Thursday, October 19, 2017
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
We need to read more....
Good WSJ journal article on how we need to read more.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-need-to-read-1480083086?mod=djmc_gtceng_ema2_stud
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-need-to-read-1480083086?mod=djmc_gtceng_ema2_stud
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Incremental progress thoughts part 2
Incremental progress thoughts part 2
As I mentioned in my introductory post, the time challenges of those who travel are what originally prompted me to investigate the concept of incremental progress.
At its simplest level, if you neglect a skill or hobby, over time that skill will decrease. Even memory falls to the same prey. A German psychologist named Ebbinhaus conducted studies that show that given time, the power of a memory decreases. However his studies also show that with repetition at intervals of increasing length, a person may continue to learn and improve their memory of facts. He created a forgetting curve that was fairly interesting and will be the subject of another post.
However deliberate practice of a skill is important. Repetition of the same fact is good for purposes of trivia, but progress requires new information or challenges. The work of Anders Ericsson in his latest book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise covers this in great and fascinating detail.
As I write this before work, one of the skills I want to work on is writing. I enjoy reading, however I've never felt my writing skills were great. It's understandable since I rarely practice long form writing.
There are so many areas of life to work on, I'll try to discuss some of the areas i'm most interested in within the next several posts.
------Dave
Sunday, October 8, 2017
My thoughts on incremental progress
Incremental progress to me is defined as a measurable improvement in a metric within a certain amount of time.
My interest in this dates back to my time in an engineering job with a moderate travel schedule. I experienced the same challenges as many of my colleagues at this firm; with a busy travel schedule time for other activities and hobbies becomes limited rather quickly.
On the road for example, it was difficult to keep up with my guitar hobby. I am sure I could have brought a guitar on the flight but decided it wasn't worth the hassle. If anything one major issue was my distrust of baggage handlers. Since I only had one electric guitar and one acoustic, I couldn't afford to take the risk of them damaging them.
My exercise schedule was another issue. Since I preferred to lift weights and use running as my cardio, I was limited to using hotel gyms. Hotel gyms leave a dedicated exerciser wanton in many ways. First the dumbbells they have are fairly light. That is probably ok given the fact that the machines in many hotel gyms are worse. A sales guy I worked with told a story of using the lat pull down machine at one hotel. The cable snapped, and as that happened during the pulldown he cranked the bar into his neck.
Hotel gyms have stepped up their game since the 90's but still aren't the best. If you aren't a member of a large chain with reciprocity, your options seemed limited. Bodyweight exercise regimes didn't seem to be as popular. I suppose at the time I would have thought to do pushups and situps, but wasn't creative enough to do anything more. Now bodyweight workouts seem to be popular and a search for a good workout is just a click on a smartphone app away.
In a series of posts I intend to write (because practicing my writing will be a form of incremental progress in itself), I want to explore incremental progress and how I hope to apply it in my life.
----
Dave
My interest in this dates back to my time in an engineering job with a moderate travel schedule. I experienced the same challenges as many of my colleagues at this firm; with a busy travel schedule time for other activities and hobbies becomes limited rather quickly.
On the road for example, it was difficult to keep up with my guitar hobby. I am sure I could have brought a guitar on the flight but decided it wasn't worth the hassle. If anything one major issue was my distrust of baggage handlers. Since I only had one electric guitar and one acoustic, I couldn't afford to take the risk of them damaging them.
My exercise schedule was another issue. Since I preferred to lift weights and use running as my cardio, I was limited to using hotel gyms. Hotel gyms leave a dedicated exerciser wanton in many ways. First the dumbbells they have are fairly light. That is probably ok given the fact that the machines in many hotel gyms are worse. A sales guy I worked with told a story of using the lat pull down machine at one hotel. The cable snapped, and as that happened during the pulldown he cranked the bar into his neck.
Hotel gyms have stepped up their game since the 90's but still aren't the best. If you aren't a member of a large chain with reciprocity, your options seemed limited. Bodyweight exercise regimes didn't seem to be as popular. I suppose at the time I would have thought to do pushups and situps, but wasn't creative enough to do anything more. Now bodyweight workouts seem to be popular and a search for a good workout is just a click on a smartphone app away.
In a series of posts I intend to write (because practicing my writing will be a form of incremental progress in itself), I want to explore incremental progress and how I hope to apply it in my life.
----
Dave
Incremental progress
https://medium.com/the-mission/10x-your-results-one-tiny-action-at-a-time-the-power-of-incremental-progress-cda9ed3ff36e
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