Learning Mathematics: The Cognitive Science Approach to Mathematics Education by Robert B. Davis

Posted on December 19, 2018December 23, 2018

Learning Mathematics: The Cognitive Science Approach to Mathematics Education by Robert B. Davis

The Essence

An in-depth look into the problem solving behind mathematical thinking. By considering how we use computation in computer science, we can uncover lessons regarding our own human information processing system (the brain). The system that represents information within our brains has identifiable patterns that when considered, reveal to us our deficiencies when approaching mathematical problems. Davis book also has implications for how we instruct students when teaching math, as well as how artificial intelligence will impact cognitive science.

Learning Mathematics Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of Learning Mathematics. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

• How do people think about Math? University students show they know far less than everyone had assumed they did about mathematics (even the majors).

• A lot of the time, the long way is wrongly spent….
Commonly-shared frames:
You are consistent with yourself.
Different people doing similar things.

• Considering human thought and computer information side by side can be extremely valuable, if only because computers operate in a highly explicit way that forces us into greater clarity in analyzing information processing.

• Anything is easy if can assimilate it to your collection of mental models.

• A problem may be quite easy if you have an effective representation of the problem itself, and effective representations for the relevant areas of knowledge. If not, the problem may be difficult indeed impossible.

• Start looking for the forest, not the trees.

• By using a broader range of mathematical topics, one improves the odds of getting a reasonably representative picture of the kind of mental information processing math requires.

• In order to say why you must interpret the ‘facts’ in terms of an appropriate theory.

• We do not see mathematics as a collection of algorithms to be memorized by rote and practice.
Nor do we see math as something to be ‘tough’ to students, with control in the hands of the teacher.
Instead, we see math as a collection of ideas and methods which a student builds up in his own head.

• Meaningful > Rote Mathematics

• KRS: Knowledge representation systems allows us to talk about representation itself, without compelling us to commit ourselves to any assumptions about the internal structure of the KRS.

• When a student is learning science, he is learning certain mythology that by no means matches commonplace experience all the time. The truth can be different based on how we define it. Words, experience, and KRS are often very different truths.

• Whenever you want to search permanent long-term memory, you MUST have a clue or cue to guide you to the correct part of memory, without a guide, you will inevitably be lost.

• Representations are fundamental to mathematical thought
How are you representing the problem?
How do you represent relevant knowledge that you have learned in the past?

• A single ‘piece of knowledge’ in the mind is the cognitive equivalent of a collage.

• One of our most powerful tools for ‘knowing’ something is the metaphor.

• To memorize verbatim without exception is to experience great difficulty in learning mathematics.

• Educate your intuition

• Math has always been in the background. All great ideas agree with our minds when pondered under the number tree.

• Any problem is impossible if you are unable to recognize its key terms. In these terms, math becomes less calculation and more of the correct assimilation paradigm retrieval.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in Learning Mathematics.

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom by Rick Hanson

Posted on December 17, 2018December 17, 2018

Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom by Rick Hanson

The Essence

Considering traditional Buddhist philosophy and the latest findings in Neuroscience, Rick Hanson provides insight into the neural mechanisms that underlay the great contemplative practices of the Eastern tradition. The brains power of neuroplasticity gives solace to our mind’s capacities to change the connections in the brain using meditative exercises. Meditative practice cultivates happiness, resilience, and positivity and science has finally gathered empirical evidence to prove it.

Buddha’s Brain Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of Buddha’s Brain. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

• You are a human being like any other and just as deserving of happiness, love, and wisdom.

• Progressing along your path of awakening will make you more effective…Nurturing your own development is not selfish, it is a gift to other people.

• When you change your brain …you change your life.

• The bias of the brain tilts implicit memories in a negative direction, even when most of your experiences are actually positive.

• Unilateral Virtue: Guided by principle, live in your own innate goodness. When you are virtuous no matter what other people do, their behavior is not controlling you.

