Non-practice

I once witnessed this scene: “I told you a few years ago that you should speak academically. Why don’t you speak academically?”.

The thing is, it’s not difficult to tell someone: “Use complicated, fancy, academic words. Avoid jargon.”.

It’s quite simple to say so.

But to implement something that requires live practice is not that easy.

If you tell a student “Speak academically”, it would take years, and not a few, for this to happen, in the end.

You can’t just tell one “Change all of your habits.”.

There are things that can be fixed easily. It’s not complicated to make a small change.

But some changes take years, and the advice, while necessary, might take many years to be fulfilled.

Coming back to the original piece of advice – “How to speak academically? Read. A lot of years, read. And communicate in official settings. For lots of years.”

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There is a podcast called #IGDLCC – Informații Gratis despre Lucruri care Costă (free information about things that cost money/are worth something).

I had this thought for a while, and kept wanting to write about it, but Madam Historian Georgeta Filitti made me finally write about it: it doesn’t matter if you have a form of power (money, fame, professional success) if you aren’t able to make the right decisions.

In the podcast with Mr. George Buhnici, above, she gives a few examples, like (approximate affirmation) – it matters more how you decorate your mind with knowledge and beauty, rather than how you look outside (1), an old piece of furniture or an old plate, with nice decorations can bring joy, even if you can buy a standard modern piece of furniture or a white plate – they can bring you joy (2), even at an older age you should keep learning and be curious (3).

I look around me and see people with power. I think some of their decisions are not according to my values. Enormous power, little care about how you spend that power.

In the podcast, they discussed a word I like a lot: MEDIOCRE! (Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) https://youtu.be/4Fbry0X7OmM)

How to avoid mediocrity, succeed in life? Not an easy solution, but you should keep aiming to get it.

In the end, it matters more, in my opinion, to be rich in the things in which you need to be rich.

What’s the solution? Should you ban very expensive cars? Should you forbid luxury and unhealthy things, and things that seem like a waste of time?

The fact that you can choose, and the ability to choose wisely, gives it importance. If you know the right things (at least according to your values), it’s more important than owning a fancy car.

There’s an old saying that you should build a house, plant a tree, and make a child. But knowing what is right for you, according to your values, might be even more important.

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“Președintele Nicușor Dan a fost întrebat într-un interviu pentru Observator cum au fost primele 100 de zile de mandat și a răspuns, printre altele, că au fost “intense”.

[…]

Întrebat ce notă și-ar da, Nicușor Dan: a răspuns: «7-8 așa, sunt o persoană exigentă».”

Pentru primele 100 de zile de mandat, Nicușor Dan își dă nota 7-8 | EurActiv.

I think there are some specific things to note about this:

• If you grade based on how you view yourself, you should give yourself a 10. You likely did a 10 based on what you thought was right at the moment. So, according to the information you had at a specific point, you did things in a certain way. But, if you had a good intention, you deserve a 10 out of 10, not a 7 out of 10. You did your best, based on the given information.
• If you grade based on how others look at you, things get complicated. Yes, you can give a certain grade from a person’s point of view, but what matters is the average. Yet, 7-8 out of 10 could be a grade of many people, but it can’t reflect the grade given by everybody. Some will give a 4, some will give a 10. But how would you know what 20M people would grade you after 100 days?

In conclusion, if you grade yourself, give it a 10, as long as you had a good intention.

If others grade you, it’s complicated, yes, it can be an average, but generally it’s a rough estimate, and individual persons’ grades can vary a lot.

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In a study, commuters in Chicago were asked to either talk with a stranger on a train, or sit quietly alone, or just do whatever they’d normally do on their commute. Then, they responded to a survey about how they felt.

Turns out those who engaged with strangers had the most pleasurable experience and those who remained solitary had the least enjoyable experience. These answers were compared with another group that did not participate but instead had to predict how they might feel in each situation. This group thought talking with strangers would be the least enjoyable, by far. The study is the journal of Experimental Psychology. [Nicholas Epley & Juliana Schroeder: Mistakenly Seeking Solitude]

Talking to Strangers Makes You Happy | Scientific American

via Andreea Roșca

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Steve Jobs on why thinking without doing is incomplete: “My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years out in the future what he would paint or the technology he would use to paint it? Of course not. Leonardo was the artist, but he also mixed all his own paints. He also was a fairly good chemist. He knew about pigments, knew about human anatomy. And combining all of those skills together, the art and the science, the thinking and the doing, was what resulted in the exceptional result. And there is no difference in our industry. The people that have really made the contributions have been the thinkers and the doers.”- Loyal to Distractions

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“Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbirdand A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice.” – Anna Quindlen • Anna Quindlen’s Commencement Address at Villanova

 

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“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ― George Bernard Shaw

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