Public Health & Medicine

When your motivation vanishes, what can you do to get it back? Many of us will buy an inspirational book or watch motivational videos, thinking this will help us get our mojo back. But these tricks are unlikely to be successful. In reality, motivation only starts to build again once we have taken the first steps and gained some momentum in our task. In the words of Lao Tzu: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Motivation is all about getting started and consistently taking action, making sure we get back on track when we fall off the bandwagon. Why we do what we do There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. When interest or enjoyment in an activity comes from within us, we experience intrinsic motivation. A violinist, for example, may desire to improve as a musician because playing brings intense joy, rather than to pursue fame or awards. Intrinsic motivation associated with doing what you love therefore strongly correlates with sustained behavioural change and improved well-being, because the activity itself brings pleasure. With intrinsic motivation, an activity provides its own inherent reward. Researchers in organisational psychology note that “intrinsic motivation is key for persistence at work”. If you enjoy what you do, the activity and the goal will collide so that both your interest and experience of work are enhanced. Extrinsic motivation, conversely, is driven by influences outside of us. You may want to progress in your career to earn more money, achieve recognition within the workplace, or to avoid sanctions. With extrinsic motivation, the outcome you desire is separate to the activity you engage in to achieve it, which will make dips in motivation more likely. But it doesn’t mean that extrinsic motivation is bad: the recipe for motivation is a bit more complex than that. The ingredients of motivation Motivation has been studied for many years, and one of the most popular schools of thought is Self-Determination Theory. This theory uses empirical methods to highlight the importance of self-regulation, the process of taking in social values before transforming them into our own values and self-motivations. Writing in the American Psychologist journal, Richard Ryan and Edward Deci highlighted the three innate psychological needs which must be satisfied to enhance self-motivation and mental health: competence, autonomy and relatedness. If we feel competent in a behaviour, either as a result of feedback, communication or rewards, our intrinsic motivation will be greater. However, this is only the case if we have a sense of autonomy over the action.  Relatedness is often more relevant to extrinsic motivation. If a behaviour is valued by a manager, client, or friend, we will feel a sense of connectedness with them, which will lead to internalisation of an extrinsic motivation. Self-Determination Theory therefore demonstrates that our psychological needs must be met for self-regulation to occur, so that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be maintained. Why is it so hard to stay motivated? We like to think of ourselves as curious learners. But many of us will have experienced a sense of apathy at some point in our personal or professional lives. Whether we have stayed in a stagnant job or spent night after night mindlessly scrolling on the sofa, demotivation can affect us all. There are many causes of demotivation. Perhaps a challenge feels too difficult. If getting out of your comfort zone causes intense fear or anxiety, you may lose any drive you once had and abandon the task. It’s not just goals that are too hard that can cause demotivation. If a goal is too easy or will not lead to a suitable reward, you may lack the drive to pursue it despite it being achievable. Similarly, if you set goals that do not suit you, you may be unable to self-regulate and see how they relate to you. Without self-regulation, neither intrinsic nor extrinsic motivation will be present, and you won’t manage to stay motivated. In some cases, the absence of clarity in your aspirations may deter you from pursuing them. You might know that you’re unhappy in your current role, but feel unsure about where to begin with instigating a career change. Whether your motivation for change is internally or externally motivated, you cannot sustain motivation without having an aim clearly in focus. As you can see, there are many reasons why you may have slip-ups in motivation. Fortunately, there are ways to get and to maintain motivation. What matters is that when you recognise a lull in momentum, you get back on track as quickly as possible. Try to “never miss twice in a row” by acting on any demotivation and not allowing it to persist.  Getting, and maintaining, motivation Motivation will only come once we have started a task or behaviour, not before we get going. Rather than letting tasks accumulate until they feel insurmountable, the best strategy is to generate the momentum required to conquer a long-term goal by consistently showing up every day. As Confucius put it: “The man who moves mountains begins by carrying away small stones”. But, of course, that’s easier said than done. When your get up and go has gone, the following five strategies will help you to rekindle your motivation. Focus on the right goals. Intrinsic motivation will occur naturally if you choose a goal you care about. If you don’t feel committed or connected to the goal, you’ll need to rely mostly on willpower, which isn’t sustainable in the long-term. You can also use the Goldilocks rule to confirm that a goal is not too easy nor too hard. Create a motivation routine. Block out time first thing each morning to focus on the goal that matters to you. Prioritising this time reaffirms your commitment to the task. Practice self-reflection. To promote motivation, you need to take care of yourself. Allow time for self-care, such as reading and exercise, and commit to self-reflection. Using a metacognitive method such as journaling gives you space to reflect on your motivation, progress and any setbacks, so that you can continue to move forwards. Use the motivation clinic. The 3C model of motivation can help you dig deeper to figure out which component of motivation exactly is the source of the problem and, crucially, which strategy you should employ to get back on track. Plan to bounce back. We will all slip up, but having a safety net in place will help to prevent demotivation setting in. Finding an accountability buddy can help keep you focused and celebrate your successes. Most importantly, remind yourself that you will never regret persevering with hard, but valuable, work once it is done. Self-regulation is an important part of motivation, and it will only occur if you feel competent, autonomous and understand how your goal relates to you. By focusing on the right goals, using self-reflection, and implementing safety nets, you can boost your motivation and ensure a prompt comeback at times of demotivation. The post The science of motivation: how to get and stay motivated appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think and work better. Ahmed Elmasry is the founder and CEO of Walling, a visual workspace to organize your ideas, tasks and projects. Users have been raving about the way it helps them be more productive, synthesize complex information, and work collaboratively. In this interview, we talked about the challenges of traditional note-taking and project management apps, how visual thinking increases productivity, how to combine flexibility with efficiency, the benefit of choosing the path of least resistance, and much more. Enjoy the read! Hi Masry, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. What do you think usually gets in the way of turning ideas into action? Thank you so much for having me! I believe most tools focus on helping you organize ideas and store information, which is not really the challenging part, even a pen and paper can help you jot down ideas. The real challenge is to be able to turn those ideas into action, or communicate them with someone such as your team or clients.  The linear structure of note-taking and project management apps can bury your ideas and make it difficult to navigate through them. On the other hand, whiteboard apps provide a visual experience but they lack organization. They can be great for brainstorming, but you can’t share ideas and project information effectively with someone in a freeform canvas format. The lack of organization would make it challenging for them to understand the context of the information given and collaborate with you on turning the ideas into actions. True productivity happens when you are able to actually get things done. The tools you are using also shouldn’t slow you down, generate busywork or get in the way of your creativity. How does Walling address those challenges? Walling provides a balance between organization and visuality, a unique experience that brings clarity to your work and helps you to communicate ideas more effectively with your team. Studies show that your brain processes visuals thousands times faster than text. The visual experience of Walling puts your ideas, tasks and all components of your work side by side. It empowers you to step back and see how everything fits together. We also find this experience to improve team communication significantly.  Unlike whiteboard apps, Walling combines the visual experience with organization. Not only are you visually collecting ideas, but your ideas on Walling are organized and actionable too.  One thing you will also notice when you use Walling is how frictionless and fast everything is. No jumping between pages or layer after layer of clicks to reveal your ideas and tasks. We designed Walling for professionals and teams who want to get work done faster and move forward with decisions more efficiently. That sounds amazing. So, how does Walling work concretely? A new page in Walling is called a wall. Each wall is divided into sections where each set of ideas or tasks is organized in one section. In Walling, you organize your ideas and tasks in blocks called bricks. They are like mini documents that contain all the rich text information you can possibly gather all associated with the idea/task. Bricks can also be tagged, contain due dates or be assigned to a wall member. For example, if you are organizing a new project on a wall to redesign a website, you can start by visually organizing the project brief and requirements in the first wall section. Then you can break down the target audience information in separate bricks under another section. You can manage the tasks of the project in a section dedicated to tasks. One of the best features of the wall sections is the ability to view them in different views, so while your target audience ideas are organized side by side, your tasks can be managed in a Kanban board or a table. You can also have more sections for collecting inspirations in a moodboard, or sharing a list of files. All organized in one visual place within a fast, flexible experience.  You can invite your team to your wall to collaborate with you in realtime. Our users love how easy it’s for their teams or clients to get started with Walling. No learning curve or unnecessary bells and whistles. A straightforward experience that helps them to get work done faster. How does Walling compare to all-in-one tools such as Notion or Coda? Right off the bat, the first difference you will notice when you try Walling is how visual everything is. This brings a lot more clarity to your work than the linear and text-based experience of apps such as Notion or Coda. The extreme flexibility of all-in-one tools makes them inefficient for most use cases. You always have to go through overwhelming setup steps or search for a template to fit your use case, but I believe you should never force your ideas into a predetermined structure too early. At Walling we are more focused on helping you to organize your ideas and projects than forcing you to use Walling for everything. This enables us to be more efficient at what we offer. For example, you can easily track all your tasks from different projects on Walling inside the “My Tasks” tab. I’m not sure if you can achieve something similar in Notion/Coda, and if you can, it will probably be an overcomplicated setup that’s not efficient.  We find Notion/Coda to be great for building wikis and sharing documents, this is why integrating with Notion/Coda is on our roadmap to help you connect your wikis and documents inside your projects on Walling. What kind of people use Walling? Walling is for everyone who needs to organize their ideas and projects, which is a pretty wide spectrum of users. We have social media managers that use Walling to manage their ideas and campaigns for their social media accounts that have millions of followers. We have managers from big companies like Microsoft, InVision and Ubisoft using Walling to organize and share ideas with their teams. Creatives and design agencies love the visual experience of Walling to organize and manage their projects. Entrepreneurs, small business owners depend on Walling everyday to organize their work. The flexibility and ease-of-use of Walling makes it appeal to a large variety of people to organize their work and improve their productivity. Were there any other surprising use cases you didn’t expect people to use Walling for? The ability to generate a public link of a wall to share it with anyone has surprised us with several use cases we never expected. From designers building beautiful walls of creative briefs to share with their clients, to schools using the walls as notice boards or to inform their students about lesson plans and upcoming events. The visuality and organization of the walls make them perfect for sharing ideas and information. And how do you personally use Walling?  My team and I use Walling everyday to communicate and organize ideas. Our work typically consists of small projects, such as designing and developing new features, creating or redesigning a page on our website, planning our newsletters and emails. Each of these projects is organized into a wall where we collaborate on ideas, tasks and references in different sections.  If I also need to share some ideas with a contractor or a social media influencer we are working with, I organize the ideas on a wall and share a public link of the wall with them. It’s not because Walling is our tool, but because it’s the path of least resistance and the most efficient way for us to quickly organize ideas and share them with someone. How do you recommend someone get started?  Go ahead and create a free account on Walling.app. We designed the experience of Walling to be as frictionless as possible with little to no learning curve. Start a new wall and see how easy it is to collect and organize ideas. You will also find example walls in your account to get a glimpse of what you can do on Walling and the visual experience of the app. If you are working within a team and it’s not easy for you to move to a new tool, you can use Walling on your own first to organize ideas and share them with your team using the public link feature of the walls.  Also make sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We regularly publish new video tutorials there.  And finally… What’s next for Walling?  We are continually working on more improvements to give our users a better experience with Walling. Improving the overall experience of the phone app to match the desktop app is our top priority right now.  Integrating with other apps to make Walling the single source of all ideas and project information is also on our list. Our long term vision for Walling is to be the default tool for everyone to organize and manage their work. From managers, creatives, solopreneurs, small business owners, to remote teams, startups and marketing agencies. Thank you so much for your time, Masry! Where can people learn more about Walling? You can sign up for Walling on our website. We also publish new updates frequently, so you can follow us on Twitter to stay updated with all the new features and improvements we release. Thanks again for having me! I’m excited to hear the feedback from Ness Lab’s community about Walling. The post Bringing clarity to your ideas with Masry, CEO of Walling appeared first on Ness Labs.

To solve a problem, you first need to understand the problem. As Irish author Derek Landy puts it: “Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies.” A problem statement can help bridge that gap. It’s a brief summary of a problem you want to address. It’s most commonly used in research to clearly identify the problem to be solved before taking action. However, it has many benefits that can be harnessed outside of a research context, and can be especially helpful to tackle personal problems. The power of defining your problems In research, problem statements are valued because they crystallize the issue at hand, help researchers to avoid preconceived ideas, and ensure that each study has a clear direction before work begins. Researcher Max Kush explains that problem statements should explore the gap between your current state and your future goal. The concise description should emphasize all of the facts that need to be addressed to move forwards. However, he goes on to highlight that unfortunately, problem statements often incorrectly assume that everyone understands the issue, leading to weak, error-laden or incomplete statements. Using a series of ‘five W’ questions (who, where, what, when and why) that ensure a comprehensive understanding of the problem can help avoid that pitfall. You will notice that the problem statement doesn’t include a ‘how’ question. The statement can suggest options, but it doesn’t define the final answer. In a team setting, the problem statement is a tool for constructive conversation: it allows group members to discuss potential solutions together. According to physics Professor Mahyuddin Nasution and colleagues, designing a problem statement can work for any “interests that require answers.” That’s why this powerful method can be adapted to better understand problems you face in your personal and professional life. A bridge between problem and solution Whether you’re facing a challenge or feel like there’s a potential area of growth you’d like to explore, writing a problem statement for a personal or professional issue can be beneficial in many situations. Problem statements are often helpful during times of transition. If you’re considering a career change, a problem statement will help you to fully understand the crux of any issues you might be facing now. By looking ahead to the future you envision, you can identify the gap between your current position and your ideal work situation. Having a problem statement in place will help to avoid rushed decisions into a new role which might not truly deliver the growth you’re looking for. Problem statements work In your private life as well. For example, you may feel stuck in a relationship. Writing a problem statement will help to identify communication gaps, and the mismatch between your current situation and how you feel your relationship should be. You can also explore how to improve your physical and mental health with a problem statement. It helps you reflect on why you want to take better care of your health, and how you might go about it. It’s a way to investigate why your behaviors do not always match your intentions, so that you can begin to address this disparity. By reflecting on the gap between ideal and reality, it becomes easier to understand the crux of a problem and lay the groundwork for potential solutions. With a personal problem statement in place, it’s also far easier to communicate the issues to others who may be able to help you. Rather than feeling anxious or overwhelmed, you will start to see the issue as a puzzle to be solved, rather than a source of stress. Writing your personal problem statement Crafting a personal problem statement involves an audit of the current situation, followed by an assessment of how this differs from the state you’re aspiring to. To write your problem statement, open your note-taking app or start a fresh page in your notebook or journal before exploring the following questions: What is your ideal? What is your reality? What are the consequences of your current situation? What can you propose as improvements? A personal problem statement might be: “I would like to read more books (ideal), but I spend two hours scrolling on social media everyday while commuting (reality), which impacts my mental health and my creativity (consequences). Instead, I should put my phone in my backpack and take my Kindle out as soon as I get on the bus in the morning (potential solution).”  Another statement could be, “I want to improve my fitness (ideal), but I am too tired to exercise when I get home from work (reality), which impacts physical health and mental wellbeing (consequences). Instead, I could start walking or cycling to work to fit exercise into my day more easily (potential solution).” If you’re struggling to articulate your answers to the above questions, you may in addition go through the series of ‘five W’ questions (who, where, what, when and why) to get to the core of the problem at hand: What is the problem? (the gap between ideal and reality) Who is experiencing the problem? (you, a friend, family member, colleague…) Where is the problem occuring? (at home, at school, at work…) When does the problem occur? (every day, week or month, during specific events, when around certain people…) Why does the problem occur? (gap in skills, knowledge, communication…) While problem statements are typically used in research, writing a statement for the issues you face in your personal and professional life can also be a powerful way to better understand those issues. With a crystalised view of the problem, you can explore potential solutions to close the gap between ideal and reality. And, who knows, one of these may become a favorite problem of yours. At work, there may be occasions when you have witnessed the hasty launch of a project that later seems to be heading down the wrong path, or requires extensive additional work due to poor initial planning.  The post Define every problem: how to write a personal problem statement appeared first on Ness Labs.

We live in a world obsessed with outcomes. At school, we’re encouraged to climb an artificial leaderboard that reflects our test scores. At work, performance is based on reaching specific targets, sometimes known as OKRs for “Objectives and Key Results.” In this goal-based society, success is defined by how our peers evaluate our track record. But what if you’re not excited about this definition of success? What if you’re feeling lost and want to find your way — not the default path, but your own path? Kyūdō, the Japanese martial art of archery, offers an alternative philosophy where aims matter more than goals, and where success is the process itself. The difference between goals and aims People tend to use the words “goal” and “aim” interchangeably, but those words have very different definitions. Archery offers the perfect metaphor to understand the difference between a goal and an aim, and there’s no better way to illustrate it than the story of a German professor who fell in love with the art of the bow. Eugen Herrigel (1884 – 1955) moved to Japan in the 1920’s to teach philosophy. There, he decided to train in Kyūdō as a way to better understand Japanese culture. He was fortunate to be taught by legendary archer Kenzō Awa, who was known as the man of “one hundred shots, one hundred bullseyes.” The training was too slow to Herrigel’s taste, who kept on missing his target after months of training, and he complained about his lack of progress. The archery master replied: “The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed.” The master encouraged him to forget about the goal, and to focus on the way he was aiming — how he held the bow, the way he positioned his feet, the way he was breathing while releasing the arrow. The goal is the target we want to achieve, while the aim is the course we set to reach that target. A goal fixates on the finish line, while an aim considers the trajectory. When we focus on our aims, the process becomes the goal. And we’re more likely to reach our goal when we become fully aware of our aim. This is the essence of the way of the bow. As James Clear puts it: “It is not the target that matters. It is not the finish line that matters. It is the way we approach the goal that matters. Everything is aiming.” How to define your aims Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661), one of the first English writers to have enough patrons to be able to live by his pen, wrote: “A good archer is not known by their arrows but by their aim.” Letting go of outcomes doesn’t mean abandoning your ambitions. Instead, focusing on your aims is a mindset shift that allows you to break free of your illusion of control so you can zero in on your output. When we focus on our aims rather than our end goals, we learn how to design a daily life where the process itself is so fulfilling that it doesn’t matter whether we ever reach an hypothetical finish line. Success is enjoying the process. However, we have all been so well-trained in obsessing over outcomes, it can be difficult to change the way we direct our energy and attention. Metacognition (“thinking about thinking”) can help us untangle those deeply ingrained patterns. The AIMS Self-Reflection Questionnaire is a simple thinking exercise to break free from a goal-based approach to life and help you focus on your aims instead. AIMS stands for Aspiration, Implementation, Metacognition, and Success. You just need a pen and paper, a timer (for example on your phone), and about half an hour to complete it. Are you a member of the Ness Labs learning community? You can access a detailed version with additional details on each question and a downloadable workbook to write down your answers. Download 1. Aspiration (10 minutes) To refocus on intrinsic motivation, the first section of the questionnaire encourages you to reconnect with your dreams. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? What experiences filled you with awe and wonder? What do you want to learn? What are some past projects you enjoyed working on, including abandoned projects? What excites you the most about the future? 2. Implementation (10 minutes) The second part of the questionnaire is about the process of aiming towards your aspirations, when you forget about the outcome and enjoy the journey instead. What does an ideal day look like to you? What things would you like to say no to if you could? When do you feel most energized? Who are the people you trust and you can count on to support you? What things would you do if you supported yourself unconditionally? 3. Metacognition (5 minutes) In the third part of the questionnaire, you will reflect on the ways you can avoid living your life on autopilot, how you can monitor your progress, and where to get the help you need when you feel stuck. What are your favorite modes of thinking? What are your self-reflection tools of choice? Where do you seek advice when you feel stuck? 4. Success (5 minutes) The last part draws on your answers to the questions in the previous sections. Looking at what you wrote in each corresponding section, complete the following sentences: In the future, I would like to… I will direct my time, energy and attention towards these aspirations by… I will reflect on my progress by… To me, success means… That’s it. You have now completed the AIMS Self-Reflection Questionnaire. It’s a simple way to rethink your relationship with ambitions by focusing on the trajectory rather than the finish line. And it’s hopefully also a nice way to remember some of your past experiences and to get excited about the future. The post Everything is aiming: forget the target and focus on your aim appeared first on Ness Labs.