The First and Second Dart:

1st “inescapable physical or mental discomfort” As long as you are, these darts will come.

2nd Our reactions; the ones we throw at ourselves. They often trigger more 2nd darts in association networks. ‘Chronic 2nd dart cascades’

• Most of our second-dart reactions occur when there is no first dart anywhere (No inherent pain in the WE ARE JUST ADDING SUFFERING condition)

• Kindness is its own reward. It is easy to be kind when others treat you well. The challenge is to preserve your loving-kindness when they treat you badly- to preserve goodwill in the face of ill will.

• Wisdom: Come to understand what causes suffering and the path to its end. With such understanding, one must let go of things that hurt you and strengthen those that help.

• Mindfulness: Skillfully use attention on your inner and outer world.

• Virtue: Regulates your actions, words, and thoughts to create benefits rather than harm for yourself and others.

• Just because we have a sense of self does not mean that we are a self. The brain strings together heterogeneous moments of self-ing and subjectivity into an illusion of homogenous coherence and continuity. The self is truly a fictional character.

• How often do we place our convenience ahead if the life if another being, even an ant to a toilet? It’s not deliberately cruel, but it is self-centered.

• As you develop greater equanimity, your happiness becomes increasingly unconditional, not based on catching a good breeze instead of a bad one.

• Equanimity: The space around experience. A buffer between you, and the tones of feelings. With it, situations have only characteristics, not demands.

• Most fears are exaggerated: As you go through life, your brain acquires expectations based on your experiences, particularly negative ones. Due to negativity bias, most expectations of pain or loss are overstated.

• When you do fulfill a desire, the rewards are often not that great…Ultimately you have contributed to suffering.

• Intentions are a form of desire. Desire per se is not the root of suffering; craving is. They key is to have wholesome intentions without being attached to their results.

• The self is only one part of the person.

• Small positive actions every day will add up to large changes over time, as you gradually build new neural structures.

• Ill will tries to justify itself: only later do we see we have tricked ourselves.

• The mind is what the brain does.

• “If getting upset about something unpleasant is like being bitten by a snake, grasping for what is pleasant is like grabbing the snacks tail; sooner or later, it will bite you” –Ajahn Chah

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in Buddha’s Brain.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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52 in 52 Book Summaries

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker

Posted on December 16, 2018December 18, 2018

How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker

The Essence

Combining the theories of natural selection and computational theory of mind, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker shares how the mind thought of as a system of organs, designed over long periods of time, functions to solve the problems of a species within the ecological niche such as the Homo Sapiens. Our ancestral environment had obstacles, and the Homos capacities for seeing, social living, throwing things, and cooking food helped us overcome them. Pinker posits that the mind is what the brain does, and as scientist learn more about the brain and genetics we will have answers to the hardest questions; like what the brain has to do with Phenomenology.

How the Mind Works Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of How the Mind Works. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

• A vast text that attempts to explain what the mind is, where it comes from, and how it lets us see, think, feel, interact, and pursue higher callings like art religion, and philosophy.
• Contents of the world are not just there for knowing but have to be grasped with suitable mental machinery.
• “Everything you’ve learned… as ‘Obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe”
• Psychology is engineering in reverse. In order to figure out our specialized information processing tool, we can use psychology to search for what the brain was designed to do. It is the hunt for universal inherited characteristics of the Homo Saipan.
• Ideas are gifts, communication is giving, the speaker is the sender, the audience is the recipient, knowing is having.
• Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning. Only be recognizing them as separate can we have them both.
• Step outside your mind for a moment and see your thoughts and feelings as the magnificent contrivance of the mental world rather than as the only way that things could be.
• Why us? What makes it so that the Homo developed the unique capacities we now pride ourselves for.
1.Visual animal
2.Group living
3. The Hand.
4.Hunting

• “The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life, in particular, outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people.”

