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My mental model of a smart person is someone who solves problems by looking at them from different angles, inverts and molds them, and arrives at a favorable and reasonable solution. This person seems to go through this process quickly and effortlessly. But 'Get Smart' by Brian Tracy makes the opposite case- the most effective thinkers are almost always the ones who think slower, longer, and with a great deal more deliberateness than everyone else in the room.

I recently listened to the podcast series of this book on the app Dialogue: Podcast Conversations on Books.

My main takeaway -> "being smart" is only a matter of clearing some misconceptions and habit upgrades. 

Here are the five of my key learnings:

• The first one is long term vs. short term thinking. Generally people are prone to go for the things that have better chances of getting them immediate rewards, or the things that are easy, without thinking about the consequences, even of a week later. But in contrast to this, a ‘high achiever’ asks: "what is this going to look like 5 years from now?". Many outcomes differ simply because of this ‘short term versus long term’ thought pattern. short term is almost always an activity that feels productive, but often isn’t.
• The second is the interval or pause between stimulus and response. Between the moment a trigger is fired and a response occurs, a split second exists when a good decision can be made, and the vast majority of people overtake it. the book asserts that this moment should be preserved. Thinking before reacting and deliberately grasping this interval and, if need be, making a small time delay before you respond will generally result in a better decision. The idea is to gradually make this a habit so it doesn't require conscious extra strain and comes naturally.
• Third is "the way of the solution-oriented thinkers." Most of the people in a ‘problem state’ focus their energy around ‘why me?’, ‘who to blame?’, ‘how it happened?’, ‘how unfair it all is.' Solution-oriented thinking acknowledges the problem, maybe feels a little pity for oneself, but focuses solely on how to resolve it. You cannot hold both ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ simultaneously in your head, whichever one your focus is directed towards is the one that will grow.
• The fourth one is result-oriented thinking. the author very nicely makes the distinction between being busy and being effective. In reality many of the things we do – emails, meetings, meetings about emails, and so on... are just moving around and filling our day with filler. Result-oriented thinking asks the question: "What is the single thing, for me, that I can do right now that will produce visible progress?" The rest is clutter until that question is answered or a way out has been found.
• Finally, we have goal clarity. If you have a goal that’s vague, your mind is free to go off and work on whatever is right there in front of you, which tends to be whatever someone else is urgently pushing or whatever demands immediate attention. A clear written goal helps you actively seek and notice the relevant opportunities that you might have missed otherwise.

What is fascinating is how simple all of these concepts, infact, are and yet how rarely they are practiced.  The book doesn't lay down a straight roadmap for transformation into a "smart person." It only asks you a simple question: are you happy(whatver that may mean for you) with how you are thinking and making decisions? (I suspect, most of the time, the honest answer to this is no.)

I'm packing my way through "Get It Done," by Ayelet Fishbach. It's an attempt to describe the science of motivation" or the science behind motivation; it's not a hustle culture read. The author intends to explain and describe the psychology behind what it is to "chase" a goal, confront hindrances, and have other related psychological first-person experiences. The author being a professor at the University of Chicago, her book is thorough yet easy to understand.

One of the most useful tips I found in the book was 'how framing your goal affects your motivation to pursue it.'

The author makes a distinction between considering a target an end versus a means to an end. If you think of "applying for jobs," it feels like a chore and just a step toward something else. However, if you see it as "finding a job," it becomes the goal itself; this shifts one’s emotional attachment to the task. Once you notice how you frame your own goals, you realize you do this all the time, and this likely drains your motivation even before you start.

On the flip side, there's a key idea from the book that didn't feel quite right to me. The author pushes the idea of making the process enjoyable as a strategy for motivation. Because in life, sometimes, it is indeed the case that we are only motivated to do the task and make progress solely for the sake of achieving an end. While it’s reasonable advice to find joy in the journey, the fact of the matter is, not every task is going to be enjoyable. I don't think it fully tackles the issue when the nature of some work is simply painful and the book treats it like a motivation problem rather than simply acknowledging that sometimes work is not fun.

Has anyone else read it? What do you think of motivation, and how do you cultivate it?

I’d always considered myself a fairly good conversationalist, until one day I noticed how people would begin to tune out. Not rudely or explicitly, but i could sense that they were now elsewhere, their answer would get shorter, and they would try to end the conversation or interaction on an abrupt note. I thought that whether you are liked or disliked by people speaks directly about your personality.

Recently I listened to an in-depth discussion on the book "How to Talk to Anyone" by Leil Lowndes on Dialogue: podcasts conversation on books. After listening, I realized that it wasn’t personality at all but a was a set of skills I had never learned.

