Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

Go And Reasoning: An Interview With Milton Bradley

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Milt Bradley playing Go

I recently had the opportunity to interview Milton Bradley. No, not that Milton Bradley, though there is a board game connection. I happened to stumble across Milt’s site, where he talks about the benefits of the ancient board game of Go, why he finds it far superior to chess, and how he taught it to hundreds of kids in an experimental after school program.

Perhaps most interesting to me was his claim that many of the world’s biggest problems are caused by poor decisions resulting from undeveloped reasoning skills, and that we can actually make progress towards solving them by learning this game. I couldn’t pass up the chance to ask him a few questions.

Hunter: First things first. What is reasoning, and why is it important?

Milt: Wikipedia says: “Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for reasons, beliefs, conclusions, actions or feelings.” I prefer to think of it more simply, as “the logical mental process through which one arrives at answers to real world problems.”

My own definition appears in the Preface to my autobiography. [Bottom of the post]

Hunter: Don’t schools already teach reasoning? Maybe not explicitly as a subject in its own right, but don’t we pick it up along the way? And if not, then what is the purpose of formal education?

Milt: No, absolutely not! The emphasis in the schools is primarily on facts and the application of formulas to the solution of problems with exact solutions (e.g. math and the sciences). The vital subject of decision making in messy real world situations is really never addressed.

Hunter: You say that a full solution to the problem would require that schools teach reasoning, starting in pre-school and continuing throughout one’s entire academic career. Noting that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, you suggest an alternative partial solution – teaching the strategy board game of Go, which can start right now.

Most people in the West have never heard of Go. I had barely heard of it until recently, and while I’m beginning to gain an appreciation for it, I know I’m far from really getting it. So I’m sure you’ve encountered a lot of people who are skeptical of your ambitious claim. Tell us, how can a board game play an important role in solving the world’s problems?

Milt: In terms of learning the process of situational appraisal and then deciding upon an appropriate strategy and the specific tactics with which to implement it, the process in Go is much like that involved in solving real world problems. So mastering the former process theoretically should help learning it in the latter, but there remains the difficult problem of skill transference from the neat, clearly defined realm of the Go board to the messy, immensely complex real world (especially considering its emotional implications). So whether or not my inference in this regard will prove correct is currently unknown.

Hunter: In the U.S., we play board games with a large element of luck, such as Monopoly, Life, and Sorry (to say nothing of roulette, the lottery, and Super Bowl squares). Eurogames, such as The Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, and Imperial, require much more thought and planning. And in Asia, they play Go and games resembling chess.

Does this tell us something about the different cultures, or am I reading too much into it?

Milt: Hard to be sure, although that’s a reasonable inference. But that’s a possibly unknowable question about historical origins which is almost entirely irrelevant to the key issue of what we do with and about the games we now play.

Hunter: I’m very interested in brain plasticity, the ability of our neurons to adapt to new experiences, an ability that decreases with age. I don’t think it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but let’s face it, some tricks are much easier for young dogs. Perfect pitch is a good example; anyone is probably inherently capable of it, but if you don’t speak a tonal language or receive musical training very early, the window closes forever.

It seems that all the great Go players started learning from a very early age. Go Seigen was an exception, becoming possibly the greatest player of all time, despite not starting until the ripe old age of 9.

For people who are far older than 9, is it too late to learn Go, or reasoning?

Milt: A good question. It’s certainly harder to attain the highest levels of proficiency, and the main reason for that is that Go is a game of pattern recognition, and it seems that the brain’s ability to absorb and internalize patterns declines quickly as a child ages. And a key here that should not be overlooked is that these top players who began as small children only were able to do so because the patterns they were exposed to as young children were on a very high level, so what they learned “by osmosis” was correct. If their exposure had been to error full low level play the result would have been quite different!

Hunter: Forgive my playing devil’s advocate, but they already play Go in Japan, and that’s not exactly a utopia. Like any other country, they have their pros and cons (see my discussion with Akemi Gaines where we compared the U.S. and Japan, or my tongue-in-cheek 10 Reasons America is Better Than Japan).

Is this because Go has been insufficient to fully develop reasoning in the Japanese, or because good reasoning isn’t enough?

Milt: Both! And because of the skill transference problem I alluded to earlier. It’s relatively easy to be objective in playing Go compared to the real world where all kinds of emotional issues intrude on the decision making process. As earlier noted, this is a key issue that must be addressed.