• Each of our mental modules solves its unsolvable problem by a leap of faith about how the world works, by making assumptions that are indispensable but indefensible- the only defense being that the assumptions worked well enough in the world of our ancestors.
• There’s nothing common about common sense. No database could install the facts we tacitly know, and no one ever thought them to us.
• Human evolution is the original revenge of the nerds.
• ‘Cognitive niche’: Using knowledge of how things work to attain goals in the face of obstacles.
• The mind is what the brain does.

• The mind was ‘designed’ to attain the maximum number of copies of the gene that created it. Only replicators whose effects tend to enhance the probability of their own replication come to predominate.
• Two important theories to consider when thinking about how the mind works:
The theory of natural selection of replicators:
The only evolutionary forces that ‘designs’ organs that accomplish improbable but adaptive outcomes.
The world is finite, so the replicators will compete for its resources.
Computational theory of the mind:
Beliefs and desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols.
Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal.

• “Mental Organ”: It is clear the mind is structured heterogeneously with many specialized parts.
• Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics game playable.
• Intelligence, as used in a majority of the text, is the ability to attain goals in the face of an obstacle by means of decisions based on rational (truth-obeying) rules.
• The concept of the individual is the fundamental particle of our faculties of social reasoning.
• Life is a densely branching bush, NOT a scale or ladder, and living organisms are at the tips of the branches, not on lower rungs.
• Evolution is about ends, not means; becoming smart is just one option.
• Human brains evolved by one set of laws, those of natural selection and genetics, and now interact with one another according to other sets of laws, those of cognitive and social psychology, human ecology, and history.
• Consciousness has various forms. We can have self-knowledge, access to information, and then there’s the big mystery of sentience.
Access to information consciousness is a mere problem, not a mystery. Therefore, one day we will understand our minds ‘consciousness’ however, the answer may not be as satisficing as sentient experience makes its self out to be.
• Learning is often described as the indispensable shaper of amorphous brain tissue. Instead, it might be an innate adaption to the project scheduling demands of the self-assembling animal.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in How the Mind Works.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoffrey Colvin

Posted on December 15, 2018December 15, 2018

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoffrey Colvin

The Essence

The title says it all; Talent is overrated. Dispose of the idea that top performance comes from anything but a methodical process of development. Our most prized prodigies are really the product of practice. And not just any practice, Deliberate practice. It’s not that a select population of people is somehow predisposed to greatness, people just prescribe to being mediocre. A tendency to seek automation of the hard things in life stigmatize hard as viscerally unpleasant. It happens that if we cling to these challenges they have the propensity to change us. Such change holds the secret to world-class performance. Find meaning, start early, and of course, practice.

Talent Is Overrated Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of Talent Is Overrated. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

• Great Performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected, talent is much less important than we tend to believe.
• Letters v. Words analogy: It isn’t just that novices see letters while experts see words; experts also know the meaning of the words.
• When finding creative solutions to problems:
Knowledge is your friend
Creativity is not a lightning bolt
Long and careful cultivation is needed

• We tend to think we are forever barred from all manner of successes because of what we are or were not born with. The range of cases in which that belief is true turns out to be a great deal narrower than most of us think. The roadblocks we face seem to be mostly imaginary.

• People keep getting better long after they should have reached their “rigidly determinate” natural limits.

• Avoid Automaticity: Progress through mindfulness of actions.
• “Experience Trap”: Occasionally people get worse with experience; adaptability.
• “Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from”
• The key component of self-regulation: DELIBERATE PRACTICE
• “Practice is too vague: use deliberate practice” -Ander Ericsson
• Deliberate practice is designed specially to improve performance. It is something that can be repeated a lot. It has feedback continuously available, is highly demanding, and isn’t much fun.
• If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them. It is hard; that is the best part!

