Calvin Newport
How to find the work you love
First be good at something that is rare and valuable
Steve Jobs uses those traits to get those traits into his life
If you are valuable to offer... There will be pressure to go up the ladder... What you do for your work is much less important than you think
Path to passion is very complicated
Specifics of work is not important
General lifestyle traits that the job gives you that is more valuable (autonomy, creativity, flexibility...)
Steve Jobs was passionately doing the work he was doing

Know yourself
Embrace yourself
Surround yourself with encouraging people
Know what you want
Work your ass off
make impossible the new possible
Fail hard, Fail often
Beat on your craft
Learn to embrace confrontation
Do what is right

Decision is the biggest power in life, not background
Emotion is the invisible force (state, or model of the world) that shapes us, lead us and others
Emotional fitness and psychological strength
Needs: certainty, surprises (variety), significance, connection (love) for Personality, and growth and contribution for Spirit
What do you focus on?
What is the meaning?
What are your actions?

Don't just follow your passions
Passion and uncertainty?
or Job first then love life later?
Not doing what we love because busy studying or working
People don't know how to make a difference in community if they want
These gave rise to the passion project
To not be the worst generation in history, don't just follow your passion.
We can follow our passions, but remember to work hard
Passionate! but not necessarily her work (like ETSY)
To practise passion is a privilege. Circumstances always block it. (kickstarters)
It doesn't mean anything to follow your passion if it is not in the service of others
Your vocation is why your passion meets the world's greatest need
Who are you not to be bold and beautiful? to not choose passionate and purposeful lives.

OPRAH WINFREY
A speech for the feeling discouraged and inferior
OK to feel bad a while
Time to mourn what you think you have lost
Learn from every mistake
Step up and turn it around
Internal moral and emotional GPS
Resume of WHO and WHAT you want to be
what is your story, dogma, purpose? as thats what gets you out of holes
Common denominator - want to be understood and validated
Goal: highest most truthful expression of yourself
max out your energy
what makes you come alive? do it, the world needs more people alive
We will all be ok, we just don't know it yet

The effect you have on others is the most expensive currency
What they need that your talent can provide?

TED 3

VULNERABILITY

Is having the sense of love and belonging, vs. those who don't
Is to simply believe they are worthy for it
Sense of COURAGE... to be imperfect
Sense of COMPASSION... to be kind to themselves first
Sense of CONNECTION... to be willing to let go of who they should be and who they were
Because what made you vulnerable, made you beautiful.
saying 'i love you's, having no guarantees, to invest in relationships
We usually NUMB vulnerability by not...
asking for help, laying off, getting laid off, initiating, getting turned down, asking someone out
why we numb vulnerability? because we cannot select emotions to numb
how we numb vulnerability? is to make the uncertain, certain.
thus, we PERFECT things. usually going for high expectations, over love and belonging
and we PRETEND it has no effect. best policy is to be honest, say we're sorry, and we will fix it.
Finally, believe you are enough


QUITTING IS FOR WINNERS

Following an act throughout will magnify a failure because:
All that effort might be for nothing
thesis is misguided
instances where journey to original goal is deviated
circumstances have materially or perversely changed...
Question comes to: when to persevere? when to give up? Quitting done judiciously is for winners!
Stop loss = cut losses early, let profits run
Trends are more common than we imagine
Doubling down is not a good betting strategy
Hard to make unbiased assessments of emotions

6 SHORTCUTS FOR PERSUASION

1- Reciprocity: Obligations to give when you have received
How it was given? must be FIRST to give PERSONALIZED and should be UNEXPECTED
2- Scarcity: People want more of the things that are less
show BENEFITS of having it, its UNIQUENESS, and what they STAND TO LOSE if not taken
3- Authority: People follow credible knowledgeable experts
hang up your DIPLOMA, wear a UNIFORM, must show why you are CREDIBLE (past achievements, appointment, expert introduction)
4- Consistency: Looking or asking for small initial  commitments that can be made
small act leads to bigger act. voluntarily active. public commitments in writing.
5- Liking: we like people who are SIMILAR to us, people who pay us COMPLIMENTS, people who COOPERATE with us. We make friends based on this!
6- Consensus: people look to actions of others to determine  their own, to observe benefits

