David Heath

.A pause is a moment of reflection which you give yourself the time and space to get back in tune with your intuition.Once you do that you can start planning changes that will put you on a better road to a better more authentic life.

Two of the most common signs you need a pause are hating you job, poor preformance, awarness of use of technology is often a reflection of a underlying problem.

Other reasons to take a pause is if a loved one needs your help during a tough period in there life. or the positive aspects such as a new job opening.

Start planning your pause by understanding you yearnings How do you find out what matters most? 'So that test' Askyouself what you want? Now ask yourself why you want it by adding "so that" to the answer

Take stock of resources befor setting on a final pause plan. money time and activity dial keep them all in check.

Formative experiences can end up holding you back later in life , e.g. teacher telling you your not good at painting , e.g. may leave you doubting your artistic ability, this is an example of a limiting belief.these can be deeply ingrained and when the going get tough you can tend to fall back on them.

Touve probably heard them a thousand times. but it doesnt mean you have to keep on playing them. in fact you can simply eject them and put something else on. and they can be changed. take up mental flossing. become aware of your fear tapes and a key part of mental flossing is learning to TASER.

TASER Start tuneing in , imagen your inner critic repeating your limiting belief aloud. once you can hear the words, acknowledge that you have this belief and the way its conditioned you over the years. now shift imagen the opposite to what youve just heard,repeat it to you really start to feel it.

Incorporate rules and nurture positive changes to make your pause more meaningful. A pause shouldnt be an endless to-do list free time is valuable. but its importnat not to slip into old habits and a waste time on endless internet sessions and sleeping till noon.

Begin with the end in mind. Note down habits you want to keep and keep in your life and ones you want to ditch.

The first thing you should do after your pause is to reflect on what you've learned.

What did you learn? what did you lean about your yearnings? do you still want to continue to the path your on? what will you and what wont you tolerate?

Making time for a pause is well worth it. Its both nourished and replenishing. At the end of your break, youll have a much deeper understanding of your true needs and wants. and set you up for your next adventure.

Reading is an active activity, not a passive one. First, inspect a book to understand what its main argument is and how it’s organized. Next, as you read the book, analyze how it develops its arguments. Finally, only after you understand the book, critique the author by agreeing or disagreeing, but always give reasons

To be well-read is not to have read a large quantity of books, but to have a high-quality understanding of good books.

4 Key Questions to Answer while You’re Reading: What is this book about as a whole?The leading theme, and how the author develops the theme.What is being said in detail, and how.The main ideas and assertions.

Any experienced learner knows that she shouldn’t fear rules at the beginning of something new. After mastery, they coalesce and can be done automatically.

Techniques to engage with the book to better absorb it Underline or highlight major points Star the 10 most important statements or passages in the book.Numbers in the margin to indicate a sequence of points to develop an argument

Elementary Reading This is pure mechanical reading of text and comprehension of what the symbols literally mean. This is where most remedial courses aim, and the extent to which reading is taught.

Inspectional Reading This is a skimming of the book to understand its main points and its structure. It aims to gain the best understanding of the book in a limited time. This is achieved by reading the table of contents, index, and key summaries of major chapters.

Analytical Reading This aims to gain the best understanding of the book in unlimited time. Not only should you aim to understand what is being said, you should develop a personal opinion about its validity. This isn’t necessary if your goal is simply information or entertainment

Syntopical Reading This aims to compare books and authors to one another, to model dialogues between authors that may not be in any one of the books.

On speed reading: A helpful component of speed reading is is training your brain not to subvocalize. Exercise: use your hand to cover text, and move your hand downward faster than you can currently read. Your brain will be forced to catch up.

However, after a point, reading faster necessarily trades off with comprehension. When speed reading helps you avoid spending time on texts that don’t deserve your analysis, this is good. But you wouldn’t want to speed read the Declaration of Independence.

More critical than speed reading is being able to modulate your reading speed dynamically. Read certain types of texts (fiction) faster than others (science textbooks). Within a text, read key points more slowly than fluff.

Inspectional Reading The goal is to gain the best understanding of the book in a limited time. Set a target for 15 minutes to comprehend a 300-page book. Think of yourself as a detective looking for clues to a book’s general idea.

The value of inspectional reading appears when you contrast it by breaking a fresh book from page one and reading it to the end. In the latter case, you are trying to understand what a book is about at the same time you are trying to understand it.

Questions to ask yourself What genre does the book fit into? What is the book saying as a whole? What is the structure of the book used to develop the main point?

Typical questions on theoretical topics: Does something exist? What kind of thing is it? What caused it to exist? Under what conditions can it exist? Why does it exist? What are the consequences of its existence? What are its characteristic properties? What are its relations to other things of a

Typical questions on practical topics: What ends should be sought? What means should be chosen to a given end? What things must one do to gain a certain objective, and in what order? Under these conditions, what is the right thing to do, and the wrong thing?

Find What the Book Says Understand the keywords of the author, and what is meant by them. The same word can mean different things to different authors. Different words can mean the same thing for the same author Find the meaning of the word Clues that a word is important:

Find the author’s leading propositions in her most important sentences. The important sentences are the ones that express the judgments on which the argument rests.

