akshatrathi

[akshatrathi]

Speed reading techniques

Of the many techniques I read about, the following seemed the most convincing and useful to me:

Obvious

1. Improve your physical and mental conditions.

2. Remove distractions from reading device and environment.

3. Locate important bits of the text. Hotspots help (sub-heads, bold, italics, graphs)

4. Push self to read fast

Interesting

1. Read phrases instead of words, which needs avoiding sub-vocalisation

2. Use a guiding tool (finger, pen or index card)

3. If the text is familiar (topic, characters, style), ensure you do a flash mental review before you read.

Bonus

If said reading is important and worth remembering, make a short note. Perhaps a tl;dr version.

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Two bad things about writing

1. Starting

2. Realising that good writing is mostly rewriting.

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How do you remain optimistic?

Kevin Kelly said:

I read a lot of history. The degree of hopeless in the past, which we overcame, puts today's despair into perspective. Also, I have children.

[akshatrathi]

These 5 habits will help you avoid dementia and other diseases

1. Exercise regularly (few times a week)

2. Don't smoke

3. Consume alcohol moderately (about 3 units/day or 1 drink)

4. Eat a healthy diet 

5. Maintain body weight (depends on your height)

While specifics about how much or how little can be debated, with every study science keeps making a strong case to follow these 5 things blindly. Consider this recent large-scale study which showed reduction in diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer, if men practised 4 out 5 of these habits.

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Following the lead

In this highly complex world, it is extremely difficult to be able to make rational choices for even the most basic of human actions.

Take the consumption of food: what is the best food to eat to minimise our impact on the environment and improve our health? The answer "be a vegan" is not as simple and straightforward. Many have put forth convincing cases against. 

While this topic is something I've followed for quite sometime and hold views about, there are many others that I can't spend the same amount of time analysing. In those cases I'm not afraid of following the lead of some trustworthy "thought leaders".

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Becoming a nun

It made the state of mind clear, calm and kind. - Ani Chudrun in Unusual Choices.

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Wrong candidate

"If you ever find yourself working for a startup, here’s a handy tip for evaluating customers. Read their job listings. Everything else on their site might be stock photos or the prose equivalent, but the job listings have to be specific about what they want, or they’ll get the wrong candidates." - Paul Graham in Beating the Averages

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Ideas and execution

Sometimes ideas are very powerful but very hard to execute. If brute force gets you somewhere that is a killer start, but, not too soon after that, it is important to partially shift focus on to elegance. For elegance is a key ingredient of the long-game. If you don’t pay attention to elegance, someone else will come along and do it better than you.

[akshatrathi]

Understanding political power

Writer Walter Mead says power comes in four sorts:

1. The sharp power of military force serves as a foundation

2. The sticky power of economic vitality rewards others for joining the system and makes it expensive to pull out

3. The sweet power of values attracts and inspires others

4. The hegemonic power or primacy, where primacy is to geopolitics what a full card is to a game of bingo. It makes states attractive. Their support is considered a form of consent, giving legitimacy to actions. 

From The Economist's November 2013 special report on America. The report argues that a combination of these four puts America at the top of the world for now and for some decades to come. The country benefits from a system of the world it created after the second world war.

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Way out for neophiliacs

Combine extreme novelty-seeking behaviour with persistence and self-transcendence (losing yourself in something you love) for a perfect cocktail for success, say psychologists.

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What maketh a man

Francis Bacon's wise words worth imprinting in memory:

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not.

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On reading books

Francis Bacon's words on reading books are worth memorising:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Of course, now the question is which book should fall in which category?

[akshatrathi]

Space for kids

Comets are relatively small solar system bodies that orbits the Sun. When close enough to the Sun they display a visible coma (a fuzzy outline or atmosphere due to solar radiation) and sometimes a tail.

Asteroids are small solar system bodies that orbit the Sun. Made of rock and metal, they can also contain organic compounds. Asteroids are similar to comets but do not have a visible coma (fuzzy outline and tail) like comets do.