• Set goals like the best performers; goal not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome.
• The connection between general intelligence and specific abilities is weak and, in some cases, apparently nonexistent.
• Our assumption on high intelligence and high achievement are nowhere near what the research has found. IQ is not the prerequisite to achievement.
• As you add to your knowledge of your domain, keep in mind that your objective is not just to amass information. You are building a mental model, a picture of how your domain functions as a system.
• There is absolutely no evidence of ‘fast track’ high achievers.
• Undergoing years of expert training Mozart is not ‘prodigy’ in our normal use of the word. Mozart became ‘Mozart’ by working furiously hard form a peaked interest and his father’s obsession.
• The knowledge of top performers is integrated and connected to high-level principles.

A few methods experts from various fields achieve world-class performance.

Music Model
Analyze the medium in sections, determine what is most important. Work with each section repeatedly, constantly striving to express. Key ideas more effectively, with feedback after repetition preferably from a teacher.
Chess Model
Designed to meet the central demands of the field and can be further focused on the types of moves that need to be improved; high repetition and immediate feedback.
Sports Model
Must be performed differently every time because the situations they encounter are never exactly the same. Conditioning is key, skills decay if not maintained. Specific skill development is needed.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in Talent Is Overrated.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted on December 14, 2018December 14, 2018

The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Essence

Meditation Master Thich Nhat Hanh redefines how we think about power. Power thought as fame, fortune, success, or strength limits our understanding of the concept. A greater power is available to each of us, and that is the power to be here now in the present moment. We can be free from anger, hatred, addiction, and ignorance if we accept and cultivate mindfulness into our lives. The quality of our lives can be transformed by incorporating the Five Spiritual Powers. True power really comes from within.

The Art of Power Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of The Art of Power. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

The Five Spiritual Powers

The Power of Mindfulness: Mindfulness is the energy of being aware of what is happening in the present moment. Recognize things as they are.
The Power of Concentration: Concentration helps us to look deeply into the nature of reality and bring about the kind of insight that can liberate us from suffering. Concentrate on the nature of impermanence, nonself, and interbeing.
The Power of Faith: Better translated as ‘confidence’, faith is having a path that leads to freedom, liberation, and transformation of your afflictions. Your eyes are brighter, and your steps are more confident.
The Power of Diligence: Practice regularly, daily, with the support of your family, friends, and community. The point is not to prove yourself. The point is to practice for your well-being and enjoyment. You simply practice and do it every day.
Four aspects of Diligence
1. When negative emotions haven’t manifested in your mind, don’t give them a chance to manifest.
2. Calm and replace negative seeds that do not manifest in your conscious mind.
3. Always invite good seeds to manifest.
4. Try to keep a good mental formation in the living room as long as possible.

The Power of Insight: Insight comes from understanding. Insight is the kind of understanding you obtain after you’ve been mindful. If you allow yourself to fell lost in regrets about the past and worries about the future, it is difficult for insight to grow and it will be more difficult to know what right action to take in the resent. Insight is a superpower. All four powers lead to insight.

• Truth is always beautiful
• Kindness is always beautiful
• And Beauty is always true and kind

• Imagine the power of our actions if each one contained 100%of our attention. This is the practice of mindfulness.
• Cravings can never bring satisfaction, yet we keep on running after them.
• Those of us who want experience great happiness, to awaken the mind of great understanding and love, should not base our mind on any external thing. The key is your capacity to cultivate happiness, understanding, and compassion.
• “If at some point in your life you adopt an idea or a perception as the absolute truth, you close the door of your mind. This is the end of seeking the truth. And not only do you no longer seek the truth, but even if the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you refuse to open it. Attachment is the biggest obstacle to the truth”
• Power is truly the power to be happy right in the present moment, free from addiction, fear, despair, discrimination, anger, and ignorance.
• Loving speech and deep listening create good communication; this is crucial.

• “Every new technology promises to help us do more things at once. Now we can send email while listening to music, taking on the phone, and taking a picture, all on the same device. With your energy that dispersed, where is your power?”

