Quote of the day
Entrepreneurship is a life idea, not a strictly business one; a global idea, not a strictly American one.
~REID HOFFMAN, author of The Start-up of You.
CAREERS
10,000 hours with Reid Hoffman: What I learned [The Start-up of You
], Casnocha | Tweet
Every decision has tradeoffs: when you choose to do one thing it means you choose not do some other thing. When you choose to optimize a choice on one factor, it means necessarily suboptimizing on another factors. Reid faced tradeoffs in his life that were heavier than the ones you or I face. Imagine you could meet anyone, from the President of the United States on down. Do almost anything you can think of – from saving the local opera company from bankruptcy to traveling to the farthest outposts on earth in total luxury. A small number of humans have virtually no constraints on their decision-making, and Reid is one of them. When Reid chose to fly to Las Vegas and speak at this event, the list of things he chose not to do with that time was very, very long. Often, Reid wrestled with these tradeoffs. Author E.B. White once captured the essence of why. “I wake up in the morning unsure of whether I want to savor the world or save the world,” White said, “This makes it hard to plan the day.”
BUSINESS
Former executive shares the secrets to how Disney runs its empire [Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney
], FastCo | Tweet
‘You don’t have to be happy to work at Disney, but you do have to act happy for eight hours, because we’re putting on a show.’
EDUCATION
Will online learning overtake traditional methods, Knote | Tweet
The consumer price index—the measure of the average change of the cost of goods and services over time—has risen 115 percent since 1985. During those same 30 years, the price of an average college education has significantly outpaced that inflation, rising nearly 500 percent. As college becomes less affordable, some students are looking toward unconventional learning methods to get the education they need to succeed in today’s difficult job market. After all, college graduates earn up to $17,500 more each year compared to their degreeless peers.
LEARNING
Is bilingualism really an advantage [The Bilingual Edge, Bilingual Is Better
], The New Yorker | Tweet
In 1922, in “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” The words that we have at our disposal affect what we see—and the more words there are, the better our perception. When we learn to speak a different language, we learn to see a bigger world.
SCIENCE
Meet the woman who can’t feel fear, The Washington Post | Tweet
Fear is one of our most basic evolutionary instincts, a sudden physical jolt to help us react to danger more quickly. In the modern world, fear often seems excessive — in the absence of wild animals to flee, we’re left screaming over roller coasters and scary movies. But for at least one woman, fear is unobtainable. And while she lives a normal life, her fearlessness is actually a handicap.
BIOLOGY
Why are you so smart? Thank your mom & your difficult birth [Riveted
], Nautilus | Tweet
Looking around our planet today, it’s hard not to be struck by humanity’s uniqueness. We are the only species around that writes books, runs experiments, and builds skyscrapers. Our intelligence must have also been useful when we were evolving—presumably it helped us to be better hunters and avoid being hunted ourselves, for instance. Perhaps even more importantly, our growing intelligence enabled early humans to compete with each other: We evolved to be intelligent to keep up with everybody else evolving to be intelligent.
HAPPINESS
Normative happiness: Don’t ask a philosopher to write your obituary, Psychology Today | Tweet
Many philosophies are concerned with human happiness and the good life. During the Pre-Socratic era, philosophy encompassed all areas of critical inquiry and scholarship. That changed once Plato channeled Socrates. Aristotle then weighed in with his views on the life well lived. Today, philosophers contemplating the human condition propose theories that are normative and evaluative. They claim to know what true happiness is, and that being so, they can evaluate the life of, well, anybody.
HEALTH
How much salt you should eat, explained, Vox | Tweet
If you’re confused about whether salt is really the number one enemy of public health, you’re probably not alone. And it’s the fault of people like me. I’ll say it plainly: a lot of the journalism about sodium intake is crap.
WRITING
Outrage: A negative emotion that works in your novel, Darcy Pattison | Tweet
Many writing teachers drum it into their students heads: conflict on every page. What they mean is that something has to happen on every page that makes the situation worse for the characters. Storytelling is about the problems of life, not the happy moments. Happiness is only possible when thrown into relief by contrast with the bad stuff.
Types, archetypes, and the occasional human being [The Anatomy of Story
], Writer Unboxed | Tweet
Virtually every writing guide worthy of being read emphasizes the importance of character in crafting a compelling story. So why are so many of these same writing guides so vague on what it takes to create interesting characters?