Category: K.E.E.N. skills

How to Design a Font to Better Remember What you Read

I love this initiative from an Australian University: Sans Forgetica, the font that is scientifically designed to help remember courses: see the Sans Forgetica page.

“Sans Forgetica is a font designed using the principles of cognitive psychology to help you to better remember study notes. It was created by a multidisciplinary team of designers and behavioural scientists.”

The interesting part I find is that “Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The ‘desirable difficulty’ you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.”

By making harder and longer to read and understand, it seems that we remember better. I find that is quite an interesting insight. It shows that it is important to spend sufficient time reading and processing what has been read to better remember.

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How We Need to Learn to Say ‘No’ – and Get Others to Say ‘No’ Too

Following up on some highlights of the excellent book ‘Never split the difference: negotiating as if your life depended on it‘ by Chris Voss, he has a quite convincing development on the need to be able to say ‘no’ and get your counterpart in a negotiation say ‘no’ too.

It “is difficult for many people because they go directly against one of society’s biggest social dictums. That is, “ Be nice” We’ve instrumentalized niceness as a way of greasing the social wheels, yet it’s often a ruse. We’re polite and we don’t disagree to get through daily existence with the least degree of friction. But by turning niceness into a lubricant , we’ve leeched it of meaning.” As a result it becomes quite impossible to know exactly what the person is feeling.

““ No ” is the start of the negotiation, not the end of it. We’ve been conditioned to fear the word “ No” But it is a statement of perception far more often than of fact. It seldom means, “ I have considered all the facts and made a rational choice” Instead, “ No ” is often a decision, frequently temporary, to maintain the status quo. Change is scary, and “ No ” provides a little protection from that scariness.”

Chris Voss goes on presenting a number of techniques aimed at provoking a clear ‘no’ as a starting point for earnest negotiation. He even mentions that if it is not possible to get a ‘no’ there is probably something hidden that is worth uncovering.

Let’s give ourselves and our counterpart the permission to say ‘no’. It is an excellent foundation for further discussion and negotiation.

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How to Respond When You Feel Unworthy

I found a lot of personal resonance in this excellent post by Leo Babauta ‘The Universal Narrative: When You Feel Unworthy‘. I recommend the full read. How can we respond when in a certain situation (or more generally), we feel unworthy, we feel that we are not good enough?

The feeling of unworthiness has significant consequences on our life: from procrastination to lack of participation in a group to the quality and genuineness of our relationships.

Of course Leo Babauta reminds us that it is just a story we are telling ourselves. So he proposes two approaches to this issue:

  • write down a mantra that we can use whenever we feel unworthy, to make us believe otherwise over time (his mantra is “The world craves you and your gift“
  • ensure this narrative dissolves by wondering how it would feel if it would not be present

Next time you will feel unworthy, consider speaking out the mantra and dissolve this idea. We should not feel unworthy because we are not.

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How to Use the Ben Franklin Effect to Build Relationships

The Ben Franklin Effect (here on Wikipedia and on Quartz) is an interesting psychological effect: “a person who has already performed a favor for another is more likely to do another favor for the other than if they had received a favor from that person“. And we might use it more often.

As explained in Wikipedia, this effect can be used in commercial relations as well as in mentor-mentee situations. It can be triggered quite easily as in the famous personal example given by Franklin.

What is appalling of course is the reverse effect. “You tend to like the people to whom you are kind and dislike the people to whom you are rude“. The reverse effect might explain vendettas and other inadequate behaviors.

I am particularly interested about the experiment on the reverse effect which was performed in an educational context. “[the students] who received the insults [from the teachers] were rated as less attractive [by the teachers] than the ones who got encouragement”. This shows that not being nice or supportive to students will have a negative impact on the student but also on the teacher, creating a negative spiral.

All in all, we should probably be more aware of the Ben Franklin effect and maybe use it more proactively in the way we develop relationships.

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How to Define Ourselves Responding Adequately to Our Mistakes

I very much like this post by Valeria Maltoni which reminds us a great truth! ‘Mistakes Happen. It’s What we do With them that Makes a Difference‘ In my mind it is a bit similar to the old saying that the worth of a sea captain is only to be seen in a storm.

We all make mistakes, some more important than others. The issue is how we respond when we realize it. Do we pretend not to notice? Do we try to hide it? Do we spend too much time bashing ourselves on the fact we have made a mistake? Do we own the mistake, apologize, and sort it out?

In this area like in many others, I believe of course that owning it and responding to it properly (not reacting to it) is the right way. And also, as Valeria reminds us, people will remember us more about how we respond to our mistakes than in the normal course of life.

Thus, in terms or trust and reputation, the situation where we have to respond to mistakes is a defining moment. How do you define yourself?

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How Low Expectations Is The Secret to Happiness

In the excellent TED talk by Barry Schwartz about the Paradox of Choice, he reminds us that modern society and the large choice in everything is increasing substantially our expectations, creating unhappiness (and depression) as a result. And there he reminds us that “the secret to happiness is: low expectations“.

As he exposes from the historical perspective, “The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. Nowadays, the world we live in — we affluent, industrialized citizens, with perfection the expectation — the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be. You will never be pleasantly surprised, because your expectations, my expectations, have gone through the roof.“

This wise thought about expectations is worse remembering from time to time. As I meet sometimes people who always want more, I wonder whether I should remind them that having little expectation is the key to wonder, amazement and finally happiness.

