Deep work is professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
The opposite is shallow work: non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. They don't create much new value and are easy to replicate.
In our current economy, deep work is both increasingly valuable and increasingly rare. Those who cultivate this skill will thrive, while those who don't may struggle regardless of their other talents.

Deep Work Definition

When you switch from one task to another, your attention doesn't immediately follow—part of it remains stuck thinking about the previous task. This creates what Professor Sophie Leroy calls attention residue.Research findings on this effect:<ul><li>Even brief glances at email/messages create significant attention residue</li><li>It can take 23 minutes to fully refocus after an interruption</li><li>This residue reduces cognitive performance even when you think you're focused again</li></ul>This explains why constant context switching between deep and shallow work is so harmful—your brain never reaches its full cognitive potential on your important work.

The Attention Residue Effect

Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.

Newport identifies four distinct approaches to integrating deep work into your professional life:
<ol>
<li>The Monastic Philosophy: Eliminating or radically minimizing shallow obligations (Example: Donald Knuth, who has no email)</li>
<li>The Bimodal Philosophy: Dividing time into clearly defined deep work periods and shallow work periods (Example: Carl Jung building a retreat tower)</li>
<li>The Rhythmic Philosophy: Creating a regular habit of deep work in your schedule (Example: Daily 90-minute morning deep work blocks)</li>
<li>The Journalistic Philosophy: Fitting deep work wherever you can into your schedule (Example: Walter Isaacson writing between meetings)</li>
</ol>
Choose the philosophy that best fits your circumstances. What works for a tenured professor won't work for a manager with constant meetings.

The Four Deep Work Philosophies

Your ability to focus is a finite resource that depletes as you use it. This concept, called attention capital theory, reveals why protecting your focus is crucial:
<ul>
<li>Our brains have a limited amount of high-quality cognitive bandwidth each day</li>
<li>Each decision you make depletes this resource (called decision fatigue)</li>
<li>Environmental distractions drain this resource even when you resist them</li>
<li>Once depleted, your capacity for deep work diminishes significantly</li>
</ul>
This explains why many high performers create strict routines that minimize trivial decisions and distractions. By eliminating unnecessary choices, they preserve their mental energy for meaningful deep work.

Attention Is Limited

Time blocking is the practice of planning your day in advance, dedicating specific chunks of time to specific activities. Newport recommends this approach with several key principles:<ul><li>Begin each day with a blank template divided into 30-minute increments</li><li>Assign all available hours to specific activities (deep work, shallow work, breaks)</li><li>When disruptions occur, simply revise your plan—don't abandon it</li><li>Include blocks for reactive work (emails, unexpected tasks) to keep the system realistic</li><li>Track deep work hours to create accountability</li></ul>This approach forces you to confront the reality of limited time, helps you notice when you're spending too much time on shallow activities, and dramatically increases deep work hours.

Schedule Every Minute

What we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore—plays in defining the quality of our life.

A Grand Gesture is a radical change to your normal environment coupled with significant investment of effort or money, designed to support deep work. These dramatic changes increase the perceived importance of the task and help you work with unprecedented intensity.Examples of effective grand gestures:<ul><li>Booking a hotel room to finish an important project</li><li>Traveling to a different location specifically for deep work</li><li>Investing in a dedicated space for important thinking</li><li>Taking a sabbatical to tackle a major intellectual challenge</li></ul>The psychology works because: 1) you've elevated the perceived importance through investment, and 2) you've engineered an environment that supports sustained concentration.

The Grand Gesture

Newport presents four rules to help transform deep work from an occasional activity into a cornerstone of your working life:<ol><li>Work Deeply: Create routines and rituals to minimize the friction in starting deep work sessions and maximize your concentration once you begin.</li><li>Embrace Boredom: Wean your brain from dependence on distraction. Schedule internet blocks, take breaks from focus, embrace productive meditation, and memorize a deck of cards.</li><li>Quit Social Media: Apply the craftsman approach to your tools. Only use a service if its positive impacts substantially outweigh its negative impacts.</li><li>Drain the Shallows: Treat shallow work as a necessary evil rather than a default. Schedule every minute of your day, quantify the depth of every activity, finish work by 5:30, and become hard to reach.</li></ol>

The Four Rules

Productive meditation involves focusing your attention on a defined professional problem while engaged in physical but non-mentally demanding activity (walking, jogging, driving, showering).
To practice effectively:
<ul>
<li>Define a specific problem before beginning</li>
<li>Maintain focus on that problem alone</li>
<li>Gently redirect your attention when it wanders</li>
<li>Structure your thinking by identifying variables and next steps</li>
<li>Review relevant information beforehand, not during</li>
</ul>
This technique serves two purposes: it helps solve difficult problems by leveraging your unconscious mind, and it trains your ability to focus intensely without distraction—effectively building your attention muscles.