Hunter: Being smart isn’t considered cool. Any ideas on how to change that?

Milt: What you’re talking about is a quite temporary (and manifestly counterproductive) artifact of our current prevalent “pop” culture! Our society has enough problems that we aren’t currently coming near to solving for this sort of mass stupidity to continue indefinitely without sounding its own death knell! So this will either change sometime in the fairly near future or our survival prospects will be even dimmer than they already are.

Milt’s Go Page is filled with insightful articles about the benefits of Go and his experience with teaching it to kids after school for eight years. When I asked him to write a bio for this post, he provided the entire preface to his autobiography, so read on for more content!

In January 1943, age 15 years and 10 months, I graduated from the newly created Bronx High School of Science, then arguably the best high school in the entire United States. At the same time I was also an overweight, friendless, indifferent student who was seriously contemplating committing suicide! But on my 16th birthday only two months later, thru sheer force of will I overcame that negative thinking, and began to transform both mind and body to turn my life around.

As a result, I can look back today with pride at the creative output and epiphany of my “retirement” years, which have resulted in the writing of 8 books, 3 of which are in print and one that’s published FREE on the internet, all brought to fruition after the age of 75, with the last just this year at age 82! But I’m now also unquestionably in the twilight of my life, suffering from incurable, invariably fatal Acute Myeloid Leukemia, while my 88 year old wife has fallen victim to both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. But I soldier on despite those burdens, still writing, and still hoping to see my most significant work published. This autobiography is high in that category as is my novel The Vigilante Murders, but first and foremost is what I consider to be my most important work, Reasoning And Problem Solving, which is the result of some unique insights which I believe have made my life worth living and writing about.

The primary theme of this autobiography can be viewed as the story of my triumph of wit and will over adversity. But that’s an oft told tale, not infrequently by others who’ve had far more serious challenges to overcome than mine. So a reasonable reader might question why they should be interested in a rather detailed exposition of my life and its accompanying problems, trials and triumphs. The most straightforward answer is that I believe my story is intrinsically interesting! But even more important is that it lays out the intellectual substrate upon which my sometimes unique insights were generated.

This memoir begins with a brief look at my familial pre-history, then continues by relating the events and circumstances of my childhood that brought me to the devastating state of mind noted above, in which I was prepared to prematurely end my then still very young life. It then proceeds through my WWII Navy service and subsequent “GI Bill” education, meeting my wife and beginning my now 62 year long marriage, and the many, often traumatic professional and personal triumphs and tragedies that followed during my working career.

Among the most unusual and noteworthy of my many personal interfaces detailed herein were intimate daily contact with four individuals who made local and national front page headlines! The first of these occurred at Bronx Science, when for 3 years I sat at the next desk to Harold Brown, who later went on to become US Secretary Of The Air Force in The Johnson Defense and Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration. Slightly more than a decade after that, I spent 4 years as a Quality Control Engineer at the RCA Receiving Tube Plant in Harrison, New Jersey, working daily with John Butenko, who soon after was unmasked, tried and convicted as the second most important Soviet spy ever in the US! Fast forward another decade or so to when I was supervising the redesign of the NYC Parking Violations Bureau’s computer system, when I spent year long daily working interface with PVB’s Deputy Director Geoffrey Lindenauer, who was soon thereafter exposed as a leading conspirator in their infamous scandal! And not too long after that, Eric Klein, who had been one of my personal programmer/analyst staff at the NYC DOT, was arrested and convicted as the largest counterfeiter of subway tokens in City history!

In attempting to establish a context in which an objective assessment of this autobiography is possible, I believe that it’s essential for the reader to consider some interesting facts. Even for those few in human history who have achieved great renown, the details of their daily lives all too often don’t offer much insight into the origins of their monumental achievements.

As a result, it’s reasonable to conclude that perhaps value in an autobiography shouldn’t be sought in the facts of the author’s life, but rather in the quality of the insights that his story generates in the reader. Or at least that’s what I try to convince myself of in attempting to justify this effort.

To really appreciate the uniqueness of my insights, it would help greatly if the reader understands (and hopefully agrees with) my most important premise – that most of the world’s myriad serious problems on the personal, interpersonal, group, enterprise, national, and even international level result from a single failing – an inability to adequately Reason objectively, unfettered by biases, prejudices, loyalties, and the “canned” prescriptions and proscriptions imposed by authority figures and institutions.

Although this precept seems to violate the principle that “Simplistic solutions to complex problems are almost invariably wrong,” I believe that this case constitutes one of the rare exceptions!

