense of time, and people sensed time accruing more slowly.

The End of Eternity

• In contrast, without time tracking, we are unable to coordinate more significant groups of people to progress industry
• Time has become a resource rather than a medium in which life unfolds.

Confessions of a Productivity Geek

• Productivity tools give us a feeling that we are on the cusp of feeling caught up. However, this never happens.
• The more we try to control time, the more we avoid recognizing and embracing our limitations of ourselves.

An Icy Blast of Reality

• Organize your days knowing that you won’t be able to get everything done.
• Instead of expecting things to be done in a specific time, let them occur through time naturally

The Efficiency Trap

• Busyness is a universal feeling. People in poverty have to work extra jobs to make ends meet. Or stress over having enough. Those into careers work so hard and so long that they rarely have time to see their children. We all have things we want to fit into our lives but can’t

Sisyphus’s Inbox

• As we catch up with everything that feels important, the goals posts will shift, and we will suddenly find or be given more stuff to do that is deemed necessary.
• “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion” Parkinson’s Law
• The fallacy of efficiency is that as we figure out how to do more in less time, people see us as efficient and more likely to get the job done. The problem is there is always a breaking point.

The Bottomless Bucket List

• Because the experiences we can have are limitless, it means we will never be able to experience everything that life has to offer.
• Trying to cram experiences can be just as overwhelming as work.

Why You Should Stop Clearing the Decks

• Having an importance filter is essential for tasks. If something is not important enough to spend time on or is only benefiting someone else, then you are only making their lives easier and not your own
• Don’t focus on clearing the decks of all the small tasks. Instead, focus on the tasks that have the most significant consequence or reward for you.

The Pitfalls of Convenience

• As tasks/errands become more convenient, they tend to lose the novelty which makes them valuable in the first place. When a job takes a bit more effort, it is more memorable and more open to other worthy experiences.

Facing Finitude

Thrown into Time

• By understanding that every decision we make cuts out a near endless supply of opportunities, we embrace the finitude of our choices. Each choice is a vote on the life we want to lead.

Getting Real

• The fact that life is limited is what makes all of our experiences valuable. If you could live forever, experiences would lose their value because you could experience them infinite times.
• As people near almost certain death from a terminal illness, these individuals have a new respect for the sense of time and a newfound outlook on their experiences.

Everything is borrowed time

• We must shift our perspectives from FOMO to JOMO or the joy of missing out. Because missing whatever other experience you could have had is less valuable than the decision or requirement to do what you are doing instead.

Becoming a Better Procrastinator

The objective measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things

The Art of Creative Neglect

• If a particular activity means a lot to you, then you need to make time for it every day. Otherwise, you will never get to it at a later point.
• Schedule time with yourself to make time for this important project
• Limit in-progress items to a max of three. No other task can be taken until one of your other three is completed.
• Avoid tasks that are not in your top percentage of priorities. These tasks just become suckers of your time that you are not very passionate about anyhow.

Perfection and Paralysis

• We cannot let the idea of perfection prevent us from progressing toward the areas we are most passionate about. Delaying progress until you can perfect something surely means it will never occur.

The Watermelon Problem

• Distraction, where we are not actively making a choice, is essentially us giving away bits of our life.
• Distraction has become a bad word thanks to social media and other technology that thrives off our attention. However, distraction is how we live as humans. If it weren’t for distractions, we would overlook beautiful sunsets while out on a walk. Or see that the rustling in the bushes might be a predator.
• Even with distraction, we must be able to focus on our experiences to enjoy them.

A Machine for Misusing your Life

• In social media usage or consumption, our focus is the product sold to marketers. The algorithms of social media are geared to identify the areas we spend the most time. However, these algorithms also identify the topics that elicit an emotional response from us to maintain our attention.
• Over time social media can carve our mood and personality with consistent psychological biases and exposure to topics or conversations that make us upset.

The Intimate Interrupter

The Discomfort of What Matters

• Boredom can occur when we are doing a task that forces us to confront our limitations. If our talents do not live up to what we expect, then we are more easily distractible.
• When much of your willpower is focused on avoiding discomfort or boredom, you limit the remaining will you have to accept the situation.

We Never Really Have Time

• As we add more time to a task, Hofstadter’s law makes that task take up the time you’ve planned and a little more.
• Planning extremely far ahead only makes you anxious about what the future holds.

Anything Could Happen

• Saying we have time for something is more like saying we accept it.
• The only time we are sure about the future is after it has already become the past.
• Much if what we value in our lives occurred due to circumstances outside of our control

Mind Your Own Business

• We can only control the present and our actions or reactions to it. We can plan for the future, but the future has no obligation to follow our plans.