Productive Meditation

The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection argues that you should adopt a tool only if its positive impacts substantially outweigh its negative impacts. This contrasts with the common Any-Benefit Approach where people adopt tools if they can identify any possible benefit.To implement the craftsman approach:<ol><li>Identify the core factors that determine success in your professional and personal life</li><li>List the top 2-3 activities that help you truly succeed in these factors</li><li>Consider which tools significantly help or significantly hinder these activities</li><li>Be willing to reject popular tools that offer small benefits but create large distraction costs</li></ol>This approach is not about rejecting technology, but about being intentional with your attention.

The Craftsman Approach to Tools

The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

A Shallow Work Budget is a strict cap on how much time you're willing to spend on shallow activities. The process works like this:<ol><li>Schedule every minute of your day in advance</li><li>Quantify the depth of each activity from 1-4 (1 being shallowest)</li><li>Set a specific cap for how many hours per week you'll spend on level 1 and 2 activities</li><li>When you hit your cap, start declining or rescheduling shallow commitments</li></ol>This approach forces you to confront how you're actually spending your time and how that aligns with your professional goals. Most knowledge workers are shocked to discover they spend 60-80% of their time on shallow work, while their most important contributions come from the deep work hours they're neglecting.

Shallow Work Budget

Fixed-Schedule Productivity is committing to a strict time constraint on your workday, then working backward to determine what habits and systems need to change to respect those limits. Newport suggests:<ul><li>Set a firm end time for your workday (e.g., 5:30 PM)</li><li>Work backward to make this constraint feasible</li><li>Become ruthless about saying no to commitments that don't align with your priorities</li><li>Develop strategies to limit shallow work and maximize deep work</li></ul>This counterintuitive approach creates an artificial scarcity that forces three valuable behaviors: 1) clearer prioritization, 2) greater efficiency during work hours, and 3) improved work-life boundaries. Productivity frequently increases despite working fewer hours.

Fixed-Schedule Productivity

Look, we're all addicted to our phones and drowning in busy work, right? Cal Newport's game-changing book shows why the ability to focus deeply is basically a superpower in today's distracted world. He lays out exactly how to develop this rare skill while everyone else is checking Instagram. Want to do work that actually matters? This is your blueprint.

Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York Times Book Review). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world. An Amazon Best Book of 2016 Pick in Business & Leadership Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller A Business Book of the Week at 800-CEO-READ

Cal Newport is Provost’s Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, and the author of seven books. His ideas and writing are frequently featured in major publications and on TV and radio.From his website: "I write about the intersection of digital technology and culture. I’m particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives."

Cal Newport

Deep Work

Most countries have a central bank that manages the money supply. It is independent of the government to prevent political interference. The government can implement different types of economic policy, like decreasing taxes, but can't increase the money supply.

The government can't just increase the money supply

The central bank determines how much money is in circulation at a time. They can authorise the printing of unlimited money to help an economy in crisis, but that's a short-term solution. It doesn't necessarily help with economic growth in the long term and can actually hurt the economy.

The central bank 

When there is more money in circulation, the manufacturers of goods like food, clothing, and cars could respond to demand simply by raising prices. This means you could no longer buy as much with the same amount of money. It is known as inflation. Inflation of about 2% a year is considered a sign of economic health, but more can quickly damage the economy.

Inflation

In recent decades, central banks have tried quantitative easing to infuse the economy with cash while maintaining a low risk of severe inflation. The quantitative easing approach is where a central bank increases cash flow by purchasing another entity's bonds. Anyone can buy bonds from corporations or governments. When you buy a bond, you're really loaning money to the company or government, who will pay it back later with interest.<ul><li>When a person buys a bond, they're using money already in circulation.</li><li>When a central bank buys a bond, it creates cash.</li></ul>

Quantitative easing

During the 2008/9 financial crisis and 2020, the United States' central bank bought unlimited bonds from the U.S. government called treasury bonds, loaning the U.S. government money. The government used the money to fund relief efforts. This isn't the same as printing money. Because of the way bonds are priced, the Federal Reserve effectively lowered the return on them. This incentivises other investors to lend to riskier entities, which should help companies to borrow money to use in projects, growing the economy over time.

