How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence
[When you feel the tightening up and defensiveness that comes with someone trying to ‘prove’ or ‘persuade’ their perspective, consider focusing on what question to ask so that you can learn something.]
[Feeling triggered is a prompt to understand what provoked it.]
[We did this three-session activity three times during the year: first for cars, then the internet, then generative AI.]
[Global impact doesn’t lend itself to simple numerical representations, as what the numbers represent may not be evenly distributed.]
[Generative models are often discussed in terms of potential impact decades from now, so to start by measuring something that has already existed for decades helps ground discussion in less theoretical terms.]
[If we network homogeneously, our surrounding opinions will tend to conform similarly.]
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber on Blinkist.
[Technical skill alone is insufficient to kickstart a successful business and can easily lead to unsustainable models where the founder does everything.]
[Turnkey businesses are popular because they have a far higher success rate; they consider and plan all aspects of the business beforehand so that the owner doesn’t need to be present.]
[Every single process needs to be documented in order for someone to run the business without you.]
[Structure all aspects of the business to support your personal objectives.]
[Your marketing should consider the customer and ignore everything else. Get to know their profile as best as you can and market in ways that are appealing to them. Adapt your strategy as they change.]
[All of this ‘business development process’ never stops, continuing as you learn while in motion and understand through testing.]
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche on Blinkist.
One must be a sea to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Speed Reading by Kam Knight on Blinkist.
[Note down every recent read and your reason for each; having clear purpose optimizes your perception and naturally goal-seeking tendencies for what’s relevant.]
[Perceive the outline or structure beforehand to give yourself a mental model to fill in as you read.]
[Shift your gaze to the spaces between words or slightly off center to use your peripheral vision.]
[Inhibit subvocalization by closing your mouth firmly, humming, or listening to instrumental music.]
[Having an idea of the author’s main message before reading helps move beyond a set of random words and into reinforcement of a larger concept. Reflect after each chapter on how the details support the main point. Mark new words and research them after each chapter to put them in better context.]
[Reduce eye strain with exercises such as: looking from side to side without moving your head, rolling them in a circle, or making figure eights.]
Capital by Karl Marx on Blinkist.
[Human labour transforms raw resources into commodities that have a ‘use value’ and ’exchange value’.]
[Work is a means to survive, rather than express creativity or humanity, and alienates workers from each other by forcing them to compete against one another for limited jobs.]
[Value comes from human labour, and transitioning entirely to mechanized labour generally reduces the rate of profit.]
Atomic Habits by James Clear on Blinkist.
[Habits compound when repeated but results are not noticeable day-to-day.]
[Focus on your trajectory instead of the result.]
[Habits are by being led from cues that triggers you to act, to cravings for a specific outcome, to responses that alleviate yhe craving, to an eventual reward that gives you a positive feeling.]
[Help strengthen your cue by changing your environment and implementing an intention or plan.]
[Bundle habits you avoid with ones you like.]
How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett on Blinkist.
[Our labeling of emotions refers to the culturally created concept rather than a specific universal sensations.]
Behave by Robert Sapolsky on Blinkist.
[Damage or pressure to the amygdala or frontal cortex can spur people to do harmful or negative things without them being aware of it.]
Win Every Argument by Mehdi Hasan on Blinkist.
[As it’s uncommon for many people to debate purely with logic, telling stories lets you appeal to their emotions while also making rational arguments.]
How to Read Faster: 11 Ways to Increase Your Reading Speed
[Distract from subvocalization with instrumental music or by chewing gum.]
[Chunk a few words at a time, or vertically divide the text into three sections to try and take in groups of words, covering what’s upcoming if needed.]
[Rereading as a habit might not be necessary and can be helped by following your finger or another visual marker.]
[Look at the center of each line to engage your peripheral vision into taking in the whole thing.]
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith on Blinkist.
[Division of labour enables members to specialize, which encourages focus, innovation, and thus productivity.]
[Money enables a form of labour division by alowing suppliers to specialize rather than providing too broad a selectiong of goods.]
[Trading provides financial compensation to the workers, factory owner, and land owner. This product of labour called “stock” of is used to sustain the recipient and surplus can be directed towards other assets.]
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill on Blinkist.
[You might evaluate your strengths and weaknesses once a year on your own (more subjective) and with someone who knows you well (more objective).]
Limitless by Jim Kwik on Blinkist.
[Avoid task switching as it makes focusing more difficult.]
[Count numbers out loud while reading to inhibit subvocalization from slowing your reading speed.]
Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley on Blinkist.
[Convert numbers into sounds based on their shape or story, and use those sounds to create words and corresponding scenarios. For example, 1969 turns into 9 / B, 6 / sh, and 9 / P, which could be a bishop landing on the moon.]
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle on Blinkist
[Bring yourself into observation of your thoughts by asking “What will my next thought be?”]
Visual design rules you can safely follow every time
[Differentiate hues in a palette with unique brightness values.]
[Saturate your neutrals with warm or cool colours, but not both.]
[Spacing better separates contrasting elements than similar ones.]
The YouTube you see has the same colours and layout as the one I see, and yet we’re not present in each other’s space like two customers browsing through the same record collection at a music store. The Internet is seldom used to ‘connect us together’ any more. No, we’re each in a private bubble.
In a sense, the new digital interfaces are like a reflective store-front made of one-way glass. Whoever approaches will see an image of themselves, reflected in what products turn up, and what messages they receive. The corporate can see them, but the person is encouraged to imagine themselves as walking through an uninhabited room with shelves that belong to them: my shelf, my basket, my account, my list, my favourites, my Amazon, my Google etc. In the 1980s there was no ‘my Walmart’, but now your data is reflected back to you as your own store with that possessive pronoun. In doing that, they get to present themselves as you.
‘Erica’ is legally in the same category as the bank’s supply of staples or fleet of vehicles, but they don’t give human names to their water coolers or keyboards. They only grant that to assets that form part of the new outward-facing interface. They encourage us to get on first-name terms with this combination of code and hardware, and by now all of us have experienced the proliferation of these named interfaces like Alexa, Bard, Claude, or Jasper.
AI chatbots give the one-way mirror a human name that’s different to your own. “I’m having a conversation with Erica”, you think to yourself as you transmit information to the (largely male) engineers of Bank of America. “She knows me so well”.
[LLM chatbot that runs offline entirely inside a browser with open models like Mistral and LLama 3. Needs WebGPU so you need to use Chrome or Edge.]