Unpack complicated sentences to find all the propositions the author is making. State the proposition in your own words – this is the best way to verify that you understand it. If you can’t do this, the author has merely transferred words to you, not knowledge.

A good book usually summarizes itself as its arguments develop. An orator’s great trick is to leave certain things unsaid that would be challenged if they were made explicit. Find what things the orator says must be assumed, what can be proved, and what need not be proved because it is self-evident.

As much as possible, you should struggle with the book independently on a first pass. This will help you see the forest for the trees, rather than getting mired in minutiae. When you use an external resource, understand 1) what you hope to get from consulting it, 2) the limitations of the resource.

There is no book so good that no fault can be found with it. Reading a book is like a conversation. Your obligation as a reader is to talk back, even though the author isn’t there. We’ve been conditioned to think that teachable students are those who passively swallow knowledge without independent judgment.

Until you’ve completed your understanding, you don’t have the right to say I agree, I disagree, or I suspend judgment. Much like a conversation, you need to give the author the chance to express herself fully before passing judgment. If you interrupted the author at each sentence to say she’s wrong, you’re not having a

Do not be contentious or combative for its own sake. Many see a discussion as something to be won, rather than an opportunity to discover the truth. They close themselves to learning something new or changing their mind.

A disagreement is an opportunity to teach, and an opportunity to be taught.

Do not play devil’s advocate by default. Don’t resent the author for being right or teaching you something new.

Inversely, don’t accept the author’s word as true simply because she seems more educated than you.

Separate your emotional reaction to the book from the rational one. Read the book sympathetically, earnestly trying to take take author’s point of view.

When you agree or disagree, you must give reasons for your disagreement. Without reasons, you’re merely expressing opinions. And fighting opinions with opinions is an endless battle with no victory.

According to How to Read a Book, If you disagree with the author, your criticism must fit into a set of categories: The author is uninformed: lacks knowledge that is relevant to the argument. The author is misinformed: asserts what is not the case; proposes as true/likely what it is false/unlikely.

Practical books What is this book about as a whole? What problems are being addressed? Discover the rules that are being recommended. What is being said in detail, and ho Discover the principles that justify the rules. Find the applications of the

Science What is this book about as a whole? What is being said in detail, and how? Is the book true, in whole or part? What of it? Why is this important? What follows?

Syntopical Reading The ultimate aim is to understand all the conflicting viewpoints relating to a subject.

Create a total bibliography of works that may be relevant to your subject. Many of the important works may not be obvious, e.g. may not have the keyword in their titles.

Inspect all of the books on your bibliography to decide which are relevant to your subject, and to better define the subject. As you research, you may find that your subject is more difficult to define than you imagined. Imagine love, which has been attributed to everything in the universe. Do we speak of love etc

Find the most relevant passages within the bibliography. Read the book quickly. You are reading it for your ultimate purpose, not for its own sake. You may use a syntopicon that organizes passages across works by subject. like Great Works of the Western World.

Bring the authors to terms with each other.Authors in different fields may use entirely different terms that mean the same thing, and the same terms in different fields may mean entirely different things. You must establish the controls and bring order to the chaos. This is in some sense like translation

Frame a set of questions to which most of the authors can be interpreted as giving answers. This may not be explicit – you may have to infer that if the author were asked the question, then she would have answered in this way.

Define the issues by ranging the opposing answers of authors. Often differences in answers are due to different conceptions of the question, and different views of the subject.

Order the questions and issues to throw maximum light on the subject. Show how the questions are answered differently and say why. Point to texts that support classification of answers. Generally, order more general questions before less general questions.

Example of the author’s syntopical reading on the subject of progress: Coming to terms: progress is used primarily to indicate change for the better, though a minority referred to is as negative changes. The authors then had to refer to the latter as “non-meliorative advances” rather than progress, thus changing the

The major question is, does progress occur in history? To this the major answers are 1) yes, 2) no, 3) we cannot know.

However, there are quite a few ways of saying each of these. There is also controversy: 1) is progress necessary, or contingent on other occurrences? 2) will progress continue indefinitely? 3) is there progress in human nature as well as in human institutions?

Finally, there are 6 respects in which progress occurs: 1) knowledge, 2) technology, 3) economic, 4) political, 5) moral, 6) in the fine arts.

Man is a “’social animal,’ greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy distrusting others.

“Extreme success of the ants also fascinated me— how a few behavioral algorithms caused such extreme evolutionary success grounded in extremes of cooperation within the breeding colony and, almost always, extremes of lethal hostility toward ants outside the breeding colony, even ants of the same species.”

“In the ant’s case, the behavioral algorithms are few in number and almost entirely genetic in origin. The ant learns a little behavior from experiences, but mostly it merely responds to ten or so stimuli with a few simple responses programmed into its nervous system by its genes.”

It seems obvious, to me at least, that the human brain must often operate counterproductively just like the ant’s, from unavoidable oversimplicity in its mental process.”

“Man is easily fooled, either by the cleverly thought out manipulation of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during “practice evolution” and kept in place because they work so well.”