Here’s what I took away from it:

• People don't remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel, and that mostly happens before you even speak. The book begins with the idea that- your body communicates before you do. We do so much evaluating before someone even utters a word, from simply assessing their body language, eye contact, and the energy they exert upon entering a room, that we can’t help but make a decision about them and the potential of their relationship with us on the spot. the author argues that people decide if they like you and want to talk to you within seconds, based mainly on non-verbal signals. this is to say that the outcome of the conversation is often decided before it begins.
• The way you make eye contact may be wrong. Many people either avoid eye contact because it feels intense or maintain it artificially to appear confident. The book describes a different type of eye contact, one that is warm and sustained and that shows genuine interest rather than just forced attention. It's called "sticky eyes." The idea is to let your gaze linger a bit longer than feels natural, it's supposed to convey that you truly find the person worth looking at, over and above what they offer. This seems to automatically translate into the person feeling seen, and people who feel seen want to continue the conversation.
• Stop trying to be interesting. Start being interested. This is the central tenet of the entire book. We enter conversations thinking about what we will say next, how we can come across, and if we sound cool or smart. However, according to the book, this is an entirely wrong approach to conversations; typically the more engaging people are not actually doing the talking - rather they ask better questions, listen without formulating their next response, and ultimately make the other person feel as if they were the most interesting person in the room, and really genuine curiosity is just about as good as social skills can get.
• Before attempting to change the emotional atmosphere, try to match it first. One practical idea in the book is to align or adjust your energy and mood with the person you're talking to before the conversation matures. Approaching someone who is quiet and reserved with high energy and enthusiasm creates awkwardness instead of connection. The book asks to take something called a "voice sample," which is assessing the emotional state of the person in front of you and meeting them there first. You may modify this gradually later on, but start at that same level.
• Compliments often don't land because they are superficial. Most people compliment appearances or achievements, but these are the glittering things that are easily noticed by nearly all parties. The book argues that the best compliments usually take the form of acknowledging something about the person they value about themselves but don’t get a lot of positive feedback for, like their thought process, judgment, or how they approach a challenge. These kinds of compliments resonate more intimately because they feel like earned and deserved compliments. The person doesn't just feel flattered, but they feel understood, and that is what a good conversation should amount to.

What makes “How to Talk to Anyone” compellingly different is that it does not suggest you become a different person or “fake” confidence you do not have. It simply makes the case that the difference between good socializers and awkward ones is a relatively small set of behaviors we all can actually learn, behaviors that nobody explicitly shares. 

What is self-esteem? 

Most of us think we know what it means- It's simply how we "feel" about ourselves or how we evaluate our own social standing. Genereally, people think of it as something you have on certain days and sometimes you don’t. It rises when things go well and falls when they don’t. I used to view it that way too.

After listening to Nathaniel Branden's 'The six pillars of self esteem' on the book podcast app Dialogue: Podcast discussions on Books, I realized self esteem isn't a feeling at all but a learned concept made up of a simple set of fundamental components or behaviors. It is a set of daily practices I had never been taught or examined for myself.

• The most important idea in the book is this: self-esteem is not a feeling but a result of behavior. The author emphasizes and makes it clear from the beginning. You do not think and feel your way into self-esteem. Instead, you act your way into it through consistent choices over time. This is a radical change in understanding self-esteem. It is not some state that happens to you depending on the circumstances.. Self esteem is something you actively enact or actively neglect. It is something you actively practice or choose not to. This shifts self-esteem from being a mood to being a skill, which is much more practical interpretation.
• "Living consciously" is the first of the pillars, and it supports all the others. The book does not refer to mindfulness in the superficial, modern sense. Rather, it emphasizes the importance of facing reality, acknowledging things you know but may not want to confront, and being fully present in situations that deserve your attention. the author calls this the foundational practice. If you are not honest to yourself about your perceptions, truth, and the feelings that result from them, you can build nothing of substance. Every other element of self-esteem relies on this.
• Self-acceptance is not identical to  "self-approval," and this distinction is quite important. Accepting yourself does not mean you ‘like’ everything you do or think or that you overlook or ignore your flaws. It means you stop fighting against yourself over them. When you reject parts of yourself, be they your feelings of guilt, your failures, or your unwanted impulses, you don't make them disappear or get rid of them. Instead, you cut off your access to them, making it harder to address them. Self-acceptance leads to honest self-reflection without generating any sense of shame.
• "Self-responsibility" is a pillar that many conversations around self-esteem overlook. The author makes the argument that when you give responsibility for your life to outside factors, such as circumstances, upbringing, or other people's actions and their results, you give up control over your self-esteem. You become reliant on external things to feel like how you think you are supposed to feel. Practicing self-responsibility simply means reclaiming ownership over your own life. This is not taking on excessive blame but rather recognizing that you are the only one who can change your situation and make it favorable.
• Personal integrity is the final pillar that the book enlists. The book defines it as 'the willingness to enact your values in your actions. Each time that the gap between what you say and what you do increases- that’s each time you make a promise (to yourself or others) and fail to keep it, you are sending a message to yourself that you can’t be trusted. This essentially transaltes to that- "if you don’t have anyone else there to damage your sense of self-esteem, you seem quite capable of doing the job yourself." Closing that gap, even in small ways, is one of the most effective paths to feeling better about yourself.