GRIT

is the PASSION and PERSEVERANCE for long term goals. having the stamina to stick with the future for years, a diligence, a life marathon
To build grit, we should have GROWTH MINDSET: the ability to learn can change with your effort

WHY WE PROCRASTINATE

Limbic (play) vs. Prefrontal Cortex (work)
Amygdala (fear and anxiety)(fight/flight) makes the limbic win
brain sense assignments as threats
what are we afraid of? how to start. fear of failure. displeasure.
Metacognition: wins limbic. it is about thinking about thinking. plan GOALS, plan TIME, plan RESOURCEs, plan the PROCESS, plan for DISTRACTIONS, plan for FAILURE. (to soothe the displeasure)
Don't wait, the time is never right - Napoleon Hill

WHAT IS WORKING MEMORY AND HOW TO USE IT?

it is the STORE, helps us REACH for info, MIX info, and contains our CURRENT GOAL
to process information is to learn. not processing means not learning.
Strategies to use it or to process it:
Practice, think and write
think illustratively and elaborative-ly
organizing ideas
support thinking route

TED 2

INTROVERTS

are best at creativity and leadership

intro vs extro is a matter of how you respond to social stimulation

find stimulation that is right for you

education system now is catered for the extroverts

it always favors ACTION over CONTEMPLATION

culture of personality due to a world led by big businesses

Stop this group work madness

Go to the wilderness and have your own revelations, stay in touch with your mind

How your suitcase is packed says a lot about you

CLASSICAL MUSIC

playing accents got lesser as child gets older

one buttock playing would release emotions in the song better

nobody is tone deaf

whom am i being that others eyes are not shining? awaken the possibilities in others

everybody loves classical music, is just that they haven't found out yet!

make a mistake, celebrating "how fascinating!"

stop the downward spiral speaking, move to the world of possibilities

8 WORDS FOR SUCCESS

Passion - gives you drive, do it for love and not money, do it and the money comes anyway, pay to do it, and not by it

Work - endure the hard work that comes along, but it's fun coz it is your passion

Good - practice heavily and get damn good at it

Focus - on one thing at a time

Push - physical limits, mental limits, away self doubt, away shyness

Serve - privilege to serve others, and give something of value

Ideas - listen, observe, curiosity, ask questions, problem solve, make connections

Persist - through failure and CRAP (criticism, rejection, assholes, pressure)

LISTENING

listening constitutes 60% of communication, retain only 50%

it is the making of meaning from sound, through pattern recognition, with sieving factors

sonority = time + meaning

we are losing our listening skills, due to selectivity, and desensitivity

conscious listening creates understanding

Silence to recalibrate ears

Mixer type: how many sounds can i identify?

Savouring: enjoying sounds

Listening positions: active passive reductive expansive critical empathetic

RASA: receive appreciate summary ask

WORK LIFE BALANCE

some jobs cannot give that to young family

ppl work long and heard to buy things the need to impress people they dont like

dont put your quality of life in commercial corporation hands

because companies try to get as much as they can from you

look at work with balanced view - physical mental and spiritual satisfactions?

the small things matter... small investments in right places transform quality of life

change the notion of success to: what a life lived well looks like

is an idea worth spreading

DRUGS DOCTORS PRESCRIBE

publication bias

negative results not published due to commercial reasons

systematic flaw in core of medicine

+ve results twice as likely to be published

half of all trials MIA

need to tell people that this has not been fixed! worse, with fake fixes...

need to force people to publish all trials

research misconduct and fraud

CANCER

angiogenesis is a hallmark of cancer

no angio, no cancer. cancer without disease

with angio, exponential growth

anti angio therapy, selective to cancer angio

poorly constructed vessels susceptible to treatment

Diet - what can we eat to starve cancer

Dr. William Li

HAPPINESS

managed by prefrontal cortex - an experience simulator

tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events

happiness can be synthesized! How?

