Why Most People Don’t Take as Many Notes as They Should, and What They Can Do About It

I claim that people don’t take as many notes as they should, and that this interferes with their cognitive productivity. This article elaborates on the claim, and points to a CogSci Apps® invention my colleagues and I developed to address these issues. Continue reading Why Most People Don’t Take as Many Notes as They Should, and What They Can Do About It

Un samedi printanier musical: Oeuvres de Piaf et autres (chez nous); de Mozart, Morlock et autres (à l’annexe)

Samedi le 18 mai, nous célébrerons le printemps (cette verdeur qui nous entoure!) et l’art, dans toutes ses formes. Le jour, nous serons imprésario (ou au moins hôtes) d’un événement musical français. Le soir, on ira à un spectacle musical du Vancouver Symphony Orchestra: Mozart, Morlock et autres.

Entre temps, CogSci Apps et CogZest s’apprêtent à lancer de nouveaux produits.

Continue reading Un samedi printanier musical: Oeuvres de Piaf et autres (chez nous); de Mozart, Morlock et autres (à l’annexe)

Front Matter Podcast Interview about Cognitive Productivity with macOS and Hook

Leanpub front matter

I was interviewed by Len Epp on the Leanpub Front Matter Podcast. Leanpub is the main bookstore on which my first two Cognitive Productivity books were published. Continue reading Front Matter Podcast Interview about Cognitive Productivity with macOS and Hook

On The Relationship-building Proclivities of Human Nature

The Guardian recently published an excellent article by Frans de Waal, What animals can teach us about politics. In the spirit of cognitive productivity, I’d like to relate this to a couple of theories of human nature that lend credence to de Waal’s analysis.

Continue reading On The Relationship-building Proclivities of Human Nature

Poetweet for Canadian Company

I tweeted the poem below today, minus “‘s”. I’d draw a cartoon to go with this, one to do with a teapot. However, although I quite enjoyed Crystal Pite’s recent Revisor, I don’t want to risk needing to issue a retraction, as even professional cartoonists have had to on this subject. So, I will leave it up to your imagination. As for the poem, there are a couple of clues in the tags.

Continue reading Poetweet for Canadian Company

Birth Announcement: Hook Is a New CogSci Apps Invention for Your Cognitive Productivity

 

Hook supplies the missing links in the world’s best OS for productivity, R&D, creativity, blogging, markdown, and learning.

Hook solves the “meta-access problem” that I described in Cognitive Productivity: Using Knowledge to Become Profoundly Effective. Now that’s process. First write the book that describes (a) the problems, (b) the cognitive science that is pertinent to the problems; and (c) ways of using existing software (hacks) and information to solve the problems. Then develop an app that directly addresses the problem.

Hook is currently in public beta.

Peripatetic Reflections on Why We Walk While We Talk and Think Deeply

Paul Minda, a Canadian cognitive psychologist at University of Western Ontario, asked an interesting question on Twitter

Why do people pace around or engage in unguided, unfocused movement when talking on the phone. Does anyone know the answer?

I will focus mainly on a subset of this question, which is: why do we do this type of thing while highly cognitively engaged (e.g., participating in a cognitively demanding conversation, or lecturing).

I like to first try to answer a question myself (drawing as much as I can on my understanding of prior readings) before delving into others’ answers. So here are some “off the cuff” rambling reflections which expand on a series of my Twitter replies to Paul’s tweet. Keep in mind that I don’t specialize in cognitive embodiment. And the following is not rigorous reasoning. Just some (hopefully relevant) thoughts. But I am interested in all things relevant to cognitive productivity, which this is.

Later I might come back to the issue.

Continue reading Peripatetic Reflections on Why We Walk While We Talk and Think Deeply

Instead of Designing a Reading List for 2019, Why Not Resolve to Do This?

It’s that time of the year again, where people review, make resolutions, set goals and plan for the next year. One of the questions that comes up is planning one’s readings.

This blog post is a slightly adapted (but still unpolished) response to a question on the productivity guild, “How do you handle readling lists?”

The concept of an absolute, global “reading list”, which is what most people have in mind when discussing “reading lists” is counter-productive. Continue reading Instead of Designing a Reading List for 2019, Why Not Resolve to Do This?