• Loving speech and deep listening create good communication; this is crucial.
• The goal is not to be perfect but simply to be mindful of ourselves, even when we make mistakes.
• Buddhist are concerned with power too… but we are only interested in the kind of power that brings happiness and not suffering.
• Compassion yields success.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in The Art of Power.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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Book Summary: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Posted on December 12, 2018December 13, 2018

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Essence

Benjamin Franklin’s international bestselling Autobiography distills the method of living a better life from one of history’s greatest. From Scheduling methodology to his desire to achieve moral perfection, Franklin's drive for personal accountability is a timeless tale of human ambition. What is most apparent when recounting Benjamin Franklin’s life is that life’s achievements have no expiration date; his age had no limits on his capabilities to astound the world. After much success in a variety of industries and disciplines, he goes on to make great waves as a founding father and diplomat. Forgo dwelling in the past ‘glory day’, for your story may just be getting started.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

The Goal of Moral Perfection

13 names of virtues. All that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed that extent I gave to its meaning:

Temperance: Eat not to dullness Drink not to elevation
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.
Order: Let all things have their places. Let each part of business have its time.
Resolution: Resolve to perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. Waste nothing.
Industry: Lose no time. –Be always employed in something useful- Cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly and; if you speak; speak accordingly.
Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chasity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

• Human Felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.
• Over sensations being very much fixed to the moment, we are apt to forget that more moments are to follow the first, and consequently that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the WHOLE of a life. Your attribution appears to have been applied to your life, and the passing moments of it have been enlivened with content and enjoyment, instead of being tormented with foolish impatience or regrets. Such a conduct is easy for those who make virtue and themselves their standard and… by example of other truly great men “

• Like him who having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, but works on one of the beds at a time.
• He that has once done to you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
• The Junto: The most ingenious acquaintance into a club for mutual improvement.
• Find satisfaction in seeing your fault diminish.
• READ. Constant study every day.
• There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as PRIDE.
• One man of tolerable abilities may work great changes and accomplish great affairs among mankind; if he first forms a good plan and cutting off all attention makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.
• Make it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive assertion of my own.
• Rather than, Certainly or undoubtedly.
Adopt: I conceive, or I apprehend, I imagine.
Leave space for the other persons claims to be considered correct. Do not spark debate or argument overstating what you believe to be the facts of the matter.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

Posted on December 11, 2018

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

The Essence

An in-depth look at the psychology of talent, effort, and achievement. Psychologist Angela Duckworth examines what characteristics are correlated with achievement. Her findings observe that it is not just being talented that counts, but a blend of passion and perseverance; what she calls Grit. Talent tends to be a distraction from more informative variables when considering goal attainment. Overtime, it is consistently accomplishing micro-goals that are strategically related to larger goals that drive us forward.

Grit Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of Grit. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

Finding your way to trigger your interests.

Begin with the answer you’re surest of and build from there
Don’t be afraid to guess
don’t be afraid to erase an answer that isn’t working.

• Grit is about working on something you care so much about that you’re willing to stay loyal to it.
• Growth Mindset >>>>Optimistic Self-talk >>>>> Perseverance Over Adversity.

• Parable of the bricklayers...

Three bricklayers are asked: “What are you doing?”

The first says, “I am laying bricks.”

The second says, “I am building a church.”

The third says, “I am building the house of God.”

