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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The capacity to perform work — to shape the world and make our ideas manifest — is among the highest privileges of being human. Any capability so powerful is worth thinking deeply about.
What constrains the performance of most workers today is not their capability or creativity, but decaying institutions founded on outdated conceptions of labor.
The traditional dream of rags to riches has been replaced by a new one: the dream of a sustainable quality of life, in every sense of the word.
Change evokes fear, anxiety, overwhelm, and resistance. It doesn’t feel like we have the bandwidth for it. It doesn’t feel like we have a say in how change happens.
happiness is not an achievement to be attained — every single thing you add merely obscures what is already there.
This is a good point, what things can I strip away and let go of to find the underlying happiness in me?
study
creativity is connecting things, especially things that don’t seem to be connected.
Def. Of creativity
By externalizing your ideas in a variety of formats — text, sketches, photos, videos, documents, diagrams, webclips, hyperlinks — you create a system of distributed cognition across “artifacts” that can be moved, edited, rearranged, and combined.
“emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking.” Often, when something “resonates” with us, it is our intuitive/right brain/System 1 mind telling us something is valuable before our analytical/left brain/System 2 mind even knows what’s going on.
This means that I need to pay attention to my feelings while i am reading. When something sparks an interest or resonates with me i need to notice and create a note of it.
Efficiency is a function of inputs and outputs.
The value of a note corresponds to how much attention you’ve spent on it
(I use Bookcision for Kindle or the built-in “Share to Evernote” feature in iBooks and Pocket) to the note.
(see Derek Sivers’ post on “compressing knowledge into directives” for more examples).
If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose.
In other words, the true purpose of note-taking is transporting states of mind (not just information) through time.
Contrarianism is the fastest method for discovering the paradox at the heart of every inexplicable phenomenon.
multifinality refers to attaining alternative objectives from the same inputs,
you’re right — the reverse is true. It’s more accurate to say that productivity, or creating more value in the world as efficiently and effectively as possible,
Def. Of productivity
Some of the most talked-about books in Silicon Valley have titles like The Untethered Soul, Radical Acceptance, and Spark Joy
Immersion means intentionally exposing yourself to streams of ideas, people, and new capabilities, not with the goal of knowing everything, but to stay sensitized to developing opportunities and threats.
An “experiment” in this context is any attempt at measuring any aspect of one’s life.
enhances self-awareness by providing a concrete mechanism for self-reflection: the act of recording.
the TrackYourHappiness project
as numerous studies have shown that people are more likely to achieve goals they set for themselves.
“The opposite of every great truth is also true.” But with an asterisk: as long as you know thyself well enough to understand how it is true for you.