Like the rest of New Things Under the Sun, this article will be updated as the state of the academic literature evolves; you can read the latest version here. You can listen to this post above, or via most podcast apps: Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Stitcher. Remote work seems to be well suited for some kinds of knowledge work, but it’s less clear that it’s well suited for the kind of collaborative creativity that results in breakthrough innovations. A series of new papers suggests breakthrough innovation by distributed teams has traditionally been quite difficult, but also that things have changed, possibly dramatically, as remote collaboration technology has improved. Subscribe now Distant and Colocated Collaboration Are Not Alike We can begin with Van der Wouden (2020), which looks at the history of collaboration between inventors on US patents, over the period 1836 to 1975. To build a useful dataset, he has to extract the names and locations of inventors from old patent documents, which have been digitized into super messy text files by Google. These digitized patents are rife with misspelling (because optical character recognition scanning is very imperfect for old documents) and lacking in much of any standardization. It’s a ton of work that involves fuzzy matching text strings to a big list of names which in turn is drawn from the US census, modern patent documents, and an existing database of inventor names. And that’s only the first step - it just tells you the names of people mentioned in a patent, not whether those names are inventors, rather than lawyers or experts. To figure out who is an inventor, Van der Wouden uses a set of classification algorithms that predict the probability a mentioned name is an inventor using a dataset of known inventors linked to patents. It’s not a perfect method, but it is able to find an inventor on about 90% of historical patents. Moreover, the people it identifies as top patent holders, and the number of patents they hold, matches pretty closely other lists of top patentees in US history. He also has to do similar work to pull out the locations mentioned on a patent. Now that he has an estimate of how many people worked on each patent, and where they lived, Van der Wouden can start to look at how common collaboration and remote collaboration are. We can see that collaboration really began to take off in the 1940s and that the probability a team of inventors didn’t reside in the same city rose from under 5% in 1836 to over 10% by 1975. From Van der Wouden (2020) Van der Wouden next tries to measure the complexity of a patented invention with an approach originally used in another paper, Fleming and Sorenson (2004).1 Fleming and Sorenson attempted to create a measure of how “fussy” technological classifications were, based on how well they seem to play nice with other technologies (fussy is my term, not their’s, but I think it captures what they’re going for in a colloquial way). If a technological classification is frequently attached to a patent alongside a wide range of other classifications, they’re going to say this isn’t a very “fussy” technology. It can be used in plenty of diverse applications. On the other extreme, if a classification is only ever assigned to a patent with one other classification, then we’re going to assume the technology is very sensitive and very fussy. It only works well in a very specific context. While this measure is a bit ad-hoc, Fleming and Sorenson also did a survey of inventors and showed their measure is correlated with inventors self-assessments of how sensitive their own inventions are to small changes, and that this measure is not merely picking up how novel or new the technology is; it’s picking up something a bit different. Returning to Van der Wouden (2020), his measure says a patent is more complex if it involves more technologies, and if these technologies are “fussy.” There are two key results: complex patents are more likely to be the work of teams. And among patents by a team of inventors, the inventors are more likely to reside in the same city if the patent is more complex. It seems that, at least over 1836-1975, it is hard to do complex work at a distance. Lin, Frey, and Wu (2022) pick up Van der Wouden’s baton and take us into the present day. They look at the character of both patents and academic papers produced by collocated and remote teams over 1960-2020 (actually 1975-2020 for patents), but focusing on how disruptive a paper or patent is. To measure disruption, they use an increasingly popular measure based on citations. To simplify a bit, the idea here is that if a paper or patent is disruptive, you’re not going to cite the stuff it cites, because the paper or patent has rendered those older ideas obsolete. After Einstein, you no longer cite Newton. On the other hand, if a paper is an incremental improvement within a given paradigm, you are likely to cite it as well as its antecedents. This disruption measure quantifies this notion: for some focal document, it’s based on how many citations go to the focal document alone relative to how many citations go to the focal document as well as the documents cited by the focal document. Across 20mn research articles and 4mn patents, Lin, Frey, and Wu find that, on average, the farther away the members of the team are from one another, the less likely the paper is to be disruptive. From Lin, Frey, and Wu (2022) So, over 1836-1975 the patents of inventors who reside in the same cities tended to be more complex, in the sense that they either drew on more technologies, or more technologies that don’t have a long history of successfully being combined with other technologies. And over 1975 to 2020, patents with inventors residing in the same city were more likely to be disruptive, in the sense that they are more likely to receive citations that do not also reference earlier work. Does Distance Inhibit Strange Combinations? These measures are not picking up exactly the same thing, but neither are they as different as they might seem at first. As discussed in a bit more detail here, Lin, Evans, and Wu (2022) find that papers that draw on novel combinations of ideas (in this paper, proxied by the kind of journals a paper cites) are also more likely to be disruptive. In other words, it might well be that the reason Lin, Frey, and Wu find papers by distant teams are less likely to be disruptive is because dispersed teams have a harder time connecting different ideas. We’ve got a few pieces of evidence that support the notion that remote teams have a harder time making novel connections across ideas. First, both Berkes and Gaetani (2021) and Duede et al. (2022) find some evidence that colocation is an important channel for exposure to intellectually distant concepts. As discussed here, Berkes and Gaetani (2021) show that: The patents of inventors residing in denser parts of cities comprise a more diverse set of technologies The set of technologies that comprise the patents of denser parts of cities is more unorthodox: two different technologies might rarely originate from the same geographical location, but when they do that area is more likely to be a dense part of a city The patents of inventors residing in denser parts of cities are more likely to feature unusual combinations of technologies themselves. That’s all consistent with the idea that being physically around lots of different kinds of inventive activity increases the chances you draw an unexpected connection between two disparate concepts. Duede and coauthors provide some fine-grained evidence from academia. They have a big survey where they ask thousands of academics across many fields about citations they made in some of their recent work. Among other things, they asked respondents how well they knew the cited paper, as well as how influential was the citation to the respondent’s work. In the latter case, respondents rated their citations on a scale from “very minor influence”, which meant the respondent’s paper would have been basically unchanged without knowledge of the cited reference, to “very major influence”, which meant the cited reference motivated the entire project. If we have a way to measure the geographic distance between the authors and the “intellectual distance” between the citation and the author’s normal expertise, we can see how the two are related: does being close in space facilitate learning about ideas you wouldn’t normally know about? Computing distance in space is straightforward: Duede and coauthors just code whether authors are in the same department, same institution, same city, or same country. To measure intellectual distance, they rely on the similarity of the title and abstract of the citing and cited paper, as judged by natural language processing algorithms. This algorithm judges papers to be more similar if they contain words that are themselves more closely related to each other. Duede and coauthors find if you and the author of a paper you cite are at the same university, then you are indeed more likely to say you know the cited work well and that it was influential on you. But what’s interesting is that the strength of this relationship is stronger if the cited and citing paper are less similar to each other. In other words, if you cite a paper that’s surprising, given the topic you are working on, you are more likely to say you know that paper well and that it influenced you if the author is at the same university. That’s quite consistent with colocation being a useful way to learn about ideas you wouldn’t otherwise encounter in the course of your normal knowledge work. The second line of evidence is larger, but less direct: physical proximity seems to be quite important for helping people form new relationships, especially relationships that wouldn’t have been formed in the course of ordinary knowledge work. I’ve looked at this line of evidenc...

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think faster and work better together. Cara Borenstein is the co-founder of Stashpad, a fast and easy-to-use notepad designed to help developers stay organized as they work without breaking their flow. In this interview, we talked about the power of embracing messiness, how to use a daily brain-dump to set your intentions, how to practice graceful context switching, how to cultivate calm in an increasingly noisy and complex world, and much more. Enjoy the read! Hi Cara, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Before we start talking about Stashpad, let’s get a little philosophical. Lots of software is about structure and organization. Why do you think we’d do well to instead embrace messiness? It’s a great question! At Stashpad, we’re focused on how individual developers go about their day. The reality is that our daily experience can often be a bit messy. You plan projects, research solutions, debug issues, and brainstorm workarounds. You need somewhere to stash things as you’re working so that you can make sense of it all and stay on top of things. Problem-solving is messy and involves various moving parts, and to navigate this effectively, you need a way to manage your working memory. Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, has talked about the value of having a messy space for your thoughts as part of your tooling. In fact, the scratchpad is his favorite productivity tool: “It’s a way to offload things out of your brain where you can still see them, look at them, organize and make sense of them, without having to keep all of these things in your mind at the same time.” Our personal scratch notes should not be a place where we feel pressure to make them look beautiful and polished — that would only be an impediment to getting things down. It would create a high bar for what is acceptable, and would discourage us from capturing our thoughts in a raw form. The point of our scratch notes is to serve us as we’re going about our day — to help us keep track of things and make sense of things. We like to parallel the scratchpad to RAM (Random Access Memory) on a computer. RAM is your working memory. It’s a cache of all the things that you need while you’re executing on a task. This is different from things that are on your hard drive (“disk”). Disk is your long-term storage. It’s where things go when you’re done working on them. We’ve found that too often, writing notes is assumed to mean writing a finished product to disk. But messiness can also mean interruptions, which makes it harder to get in the flow. How does Stashpad address this challenge? Step one is acknowledging that our day involves juggling different threads, and sometimes context-switching is inevitable. Our goal is to make capture as frictionless as possible, so that you’re not trying to keep too much in your head. Whenever an idea comes up that you want to put away for later — whether someone mentioned something to you, you came across some new information, or it just popped into your head — it should be super easy to jot it down, and in such a way that you’ll be able to find it later. With Stashpad, you can jump to the right context in two keystrokes. Something comes up, and it’s not urgent enough to pre-empt what you’re doing, but it still may be worth revisiting later? Stash it. We’re not completely eliminating the context-switch — we’re trying to make it as quick and seamless as possible. The outcome is that you can get back to focusing on your Main Thing right away, and you’re also not dropping the ball later. Stashing quick ideas as you’re going about your day is key to maintaining flow and momentum. If you don’t have a good way of doing this, you either get sidetracked wondering what to do with this idea that came up, or you try to stow it away in your mind — but it may very well continue to vaguely take up some of your attention and prevent you from fully focusing on what’s in front of you. As Sophie Leroy, Associate Professor at the University of Washington Bothell School of Business, puts it: attention residue is “when our attention is focused on another task instead of being fully devoted to the current task at hand.” By getting things out of your head and into written form, you can reduce the chances that attention residue from one task will pollute your focus in your next task. Another key to effective stashing is being able to easily retrieve what you stashed. Or, put another way, how can you quickly stash things without your stash devolving into complete chaos? If you think about the classic pen and paper approach to note-taking, this is where it can start to break down. It can be convenient and enjoyable to jot things down on a piece of paper, but finding something you wrote down two weeks ago — or yesterday — or something you don’t remember when you thought of can get difficult. When it comes to retrieval and keeping things in order, it’s important to be able to flexibly compartmentalize your notes, jump between these compartments, and send things to the right place. More generally, we’ve found that existing solutions tend to be either convenient for capture, but unable to handle complexity over time; or they’re great at organizing, but too heavy and unapproachable to be your tool of choice for capture. We’re putting a lot of work into making Stashpad the best option for capturing thoughts and finding them later — so that you don’t get bogged down on either side of this process. As humans, we’re “single core machines” — meaning we can focus on one thing at a time. But our day-to-day involves juggling multiple threads going on at the same time. Stashpad is designed to ease the tension between these two realities. When did you start tackling this challenge? We actually first started out on a somewhat different problem. Theo and I noticed at our respective engineering jobs that knowledge sharing between engineers often did not happen as smoothly as one would hope. And specifically, the team wiki, which was supposed to be where a lot of this knowledge sharing happened, often fell short when it came to supplying complete and up-to-date information. So in 2019, we set out to improve knowledge sharing in engineering organizations by building a more approachable wiki. After working on this for a few months, we found that not very many people were interested in our new wiki. We ultimately realized that in people’s day-to-day workflows, their team’s wiki tool was not a major pain point. In fact, it wasn’t really a big part of their workflows at all. We went back to the drawing board and asked around a hundred developers more detailed questions about how their knowledge management practices at work. And we found that 90% of them frequently used what we like to call a “barebones” notepad — something like Apple Notes, Notepad++, untitled text files, etc. And that occasionally, certain things would get transferred over from their notepad into collaborative tools like Slack, Jira, or Google Docs when they were worth sharing. That’s when we realized that, subtly, this barebones notepad plays a major role in how we do our work. And we noticed that many developers weren’t very pleased with their setup. The truth is that the notepad hasn’t seen much innovation in the last few decades. So we decided to build a better developer notepad. This was the summer of 2020. So, how does Stashpad work exactly? At the core of Stashpad is bytes and stacks. A byte is a short note. A stack is a kind of byte that can contain other bytes. Stacks let you structure your notes and add hierarchy in whatever way is useful to you. Navigating around your notes quickly is key. To that end, you can open a stack in a tab, or expand a stack inline. You can pin a stack, and jump to a recent stack. You can search for a stack or for any note, with filters to help narrow your query. You can also capture notes to the right stack without needing to navigate to it. There’s a shortcut to pull up Stashpad from anywhere. Home is your top-level stack. It is where you can create your first stacks. It’s also a good default “dumping ground” for notes when you’re not sure where they should go. You can act on your notes. An advantage of jotting down short notes is your notes are more modular, making it easy to perform commands on specific bytes. Moving, deleting, re-arranging, formatting, copying to clipboard — these are all actions you can perform via the keyboard. You can access all of the available actions by hitting cmd/ctrl + K at any time in the app. In general, you can do anything in Stashpad from the keyboard. And of course, there’s markdown support and code syntax highlighting. Soon, you’ll be able to customize the keyboard shortcuts to your liking. You’ll also be able to define flexible queries that will dynamically generate stacks with the relevant content. We will offer image support and other file attachments. There will be a mobile app with hosted sync. There will be a public API and hooks for getting content in and out of your Stashpad, as well as integrations with other popular tools. What kind of people use Stashpad? Software engineers at companies like AWS, Coinbase, and Twitter use Stashpad everyday to manage their notes and thoughts as they do their work. In particular, people who work on complex projects and who often have multiple threads of work going on at the same time benefit especially from a better working memory solution. Before finding Stashpad, our users would often rely on a combination of untitled text files, Slack messages to themselves, and even pen and paper as a quick way to capture information as they were working. Some then paste some of this information into a more robust long-term knowledge store like Evernote and Notion. Stashpad is at least as fast at capture as these simple options and it works bette...

Once upon a time, an organization could take on a young, new employee, and know that with slow and steady development, that individual would loyally climb the career ladder, remaining with them until retirement age. Nowadays, the concept of a career for life has become outdated. Our professional lives are becoming increasingly squiggly, with a new normal that allows us to move frequently and fluidly between not only roles, but careers too. Even those in vocational, so-called lifelong jobs may feel the urge to leave, as I know only too well myself. My transition from working as a doctor to becoming a freelance writer came with huge uncertainty. Thinking about changing careers is likely to provoke inner turmoil, stress, disruption and even feelings akin to a personal crisis. It’s therefore reassuring that following certain strategies can make the process as painless and as exciting as possible. The extinction of the single career  With the idea of a lifelong career becoming archaic, there has been much interest in what a modern career journey looks like and what millennials and younger generations will expect.  In 2021, research found that 49% of employees “had changed careers from a wide range of industries”. However, in many cases it had taken an individual years to upskill, network and prepare themselves financially for making the change successfully. This preparation may be particularly pertinent when individuals are recognized to be making frequent transitions that cross significant boundaries including industry, occupation, labor market and geographical location. Furthermore, one is more likely to be driven by opportunism. If our current role has little potential for growth or promotion, we will apply for roles elsewhere to ensure professional development. Not everyone seems to be made equal when it comes to career change. A study by Carole Kanchier and Wally Unruh showed that occupational change is more likely for those who place a higher value on personal fulfillment and intrinsic job rewards. Career changers are also likely to have higher self-esteem than those who stay put. Knowing when it is time to leap It can be difficult to know when it’s time to attempt a career change. However, there are three tell-tale signs that may alert you to the fact that you are ready to move on. 1. Physical signs Lack of energy. You want to feel that you are getting a buzz from, and thriving, at work, even if the role itself is demanding and you feel tired at the end of the day. If you feel lethargic, drained or apathetic about your role, this could be a sign that rather than inspiring you, there is no joy left in your current role.  Struggling to get out of bed each morning. Tiredness is common, but work should not cause you to dread getting up each morning. Pay attention to this sign, because it could indicate that your current role is having a negative impact on your mental health. 2. Psychological signs Boredom. Every job has tedious tasks and you will need to accept that each role will have its less enjoyable elements. However, if you always find work boring, it is time to look for alternative jobs or careers. Poor concentration. Work that does not captivate you is far harder to focus on. If you find yourself taking too many breaks, regularly being distracted by your phone, or making poor progress with tasks, then you could be in a job that does not suit you. Feeling stuck. If it appears that there is no opportunity for growth or progression, you may feel frustrated or bored. Ask about upskilling, professional courses, sideways moves or promotion. If this confirms that you have hit a wall, consider alternatives. Dreaming of a new career. If you feel you are in the wrong job, you may fantasize about your dream role. If these dreams are intense or persistent, it could be time to start preparing for a new venture. Feeling envious. You may notice you feel envious of friends who have a much smaller salary, but clearly have enormous job satisfaction. Money may not be as important to you as you once thought, and considering a lower paid job may increase your options for a career change. Financial motivation. If you feel you only go to work for the money, then it is likely that you are dissatisfied with your role. It is important to recognise this sign, as you may be able to earn a similar salary with far greater satisfaction elsewhere.  3. Behavioral signs Reading about other careers. To distract yourself from a role you dislike, you may spend hours reading about the careers of others you admire. Not talking about your job. If you find you avoid talking about your job at parties, this could be a sign of your dissatisfaction. Coasting along. If you are not making the effort to perform well, consider whether your heart is truly in your current career. Lack of interest in your employer. Appreciating a role often leads to interest and emotional investment in the company. If you feel indifferent, perhaps this company is not for you. Figuring out a career change I was certain that I wanted to transition to a new career, but finding the right alternative took time and taking the plunge was daunting. If you notice one or more of the above signs, there are several ways to figure out your career change so that you can make the move with confidence. Firstly, define your career goals by considering your own personal values, how much purpose you assign to your occupation, and the careers that appeal. Write down the skills you have and those that you want to acquire, as well as your financial requirements. Reflect on whether flexibility is important to you, and how happy you truly feel now. Explore alternative career options objectively and be open to both the pros and cons. This should help to confirm whether you are changing careers for the right reasons. Next, you will need to accept that career change is often slow. If you want to go freelance, you may need to start up a business that you can run alongside your current employment so that you remain financially secure. To transition into a new sector, you may need to consider lower paid roles that will allow you to gain experience and new skills before you can progress to a more senior position. Commit to expanding your professional network to discover new work opportunities that may not be obvious. If this is difficult, you may even find it helpful to work with a mentor or career coach to support you while you metamorphose. Career change is common in the modern workforce, but when figuring out how, when, and which role to transition to you may experience extreme stress and internal friction. The shift will not happen overnight, so take your time to reflect on your current job and dream career, while also exploring your motive for change. Even if you have undergone rigorous training or development, if you are unhappy, disillusioned, or bored by your role, persevering is unlikely to be the right choice. By thoroughly investigating the alternatives, you will feel more confident in making a leap of faith and dedicating yourself to a career that you love. The post How to figure out a career change appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us work better without sacrificing our mental health. Michael Villar is the founder of Height, the all-in-one tool to share project management across the entire company. Before starting Height, Michael co-founded another productivity startup, and was an early engineer and product designer at Stripe. In this interview, we talked about interconnected companies, how to reconcile project management with personal productivity, how to foster cross-collaboration between different types of teams, how to create “swimlanes” of work, and much more. Enjoy the read! Hi Michael, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. What inspired you to build Height? I’ve always been interested in collaboration tools, I actually founded a previous company in the space called Kickoff. We were acquired in 2013 by Stripe, which is where I saw how project management works at a high-growth company.  Spoiler alert, we kept switching tools: from GitHub issues, to Asana, to Dropbox Paper, to Phabricator, to Jira.  We kept outgrowing existing tools because existing tools are fairly rigid and enforce workflows, but our company kept growing: new teams would get created, new people would be hired, new workflows would be spun up, and our overall project management strategy kept changing. When I left Stripe, I knew I wanted to build a project management tool that evolves with your growing company, that unlocks cross-collaboration between various types of teams instead of, for example, feeling like the tool was only designed for one type of team, like just engineering. How would you define an interconnected company? One trend I’ve noticed is that work is becoming increasingly cross-functional: at modern companies, many people work across multiple projects and teams as needs arise. For example, a designer might work primarily with the platform team, but may also support projects on the growth team, or even help the recruiting and marketing teams as needed. Or, as another example, in order to launch a new product, people from many teams come together to make the release a success: marketing, engineering, product, design, customer success & support, sales. And yet, with the existing project management tools out there, people end up siloed, with a situation like engineering and product using Jira, marketing and comms on Asana, and design on Dropbox Paper. This results in information about different aspects of the project getting scattered across different tools, rather than being centralized in one place to track the state of the entire project. This makes it hard to keep everyone working on a project on the same page, and ends up meaning more meetings to discuss project progress, since there’s no one one-shop stop to see how the project is going. The inverse of this chaotic picture is a truly interconnected company, one which is working like a well-oiled machine, shipping high-caliber features and projects quickly, and without any last minute scrambling or nasty surprises. Company culture helps determine to what level this happens, but using one project management tool that keeps teams in sync, with centralized information about the state of work can help make that dream a reality. And how does Height help interconnected companies do their best work? We’ve really designed Height from the beginning to be a tool that works for every type of team, and to act as a centralized hub for all things project management. This is reflected in what we’ve prioritized building: visualizations like Spreadsheet, Kanban, Calendar, and Gantt, custom attributes, powerful integrations that enable actual workflows, and a robust privacy and sharing model. Spreadsheet view Kanban board Calendar view Gantt chart Maybe less obvious, but equally importantly, Height has real-time chat per task. This has been a gamechanger for our customers — chat per task ensures all conversation about work happens in context, is searchable, and only notifies the right people for whom the info is relevant, instead of an entire channel worth of people. The default these days, especially in a remote-first world, is people having conversations about their tasks or work in Slack or Teams. Conversation in these types of tools is not attached to specific tasks, it’s freeform and topics can change frequently (and do!), making it easy to lose track of decisions, and hard for remote teams working asynchronously. By keeping all conversation for a specific task in one place — the task — it’s easy for people to get caught up in other timezones, or after coming back from a holiday. And it sounds small, but Height also tells you who read your messages, so you don’t need to ping them individually and ask if they saw your message! All teams have different workflows which can be hard to seamlessly integrate together. How does that work in Height? With Height, we’re building a tool with which you implement your own workflows. Rather than creating an opinionated methodology or system on how project management should be run, we believe there are a million different ways to run a successful company, and Height should accommodate your way of working. For example, a small company just getting going might simply use a few lists of tasks, and assign people to the right tasks. A larger company, with multiple engineering teams can organize their work in sprints or releases, and marketing teams can plan their launches with dates and calendars… You get the point. We’re building the features you need to manage your work, and we’re doing so in a way that ensures you can change the way you work overtime too. When you hire a Head of Product or a VP of Engineering who comes in with new ideas of streamlining work or updating workflows to improve efficiency, we’ve made it super easy to reflect those changes in Height fast, through a combination of our super powerful search filters and keyboard actions to bulk-edit tasks. Because Height doesn’t believe there’s one best way to work, companies can change workflows and continue using Height as their own needs and goals evolve. Team collaboration software can sometimes get so tedious that it creates friction and lowers personal productivity. How does Height address this challenge? Our goal is to contain the source of truth of all things projects, so it needs to be extremely easy to update that information. When tasks are kept up-to-date, making decisions becomes a lot more efficient. When you can find all the latest information about a project in one place, including any conversation about it from the people working on it, suddenly you no longer need project status meetings or other synchronous communication. The way we keep task data in Height up-to-date starts from making it incredibly easy to create and manage tasks. Think about how easy it is to write bullet points in a document — we’ve effectively replicated that same experience in Height, just making your tasks now exist in a structured form. To get into more granular detail, here’s how we brought the ease of making tasks in documents to Height: press `Enter` to edit and create tasks, `Tab` to create a subtask, use all the keyboard shortcuts you would expect, multi-select to edit tasks in batch, and more. We also introduced the Command palette in which you can run any feature right from the keyboard, and you can also assign any custom shortcut to any command, which makes it even more powerful. Secondly, the way you keep task data up-to-date is by making it incredibly easy for the ICs who are doing the work to update their tasks. As a bit of an aside, when it takes extra effort, or 5 clicks to update your task, what ends up happening is you either don’t keep tasks updated, or you update your tasks on Friday afternoon just before your stand-up meeting. This means this task data is no longer fresh, and that other stakeholders have probably been DMing you to ask about project status all week. When people no longer trust the shared task management tool to be an up-to-date source of truth on project status, that tool has become dead weight without providing its real value. The most important way we’ve found of helping ICs keep their tasks up-to-date in Height is by investing in powerful integrations. Every integration we build, we build with the question of: how do we make this the most useful version of itself? For example, our GitHub and GitLab integrations allow you to automatically update tasks from a pull request. You can customize when tasks should change status and what to, so that when you link a task to a pull request, it automatically changes the task status to “In progress” (or whatever custom status your team uses), and similarly, when you merge a pull request, the task will be marked as “Done”. This makes it super easy for your colleagues in product and support to stay on top of what’s happening without DMing you or having to figure out how to navigate through GitHub/GitLab to see updates. What kind of people use Height? It’s still early days for us, but already companies from 1 to 1000 employees use Height every day, many which grew 10x or more as they’ve been using Height. From established tech companies, to early-stage web3 startups, to dev and marketing agencies, each of these companies all have different teams using Height, including engineering, marketing, ops, support, HR, IT, design, legal, and product teams. None of these companies are the same, and this is exactly what we are striving for. And how do you personally use Height? We organize projects and tasks with lists, one of the more unique features of Height. A task can belong to many lists, which makes it easy for teams to cross-collaborate, but also easy to find these tasks. We have lists for features (e.g. #feature-chat, #feature-filters), bug triaging, quick improvement sessions, customer requests (e.g. ...