Get rich, lose it

Spend time in prison

Help others get rich...

Synthetic happiness vs Natural happiness

we like better what we own than what we don't

Accept what you cant change

Psychological immune system works best when totally stuck, irreversible situation

Reversible situations not good for synthesis of happiness

GETTING IDEAS TO SPREAD

people now have lots of choices and little time, so many ideas have tendency to get ignored, like advertisements

to spread ideas, your idea must be remarkable

Remarkable - catches attention, and worth making a remark about (50ft lava lamp!)

market to innovators and early adapters (the otakus)

sell the idea to people who are listening

give people what they want

Design is free with scale. Get design to work for you

Safe is risky

Very good is bad, be remarkable

FOOD (JAMIE OLIVER)

Home - little monitoring of what the household eats, and no passing down of food culture

School - run by non food people so no food expert to make decisions over what the canteen provides

Main St. - poor labeling, plus all the processing and additives

Teach kids about food, identification, know what it is good for etc.

Big brands need to put food education at the heart of the business

All kids should learn 10 recipes as life skills

and finally we need to pass on the skill on food

GOOD IDEAS

are a network of neurons formed by liquid network

we need to create the environment for it to happen

ideas have incubation, like a slow hunch

share ideas to hunch meet hunch

chances favors connective minds

Liquid networks are a chaos, mess, ideas from different backgrounds

Environments for such includes: Cafes, meetings, conferences, updates etc

today, we always protect ideas, rather, we need to Connect vs. Protect

STRING THEORY

little strings that dane around to create subatomic particles

the medium that gravity travels in is time and space, it warps and curves

there are big and small dimensions, those that can see and those that cannot be seen

Super string theory to connect all 20 numbers

10 dimensions space, 1 dimension time

20 numbers?

theory of relativity?

photons, gravitons?

SCIENCE AND VALUES

values are a certain kind of fact

values are written with human well-being at heart

Culture conforms Brain, which affects Personality and Choice

is this the perfect/ best expression of psychological balance?

when talking about facts, certain opinions must be excluded

how have we come to a point that we are taking in all opinions?

There are rights and wrongs to human flourishing

yet, who should police such? there are no moral experts!

we have to admit that at times, cultures care to the wrong things, this have to change

Because ultimately, we are having human well-being at heart

Funny thing is, we cannot converge on differences on human well being

Rather, we can converge on facts/ science of how diseases spread and so forth

we also have to admit that these questions have answers

we need to consider well being in a larger context inclusive of positive emotions and all its factors

INNOVATING TO ZERO INCREASE IN CO2

we need energy miracles!

need many companies to work on this

CO2 = People X Services X Energy X CO2 produced

P and S v hard to go down, but E has many ways to do so

need:

Research funding

Incentives to decrease CO2

Entrepreneurial opportunities for innovative business for the environment

Rational regulatory framework

Promising alternatives to energy:

Terrapower

burn spent uranium, burns for 50 years with no waste produced

filtering seawater?

TED

How to learn something in 20 hours
1 - deconstruct the skill. breakdown the tasks into smaller steps
2 - learn enough to self correct in practice. through books, youtube etc. Do not use this as an excuse to procrastinate!
3 - Remove practice barriers. Youtube, Facebook and other distractions.
4 - 20h of practice!


discover your unique strengths. especially strengths that you display whether you are paid or not. and regularly display.
what are your values toward such strengths.
What experiences did you have with such strengths? and what do you look forward to with it?
you must be a self expert in something. Do the impossible, surpass your own impossibilities. and surround yourself with passionate people.
"you are the average of 5 people you hang around with the most" Jim Rohn
WHAT IS THE WORK YOU CAN'T NOT DO?
what do you feel supremely qualified to teach others at?
what activity leaves you physically drained, but spiritually uplifted?


how many of us want our time back?
we can spend time making money, but we cannot spend money making time!
do not come to a state whereby...
my possessions own me, rather than i own my possessions
own your time, own your life
because your time and your life are the most valuable possessions to you.


