Random Learnings From The Books I Read In 2018
I tend to read 10-12 books a year. Last year, I completed reading eleven books and at the end of the year I realized that I do not remember much of what I had read. Following is an attempt to remember at least one thing from each book I read i.e. a random sentence or paragraph I underlined while reading the book:
A common mistake is to use a process for making a decision that is appropriate for activities that are nearly all skill and then apply to activity that is mostly luck.
Emotion is temporal. Waves of feeling drags us out of the present and into the past and future. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that trying to live in the present moment is a losing struggle. People, he said, are ceaselessly drawn to "the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us." Mindfulness is a state of focused attention that requires people to resist distractions and stay focused on what is happening right now. Mindfulness is difficult to sustain because the mind is a creature of history, constantly wandering back and forth in time. Achieving mindfulness may yield psychic rewards, but memory and anticipation are essential to the human condition. Past and future are integral elements of full, temporally complex experiences.
Much of the modern unhappiness comes from our aspiration to be rational. Even most Western religions suffer from this defect. Zen Buddhism appeals to many people because it talks about enjoying each day, accepting life and oneself in its tangible reality rather than living in the future.
Consider education not as at the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary proportion of the individual to earn his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible, for the enlargement of man's understanding, control, embellishment, and enjoyment of life.
Without being aware of your vulnerabilities, fears, and longings, it is easy to go off the track of your True North [an orientation point - derived from your most deeply held beliefs, your values, and principles you lead by], and others can take advantage of you.
To achieve superior investment results, your insight into value has to be superior. thus you must learn things others don't, see thing differently or do a better job of analyzing them - ideally, all three.
Boltzmann's idea is subtle and brings into play the idea of probability. Heat does not move from hot things to cold things due to an absolute law: it does so only with a large degree of probability. The reason for this is that it is statistically more probable that a quickly moving atom of the hot substance collides with a cold one and leaves it a little of its energy, rather than vice versa. Energy is conserved in the collisions but tends to get distributed in more or less equal parts when there are many collisions. In this way the temperature of objects in contact with each other tends to equalize. It is not impossible for a hot body to become hotter through contact with a colder one: it is just extremely improbable.
Getting stuck is a frustration every artist of every type has to face at one time or another. But fortunately for them and for us there are ways to overcome such blocks. One method that has proven to work time and again is to move. A change of scene literally changes your point of view: the disruption activates your senses, which are stimulated by the unfamiliar; you see and experience life differently. An impulse to capture and express your feelings is heightened, which is why we like to take photographs when away from home.
In addition to looking at the worst-case scenarios, I look at how hard something is to execute. The simple the goals and the steps to reach them, the more likely I'll be successful.
Decision fatigue is perilous: as a consumer, you become more susceptible to advertising messages and impulse buys. As a decision maker, you are more prone to erotic seduction. Willpower is like a battery. After a while, it runs out and needs to be recharged. How do you do this? By taking a break, relaxing and eating something.
When we express our goals in terms of how we will learn and grow, it opens us up to a whole new level of insight and achievement.
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What I underlined while reading a book is a function of what I had read or learned before and the frame of mind I had at that moment.