Buying bonds from the government

When the Federal Reserve pledged to buy unlimited government debt, this means the government could just issue more bonds which the central bank would buy. The government could then use the money from the new bonds to pay off the old bonds, meaning the government never pays back its debt. Some economists say that when a central bank buys government debt, it's a subversion of a system designed to protect the economy. Others insist that these measures help stabilise economies.

Concerns over central banks buying government debt

Explore the economic strategy of quantitative easing, where a central bank purchases bonds in order to boost the economy. -- In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rocked economies worldwide. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many businesses struggled to survive or shut down. Governments responded with some of the largest economic relief packages in history— the US alone spent $2.2 trillion on a first round of relief. So where did all this money come from? Jonathan Smith explores the strategy of quantitative easing. Lesson by Jonathan Smith, directed by Serin İnan, Kozmonot Animation Studio. Support Our Non-Profit Mission ---------------------------------------------- Support us on Patreon: http://bit.ly/TEDEdPatreon Check out our merch: http://bit.ly/TEDEDShop ---------------------------------------------- Connect With Us ---------------------------------------------- Sign up for our newsletter: http://bit.ly/TEDEdNewsletter Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/TEDEdFacebook Find us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/TEDEdTwitter Peep us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/TEDEdInstagram ---------------------------------------------- Keep Learning ---------------------------------------------- View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-governments-create-money-out-of-thin-air-jonathan-smith Dig deeper with additional resources: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-governments-create-money-out-of-thin-air-jonathan-smith#digdeeper Animator's website: https://www.kozmonot.tv ---------------------------------------------- Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Nathan Giusti, Helen Lee, Anthony Benedict, Karthik Balsubramanian, John Hong, Annastasshia Ames, Amy Lopez, Vinh-Thuy Nguyen, Liz Candee, Kathryn Vacha, Ugur Doga Sezgin, Anthony Arcis, Chung Wah Gnapp, Karmi Nguyen, Yelena Baykova, Harshita Jagdish Sahijwani, Nick Johnson, Carlos H. Costa, Roberto Patrick, Les Howard, Jennifer Kurkoski, Ryan B Harvey, Abhishek Bansal, Akinola Emmanuel, Jose Arcadio Valdes Franco, Karl Laius, JY Kang, Heidi Stolt, Alexis Hevia, Christina Salvatore, Karlee Finch, Michael Goldberg, Denise A Pitts, Doug Henry, Kristiyan Bonev, Keven Webb, Mihai Sandu, Deepak Iyer, Javid Gozalov, Kyanta Yap, Rebecca Reineke, William Biersdorf, Patricia Alves Panagides, Valeria Sloan Vasquez, Yvette Mocete, Cyrus Garay, Samuel Barbas, Brighteagle, LadyGeek and Curtis Light.

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Explore the economic strategy of quantitative easing, where a central bank purchases bonds in order to boost the economy.

--

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic rocked economies worldwide. Millions of people lost their jobs, and many businesses struggled to survive or shut down. Governments responded with some of the largest economic relief packages in history— the US alone spent $2.2 trillion on a first round of relief. So where did all this money come from? Jonathan Smith explores the strategy of quantitative easing.

Lesson by Jonathan Smith, directed by Serin İnan, Kozmonot Animation Studio.

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View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-do-governments-create-money-out-of-thin-air-jonathan-smith
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Animator's website: https://www.kozmonot.tv
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Thank you so much to our patrons for your support! Without you this video would not be possible! Nathan Giusti, Helen Lee, Anthony Benedict, Karthik Balsubramanian, John Hong, Annastasshia Ames, Amy Lopez, Vinh-Thuy Nguyen, Liz Candee, Kathryn Vacha, Ugur Doga Sezgin, Anthony Arcis, Chung Wah Gnapp, Karmi Nguyen, Yelena Baykova, Harshita Jagdish Sahijwani, Nick Johnson, Carlos H. Costa, Roberto Patrick, Les Howard, Jennifer Kurkoski, Ryan B Harvey, Abhishek Bansal, Akinola Emmanuel, Jose Arcadio Valdes Franco, Karl Laius, JY Kang, Heidi Stolt, Alexis Hevia, Christina Salvatore, Karlee Finch, Michael Goldberg, Denise A Pitts, Doug Henry, Kristiyan Bonev, Keven Webb, Mihai Sandu, Deepak Iyer, Javid Gozalov, Kyanta Yap, Rebecca Reineke, William Biersdorf, Patricia Alves Panagides, Valeria Sloan Vasquez, Yvette Mocete, Cyrus Garay, Samuel Barbas, Brighteagle, LadyGeek and Curtis Light.