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How Not To Believe in Your Thoughts

I like this quote of Byron Katie: “I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that.”

Now the issue is of course, how not to believe in one’s thoughts. Leo Babauta in this post ‘A Simple Mindful Method to Deal with Tiredness, Loneliness & Stress‘ provides a step-by-step method.

The thing is that we need to “notice that the thoughts are causing our difficulty. Not the situation — the thoughts.” And then work to be in the moment, observe our thoughts and consider how different we would be without those thoughts. Sometimes it may require a good night’s sleep to overcome those thoughts, or maybe some entertainment to think about entirely different things for a while.

I understand it takes practice, but when one has gone through the exercise, it is very rewarding. Observe your thoughts, they have something to tell you. But don’t believe them!

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How Deadly Powerpoint Can Be in Reality

In a previous post ‘How Memos Are More Powerful Than Powerpoints to Structure Thoughts‘ I argued against Powerpoint as a way to develop adequate content. In this excellent post ‘Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people‘, an actual example of a deadly powerpoint slide is exposed: an engineers’ slide during the analysis of the incident on the Columbia space shuttle launch that eventually lead to the loss of the spaceship upon re-entry.

In this example, the content of the slide is accurate, but the way it is presented, highlighting the wrong part of the content, may have led to take the wrong decision. The actual technical argument (the event that happened was way beyond any test or simulation and thus, available data points could not be used) was hidden in small font at the back of the slide. Again, a well argued technical note would possibly have led to structure it differently and more time could have been taken to review evidence (read the full post, it is extremely enlightening).

Another take away from this post if of course, that the way information is presented on the slide is also essential in the meaning that is conveyed, and that may people probably don’t read beyond the title!

I recently had another argument about the usage of powerpoints, this time for preparation of consulting commercial proposals. Again, I find that in that case where it is all about building a compelling story, powerpoint is not the most adequate mean. At best a shortcut.

As any tool, Powerpoint takes skill to use it properly and in the right situations. And we have not learnt enough that other tools can be used more effectively in many instances. I think I may start a crusade against the usage of Powerpoint as a cognitive shortcut in any situation!

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How We Are Feeling Machines that Think

I like this quote from Antonio Damasio: “We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think”.

Well that’s quite true of course, and it is demonstrate that our emotions drive our decision-making much more than our thoughts and rationality.

This has quite serious implications. Marketers and sellers know a lot about this. We may not be sufficiently self-aware to perceive that emotions drive a lot of our actions, and it may be required to give some more thoughts about this observation.

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How the Dunning-Kruger Effect or Illusory Competence Impacts Organisations

I knew about it and observe it regularly, but it did not know it had a name: the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is basically the illusion of being competent when one is not. This is specifically applicable when someone starts to learn in a new field.

The Dunning-Kruger effect or “the cognitive bias of illusory superiority” would stem from “an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability“. What is quite amazing is that apparently this cognitive bias has only been formally described and documented in 1999!

The funny part of course is that “The identification derived from the cognitive bias evident in the criminal case of McArthur Wheeler, who robbed banks while his face was covered with lemon juice, which he believed would make it invisible to the surveillance cameras.”

More seriously, this illusion has daily unfortunate consequences in organisations, and I have observed also that the education system of some countries tends to increase prevalence.

At least the next time you encounter this symptom you’ll be able to put name on it!

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How to Be Aware that Stress Closes our Hearts

This beautiful post by Leo Babauta ‘The Beautiful and Scary Practice of Moving Closer‘ reminds us that when we are under stress we tend to close our hearts and this creates damage in our relationships.

“The sad effect of these habitual reactions [to stress] is that they move us further away from others, and from the direct experience of the moment.” and this has many consequences: “Closing our hearts to others and creating distance from them out of habitual reaction to stress is the heart of aggression, violence and pain.” This in turn creates deep unhappiness.

I fully concur with this observation as under stress I tend to turn inward to myself and cut out relationship with others.

Leo Babauta goes on to propose to be more mindful in our reaction to others in particular when stress is involved. And make the effort to move closer rather to move further away. That’s tough for sure, but I will try it out. “It’s an incredibly beautiful practice. And yes, it’s filled with shakiness. That makes it even more courageous“

I am not sure I will be able to overcome instant emotional reactions, still it is worth trying, don’t you think?

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How to Practice at Our Edge to Progress More Quickly

Following up on our previous post ‘How We Need to Dose Our Self-Transformation Effort‘, I like this post of Leo Babauta ‘The Rule of the Edge‘. It is quite simple actually: “practice at your edge most of the time“. “And this rule is what will help you grow the most, over time“.

The idea is to stay just on the edge, but not more: “Your edge isn’t pushing yourself until you’re ready to collapse. It’s not pushing to injury, pushing so that you can’t practice tomorrow. It’s not studying all day long until your brain has melted. It’s going to the edge, not diving off it.”

What I like in Leo Babuta’s approach (and I encourage reading the full post) that what is proposed is to accept that it is not possible to be at one’s edge all the time. We need to be mindful about our body and mind, and accept that we need some rest from time to time.

What’s amazing of course is to see how our edge shifts over time when we are practicing at the edge often!

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