• ABOUT TIME MANAGEMENT: Your calendar should be the last thing you fill, not the first. Time should be building your day from top-down priorities — monthly Goals, weekly Tactics, then daily tasks. ‘Busy’ is not the same as ‘Forward.’ Dennis gives training presentations on ‘Working Smarter, Not Harder.’ Call for scheduling.
• UNFORTUNATELY, OUR BRAINS ARE UNRELIABLE PREDICTION MACHINES, effectively serving us propaganda as they try to make us feel safe and stable. They process simple & coherent pieces of data into stories we perceive as truth, by gathering evidence with Directional Motivation reasoning toward a logical conclusion we’ve already chosen. In heading a business, this often leads to decision-making with less-than-optimal outcomes, when stakes are high and the picture is incomplete. The process to best prevent this involves: (1) Defusing any emotional state, like fear, frustration or excitement; (2) Clarifying any bias affecting the decision, like overconfidence, sunk costs, pressure from others; (3) Modeling every option for short & long-term benefits versus costs; (4) Looking for evidence to the contrary, e.g. “what would have to be true for this decision to be wrong?” (Analysts call this ‘red team thinking’). [CHIEF EXECUTIVE]
• “SPEECH IS NOT ONLY A CONDUIT FOR TRANSMISSION OF IDEAS, but a generative activity that enhances thinking.” And, talking out oud to yourself is not weird, it’s a technology of thinking which encourages formation and processing of thoughts which contribute to reasoning. It can allow retrieval of thoughts in full, which can then trigger new mental & linguistic connections, generate new info and a mental shift. Just as in writing, where the typical solution for creative blocks isn’t just to stare at an empty page and wait for thoughts to arrive, but to continue to speak or write anything at all, this initiates a generative process. “Self-talk can further allow us to question ourselves more critically by adopting an external perspective on our ideas, and so to consider shortcomings in our arguments. The materiality of language undergoes a transformation which produces a mental shift,” it’s not crazy! [PSYCHE.CO]
• THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: Who decides if a word is ‘racist’? By today’s standards, the policy of language “appears to be generated often by academics who presume to represent certain ethnic minority groups, while members of historically ‘victimized’ groups are eager to exploit the power that membership confers, and on the lookout for opportunities to work themselves into a lather of being ‘offended’ and daring others to call them out. Those others can’t afford the luxury of thought, and rather defer to the ‘offended’ party to prove their ‘anti-racist’ identity, so the bullies strut around while the ‘offender’ backs down and shuts up, so the air is chilled and the illiberal bastards win.” [SPECTATOR]
• Last week, the U.S. State Dep’t finally announced it has ended the DEI practices that had “become demoralizing and distracting to the department’s core mission, with materials, trainings and readings that were forced upon instructors and foreign service officers which were ideologically extreme and shamefully denigrated U.S. Trainings on systemic racism. Officials admitted that the Biden administration was trying to make the maps more gay in pursuit of grants for DEI programs around the world.” [PATRIOT POST]
• Elon Musk has spoken about universal high income. UBI is a floor that keeps rising. The idea is that AI and robotics reach a point where the marginal cost of producing anything approaches zero, and the economic surplus is so enormous that everyone has access to more than enough. He’s been right about so many things…