The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling

• Interpret failure as a cue to try harder
• We are, by nature, neophiles. That meaning, we are drawn to novelty.
• “our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
• On giving up. Consider your goal hierarchy. Give up when one low-level goal can be swapped for another that is more feasible.
• Goal Hierarchy: The more unified, aligned and coordinated our goal hierarchies, the better.
• Some goals are only a means to an end of larger more abstract foals. Everything you do should stem to yield results for a higher goal.
• “it’s not important that I understand everything. It’s important that I listen”
• Enthusiasm = Common
• Endurance = Rare
• Greatest is doable. Many individual feats, each of them doable = Greatness. High performance is, in fact, an accretion of mundane acts.
• Consistency of efforts over the long run is everything.
• “It’s all about in the moment self-awareness without judgement. It’s about relieving yourself of the judgement that gets in the what of enjoying the challenge” Get out of your own way.
• EFFORT COUNTS TWICE: talent multiplied by effort is skill. But Skill multiplied by effort is achievement.
• Effort build skills and makes skill productive.
• Compete means, to strive together in Latin.
• Corresponsive Principle: The situation to which people gravitate tend to enhance the very characteristics that brought us there in the first place.
• When we can’t easily see how experience and training got someone to a level of excellence that is so clearly beyond the norm, we default to labeling that person ‘Natural’. Stay focused, Talent is merely a distraction.
• Persistence eventually delivers rewards.
• “To me, any success I’ve had, it’s because I love to share. There’s no reserve in me- whatever I have, I’m willing to give to you or anyone else”
• When you have setbacks and failures, you cannot overreact to them. You need to step back, analyze them, and learn from them. But you also MUST stay optimistic; work hard and learn.
• It’s progress just clarifying your goals, and the extent to which they are—or aren’t—aligned towards a single passion of supreme importance. It’s also progress to better understand how well you’re currently able to preserve in the face of rejection.
• Figuring out the overarching vision is of utmost importance.
• Research shows that people are more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interest. Further, they also perform better.
• Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.
• Interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world.
• “Even when learning is hard, it is not bitter when you feel it is worth having, that you can master it, that practicing what you learned will express who you are and help achieve what you desire.” –Csikszentmihalyi

• Leaders and employees who keep both personal and prosocial interest in mind do better in the long run than those who are 100% selfishly motivated.
• The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again…I resolve to make tomorrow better.
• Optimist habitually search for temporary and specific cause of their suffering.
• If you experience adversity that you overcome on your own during your youth, you develop a different way of dealing with adversity later on.

• We change when we need to. Necessity is the mother of adaptation.
• ALL of us are parents to young people other than our own children in the sense that collectively, we are responsible for ‘bringing forth’ the next generation.
• Following through is evidence for the merits of Purposeful continuous commitment to a certain type of activity vs. sporadic effort in diverse areas.
• Whether we realize it or not, the Culture in which we live in, and which we identify, powerfully shapes just about every aspect of our being.
• Define Genius as working towards excellence ceaselessly with every element in your being.

• “When I am around people, my heart and soul radiate with the awareness that I am in the presence of greatness. Maybe greatness unfound, or greatness underdeveloped, but the potential or existence of greatness, nevertheless. You never know who will go on to do good or even great things or become the next great influencer in the world. So treat everyone like they are that person.”

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in Grit.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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Art of Living by Epictetus

Posted on December 10, 2018

The Art of Living: The Classical Mannual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness by Epictetus and Sharon Lebell

The Essence

Philosopher Epictetus’s classic text on Stoicism resurges through the voice of writer Sharon Lebell. A manual to widen the accessibility of some of the greatest ideas in western thought. The Art of Living reminds us the harness the powers of our minds to navigate the internal and external landscapes that exert forces upon each of our daily decisions. Gradually, we can refine ourselves to cultivate states that promote a virtuous, happy, and effective life.

The Art of Living Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of The Art of Living. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

The prescription for a good life centers on 3 main themes:

Mastering your desires.
Preforming your duties.
Learning to think clearly about yourself and that relation with the larger community of humanity.

• Am I doing my part to contribute to the spiritual progress of all with whom I come in contact?
• Stoicism vets our choices of thought, word, and deed to help us live clear-sighted, ennobled lives and virtuous live
• Most people tend to delude themselves into think that freedom comes from doing what feels good or what fosters comfort and ease. The truth is that people who subordinate reason to their feelings of the moment are actually slaves of their desires and aversions.

• Desire and aversion though powerful, are but habits. And we can train ourselves to have better habits
• IT is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. STOP scaring yourself with impetuous notions with your reactive impressions of the way things are.
• Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness
• Coping calmly with this inconvenience is the price I pat for inner serenity, for freedom from perturbation; you don’t get something for nothing.
• Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative attitudes through your associations.