Meteoroids are small rocks or particles of debris in our solar system. They range in size from dust to around 10 metres in diameter (larger objects are usually referred to as asteroids).

A meteoroid that burns up as it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere is known as a meteor. 

A meteoroid that survives falling through the Earth’s atmosphere and colliding with the Earth’s surface is known as a meteorite.

[akshatrathi]

War is boring

This is probably one of the most provocative political phrases I've come across recently. After all most of human civilisation has been about wars. Violence may be in decline, as Steven Pinker has recently convincingly argued, but have we reached a point where it isn't a strong driver anymore? 

I don't think we have, but that is exactly why this phrase should spread. Because, really, war is boring.

PS: "War is boring" is a book by David Axe and Matt Bors, which I came across as a collection of posts on Medium.

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21 lessons from Trust Me, I'm a Doctor.

The BBC ran an excellent series of three episodes called Trust Me, I'm a Doctor. You can dig into their conclusions here. Here are the take away lessons from it:

1. Body Mass Index or body fat count don't say much about your health. How fit and active you are does.

2. It doesn't matter what you use to wash your hands. It's how you wash your hands that matters.

3. Deep sleep is the key to consolidating memories and needs to be achieved in 24 hours. Catching up on the weekend doesn't help.

4.No need to drink 2 litres of water every day. Just drink when you're thirsty and you'll be fine.

5. CPR doesn't need mouth to mouth resuscitation. Keep it going and the ideal beat is to match it with the song Stayin' Alive (not kidding).

6.The evidence on benefits of eating aspirin, if you've not had a heart attack, is small and may not outweigh risk.

7. Ultrasound can be used to burn parts of the brain to get rid of a Parkinson's tremor.

8. Sleeping 7.5 hours day reduces chances of diabetes and improves our immunity.

9. Vitamin supplements are a waste, unless you're a strict vegetarian, a kid or a pregnant woman.

10. Diagnostics tests, most of them, are unnecessary if you don't have an illness.

11. Over 55, the benefits of statins may outweigh risks. If side-effects appear, consider other statins or give them up.

12. Standing 3 to 4 hours a day is equivalent to running 10 or more marathons run per year.

13. Probiotics doesn't make any difference to our long-term health.

14. Instead, a morning of 100g oats might help improve the number of bacteria that produce healthy effects.

15. Treat smoothies as a treat, not a healthy snack. Most have more sugar than an equivalent amount of coke.

16. For migraines: avoid triggers, follow a standard sleep pattern, and when an attack occurs hit 'em with high dose of painkillers. One solution may be to get a botox treatment.

17. Nasal sprays are better than anti-histamine for hay fever. Ensure that anti-histamine, if you take them, that they don't cause drowsiness. Another option is to take immunosuppressant therapy.

18. There is no evidence that coffee can be good or bad for our long-term health (unless you're pregnant, then it is bad).

19. The evidence of Hormone Replacement Therapy helping women with severe menopausal effects is strong. Otherwise there are risks which need to be considered more carefully on a case by case basis.

20. Cracking your knuckles isn't linked to arthritis.

21. A line of trees in front of the street outside your house could cut particulate matter population by as much as 50%.

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Social media is about filtering trolls

Trolling, I decided, was the native mode of the internet, and not exactly sharing in the literal way that Facebook declares it. Sharing is complicated and private; humour is entertaining, appropriate to an audience.

From Katherine Losse's The Boy Kings about about the rise of Facebook from the view of its 51st employee.

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Preserving good habits

A habit is, by one definition, "an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary". While acquiring habits takes effort and is quite hard, losing them is easy and can happen surprisingly quickly.

Some habits are often built because of the people around you. And if in the wrong company, previously held good habits can get lost.

This happened to me recently. And although I had a faint realisation while I was losing this habit, it only fully hit me when I had lost it. To prevent this happening again, I have to remind myself to not just actively seek the good from people around me but also shun the bad.

Double the effort, double the reward.