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TED-Ed

Why can’t governments print an unlimited amount of money? - Jonathan Smith

Whether you’re flying through the sky, falling from a twelve-story building or having a romantic relationship with your neighbour, dreams are a window into a world without constraints. The barriers in our everyday life don’t exist. Some parts of our dream world appear realistic, but others are tokens of our imagination. And this begs to question: Do our dreams have meaning? For researchers, this has long been a point of contention.

The Meaning Of Our Dreams

Dreaming also prepares us for social interactions. Positive and neutral dreams may help hone our social cognition and perception. We are very rarely alone in our dream world, so these dreams help us to rehearse social interaction.It wouldn’t make sense for dreams not to have meaning because they’ve stayed throughout our evolutionary history.Animals also dream and it’s unlikely that it’s for no reason. Other experts contend that the breadth of dreaming is so wide that defining its purpose and meaning is like defining the purpose of waking thought.

The Purpose of Dreaming

Dreaming is just thinking but in a different brain state. Defining its purpose depends on what you’re dreaming about.We agonize about many of the same things when we’re sleeping as when we’re awake, like relationships, work issues, hopes and fears, she says. Dreams are different, but the content is often the same.Visual areas of the brain are much more active during dream states as are emotional centres. While linear logic and language areas are damped down.

A Different State Of The Mind

Dreams give us a different idea of how to do things because they help us to think outside of the box and they can solve problems that involve going against conventional wisdom.But dreams help us to think differently because the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with habits and learned behaviours, is less active when we’re dreaming.

Removal Of Barriers

You may find dreams automatically concerning when they’re terrifying. Things like post-traumatic nightmares — more intense nightmares that may replay actual traumatic events and are particularly violent — should concern you. But in most cases, they already do because we wake up petrified.Dreams are casting a pretty loose net of associations to things that may be metaphorically a part of ourselves, but aren’t closely tied into any actions that we may take in real life.

Our Dreams And How We Should Act

People tend to get more concerned with their dreams than necessary. It’s relatively normal to have some sexual dreams about someone other than your monogamous partner. People may also have dreams where they’ve murdered someone, but that doesn’t mean they’re violent people in real life.Dreams can give us a different perspective on threats and problems that we encounter in our everyday life. What we dream at night can allow us to think in a more “flexible” way and find new solutions to the issues that pervade our days.

We process real-life situations in our dreams, but that doesn’t mean we should always pay attention to them. 

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Do All Dreams Have Meaning?

As babies, we could get people to do things for us without needing to say anything.  Adults would correctly surmise that we crave some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, or that we're ready for a snooze.  While this is highly gratifying and important in infancy, it can be dangerous if we keep these expectations for the rest of our lives. It can breed the idea that anyone who claims to know us should be able to determine our deepest aspirations and wishes without us needing to say much.

Assuming others know what we mean or want

We may assume that others must know what we want without telling them. We presume our lover must understand what we're upset about, that our colleagues must intuitively know what we want to be done.   Then we assume that if they don't, it must be a sign that they deliberately refuse or that they're wicked. So we justify our sulk, where we punish people for having committed offences while refusing to reveal the offences to them.

Destructive thoughts

Teaching is a skill we should put into practice daily. The subject we must patiently become experts and give lessons in is called "ourselves": what we like, what we fear, what we're hopeful about, what we want from the world. It is understandable when we should fail in our teaching duties because we never had to bother with all that in the early years.