Put one hand in hot water, one in cold water, then put both in the same temperature warm water. “Now one hand feels as if it has just been put in cold water and the other hand feels as if it has just been placed in hot water. When one thus sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast,

Being aware of biases is not a perfect defense. Charlie loves checklists.

Bias 1: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency Incentive-caused bias Self-interest and rewards drive behavior Behaviors are conditioned by prompt rewards given after an action. Once a behavior is conditioned, random distribution of rewards keeps the reflexive behavior most established.

Poorly designed incentives will cause bad behaviors. In pursuit of his own self-interest, man will rationalize bad behavior. excised normal gallbladders. Did this surgeon think, ‘I can get some easy cash by fraudulently excising gallbladders?’ No, “he thought the gallbladder was the source of all evil.

Bad behaviors become intensely habit-forming when they are rewarded

Antidotes Don’t reward behaviors you don’t want. Don’t design terrible incentive structures. Fear professional advice, especially when it is good for the advisor. Learn and use the basic elements of your advisor’s trade as you deal with your advisor. Double check,

“If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” – Ben Franklin

Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency Association fallacy Humans tend to like and love things and people, especially mothers, much like goslings attach to whatever is there at birth. People like and love being liked and loved. You ignore fault of and comply with wishes of the object of your affection.

Bias 2: Liking/Loving Tendency Why it evolved Attachment to parents promotes learning and safety for child Reciprocal liking between people allows social cohesion

Liking/Loving tendency How it can be harmful You can ignore the real faults of the object of your affection. In extreme cases, affection can be so strong you self-harm to attain what is loved. Because you like being loved, you pursue paths that make other people admire you, rather than the optimal choice for yourself.

Liking/Loving tendency Antidotes Put good admirable people in situations where people are prone to like/love, like teaching. Explicitly recognize your desire to be liked/loved, and control for that in decision making.Invert,always invert – what do you dislike most about an object of your affection? How can it go wrong

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency What it is:

Liking/Loving tendency Examples Like making popular but wrong decisions as a manager, or pursuing a respectable but dull career path. Advertising associating products with popular figures Warren and Charlie both liked Warren’s uncle, Fred Buffett, the grocery store owner,

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Antidote Invert, always invert – what can you find to like about an object of your hatred? How can you come to accept this object? What does the best case scenario look like? Respect your adversaries as people who are highly competent with many virtues, whom we will respect.

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Why it evolved

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency How it can be harmful Ignoring virtues can further intensify dislike, causing feedback loops Rifts can progressively widen until there is no common ground, and agreements are harder to achieve. Judgments can be made without consideration of full facts

Bias 3: Disliking/Hating Tendency Examples Negative political advertising, and treatment of opposing political candidates. When World Trade Center was destroyed, many Pakistanis concluded the Hindus did it, many Muslims concluded the Jews did it.Really, pick anything you strongly dislike, and see

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency What it is:

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency why it evolved:

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency How it can harmful

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency Example

Bias 4: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency Antidotes:

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency What is it?

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Why it evolved?

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency How it can be harmful:

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Examples:

Bias 5: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency Atidotes

Stand up straight with your shoulders back. There is a part of your brain that is constantly monitoring signals to figure out your position in society. Fix your posture to get others to treat you better, which will make you feel better and stand tall, thus kicking off a virtuous cycle.

Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. Many people are better at filling prescriptions for their dogs than themselves. Similarly, you may self-sabotage yourself daily – by not taking care of your health, not keeping promises you make to yourself.

Make friends with people who want the best for you. Surround yourself with people who support you and genuinely want to see you succeed. You will push each other to greater heights; each person’s life improves as the others’ improve. They won’t tolerate your cynicism, they will punish you when you mistreat yourself

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. With mass media, it’s easy to think of yourself as miserably outclassed. Drill deeply into your discontent and understand what you want, and why. Define your goals. Transform your goals into something achievable today.

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Children test boundaries of behavior to learn the rules. As a parent, your purpose is to serve as a proxy for society. You must teach the child what is acceptable, and what isn’t. Children who receive no/incorrect feedback don't learn boundaries

Put your house in order. It’s easy to blame the outside world, a group of people, or a specific person for your misfortunes. But before you do this, question – have you taken full advantage of every opportunity available to you? Are you doing anything you know is wrong? Stop it today.

Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Doing good (preventing evil from happening, alleviating unnecessary suffering) provides your life with meaning. Meaning defeats existential angst; it gratifies your short-term impulses to achieve long-term goals; it makes your life worth living.

Tell the truth. You may lie to others to get what you want; you may lie to yourself to feel better. But deep down you know it’s inconsistent with your beliefs, and you feel unsettled. You must develop your personal truth, and then act only in ways that are consistent with your personal truth.

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. As a listener, you are helping the other person think. The most effective listening technique: summarize the person’s message. This forces you to genuinely understand what is being said; it distills the moral of the story, perhaps clarifying

Be precise with your speech. Anxiety usually comes from the unknown. You don’t know what the problem is, or something vague seems really scary. Specificity turns chaos into a thing you can deal with.Why don’t you treat every other problem in your life with the same clarity? Be precise. What is wrong, exactly?