I came across two fantastic links this morning:
- Steve Rubel’s How To Set Up a Portable Personal Nerve Center is an excellent read. Steve uses Gmail as a foundation for managing his life and walks through an excellent way of having access to its info wherever he goes. We’ve often talked about about ways to sync your data, and whether it is worth the hassle, and Steve’s article is a great one to go along with those discussions (for example, see this post on syncing).
- Alvaro Fernandez writes about the 10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains. A very well done article, with a lot of good tips. I especially like the following point:
“Don’t Outsource Your Brain. Not to media personalities, not to politicians, not to your smart neighbor, not to this blogger… Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And learn from them. That way, you are training your brain, not your neighbor’s.”
I am a strong proponent of being an independent thinker. To me, this does not mean shutting out everyone else’s opinion. Indeed, it means taking in a variety of opinions and ideas and data and studying them, understanding them yourself, and then making your own decisions and conclusions based on all you take in.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I like what you said about listening to a variety of opinions. If you truly want to make an independent conclusion, you could fully research a topic, try to avoid bias, and then come to a conclusion. But that’s just impractical for 99% of the conclusions you need to make each day. A quick shortcut is to listen to opposing opinions. I get all my news by subscribing to BBC News and Al Jazeera. I expect them to counteract each other’s biases.
I recently wrote about determining your own biases, but to avoid hijacking this blog, I’ll summarize here: We tend to see opposing positions in their worst possible light. That makes it easier to filter everything we hear into buckets according to our existing biases. Instead, we should try to put on other points of view until they can make sense to us. I don’t believe anyone can really know why his opponent is wrong until he understands why his opponent is right.
“I don’t believe anyone can really know why his opponent is wrong until he understands why his opponent is right”
= profound
Thanks for sharing, Jeremy!
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