The human mind is extremely averse to ambiguity and uncertainty. We are hardwired to seek answers — even if they’re incomplete or wrong — and most societies consider having answers as more valuable than having questions. Look around you: the overt objective of many jobs is to provide answers. After going through an interview process where you need to give answers that prove your level of competency, your role will often consist in giving more answers to your manager, your colleagues, and your customers. We love content that offers advice, products that offer solutions, quick fixes, magic bullets and antidotes. We certainly don’t like problems, especially if they linger for too long. We try to avoid them as much as possible, and, if we’re unlucky enough that a problem falls into our lap, we strive to crack them swiftly or to delegate them to another poor soul. But what if we learned to fall in love with problems, to see them as puzzles to play with, a lens through which we can better see the world? Feynman’s favorite problems Richard Feynman was a true philomath — a lover of learning. Not only did he greatly expand the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, but he translated Mayan hieroglyphics, figured out the origin of the NASA Challenger disaster, and was a fantastic physics professor. During the second world war, he worked on the first ever nuclear bomb, and became an expert safecracker just to demonstrate how the documents for the construction of the bomb were not securely kept. In 1965, for “fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles”, Feynman received a joint Nobel Prize in Physics. One of Feynman’s most enduring characteristics was that he loved problems. Instead of avoiding them or trying to solve them as fast as possible, he would seek interesting problems, keep them in mind, let them simmer, and constantly try to connect his everyday experiences to these big questions. During a talk at MIT, mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota recalled: “Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.” Through the looking glass Like Feynman, you can generate a list of a dozen problems to constantly keep present in your mind, not because you want to solve them as soon as possible, but because they feed your curiosity and turn the world into a big mystery game. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian ​​David Hackett Fischer aptly said: “Questions are the engines of intellect — cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry.” Similar to Alice who discovers a strange world through the looking glass, the questions you choose to keep in mind act as a mirror that reflects the world around you and makes you look beyond the surface of the glass. Your favorite problems form a prism that separates incoming information into a spectrum of ideas — a frame that allows you to deliberately filter distractions, direct your attention, and nurture your curiosity. In short, your favorite problems become a curiosity engine. Creating a list of favorite problems offers many benefits: Turn stressful situations into intriguing problems to explore Filter information based on whether it relates to one of your favorite problems Connect with fellow curious minds who are interested in similar problems Focus your attention on ideas that arouse your curiosity Notice relevant patterns and potential solutions across seemingly unrelated topics The good news is: you don’t need to be a Nobel Prize winner to craft your very own list of favorite problems. You just need to proactively dig into your past interests and imagine your future opportunities. How to create a curiosity engine Taking the time to define your favorite problems is one of the best investments you can make into becoming a better thinker. By crafting a personal list of problems you care about, you will navigate the world around you more effectively and more playfully. The realization that you can connect an experience or a piece of information to one of your favorite problems will bring you child-like joy, while making you a more productive problem-solver. Follow these three steps to generate your favorite problems and design a curiosity engine: 1. Make physical and mental space for self-reflection. Defining your favorite problems is a metacognitive exercise that requires time and presence. Don’t rush it. Block an hour in your calendar, find a quiet spot, and open a notebook or your note-taking app. 2. Explore potential areas of inquiry. This is the most gratifying part of the process. Go through the following prompts and write down your answers: Thinking about your childhood, what were some of your favorite hobbies? As an adult, what are the topics you most enjoy learning about? What are interesting ideas you know of but can’t fully grasp? What are skills you wish you had? What are areas of your life you find difficult to reconcile? What aspects of society do you find puzzling? If you had a crystal ball and could travel to the future, what would you want to see? 3. Turn areas of inquiry into questions. Take the areas of inquiry you identified in the previous step, and rephrase them into questions by using one of the following structures: How do I…? How can we…? What is the best way to…? What is the relationship between A and B? Why is X a certain way? Make sure that your favorite problems are specific enough that you can connect them to new experiences and information you come across. For instance, “What is the meaning of life?” is too broad, but “How can I inject more meaning into my daily life?” is specific enough. Your favorite problems While Feynman mentioned having a dozen favorite problems, not all questions you generate this way will feel important or interesting enough to make it into your final list of twelve favorite problems. However, try to aim for at least five questions so you have a balanced mix of problems that relate to different areas of your life and work. Your favorite problems can be practical business questions, such as: “As a team, how do we overcome the tyranny of perfectionism while delivering great work?” They can also set your professional vision, so all of your work is seen through that particular lense. For Ness Labs, our favorite problem would be: “How do I help others be more productive without sacrificing their mental health?” But your questions can also be more philosophical. Some of the biggest unresolved problems in neuroscience include: How does the brain transform sensory information into coherent perceptions? What is the relationship between subjective experience and the physical world? How can learning be improved? How does past experience alter future behavior? Why do we dream? Once your list of favorite problems is ready, save it into a note, which you can call “Favorite Problems”, and pin it to the top of your home screen for easy access. You can even share it publicly, whether on your blog or on social media — this is a great way to spark conversations with people who are curious about similar problems. Then, start collecting ideas that relate to these problems, whether these ideas come from an article you read, from a conversation with a colleague, or from something you watched. Practice mind gardening by connecting these ideas together and generating your own original ideas. Just like Feynman’s, your favorite problems will become a curiosity engine, encouraging you to look for patterns, ask questions, expand your knowledge, and seek the diverse opinions of others. As you learn and grow, those big questions may evolve, acting as a compass for self-discovery. The post How to turn problems into a curiosity engine appeared first on Ness Labs.

Fear is a universal emotion. Fear of spiders, fear of crowds, fear of heights… There seems to be many types of fear, which makes it hard to know how to deal with them. Do you need a specific strategy for each unique fear you face? Fortunately, all fears can be divided into four broad categories which psychologists refer to as the four horsemen of fear: bodily, interpersonal, cognitive and behavioral fears. And each of the four horsemen of fear can be addressed by applying simple strategies.  Exploring the facets of fear From an evolutionary perspective, fear forms part of our response to perceived threats, which is supposed to protect us from harm. However, fear can greatly impact our thoughts and actions. The phrase “four horsemen” is rooted in Christian mythology, with each horseman representing part of a larger metaphor depicting the end of times. In 2020, researchers Adriano Schimmenti, Joël Billieux, and Vladan Starcevic used the metaphor of the four horsemen to explore the key domains of fear experienced during the pandemic. The first horseman of fear is bodily fear, in which an individual fears the body, or fears for their body. This fear relates to our sense of physical wellbeing, vulnerability, and anxiety related to the signals our body sends us. Bodily fear can lead to hypervigilance to new symptoms, and significant fear of illness, injury or infection. People who experience bodily fear tend to see their body as a valuable commodity which must be cared for to ensure a good quality of life. Thus, they may avoid taking risks such as going on a plane or visiting busy public places, despite this causing a potential reduction in overall life satisfaction. The second horseman is interpersonal fear, relating to the important people in our lives. We may find ourselves experiencing substantial fear of significant others, or fear for significant others. Complex relationships can exist between children and their parents, as well as between partners and friends. You may worry about the health of a loved one, or conversely have concerns that their behavior might cause you emotional, physical or financial harm. It is possible to concurrently experience both fear of, and fear for, someone else. The third horseman is cognitive fear, the fear of not knowing, or the fear of knowing. With information available at our fingertips, many of us are caught in a vicious cycle of extensively reading about a topical issue, such as a war or an economic crisis. Conversely, if we don’t educate ourselves, we may start to fear what we don’t know. A destructive intellectual cycle of needing to know followed by a fear of knowing can quickly ensue. Finally, the fourth horseman is behavioral fear, which relates to the fear of taking action, or contrastingly, the fear of remaining inactive, as the team of researchers clarified in a further paper. At work, you may be unsure how best to proceed with a project and worried that you may make a mistake, or you may feel stressed about not doing anything about a problem. By causing decision paralysis or stimulating hyperactivity, behavioral fear may drive you to make multiple poorly considered decisions, disrupting your progress as a result. How to manage the four horsemen of fear The four horsemen of fear can impact us in different ways. Each of these domains of fear lead to the biochemical fight or flight response that causes physical changes within the body such as increased heart rate. That’s why, as Dr Ralph Adolphs explains, when we feel threatened, we try to either avoid the threat or cope with it. But these behaviors are not always productive, especially when we’re not aware of which domain of fear we are dealing with. For example, bodily fears, which should be dealt with by appraising our physical sensations without judgment, can lead to panicked decisions when we confuse them with behavioral fears. Alternatively, we may not recognise our cognitive fears, which should be dealt with using metacognitive strategies, and erroneously approach them by focusing on our body. Journaling is a great way to figure out the domain to which your fear belongs. Ask yourself: what is it exactly that is causing me worry, stress, and anxiety? Does my fear relate to the body, to people in my life, to the presence/absence of knowledge, or to (in)action? Describe your fear in as much detail as possible, trying to be as honest as possible with yourself. Once you’ve identified the source of your fear, you can apply one of the following ways to deal with the four horsemen of fears: Bodily fear: appraise your body. Reconnect with your body by understanding how you feel. For example, you can track your physical activity, set prompts to improve your posture, and practise mindfulness to become more familiar with how you feel. Interpersonal fear: identify problematic relationships. Take an inventory of your interpersonal relationships to determine the connections that act as a source of growth and empowerment, and which lead to internal conflict and negative emotions. Cognitive fear: foster your curiosity. Write down a list of problems you want to solve or questions that have been on your mind. Intentional scrutiny will help you move forward by turning doubt into discovery. Behavioral fear: improve your emotional regulation. Create a ritual that allows you to feel calm and collected, whether it’s going for a walk, stretching, breathwork, doodling, dancing, or any other activity that creates space to explore and understand your emotions. When our emotions become steadier, a trigger for behavioral fear is less likely to push us into an overwhelming state of fight or flight. Being in a state of fear affects how we think and act, negatively impacting our mental health, decision-making processes and personal growth. Often, multiple facets of fear may be present at once, and they may conflict or contrast with each other, leading to anxiety and paralysis. By understanding which of the four horsemen of fear you are facing, you will be better equipped to deal with your fears accordingly. The post The four horsemen of fear appeared first on Ness Labs.

Roam, with its bi-directional links and knowledge graph, is a great tool for creative thinking. But what if you also need dashboards, spreadsheets, and documents? You might then want to consider switching to Tana, a tool for thought that promises to end context switching. If you are thinking about migrating, follow this tutorial for some things to consider before switching, and a step-by-step guide to transferring your notes from Roam to Tana. Why you may want to switch from Roam to Tana Here are some important features to think about if you are thinking about switching from Roam to Tana. Productivity workflows. Tana offers countless customization options for creating your own productivity workflows. With Tana, you can design the ideal workflow for your needs using task lists, Kanban boards, and multiple database views. Tana nodes can be linked together, filtered with different views, and turned into databases with fields and SuperTags. Roam on the other hand is more focused on exploratory knowledge management than productivity workflows, despite having features like task lists and Kanban boards. Everything is a node. Tana allows you to look at a node’s content differently. You can view the same node as a table, list, columns or card view. This makes it simpler to organize your notes and projects and helps you to see your data from a different angle. With different views, you can create powerful workflows that are tailored to your needs. On the other hand, Roam only allows you to view your notes in bullet points. Better search. With Tana’s live search feature, you can easily find the information that you need. Instead of having to use complex syntaxes to make queries like in Roam, you can search for the specific notes that you need by using Command Prompt with the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl + K. A live search is considered as a node, and thus you can view your search results in different views as well. How to migrate from Roam to Tana If you have made up your mind about making the switch from Roam to Tana, here are three simple steps you can take. 1. Export your files from Roam. Go to your Roam database and click on the three dots in the top right corner. Click on “Export All,” choose the export format as JSON, and export all your notes. Roam will download your database into a zipped folder containing your notes in JSON. Before moving on to the next step, unzip the downloaded file to extract your JSON file. 2. Import the content in Tana. Once you have access to Tana, click the gear icon in the top right corner and select “Import content”. Click on Roam and upload the JSON file you just exported earlier. Tana will analyze the file, and let you know how many notes you are importing. Click on Import, it will begin importing your notes. This process will take some time depending on the size of your database. 3. Configure your imported database. Unlike most apps, Tana does not merge your imported database with your existing database. Instead, it creates a new database that you can access in the sidebar. This database is separate from your existing database, and you need to allow access to your current database if you would like to link nodes from it. To do so, go to Options, select “Allow content from” and pick the database you would like to link with. Inversely, if you would like to link these imported notes from your existing database, you also need to allow access via “Allow content from”. You can decide whether to cross-reference the notes between the two databases by allowing access to the two or to keep them separate so that you can create a new structure in your new Tana database and transfer notes from the Roam database as needed. Getting started with Tana Now that you have successfully migrated to Tana, let’s go through a few quick wins so that you can get used to Tana in no time. Get oriented around Tana’s UI. While Tana and Roam are similar in some ways such as both being an outliner app, there are some differences such as not having pages, different ways of using tags, having panels instead of a main view and a sidebar, as well as using @ to link instead of double brackets.  Use the “Today” page. Similar to Roam’s Daily Notes, you will be greeted on launch with an empty canvas with a date as the title. It functions similarly to Roam, where you can use it as your everyday scratchpad and acts as a place to capture all your notes. Create your first SuperTag. SuperTags allows you to add fields to any nodes that are tagged with the Supertext. For example, let’s say you want to turn the tag #book as a Supertag. Doing so allows you to configure a template that will show up everytime you tag a node with #book. This is useful for adding metadata such as author, topic, and reading status to any node tagged with #book. You can create a SuperTag by using the Command Prompt or by clicking on the tag and clicking on configure to add the default content that will pop up when you turn a node into a Supertag. This only scratches the surface of what SuperTags can do, but for now, try creating your first SuperTag. Create a task list. You can create a task list by using the tag #todo. This will add a checkbox to the node, and you can also take a look at all your remaining tasks by clicking on the #todo tag. This makes Tana a great app for task and project management. As always, switching tools for thought costs time and energy that could be used to focus on your productivity and your creativity. Take some time to play around with Tana so you can figure out if it makes sense for you and your workflows to consider making the switch from Roam. However, if you’ve been juggling multiple tools — perhaps a tool for architects and a tool for gardeners — then you might find Tana a great way to avoid unnecessary context switching. The post How to switch from Roam Research to Tana appeared first on Ness Labs.

“Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos,” says an old Chinese proverb. Ha, the lure of immutability! We do, indeed, instinctively dread chaos as a threat to our stability; we fear chaos as a source of unpredictable risk and uncomfortable change. But nature shows us that life itself depends on chaos. And, because we’re human and able to override some of our instinctive behaviors, we can learn to embrace chaotic times, going from paralyzing anxiety to thriving curiosity. The edge of chaos Many people consider chaos as what we cannot control. Scientists define it in a different way: to them, chaos is what is so​ sensitive to initial conditions that it makes it very difficult to understand its underlying patterns and interconnections. The dynamics of chaos are so complex, they appear to be random and unpredictable. In their book Surfing the Edge of Chaos, Richard Pascale, Mark Milleman, and Linda Gioja explain that there are four cornerstone principles to chaos in nature that we can also observe in chaotic times in our lives and at work: Equilibrium is a precursor to death. “When a living system is in a state of equilibrium, it is less responsive to changes occurring around it,” they write. This state of equilibrium is highly dangerous, putting the system at risk of not adapting quickly enough. Innovation usually takes place on the edge of chaos. It’s when they face a threat or are excited by a new opportunity that living systems tend to come up with new ways of living through experimentation and mutation. Self-organization emerges naturally. As long as a system is sufficiently populated and properly interconnected, a new self-organization will emerge from chaos. Living systems cannot be directed towards a linear path. In dynamical systems, an attractor is defined as a set of states toward which a system tends to evolve. The direction is discovered rather than dictated by the living living system. Norman Packard, a chaos theory physicist from the Santa Fe Institute, coined the term “edge of chaos” to describe a transition space between order and disorder that’s fertile for adaptation and innovation. Why the edge of chaos, and not the middle of chaos? “As long as one operates in the middle of things, one can never really know the nature in which one moves,” wrote philosopher William Irwin Thompson. Only by exploring the edge of chaos can we truly learn and grow. The edge of chaos is a place for liminal creativity. It allows us to redefine a frontier where we have never gone before, to make discoveries and to reinvent ourselves. Instead of resisting change by trying to stay stationary, this liminal space is an opportunity to respond to the threat of disequilibrium by constantly experimenting, learning, and adapting our ways of thinking. What’s more, the living systems that successfully change their inner properties to better fit the edge of chaos not only survive — they thrive. How to thrive in chaos Living systems tend to initially respond to chaos by attempting to restore stability. However, problems arise when we try to apply a traditional solution to an adaptive problem. When new rules are emerging and the path forward is uncertain, we need to discover our goals instead of dictating them. In that spirit, here are four strategies you can experiment with in chaotic times: 1. Make a pact. Trying to force a specific outcome in chaotic times is like trying to herd butterflies. However, just like chaos theory has its attractors orienting a system in a particular direction, you can orient yourself in chaotic times by defining a pact with yourself. Make a commitment to dedicate a certain amount of time or a certain number of repetitions towards a project you care about. Similar to a compass, a pact encourages you to show up and surf the chaos, letting a new self-organization emerge over time. It needs to be purposeful, actionable, contextual, and trackable. Examples of pact include: Writing for one hour every morning before everyone wakes up Publishing one newsletter every week about a topic you care about Studying for a JavaScript certification for two hours every Sunday As you can see, there is no finish line; no success metrics except for whether you show up or not. During chaotic times, focusing on your output rather than the outcome will rekindle your sense of agency without falling prey to the illusion of control. 2. Create an anchor ritual. To grow and learn, we need to soak in the chaos without completely destroying our living system. We all know how important habits and routines are for our mental and physical health, and millions of books have been sold on those topics. But the reality is that these keystones often fly out of the window when we find ourselves trying to navigate the sea of chaos. Instead, choose one — and one only — anchor ritual, such as journaling, gardening, dancing in your living room, consciously breathing and stretching, doing a few pushups, drawing or coloring, sending a voice note of gratitude to a friend, etc. Chaos can be anxiety-inducing. Acting as a life buoy in times of uncertainty, your anchor ritual needs to be simple, enjoyable, and practical, so you can turn to it anywhere and anytime you feel overwhelmed. 3. Practice metacognition. In a fact-changing environment, your initial pact may quickly become obsolete, whether it’s because of a contextual change, or because your own aspirations have evolved. But you won’t realize it if you’re not actively paying attention. Put simply, metacognition is thinking about thinking. Instead of blindly repeating the same behavior day after day, take time to reflect on what’s working, what could be improved, and what you want to do next. By observing and reflecting on your thoughts, you will become more adaptable to chaos, ensuring that you adapt your actions to the currents around you. And remember that while a pact can be amended to adapt to a new context or new goals, entirely abandoning your pact is also a valid decision. Experimentation and mutation are the only actions to stick to when surfing the edge of chaos. 4. Don’t do it alone. As Pascale, Milleman, and Gioja explain in their book: “Self-organization arises from networks that are fueled by nodes and connections.” In a collaborative setting, everyone contributes to the creation of new nodes and the addition of new connections between existing nodes, leading to new ideas and new bridges across islands of knowledge. That’s why it’s especially important in chaotic times to learn in public, ask questions, connect with people outside of your circle of competence, collect feedback, practice networked thinking, and share your discoveries with the world. Not only will this improve your chances of success and make the journey more enjoyable, but you will also make friends along the way. In the sea of chaos, your pact is your rudder and metacognition is your captain’s log. Your anchor ritual offers one pillar of certainty in the middle of turmoil, a haven of calm to turn to when fear and anxiety threaten to overpower your curiosity. While some lone sailors may survive the storm, you are much more likely to thrive if you join forces with others. That’s what chaos surfing is all about: make a pact, create an anchor ritual, practice metacognition, and don’t do it all alone. Not only will you survive, but you will thrive. The post Chaos surfing: from surviving to thriving in chaotic times appeared first on Ness Labs.

Many of us would like to have more time to read, but life can get in the way of picking up a book. You will find plenty of well-meaning advice online, such as “remove all social media apps from your phone”, “don’t watch TV in the evening”, but the recommendations are often unrealistic. So what are strategies that actually work to make more time to read? Living a thousand lives Even those who love reading can find it difficult to make time for books. The compelling nature of scrolling through our feeds can see a whole evening disappear without ever opening a book. Which is fine, since reading is all about spending a relaxing moment — right? Not quite. Beyond the pleasure of entertainment, reading has many other benefits that have been backed up by science. For example, just six minutes of reading silently could reduce your stress levels by more than two thirds, and a study found that depressed patients who attended reading groups for 12 months showed significant mental health improvements. The mental stimulation of reading can even improve your memory and slow the progress of dementia. In a six-month study of those with Alzheimer’s, scientists observed “restoration of communication and independence” in those who took part in reading and maths tasks. Furthermore, reading is a proven method of learning new words and can enhance your analytical skills. Of all genres, reading classic fiction and contemporary literary fiction leads to the greatest gains in vocabulary. When immersed in a story, probing the plot strengthens critical thinking skills. These skills can then be applied to other areas of your life including personal and professional dilemmas. In A Dance with Dragons, author George R.R. Martin wrote: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once.” Indeed, researchers David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano highlight that reading literary fiction expands our understanding of others’ beliefs and desires, as well as the recognition that these views may greatly differ from our own. And it doesn’t stop there. In 2013, researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Brisbane, Australia, explored the relationship between reading ability and creativity. Their results showed that higher scores in reading were matched by greater individual creativity. Reading ability may therefore also facilitate creative thinking. Now, a word of caution. With all this evidence supporting the advantages of reading, you might think that speed reading could be an effective way to reap the benefits of reading despite your limited free time.  However, speed reading limits your comprehension of the novel, reducing the accuracy of what you read and hindering how much you retain of the story. Speed reading might seem like a good short-cut, but it does not offer the same benefits as reading at your natural pace. Let’s have a look at slower but more effective approaches. Start with self-reflection Before you can make time to read, you need to understand why you want to read more. Perhaps you are keen to support your memory, enhance your vocabulary, or support your critical thinking skills through an enjoyable activity. Or, if you’re going through a stressful period, you may want to read as a way to unwind. One of the easiest ways to reflect on your reading motivations is to answer the following three questions, for example in your journal: What are your reading goals? Consider what you want to get out of reading. You may be trying to learn about a new business idea or a different way to manage a project, or you might want to educate yourself on a particular topic. Alternatively, you may want to read purely for entertainment or relaxation. In some cases, you are likely to read for both knowledge and entertainment, for example by reading historical literature or a memoir. What would you like to read? Different types of books will create a different reading experience. If you already read technical manuals to support your business, could you also benefit from the stress-relieving benefits of reading fiction for pleasure in the evening? Alternatively, you might want to pick up non-fiction books in tangential areas such as personal productivity. What hinders your reading? Write down all of the barriers that stop you reading as much as you would like to. This might include playing video games, managing childcare, feeling stressed or fatigued, or facing regular interruptions that make it difficult to settle into a book. It could also be as simple as not having a quiet space conducive to reading. Take your time to answer these three questions as truthfully as possible. We sometimes fall prey to reading books only based on external motivation — for a work project or to impress a colleague — but the goal of this exercise is to uncover the intrinsic source of your motivation, and the obstacles that stand in the way of reading more. Practical strategies to read more Once you have reflected on why you want to read more, you can implement some simple strategies to ensure you reserve enough time to enjoy reading and its benefits. 1. Stick to physical books or an e-reader. Although it might be tempting to use your phone for reading, physical books or a dedicated e-reader will help you avoid digital distractions and temptations. 2. Schedule regular times for reading. These will need to suit your lifestyle and daily routine, but could include reading when you first wake up or before you go to sleep, before or after dinner or on a weekend morning. 3. Design a reading ritual. This is optional, but can help you more easily switch into reading more. For example, you might always sit in your favourite “reading chair”, light a candle, or prepare a fresh coffee before you pick your book up. 4. Carry a book with you. Carrying a book with you at all times could significantly increase the time you have available for reading. If you get stuck in traffic while on public transport, or are waiting for an appointment that starts late, this time that might otherwise have been wasted scrolling on social media can instead be used for reading. 5. Create accountability. You are likely to increase the time you dedicate to reading by creating some form of accountability. Find a reading buddy or join a book club, and commit to reading regularly so that you can take part in organised discussions. You can also create an “anti book club”, where everyone reads whatever they want and shares what they learned with the others. This can be a powerful approach, as you’re more likely to read if you follow your curiosity. Rather than forcing yourself to read the things you feel you “ought” to read, pick up something you truly want to read. If you’re invested in the story and looking forward to the next chapter, you’re far more likely to make time for reading than if it feels like a chore. Reading is proven to be beneficial in multiple ways, from acquiring vocabulary, to enhancing creativity, and even to slowing the progress of dementia. However, with competing priorities, it can be difficult to find time for books. To make time for, enjoy, and reap the benefits of reading, you first need to reflect on your relationship with reading and how you might like this to change. Then, apply some simple strategies to help you regularly sit down to read and immerse yourself in your book. The post How to make more time to read appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our interview series, where we talk to founders on a mission to help us think better without sacrificing our mental health. Brad Wolverton is the Director of Content at The Hustle, one of the fastest-growing newsletters in the world, read by millions of ambitious professionals and innovators. In this interview, we talked about the power of authentic storytelling, how to engage an audience on different levels, how to blend information and entertainment, and more. Enjoy the read! Hi Brad, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. More than 2 million people subscribe to The Hustle. In an online world dominated by social media, how do you explain the popularity of your newsletter? I think the popularity of The Hustle newsletter comes down to two things: our focus on quality content, and our commitment to delivering that content in a fun, punchy way. Our editorial approach dictates that we only cover the top business and tech stories of the day. We don’t publish anything that isn’t newsworthy, and we only share content that we think is worth your time. But we also try to add a little bit of humor and personality to each email, so it’s not just another dry news update. This approach has earned us a lot of trust from our readers. That combination has been really successful in attracting a large, engaged audience. What can readers expect when they subscribe to The Hustle? Every morning, you can expect to find a mix of news, analysis, and original reporting, all delivered in a concise and easily digestible format. We know our reader’s time is precious, which is why we’ll never waste yours with clickbait or fluff. Instead, we focus on bringing our readers the weirdest, wildest, newest stories in business, money, and tech – what to learn from them, and how to capitalize on them. What do you think makes The Hustle different from other newsletters? What sets The Hustle apart from other newsletters is our approach to storytelling. We believe that business and tech news doesn’t have to be boring, so we add a little bit of humor and personality to each email. Rather than just regurgitating the day’s news, our editorial team keeps a constant pulse on everything going on in business and tech to deliver stories that you won’t find elsewhere. Our blend of information, entertainment and authenticity is what keeps our reader’s coming back for more each day. Is there anything else about The Hustle that you’re particularly proud of? There are a few things that I’m really proud of when it comes to The Hustle. First and foremost, our team’s ability to consistently produce quality content that engages our audience on different levels.  We’re always looking for new ways to connect with our readers, by experimenting with new formats and content including the addition of two new podcasts, The Hustle Daily Show and My First Million. I’m also proud of the community we’ve built around The Hustle. We have an incredibly engaged and passionate audience, and I think that’s a testament to the audience-centered approach we take in everything we do. What kind of people read The Hustle? The Hustle’s readership is composed of ambitious professionals and innovators who want to stay up-to-date on the latest in tech and business.  The Hustle provides an invaluable resource for these readers, delivering cutting-edge information and insights that help them stay ahead of the curve. And finally… What’s next for The Hustle? The Hustle is always exploring new ways to engage with our readers. Our new podcast, The Hustle Daily Show, is a great way to connect with our audience and share the latest news and trends in business and entrepreneurship. We’re also working on new content and features, so stay tuned! Thank you for your time, Brad. Where can people learn more about The Hustle? Thank you! You can sign up to the newsletter on our website, and receive our latest updates on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. The post Stay in the know and discover your next big idea with The Hustle appeared first on Ness Labs.

We have all experienced serendipitous moments in life, the unexpected discoveries or fortunate occurrences that happen by chance. Serendipity occurs when you stumble upon a first edition novel by your favorite author at a car boot sale, or bump into an old friend who you then realize could become the fantastic business partner you’ve been looking for. However, there are many times when we will also experience the opposite manifestation of serendipity: zemblanity. Zemblanity is an unlucky discovery that occurs by design. By understanding such unpleasant, but predictable events, it becomes possible to manage their incidences. Serendipity versus zemblanity Many of the greatest inventions have occurred as a result of serendipitous circumstances. Scientist Percy Spencer invented the microwave after noticing that a candy bar in his pocket melted when he stood next to an electromagnetic wave generator. In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming went on holiday but left out a petri dish containing staphylococcus bacteria. On his return, he saw that penicillium mold had developed on the dish. Most importantly, there was a clear ring free from staphylococcus around each area of the mold. This led to the discovery of penicillin, the first true antibiotic.  Even children can make serendipitous discoveries. In 1905, soft drinks made by stirring powder into soda water were popular. Aged 11, Frank Epperson mistakenly left his soft drink outside on the porch with a stirring stick still in the cup. As a result of cold overnight temperatures, the following morning Epperson found he had created what we now call a popsicle. The word serendipity is derived from Serendip, the old name for Sri Lanka, a lush, tropical island in the Indian Ocean. Serendipity’s antonym, zemblanity, was first coined by Scottish author William Boyd in his 1998 novel Armadillo. Zemblanity takes its origins from Nova Zembla, an archipelago of Arctic islands that was once the site of Russian nuclear testing, strongly contrasting the beautiful Serendip.  Whereas serendipity describes a pleasant surprise or unexpected discovery, zemblanity depicts an unlucky, but predictable discovery. In both etymology and meaning, zemblanity and serendipity are polar opposites. The strange case of organizational zemblanity We will all experience zemblanity throughout life. Some events are impossible to stop or prevent, despite being predictable. For example, learning that your grandmother has died is an inexorable, yet still unlucky, discovery. Zemblanity occurs not only in our personal lives, but in a professional capacity, too. It can be particularly destructive if it strikes on an organizational level in the workplace. As zemblanity describes an anticipated but unwanted outcome, it can be hard to imagine why actions that are predictably destructive might be exercised in an organization. However, it is not uncommon for poor decisions to be made despite knowing that they will bring an unfortunate outcome. In 2019, psychologist Professor Antony J.W. Taylor found that, despite it being hard to imagine researchers having destructive intentions, there are incidences in which it is clear that damage will be caused, but the act is carried out regardless. In 2009, a technician working in the Antarctic deliberately damaged laboratory equipment by driving a truck into it. It was found that the technician was working under extreme conditions and, despite knowing he might face repercussions, damaged the equipment in an attempt to preserve his sanity. Other forms of sabotage have occurred within research teams for financial, political, or personal reasons. Researchers Luca Giustiniano, Miguel Pina e Cunha and Stewart Clegg showed that, despite systems being in place to reduce risk, individuals within an organization can still create their own misfortune while putting others at risk. The 2012 Costa Concordia disaster is a tragic example of a vicious cycle of poor decision making that led to 34 deaths. After sailing too close to the shore, the Costa Concordia struck rocks before partially sinking. What happened, exactly? The captain had taken the ship off course to salute the Isola del Giglio. Rather than issuing an order to abandon ship upon hitting rocks, the captain instead lied to passengers and the coastguard. While the captain made disastrous decisions, the crew had such belief in the hierarchy of the ship that they followed his orders despite knowing that his actions would result in catastrophe. In this case, organizational zemblanity occurred with both the reckless choices of the captain, and the crew’s failure to refuse to obey him. Many data scientists believe that the analysis of large data sets can lead to serendipitous discoveries. However, researcher Ricardo Peraça Cavassane argues that by feeding large volumes of information into a data set or model, “zemblanitous findings” will occur as a result of linear causality. The interaction of factors means that the outcome is predictable, and can therefore be identified beforehand. For example, in public and private security, biases will necessarily occur when linearly combining crime data. A vicious cycle occurs in which higher crime levels are expected in impoverished neighborhoods with minority ethnic groups. The police presence here increases accordingly, leading to a greater proportion of crimes being detected. Because complex societal dynamics aren’t taken into account, the discovery of crimes becomes inexorable. Zemblanity affects not only public and private organizations, but individuals as well. You may regularly provide personal data for online shopping, to enroll on professional courses, or to get an insurance quote. The more data you part with, and the less secure it is, the greater your chance of being involved in a data breach or leak. Despite this, many of us continue to freely give away personal information, hoping that it will never be us who is hacked — effectively building our own zemblanity machine. How to deal with zemblanity As instances of zemblanity can, by their nature, be predicted, there are ways to manage them. Here are three practical strategies you can implement to deal with zemblanity: Learn to accept zemblanity. Sometimes, unlucky or unwanted outcomes are inexorable. We will all experience loss, death, unhappiness or dissatisfaction that could not have been avoided. At these times, it is vital to have the right systems in place to take care of your mental health and manage the aftermath. This might involve getting help from friends or family, seeking counseling, or finding ways to turn adversity into advantage by supporting your personal growth through the challenge.  Practice self-reflection. Using a journal to reflect on the situation will help you to become more aware of when unlucky outcomes are created by design. Your reflection should also involve consideration of whether the outcome occurred because of your own actions, the behavior of those around you, or a combination of the two. It’s also helpful to consider whether there is evidence of professional or personal self-sabotage, as learning to manage this will help to avoid preventable, unwanted events. Write a post-mortem. When you identify an instance of organizational zemblanity, create a post-mortem to examine what happened, and which signs you should have been aware of, and share it with your team. Increasing your professional awareness of the precursors to organizational zemblanity will help you to mitigate the worst consequences in the future. Zemblanity is the opposite of serendipity, meaning that it is an unlucky or unwanted, but predictable, event. Although it might be difficult to imagine someone behaving in a manner that could be predicted to cause harm, zemblanity can occur as a result of complex human and organizational factors. In an organization, zemblanity can lead to particularly unfortunate outcomes that can have detrimental impact on employees, their clients, and the wider public. By learning to accept that zemblanity will occur, and by practicing self-reflection and critically reviewing instances of zemblanity, you can better manage similar situations in the future. The post Zemblanity: the inexorability of unfortunate discoveries appeared first on Ness Labs.