To be sure that there’s no ambiguity concerning what I mean by Reasoning, I conceive it to consist of:
1. The ability to objectively perceive and analyze an often complex problem situation, and then
2. Arrive logically and unemotionally at the course(s) of action required to best resolve the significant points of difficulty and/or contention involved.

When I arrived at this key realization of the almost universal difficulty most people experience in objectively solving real world problems, I believed that I had uncovered one of the central impediments to human progress throughout its history, and one whose conquest would rank among the most significant. And I also somewhat naively expected that this insight couldn’t possibly be one uniquely developed by me, but that surely some great thinker had long since both addressed this transcendentally important problem and solved it! But I discovered to my great surprise that not only was that not true, I was unable to find any reference to the fact that anyone had heretofore explicitly acknowledged that it was a even significant issue worthy of attention!

If this seems strange or improbable, I refer the reader to a bit of history in the field of mathematics by way of analogy (recognizing that, by their very nature, all analogies are necessarily imperfect). In this (possibly apocryphal) story, when John Napier, then an unknown Scot, published his treatise on Logarithms in 1614, it was so revolutionary that the head of the prestigious British Mathematical Society made a special trip from cosmopolitan London to semi-rural Scotland to meet him. As the story goes, on finally meeting Napier, the great man from London sat for perhaps a full half hour simply staring at him before finally saying something to the effect that “How can it be that this marvelous idea (of logarithms) escaped the best minds in all of humanity for thousands of years, yet was finally discovered by someone as ordinary as you?” I, of course, make no claim to intellectual equality with either Napier himself or his accomplishment, but mention this anecdote to emphasize my favorite dictum:

The validity and worth of an idea are unrelated to:
- Who proposed it.
- How long it has been believed.
- The number and importance of those who believe it.
- The vehemence with which they profess that belief.

History is replete with instances of the entire world believing something that was later acknowledged to be manifestly false (“The world is flat”), followed by a single man proposing an idea completely at variance with then conventional, accepted thinking, and ultimately prevailing. Galileo is perhaps the best known and most often cited example of this, and Einstein is another. But they were both operating in the world of physical science, where absolute proofs are possible. In the realm of ideas in which I’m operating no such absolute proofs exist, only opinion. Despite that, perhaps, just perhaps, it’s possible that, despite the uniqueness and novelty of my insight about Reasoning, I really might have discovered something that’s worth listening to!

Although I certainly wasn’t aware of it at the time, in retrospect it now seems that creating this new Reasoning paradigm was the goal toward which all of my training and life experiences had been pointing. How interestingly I describe those experiences and whether or not any of that really provides the reader with useful insights are crucial issues that only you can properly judge for yourself after you’ve perused what follows! Hopefully the result will satisfy us both.

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Think Like A Black Belt

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Anyone who values their own safety needs to read Think Like A Black Belt, by third degree black belt and martial arts instructor Lori Hoeck. This ebook is free, in exchange for your email address.

You’re not going to learn any martial arts techniques, but you’ll learn how to mentally prepare yourself to avoid danger or get yourself out of it. And that can be much more important.

As Lori says, ”Thinking like a black belt means thinking ahead, wearing a wary eye, and presenting yourself to the world in a way that makes you less visible and less desirable to the criminals and predators who populate your life.”

Her target market appears to be women and teens, but this information is applicable to anyone.

I know a guy who has absolutely no trouble defending himself. He was once attacked by a guy with a knife, and not only did he escape injury, but he broke the guy’s neck.

However, he didn’t know how to think like a black belt. When walking through an area that wasn’t even considered particularly dangerous, he was lured into an alley by a homeless woman who called him. It was a setup, and two guys robbed him at gunpoint. He wasn’t hurt and only lost $40, but thinking like a black belt would have let him avoid the whole thing.

Thinking like a black belt could also reduce the number of fatalities in something like the Virginia Tech shooting. The details aren’t clear, but by some accounts, there were long pauses during which the shooter was reloading. He would have been vulnerable during these times, but fear kept anyone from taking action.

Sure, it’s easy to say what people should have done in hindsight, but it’s very different when you’re actually in the middle of it. That’s the point. When your adrenaline is rushing in a life and death situation, it’s not easy to think straight. That’s why you need to learn how to control your adrenaline ahead of time.

Your inner warrior is ready to be awakened. Be safe, not sorry.

