Young & Brilliant conversations

notational:

ninakix:

Here’s readings of the week from the first week of October… Still making my way up there.

1. How Arts Training Improves Attention and Cognition by Michael I. Posner, PhD, and Brenda Patoine
   Basically, my reaction when I read this was, “WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!” I was pretty excited. The article talks about how kids deeply engaging with an art actually improve their attention and cognition in other areas of their study, as well. It’s funny because this was something I found in Middle School and High School, even when I was skiing. I felt like the stuff I participated in outside of school not only made me feel better about myself in a way that allowed me to focus (I think this has to do with the whole brain-as-a-muscle thing), but it really drove my interests and curiosities within school. I’d see connections and become more interested in a lot of subjects I wouldn’t normally be interested in. Also, as a complement, are the always-incredible thoughts of Jonah Lehrer.
2. Vulnerability: The Defining Trait of Great Entrepreneurs by Anthony Tjan
   I love this description of entrepreneurs and the risks they take. What really caught my attention is the fact that a lot of times, if we don’t choose to make ourselves vulnerable in this active way, we often end up vulnerable in the passive way. 
   Tjan also published a piece on “Why Do Most Entrepreneurs Fail to Scale?” which is a great little dip into the subject. I’ve seen some of these problems in real life, and I’m glad I’m not just imagining these problems.
3. On the Tip of Creative Tongues: The Word ‘Curate’ No Longer Belongs to the Museum Crowd by Alex Williams
   Here’s an interesting piece on the new obsession with the word curation. I’ve actually been thinking about this for a couple years. It makes sense when we consider the fact that the internet is just a giant conglomeration of over-information. At some point people would figure out that they don’t have to find this information, if they just edit it down to the most interesting bits, they can become unique, interesting bloggers. Also, I love the idea of curation as a talent and an art form, almost.
4. Know Me/ Nudge Me (Patterns from IDEO) by Jenny Comiskey, Aradhana Goel, Simon King
   I actually really like the patterns series that IDEO does. I love the exposure to and exploration of all these different ideas around an area and a stab at what they mean. This is an interesting piece about using data effectively.
5. How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect by Benedict Carey
   Speaking of pattern-seeking, here’s an article about how, when the brain is exposed to nonsense (things it can’t make sense of), it actually makes the brain more attuned to seeing patterns else where. I’d be curious to see how the research about how brains ascribe patterns to something when there isn’t one fits in here as well.
6. What Alters Our Genes by Sharon Begley
   I’m enthralled by the findings and pieces (epigenetics) about how our environment actually effects gene expression. Here’s a great little example of that. It’s cool to see a nonhuman context.
7. The Uneducated American by Paul Krugman; Nobel Prizes Remind Us Why Immigration Matters by Chris O’Brien
   These articles are basically linkbait for me. So there you go.
8. How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind by Clive Thompson 
   An interesting article on the differences between real-time search and old, cataloguing search.
9. The Evolving Face of Social Networks by Laura Parker
   I only wish this article went a little more in depth, got a little more nitty-gritty.

ninkix, your reading lists are a great resource.

hehe, yay! I’m just glad people like them (:

benkraal:

I went to an internal seminar here at work the other week. It had a title like “Building a Stellar Research Career”. The research development office had invited some senior academics along to talk about how they had managed their careers. While it was nice to hear smart and successful people talk about their work, it was too high-level to be of much use. Most of the advice boiled down to (1) Publish a lot, in the highest quality publications you can get into and (2) apply for a lot of funding so that you eventually get some. Which is lovely, and valuable to hear if you’d not heard it before.

There was also quite a lot of talk about being open to new ideas and working across disciplines and so on. Also, good to hear if you’d not heard it before.

My problem is that I have heard it before. In these sort of seminars I’ve heard too much about attitude and approach and not enough about the day-to-day work of putting that into practice. Seth has his hierarchy of success:

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

And he exhorts us to look at the top of that hierarchy, to get our attitude and approach right.

I’ve also been to seminars and workshops where we’ve had great help with the actual execution part of work. How to write a great abstract for a journal paper. How to structure a conclusion. And those were awesome. They improved my writing, both for formal publication and for planning presentations.

But eventually, at some level, you have to just sit down and work. But work is really hard. How do you go from great execution, at the level of paragraphs, into tactics, strategy and so on? What I want to hear about is the practices involved doing that work and I want to hear about it in a way that links back to the noble goals of having a great attitude and approach. Using Seth’s hierarchy as the yardstick, I want to know more about the small scale tactics that people use every day.

Maybe they can’t deal with anything higher level because they view “approach” and “attitude” as being already embedded in whatever discipline you’ve chosen. But it’s funny, because I think when you start to get the most out of multidisciplinary is when you start to examine those attitudes and approach. And to do that, you really have to be engaged with the “multi” part of multidisciplinary. Maybe that just makes people uncomfortable, to challenge their beliefs - and careers - so fully, so they’d rather just not go there?

It’s late. I have no idea what I’m trying to say, haha.

(via crazynutjob)

CONGRATULATIONS!