Response to Tom Monahan’s “If I Were 22: Embrace Your Ignorance”

While differing widely in the little bits we know, or rather guess, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. (Karl Popper).

Tom Monahan (Chairman and CEO at CEB) published an interesting article on LinkedIn yesterday: “If I Were 22: Embrace Your Ignorance”. He admitted that he graduated from Harvard feeling that he was “master of not only my own nascent trade, but pretty much anything else under the sun”. I.e., overconfident about his knowledge and abilities. Looking back, he would embrace his own ignorance, be a curator of good questions, and ask questions of more people. Good advice!

Continue reading Response to Tom Monahan’s “If I Were 22: Embrace Your Ignorance”

Spritz Text Streaming, “Speed Reading” and Cognitive Productivity

Spritz, new reading technology, is about to hit the Android market. It’s been called  “speed-reading” technology; however, it’s sufficiently different from other approaches that this categorization can be misleading.

Can this app help with CogZest’s mission, which is to boost cognitive productivity with cognitive science and technology? Continue reading Spritz Text Streaming, “Speed Reading” and Cognitive Productivity

Voltaire and the Importance of Concepts and Symbolisms to Understand the Human Mind

In 1734, Voltaire wrote

Qu’il y a des carrés d’infini, des cubes d’infini, et des infinis d’infinis, dont le pénultième n’est rien par rapport au dernier? Tout cela, qui paraît d’abord l’excès de la déraison, est en effet, l’effort de la finesse et de l’étendue de l’esprit humain, et la méthode de trouver des vérités qui étaient jusqu’alors inconnues.

What a beautiful thought expressed by a mind in reverence of Newton and his invention of differential calculus!

To translate:

That there should be squares of infinity, cubes of infinity, and infinities of infinities, of which the penultimate is nothing in relation to the last? All of that, which at first seems like an excess of  reason gone mad, is in fact, the effort of the perspicuity and extent of the human mind, and the method of finding truths that were until then unknown.

What is equally stunning is just how many forms of representations humanity has invented.
Continue reading Voltaire and the Importance of Concepts and Symbolisms to Understand the Human Mind

Opening Quotations: Hermann Hesse Displaces Rudyard Kipling and M. C. Esher

Most sections of Cognitive Productivity have an opening quotation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed choosing them. I’ve also appreciated the positive feedback I’ve received from readers about them.

Continue reading Opening Quotations: Hermann Hesse Displaces Rudyard Kipling and M. C. Esher

Arthur Balfour on The Benefits of Reading (1887)

There is so much information to choose from, and the demands on one’s time are so great, that selecting what to read (or, more generally, what resources to process) is amongst a knowledge worker’s most important skills. In Cognitive Productivity, I dedicate an entire chapter to the benefits of processing knowledge resources. Chapter 11 is dedicated to assessing knowledge resources. You may find it useful to consider these chapters in relation to Arthur Balfour’s position on these problems.

Continue reading Arthur Balfour on The Benefits of Reading (1887)