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The 77 Traits Of Highly Successful People

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People

You’ve probably heard about Stephen Covey’s classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. A great book, but what could be 11 times better?* How about The 77 Traits of Highly Successful People?

This free ebook is a joint venture masterminded by Mark Foo, involving myself and 47 other personal development bloggers. The collaborative nature means a variety of different voices, but they’re all focused on one thing: how ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.

48 top notch bloggers. 77 essential success traits. 233 captivating pages. Free with your email opt-in.

* OK, maybe not 11 times better, but you get the idea.

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9 Life Lessons From Rambo: First Blood

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

First Blood

Here’s an old post that I’ve had sitting around unpublished for two years. With the 24 premiere tonight, it seemed like a good time to put it out there.

First Blood, the first of the Rambo movies, is about a troubled Vietnam war hero trying to get readjusted to life in America. He’s just learned that the only other survivor from his unit has died from cancer due to Agent Orange exposure, but he gets no sympathy from a sheriff who doesn’t like drifters. What lessons might we take away from this?

1. Don’t be too quick to judge people.

Sheriff Teasle makes it clear that his town doesn’t want people like Rambo because of the way he looks. He didn’t consider that Rambo might have issues that for now are more important than getting a haircut or cleaning his jacket. All the ensuing conflict would have been avoided if Teasle hadn’t decided to make an enemy for no good reason. As Rambo said, “All I wanted was something to eat.”

2. Sometimes what you say is less important than how you say it.

Rambo defends his actions by saying “They drew first blood, not me.” Of course, this is just a tough guy way of saying “But Colonel, they started it!”

3. Know when you’re outmatched.

Colonel Trautman’s advice to Teasle was that instead of sending a bunch of poorly trained cops into the woods against an expert in guerrilla warfare, they should just let him go and arrest him later when no one would get hurt. Teasle repeatedly ignores this, always thinking that somehow his next attempt would be different.

4. When you get caught up in something, it’s easy to lose perspective.

Although something may make perfect sense to people right in the middle of it, sometimes an outside observer can see how ridiculous it is. Like how Colonel Trautman sums up Rambo’s crime: “Vagrancy, wasn’t it? That’s gonna look real good on his gravestone in Arlington: Here lies John Rambo, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, survivor of countless incursions behind enemy lines. Killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater, USA.”

5. Some job skills don’t transfer well.

Rambo found that his extensive training was useless when he came back from Vietnam, and he wasn’t able to find something else he could do nearly as well. He said: “Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment. Back here I can’t even hold a job parking cars!” A tough problem, but maybe the solution is to become a Career Renegade.

6. Sometimes it’s best to just let it go.

Sheriff Teasle refused to give up on his maniacal desire to catch Rambo, who had never done anything wrong in the first place. This resulted in the accidental death of one cop, many injuries, and major property damage. Still, he refused to back off, even when he acknowledged that it could cost him his life. These are the times when you need to walk away (and solve the problem in a better way).

7. War is bad.

Of course we know this, but usually just as statistics in the news. It’s very different when you actually see the results. You have to feel sorry for people who consider themselves lucky to survive with post-traumatic stress disorder.

8. Sometimes the movie is better than the book.

For some reason there’s a widespread assumption that the book has to be better than the movie. I don’t think that’s always true, and here’s a good example. The book was much more violent and portrayed Rambo as a psychotic killer. In the movie, Rambo was a sympathetic character who went on to become Ronald Reagan’s hero.

9. Be prepared to seize opportunities.

After Kirk Douglas gave up the role of Colonel Trautman over a script dispute, Richard Crenna stepped in after filming had already begun. Although he had already been in 28 movies, this would become his most famous role. You never know when your big break will come, so you have to keep your eyes open.

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The God Delusion

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

The God Delusion

After hearing everyone talking about this bestselling book, I was finally compelled to read The God Delusion by British biologist Richard Dawkins. Among his main points:

1. The existence of God is a scientific question. You can’t say that science is completely separate from religion, because a universe with a God would look very different from a universe without one.

2. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. The Boeing 747 gambit is an argument for intelligent design, saying that the odds of higher life forms emerging by chance are roughly the odds of a hurricane sweeping through a scrapyard and happening to assemble a Boeing 747. But attributing the design of a complex world to God doesn’t solve the problem, because the creation of a God capable of such design would have been an even more improbable event.

3. Natural selection gives a much better explanation of the world by use of a “crane” rather than a “skyhook,” or creating complexity by building on lower layers rather than from a miracle.

