Elastic Quotes

“The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw out the bad ones.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“That’s when I push myself, and try harder to be open to the possibility that I’m mistaken. Why do I hold that belief? Are there those who don’t? Do I respect them, or at least some of them? Why might they have come to a different conclusion? I try to recall times in the past when I was wrong about something, even though I’d been confident of being right. The bigger the mistake, the better. The process helps me to understand that the mental adjustment to a new thought paradigm isn’t as easy as hindsight always makes it seem.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“Economists write many scholarly articles, usually starting with the assumption that people act rationally, which in reality excludes everyone except those with certain rare brain disorders.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“in 1958, the average life span of companies in the S&P 500 was sixty-one years. Today it is about twenty.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“in the recent past, as the pace of change has quickened, the calculus governing the benefits of embracing novelty has been dramatically altered. Today’s society bestows rewards as never before upon those who are comfortable with change, and it may punish those who are not, for what used to be the safe terrain of stability is now often a dangerous minefield of stagnation.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“As our lives have been flooded with novelty and change, they have become more hectic than ever before, at both home and work. We are barraged by a constant stream of information, and thanks to all of our screens and devices, we are in ceaseless contact with dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of other people, rarely (if ever) enjoying any complete downtime.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“O primeiro passo é reconhecer um mau pensamento e aceitá-lo sem tentar suprimi-lo de imediato – a aceitação tende a diminuir o impacto. A seguir, imagine que não é você, mas um amigo quem está tendo o pensamento. Que conselho você daria a essa pessoa? Se a pessoa cometeu um erro no trabalho, por exemplo, você pode ressaltar o registro do caminho positivo dessa pessoa como um todo, e que não é razoável esperar que ela nunca cometa um erro. Depois, concentre-se em como esse conselho poderia se aplicar a você.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elástico: Como o pensamento flexível pode mudar nossas vidas

“The lesson is that, though we expect our best thinking time to be when we are fresh, our elastic thinking capacity may be highest when we feel “burnt out.” That’s good to know when scheduling your tasks—you could be better at generating imaginative ideas if you do that kind of thinking after working on a chore that involves a period of tedious, focused effort that strains your powers of concentration.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“That brings us back to the default mode. “When your mind is at rest, what it is really doing is bouncing thoughts back and forth,” Andreasen says. “Your association cortices are always running in the background, but when you are not focused on some task—for example, when you are doing something mindless, like driving—that’s when your mind is most free to roam. That’s why that is when you most actively create new ideas.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“the elasticity of our thinking allows us to move beyond the existing world of our senses and invent new concepts.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Unlocking Your Brain's Ability to Embrace Change

“Yes, as distasteful as it is, it is beneficial to talk to people who disagree with us. So if you hate conspiracy theories and run into someone who believes that we faked the moonlanding and Einstein plagiarized relativity from his mailman, don't tell him, 'You life is a cruel joke' and walk away. Have tea with him. It can broaden your style of thinking, and it's cheaper than seeing a therapist.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change