The fundamental importance of teaching

There is a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want without us having actually told them clearly. We assume that if they don’t, then it must be a sign that they are being wicked or deliberately obtuse. The truth is we have forgotten the fundamental importance of teaching. Sign up to our new newsletter and get 10% off your first online order of a book, product or class: https://bit.ly/3HpVdSa For books and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://bit.ly/3xWeb0F Our website has classes, articles and products to help you lead a more fulfilled life: https://bit.ly/37S5QAm Join this channel to get access to exclusive members perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7IcJI8PUf5Z3zKxnZvTBog/join FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects on our blog, here: https://bit.ly/3ETcJO1 “One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others. Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a guess at determining what we intend — and, typically, they’ll get it right. They’ll correctly surmise that we are craving some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, that it’s time for a snooze or that we want to jiggle the keys again…” MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE Watch more films on SELF in our playlist: http://bit.ly/TSOLself SOCIAL MEDIA Feel free to follow us at the links below: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theschooloflifelondon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSchoolOfLife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschooloflifelondon/ CREDITS Produced in collaboration with: Deanca Rensyta Mihardja https://www.deancarensyta.com/about Title animation produced in collaboration with Vale Productions https://www.valeproductions.co.uk/

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There is a widespread tendency to assume that others must know what we mean and want without us having actually told them clearly.  We assume that if they don’t, then it must be a sign that they are being wicked or deliberately obtuse.  The truth is we have forgotten the fundamental importance of teaching.
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“One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others. Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a guess at determining what we intend — and, typically, they’ll get it right. They’ll correctly surmise that we are craving some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, that it’s time for a snooze or that we want to jiggle the keys again…”

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Why You Should Explain What You Need

Averages, relationships, trends and graphs are not what they seem. Statistics can make an important fact look as if it is nothing noteworthy and a trivial fact like there may be more in it. Writers need statistical methods and statistical terms when reporting data of social and economic trends, but they need to use the words honestly, and readers need an understanding of what they mean. Otherwise, it may result in semantic absurdity.

The abused statistic

“The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.”

For any statistic to be worth it, it should come from a representative sample of the group it is describing. But a representative sample is near impossible because of lack of time, resources, and other practical reasons. As a result, you are more likely to see a subset based on biases from the method of sampling rather than the representative group itself. When you see the statistic that, for example, represent the entire nation, ask yourself, “Which part of the nation?”

The representative sample

There are three common kinds of average: 
<ol>
<li>Mean. Add up all the values and divide by the quantity of the values.</li>
<li>Median. The value in the middle of the sample.</li>
<li>Mode. The most common value. </li>
</ol>
When a statistic cites the “average”, it could be the mean, median or mode, which can be drastically different. The unspecified “average” is used to prove a point while leaving out any numbers that might question their predetermined point.

The kind of average

If you want to use a test to measure something or somebody, it is equally important to know the limitations of the test. What can it not measure?  For example, an intelligence test does not measure leadership, creative imagination, diligence, and emotional balance. The test may still be useful for admission to a university or a job, but you should also understand its limitations.

Consider what it really measures

“As long as the errors remain one-sided, it is not easy to attribute them to bungling or accident.” Statistics are often used to support a cause or agenda a person believes in, rather than to disprove them. When people err in their use of statistics, it is always in the direction of their beliefs or agenda. So, instead of getting an unbiased view of the world, we get a biased view that other people want us to see.

Statistics are always biased

“‘Does it make sense?’ will often cut a statistic down to size when the whole rigmarole is based on an unproved assumption.” Consider what they are saying and why they are saying it. If a statistic doesn’t seem right, or someone arrives at a conclusion that seems questionable, ask “Does it make sense”.

The common-sense test

It describes using one thing as a way to claim proof of something else, even if there exists no correlation between the two.Meaningless statements:<ul><li>“32% of doctors think Mercedes vehicles are safe."</li><li>“27 % of a large sample of eminent physicians smoke Throaties— more than any other brand.”</li></ul>Expressing the data to suit your view. For instance, express exactly the same fact by calling it a one % return on sales, a fifteen % return on investment, a ten-million-dollar profit, or a decrease of sixty % from last year.

