0828 Another Chill Day: Making Flyers and Reading Books
🖱️ Made flyers
📖 11:20 Read The Attention Merchants Chapter 9
Notes:
For by testing the extremes of what attention capture could accomplish, the Third Reich1 obliges us to confront directly the relationship between what we pay attention to and our individual freedom.
If to pay attention is to open the mind to information, to do so in an animated crowd is to fling the doors wide open. To be exposed to any information is to be influenced, but in crowds the possibilities go well beyond everyday experience. Gustave Le Bon, the first theorist of crowd psychology, held that it is loss of individual responsibility that makes the individual in the crowd more malleable. Freud would say that the superego was supplanted by the will of the crowd, as unconscious wishes rise to the surface and are shared.
Freedom might be said to describe not only the size of our “option set” but also our awareness of what options there are.
1</sip>the Third Reich: The Third Reich,meaning “Third Realm” or “Third Empire”, referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918).
📄 11:30 I read a blog post by Ruan Yifeng and installed Siphon (a plugin) to record unfamiliar words.
🔗 Some slides from famous companies
📄 13:20 Read an English article about Comprehensivist using Siphon
📖 13:30 Began to read The First 20 Hours
Notes:
Rapid skill acquisition has four major steps:
- Deconstructing a skill into the smallest possible subskills;
- Learning enough about each subskill to be able to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice;
- Removing physical, mental, and emotional barriers that get in the way of practice;
- Practicing the most important subskills for at least twenty hours.
One of Dr. Stephen Krashen’s primary insights is that language acquisition is different from language learning.
Learning concepts related to a skill helps you self-edit or self-correct as you’re practicing.
Learning helps you plan, edit, and correct yourself as you practice. That’s why learning is valuable.
If you want to acquire a new skill, you must practice it in context. Learning enhances practice, but it doesn’t replace it.
Without a certain amount of skill acquisition, training isn’t possible or useful. Preparation and conditioning can make some forms of skill acquisition easier, but they can never replace practice.
“Three-stage model” of skill acquisition, it applies to both physical and mental skills.
- Cognitive (Early) Stage—understanding what you’re trying to do, researching, thinking about the process, and breaking the skill into manageable parts.
- Associative (Intermediate) Stage—practicing the task, noticing environmental feedback, and adjusting your approach based on that feedback.
- Autonomous (Late) Stage—performing the skill effectively and efficiently without thinking about it or paying unnecessary attention to the process.
The ten major principles of rapid skill acquisition:
- Choose a lovable project.
- Focus your energy on one skill at a time.
- Define your target performance level.
- Deconstruct the skill into subskills.
- Obtain critical tools.
- Eliminate barriers to practice.
- Make dedicated time for practice.
- Create fast feedback loops.
- Practice by the clock in short bursts.
- Emphasize quantity and speed.
I’ll get around to it, when I find the time, we say to ourselves. Here’s the truth: “finding” time is a myth.
The ten major principles of effective learning:
- Research the skill and related topics.
- Jump in over your head.
- Identify mental models and mental hooks.
- Imagine the opposite of what you want.
- Talk to practitioners to set expectations.
- Eliminate distractions in your environment.
- Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization.
- Create scaffolds and checklists.
- Make and test predictions.
- Honor your biology.
The recognition of confusion is itself a form of clarity.
Noticing you’re confused is valuable. Recognizing confusion can help you define exactly what you’re confused about, which helps you figure out what you’ll need to research or do next to resolve that confusion.If you’re not confused by at least half of your early research, you’re not learning as quickly as you’re capable of learning. If you start to feel intimidated or hesitant about the pace you’re attempting, you’re on the right track.
Not being willing to jump in over your head is the single biggest emotional barrier to rapid skill acquisition.
😢 15:30 I felt a bit uncomfortable when my partner told me she had used my laptop with wet hands, and now the keyboard doesn’t work.
🫂 Reading this Reddit thread actually made me feel better.
💥 So many people have accidentally gotten water in their laptops.
👂 The nice girl near me is going back to her hometown this year, and I heard she’ll quit her job in November.
📖 17:10 Finished reading The First 20 Hours until chapter 5