• All events contain an advantage for you-look for it.
• When anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgement of the incident that provoke you. Don’t let your emotions get ignited by mere appearances.
• Do not try to seem wise to others. If you want to live a wise life, live it on your own terms and in your own eyes.
• You become what you give your attention to. We become small-minded if we engage in discussion about other people.
• Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people’s weaknesses.
• Only the morally weak feel compelled to defend or explain themselves to others.
• Through vigilance, we can forestall the tendency to excess; observe proper proportion and moderation.

• The first task of the person who wishes to live wisely is to free himself from the confines of self-absorption.
• There is a big difference between saying valuable things, and doing them; look to the example of people whose actions are consistent with their professed principles.
• Concentrate ion the small but significant inner moral choices we make in the course of any day.
• Notice what’s actually happening, not just what you think is happening or wish were happening. Look and listen.
• Many socially taught beliefs are so deeply ingrained that they are hidden from our own view. The commonplace sluggishness of the lives lived by undisciplined is dangerously contagious, for we often are exposed to no alternative healthful way of living.
• Don’t just say you have read books. They are very helpful, but it would be a mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their content.
• Human betterment is gradual.
• To live a life of virtue, you have to become consistent, even when it isn’t convenient, comfortable, or easy.
• The virtue that leads to enduring happiness is not a quid pro quo goodness. Goodness in and of itself is the practice and the reward.
• When you begin your program of spiritual progress, chances are the people closest to you will deride you or accused you of arrogance, it is your job to comport yourself humbly and to consistently new your moral ideals. If you are steadfast, the very people who ridiculed you will come to admire you.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in The Art of Living.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Posted on December 9, 2018December 11, 2018

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The Essence

Practical philosophy as written from the private writings of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. As prescribed by the timeless lessons of Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are applied writings in his day to day life as literal king of the world. They are reminders of living in accordance to nature; to accept what you cannot control. We all have the tools reappraise what is out of control and the powers we have over our minds to shape every obstacle that may arise in our lives into something that assists us. It is though this, that one may become a person of virtue.

Meditations Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of Meditations My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

• Live according to nature. Accept without resentment whatever may befall.
• Kindness to his fellow creates is therefore incumbent upon him.
• The man of understanding finds good in his own actions.
• Never parade encyclopedic learning, put guard against unnecessary fault-finding.
• Never become unduly absorbed in things that are not of the first importance.
• The mind can circumvent all obstacles to action…barriers in its path become aids progress.

• True, others may hinder the carrying out of certain actions; but they cannot obstruct my will; nor disposition of my mind, since these will always safeguard themselves under reservations and adapt themselves to circumstances.
• Teach them better; if you can; if not, remember that Kindliness has been given you for moments like these.
• Be sparing in my wants, attend to my own needs, mind my own business, and NEVER listen to gossip.
• Treat with respect the power you have to form an opinion.
• What is the good of praise-unless maybe to sub serve some lesser design? Surely, then, you are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow.
• Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.
• Approach each action as though it were your last. Time has a limit set to it for you. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and NEVER in your power again. You can only ever lose the moment you are living now.

• Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness- all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and it nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother; therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother of fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet, or eye lids, or like the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Natures law and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction?

• REJECT your sense of injury and injury will disappear.
• A good man does not spy around for the black sports in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.
• Recollect all you have learnt and accepted regarding pain and pleasure.
• When anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, ‘This is a misfortune’. But, ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune’.
• The more a man deprives himself, or submits to be deprived, of such things and their like, the more he grows in goodness.
• In every instance learn… Nothing so enlarges the mind as the ability to examine methodically and accurately every one of life’s experience with an eye to determining its classification, the end it serves, worth to the universe, and it’s worth to men.
• Think it no shame to be helped.
• When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.
• “It lies in my own hands to ensure that no viciousness, cupidity, or torture of any kind finds a home in this soul of mine; it lies with me to perceive all things in their true light, and to deal with each of the mass as it merits. This is Natures gift to you.”
• Let NO emotion of the flesh, be they pain or pleasure affect the supreme and sovereign portion of the soul.

