Sunday, June 1, 2014

Fw: Life Lessons

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From: Farnam Street Weekly <newsletter@farnamstreetblog.com>

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Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2014 10:00:23 +0000

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ReplyTo: Farnam Street Weekly <newsletter@farnamstreetblog.com>

Subject: Life Lessons

Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out.

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If you missed last week's edition —Hunter S. Thompson's letter to his friend Hume Logan on finding your purpose and living a meaningful life, Eudora Welty's fantastic cover letter to the New Yorker, Sol LeWitt on the power of "doing," and how reflection cements the learning process —you can catch up.

Start Here

The most popular article this week was 10 Life Lessons From Admiral William H. McRaven, a Navy SEAL.

What else was interesting?

The Skills of Leonardo Da Vinci — Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci sought a job at the court of Ludovico Sforza, then the ruler of Milan. Leonardo's application letter included a ten-point list of his abilities.
Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 Letter to the Man Burning his Books — "If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely."
The Origins of Good and Evil — What is morality? Is there an evolutionary benefit? What aspects of morality are we born with and what do we acquire?
Certainty Is an Illusion — "Not understanding a new technology is one thing, believing that it delivers certainty is another."
Rory Sutherland — This Thing For Which We Have No Name. Rory is incredible. Put aside the 50 minutes you need to watch this and you'll come away smarter.

Something to Read

Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions
The book argues that in a world full of information and complexity sometimes our best bet is to use simple heuristics to avoid problems. Just as increasing debt rarely solves a debt problem, complex problems are rarely solved with complexity. The book is a good counter-balance to the system two rational thinking books that are becoming somewhat pervasive. Do you know how Captain Sullenberger chose to land on the Hudson after his plane hit the flock of geese on that fateful day? He used a heuristic.

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor
An incredible read. For the longest time we've seen poverty through the lens of a 'technical problem' that requires 'expert' solutions. Well, experts have been recommending technical solutions for years and the problem doesn't seem to be getting better. These solutions address the immediate problems but all too often ignore the systemic issues that caused them in the first place. I see this same phenomenon repeated in organizations around the globe. It's a lot easier to address the immediate 'technical' problems than to solve the broader issues that cause them. An argument against "naive intervention."

See the big list of what I've been reading.

Still Curious?

+ Maya Angelou's 10 Most Memorable Quotes — The legendary poet and writer Maya Angelou died this week at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86.

+ Faking Cultural Literacy — "It's never been so easy to pretend to know so much without actually knowing anything. We pick topical, relevant bits from Facebook, Twitter or emailed news alerts, and then regurgitate them."

+ Why empires fall: from ancient Rome to Putin's Russia — "Moscow, to western eyes, does not look much like Rome. But if there is any country in the world where the tug of the Roman ideal can be felt, it is Russia."

+ I don't want to be right — "When there's no immediate threat to our understanding of the world, we change our beliefs. It's when that change contradicts something we've long held as important that problems occur."

+ Beauty does not equal truth — "Scientists prize elegant theories, but a taste for simplicity is a treacherous guide. And it doesn't even look good."

+ This column will change your life: hindsight – it's not just for past events — "Hindsight makes things look so utterly different that it's impossible, when taking a decision in the moment, even to begin to grasp how it'll strike you later on." (Pair with Daniel Kahneman's favorite approach for making better decisions.)

+ Google's Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance (and Much More) — "for any organization, there are four steps you can take to start your own exploration and move from hunches to science."

+ Re:Think Innovation — I'm putting on a two-day workshop on how to use Farnam Street principles like curiosity, combinatory play, inversion, and uncertainty to rekindle innovation in your organization and yourself.

+ The most popular article from last week's edition of Brain Food was: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life