4. There is almost (he does give that concession) certainly no God, and belief in one in spite of the contradictory evidence qualifies as a delusion.

This part of the book is very strong, and frankly, you don’t need reasoning nearly as sophisticated as his to argue the point.

I was raised as what you might call a casual Christian. It was our affiliation by default, but I think we all knew it was made up. Actually, until I saw Religulous in 2008, I had no idea the whole Bible was meant to be taken literally. For those who don’t know, the universe was created by the Big Bang, snakes can’t talk, dinosaurs were real, and Jesus did not reincarnate as bread.

Even if you interpret the Bible metaphorically, it still doesn’t make sense. God commits random acts of genocide, then says “Thou shalt not kill.” He’s omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, but prefers to take a completely hands off approach to running the world, lest his existence be revealed. He created (at least some) people with rational minds, then gets offended when they don’t believe in him without evidence. He loves everyone, but he’ll send you to hell if you’re gay or you eat the wrong apple or work on a Sunday.

(And for those who wonder how I can say this while entertaining the possibility of phenomena such as Akashic record reading, keep in mind that not believing in something full of ridiculous contradictions is very different from automatically rejecting everything we can’t see.)

But I was wondering why Richard Dawkins would write this book. Yeah, I knew I would agree with a lot of what he said, but why put so much effort into refuting something that’s so obviously false, and which does no harm if not taken to extremes? Why not live and let live?

I changed my mind when I read about some of the anti-atheist and pro-religious discrimination Dawkins talks about. Some examples:

  • When an atheist asked for police protection for his peaceful protest of an anti-vaccination group, eight different police officers independently refused to protect him, or even threatened violence against him.
  • The Supreme Court ruled that members of a particular New Mexico church can take hallucinogenic drugs because they believe that it connects them to God. Meanwhile, doctors believe that medicinal marijuana can prevent blindness in glaucoma sufferers, but apparently that’s not good enough. (Though New Mexico legalized medicinal marijuana after the book was published.)
  • A twelve year old student wasn’t allowed to wear an offensive t-shirt to school because it violated the school’s policy against harassing homosexuals. The student’s lawyer got him a religious exemption from the harassment policy, on the grounds that homosexuality conflicts with his Christian beliefs.

We’ve been conditioned to think that all religious beliefs are automatically untouchable. If stuff like this is happening, maybe it’s time to question that.

This book is more constructive than I was expecting. As opposed to just being anti-religious, Dawkins claims that atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled, and the benefits potentially gained from religion can be better gained in other ways.

However, this part of the book needs to be greatly expanded to do this topic justice. Before reading the book, I thought, “OK, it’s a delusion. But is all delusion bad? What about the placebo effect, where a sugar pill cures a disease because the patient believes it will?” I don’t think he answered this question well enough.

Share your thoughts. Is all delusion bad? Is religion OK? Is atheism OK? Do people have the right to their own religious beliefs? Do other people have the right to say that their religious beliefs are stupid? What happened to the separation of church and state in America? Is mainstream religion a direct threat? Is it an indirect threat, in that it provides a breeding ground for extremists?

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Personal Development For Polymaths

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci: scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer. Polymath is almost an understatement.

“Polymath” comes from the Greek word polymathēs, meaning “having learned much,” and usually refers to having significant knowledge or expertise in a variety of fields. I’m going to broaden the term and say it also refers to having diverse interests and hobbies. It’s the opposite of a monomath, someone who specializes in one field and has a more focused range of interests.

The word “polymath” is less common than the term “Renaissance man,” but (1) being politically correct by writing Renaissance (wo)man every time would be awfully cumbersome, and (2) the world has changed a lot over the last 400 years, and the Renaissance ideal no longer applies in the age of the iPhone.

Polymaths and monomaths are at opposite ends of a long and nebulous spectrum. An extreme example of a monomath would be someone who completely isolates themselves from society to devote their entire life to becoming the ultimate chess player, to the detriment of everything else. An extreme example of a polymath would be a pure generalist, someone who chases everything under the sun, seeking high achievement in every field of study, every language, every musical instrument, every sport, etc.

But neither of these extremes actually exists. Everyone is somewhere in between. Most people are clustered near the middle, some are more on the monomath side, and others are more on the polymath side. It’s a really vague scale, so don’t worry about pinpointing your location on it. You might have a sense of where you are, and if not, that means you’re in the middle, in the range we call “normal,” with a typical balance of breadth and depth.

