I have a 6-year-old toy poodle who, after every dinner, starts to nag me. She’ll place her front paws on my knees, tilt her head upward, and gaze at me with her big, dark eyes—intently staring, as if to say: “I need a walk, and more importantly… I need to pee.”
As we head out for our evening stroll, most of the time with my girlfriend by my side, we chat about the events of the day—everything from the mundane to the absurd. I cherish these moments, these simple walks in the park, with the sound of our dog’s little paws tapping along the path. But even as I enjoy the walk, there’s a subtle sense of guilt that gnaws at me, quietly echoing in the back of my mind. It almost feels like I’m doing something wrong. I should be doing something “productive,” something that will make my time more valuable. In some strange way, I’ve come to equate leisure with guilt.
My reason for writing it (the book) was the conviction that the economy is too important to leave to the economists.
But books that popularize science are important in a world where the president of the United States wages open war against it and our children eschew science courses.
the more scientific our models of the economy become, the less relation they bear to the real, existing economy out there. This is precisely the opposite of what obtains in physics, engineering and the rest of real sciences, where increasing scientific sophistication throws more and more light on how nature really works.
Each day, we all awaken to a familiar horror story. Behind the mere six-inch screen of our smartphones lurks an army of dodgy characters, constantly conspiring to steal our precious attention.
As you ride a subway train, glance around at your fellow passengers. Heads bowed low, eyes mindlessly fixated on the screens in their hands, index fingers twitching or swiping. Don’t they bear an uncanny resemblance to the zombies in that movie you watched over the weekend? And then, when you look into the mirror, you realize you belong to the same species, with the screen in your own hand blinking back at you.
Of all the tricks memory masters utilize to fight the fleeting nature of human memory, “the memory palace technique” is probably the most prominant one. It works by associate information with familiar spatial environment (such as your home or your bedroom). People who are specially good at this can sometimes memorize things that are simply unimaginable for us uninitiated.
On the face of it, The process of a second language acquisition is, for the most part, a game of memorization. There is no doubt that a good memory will help you tremendously in this department. But we don’t have a lot of memory masters who speak a lot of languages, do we? So surely there is more to language learning than meets the eye?
All asians share the same parents. This is the conclusion I reached after reading the autobiographies of two Asian actors: Jimmy O Yang’s How to American and Simu Liu’s We Were Dreamers.
Although the two characters can’t be more different from each other – Jimmy the comedian will make you crack up every few lines, while at times Simu’s brutal honesty and vulnerability put you on the edge of tears – the core theme of both stories is one and the same: the clash between the expectations of Asian parents and a kind of black-sheep kid who has a slightly different dream.
Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.
– Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
When a company or organization is facing a media crisis, a dirty trick that public relations professionals have up their sleeves is to flood the news outlets with all kinds of unrelated information, so that “the bad piece” may get totally lost in all the noises.
When starting a dialogue, it helps to think of the discussion as a negotiation where the prize is figuring out what everyone wants.
– Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
The other day, I was baited into a heated debate online with a stranger. I’m not going to delve into the details of the debate, but I said something I ought not to have, and my opponent did the same, and I ended up blacklisting him (or her).
Time is undoubtedly the sole resource you possess that grants you an upper hand against Jeff Bezos, provided that you are younger than him. In case you aren’t, well, then perhaps you have a better hairline?
It’s quite astonishing to consider that you hold something which even the wealthiest individual on earth isn’t going to obtain any more of. This implies that if we were in a fictitious world where everything is valued in relation to time, then you would undoubtedly be among those who possess greater purchasing power than Jeff Bezos.