The semidetached figure

If B follows A, then A has caused B.For example:<ul><li>Assuming that since smoking and low grades go together, smoking causes low grades.</li><li>If you attend college, you will earn more money than if you decide to use the next four years in another way. The unwarranted assumption is that since college-trained people make more money, they make it because they went to college. However, we don’t know if these people would have made more money had they not gone to college.</li></ul>

Correlation vs. Causation

<ol><li>Who says so? What is the agenda? Who will benefit from presenting the data that way? Does it tell the whole story or only the good or bad part? Does it misuse average? Does any bias come into play?</li><li>How do they know? Where did the data come from? Is it representative? Can it be biased? Is the sample big enough?</li><li>What’s missing? </li><li>Did someone change the subject between the raw data and the conclusion? Is it a real statistic, or what someone reported?</li><li>Does it make sense? Pay attention if it fails the common sense test. Is something complex reduced to a single number?</li></ol>

How to avoid blind belief in statistics

This book lays the groundwork for the many ways statistics are used to mislead people. Honest people must learn the tricks of statistics so that they can interpret data intelligently.

Over Half a Million Copies Sold--an Honest-to-Goodness Bestseller Darrell Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to full rather than to inform.

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If you want to outsmart a crook, learn his tricks—Darrell Huff explains exactly how in the classic How to Lie with Statistics. From distorted graphs and biased samples to misleading averages, there are countless statistical dodges that lend cover to anyone with an ax to grind or a product to sell. With abundant examples and illustrations, Darrell Huff’s lively and engaging primer clarifies the basic principles of statistics and explains how they’re used to present information in honest and not-so-honest ways. Now even more indispensable in our data-driven world than it was when first published, How to Lie with Statistics is the book that generations of readers have relied on to keep from being fooled.

Darrell Huff

How to Lie with Statistics

Companies and teams that use rituals can significantly increase collaboration and productivity.
<ul>
<li>Rituals give a sense of psychological safety and belonging.</li>
<li>Rituals provide an opportunity to connect to purpose and values.</li>
<li>Psychological safety and purpose together boost performance.</li>
</ul>
Studies found that collaboration went up by 47% and productivity by 50% when people felt a sense of psychological safety.

Rituals in the workplace

<ol><li>A ritual is something to which we assign meaning and intention.</li><li>A ritual has a regular cadence, repetition, like every morning or once a week or month.</li><li>A ritual goes beyond its practical purpose.</li></ol> To understand a ritual, ask when employees at your company feel the most like they belong? You would know something is a ritual if it seems weird or crazy if it didn't happen. It would feel like a loss.

Understanding rituals

<ul><li>You can be intentional around your meetings - around beginnings and endings. It's possible to maintain some magic even when people are remote.</li><li>For asynchronous companies, a regular meeting during a suitable time for everyone with your camera on can still be worthwhile.</li><li>Managers need to build time to have one-on-ones and find out how the person is really doing. They don't need to be every week for an hour. They can be bite-sized. But you have to check in.</li></ul>

Rituals for hybrid and asynchronous companies

Workplaces are where people encounter some of the greatest diversity.  When we are left to our own devices, we naturally gravitate toward people that are more like us. Therefore, we have to be intentional about how we connect with other people, whether it's through bringing together multiple employee resource groups (ERGs) or through mentoring and professional development.

Be intentional about how people connect

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How to use rituals to connect with work and retain colleagues

When writing a review, although everyone likes a good story, it's important to only layout your experience with relevant information that other people might base their opinions upon. Such as the date when you went, when you placed an order, when did it arrive, etcetera.Whether you're writing a complaint or a compliment, readers would like to know the service time, how the staff is towards the customers.

Include relevant details only

One of the largest criticisms of online reviews is that many of them are vindictive and target specific individuals.It doesn't make the review useful when you "blast" a specific person, it only makes it seem pompous and blathering. Keep the review about your experience and omit individual names.

Leave out the proper names

A good review is the type of review that is useful to the people who will come along behind you.It's great to read a review that is intelligently, coherently, and honestly sharing their experience, whether negative or positive.When writing a review, you must organize your thoughts, use complete sentences, and then check your spelling and grammar before posting it.

"Good" is not always positive

This doesn't work for everyone but it can make your review stand out and certain. Leave your contact details on your reviews so that people may be able to contact you to corroborate your story.Sometimes we need the cover of anonymity to be truthful and honest without the fear of reprisal or judgment, but if you're able to stand behind your words, it most certainly helps.

Offer yourself up for commentary

You don't need other people's opinions to bolster your own.Remember that your review is about your own experience.

Your review is your experience

Positive reviews almost never gets challenged, but they're most often ignored by future readers. It's the negative reviews that capture the attention of the crowd.However, negative reviews can be useful if you address why you think your experience unfolded the way it did.We understand that there is no excuse for poor treatment and bad service, but if we show a little understanding, it can validate your review as an honest one.