New Things Under the Sun is a living literature review; as the state of the academic literature evolves, so do we. This post highlights some recent updates. Thanks for reading What's New Under the Sun! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. Same Data, Same Question, Different Answers The post “One question, many answers” looked at the “many analyst” literature, wherein a bunch of different researchers and research teams independently try to answer the same set of questions, using the exact same dataset. Surprisingly, it’s not at all uncommon for different teams to arrive at different conclusions. I’ve added to this post another recent paper, Menkveld et al. (2021): Finally, Menkveld et al. (2021) wrangles 164 teams of economists to test six different hypotheses about financial markets using a big dataset of European trading data. Testing these hypotheses required participants to define and build their own measures and indices, and to see if they have increased or decreased over time. As should be no surprise by now, the teams came up with an enormous range of estimates. For example, on one hypotheses - how has the share of client volume in total volume changed - 4% of teams found it had increased, 46% found it had declined, and 50% found no statistically significant change over time. The updated post integrates discussion of Menkveld et al. (2021) throughout, where it echoes the findings of other papers in this genre, for example, in its finding that the dispersion of expertise does not seem to account for much of the dispersion in results. Instead, the post argues this difference stems from some of the inadequacies in our “methodological technology.” There are many different points at which researchers can make different, defensible, research choices, and those difference add up. One place researchers can make different decisions is at step one: what counts as evidence that answers the stated research question? Another recent paper - Ausburg and Brüderl (2021) - suggests such differences were an important factor in the difference outcomes found in one the most famous of these studies, Silberzahn et al. (2018). Ausburg and Brüderl (2021) provides some interesting detail on what drove different answers in [Silberzahn et al. (2018)], by digging back into the original study’s records. After analyzing each team’s submitted reports, Ausburg and Brüderl argue that the 29 teams were actually trying to answer (broadly) four different questions. Recall [Silberzahn et al. (2018)’s] research prompt was “are soccer players with dark skin tone more likely than those with light skin tone to receive red cards from referees?” Ausburg and Brüderl argue some interpreted this quite literally, and sought to compute the simple average difference in the risk of red cards among dark- and light-skinned players, with no effort to adjust for any other systematic differences between the players. Others thought this was a question specifically about racial bias. For them, the relevant hypothetical was the average difference in risk of a red card among two players who were identical except for their skin tone. Yet others interpreted the question as asking “if we are trying to predict the risk of red cards, does skin tone show up as one of the most important factors?” And still others thought of the whole project as being about maximizing the methodological diversity used to tackle a question, and saw their role as trying out novel and unusual methodologies, rather than whatever approach they thought most likely to arrive at the right answer! Menkveld and coauthors’ paper on financial markets provide some other evidence that tighter bounds on what counts as evidence can reduce, though not eliminate, the dispersion of answers. Recall this paper asked researchers to answer six different hypotheses. Some of these hypotheses were relatively ambiguous, such as “how has market efficiency changed over time?” leaving it to researchers define and implement a measure of market efficiency. Other hypotheses permitted much less scope for judgment, such as “how has the share of client volume in total volume changed?” The dispersion of answers for the more tightly defined questions was much narrower than for the more nebulous questions. The updated post also discusses some promising evidence that when teams are allowed to discuss each other’s results and offer feedback, this can substantially reduce the dispersion in their results. Read the whole thing More Evidence Publication Bias is Real The many analysts literature is worrying enough, but publication bias compounds the problem it identifies. Publication bias is when the probability a result gets published is dependent on the result identified. In general, we worry that there is a preference for novel results that identify some new statistical relationship, as opposed to results that find no statistically significant correlation between variables. This can create a biased picture of the evidence, because if so-called “null results” are not publishable, a review of the literature will seem to find unanimous evidence for some statistical relationship. The post “Publication bias is real” reviews various lines of evidence on the existence of publication bias and its magnitude. I’ve added to this post a new short section on experimental papers. As a first step, let’s consider some papers that use experiments to explicitly see whether reviewers treat papers differently, depending on the results. In each of these papers, reviewers receive descriptions of papers (or actual papers) that are basically identical, except for the results. For one random set of reviewers, the papers (or descriptions of papers) obtain statistically significant results; in the other, these results are changed to be statistically insignificant. But as much as possible, what the reviewers see is otherwise unchanged. The papers then compare the recommendations and ratings of the two groups of reviewers to see if the non-significant results are rated more poorly or given lower recommendations than the significant ones. We have three papers from different fields. Emerson et al. (2010) has 110 actual reviewers of papers of orthopedic journals do a standard peer review of one of two different fictitious papers, each of which are identical but for the results. Berinsky et al. (2021) email short descriptive vignettes of research papers to all faculty in US political science departments that grant PhDs and have respondents fill out surveys about these vignettes, getting about 1,000 responses. Similarly, Chopra et al. (2022) get responses on short descriptive vignettes of economics papers from about 500 responses from economists at top 200 departments. These studies varied a bit in exactly how they measured support for publication and what other dimensions they studied, but in all cases reviewers believed papers with statistically significant results were better candidates for publication. The figure below tracks, in dark blue, the probability a given reviewer would support publication among the reviewers who saw a statistically significant finding, while light blue illustrates the same for reviewers who saw a statistically insignificant result of an otherwise identical paper. Orthopedics data from Table 1 of Emerson et al. (2010). Political science data from in text description of Figure 3 of Berinsky et al. (2021). Economics data computed from in text description of Table 3 of Chopra et al. (2022). To emphasize - the only difference in the papers or paper vignettes that respondents read in the above figure was whether the result was described as statistically significant or not. Holding everything else fixed - the research question, the methodology, the quality of the writing, the sample size, etc - reviewers were less likely to recommend the versions of the papers that found non-significant results be published. The rest of the post looks at other evidence that takes a variety of complementary approaches. Read the whole thing Weaker Methods → Worse Bias? Finally, the post “Why is publication bias worse in some disciplines than others?” seeks to get some answers about why we have publication bias, and more specifically, why some fields seem to have it worse than others. This is a subject where the experimental literature discussed above has been really clarifying I think. I have largely rewritten a discussion of possible reasons for why publication bias might vary across fields: Suppose the root cause of publication bias is that journals want to highlight notable research, in order to be relevant to their readership. There are at least two different ways this can lead to publication bias, depending on what journals view as “notable” research. First, it might be that journals consider surprising results to be the most notable. After all, if we’re not surprised by research, doesn’t that imply we already sort-of knew the result? And what would be the point of that? But this leads to publication bias if results that challenge the prevailing wisdom are easier to publish than results that support it. In aggregate the weight of evidence is distorted because we do not observe the bulk of the boring evidence that just supports the conventional wisdom. This could lead to variation in publication bias across fields if fields vary in the breadth of what is considered surprising. For example, we could imagine one field that is very theoretically contested, with different theories making very different predictions. In that field, perhaps everything is surprising in light of some theory and so most results are publishable. In this field, we might not observe much evidence of publication bias. In another field (social science?), perhaps there is an unstated assumption that most hypotheses are false and so null results are perceived as boring and hence difficult to publish. In this field, we would observe a lot of evidence of pu...

Welcome to this edition of our interview series, where we talk to founders on a mission to help us achieve our creative ambitions without sacrificing our mental health. Sid Yadav is the co-founder of Circle, the all-in-one community platform for creators, which brings together engaging discussions, members, live streams, chat, events, memberships, and online courses all in one place. Circle is a fantastic tool to connect people together, foster collective intelligence, and build learning communities. This is the platform we have been using from day one for the Ness Labs community. In this interview, we talked about the challenge with building meaningful online relationships, how to design engagement-driven experiences, why communities need to be cross-medium, jungle-gym versus ladder communities, and much more. Enjoy the read! Hi Sid, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. There are so many ways to connect with other people online, and yet it’s hard to build meaningful relationships. Why do you think we need more thoughtful communities? First — I want to mention that I’m a big fan of Ness Labs and the work you do! Internet forums have had a special place on the Internet since the earliest days. I remember getting into websites and programming through a forum called WebmasterWorld. Learning about servers, HTML/CSS, and SEO used to be so fun — and it was surreal to meet people from all over the world as you got to do it. As we evolved into the world of social media, I think the web lost something for everything else that it gained. As you mentioned, it’s become tricky to build meaningful relationships online. The social media environment prefers quantity over quality and soundbites over depth, which leads to connections that are typically surface-level and ephemeral. I’d love for there to be many more thoughtful communities on the web. The world needs more Ness Labs’! I feel like more people should get to know each other on the basis of shared interests and experiences; not because an algorithm wants a particular type of content to succeed. What inspired you to build Circle? I’ve been actively building tools in the creator space since 2014, when I was on the founding team of an online course platform called Teachable. When we first launched Teachable, we didn’t refer to our customers as “creators”, and it felt like we were on the cutting edge of empowering all these independent entrepreneurs to transform their knowledge into meaningful income. After my stint at Teachable for 5 years, I re-grouped with my co-founders (both ex-Teachable) and we got thinking about what the next evolution of the creator and community ecosystem looks like. We thought about the disconnect there is between content-focused products like online courses, and engagement-focused experiences like a community. It slowly became apparent for us that human connections — engagement — is what it’s all about. It’s what a creator needs to unlock to have a sustainable and long-lasting business online. That said, when we looked around us at some of the popular products for creators, we saw a lack of focus on the engagement aspect of building and monetizing your digital product. It eventually felt to us like a calling: we were uniquely poised given our experiences building and marketing products in this ecosystem to build the next evolution of what a community platform — and the next creator platform! — looks like. And what makes Circle different? To reiterate my point above, engagement-driven experiences are what make Circle unique. We’re big on our belief that we build an all-in-one platform for communities and give community builders the building blocks they need to make their vision come to life. This means a few things, but primarily — it’s about blending asynchronous and synchronous paradigms; both of which are necessary to build a thriving community online. It means building a platform which is as good for asynchronous discussions as it is for live events and chat. And then on top of that, one which helps creators make money from the experiences they empower. On a technical level, this means we need our software to be “better than most” at a wide variety of things: conversations, events, chat, payments, and so on. We also need it to be extensible and non-opinionated — which is why we’re big on the idea of giving our customers “building blocks” with their community spaces, as opposed to telling them exactly what to do. We’re about empowering their vision to bring their own digital experience to life. But it’s challenging to recreate the same dynamics in online communities as in face-to-face communities. Yes, totally. We experience this internally as a remote international company. While we love working together online, we realized after our first offsite that it’s pretty important we meet in person every six months or so. It’s just a completely different experience — one which the remote toolkit cannot replicate. Communities are similar in that regard. For there to be a wholeness of belonging and connection, a thriving community ideally needs to be cross-medium: slow async conversations, weekly or monthly virtual rituals, in-person meetups, 1-1 DMs, learning about each other through the member directory and profiles — it’s all a part of the toolbelt! More tangibly, you can use our events feature to create and collect RSVPs for in-person events. Is there a feature you’re particularly proud of? The feature I’m most proud of is our baseline paradigm: when we started Circle, we didn’t see any platform with the concept of what we now call spaces and space groups. There were Slack channels, but those were limited to chat. So, we had to come up with a way to allow communities to structure their engagement areas across paradigms (posts, chat, events, courses). We put a lot of thought into the product details of what a space would enable and how it would work with different types of spaces, permissioning, nesting, notifications, and so on. It’s one of those rare instances where most of our hunches have panned out — spaces allow structure to be both flexible and feature-rich while keeping the UI paradigm simple and digestible. Over time, we’ve also made it so that you can create paywalls inside Circle to get a space or set of spaces with subscriptions, one-time payments, free trials, coupons, and upsells. I love the idea that a community should be a jungle-gym and not a ladder. We want to empower creators to build layered digital experiences on top of one and another instead of continuing to “sell products” to their audience.  One thing online creators often complain about is how hard it is to juggle lots of different tools. How does Circle address this problem? We try to solve this in two ways. Firstly, we’re trying to build an all-in-one platform at its core, so we want to actually reduce the number of tools you need if you’re using Circle. For example, with the launch of event spaces on Circle, you no longer need a separate platform for events. With chat spaces, you don’t have to use Slack or Discord on top of Circle unless you really want to. With live streaming (and soon live rooms), you won’t need to use Zoom for your live events. And the thing I’m most excited about — this is a bit of a teaser — is that we’re launching full-fledged online courses with Circle, so the idea is to prevent the need for a separate learning management system (LMS) platform. I know it’s a lot! But we really believe the future community platform involves integrating multiple use-cases inside the community, instead of cobbling together a bunch of different products. Second, we’re also pretty open to integrations and have been from day one. Circle was the first community platform to offer Single Sign-On integrations, and we launched with five different providers. We offered an embed widget from day one, so you can embed Circle on your own website. If you do have to use other platforms in conjunction with Circle, we’d like for that to be as painless as possible. What kind of people are building communities with Circle? I’ve seen a huge variety of communities — the long tail is pretty crazy whenever we look at the day. We’ve been very well adopted by content creators, online coaches, educators, bloggers, startups, and even VC firms. Really, it’s a great product for any creator or brand with an existing audience they’re looking to engage and (potentially) monetize more deeply. How do you recommend someone get started with Circle? I suggest signing up for a trial and playing around with the product, and checking out some of the communities on our showcase page for inspiration. I also would think deeply about what you want to get out of a community platform like Circle. What are the possibilities we enable?  Once you dig into the product, the actions within the product are actually pretty simple: structure your spaces, invite your members, create ways for them to engage via prompts, start hosting some events, start customizing your weekly newsletter, and so on. That said, we believe in letting your goals drive your usage of the product instead of anyone (including us!) telling you exactly what to do. What about you… How do you personally use Circle? We run the Circle Community on Circle! For me as a founder, our community is really my go-to place for the sentiment of our customers, product feedback, and inspiration. So much of what happens in our community guides the way we build the product as a whole. My favorite use of our customer community is for all the customer betas we run. When we launch a big new feature, we open up a private space for all the beta testers and let them have at it with product feedback. We find that this keeps things very transparent between our customers and our team members — our engineers are often in there looking at every piece of feedback and responding to customers directly. The feedback loop is re...

Although we think we are fully aware and in control of our everyday decisions, we actually often follow a series of cognitive scripts. These cognitive scripts often develop in childhood and are personal to you. However, as they are commonly based on a sequence of events that we expect to occur in given situations, many scripts will follow a common theme. For example, when meeting someone new, we know we are expected to give our name, ask the individual about themselves, partake in some small talk, and then move onto deeper topics. Although cognitive scripts can save time and reduce the mental effort of deciding how to behave, they can also negatively affect our decision-making and productivity. How we automate decisions with cognitive scripts Cognitive scripts are based on the semantic memory, or the knowledge we acquire throughout our lives. Semantic memory develops when we experience events in the everyday world, such as how to travel by public transport or the steps involved in eating in a restaurant. We organise our experiences into cognitive scripts that are personal to us, and these scripts may vary depending on our perception of a situation and the cultures we identify with. In the 1970s, Roger Schank and Robert Abelson formulated the Cognitive Script Theory. They showed that through our own experiences, and by observing how others behave, we store the cognitive scripts in our memory and then retrieve those scripts when required to guide our behaviour. A seminal study conducted in 1979 by Gordon Bower, John Black and Terrence Turner showed that cognitive scripts prompt the recall and recognition of things we already know. Participants were asked to describe the components of a particular “scene”, such as going to the dentist. Participants largely agreed on the components of those scenes, mentioning similar characters, props, and actions, as well as the order in which these actions should occur. Because of our semantic memory of the common cognitive scripts in our lives, it is easy to recognise and recall these experiences, so we can predict similar ones in the future. Cognitive scripts have been found to control our social behaviour to a certain extent. Learning by social observation and then storing cognitive scripts gives us an indication of what we can expect and what is expected of us in a certain situation. We build an internal catalogue of scripts so that we recognise how to behave in a diverse range of situations including at business meetings, when socialising, or even during a funeral. Having inbuilt cognitive script means you can quickly interpret and understand the world around you. This allows for faster decision making, as there is no need to analyse every situation individually. When eating in a restaurant, for example, you don’t have to make complex decisions because you already know the sequence of events and have a clear picture of your role as a customer. Subconsciously referring to a cognitive script therefore saves both time and energy in everyday life. But this everyday convenience comes at a cost. When cognitive scripts might be unhelpful Although cognitive scripts can speed up decision making, they’re not always helpful. The automated response when recognising a situation based on our previous experience means that we may act without truly thinking about our decisions, the background behind them, nor the consequences they may have. Many of us exhibit patterns of behaviour that are a throwback to the behaviours formed as children in our family unit, or because of behaviours lived out in our current social environment. For example, following a turbulent childhood, you may now hold the belief that people will always leave you. This may lead you to avoid building deep relationships in adulthood for fear that this will only lead to abandonment. Bringing these cognitive scripts from childhood into your current personal or professional relationships may therefore unnecessarily limit the connections you make as an adult.  Even when cognitive scripts become unproductive or unhealthy, it can be difficult to break this automated way of acting. If your cognitive scripts include painful experiences of failure, you may avoid competitive workplace situations including applying for promotions or leading complex projects. The negative self-talk of this cognitive script will prevent you from striving as you repeat the same automated behaviours over and over. It can also be difficult to stray from a cognitive script if you fear that you will lose your personal identity as a result. If you identify as a successful business leader, but the impact of working long hours and managing intense stress is making you miserable, it may be in your best interest to make a change. However, the thought of losing your identity can make you cling to this unhealthy, but ingrained, cognitive script. Fortunately, it is possible to overwrite unhelpful cognitive scripts to improve your productivity and decision-making processes. Overwriting unhelpful cognitive scripts Because they are based on many experiences stored in our semantic memory, cognitive scripts are deep-rooted and challenging to modify. However, a few simple strategies can help you question your cognitive scripts and start overwriting the most unhelpful ones. Make time to journal. By journaling, you can take note of recurring scripts and the consequences they have. If you have the chance to set up a new business, but your initial response is to reject the opportunity, identify the script you’re automatically following. Practice fear setting to list the pros and cons of this new venture to ascertain whether you’re consciously making a decision that’s right for you, or if you are following a cognitive script that’s outdated or unhealthy. Update scripts that fail you. Some scripts will only work at certain times in our lives before we outgrow them. If you experienced rejection as a child, and now keep others at arm’s length as an adult, this cognitive script that once protected you may no longer be needed and could in fact be failing you. Update your cognitive script to start developing healthy relationships with those around you, for example by using self-affirmations to remind yourself that you can be a good friend, partner or colleague. Inject randomness and measured risk. Going off script and taking risks may lead to surprising results. If you’ve always wanted to set up your own business, learn to fly a plane, or move to a new country, but have never taken action, it could be a good sign that a cognitive script is limiting your willingness to take risks. You can overwrite that script by experimenting with challenges outside of your perceived circle of competence, which will help you unlock new opportunities. Cognitive scripts save time and energy by telling us how we should behave or act in certain situations, based on our prior experiences or social observations. However, these scripts can also be unhelpful if they stunt our growth, or lead to behaviours that are no longer healthy for us as individuals. That’s why, while not all cognitive scripts are bad, it’s important to remain aware of them so that you can apply critical thinking to consider a script with intentionality. In this way, you can ensure the script is still benefiting you. Despite following these steps, you may at first find it difficult to get rid of unhelpful cognitive scripts because they feel intrinsically tied to your identity. Changing the script will also take you out of your comfort zone. By regularly journaling, updating outdated or unhealthy scripts, and taking measured risks, it is possible to overwrite unhelpful cognitive scripts to promote healthy, productive behaviours. The post How to overwrite your cognitive scripts appeared first on Ness Labs.

Blank page syndrome, writer’s block—call it whatever you want, most creators have once faced this overwhelming lack of inspiration. If you do experience writer’s block from time to time, the best reaction is to go do something else: going for a walk, journaling, talking it out with a friend. Better yet, though, is to avoid writer’s block together by not relying on flimsy, unpredictable inspiration. Instead, use idea sex to programme your creativity. Waiting for your muse How do creators find ideas to write about? Poets, artists, and authors alike have been wondering about the source of our inspiration for millennia. In ancient Greek mythology, the Muses are the nine sister goddesses presiding over literature and the arts. These goddesses were considered the source of the inspiration embodied in the songs and poetry related first orally, then in written form, across the centuries. Since then, the word “muse” has been used to describe a mythical entity which inspires musicians, artists, and writers. The Myth of the Muse Many poets despaired when their muse did not visit them, and some artists even relied on external help to force their inspiration. For instance, the link between opium and Romanticism is so strong it has its own Wikipedia page. M. H. Abrams, a literary critic known for his work on Romanticism, explains how a poet from this era “utilised the imagery from these dreams in his literary creations, and sometimes, under the direct inspiration of opium, achieved his best writing.” While we have fortunately moved away from using such dangerous drugs to force our inspiration, the idea that creativity is something uncontrollable you either experience or not—that a sort of elusive muse may visit us to whisper ideas in our ear—is still prevalent among creators. But inspiration can, in fact, be programmed so you can generate ideas on demand. “I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” Frida Kahlo Idea sex for active idea generation Idea sex is the process through which ideas “mate” to produce new ideas. While the process itself is nothing new, it is unclear who first used the term. Science writer Matt Ridley gave a TED talk about the concept of idea sex in 2010. The term “idea sex” was then made popular by entrepreneur James Altucher. Since then, it’s been used extensively by many authors to describe combinational creativity. So what’s the difference between inspiration and idea sex? Inspiration is passive: you wait for it to happen to you. It’s unpredictable: you can’t just experience it on demand. And finally, using inspiration as your main source of new ideas is stressful: if you need to write something and you don’t feel inspired, there is not much you can do about it except take a break and go for a walk. Idea sex, on the other hand, is active: you can proactively decide to combine two or more ideas and to see what interesting new idea may come out of the experiment. It’s programmable: if you create a sustainable system for yourself to combine ideas together, you will be able to create new ideas on demand. And it’s mindful: instead of forcing yourself to stare at a blank page until your muse pays you a visit, it’s about looking through your network of ideas to find a trail to explore. Inspiration Idea Sex Passive Unpredictable Stressful Active Programmable Mindful Idea sex for sustainable creativity In order for two ideas to have sex, they need to stay in the same room for long enough. This is why taking smart notes is core to idea sex. Instead of waiting for inspiration until you sit down in front of your computer to write a piece of content, incorporate idea sex into your creative process. Be selective when saving ideas. Before adding something to your note-taking app, ask yourself: does this idea connect to any other idea that’s already in the system? If yes, make sure to connect the two ideas together through an internal link. If no immediate link comes to mind, spend a couple of minutes trying to find a connection. If really nothing comes to mind, it may not be useful to make a note of that idea, as there will be no trail of thought which will bring you back to it in the future. Proactively connect ideas together. Block time for mind gardening. Go back to some recent ideas you saved in your note-taking system and try to find new connections. Use networked thinking such as mind maps and concept maps to think your way through these potential connections, and progressively build a mental atlas. Let your ideas evolve. Ideas are not set in stone. If connecting two ideas together makes you realise an idea you wrote about in the past feels outdated, create a new version. Some people like to “fork” the idea to keep a trail of their thoughts, others just edit their old ideas to update them. There is no right or wrong way to go about it—especially as many note-taking tools offer versioning—but make sure you don’t consider anything you have written down as too sacred to edit. You can also practice idea sex with other people. Share your ideas with the world, learn from others, and proactively connect ideas together during conversations. If you keep on following these steps while reading content and taking notes, new ideas will naturally emerge from the combination of other people’s ideas. Instead of experiencing writer’s block or a lack of inspiration, you may experience another challenge: having too many ideas to select from. The post From inspiration to idea sex: how to generate ideas on demand appeared first on Ness Labs.