All six pillars work together in support of one central idea on which this entire book rests: self-esteem is earned, not given. It is earned through your choices in everyday life, not through extraordinary experiences or external achievements. Most advice about confidence focuses on and tells you what exactly you should be projecting to your external environment. But this book, on the other hand, shows what you should be doing to cultivate the only lasting internal validation there is- your own.

Happy learning.

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Hello!

For the past month or so I have been working on Another Page. It's an e-reader that also functions as an app blocker, so if you are someone whose goal is to read more, it can be fairly useful. It puts a few pages of a classic book between you and your most distracting apps. So if you open an app like Instagram or TikTok, a reading screen will show up first. Read a bit, and the app opens for the window you have set. Then it will lock once again.

How it works

1. Pick the apps you want to block.
2. When you open one, a reading session starts, right where you left off.
3. Hit your goal, in pages or minutes, and the app unlocks for as long as you set.

Some of its features

• It's a fully featured EPUB reader, so it has a good font selection, light/sepia/dark themes, highlights, higlights, bookmarks, and basically everything you would expect from a proper e-book reader app. It works as a standalone reader too.
• A library of about 1,400 free classics from Standard Ebooks. These are nicely made public-domain editions. You don't need any subscription to read them. Each one downloads the first time you open it, then it's saved for offline reading. Some examples are Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, and Meditations.
• The rules are extremely flexible and you can customize them to your needs. Pages or minutes to unlock, how many unlocks a day, how long each one lasts. Pause it, put it on a schedule, or borrow a little time when you've run out. The app holds you to your choices. It doesn't punish you.
• There's no account needed, and there are no ads or tracking. Your blocked apps, reading progress, and streaks always stay on your phone.
• If you really mean it, there's an optional strict mode (Premium) that puts a PIN or a puzzle in your way when you try to loosen your own rules, so a weak moment can't quietly undo them.

The free version has all the core features: the reader, the full library of 1,400 books, blocking, streaks, and stats. It works fine on its own. The app also a premium tier if you want more, with unlimited blocked apps (free covers 3), app groups with their own rules, uploading your own books, extra schedule windows, reading insights, and a couple of streak freezes a month.

It's Android only for now, but I am working on the ios version too. Let me know if you have any feedback or questions! You can also DM me if you are curious about the premium, and I can send you promo codes.

You can download it from the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.anotherpage

[Mods can delete this if it breaks any rules]

I have read my fair share of books on psychology, habits, resilience, and self-improvement over the years. Most of them tend to explain the topic in a dry and direct manner and urge you to do things like- become more disciplined, recover more efficiently, foster resilience, and cultivate a certain mindset. A few days ago, I finished "PQ-7: You Against Yourself," which takes a very different approach. Rather than telling you these things directly, it has you meet them in person. Less than halfway in the book, the book's characters stopped feeling like fiction at all and began to feel like people I've known, worked with, competed against, or grown up with.

We have a character, Carlos, who walks quietly to his car, grabs a worn-out One Blood blanket he had received after a blood donation, and starts to dry a wet court because nobody else wants to quit on a weekoff morning. We meet Ray, who organizes all the games each week, he checks up with everyone and ensures the attendance, books courts, and arranges food. He is a kind of person whse single question after being in a major medical crisis and waking up in the hospital would be, "When can I play pickleball again?" Then there is Gary, who understands the game better than almost anyone but realizes the frustrating gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it under pressure. We also have Tony, he is someone who offers the same tactical advice for virtually every on-court conversation "hit it to the weaker opponent." (At first, it's funny. Then all of a sudden, it turns into an insightful reflection on competition and why winning matters at all and what it is really.) Last but by no means least is Marco, who has been promising to "bring drinks next time" for literally years, yet somehow consistently forgets them. But everyone still hopes he's there every Saturday because his presence matters more than his contribution.

It wasn't until I met these characters that I realized they were more than just stories. Each one of them illustrated a component of the framework called PQ-7. The seven dimensions that it encompasses are - Heart IQ, Drive IQ, Game IQ, Recovery IQ, Joy IQ, Post-Game IQ, and Camaraderie IQ. But the truly genius part is that the book doesn't teach them like a textbook. By the time the framework is fully explained, you've already experienced each dimension through real people. This makes the ideas stick in a way I honestly didn't expect.

There is a self-assessment at the end, which caught me off guard. I thought it would be just another personality quiz, but I quickly realized I was answering as the person I wanted to be, not the person I usually am. I actually changed several answers before finishing because they pushed me to be more honest than I anticipated.

What stayed with me the most was the realization that it was not really about the pickleball, whih the book revolves around, it's just the framework, or if you prefer, a metaphor. Swap the pickleball court with a golf course, a tennis court, a running group, a gym, or even the workplace, and the same patterns will emerge. By the end, I wasn't asking which character I was. I had been every one of them at different stages of my life. I suspect most readers will feel the same.

So if you are someone who is interested in anything that has to do with psychology, habits, motivation, human behavior, leadership, or simply understanding yourself better, you'll find a lot more here than you might expect.

If anyone's interested: Book link

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