Forever Grateful

 I want the self-help genre to be part of my staple readings.  Timeless works (at least for me) like Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich or Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People  will remain at the leading edge of this category.  However, listening to Cal Newport's podcast on Self Help is reframing the way I look at Self-Help books.  I might add, I am glad I am re-evaluating my approach to Self Help books in general. In his podcast, Dr. Newport categorizes Self Help into three sub-groups: Predigested self-help contents: Short how to videos (On You Tube, Tik Tok, etc.) Podcasts Self-Help books like Hill's and Covey's bestsellers mentioned above Interpersonal (Books or movies that persuade you to make empathetic connections with a character) Memoirs Feature Movies Novels Heavier Philosophical Works Works of the Stoics Heidegger (I am surprised I got the spelling right on my first try) These categories provide intriguing mental models to class...

  I know I have mentioned this experiment before; I also know it is one of my favorite experiments. Spoiler alert: if you have not checked out this experiment, go to this link before reading further:  selective attention test (youtube.com) .    Note; this video is from a research by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. Two teams, one in white and one in black and one in white are passing basketballs.  The viewer is instructed to count the number of times the team in white passes their basketball.  at the end of the segment the viewer is asked for the count and given the right answer: 15.  The viewer is then asked if he/she saw the gorilla that walked across the players. I understand that about 50% of the watchers miss the gorilla: I was one of those 50% that failed to spot the gorilla. Reading new books, especially non-fiction books, mimics that experience for me.  Books present condensed knowledge that authors worked on for years.  In his ...