💡 Psychological Concepts | Idea Flows | Substack | Mental Models | Happiness | Fasting

🤕 Psychosomatization: physical manifestations of emotional states - often happens because we’re unable to feel things emotionally. Ex: feeling nauseous when what you really are is anxious. “We store our issues in our tissues.” 

The idea that ten thousand hours is a “rule” for expertise has always been somewhat silly. First, the research the rule was based on suggested it was only an average, not a fixed amount. Second, the rule implies just getting a lot of hours is the key. In fact, the research showed pretty much the opposite.

Deliberate practice means overcoming automaticity and new innovations to push performance higher.

One easy change is to reduce the overlap in idea sources. Go through your Twitter, Feedly, Podcast, or YouTube feed and see what sources are saying the same things in different ways. Now of those, which are your favorites. Keep one or two, and ditch the rest.

If you’re not in the habit of creating things from your ideas, your ideas are never forced into some kind of coherency. They never become memes: idea-viruses that can reproduce in the brains of other people.

The best writing is the writing you don’t care if anyone reads. It’s what you create to help yourself understand and clarify what’s bouncing around in your head. If someone reads and finds value in it, great, but simply by creating it you’ve gotten most of the value.

Why is hotel bedding white? Why do we pay more for medicine than prevention? Why would most people rather have credentials than an education? The answer is signaling.

Signaling is taking visible actions to change what other people think. The fact that you can lie, creates strange incentives for would-be signallers to choose things that make lying harder. Bedsheets in a hotel are white, typically, because patterned sheets hide stains. If you’re worried about cleanliness, a pristine white sheet is harder to fake.

We tend to be suspicious of signaling, as it feels less authentic. But it is likely embedded into our psychology at a very basic level. Much of our behavior may be optimized for sending signals, rather than merely reaching direct ends.

More and more, our jobs require creativity and innovative thinking. Yet few people take the time to engage in real creative thought during the day.

who can “get creative” in a 15-minute slot between their mandatory lunch meeting and the hour-long call with the sales team at 1:30?

If your job is to think up new and innovative ideas, this just doesn’t work. So what does?

If you want to explore something and you have 3 months runway, it might be worth doing it for 2 months if you can. 2 months is a really long time to do something full-time, and you will learn a lot about what you want to do during that time.

O’Neil encourages writers to give Substack a try. “Maybe you only get 150 subscribers and it doesn’t work out. OK, no big deal. We’re all working constantly for free all the time anyways,” he said. “Let’s say all you can get is 100 people subscribing giving you $5 a month. For most freelance journalists, $500 a month is something.”

As more writers join the platform, he doesn’t think there is necessarily a subscription bubble for newsletters. … “[People] feel good about giving people they like money so they can continue to make stuff they like.”

Don’t Wait For Permission

When we’re thinking of starting something we’re often waiting for someone to give us permission or a certificate to say that we’re allowed to start. But waiting is not going to help. … in fact, the act of ‘doing’ is the best form of learning. If you’re providing a good service that’s all the qualifications you need.

Social scientists have a particular definition of what they call subjective well-being.

“They typically think of [happiness] as having two parts: a cognitive component — whether you’re satisfied with your life — and an emotional component — whether you have lots of positive and not so many negative emotions, which is sort of whether you are satisfied in your life,”

Santos said one of the most common misconceptions is that “we can’t change our happiness.” In other words, we think we’re predisposed to a certain level of joy.

Having close relationships with same sex best friends gives you a foundation of learning about intimacy, opportunities for being assertive and learning how to handle differences.

While some teens find a stable group of supportive peers through clubs, sports, etc., many do not — they suffer the emotional blows of falling in and out of various peer groups, and often develop “masks” to fit in and hide their true feelings. … As a result, they enter the adult world with unhealed social and emotional wounds that continue to impact them.