Tonight, I will moderate a humanist meeting on “Self-directed Learning with Fiction”. Here’s the blurb:
Continue reading Humanist Meeting On Self-directed Learning with Fiction
Author: Luc P. Beaudoin
Head of CogZest.
Author of Cognitive Productivity books.
Co-founder of CogSci Apps Corp.
Adjunct Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University.
Why, Where, and What I Write.
See About Me for more information.
Fiction About Fiction: Dangers and Missed Opportunities in Processing Stories
For the most part, we process (“consume”) fiction, in its various forms, for divertisement. But fiction sometimes comes with a false bill of goods: that we will (somehow) learn (something) from it; we will walk away from the experience a better person. The promissory note is sometimes issued by the marketers of art. But it also figures in serious psychology of fiction. I have some cautions to add to this tale. And I would like to propose an exercise to help readers reflect on the transformational potential of fiction, and art more generally.
Continue reading Fiction About Fiction: Dangers and Missed Opportunities in Processing Stories
What Can You Learn from the Knowledge of Others?
Who would argue with this: “Learning is good in itself. The quality of performance —in work and personal endeavours — depends largely on prior learning”? Hence we should learn deliberately, and optimally. Now, if we are to devise better ways of learning, would it not help to have some explicit understanding of the different ways in which we can learn, or develop? I think so.
Continue reading What Can You Learn from the Knowledge of Others?
What Can Be Learned from a Few Good Men that Trump Did Not?
Defence attorney, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, put Colonel Nathan Jessup on the stand with the aim of provoking him to disclose that he had ordered the Code Red.
Continue reading What Can Be Learned from a Few Good Men that Trump Did Not?
You’re Luckier than You Think
if I could fork myself, I would write a post on the role of luck in personal success. However, I can’t.
Focusing in the Age of Information Technology: Leveraging Gallagher’s Rapt, Carr’s The Shallows, Newport’s Deep Work, and Apps for Cognitive Productivity
Deep work is how brains produce value with knowledge. Thus, those who are better able to engage in deep work tend to generate more value. On average, they will be better able to protect their jobs, obtain promotions, generate sales, and make more money.
Time-Tracking and OmniFocus: Screencasts for the mySelfQuantifier System
Beyond creating and editing projects in personal project management software like OmniFocus and Things, one needs to know how much time one has sunk into one’s projects. However, a major limitation of those apps is that they do not provide time tracking functions.
Continue reading Time-Tracking and OmniFocus: Screencasts for the mySelfQuantifier System
A Student of Mind in a Community of Excellence
I remember reading an article a few years ago about Warren Buffett purchasing local newspapers. Buffett said that whereas large newspapers are under pressure, there will long be a viable need for community newspapers. I concur. Moreover, many communities, like mine, are fortunate to have excellent journalists working hard to cover stories that matter, or ought to matter, to them.
Continue reading A Student of Mind in a Community of Excellence
Two Responses to the Shallows: Deep Work and Cognitive Productivity
Seven years after Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows rang alarm bells that the Internet is ‘rewiring’ our brains, sources of distraction continue to proliferate. Yet there is still no consensus on how to respond. Continue reading Two Responses to the Shallows: Deep Work and Cognitive Productivity
Introducing mySelfQuantifier
I’ve published several web pages on mySelfQuantifier, which is a self-quantification project I alluded to in part 3 of Cognitive Productivity. While time-tracking is its typical application, it is a general, yet simple, contribution to the Quantified Self movement.