The most recent smartphone, the latest tool, the hottest trend… Humans are naturally attracted to novelty, whether it’s new objects or new ideas. In the modern world, our desire to be on the cutting edge of technology only exacerbates the appeal of adopting the newest innovations. However, there is danger in blindly embracing something new without first examining it with a critical eye. This is known as the novelty fallacy, also known as the novelty bias. Overly drawn to novelty The novelty fallacy is deeply rooted in our neurobiology. It is well known that the brain’s reward system is stimulated by novel ideas and objects. As novelty sparks our sense of curiosity, our brains make us naturally drawn to explore ideas and objects that feel unfamiliar to us or seem more recent than the ones we currently know or own. The way we experience novelty can have a significant impact on learning, performance and cognitive development: neuroscientists have explored experiences of novelty and discovered that novelty increases our attention, promotes memory formation, and modifies our goal-directed behaviour. As such, our attraction to novelty can be helpful for our survival, but a fast-changing environment can render this cognitive bias rather problematic. The novelty bias is a form of informal logical fallacy, where we consider that something is better simply because it’s new. Of course, in some cases, novelty seeking does correlate with benefits. For example, a newer computer may offer improved speed and performance. However, not all new ideas and objects will offer benefits over something older or more established. Researchers have come together to question the dominant discourse that constructs innovation as an inherently “good thing”, and critically analysed innovation and its undesirable consequences. In their own words: “The one-sided focus on desirable effects of innovation misses many opportunities to reduce the undesirable consequences.” In Western societies, there’s a common tendency to seek innovation not only in terms of technology, but as an important driver of organisational success. With innovation often viewed as essential for businesses, it is not surprising that the assumption that innovation is inherently good is often not questioned. However, following their analysis, the researchers found that the novelty fallacy can lead to a pro-innovation bias, the belief that a certain innovation should be widely used across society without the need for any adjustments. Often, the person championing the novel idea is so strongly biased in its favour that they cannot see any shortcomings and continue to promote it regardless. In business, this may lead to unnecessary investments of time or finances, for little reward. The impact of the novelty fallacy As consumers, most of us will have been affected by the novelty fallacy. Companies often rely on this bias to sell us newer products we believe to be better than items we currently own, for example because we assume that the company will have considered existing problems and corrected them with the latest edition. A company may try to sell you a new software, persuading you that it will increase overall productivity. However, beyond some cosmetic differences, it may have no additional benefits when compared to the system you currently use. Despite performing well, the new software may have minimal impact on output and could fail to lead to a return on investment. Similarly, many business leaders have relied on restructuring their teams to tackle business challenges. Changes to organisational structure are often recommended for businesses in financial distress or undergoing rapid expansion. A new structure is expected to help generate fresh solutions. But such reshuffles are unlikely to lead to improved performance if the systematic issues are not addressed. The novelty fallacy can affect your personal life, too. For example, the launch of a new smartphone may instantly appeal to you, though it simply boasts aesthetic changes with no significant technological improvements when compared to your current model. You may also be swayed by novel health ideas, including new diets. The promise of improved health via a new, original method feels more appealing than calorie restriction and increased exercise. However, many novel diets are based on minimal scientific evidence, may not yield long-term results, and could even lead to nutrient deficiency. New is not always better. How to manage the novelty fallacy Although the novelty fallacy occurs naturally due to how the brain’s reward system is designed, once you’re aware of this bias it is possible to avoid falling prey to its worst consequences. The following strategies will help you make rational decisions that are not purely based on novelty: Notice when novelty feels appealing. Pay attention to what it is about a new idea or product that’s drawing you in. Try to articulate why its novelty is beneficial: is it because it comes with much needed improvements in performance or experience? Is it because the previous version was lacking in some fundamental way? Ignore the novel aspect and then explore the benefits of the object independently. If you find it hard to justify an upgrade, it may be that your brain’s reward centres are being stimulated by novelty, but the new product or idea itself is not truly valuable to you. Document the limitations of a new approach. The appeal to novelty is natural and hard to resist. Our excitement about a new product or idea may cause us to lose sight of the big picture. It can be helpful to make a list of the limitations associated with a new product or idea. Think about how switching or upgrading may impact your time, money, and energy, and consider whether these costs are truly worth it. Delay decision making. Giving yourself more time before committing to innovation so you can avoid succumbing to the shiny toy syndrome. Before you embrace something new, define what success looks like for you or your business, check whether the product will truly benefit you, and estimate the impact it will have. This may take a little bit longer, but will avoid constantly switching gears because of the novelty fallacy. We are frequently exposed to novel ideas which affect our attention, our memory, and the way we approach our goals. Innovations stimulate the reward centres of the brain, increasing the appeal to novelty, which can lead to hurried decision making. By implementing strategies to avoid falling prey to the novelty fallacy, you can ensure the decisions you make are based on rational factors, rather than being influenced by novelty. The post Novelty fallacy: why new isn’t always better appeared first on Ness Labs.

Before today’s post, a reminder: The Institute for Progress is hosting a free 6-week online PhD course titled “The economics of ideas, science and innovation.” The deadline to apply is the end of today! Learn more here! Now for your regularly scheduled content… Like the rest of New Things Under the Sun, this article will be updated as the state of the academic literature evolves; you can read the latest version here. You can listen to this post above, or via most podcast apps: Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Stitcher. These are weird times. On the one hand, scientific and technological progress seem to be getting harder. Add to that slowing population growth, and it’s possible economic growth over the next century or two might slow to a halt. On the other hand, one area where we seem to be observing rapid technological progress is in artificial intelligence. If that goes far enough, it’s easy to imagine machines being able to do all the things human inventors and scientists do, possibly better than us. That would seem to pull in the opposite direction, leading to accelerating and possibly unbounded growth; a singularity. Are those the only options? Is there a middle way? Under what conditions? This is an area where some economic theory can be illuminating. This article is bit unusual for New Things Under the Sun in that I am going to focus on a small but I think important part of a single 2019 article: “Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth” by Aghion, Jones, and Jones. There are other papers on what happens to growth if we can automate parts of economic activity,1 but Aghion, Jones, and Jones (2019) is useful because (among other things) it focuses on what happens in economic growth models if we automate the process of invention itself. We’ll see that automating invention does indeed lead to rapidly accelerating growth, but only if you can completely automate it. If not, and if the parts you can’t automate are sufficiently important, then Aghion, Jones, and Jones show growth will be steady: no singularity. I’m going to try to explain their results using a simplified model that I think gives the intuitions but doesn’t require me to write any math equations. Subscribe now A Baseline: Human Driven Innovation Before getting into Aghion, Jones, and Jones’ model, let’s see what these models predict would happen if innovation continued to be a mainly human endeavor. To start, we need a way to measure technological progress. For this simplified model, things will be easier if we can just assume technology proceeds in discrete steps, so I’m going to use something a little unusual for economics: the Kardashev scale. This is a hypothetical measure of a civilization’s technological level based on the amount of energy it can harness. In the usual formulation, civilizations come in three types. A Type 1 civilization can harness all the energy emitted by a parent star that reaches its home planet. A Type 2 civilization can harness all the energy emitted by its parent star. A Type 3 civilization can harness all the energy emitted by its galaxy! A typical Kardashev Scale. Wikipedia The differences between each type are gigantic. It’s estimated that a Type 2 civilization would use about 1010 more energy than a Type 1 civilization, and Type 3 civilization uses about 1010 more energy than a Type 2 civilization. Let’s make things a bit more manageable by creating smaller 0.1 Kardashev increments. A Type 1.1 civilization uses 10 times as much energy as a Type 1.0 civilization, a Type 1.2 civilization uses 10 times as much energy as a Type 1.1, and so forth. We can think of a staircase that goes up three levels: the first floor above ground is a Type 1 civilization, the second floor is a type 2 civilization, and the third floor is a Type 3 civilization, and there are ten steps on the staircase between each floor. By this definition, we are currently sitting at something like a Type 0.7 civilization, since total energy from the sun to Earth is maybe a thousand times as much as the energy our civilization currently uses. We’ll measure the rate of technological progress by the length of time it takes us to climb a 0.1 increment up the Kardashev scale. Let’s now make a few assumptions about how economic progress happens. They’re simple and unrealistic. Everyone in the world devotes themselves full time to inventing. Global population grows by 0.7% per year, which means it doubles every 100 years. Inventing gets harder. Every 0.1 step up in our Kardashev scale takes twice as many inventor-years to achieve. I’ll re-examine these assumptions towards the end of this post. But in our baseline scenario without any automation, this set of assumptions means civilization climbs one 0.1 step up the Kardashev scale every century. Each step is twice as “hard” as the last, in the sense that it takes twice as many inventor-years, but the growth rate of the population ensures the number of inventors also doubles every century, so the overall growth rate is steady. Invention gets twice as hard, but there are twice as many inventors per century. We can also see that if we tinkered with the growth rate of inventors, the growth rate of the economy would change. If population growth rises to 1.4% per year, the population of inventors doubles every 50 years, and we advance two Kardashev steps every century. On the other hand, if population stopped growing, then our growth rate would get cut in half with each 0.1 step up the Kardashev scale. We would still advance, but it would take twice as long, with each step, to get enough inventor-years to climb a step up the Kardashev scale. Automating Invention Now let’s tweak this model. Instead of humans doing all the inventing, let’s assume robots can do it and humans can relax. The key difference between this model and the last is that human population growth is a matter of fertility choices and ever since we escaped the Malthusian trap, those don’t seem to depend much on the size of the economy. Specifically, we assumed the human population grew at 0.7% per year, no matter what our Kardashev level was. Robots though, are something we build using economic resources. That means, as the economy grows larger, we are able to build more robots. Specifically, let’s assume, like energy, the number of robots we can build also increases by 10x every time we go up a step of the Kardashev scale. This results in a radically different dynamic than when we relied solely on human inventors. Now, every time we climb 0.1 steps up the Kardashev scale, we can throw 10x as many (robot) inventors at climbing the Kardashev scale as we could during the last step. True, innovation gets harder and it takes twice as many (robot) inventors to advance with each step, but since we get 10x as many (robot) inventors at each step, we still advance in 1/5 the time with each step. If it takes a century to get from 0.6 to 0.7 (roughly where we are today), then it takes twenty years to get from 0.7 to 0.8, four years to get from 0.8 to 0.9, and under one year to go from 0.9 to 1.0! This acceleration continues at a blistering pace: once we reach a Type 1 civilization, we’ll get to a galaxy-spanning Type 3 civilization in less than three months! The Pace of Progress with Robot Inventors As with the human inventor baseline, we can also tinker with our assumptions in this model to see what happens. Suppose every 0.1 step up the Kardashev scale only increases our ability to manufacture robots by 4x, instead of 10x. In that case, we’ll still have more robots than the 2x needed to advance to the next Kardashev increment in the same amount of time, so growth will still accelerate; just not as quickly. On the other hand, if the number of robots we can build increases by less than 2x for every increment up the Kardashev scale, then economic growth slows down over time (assuming the humans are still just relaxing and not trying to invent). The key is that our ability to improve our inventive capability grows faster than the rate at which invention gets harder. Taking Stock This exercise has a lot of simplifications but as a first approximation, it seems to capture our intuitions about the weirdness of our times. If innovation is getting harder, and population growth is expected to slow, then maybe economic growth will steadily slow down over time. On the other hand, if we can automate innovation, the exact opposite can happen (provided invention doesn’t get harder too fast). The key point is that the second case has a self-amplifying dynamic that is absent from the first. Robot inventors improve the ability of the economy to make more robot inventors, which can lead to accelerating growth. Human inventors enjoy living in a richer economy, but their growth rate is independent of it. Could we really jump from a Type 1 civilization to a Type 3 civilization in three months though, even in this simple model? Probably not, given our current understanding of the laws of physics. For example, it seems sensible to believe the universe’s speed limit would drastically slow down this process; the edge of the galaxy is close to a million light-years away, so maybe we can’t get a galaxy spanning civilization for at least that long. That might seem like it’s missing the point of our illustrative model, but it actually points to something quite important: what tends to drive long run growth is not our strengths but our weaknesses. We’ll come back to that. A More Realistic Model of Automating Invention This model captures our intuitions well but it’s a bit too simple to help us think through the effects of automation because in this model automation is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either humans or the robots are the inventors. Aghion, Jones, and Jones propose a model that helps us think through the implications of a more realistic case where automation is partial but advancing in its capabilities. They suggest we think of the innovati...

Fear is unavoidable, especially when attempting to accomplish an important goal or embarking on a new project that requires you to take risks. However, fear doesn’t need to become a source of unmanageable stress and anxiety. A simple method called “fear setting” will help you to define your fears so that you can embrace them and achieve your goals. The science of fear In biological terms, fear is induced when there is a threat to our wellbeing or survival. Neuroendocrine messengers are activated, causing physiological changes including increased heart rate and blood pressure, so that we are ready to handle the perceived risk. This evolutionary fight-or-flight response ensures we are more alert to danger, thus offering us a form of protection. In addition to fight-or-flight, the “freeze” coping strategy of immobilisation may occur if we feel like we cannot escape the threat. This biological response to fear can lead to paralysis, preventing us from taking action. There are several common triggers for fear. For example, natural conditioning can lead to a fear of snakes or spiders. Social fears are also fairly common, and can be triggered by formal situations, public speaking, or the thought of being rejected. Regardless of what triggers them, all these fears may significantly impact your confidence in life and in the workplace. Research suggests that the most fundamental trigger for fear is uncertainty. The good news is that if you can identify which fears are rational, and which are irrational, you can exert some level of control over them. This may prevent fear from delaying your progress towards a goal or paralysing you into inaction. What is fear setting? In humans, fear is modulated through the process of cognition and learning. The fear setting method was created by famous entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss. The catalyst for exploring fear setting came when Ferriss found that despite the success of his business, he felt completely drained by its demands on his time and energy. Fear setting was born as a process of reflection that allowed him to step away from the everyday grind to gain perspective, and therefore face his fears. It involves identifying and defining your fears so that you can overcome them. The unpleasant feelings that come with fear are caused by the neuroendocrine response. Your discomfort might be so strong that it prevents you from taking action, despite wanting to. Rather than face your fear, you turn away from it. For example, you may see your dream job advertised, or have the opportunity to get a new business off the ground. But fear of being rejected, falling behind, or not being good enough may mean that you choose not to act. Instead, you decide to stay in the same role you have been in for a decade. Unfortunately, a year down the line, you may regret not acting when you had the chance. Our thought patterns are altered by fear, which makes it harder to make a rational decision in uncertain situations. Our cognitive biases mean we might emphasise the potential negative consequences of taking action, yet downplay any prospective positives. It’s also likely that the costs of inaction will be ignored, so that future missed opportunities associated with inertia are overlooked. In short, we’re more likely to imagine the worst-case scenario, while disregarding the potential for positive outcomes. Rather than blindly following your fears, the fear setting method encourages you to define your fears through close examination, so that they can be managed. Those who practice fear setting learn to build an operating system that promotes awareness of their fears, so that they can act with intention and thrive in high stress environments. How to practice fear setting There are three steps involved in defining your fears so you can make informed decisions. Use one sheet of paper for each step to keep your thoughts clear, and make sure to block at least one hour in your calendar so you have time to fully explore the ramifications of your thoughts, emotions, and decisions. 1. Put your fears under a microscope Although our natural urge is to turn away from the discomfort of fear, the first step involves facing your fear head on. Mark three columns on your first sheet of paper, and label them define, prevent, and repair. Under define, write down your doubts, worst-case scenarios, and problems that might arise. For example, if you’re worried about going freelance, this list should define everything that you fear about taking action, such as not earning enough money or not being successful.  The prevent column is where you should explore how you can prevent those worst-case scenarios from occurring. This might include only freelancing on the side at first, reducing your living costs, taking relevant professional courses, or working with a coach. In the third column, repair, you will list how you could repair the damage and get back on track if your fear were to come true. For example, if you have remained in employment, you will have your day job to fall back on. You may also have contacts you can reach out to, and new roles you can apply for with the experience you have gained. Once you have completed the three columns, give each of your worst-case scenarios in the define column an impact score out of 10, where 1 is minimal impact and 10 is significantly life-altering. If you have savings and will be able to continue earning money while setting up a business, you might be surprised to find that running out of money might only score 3 out of 10. The simple act of exploring your fears can reduce their impact. 2. Consider the benefits of taking action On your second sheet of paper, consider what might go well. Make a list of the potential benefits of complete success, partial success, or even just attempting to take action. Even if your business idea is ultimately not successful, taking steps to becoming an entrepreneur might lead to development of new skills, improved networking, realisation of your own potential or improved flexibility. Rate each benefit out of 10, with 1 indicating minimal impact and 10 being very significant. For instance, you may find that learning how to structure a company scores 10, and this small win could prove incredibly important to you in the future, when you try building another company. This exercise will make you realise that whatever the outcome, you will learn something new and grow in the process. 3. List the consequences of inaction On the third sheet of paper, draw three columns labelled six months, one year and three years. In each column, document the potential emotional, financial, and physical costs of not taking action. Let’s say that you decide to keep on focusing on your day job instead of launching a side project that could become an independent business in the future. At six months, the consequences of inaction may include feeling stuck in a role where you’re not growing anymore. At three years, you could be stuck on the same salary rather than deciding your own pay as an entrepreneur. Once you have completed the three steps, your fears should be clearer, the benefits may appear greater, and you will feel better prepared to conquer your fears. Fear setting provides clarity so that you can conquer your fears and take action. The worst-case scenario may not be as bad as you might assume, while not taking any risk could mean you fail to fulfil your potential. Attempting something new might trigger your fears, but even if you’re only partially successful in your endeavours, you may still reap significant benefits in the future. The post Fear setting: an exercise to define and conquer your fears appeared first on Ness Labs.

When you want to learn or build something new, it’s tempting to just get going. Read as much as you can, do some tutorials, work on some related projects. Short-term, this gives you a motivation boost. You feel like you’re moving forward. But, after a while, you notice that you’re not progressing as fast as you expected. You may even start burning out. Turns out, cramming content inside your brain is not the most effective way to grow. Instead, you need to develop your metacognition. What is metacognition? The word “metacognition” literally means “above cognition” — it’s one of the most powerful forms of self-monitoring and self-regulation. It’s a fancy word for something fairly simple once you break it down. Put simply, metacognition is “thinking about thinking” or “knowing about knowing.” It’s being aware of your own awareness so you can determine the best strategies for learning and problem-solving, as well as when to apply them. Researchers have identified three main components that make up metacognition. These are not clear, separate aspects, but rather interact together in complex ways to influence the way you learn, create, and solve problems. Metacognitive knowledge. What you know about yourself and others in terms of thinking, problem-solving, and learning processes. Metacognitive regulation. The activities and strategies you use to control your thinking. Metacognitive experiences. The thoughts and feelings you have while learning something new or trying to solve a problem. Metacognitive knowledge in particular can be divided into three further categories. The first is declarative knowledge — the knowledge you have about yourself as a learner and about what factors can influence your performance. The more you know about yourself, the higher your metacognitive knowledge will be. The second is procedural knowledge — what you know about learning in general, such as learning strategies you read about or that you have applied in the past. The more you learn about learning, the more procedural knowledge you will have. Finally, conditional knowledge refers to knowing when and why you should use declarative and procedural knowledge, allocating your mental resources in a smart way to learn better. The more mental models you have in your toolbox, the more you will develop your conditional knowledge. Even if you don’t remember all those details, just know that metacognition is understanding your thought processes and emotions and the patterns behind them. It’s the highest level of mentalisation — an ability that is part of what makes us human. The benefits of metacognition Metacognition can help you maximize your potential to think, learn, and create, all while taking care of your mental health. Beyond the elevated self-awareness and consciousness you’ll experience by applying metacognitive strategies, scientists have investigated some of the many benefits of metacognition. Learn better. Research shows that high-metacognition learners identify challenges much faster and change their tools and strategies to better achieve their learning goals. Metacognition can even compensate for IQ and lack of prior knowledge when it comes to solving new problems. Make decisions faster. Monitoring and controlling your ongoing cognitive activity can make you aware of your cognitive biases and help avoid mistakes, or at least not reproduce the same mistakes twice. In addition, because of heightened awareness, metacognition leads to a reduction in response time, which reduces the time to solve a problem or complete a task. Be more creative. According to Dr Markus Lång, all narrative works of art can be defined as metacognitive artifacts which are designed by the creator to anticipate and regulate the cognitive processes of the recipient. Intrinsically speaking, creativity is thinking about thinking. Improve your mental health. Metacognition gives you the ability to understand your mental health and to adapt your strategies to cope with the source of any distress. As such, researchers defined metacognition as the process that “reinforces one’s subjective sense of being a self and allows for becoming aware that some of one’s thoughts and feelings are symptoms of an illness.” As you can see, metacognition really is the mind’s Swiss Army knife. That one ability can help you learn better, make decisions faster, be more creative, and improve your mental health. So, how can you experience those benefits? The ingredients of metacognition Metacognition has many components, but it doesn’t mean that it has to be complicated to apply. According to scientists, there are only three skills you need to master in order to improve your metacognition. Planning. Before you start learning something, tackling a new problem, or exploring a creative idea, think about the appropriate strategies you will use, as well as how you will allocate your time and energy. This phase is based on your metacognitive knowledge — of yourself (declarative knowledge), learning strategies (procedural knowledge), and when to use them to maximise your performance (conditional knowledge). Monitoring. While learning, solving a problem, or working on a creative project, stay aware of your progress. Are you struggling with certain aspects in particular? Are there other elements that seem to be a breeze to go through? Instead of passively experiencing your thoughts and feelings, ask yourself these questions to see what works and what doesn’t. Evaluating. When you’re done with a chunk of work, consider how well you performed and re-evaluate the strategies you used. Make any necessary changes before starting to work on the next part of your project. As these may feel quite abstract, let’s have a look at some simple strategies you can use to put these principles into practice. How to develop your metacognition “Thinking about thinking” sounds great in theory, and there’s lots of research demonstrating its many benefits. But what does it look like in practical terms? Here are some activities you can experiment with to develop your metacognition. Keep a learning journal. If you already keep a journal, you can add a section at the end of each day answering a few questions about what you’ve learned, what went well, what didn’t, and what you want to learn next. Plus Minus Next journaling is a great approach to keep a learning journal, or you can have more of a free-flow approach — whatever feels most comfortable. The goal is to be aware of your progress, the challenges you face, and the strategies you will apply to improve your thinking, learning, and decision-making. Think aloud. While mind wandering can contribute to creativity, it can also be unproductive when not paired with a phase of focused thinking. Thinking out loud may feel a bit strange, but it will help you stay on track when practicing metacognition. Another way to think out loud is to find a thinking buddy — someone you meet with regularly to discuss your progress and challenges, and to suggest metacognitive strategies to each other. You can then take notes about the discussion in your learning journal. Apply mental models. Mental models are frameworks that give us a representation of how the world works, a set of beliefs and ideas that we form based on our experiences that guide our thoughts and behaviors and help us understand life. For example, knowing about the availability heuristic helps you think about human relationships. Knowing about temporal discounting helps you pay attention to the consequences of your decisions, even if they are far in the future. Building your own toolbox of mental models is a productive way to practice metacognition. Use a tool for thought. After a while, you will start accumulating a collection of metacognitive strategies based on mental models and knowledge about yourself. To make the most of these strategies, it can be helpful to use a tool for thought so you can easily store and retrieve them based on the challenge at hand. For instance, you could tag your metacognitive strategies depending on whether they are more relevant for learning or problem-solving, or if they are more useful to deal with procrastination or creative anxiety. In his treatise On the Soul, Aristotle (384–322 BC) wrote: “What thinks and what is thought are identical.” Thinking is combining your existing knowledge into new ideas. Metacognition is the act of observing and reflecting on our thoughts. It’s the mind’s Swiss Army knife: when practiced regularly, it can make you a better learner, decision-maker, and creator, all while supporting your mental health. The post Metacognition: the mind’s Swiss Army knife appeared first on Ness Labs.

