Beauty in Deep Understanding

A rose is a rose is a rose; but the examined rose is a sonnet. 

Natalie Angier, in The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

Strength of Conviction and Truth

This quotation applies to any conviction, scientific or not.

I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not. The importance of the strength of our conviction is only to provide a proportionately strong incentive to find out if the hypothesis will stand up to critical evaluation.

 Peter Medawar, in Advice to a Young Scientist

Imposter Syndrome Contrasted With Growth Mindset

Impostor syndrome says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out.”

Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.”

Adam Grant, in Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

Creating Your Future Self

The person you will be in 5 years is determined by the books you read, habits you start, and people you meet today.

- This specific quotation is from a LinkedIn post by Jade Bonacolta but there are many variants and sources of this wisdom.

Mindset For Tool Selection

Whereas the any-benefit mind-set identifies any potential positive impact as justification for using a tool, the craftsman variant requires that these positive impacts affect factors at the core of what’s important to you and that they outweigh the negatives.

Cal Newport, from Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World

Certainty

 Being certain about something doesn’t make it true. 

Making Decisions - Cutting or Killing

When making decisions, deciding to cut options can be terrifying—but the truth is, it is the very essence of decision making. In fact: The Latin root of the word decision—cis or cid—literally means “to cut” or “to kill.” You can see this in words like scissors, homicide, or fratricide.

It’s how you get from the Trivial Many to the Vital Few.

-from Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown

The White-Space Walk

Every week, take one 20-minute walk with no phone, no music, no podcast. Just you and your thoughts.

Boredom isn't the enemy. It's where your best ideas live. They just need a little white space.

(Stolen from The Quiet Rich weekly newsletter from Jade Bonacolta)

Note From the Shower

Travel toiletries such as soap or shampoo usually need to be opened in the shower, yet the product packaging is designed to be next to impossible to break open when wet. Our best packaging engineers should be assigned to Tylenol, not Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

 I hadn't posted here in a while, but I had something to post, and had decided that I should resurrect this blog and post it here. And then forgot what I'd intended to post.

Genius and Madness

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, although most sources attribute this to Aristotle

A friend who's retiring said that what she's looking forward to the most is going to bed every night feeling the same way that she feels on Friday nights now. I think that pretty much sums things up!

10-1/2 years ago, my post on this blog read "I'm behinder than I've ever been." Now, I'm way behinder.

After Discipline has mastered a form, she is free to improvise.

-Ruth Gendler, The Book of Qualities