As you can see, my blog’s tagline is now “Personal Development for Polymaths.” Nothing is really going to change, except that I now have a context for everything. The purpose of my blog is to seek an answer to the question: How does a polymath make the most of their life?

I haven’t thought the whole polymath thing through all the way, but here are some thoughts for now. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

1. Let’s ditch da Vinci as an example of a typical polymath.

Yes, that’s his self-portrait above (copyright expired), but he’s an extreme example, not a representative one. Leonardo was an outlier among outliers, the archetype of the Renaissance man at the height of the Renaissance. He made Michelangelo look like a two-bit hack who just got lucky with a chisel. He bears little resemblance to the modern day polymath next door.

2. You are a polymath if you think you are.

If Leonardo-like stature is not required for admission into the ranks of polymaths, what is? It’s hard to propose a clear definition, because polymaths are all so different. Tanned muscle-bound aikido-master genius stud philosophers would probably qualify, but what about real estate agent psychologist figure skater weapons expert hamster breeders?

Anyway, do you have intense interest or significant proficiency in areas that are usually considered unrelated? Do you struggle with finding something to focus on, because you think you’re supposed to? Would you find life to be empty if you could only pursue one thing? Do you think specialization is for insects? If so, you might be a polymath.

It’s hard to judge other people because we don’t necessarily see all sides of them, and it’s probably pointless to come up with a test that tells you where you fall on the spectrum. So you’re the best judge of yourself.

3. Polymathy is neither good nor bad, it just is.

Albert Einstein focused on theoretical physics. Isaac Newton took a much broader approach, making important contributions to many different branches of science. He also invented calculus, and though he’s not known for it, most of his work was actually in the field of Bible interpretation.

In the end, they achieved very similar levels of success, recognition, and impact. They both did what they wanted, and they both came out on top.

4. The world needs specialists, but you don’t have to be one of them.

We need specialists to do things like find a cure for cancer and research alternative fuels. But that doesn’t mean it has to be you. Don’t worry about what you should or should not be. Just go with what you are.

(However, this is not to say that a polymath should eschew all aspects of specialization, as it still has a place in their bag of tricks.)

5. Somewhat paradoxically, being a polymath has nothing to do with being well-rounded.

Polymaths are often condescendingly called “jack of all trades, master of none.” This is flawed right off the bat because no one is a jack of all trades. Everyone has major holes. Trying to be well-rounded means ignoring your strengths and passions to work on things you hate and suck at. How can that possibly be a good thing?

Being a polymath means pursuing a wide variety of trades, but certainly not all of them. If you don’t want to play the piano, don’t play the piano.

6. Mastery is overrated.

A follow-up to the “master of none” bit. First, specialization does not guarantee mastery. There have been many people who gave their lives to theoretical physics, who did not come close to Einstein’s level. That doesn’t mean their lives were a waste, of course. But if you have many interests, you shouldn’t ignore all but one with the expectation that greatness will surely follow.

Also, maybe mastery at that level isn’t that important. Reaching the 95th percentile is far easier than reaching the 99.99th percentile. Some people will prefer moderate mastery of many things over supreme mastery of one thing. Besides, being the best in an objective sense doesn’t guarantee that others will subjectively agree, because value is in the eye of the beholder.

7. Polymaths may have certain traits in common.

As different as one polymath is from the next, I’m sure they tend to have certain things in common. For now though, I don’t know what they might be.

Any list of recognized polymaths you dig up will look like a list of universal geniuses. But I actually think polymathy has little to no correlation with intelligence (witness Einstein the monomath). I was thinking that polymathy is highly correlated with curiosity, but again, Einstein is an obvious counter example. Thoughts?

8. Polymaths face different challenges from monomaths.

Monomaths face challenges such as burnout from lack of variety, working ever harder for continuously diminishing returns, and facing stiff competition from people who do the exact same thing, only better.

The main challenge polymaths face is that their fanatical thirst for variety may deprive them of the focus and follow-through needed to have a significant impact in any one area. Leonardo himself warned about this, saying “Like a kingdom divided, which rushes to its doom, the mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”

Polymaths may also have trouble finding appropriate outlets for their talent in a world that increasingly demands specialists.

Overall, I think the monomaths have it easier, because the world is friendlier to them, they know exactly what they want, and they’re likely to have a clear road map to follow. Hence, there is a need for more polymath support.