Workflowy is an excellent solution for people who struggle to stay organized. Researchers, writers, students, and anyone who has difficulty keeping track of information will find it helpful. However, it requires an entirely different way of thinking about your note-taking system, and may not be the perfect fit for everyone. A great alternative with similar features to Workflowy is Notion. If you are thinking of migrating, here are some things to consider before switching from Workflowy to Notion. Why you may want to switch from Workflowy to Notion While both Workflowy and Notion allow you to collect and organize notes via desktop and mobile devices, this only touches the surface of their features. If we dig a little deeper, there are several key distinctions to consider before switching from Workflowy to Notion. Team collaboration When it comes to collaboration, Notion is the gold standard amongst tools for thought. You can create team dashboards, project lists, and documents and share them with your team members. As such, Notion is the perfect app for working in a team with features such as comments, mentions and reminders. While collaboration is also possible in Workflowy, it is not as robust as Notion’s team features, and is limited to sharing your database and assigning tasks only. Custom workflows Thanks to Notion’s customizability, you can create a personal productivity workflow that works for you. With features such as calendars, task lists, Kanban boards, database views, and templates, you can design a workflow that suits your needs. Simply drag and drop blocks to create the dashboard, document, or an entire system interconnecting different elements. In contrast, only some project management features are available in Workflowy, such as task lists and Kanban boards. Templates It is a waste of time and effort to keep recreating the same elements. Thanks to Notion’s templates, you can write notes more quickly and efficiently. You can replicate the structure of a note with only one click and focus on work that actually matters. While you can use templates in Workflowy, you need to copy and paste them or use a text snippet, which is more cumbersome compared to Notion’s one-click solution. Notion also makes it easier to look for and apply templates and offers a more extensive selection of templates to import into your note-taking system. Database views Thanks to database views, you can look at the same database from a different perspective. The same information can be reorganized into a table, list, board, gallery, calendar, or timeline. This allows you to view your information and project in different contexts. Why you may not want to switch from Workflowy to Notion As you can see, Workflowy and Notion have some significant differences, but this does not mean that you should succumb to the shiny toy syndrome. Though it offers interesting features, Notion might not have everything you require. It might not be practical to switch to Notion if you currently find these features an essential part of your work: Keyboard shortcuts One of the easiest ways to speed up your workflow is through keyboard shortcuts. According to research, using a keyboard shortcut to complete a task cuts the time it would take to achieve the same action using a graphical interface in half. Some studies suggest that not using keyboard shortcuts can cost you eight days annually. Extensive keyboard shortcuts are more powerful in Workflowy than in Notion, which means that you can quickly re-organize a document, project, or task list without touching your mouse. Search functionality Workflowy’s search function is more powerful than Notion’s when browsing your notes. You can create custom search parameters and find the necessary information with advanced search operators. Notion’s search offering, on the other hand, is slower and does not offer precise parameters compared to Workflowy’s. Frictionless note-taking Workflowy has a unique ‘single-page’ and outline structure. It acts as a scratchpad where you can add notes and get down to writing immediately instead of thinking about where to place the notes. Workflowy’s powerful search function gives you the certainty that you will resurface these notes when necessary. If you find this approach more comfortable, you may not want to switch from Workflowy to Notion. In addition, all notes exist in Workflowy as outlines that can be expanded and collapsed. Expanding and nesting on a block allows you to go deep on an idea without losing context. You can also take a step back and follow the breadcrumbs to focus on the big picture.  How to migrate from Workflowy to Notion If you’re convinced that using Notion would make your workflow more efficient, making the switch from Workflowy to Notion only requires three steps and is relatively straightforward. 1. Export notes from Workflowy. Click the three dots in the top right corner in Workflowy and click on “Export All”. Export your notes as plain text and click the download button below. Alternatively, you can copy your list and paste it into Notion. 2. Import notes into Notion After installing Notion, click the “Import” button on the left sidebar. Select the Workflowy import option and upload the plain text files you downloaded earlier. If you decide to copy your list, create a new note in Notion and paste the list into the new page instead. 3. Organize your notes Unfortunately, Workflowy’s infinite nesting cannot be transferred into Notion’s toggles. However, you can manually bulk select the bullet points and convert them into pages and toggles according to your preference. Workflowy’s backlinks and Mirrors feature also do not transfer over to Notion, and you may have duplicate information. You can, however, create backlinks by hand in Notion to replace them. Getting used to Notion You are now completely set up with Notion, great job! At first, it can feel a little confusing, so let’s explore the key differences you must be aware of to get used to it in no time. Notion backlinks. Both apps allow you to link notes to each other via backlinks. While you can connect blocks in Workflowy with double brackets, Notion uses @ mentions to target specific pages. Workflowy shows your backlinks at the bottom of each block, while Notion shows them under the page title at the top of each page.  Explore the gallery. Are you looking for inspiration? Notion has thousands of community-made templates and integrations that can help you create your best work.  Use the Web clipper. Workflowy’s Web Clipper lets you quickly capture notes to any place in your Workflowy account without losing the context of the web page you are on. Notion also has a web clipper that allows you to save important articles and add notes to your database. Finally, you may also want to consider using both tools. You can use Workflowy to keep track of your personal to-dos and notes while Notion organizes your team’s projects and documents. This way, you will be able to take advantage of both tools without entirely discontinuing the use of one. If you are interested in learning about Notion, join our community’s Notion support group. The post How to switch from Workflowy to Notion appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think better. Ida Josefiina is the co-founder of Sane, a digital gardening tool designed to collect, connect, and share ideas via “thought spaces” — a home for all the thoughts you want to keep, work on, and share with others; a that inspires deep thinking and asking questions. In this interview, we talked about how to turn data into wisdom, how to make sense of information, how to inspire deep thinking and big questions, how to embrace chaos and complexity, how to facilitate collective creation of knowledge, and much more. Enjoy the read! Hi Ida, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Let’s start with a bit of a philosophical question: what do you think is the difference between information and knowledge? Super happy to be speaking with you, Anne-Laure!  I think people have always wrestled with the question of how to turn data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. More information (or more structured information) doesn’t automatically mean more knowledge — or wisdom for that matter.  Knowledge is created when a meta-layer of connections between units of information is added on top. And I would argue that wisdom comes from our ability to truly internalize and utilize that knowledge for good. The World Wide Web was supposed to be all about creating those meta-layers of connection, and yet it doesn’t seem to work as expected. Why is that?  The creation and sharing of knowledge was at the core of the initial vision for the World Wide Web. But as the internet became widely popular, big tech adopted a business model relying on ads. This catalyzed a massive race for our attention; resulting in anxiety, lack of depth, and general content collapse. There’s information everywhere, but it’s increasingly difficult to make sense of it all.  How does Sane aim to address those challenges?  Sane was born out of conviction that the internet should be a place of curiosity and collaboration, not one of ads and outrage. A place where we choose what to devote our attention to. A place that inspires deep thinking and asking questions. An extension of our minds that’s responsive, not reactive. Our vision is to build a company that works with intention, diligence, and care to solve one of the most pertinent challenges facing society. We see technology as a means to an end — a tool in our belt where building a better internet means building a better world. This is an important but ambitious mission! Specifically, how does Sane work?  It is an important mission! And Sane certainly isn’t the only one working on this. Already back in 1945, Vannevar Bush outlined a project called Memex with similar ambitions. Other examples include Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu, or more recently, Venkatesh Rao’s writings on the Cozy Web. These all have functioned as important reference points for us.  Sane is built on the principles of the connectivist learning theory – meaning we embrace chaos, network, and complexity, and believe that learning comes from combining thoughts, theories, and general information in a useful manner.  Generally, we describe Sane as a tool for collecting, connecting, and sharing ideas. The interface in the product, which we call a ‘thought space’, is in its essence a minimalist digital environment, combined with a set of features that enable anyone to create and connect documents/texts/images related to a given project. It functions as a bank of information sources that are interlinked by the user to form a network of connected nodes. Users can create as many thought spaces as they desire, choosing whether to make them private, collaborative (coming soon), or public. They can be published and shared as unique URLs to showcase any type of knowledge. You can use Sane for storing your working notes, sharing projects and research, or planting seeds for future ideas. How do you recommend someone get started with Sane? You can get started with Sane by signing up at sane.fyi and creating your first thought space! Everything works through right-click commands, including the creation of new nodes. An idea for your first thought space could be to build a digital garden that functions as an introduction to yourself, such as this one created by my co-founder Tiina. One of the key ideas behind Sane is to not just build another note-taking tool, but to facilitate the sharing of thought processes and ideas. This is why we really encourage users to publish thought spaces, and use Sane as a blog or website! What kind of people use Sane? We’ve playfully called Sane the infopunk’s digital garden. An infopunk is a person embracing alternative information dynamics. Someone who challenges the foundational ideas around questions such as “where do ideas come from?”, “who determines what knowledge is?”,“‘who has access to knowledge and through what channels?”, and so forth. Less conceptually speaking, Sane is used by all kinds of people in various fields. Founders, researchers, content creators, novelists, teachers, students, and people who are generally interested in sharing their idea dumps, thought processes, and musings with more depth and nuance. What about you… How do you personally use Sane? I told my co-founder the other day that if all else fails, I’m happy we’ve built a product that at least its creators use obsessively. I’ve started using Sane for many purposes. I have two accounts, one for myself personally, and one for Sane. On my personal dashboard, I’ve created thought spaces, for example, for showcasing my personal profile (basically in replacement of a personal website), for mapping out intellectual rabbit holes I’d like to dive deeper into, and for collecting random bits of research on transhumanism. On Sane’s account, we’ve created thought spaces such as a guide for building thought spaces, an update on the business and our goals to share with our partners, and one that showcases all the reading recommendations from our guests on Reverb (our podcast). And finally… What’s next for Sane?  The next phases of Sane’s development will focus on removing obstacles for thought. In practice this means building platform integrations and a mobile version for the editor to make Sane accessible on all devices. We’re also working on support for audio and other media types to remove as many constraints as possible.  Our vision for Sane is facilitating collective creation of knowledge, and enabling as many people as possible to discover and access this knowledge. For our product development this means building with collaboration and publishing in mind in the long term. We’re hoping this will open up entirely new ways for people to interact with information online.  Thank you so much for your time! Where can people learn more about Sane and give it a try? Thank you! This was fun. I hope your readers give Sane a go! Folks can sign up and see examples of how people have been using Sane at sane.fyi.  Also, I host a podcast called Reverb by Sane where we dig into the ideas and research around some of the most important questions of our time. Guests have included people like Dr. Isabel Millar, Sari Azout, Maggie Appleton, Dr. Anders Sandberg, and Professor Sune Lehmann, among others. You can have a listen through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or through other channels. For updates, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and sign up to our newsletter (where we send new Reverb episodes including guests’ reading recommendations, product updates, and the occasional philosophical musings on the state of the internet and the world).  The post Building an infopunk’s digital garden with Ida Josefiina, co-founder of Sane appeared first on Ness Labs.

Social comparison begins in childhood. As children, we look at other children’s toys, parents, and houses, and compare them to our own. In adulthood, social comparison is perfectly normal as well. However, systematically comparing ourselves to others can make us feel less capable. To avoid comparison anxiety, it’s helpful to be aware of how assessing our success based on a subjective view of how we compare to others may lead to unnecessary stress and poor mental health. The science of comparison anxiety Comparison anxiety has its roots in social comparison theory, which was initially proposed by social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954. Festinger wrote that as humans we employ social comparison to compare our own abilities and achievements against those of others.  Festinger recognised the importance of social comparison from an evolutionary perspective. Social comparison not only helps us make sense of our own behaviours and assists us in defining who we are, but it drives us to improve and raise to the level of the ones we perceive as the most competent around us. For instance, being a fast runner would have offered protection against predators, and holding a high opinion of the fastest runners would have encouraged members of the group to practice running faster. Sizing up against those around us, and taking the necessary steps towards self-improvement, would therefore have provided us with an edge when it came to survival. More recently, psychologists have confirmed the hypothesis that social comparison can be both upwards and downwards in nature. Downward comparison involves measuring ourselves against someone who we feel is inferior. This may make us feel better about ourselves by confirming that we are right to feel superior or better than someone else. In contrast, upward comparison is when we compare ourselves to someone whom we perceive to be superior to us. For our ancestors, this might have been the best hunter or the most-skilled tool maker. Nowadays, it is more likely to be our peers at work, our friends or family, celebrities, sportspersons, or influencers we see online. This form of comparison is common, especially with increased use of social media, and it may drive us to work harder or to learn a new skill — which is beneficial. However, near-constant upward comparison can also leave us with a sense of failure and inadequacy, which leads us to suffer from comparison anxiety. The rise of comparison anxiety Comparison anxiety can affect anyone, but there are certain risk factors that can predict to what extent it impacts us. Such risk factors include our levels of internal and external competitiveness, the intensity of our social media use, our overall self-esteem, and our mood. In 2017, Dr Jin-Liang Wang and colleagues explored how we define ourselves through comparisons we make using social media. Because most of us only document the positive highlights of our lives on social media, giving a skewed view of our overall success and happiness, viewing digital representations of the seemingly near-perfect lives of others will naturally lead to upward comparison. The researchers found that looking upwards was, in turn, associated with negative feelings and a greater chance of negative self-evaluation. Overall, social media use was found to result in lower subjective well-being due to its detrimental impact on our own self-esteem.  Further research in 2020 reported that although in some cases comparison on social media could lead to improved well-being, for those who engage in upward social comparisons, it is more likely to be associated with negative effects. Concerns about what others think of us can also occur in real-life settings. Researchers Marina Micari and Pilar Pazos found that students taking part in group work could feel threatened by those they perceived as being better prepared or more confident in a task.  This threat of perceived inferiority hindered cognitive performance and “resulted in reduced ability to process information.” Peer-learning situations can therefore produce negative effects on performance if students are worried about how they compare to others. This impact may be heightened in those already battling low self-esteem. When comparison anxiety occurs, we may try to soothe it with downward social comparison. If you have noticed promotions being awarded to your peers, you may start to feel anxious about your own achievements. This will be especially true if you are already feeling low or worried, or if you are competitive by nature. To feel better, you may identify colleagues who have remained stuck in a role that is lower than yours, with the aim of helping you to internally ‘prove’ your own superiority and manage the comparison anxiety you feel. However, using downward social comparison is a mere bandage that doesn’t really support better mental health. How to manage comparison anxiety Although observing what others are doing may be beneficial in encouraging you to strive for more, comparison with others needs to be carefully managed to ensure that this process does not lead to reduced productivity, cognitive performance, and mental health. You can avoid the worst aspects of comparison anxiety by applying the following strategies: Practice strength journaling. This practice involves identifying your strengths rather than dwelling on any perceived shortcomings. This simple practice will help you develop resilience and boost your self-esteem. By highlighting our own achievements, it will be easier to avoid the anxiety associated with comparing yourself to others. Find role models. Whether you admire someone else’s creativity, motivation, or overall success, it’s possible to look up to someone else without feeling anxious. Move away from measuring yourself against peers whose constant achievements make you feel inferior because they feel unreachable. Instead, focus on someone whose success is within reach, which will make it aspirational and motivating. This will allow you to strive for more, while providing actionable steps for personal growth. Partner with a goal buddy. Choose one person to buddy up with and support each other in your self-development journey. Then, document your goals and have regular check-ins for motivation, assessment of progress, and celebration of achievements. Rather than being in direct competition, support each other in striving for more. Create a support circle. A support group can be another effective way to avoid comparison anxiety. Everyone in the circle should share a common goal such as achieving a promotion, launching a side project, or regularly exercising. In a similar way you would with a goal buddy, discuss your progress and challenges with the group on a regular basis. Rather than trying to out-perform the group, work together to support each other to succeed. Limit social media. If you use social media and often fall into the trap of upward comparison, try to put stricter boundaries in place to avoid overuse of social media and an increased risk of comparison anxiety. For instance, you may decide to restrict who you follow, how many minutes of social media you consume each day, or even take a break from it. Comparison anxiety is a common phenomenon that can be heightened through our access to the lives of others via social media. Seeing a rose-tinted view of another’s life may lead us to believe that everyone else is happier, richer, or more successful than we are. However, constant comparisons will not only provoke anxiety, but can also reduce cognitive performance and productivity. Identifying your strengths, finding appropriate role models, seeking the support of others and limiting access to social media will help you stop comparing yourself to others, and instead focus on your own journey. The post Comparison anxiety: how to stop comparing yourself to others appeared first on Ness Labs.

