#006 Friday's Findings
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#006 Friday's Findings
The hope of Spring, The illusion of transparency and more.
What a lovely day it is today.
Happy Friday, everyone! It is finally time for a month of blooming flowers (and weather). I adore Spring because there is so much hope.
I just finished a book called Why We Sleep last night, and it was an eye-opener. The extent to which Matthew Walker describes how important sleep is, is incredible. I will be discussing the topic of sleep in a later edition issue.
Spring is beautiful. It is the true beginning of the year, as we welcome the sun, and with it; the light that we are so desperately in need of. It is the time of year that we allow ourselves to be alive again.
It is also a time I adore going for walks, as it is actually bearable... without turning my mere hands and feet blue!
It is a great period to stroll through the olive woods.
Have a great weekend.
Suggested readings
When we experience strong emotions, we tend to think it’s obvious to other people, especially those who know us well. When we’re angry or tired or nervous or miserable, we may assume that anyone who looks at our face can spot it straight away. That’s not true. Most of the time, other people can’t correctly guess what we’re thinking or feeling. Our emotions are not written all over our face all the time. The gap between our subjective experience and what other people pick up on is known as the illusion of transparency. It’s a fallacy that leads us to overestimate how easily we convey our emotions and thoughts.… (Illusion of Transparency: Your Poker Face is Better Than You Think)
Say you want to learn French. Would you do better if you studied for 100 hours in a year-long course (~2 hours per week) or if those hours were compressed into a month (~20 hours per week)? Surprisingly, the answer seems to be that more intensive language education programs do better! The research is surprising because the spacing effect is one of psychology’s most robustly replicated effects. Essentially, when material is presented repeatedly, spread out over time, it results in enhanced memory compared to repeated presentations in short succession. Here are some speculative explanations for what might be going on… (Learning, Fast and Slow: Do Intensive Learning Projects Work Better Than Slow Ones?)
When I was a teen, I remember telling my mother that I was lucky because no matter what happened to me in life, I’d always be happy as long as I had a book. I loved movies as well, so it’s interesting I said books, not movies. Perhaps it was because movies could only be watched in a theater or on a TV then. Movies weren’t portable, as they are now, whereas a book could go anywhere, a deserted island or a prison. But I think it was something else. I think I said books because I got a deeper satisfaction of the soul from reading. I’ve been missing that deeper satisfaction. Somehow, without my knowing it, it withered away, like a neglected house plant.… (Struggling to Read)
Motivation has been studied for many years, and one of the most popular schools of thought is Self-Determination Theory. This theory uses empirical methods to highlight the importance of self-regulation, the process of taking in social values before transforming them into our own values and self-motivations. If we feel competent in a behaviour, either as a result of feedback, communication or rewards, our intrinsic motivation will be greater. However, this is only the case if we have a sense of autonomy over the action.… (The science of motivation: how to get and stay motivated)
Every article has thrust and drag. The thrust of a piece is what motivates readers to invest the energy necessary to extract its meaning. It is the reason they click. Drag is everything that makes the reader’s task harder, such as meandering intros, convoluted sentences, abstruse locution and even little things like a missing Oxford comma. When your writing has more thrust than drag for a group of readers, it will spread and your audience will grow. Achieving this takes practice and experimentation... (How to Write Essays That Spread)
A quote I’m contemplating: “When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities).” — Matthew Walker
Tools and Proposals
NordVPN — I suggest you try this VPN! I do not often use a private network like this, but when I do, NordVPN has always served me well.
A Look at Suffering - Philosophize This! (Spotify) — I recommend you to listen to this podcast episode on a look at suffering from Philosophize This.
Built With — I suggest you try this tool for websites. Built With uses technology to track analytics and frameworks of websites, allowing you to easily find out what tools websites are built with.
Sounds
Until next time,
Magnus