Please share your thoughts. What makes someone a polymath? What do they have in common? Do they have a harder time in life? Would they be better off pursuing all their interests, or focusing on a smaller number of them?

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The Marge Simpson Guide To Writing A Novel

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Marge Simpson is known as the patient mother, dutiful housewife, and voice of morality in the Simpson family. But every now and then, she takes up a bold and daring project that rocks Springfield.

Case in point: her first novel, The Harpooned Heart. She started it on a whim, got it finished in record time, and quickly became the talk of the town. Here are some tips she used to spur herself to success (as well as some lessons she hopefully learned along the way).

1. Know that you can do it.

Marge walked into a Bookaccino’s bookstore to get a muffin. But once inside, she found out that Esme Delacroix, author of the novel To Kiss a Scoundrel was there. Marge asked Esme if she had any special training to become a writer.

Esme said that she just took a class at “the Y” (Yale University), but anyone with passion can write. Hearing this, Marge realized that she too could become a novelist. She had only one more question: ”If I write a book, will they tell me when it comes out?”

2. Enlist the support of your family.

Writing a novel is going to impact your family, so you need them to be on board with you.

On what Marge wanted to be her first night of novel writing, she was hoping that her husband Homer would watch the kids. But Homer informed Marge that he had just started a new job as an ambulance driver, with his first shift being that night.

A little more communication both ways would have been helpful in letting everyone pursue their goals.

3. Get inspiration from anywhere.

While pondering what to write about, Marge noticed a painting of a sailboat that had always sparked her imagination. As she looked at it, her imagination morphed the sailboat into a whaling vessel. Then she shouted, “That’s it! A novel about whaling! That’s something you haven’t seen before.”

4. Be aware of what’s already been done.

It turns out that there was already a kinda famous novel about whaling. When Marge read the title of the painting that inspired her, she said “Thank you, ‘Scene From Moby-Dick.’”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that her book would be accused of plagiarism, but it would be nice to know what’s already out there. However, it’s hard to know about everything. In high school English class, I wrote a short story that the teacher said was “Very Grapes of Wrathy, don’t you think?” But I had never read The Grapes of Wrath, and had no idea what it was about.

5. Don’t be a perfectionist.

If you try to write the perfect novel on your first try, the likely result is that you’ll never finish. Instead, try the NaNoWriMo approach, which advocates getting a rough draft done quickly, then revising only when the draft is done.

Marge sat down at her computer and wrote this:

“Chapter 1: Starts and Beginnings

Swim, swim, swim, thought the whale, flopping his floppers.”

It’s not exactly great literature, but the time to revise it is after the draft is done, not constantly.

6. Be careful about taking too many brownie breaks.

Immediately after writing her first sentence, Marge ran into the kitchen for a “brownie break.” While it’s important to take breaks as needed, your breaks will be more effective and better deserved if you take them as a reward for getting more than one sentence done. And eating too many brownies poses nutritional problems.

7. Watch out for procrastination.

This is related to the previous point, but more subtle. While it will be obvious when you’re eating too many brownies, it’s less obvious when you’re doing work that seems productive but isn’t really.

Having barely started, Marge stopped to write her acknowledgements page. After thanking “…Mayor Quimby, Disco Stu, and our fighting men and women overseas,” she returned to the novel.

She then wrote one sentence: “Temperance Barrows stared at the sea, like a dog stares at a ham.” Realizing that she had just finished her first paragraph, she decided it was time to run spell check.

These are things that need to be done, but don’t forget that almost all of your focus needs to be on actually getting the novel written.

8. Write about what you know.

Marge based her characters on people she knew, which made it easier to give them consistent personalities. She was also knowledgeable about her novel’s setting, which made it easier to create realistic surroundings.

Everyone brings their own experiences to the table, so try to get some use out of them.

9. Be careful about writing a real person into your novel.

It’s one thing to base a character on someone you know, perhaps borrowing their looks, occupation, or personality to inject some believable positive qualities into a character. It’s another thing to make the character so similar that the person feels like they’ve been put in the spotlight.

Controversy erupts when Marge created a character based on Homer’s bad side, revealing his flaws to the world. Fortunately, Lisa advised her to show it to Homer before publishing it. Unfortunately, Homer said he was OK, but hadn’t actually read it. It’s best to let your fiction be fictional.

10. Don’t make your characters too perfect.

While Marge shouldn’t have done that to Homer, it did have the beneficial side effect of adding some character flaws. When Temperance’s husband was perfect, there was no conflict, nothing to keep the reader interested. But when he became a jerk, things became interesting. (Especially when the character based on Ned Flanders became a potential love interest – see the previous point.)