With the rise in popularity of networked thinking note-taking apps, you might think about switching away from cabinet-based note-taking apps like Evernote. While Evernote kicked off the age of digital note-taking, Obsidian’s flexibility and bidirectional linking make it a great alternative. Let’s explore why you may want to switch and how to migrate your data from Evernote to Obsidian. Why you may want to switch from Evernote to Obsidian Because Evernote and Obsidian have different approaches to note-taking, you should carefully consider whether it makes sense to switch tools. If the features listed below could enhance your workflow, then it may be a good idea to switch from Evernote to Obsidian. Plain text notes If you need to access your notes with other tools for thought, then you should consider switching to Obsidian, which is based on plain-text files. Unlike Obsidian, Evernote’s notes are proprietary. Evernote also does not allow exporting your notes as plain text, which means that you may lose essential syntaxes such as metadata and tags if you need to work with other tools for thought. With plain-text files, you can ensure the reusability of your notes across a wide range of tools. Privacy and security In Obsidian, all your notes are stored locally, unlike Evernote where your notes are hosted on a server. There is no need to worry about whether your notes are securely hosted, as only you can access them from your device. Obsidian also offers an option to host your notes on their servers, so you can choose between keeping your notes locally for security or hosting them for accessibility. Networked thinking Like other tools for thought that offer bidirectional linking, Obsidian is a good option for research work. In Obsidian, you can reference information and sources with bidirectional links and use the sidebar to view multiple notes simultaneously. You can also link your notes by typing double brackets, explore these references by checking the linked mentions tab, and create references you did not link before under the unlinked mentions tab. Finally, you can quickly generate new creative ideas by seeing how your notes connect with each other. At the time of writing, Evernote does not offer any ways to link your notes. If your work requires a lot of research work and networked thinking, you might find Obsidian more suitable for your needs. Why you may not want to switch from Evernote to Obsidian As we have seen, there are some key advantages Obsidian offers over Evernote. However, you might not want to switch if your workflows are unaffected by these differences. In addition, if the features below are crucial to your current workflow, it is probably wiser to stick with Evernote. Search functionality When it comes to searching through your notes, Evernote has more powerful features compared to Obsidian. Thanks to advanced search modifiers, searching for the exact information you need is a breeze. Evernote also has optical character recognition (OCR), allowing you to search for text inside PDFs, images, Office docs, and handwritten notes. While Obsidian also allows you to search your notes with syntaxes and operators, more powerful search features like OCR require installing a third-party plugin. PDF annotations If you handle PDFs regularly, you should stick to Evernote, as Obsidian offers limited options for working with PDFs. Evernote allows you to annotate PDFs, make highlights, etc. While this is possible in Obsidian, this again requires you to tinker with plugins and may not be as smooth as Evernote’s PDF management which comes straight out of the box. Web Clipper Evernote’s web clipper is a great way to save all sorts of content quickly, such as articles, images, emails, and other content for future reference. The clipper lets you clip the entire article or just a portion of it. Obsidian, at the moment, does not have an official web clipper, and the third-party solutions are not as powerful as Evernote’s. How to migrate from Evernote to Obsidian While you cannot export your Evernote notes into Markdown and import them into Obsidian, it is still possible to migrate your notes. To do so, you need to use Notion to help convert your notes into Markdown. 1. Import your Evernote database into Notion.  First, sign up to Notion. After logging into Notion, click on the Import button on the left sidebar and authorize the connection between Notion and Evernote. Next, select the notebooks you would like to migrate. These notes will then be added to a database in Notion. 2. Export from Notion as Markdown and CSV. Next, go to the three dots in the top right corner in Notion and click on Export. Select the export format to Markdown & CSV, and select the “Include Subpages” option. Your notes will be downloaded into a zip file that contains Markdown files and images. 3. Import into Obsidian via Markdown. Open Obsidian, where you will be first greeted with a menu to select the folders for your notes. You can create a new folder to store all your notes or open an existing folder with Markdown files. To access the notes you exported from Evernote, click “Open folder as vault” and choose the folder containing the Markdown files you downloaded earlier. While you could import everything from Evernote, try to be selective about the notes you want to migrate to Obsidian. Consider the notes that you often use and only migrate those notes. You can migrate other notes when you need to use them in the future. Doing this allows you to benefit from Obsidian’s features without bloating them with notes you rarely return to. 4. Transfer images. Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to import all your images from Evernote to Obsidian in one go, and you need to do it manually instead. To do so, create a page in Obsidian called “Evernote images” and dump all the images you downloaded into this page. When you encounter a missing image in your notes, quickly refer to this page, and copy and paste it. Getting used to Obsidian Congratulations, you have successfully migrated your notes from Evernote to Obsidian! Here are some tips to get used to Obsidian in no time. 1. Use the Graph view. With the graph view, you can visually look at how your notes are linked to each other. You can either view the graph for individual pages or the whole database. The graph view can help you look at the connections between your notes differently and help you to practice combinational creativity and idea sex. 2. Familiarize yourself with Markdown. Obsidian uses Markdown, meaning you can format your notes without getting your hands off the keyboard. Evernote, on the other hand, uses a WYSIWYG editor. Learn how to use Obsidian’s Markdown syntax so you can format your notes faster. 3. Use Obsidian sync. As mentioned earlier, you may need to trade off some level of accessibility for security. However, you can also use Obsidian Sync should you have some notes that you need to access with other devices, similar to how Evernote works. This allows you to keep your sensitive notes locally and access notes you need to access quickly on the cloud. 4. Use bidirectional linking. Finally, you must understand how to use one of Obsidian’s most powerful features, which will be completely new to you as an Evernote user. Let’s familiarise ourselves with bidirectional linking in Obsidian. This is what a page in Obsidian may look like: And this is an empty page with multiple references. Notice how a note is already populated from your prior links under the linked mentions tab. With unlinked mentions, you can also view pages that mention the name of your current page that has not been linked yet. These notes can then be linked to the current page by clicking on that term and adding double brackets. As a general rule, if you prefer a librarian approach to your note-taking, and prioritize the collection and retrieval of ideas, you should stick with Evernote. If the gardener’s approach is your style, and exploring and connecting your ideas is essential, you may want to consider switching to Obsidian. As always, If you want to learn more and discuss how to use Obsidian, join our Obsidian support group in our community. The post How to switch from Evernote to Obsidian appeared first on Ness Labs.

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, “threshold”) is the ambiguity that emerges in the middle of a fundamental transition. Liminality is the “in-between”, where the space and the participants no longer hold their past status, but have not yet fully transformed to their post-transition self. Liminality can be applied to a person standing at the threshold between their previous way and a new way of structuring their identity, their time, or their community. Think about a student who just submitted their last essay but has not graduated yet; an employee who’s being transferred soon but has not started their new role; a couple who’s engaged but not married. It can refer to a place, from an airport to a no-man’s land, or a reception room after the event has finished, the guests have left, but the leftovers on the dinner table still hold the memories of a shared meal. Societies also go through liminal periods, where a “collapse of order” leads to an axial age, defined by philosopher Karl Jaspers as a period where the undisputed understanding of life is challenged, and where radical questions need to be asked. Both destructive and constructive, liminal events — such as political revolutions, wars, and economic crises — shape the societal patterns that arise during these large-scale transitions. Whether it refers to people, places, or societies, liminality provides a playground for transformation, a game with no rules we’re all invited to join, a sandbox for liminal creativity. The paradox of liminal spaces Losing a job, taking on a new challenge, preparing to launch a project, deciding to raise a family, moving to a new country, living through a societal revolution: the world’s chaotic flows force us all to walk through liminal spaces at one point or another during our lives. Liminality is so omnipresent, many cultures worship liminal deities: gods or goddesses who preside over thresholds, guardians of gates, crossers of boundaries. Enodia, the goddess of crossroads in Greek mythology; Janus, the dual-faced god of beginnings and endings in Roman mythology; Menshen, the divine protectors of doors in Chinese mythology. Even stripped from these ancient narratives, our lives are still full of liminal spaces: when we’re not children anymore but not adults yet; when we know we’re leaving but haven’t said goodbye; when we’re lost but still hope to find our way. Just like twilight is a liminal time between day and night, critical life stages and large societal shifts create liminal spaces that offer risks and opportunities, spaces that expand our perception of possibles. What happens in liminal spaces? Doubt, discomfort, unfamiliarity, anxiety. But also growth, change, and discovery. Liminal spaces offer all of the ingredients for creativity. Liminal creativity is new ideas emerging from the unknown, identities changing through challenges, innovations sprouting in the midst of chaos, new beginnings built from the remains of failures. Still, our brain is uncomfortable in liminal spaces. Fear of uncertainty is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect us from unknown risks. Our brain resists change and seeks predictable patterns. But some people seem to be more comfortable than others in liminal spaces. They crave transformation, often changing jobs or careers, moving places, persistently looking for surprising ideas and working on new projects. Once they reach a certain level of comfort, they start searching for the next rite of passage — the next liminal space. In the words of neuroscientist Gregory Berns, “only when you consciously confront your brain’s reliance on categories will you be able to imagine outside of its boundaries.” In this constant quest for the unknown, liminal creators keep on fueing their imagination by exploring the gray areas that live outside of established categories. Creativity in the age of change As Heraclitus famously said, “change is the only constant in life.” The hero’s journey is a constant cycle of change, where the hero reinvents themself and comes home transformed, before starting a new adventure. Similarly, life is a creative adventure that requires becoming comfortable with discomfort, a journey where we continually experiment, make mistakes, learn, and grow. And some of the biggest turning points in our story happen in the uncomfortable yet liberating liminal spaces where we are free to express our creativity. Though not exhaustive, here are some guiding principles to embrace liminal creativity: Explore the edge. Roam the edge of practices, where they permeate several trends and communities, creating gateways between worlds of ideas; push the boundaries of knowledge by connecting seemingly unrelated ideas; direct your curiosity towards questions that haven’t even been formulated yet. The poet Alison Hawthorne Deming wrote: “In ecology, the term edge effect refers to a place where a habitat is changing — where a marsh turns into a pond or a forest turns into a field. These places tend to be rich in life forms and survival strategies.” Similarly, liminal creativity happens where thought spaces overlap, such as the crossroads between science and spirituality, art and technology, fashion and politics, history and futurism. Get in the flow. When everything around you is shifting and evolving, you need to accept that the only thing you have authority over is your attention. Let your ever changing world fuel your inspiration without becoming a distraction. Direct your attention toward the liminal space emerging from those transitional states. Ask yourself: where do I want to funnel my creative energy? Then, focus on your creative task while letting go of the illusion of control. Make friends with your fears. Again, our brain is uncomfortable in liminal spaces. Our fear of failure and our fear of being judged are deeply encoded in our social cognition, encouraging us to align our creative goals with those of others. It feels much safer to follow the crowd. Liminal creativity requires courage to elevate yourself above your biological instincts, to face your fears and conquer them, to get comfortable with uncertainty, and to consider the unknown as an opportunity for learning and personal growth. Create liminal rituals. In the morning before everyone wakes, on the plane while traveling somewhere, between two work projects… Use these liminal spaces to create your own rituals, whether it’s journaling, doodling, deliberately importing your favorite Kindle highlights into your note-taking app, removing weeds from your mind garden, or writing atomic essays. Claim those in-between moments to express your creativity, unhindered by social rules that define the structure of your usual schedule. Reinvent yourself. Shapeshifters are the quintessential liminal beings. What better expression of liminal creativity than reinventing yourself? One of my favorite comics says: “It takes about seven years to master something. If you live to be 88, after age 11, you have 11 opportunities to be great at something. Those are your lifetimes. Use them.” Do not fall prey to the self-consistency fallacy. Learn something new. Change careers. Take a risk. Reimagine your identity. Live all of your lifetimes. Document the change. The most interesting transformations happen in liminal spaces, but it’s easy for your new self to forget where you came from and the details of your journey. In the words of Salman Rushdie: “Never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things — childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves — that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.” Whether it’s through words or images, publicly or privately — take the time to capture your own story. The ideas and identities that are born in the chaos of change are ours to forge. Liminal creativity can help carve a path from disorientation to discovery, from uncertainty to curiosity, from fear to innovation. It can turn scary situations into transformational experiences of self-discovery and self-authorship. In fact, life itself is a liminal space between birth and death. The post Liminal Creativity appeared first on Ness Labs.

Are you thinking of switching from Notion to Obsidian? As a rule of thumb when choosing a note-taking app, Notion tends to better suit architects, while Obsidian suits gardeners better. If you feel like a change of tool for thought might benefit you, read this tutorial to explore why and how to switch from Notion to Obsidian. Why you may want to switch from Notion to Obsidian As Notion and Obsidian have very different approaches to note-taking, you should carefully consider whether you should make the switch. If the following features would improve your workflow, you may want to switch from Notion to Obsidian. Plain-text files If you need to work with your notes using a variety of tools, you should consider switching to a plain-text based app like Obsidian. Notion’s notes are proprietary, and while you can export to Markdown, most of the features of your Notion’s notes are not easily transferable to other tools. Choosing a plain-text app like Obsidian ensures that your notes can easily be moved to other apps should you need to work across a variety of tools. Frictionless note-taking To create a note in Notion, you first need to think about where this note belongs. On the other hand, creating a note on Obsidian is as simple as writing on the Daily Notes page without having to worry about organizing, sorting, and categorizing your notes. With Obsidian, you can focus on the work itself — writing notes. Because of Obsidian’s ability to effortlessly reference your notes, organizing your notes happens organically. Bidirectional linking While both apps offer bidirectional linking, Obsidian does it differently from Notion: you just need to type double brackets or a hashtag to link to an existing page or create a new page in Obsidian. Notion calls their version of bidirectional links backlinks, which are created by using @mentions to refer to specific pages. Here a comparison between how backlinks are used in Obsidian and Notion:  Another difference is where you will find the bidirectional links in Obsidian and Notion. While your backlinks are shown in another pane under Linked References in Obsidian, your links are directly under the page title in Notion. Obsidian has Unlinked References, which shows you pages that mention the page’s name that you did not link. Looking for a specific note in Notion can be tedious. You need to go to the project folder, open a specific page, and unroll the header. This structure can feel stifling for some, and you may benefit from a more serendipitous approach to navigating your notes. Obsidian, on the other hand, encourages you to explore your notes with bidirectional linking and graph views. Why you may not want to switch from Notion to Obsidian As we have seen, Notion and Obsidian are fundamentally different Tools for Thought. The decision to migrate from Notion to Obsidian depends on your goals and use cases. If you cannot live without the following features, you may be better off sticking with Notion. Templates It can be time-wasting to rewrite the same elements repeatedly, and using templates can save time and focus on writing your notes. Notion templates can replicate the structure of notes you frequently use. This can be helpful with work that you have a specific format for, such as writing a draft or writing book notes. While Obsidian also offers templates, you need to do some tinkering to enable it, while Notion’s template feature is built-in. Notion also has a wider selection of community templates to add to your database than Obsidian.  Real-time collaboration If you work with a team, you should stick to Notion. You can work on the same document in real-time by sharing your notes with others. Not only that, but Notion also offers collaboration features such as Kanban boards, calendars, and assigned tasks to help you stay on track when working on a project with your team. While you can collaborate with Notion, it is not as powerful and requires you to tinker around with plugins to set it up. Productivity systems If you care about designing a personal productivity system, stick with Notion. You can mix and match many workflows to create a system that works for you, or you can even choose a system made by the community and customize it to your liking. While Obsidian has task management features, it is not as powerful and customizable as Notion. How to migrate from Notion to Obsidian If you are considering jumping to Obsidian, the good news is that it only takes three simple steps to migrate all your notes from Notion to Obsidian 1. Export your notes in Notion First, launch Notion and click on the three dots in the top right corner. Click the Export option, and select the Markdown & CSV option. Make sure you choose the “Include Subpages” option. Notion will then download all your images and notes into a zip file containing your notes in Markdown.  2. Import your notes into Obsidian Next, launch Obsidian, where a popup will ask you where to store your notes on startup. Under the “Open folder as vault”, select the Markdown file you downloaded earlier. 3. Transfer your images into Obsidian Next, create a page in Obsidian called Evernote images. Drag all the images in the image folder you downloaded in Notion. If you have a missing picture in your notes, refer to this page and copy-paste the missing image.  Getting used to Obsidian Now that we are done with the migration, let’s explore some of Obsidian’s features so that you can get used to using Obsidian in no time. Use Obsidian Sync. If you need to access your notes with other devices, you may want to use Obsidian Sync. This feature allows you to store your notes in Obsidian’s server instead of keeping them on your computer and be able to access them anywhere and synchronize them like what you are used to in Notion. Customize your tool for thought. To make your tool for thought more personal, you should consider using plugins and CSS styles. Explore the plugins and themes from the community, or create plugins and themes to suit your preferences and needs. Familiarise yourself with Obsidian’s formatting. While both apps use Markdown, their syntaxes are different. Explore more about Obsidian’s flavor of Markdown here to get used to it in no time. As always, be wary of the shiny toy syndrome. This is especially true when switching apps with markedly different note-taking approaches, like Notion and Obsidian. Your note-taking style and the app’s features should be considered if you are thinking of migrating. If you have made the switch and want to learn more about using Obsidian, join the Obsidian support group in our community. The post How to switch from Notion to Obsidian appeared first on Ness Labs.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom,” once said Aristotle. Introspection is the act of looking inwards to examine one’s own conscious thoughts and feelings. Our busy lives often prevent us from making time for introspection, which means we miss out on the many personal and professional benefits this form of self-reflection offers. However, there are many simple ways to inject healthy introspection into our daily lives. The history of introspection The practice of introspection is as ancient as human thinking. In Eastern Christianity, nepsis, Greek for “sober introspection”, encourages people to observe conflicts between the heart and the mind. Pratikraman, Sanskrit for introspection, is practised by Jains to learn from their mistakes, and Hindus are encouraged to reflect on their true nature as part of sāvdhyāya (“contemplation of the self”). Around 700 BC, The Temple of Apollo was built at one of the oldest religious sites in ancient Greece. The aphorism, “Know thyself”, was carved into the entrance. This practical wisdom was derived from the high priestess, Delphi, who was the most authoritative oracle in classical Greece. More recently, during the Enlightenment, philosopher Immanuel Kant rekindled our interest in introspection, a process he described as the liberation and emergence of humans in developing the ability to “think for oneself”. Kant also argued that it is because of our self-consciousness and capacity for rational thought that humans are different from animals. In modern psychological sciences, introspection is known as “experimental self-observation”. Researchers have found that individuals who reflect to understand past events are able to enhance and add meaning to their lives. Furthermore, the process has been shown to have numerous benefits for problem-solving, mental health, and future planning. The many benefits of introspection Early research into introspection suggested that the practice could promote error or misperception. However, a study in the 1990s later disputed this when it was discovered that thinking about the self could foster self-insight that did align with others’ views. A study by Keith Morrison in 1996 found that students who engaged in reflective activities were more self-aware, had greater confidence in themselves, and felt empowered to “recreate their own self-concept”. Research conducted by Cynthia Roberts in 2008 also suggested that reflection can broaden one’s horizons, leading to a “more holistic understanding of complex or ambiguous situations.” In understanding all aspects of the self, including personal, public, and professional personas, one can develop a clear picture of their whole person. In practising introspection, you may benefit from: Improved problem-solving. Researchers uncovered that “introspection improves problem solving performance, sometimes dramatically. Several studies suggest that self-observation, self-monitoring, and self-reflection play a key role in developing problem solving strategies.” Introspection can be used to break down the challenges we face so that we can better understand them. Reflecting on past experiences may help us to recall similar situations in which we either solved an issue or found our attempts fell short. Better mental health. By taking the time to reflect on your sources of stress, or the common causes of anxiety, you will be better placed to recognise when your mental health may be under pressure. When stress arises, feeling confident in practising introspection will allow you to remain focused and avoid succumbing to a negative thought cycle. Taking a solution-based approach, self-reflection can help avoid ruminating on a difficult situation, and instead use reflective practice to strive towards insight into how to overcome an issue or reach a goal. More self-compassion. Improving familiarity and knowledge of oneself will give you a better understanding of your thoughts, feelings and values. Ask “what” questions, such as “what is in my control?”, rather than “why” questions including “why do I feel so stressed?”. The “what” approach supports self-growth and the search for information, rather than increasing any sense of limitations you might have. Greater ability to confront fears. If you are fearful of making a decision or embarking on a solution, your personal and professional growth may be stunted. Reflecting on and understanding where your fears come from can help you to allay or confront them. Some fears may even come from childhood, and recognising and confronting the source may help you to leave a deep-seated fear behind. Enhanced future planning. By practising introspection, you can review your personal and professional performance to plan future development. If something went well, aim to do more of it. Conversely, in areas that have not been successful, consider adjustments that will ensure you avoid making the same mistake twice. When thinking about leadership roles in the workplace, an individual who practices introspection will demonstrate enhanced professional skills. Incorporating such self-reflection into leadership training could help professionals to listen more effectively, manage change, and better clarify arguments. But you don’t need any formal training to start benefiting from introspection. How to practise productive introspection Examining your mental or emotional processes can either lead to rumination, which will negatively impact your mental health, or productive introspection, which will support your decision-making, self-compassion, and future planning. As with most forms of self-reflection, your efforts will be most fruitful if you find a quiet space in which to explore your feelings privately and without distraction. For those with families, this might mean getting up before everyone else wakes to have uninterrupted time for yourself, or finding creative ways to acquire space such as going for a walk alone. By journaling, you can increase your awareness of how you feel, privately articulate your feelings or needs, and feel more confident in expressing who you are or what you dream of. Documenting a stream of consciousness can feel liberating. At first, your thoughts may seem tightly controlled, but as you write more, you may be surprised at the subconscious thoughts that come to the surface.  It is also helpful to document and update your goals by writing your intentions in your journal. Answering questions about who you are, who you want to be, what you want in life, and which values you are aligned to can broaden your sense of self. Finally, journaling is a great way to reflect not only on your present inner self, but your past self too. Looking back at entries from a year ago can boost your self-confidence and self-esteem, and help you notice patterns that you way want to explore further. If you don’t enjoy writing at length, setting aside time for meditation offers an excellent opportunity to spend time with yourself while looking more deeply into your thoughts. By meditating, you may become more aware of your values and who you are, be able to reflect on past successes, and recognize bad habits that you could attempt to quash.  Taking a walk in nature is proven to be beneficial for those experiencing stress or anxiety. Although you can practice introspection when walking in a city, getting into the countryside or at least a park is a great way to clear your mind of internal noise. Put your phone on silent, and focus on the natural sounds, smells and vistas around you while practising self-reflection. Whichever method you choose, to make the most of the benefits of introspection it is important to reflect not only on your emotions, but on your behaviour too. Consider which behaviours are a burden, and take steps to abandon them. Conversely, take action to initiate new, beneficial behaviours.  As we have seen, introspection is an ancient practice that can benefit our modern lives. By knowing oneself, it is possible to better understand our feelings, behaviours, and how we can best cope with life’s challenges. In regularly practising this form of self-reflection, it is possible to boost self-compassion, manage stress more effectively, and contemplate how we can shape our lives to become the best version of ourselves. The post The power of introspection appeared first on Ness Labs.