For Humans; The Greatest Self-inflicted Wrongs:

• To quarrel with circumstance in a rebellion against Nature.
• To reject a fellow-creature of oppose him with malicious intent as men do when they are angry.
• To surrender to pleasure or pain.
• To dissemble and show insincerity or falsity in word or deed.
• To direct its acts and endeavors to no particular object and waste its energies purposelessly and without due thought.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in Meditations.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

Posted on December 8, 2018

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

The Essence

An expert in expertise, Anders Ericsson distills 30-years of research on how people become top performers. Peak revels that top performance is not preordained to a select few; it’s open to everyone. So long as we have a deep intrinsic interest to discipline and motivate ourselves, excellence is no question open to all. The secret sauce is all in the type of practice that one engages in to gain expertise; it’s Deliberate practice is the gold standard. By harnessing the power of Deliberate practice mastery of any field is possible. It is Deliberate practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvements—the 'talented' are simply those who after having built interest put the time.

Peak Journal Entry Notes:

This is my book summary of Peak. My notes are a reflection of the journal write up above. Written informally, the notes contain a mesh and mix of quotes and my own thoughts on the book. Sometimes, to my own fault, quotes are interlaced with my own words. Though rest assured, I am not attempting to take any credit for the main ideas below. The Journal write up includes important messages and crucial passages from the book.

• There are no shortcuts… The bottom line is that every time you look closely into cases of innate talent you find that the extraordinary abilities are the product of much practice and training.
• The brain is far more adaptable than anyone ever imagined, and this gives us a tremendous amount of control over what our brains are able to do—Neuroplasticity.
• “No one has ever managed to figure out how to identify people with ‘innate talent’. No one has ever found a gene variant that predicts superior performance in one area…We cannot just simply identify kids as ‘best’ athletes, mathematicians, or doctors etc.”
• BEWARE: Belief in innate differences yields self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Strengthen the reasons to keep going, weaken the reasons to quit.
• ANYONE can improve. We as humans have far more potential than ever realized. We ALL can take control of our lives!
• Find a good teacher: It puts you miles ahead. No teacher? No problem. Focus, Feedback, and Fix it will be your guide.
• If you wish to develop a truly effective training method of anything that method will need to take into account what works and what doesn’t in driving changes in the body and brain.
• Research has not found some immutable limit on performance. People more often just give up and stop trying to improve.
• The human body is incredibly adaptable.
• The fundamental truth about all practice: If you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.
• Experts see the forest when everyone else sees only trees: superior mental representations through domain specific specialization may be the cause.
• Mental Representations: A mental structure that corresponds to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or anything else, concrete or abstract, that the brain is think about. We have them for everything! We ought to build more efficient mental representations for whatever activity we practice.
• Skills > Knowledge
• Mindset Matters
• Honing the skill improves mental representations and mental representations help hone the skills. This is improvement reinvesting its dividends.
• Once you start automating you stop improving… Automaticity does not yield progress.

Purposeful Practice:

Well-defined, specific goals
Focused
Involves feedback
Getting out of comfort zone

Deliberate Practice-The Gold Standard

Deliberate Practice…
• Develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established.
• Is deliberate, that is, it requires a person’s full attention and conscious action.
• Involves feedback and modification of efforts in response to that feedback.
• Takes place outside one’s comfort zone and requires a student to constantly try things that are just beyond his or her current abilities.
• Involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspects of the target performance: it is not aimed at some vague overall improvement.
• Nearly always involves building on modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically.
• Both produces and depends on effective mental representations.

If you liked what you saw. Here are 3 titles that I recommend based on what was discussed in Peak.

Find the book on Amazon: Print | Audio

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