Address the other side of the story

In the days before the internet, our options for reading reviews of a restaurant, product or business were pretty limited. But now, with a few clicks or taps on our phone, we can know exactly what thousands of people think about that new bagel shop. And as helpful as some reviews can be, they are ultimately a crap…

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Leadership & Management

How to Write Genuinely Useful Reviews Online

This is the behavior that makes it difficult to stay positive around negative people. It's where we tend to overreact negatively to normal situations due to stress, exhaustion, or an emotional disorder.
Just as how we offend other people because we feel offended and both sides of the dynamic think that they're merely reacting to the other. It happens in any relationship, familial or social.

Emotional Reactivity

This is the extreme form of emotional reactivity. What happens is that:
<ul>
<li>We tend to recall past disputes with revised dialogues (when they said this, I should've said that);</li>
<li>We imagine arguments that haven't taken place yet; and</li>
<li>We feel that other people make us angry and are trying to get on our nerves.</li>
</ul>
Emotional reactivity spreads as quickly as lightning due to the salience of negative emotions and their vast contagion.

Reactaholics

Negative emotions like anger and anxiety are processed much quicker than rational judgment. We are filled with confirmation bias that makes us overlook contradicting evidence.
Most of the thought process during this behavior is about justifying what we're feeling rather than testing the reality of its perceptual influence.

Feelings Vs Accurate Perception

Whenever we realize that the conversation is going downhill, it is important to ask ourselves these questions:
<ol>
<li>What is this person reacting to? Are they perceiving me to be disrespectful, biased, or narcissistic?</li>
<li>Am I acting like the kind of person I want to be?</li>
</ol>
We must remember to act according to our deeper values instead of blindly reacting to situations and always ask the other person to do the same.

Breaking The Reactive Dynamic

When dynamic reactivity is high, we become what we despise.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mentalhealth

Mental Health

How Emotional Reactivity Causes Conflict

When you speak off-script, you may worry that you will go off on a tangent.
But getting straight to the point and sticking with it comes down to knowing your message. When you are sure of your message, you can change your words without ever losing the thread.

Know your message

<ol>
<li>It's one idea. Focus your idea on the one point you want your audience to buy into. Too many ideas will produce confusion.</li>
<li>You can express it in a single, clear sentence. If your message is more than one sentence or a long sentence, your listeners won't "get it."</li>
<li>It's engaging. Your message should engage the hearts and minds of your listeners. It means you know what your audience wants.</li>
<li>It carries a message you believe in.</li>
<li>It's positive. Your message should move the room in a hopeful direction.</li>
<li>Ensure everyone can identify your message. "My view/point/message is..."</li>
</ol>

Six things every message needs

entertainment

Entertainment

product

Product & Design

How To Get Straight To The Point No Matter What You’re Trying To Say

All humans partake in gossip in some form. Everyone talks about other people. One study found that male participants spent 55% of conversation time and female participants 67% conversation time on socially relevant topics.
People like to think of gossip as the same as malicious rumours, but researchers define gossip as talking about people who aren't present.

The broader view of gossip

Gossip gives people the ability to spread useful information to large social networks. Without engaging in these discussions, we would be unable to maintain societies.
A 2019 meta-analysis found that of the 52 minutes a day the 467 participants spent gossiping, most of it was neutral. 15% was considered negative gossip, and 9% was positive.

Gossip: The chatter is often harmless

<ul>
<li>It helps us get information about people from others when the network is too big to get it firsthand.</li>
<li>Gossip offers teachable moments and provides examples of what's socially acceptable and what's not.</li>
<li>People want to be seen positively by others and fit in socially. Gossip can help to keep people in check morally. </li>
<li>Gossip can spread the reputation of someone.</li>
<li>Gossip facilitate bonding and closeness. </li>
<li>It can also serve as a form of entertainment.</li>
</ul>

Gossip plays many different roles

Some types of gossip should be avoided, such as harmful gossip that serves no greater purpose.
There's also a physiological distinction between active and passive participation in gossip. A study showed that when subjects heard about another person's anti-social behaviour, their heart rates increased. When they actively gossiped about the person, it helped calm their body.

Active and passive gossip

Why do people gossip? Here's the scientific reason we love chatter, according to psychologists.

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