An expert in their field has taken their vast knowledge and distilled it to what's most important. Writing forces you to make difficult decisions on what's important and what's not. Writing demands clarity. You're getting an expert's lifetime of work for $15.
THREAD
The world is littered with hacks and quick fixes.
Magic routines, butter in our coffee, special supplements, exotic foods. All promising to transform our lives.
Nearly all of it is BS. Here are 12 science-backed "hacks" that actually work.
An expert in their field has taken their vast knowledge and distilled it to what's most important. Writing forces you to make difficult decisions on what's important and what's not. Writing demands clarity. You're getting an expert's lifetime of work for $15.
The best way to "hack" knowledge? Have a conversation with those who are informed. They've done the hard part of figuring out of sorting through the mess of information AND making sense of it. Having a conversation brings clarity for application.
Day after day. Sit down to write. Get out to exercise. Whatever the task you're trying to master, just keep showing up.
If you show up enough, you'll get better.
Just getting your 8+ hours has enormous benefits from the psychological to physical. Sleep is when your body restores & grows with its highest output of growth hormones, & when your mind processes and coalesces information. Translating knowledge from superficial to deep
Get out and move. Most should be easy to moderate so you can keep coming back day after day. Some should be moderate/hard. And very occasionally you should "go see god" to remind yourself what going to the well is like.
Being outside can increase creativity, mood, and well-being. Just being near nature, according to one study, was equivalent health-wise to being 7 years younger. Even just looking at pictures of nature can do the trick, improving mood and performance.
One of our fundamental needs as a person is to belong. If we satisfy this need, our health and motivation improve We're more likely to persist, and tackle difficult challenges.
Feeling like we belong allows us to feel secure in who we are.
Moods and behaviors are contagious. Research from the Framingham study found that sadness and happiness rippled through the town. Living nearby a friend who becomes happy increases your probability of becoming happy by 25%
Sitting close to a low performer decreased performance by 30%.
Surround yourself with people who lift you up. https://t.co/KTms7fVddp
When life is too easy, we get bored and unmotivated. When we don't have a shot at winning, our motivation wanes and we give up.
Find challenges that are in the sweet spot of just beyond your current capabilities. A slight stretch.
Find something that is sustainable. Dieting is akin to going all-in on the latest exercise fad, lasting for 3 weeks and giving up exercising for 6 months…It's much better to find something that is sustainable for you.
Follow your interests. Go deep when something catches your eye. But don't be afraid to ditch it and move on to the next thing if it no longer meets your needs. Don't tie your identity too closely to what you do. Explore the world.
A self-transcending purpose allows us to persist a bit longer, perform a bit better. In physical pursuits, our brain loosens the reigns allowing us to dig a bit deeper.
Move. Sleep. Belong.
But that's the point. We spend so much time looking for shortcuts when the boring stuff right in front of us has a much bigger effect.
Choose the boring stuff!
We are seeking the silver bullet, when the reality is we need to zoom back out and nail the basics before we even consider the final 1 percent.
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Thanks for taking the time to read my work! https://t.co/Esomf74PKg
More from Science
@mugecevik is an excellent scientist and a responsible professional. She likely read the paper more carefully than most. She grasped some of its strengths and weaknesses that are not apparent from a cursory glance. Below, I will mention a few points some may have missed.
1/
The paper does NOT evaluate the effect of school closures. Instead it conflates all ‘educational settings' into a single category, which includes universities.
2/
The paper primarily evaluates data from March and April 2020. The article is not particularly clear about this limitation, but the information can be found in the hefty supplementary material.
3/
The authors applied four different regression methods (some fancier than others) to the same data. The outcomes of the different regression models are correlated (enough to reach statistical significance), but they vary a lot. (heat map on the right below).
4/
The effect of individual interventions is extremely difficult to disentangle as the authors stress themselves. There is a very large number of interventions considered and the model was run on 49 countries and 26 US States (and not >200 countries).
5/
1/
I've recently come across a disinformation around evidence relating to school closures and community transmission that's been platformed prominently. This arises from flawed understanding of the data that underlies this evidence, and the methodologies used in these studies. pic.twitter.com/VM7cVKghgj
— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) February 1, 2021
The paper does NOT evaluate the effect of school closures. Instead it conflates all ‘educational settings' into a single category, which includes universities.
2/
The paper primarily evaluates data from March and April 2020. The article is not particularly clear about this limitation, but the information can be found in the hefty supplementary material.
3/
The authors applied four different regression methods (some fancier than others) to the same data. The outcomes of the different regression models are correlated (enough to reach statistical significance), but they vary a lot. (heat map on the right below).
4/
The effect of individual interventions is extremely difficult to disentangle as the authors stress themselves. There is a very large number of interventions considered and the model was run on 49 countries and 26 US States (and not >200 countries).
5/
What are the classics of the "Science of Science" or "Meta Science"? If you were teaching a class on the subject, what would go in the syllabus?
Here's a (very disorganized and incomplete) handful of suggestions, which I may add to. Suggestions welcome, especially if you've dug into relevant literatures.
1. The already classic "Estimating the reproducibility of
psychological science" from the Open Science Collaboration of @BrianNosek et al. https://t.co/yjGczLZ6Je
(Look at that abstract, wow!)
Many people had pointed out problems with standard statistical methods, going back decades (what are the best refs?). But this paper was a sledgehammer, making it impossible to ignore the question: what, if anything, were we actually learning from all those statistical studies?
2. Dean Keith Simonton's book "Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist". If an essentially scientometric book could be described as a fun romp through science & creativity, this would be it
Here's a (very disorganized and incomplete) handful of suggestions, which I may add to. Suggestions welcome, especially if you've dug into relevant literatures.
1. The already classic "Estimating the reproducibility of
psychological science" from the Open Science Collaboration of @BrianNosek et al. https://t.co/yjGczLZ6Je
(Look at that abstract, wow!)
Many people had pointed out problems with standard statistical methods, going back decades (what are the best refs?). But this paper was a sledgehammer, making it impossible to ignore the question: what, if anything, were we actually learning from all those statistical studies?
2. Dean Keith Simonton's book "Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist". If an essentially scientometric book could be described as a fun romp through science & creativity, this would be it