ORIGAMI:
4 laws of CP
1 - 2 colorability
2 - at any interior vertex, M-V = +- 2
3 - alternate angles around a vertex can be added up to 180 degrees (straight line)
4 - no self intersections @ overlaps

idea > tree diagram > base > product
    (easy)          (HARD) (easy)
mainly revolves around the idea of creating appendages
to create appendages, you need flaps
flaps all involve a circle/ some parts of a circle
many flaps = many circles
"treemaker" program from ROBERT LANG's website helps to translate tree diagrams into base CP


DL: "software development kit" to create apple apps


tidying up art:
it is important how people introduce a new idea to people. about communication.
how it is possible to separate artwork into its constituent composition, and study it from there


crisis evokes serenity. to be able to appreciate serenity and beauty when in times of hardship.
getting things done: is to be appropriately engaged in the activity. do notice whats on your mind when you are engaging in the activity
get comfortable with paradoxes, of placing reminders at various places (that seem Awkward, Unnatural, and Unnecessary)
places that demand attention. Prioritize our attention
Issue is not time. is what psychic bandwidth you place yourself at during the task. and how much room you give yourself to be creative?
creative breakdown: give yourself the freedom to make creative mess
be at the Captain/ Commander level of your tasks:
have Perspective of your objective (you are clear of what you want to do)
have Control of your journey to reach the objective (maintain your momentum to achieve tasks)
Save your own Creativity
Feel Engaged in your tasks
Respond to Changes
To do list:
must be in complete sentences
breakdown tasks to stages
#flexibility, not perfection
#shift in and out, change focus fast, yet give the task its appropriate engagement
#get irrelevant tasks out of your head during the engagement of current task
#notice what you are noticing
#use the right maps


HOW WILL YOU MEASURE YOUR LIFE?
the pursuit of achievement
not straying from values as humans
dont focus on investing in easy tangible achievements. good to have but go more for long term.
"How in the circumstance, you helped others become better?"
"The individual lives of people I blessed with God-given talents?"
seems like teaching?


INACTIVITY IS THE MAJOR CAUSE OF DEATH
aging well needs:
1 - work
2 - diet
3 - exercise
work gives you: self worth, family esteem, identity, standing in community
Retirement gives you time to pursue: new body, talents, life, company (business!)


DEVELOPMENT NEEDS TO COME FROM WITHIN
developing a poor region needs to be LED and INSPIRED by their own community, for sustainability
Angels for Angels. A setup for such.
Social entrepreneur. A business for the community.


CURING DIABETES WITH NEW DIETARY APPROACH
Glucose are used in muscle cells
insulin disrupted by fat globules in muscles, causing insulin to be useless
Genes can be dictators, and "suggesters. Little percentage of genes give you tendency for diabetes, meaning that most diabetes cases can be prevented.
our bodies may not be designed for what we put into it.
Dental test > shape of teeth largely shows that we should eat plant based diet
Bunny test > cats will kill the bunny
Box test > silica gel
broccoli, spaghetti, artichoke, mushrooms, tomato sauce and the like
plant based diet ideal for optimal health
eat REACTIVELY - react to how it tastes
eat PROACTIVELY - conscious of what it can do for your body, what it is made of, eat with intention...


MIT EDUCATION FOR 2K: SCOTT YOUNG
i wanted the education, not the school
students are paying for many other things other than education
use online videos for lessons to pass tests!
productivity: LOG all activity in the day
lecture at 1.5X speed
assigments: may not facilitate learning, attempt with solution at hand to give tight feedback system
1 year vs 4 years: education hacking
THIEL Fellowship. org: give money for ppl to drop out of school to do something fantastic
Never let SCHOOLING interfere with EDUCATION - Mark Twain


NICK VUJICIC
what do you think your purpose in life is?
BE a miracle for others, even though you didnt get one
Dream big!