Random Walk Newsletter, Issue 5#
One Sentence#
This time I'll share two sentences, one in Chinese and one in English.
"Creation is not enlightenment, it is labor."
Overthinking often ends as regret.
If you're overthinking, write.
If you're underthinking, read.
Audiobooks & Reading#
About Habits
This week I read Random Search - What habits do you plan to develop or quit this year?, which reminded me of two books I had read before, "The Power of Habit" and "Habit Psychology." From these two books, I learned some useful knowledge about habits, such as the key to self-control is not strong will, but establishing stable behavioral patterns, which means developing good habits.
So how can we develop good habits? Here's a new understanding: instead of trying to eliminate a bad habit, we should replace it with another behavior. In fact, habits are neither good nor bad; they are shortcuts we establish to achieve certain benefits. The golden rule for changing a habit is to replace it with another one.
Another important influencing factor is the environment. The environment can create friction for bad habits. For example, if you tend to oversleep in the morning, you can place your alarm clock farther away so that you have to get up to turn it off. This approach can be applied not only to bad habits but also to developing good habits. For example, many people decorate their desks in a way they like, so that whenever they sit down, they enter a working state.
It's Not My Fault
There's a point in there that gave me some inspiration about how we deal with mistakes. From a young age, we have associated the way we handle mistakes with our intelligence. For example, when praising a child, if they did well, we say "You're really smart" instead of "You worked really hard." And if they didn't do well, we might say "Why are you so dumb?" This has led to a situation where, as adults, our first reaction when we make a mistake is to shift the blame, in order to avoid being seen as having low intelligence or flawed character.
In reality, we should separate these mistakes from intelligence and character. If we make a mistake, it's simply a mistake, and it has nothing to do with our intelligence or character. By cultivating this mindset from a young age, we can face our mistakes openly and correctly, and truly learn from them, avoiding making the same mistakes again.
Another book that talks about this is "Thinking Inside the Box." The main idea is that we should approach mistakes in the same way as a black box does. However, in many industries, this is not the case. The book mentions the medical industry, which not only lacks this black box thinking but also tends to deny and evade mistakes.
Enlightenment in the Present
From the book by Stephen Pinker, the most profound impression I got was that our world is moving towards increasing entropy, which means chaos, inefficiency, and unpredictability. How should we deal with this? Pinker's view is to counteract entropy with information. When all your thinking is based on objective facts, you are using information as a weapon to the fullest extent.
The question this girl should be asking is, what should we believe in after humans stop believing in God?
Pinker's answer is, believe in reason.
Observations & Insights#
- This week I read an article by Liu Run, introducing concepts such as web3, blockchain, and metaverse. It's easy to understand and I recommend everyone to read it, I suggest you read it carefully. You must understand it.
- The February issue of the "Three Strikes Newsletter" is very rich in content. I wish I could write such content someday, Three Strikes.
- I read an article on the Minimalist about memorizing vocabulary. It's not long, but the content is great. Sometimes we work hard, but the method is more important, How to memorize vocabulary effectively?.
To be honest, this week's newsletter was a bit rushed. I had a lot of things going on, including accepting a job adjustment, preparing for promotion documentation, and dealing with various miscellaneous matters. I didn't have much time this week. I organized my usual notes and composed this newsletter. It's also a form of learning, gradually learning how to better complete a piece.