When a young Albert Einstein worked at the Bern patent office — an occupation for which he was overqualified — he would often finish his daily work in a few hours. He would then spend his afternoons watching trains coming and leaving the station, letting his mind wander. Back at home from work, he would tell Mileva (his wife): “I thought about something unusual today …”
Walter Isaacson, who penned Einstein’s biography, noted that “Mental visualisations are responsible for the most beautiful, groundbreaking theories that Einstein contributed to modern science.” …
Thinking in better ways is a skill anyone can learn. And by learning to think better, you’ll have a serious edge over your peers.
Mental models, which are patterns of thinking, can help you do just that. They improve your problem-solving and show you better ways of engaging with the world.
Strive to master a few mental models, and you’ll:
Here are five mental models that are extremely useful in real-life situations. …
The way you think determines any success you want to achieve.
I’ll show you a simple exercise to solve problems no matter your education level or industry.
This technique was and is still crucial to many innovators and thinkers such as Albert Einstein, Aristotle, and Elon Musk.
Whether starting a business, switching jobs, acing exams, or even buying a house, this exercise can help you make smarter decisions.
The technique I’m talking about is known as first-principles or principles first. Make a habit of using it, and you’ll dramatically boost your odds of success in any project.
Principles are basic facts (fundamentals) that we know for sure to be true. Think of a few facts you learned at school. …
“Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed. Everything transforms.”
The law of transformation is one of the most important rules in science. Its author, Antoine Lavoisier, tells a fascinating fact: the universe is fully booked and fully locked. Nothing enters, nothing leaves; anything new is merely an act of transformation.
As a result, if you want to be original, the only way is to mix things up.
Even if you think you are not creative, Lavoisier law tells a clear message: with the right transformations, you can make new things that marvel the world. …
This year has been tough on everyone. With a pandemic running amok and lockdowns stripping us from social interaction, our mental health is suffering.
Despite all the challenges, I’m grateful for finding the right resources to ease my worries, shift some of my perceptions, and lift my spirits.
In this listicle, I want to share with you some actions and adjustments I introduced in my own daily life. These changes helped me immensely during this challenging year, and I’m confident they will keep me good company in the future. I hope you’ll find these tips helpful as well.
One of the core ideas of Buddhism is non-self. The whole concept boils down to recognising that you don’t have control over your thoughts. …
Delaying gratification to reach a future success is unnatural. It goes against your very nature as a human. To be happy in the now and make it big, you should approach your goals a bit differently.
Consider playgrounds for a moment. They are a great model of fun work that leads to long term results. Children enjoy their time while building strength, mental knowledge and social interactions that are crucial to their adult lives.
As we grow, we seem to lose this harmony of loving the process while working to reach our goals. As if we must sacrifice one to have the other. As a result, many self-help resources preach the “you must delay gratification” mantra. But do you really need to defer joy and having fun to produce extraordinary results? …
Have you wondered why people bother listening to billionaires advice? Most of it is either non-sense or crap. Look at this:
What factual information did you learn from this? Nothing. Worse, you’re misguided in thinking that:
If you try to follow all the self-help you’ve been reading, then you must:
But here’s the thing:
Whenever you miss or don’t keep up, your mind says: “You should work harder instead of taking a day off. You’re not serious about getting fit if you skipped today at the gym.”
Consuming self-help without moderation can hurt your mental well-being. …
Meetings take a big chunk of our time. Yet, unlike with personal productivity, little is done to optimise them fully. Why? For two reasons:
According to Forbes, about 55 million meetings happen each day in the United States alone. And due to poor planning and poor execution, most of our get together feel like a waste of time: pointless distractions from the real work.
With so much of our time sucked into daily meetings, not taking care of optimising them lead to the biggest productivity loss in our organisation. …
The urge to stand out and achieve big things make you susceptible to grow overly self-centred.
Here are three dangerous signs to watch for when working to achieve your dreams, lets they steer you away from success rather than towards it.
“I want to be a leader, a successful entrepreneur, a famous writer. I want to be happier, smarter, sexier.”
The problem with these aspirations is that they are self-centred.
A mentality centred around your desires and dreams is an alarming sign you are heading the wrong path to success. …
About