Archive for the ‘Education Books’ Category

The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink deals with the power we can draw from dealing with our regrets in a thoughtful manner. Regrets deal with things you can control so you need to take action when possible to make things better and move on from things that can’t be fixed. Research shows that people who do this are healthier and happer. Thanks, Dan for this vital life lesson.

Part One. Regret Reclaimed – 1. The Life-Thwarting Nonsense of No Regrets

• Fron popular songs to literature to advice columns we hear over and over again about how successful people supposedly have no regrets. In this book, Pink shows not only that this is wrong-headed thinking, but when properly used, analysis of your regrets can serve to improve your life. We all have a portfolio of emotions and most of us try to have a bias in our lives for positive ones. That makes sense, but we also need to deal with negative emotions to help us avoid harm, be it physical or emotional. The purpose of this book is to show you how to use regret’s many strengths to make better decisions, perform better at work, and bring greater meaning to your life. Pink draws on his analysis of two massive surveys to accomplish this goal.

2. Why Regret is Human

• Regret is the unpleasant feeling associated with some action or inaction a person has taken which has led to a state of affairs that the person wishes were different. It is more understood as a process than a thing. As we mature, our brains naturally develop to experience regret. It is associated with the orbitofrontal cortex. People with lesions in this area typically do not experience regret. The same is true for people with Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. Reget is the most common negative emotion as things you regret are your own fault. They are things where you had control and constantly involve some comparison.

3. At Least’s and If Only’s

• These are two types of counterfactuals. When you think at least, you are thinking about how things could have been worse. When you think if only, you are thinking that an outcome could have been better if you had done something different. Most people engage in if only thinking much more than at least thinking. If only thinking degrades our feelings now, but it can improve our lives later. This is one way regret can help us do better tomorrow.

4. Why Regret Makes Us Better

• If you actively regret something you are not likely to do it again. A central finding is that regret can deepen persistence, which almost always elevates performance. Even thinking about other people’s regrets may confer a performance boost. Regret, however, does not always elevate performance. Lingering on regret for too long can have the opposite effect. Setbacks can supply fuel for future performance. Making mistakes and learning from them via regret is a path to growth.
• When it comes to things you regret it is key that you not wallow in them or dodge them altogether. Doing so will just make things worse. These feelings should result in thinking that results in future action that makes things better or avoids further pain. Think of this action as an evaluation that can be instructive. In short, if you make a mistake you need to ask yourself “what can I learn from it.” (Doug: This is a guiding principle for me.)

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Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath & Karla Starr gives specific advice on how to frame numbers in a manner that your audience and make sense of and remember them long after hearing a presentation or reading an article. If you find that you have to use numbers to persuade people, read this book and share it with your kids and coworkers.

Introduction

• We live in a world where our success depends on our ability to make numbers count. The goal of this book is to teach you how to translate numbers that lack meaning to most people into comparisons that do. For most humans, when you get past five or so all other numbers are just variations of lots. You can start by flipping through the book looking for boxes that contain a standard representation of a number and a translated version that is more understandable. There are over thirty translation techniques to choose from. If you, like most people, are not a numbers person, this book is for you.

Translate Everything, Favor User-Friendly Numbers

• If you don’t translate numbers for most people you might as well be speaking in a foreign language. Math is no one’s native language. The best translations of numbers are not numbers at all, but things you can visualize and stories you can remember. A gallon of water next to three ice cubes with water running off of them represents in order, the saltwater in the Earth’s oceans, the freshwater trapped in glaciers, and the freshwater we can drink. That image replaces four numbers.
• Try to avoid the big numbers like the points scored in a career and go with the per-game number of points. Rather than report the number of guns in the US, report the number per person. One game or one person demonstrates the power of one.
• If you want people to remember a number make sure you round when you can. It’s easier to remember 6 than 5.684. Also, use whole numbers rather than fractions, decimals, or percentages. Try 2 out of 3 rather than 2/3. Depending on your audience, you can break these rules. Baseball fans are fine with batting averages expressed to three decimal points for example.

To Help People Grasp Your Numbers, Ground Them in the Familiar, Concrete, and Human Scale

• A look at history shows us that all cultures use familiar things like the human body for measuring units. Your arms spread is a fathom. From your fingertips to your elbow is a cubit. One thousand steps is a mile. Use things in your environment that your audience knows well. A grape-sized tumor works better than a 3 cm tumor. While you might have to use multipliers sometimes, Pakistan = two Californias for example, smaller multiplies are better and the best multiplier is one.
• Pay attention to your geographic location and culture when selecting areas and items. Above all translate from abstract concepts to concrete objects. This will make your figures feel real. Infographics may be nice, but the brain is a pretty good graphic processor if given the right raw material. There are many examples here. A favorite is a model for our solar system and the nearest star, which are compared to two quarters lying on opposite goal lines.
• Another trick is to convert one type of unit into another. Time, for example, can be converted into money using a worker’s annual salary. Calories can be converted into distances you walk to burn them off. This doesn’t always work as a trillion one-dollar bills makes a 67-mile stack, a distance that few can quickly relate to.
• Always strive to translate numbers to a human scale. An example of shrinking turns the Earth into a basketball on the baseline and the moon into a baseball on the three-point line. The two-degree reentry window for a spaceship is now the thickness of a piece of paper. An example of magnification can be used to compare the speed of sound and the speed of light. If light from a new year’s fireworks display takes one second to reach you, the sound won’t arrive until January 10th.

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