When Resilience Requires Slack

The traditional approach to understanding complex systems has been reductionist, breaking them into smaller, simpler components. While effective for understanding mechanical systems like clocks, where each cog serves a clear purpose in isolation, this method falls short when applied to dynamic, interconnected systems like living organisms, ecosystems, weather patterns, or even social structures such as economies, organizations, institutions, supply chains, or families. To look at systems like these and only see parts is to miss the force that ties them together. […] You don’t …

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Reading for Knowledge

Reading is integral to our daily lives, serving various purposes ranging from relaxation to in-depth learning. How we approach reading often depends on our objectives — whether we are unwinding with a novel, seeking specific information, or engaging with academic texts. Reading for Leisure Reading for leisure is an unhurried journey through stories, ideas, and emotions. It allows us to experience pleasure, relaxation, and sometimes escapism through the written or spoken word. The motivation is personal enjoyment rather than academic, professional, or life admin …

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Resources of July 2024 – Procrastination, Generalization vs. Specialization, Ingenious Living and More

Note: Sometimes, it can take me up to a year to turn a concept into a published article. I noticed this recently with my latest piece, Insights from Bjarne Stroustrup, Creator of C++, published this July. The idea for that article originated when I watched Stroustroup’s video interview for Honeypot last August. This made me consider creating a series where I gather insights from my findings. I would call it something else than a newsletter, as it might not necessarily be news-oriented but ideas-focused. …

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Brandon Sanderson’s Framework to Achieve Hard Things 

In 2020, Brandon Sanderson, an epic fantasy and science fiction writer, delivered an excellent keynote called The Common Lie Writers Tell You. This session was a map of achieving difficult things disguised as writing advice.  The first thing that jumps from this video is the lie we usually hear “you can do anything if you just set your mind to it”. In Sanderson’s words: Some things are simply impossible, and even for the things that are possible, luck plays a bigger role in accomplishments …

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How to Reduce Biased Thinking

The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychological, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on its owner the comforting delusion that he or she does not have any.  Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson – Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)   Every day an overflow of thoughts dashes through our minds as we must adapt as efficiently and quickly as possible to everchanging environments. We can’t process all streams of information around us at once, so we turn to mental shortcuts …

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How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2)

Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) This article will present other techniques that women (who usually experience gender stereotyping or/and are caregivers) choose to follow in their work aspirations. As in the previous article, most of this research is based on Mason Currey’s excellent books, Daily Rituals and Daily Rituals: Women at Work.   Hidden in plain sight   Costume designer Edith Head created the …

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How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1)

Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) As I mentioned in the previous article, the focus of this article is adding more examples of women (who usually either experience gender stereotyping or are caregivers or both) to the deep work philosophies Cal Newport identified in his book Deep Work. To recap some work strategies, Newport categorized four types of work philosophies …

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The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction

Articles in this series: The Limitations of the Deep Work Hypothesis – Introduction How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 1) How Women Find Time for Their Work Projects (part 2) In his Deep Work bestseller, Cal Newport coins the term “deep work” as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”   In contrast, Newport defines shallow work as “non-cognitively demanding, …

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