In this blog I often talk about misconception and sometimes about sleep. It is only natural at some point to deal with popular sleep misconceptions. For further information I suggest reading here, here, here, here, here, here and here. What is a microsleep? A good sleep lasts for several hours, maybe seven hours is a …
Smile to win
No matter how much we know and how productive we are, we do need the help of other people. Communication with others can be the biggest source of fulfilment and of frustration. Today I offer you reading here, here, here, here, here, and here. Smile, the superweapon Smiling is easy and effective. When we smile …
Tips on exercising your brain
We address memory training quite seriously and have many different exercises on our site. In this post, I want to share some training tips inspired by this, this, this and this articles. Specific and generic training If you research a subject or write a code, you do many different and seemingly unconnected tasks. It is …
Creativity: deconstucting the problem solving skills
There is a lot of interest in metalearning and metacognition. Metalearning deals with deconstructing the way we learn. Metacognition deals with deconstructing the way we solve problems. Today I prepared an especially good selection of reading material. Please do spend your time to read here, here, here, here, and here. Four stages of problem solving …
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Fixing our education
The education system is arguably broken, so it must be easy to improve the situation for some people. How can we do that? There are many ways to address the issue. In fact we have a dedicated course about it. Here are some small ideas that did not quite make it into the course materials. …
Is willpower limited?
The words “resilience”, “perseverance” and “grit” are used interchangeably in modern education. Is is justified? Should we train and manage our willpower? This is a common subject in our blog. For today’s references check here, here, here, here, here and here. Vocabulary issue: resilience vs perseverance vs grit There are small differences between these terms, …
Reading things we disagree with
Quite often we read texts we disagree with. Our brain is hard-wired to ignore this sort of information and occasionally react in anger. This is not the most effective approach. In this article, I show several alternatives. As always, you are welcome to read more here, here, here, here, and here. Why we shut down when …
Commitment, resilience and vagus nerve training
There was a large series about relaxation and resilience on the psychologytoday blog. In a spirit quite similar to our blog, the relevant activities are called “training” and the organ being trained is neurologically defined as “vagus nerve”. I link all of it here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part …
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Self awareness and cognitive biases
People are not perfect. Some of these imperfections are known as cognitive biases. Being aware of our cognitive biases, we may be able to mitigate them. Self-awareness is strongly linked to personal wellbeing, professional success, and learning abilities. For more reading please check here, here, here, here, here, and here. Why questions Being a scientist, I …
The memory-friendly way to say no
Quite often we need to say “no”. Our language is very rich, and there are many ways to do that. Some ways are very direct, while others are more subtle. The way we choose to say “no” may affect our memory. For more information I suggest reading here, here, here, here, and here. Japanese: a …