Monday, July 18, 2005

The WTF learning principle

From Kathy Sierra's blog
The best learning happens when you're surprised... when you don't get what you expect.

The brain is a prediction machine. It's constantly scanning to make sure that nothing fails to meet its predictions. And as long as everything is just as the brain expected, there's no need to wake up and pay attention.
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Monday, July 11, 2005

Live with passion

From Kathy Sierra's blog
I promised this blog would never devolve into a touchy-feely self help thing, and I intend to break that only very, very rarely. This is one of those times, so you've been warned.

Sunday was my birthday, which capped four fabulous days at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Walking back to my hotel Sunday evening, I collapsed in the street and began having seizures. The ambulance came, and I spent the night in the ER. As I slipped in and out of consciousness, I thought I was going to die.

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'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

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Thursday, April 28, 2005

Passion

Self induced passion

Is there something in your life you know you should do you, but you just can't seem to do it on a regular basis? For lots of people, this might include things like eating right, exercising, even cleaning the house! We've had many good ideas here about how to create passion in our users, how about creating passion (or at least something resembling that) in ourselves? It's easy to be passionate about things you love to do already, but for the things you want to do, but aren't passionate about, so you tend not to do them when you know you should - that's trickier.

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