You are Here

• Live life at the moment and don’t focus so much on the future that you are only using the current state to progress your future state.

The Last Time

• Most of us don’t approach life with pure appreciation and attention. We don’t notice that every activity could be out last.
• We pursue endless busyness with the end goal of being able to relax and enjoy life when you could instead have been enjoying life throughout with less busyness.

Absent in the Present

• On the contrary, if you focus too hard on being present in each moment, you lose the point. You are actively in the moment whether you want to be or not. Interacting with a moment without forcing is the goal.

Rediscovering Rest

The Decline of Pleasure

• Our leisure time has become a task in and of itself. When we feel like there is a way that you waste your time off it means we have our priorities set incorrectly.
• True leisure is not dictated by a list of activities. It is a right to be lazy and disconnect from all forms of work or obligation.

Rules for Rest

• We don’t have to expect rest to feel good. In an age when idleness is considered taboo it can be hard to psychologically get past the hurdle and allow yourself to rest.

Hiking as an End in Itself

• Spend more time doing activities without an end goal in mind. Do them just to do them.

Rod Stewart, Radical

• Hobbies allow us to do something for the joy of doing it. A true hobby has no underlying ulterior motive tied to a productive outcome.
• We don’t actually have to be good at a hobby in order for there to be benefits of the hobby.

The Impatience Spiral

Escape Velocity

• The phenomenon where people are still impatient even though daily life has become more and more efficient though technology can be explained by the frustration that a task can’t occur instantaneously. For example, dinner can take as little as 60 seconds to prepare, but this amount of time is frustrating because it is close to zero but not absolute zero.
• Many people report that they do not have time to read but the truth is more that because reading cannot really be sped up in meaningful way it looses the battle to the other distractions

Must stop, Can’t stop

• Living life in the fast lane has become as bad as any other addiction. We pursue speed and efficiency to avoid other emotions or fears. As we speed up we create additional emotional fuel by missing out on other aspects of our lives. This causes us to double down on speed and the spiral continues.

Staying on the Bus

• An exercise in patience and it’s difficulty is focusing on a piece of art for three hours. Avoiding all distractions and only taking time cow bathroom breaks you go through a phase of initial frustration at how slowly time is going by. After a certain point you mind gives in and you can experience the moment and the art with a whole new focus and clarity.

Watching and Waiting

• Often when we are confronted with a problem in an unfamiliar area if we are willing to accept being uncomfortable and sit with the issues and think through the roots we will be able to slowly see a solution come into view.

Three Principles of Patience

• if you can continue to pursue a passion or decision far enough your work or experience will begin to diverge from the paths that others have taken. In the early stages of career development or experience you tend to take a similar path that others have taken and you are unlikely to produce unique work or meaningful experiences.

The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad

In and Out of Sync

• Being able to sync up communal schedules with those you care about and spend the most time with is import to a sense of good use of time. When no one else is available when you are there becomes a lack of opportunity for social events.
• Digital nomads suffer for a sense of community when their lives are not connected to the time of others.

The Freedom to Never See Your Friends

• When you hoard you time so much that you give up on important social interactions you move too far to the other side of time management.

Cosmic Insignificance Therapy

The Great Pause

• At the start of the pandemic the stopping of the economy caused us to pause and realize a world outside is the fast lane. It allowed us to observe the things that really mattered for us.

A Modestly Meaningful Life

• It is empowering to realize that the likelihood of your life having impact equal to an Einstein is low. Yet regardless of this the activities we pursue with our days can be just as meaningful. We don’t have to make a dent in the universe. We can live a good life pursuing things that we value.

The Human Disease

• We will never be able to be in command of all of the opportunities that come our way. We have to make tough choices because we simply are not able to pursue them all.

Five Questions

• Sometimes we have to be uncomfortable in our decisions because it means we are taking risks. Reasonable risks that have rewards are worth pursuing if the enlarge you versus diminish you.
• Do not hold yourself to standards that are impossible to meet
• Don’t try to be someone you are not. Lean into your skills and values to contribute in ways that make sense for you. Don’t try to contribute the same as someone else
• Everyone is winging it in some way. Knowing that you don’t necessarily have to be all knowing go take action lowers the perceived risk to action.
• Know that seeing the outcome of a project is not required to start a project. We can start things in our lives that will never finish

The Next Most Necessary Thing

• With each moment, if we focus only on doing the next most necessary thing or the most right thing, we will be more content. Accept that knowing the right thing in every decision is impossible as well.

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Source

Burkeman, O. (2021). Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.