CogZest

Updated BSBM+ a New Meditation for Strengthening Attention, Executive Control, and Emotional Regulation

Having published a wildly popular meditation for inducing sleep called the “cognitive shuffle,” On my substack, I’ve published a new iteration of my BSBM+ meditation. This multi-anchor meditation intersperses Andrew Huberman’s “physiological sigh” technique in a body scan during which one controls one’s breathing and recites a mantra. In the “+” phase, this meditation is optionally followed by an open monitoring or focused attention meditation.

Have a look and let me know what you think on social media.

Hazel, Clean My Links, Hookmark 7.0.2 etc.

Here’s a summary of a newsletter we sent today to all Hookmark customers:

Continue reading Hazel, Clean My Links, Hookmark 7.0.2 etc.

How Cognitive Science Helps Design Better Software

Our software company is called CogSci Apps for a reason: our software is designed with cognitive science in mind. Following Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner, we recognize that one cannot directly infer engineering (or psychotherapy) from science—but one can design better systems by using science as a guiding resource.

Continue reading How Cognitive Science Helps Design Better Software

Recently

These days, I write mainly on the Hookmark blog and my Substack..

Continue reading Recently

How to update yourself — include productive practice in your workflows

We are constantly told that we can transform ourselves by reading more, listening more, watching more. We assume we will remember, understand, and apply what we take in. In educational psychology, these are called illusions of learning (discussed in Cognitive Productivity with macOS). Most people believe that re-reading is an effective learning strategy. In fact, research shows that the mind does not easily transform itself by re-reading.

I believe the key to taking control of one’s learning is to use productive practice. I explain that on substack.

A Story Was a Deal

In A Story Is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate In and Persuade, Will Storr arguess that a story involves a deal between the storyteller and the listener. I argue on my substack that before we became such a literate society, this was much more likely to be the case than it is now that we are inundated with stories.

Recording of Hookmark Office Hours (January 15)

I recently hosted an office hours session on using Hookmark for lawyers and writers. Here is the recording of the session:

Continue reading Recording of Hookmark Office Hours (January 15)

And on the Hookmark forum

Self-directed Learning from Stories: Preventing and Solving Problems

Can stories help us—help our loved ones—deal with major problems such as preventing affairs, ending alcoholism, or exiting a very destructive relationship?

Many of us already consume stories about such situations: films, novels, songs, even book-club discussions. But passive exposure is rarely transformational. Insight alone does not reliably change what we do when temptation, insistence, or fear takes over.

What if stories could be used more deliberately—as tools for self-directed learning and preventive practice, rather than as retrospective commentary on lives already in trouble?

I have added a chapter on self-directed learning from stories to my third book, Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind. The chapter appears in the part of the book titled On Stories, and develops the idea that stories—especially films, novels and music—can function as instruments for story editing, bibliotherapy, and productive practice. The focus is not on appreciation, but on how stories can be used before problems escalate, as well as when decisive change is required.

Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind is already available for sale on Leanpub, a Canadian ebook platform, and is being published incrementally. The book and chapter are still in draft form.

A draft of the chapter is available on my Substack: Self-Directed Learning from Stories – Luc Beaudoin

A Birthday Gift: Curated Listening on Emotions for Psychotherapists and Others

I decided to give my emotion researcher friend the gift of a curated playlist of podcast episodes and TED Talks on emotions, plus some cognitive productivity tips for making the most out of them. They are not all worth learning from, but some of them have knowledge gems that are worth instilling.

Continue reading A Birthday Gift: Curated Listening on Emotions for Psychotherapists and Others