11. Create an idea file.

After seeing the conflict arising from the deeply flawed husband, Marge says, ”This story is as dark as those new Milky Way bars. Ooh, that’s a good analogy. I’ll work it in somewhere.” She then writes this down for later, and continues writing.

Lots of ideas will come to mind when you’re writing. If you always stop to see how you can work them in, that will suck up a lot of time. But if you write them down in your idea file, you can keep going, knowing they won’t be forgotten. When you’re done with your draft, you might see that they’re no longer needed, or you might know the perfect place to use them.

12. Be prepared for criticism.

You may have fans. You’ll definitely have critics. The best review Marge got was Homer’s less than enthusiastic testimonial: ”The end of your book was the wake-up call I needed after falling asleep at the beginning of your book.” But she handled it just fine, and will hopefully use the criticism to improve.

13. You don’t ever have to stop writing.

If you like writing one novel, there’s no reason you have to stop there. As soon as Marge was done promoting her first book, she jumped right into the sequel, The Harpooned Heart II: Thunder Down Under. She started with “Temperance Barrows stared at the shrimp on the barbie…” Who knows where her imagination will take her this time?

Photo by dannysullivan

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Breaking The Rules With Daylight Saving Time

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Here’s a true story about how daylight saving time can point out overly conforming tendencies. (Note that it’s not “daylight savings time” – it’s about conservation of daylight, not a clearance event.)

The newspaper said it very clearly. “At 2 AM, you should set your clocks back one hour.” And so, she set her alarm for 2 AM, waking up in the middle of the night to set back every clock in her house at the scheduled time.

Yes, she followed the rules to the letter. But was that the best way to do it? Would the time cops have found out if she had changed her clocks the night before, or the morning after?

Not everyone is a natural rule breaker, but if you can’t take the plunge with your own clocks, perhaps that’s something to work on.

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Ignore Everybody (And 39 Other Keys To Creativity)

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Ignore Everybody

I just read Hugh McLeod’s book Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. This is the book version of his 13,000 word post how to be creative, which has been read by over a million people, and is a must-read if you’re not one of those million. And you can read more about Ignore Everybody here.

I don’t remember how different that post is from the book, but they’re probably very similar. The main difference may be that a way-too-long post works better as a bit-too-short book. Anyway, the book retains his wisdom, his cynicism, and most importantly, his cartoons drawn on the backs of business cards.

And by turning it into a book, Hugh gives us yet one more key to creativity: if you can’t think of what to write a book about, first write a blog post that a million people want to read. You now have a best seller just waiting to be published.

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Left-Handed In A Right-Handed World

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

We all know we live in a right-handed world. Every day, we use countless things that were designed for right-handers: refrigerators, microwaves, can openers, coffee mugs, corkscrews, notebooks, phones, scissors, cameras, and so on.

This arrangement creates two kinds of people: those who use everything the intended way, and those who have to figure everything out. Of course this affects the way we look at appliances, but in a bigger sense, can it affect the way we look at the world?

In David Wolman’s book A Left Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things Southpaw, he shares the thoughts of his father, a Harvard psychologist:

“Lefties can never accept the world as it is presented to them, always reconfiguring spatial arrangements, implements, and the like from right-oriented to left-oriented. My guess? The same thing happens conceptually, and lefties are often re-imaging ideas and concepts because of their proclivity not to take things at face value.”

Ask a right-hander how they write, and they’ll just show you. Ask a left-hander how they write, and there’s a good chance they’ll say “Well, I can do it this way, or maybe this way, or sometimes this way…”

Because they can’t just accept what’s presented to them, they’re forced to figure out their own way, and this mentality may extend beyond figuring out how to use a right-handed guitar or field hockey stick.

Which way is better? Well, there are obvious benefits to doing things the direct and efficient way. But if you get in the habit of doing everything on autopilot, you might get lazy and miss out on what can be gained from a novel approach.

On the other hand, there are obvious benefits to working out alternative solutions to problems. But if you insist on bypassing the standard route every time, you can get really burned out from overcomplicating things.

There’s room for both approaches: following a tried and proven path, as well as forging your own. And that’s true regardless of which hand you use.

For more stuff for lefties and righties alike, check out my ebooks Ambidextrous (for right-handers) and Ambisinistrous (for left-handers).

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