Stress and Recovery

This also comes from The Art of Learning.

Josh talks about how he had to train his entire body to handle the stress of a chess match. One must learn how to quickly and efficiently recover from stress in order to remain focused on the next event. He would get a drink of water during an opponent's move or even go to the hallway and sprint up and down it. As he matured, he began doing interval training (fast then slow repetitions) to train his body to recover. He talked with Jim Harbaugh (Colts Quarterback) and other athletes. The best QBs completely relax when they are off the field. No matter how stressful the game is, they must remain relaxed in order to perform the best when its their time. Recovering, rather than stressing, during a period of waiting is an invaluable skill.

"Not only do we have to be good at waiting, we have to love it. Because waiting is not waiting, it is life" (p. 187).

This quote focuses on living in the moment. Even action movies have many more scenes without excitement than they do with it. Life is not a constant and never-ending series of events. Trying to focus on each upcoming and past event causes one to ignore and not take advantage of the period of waiting. If you ignore the waiting, you often miss the moment when it finally comes.

Being a Jaguar

"If the opponent's movement is quick,
then quickly respond;
if his movement is slow,
then follow slowly."

"It is said if the opponent does not move, then I do not move.
At the opponent's slightest move, I move first."
--Wu Yu-hsiang

These quotes comes from the book The Art of Learning and relates to the ideas behind Tai Chi. Do not waste energy or movement, but still remain in control.

With these quotes comes a story about José from the Amazon. The jaguar is a stealth hunter in the Amazon, who few people ever see (if you do it's probably too late). One night José was walking through the woods and Jaguar came down from the trees. Knowing that if he ran the beast would kill him, he threw his bags forward and held his machete in front of him. The cat paced back and forth in front of José for 15 minutes keeping its yellow eyes fixated. José started sweating and then crying. Finally, no longer able to handle the wait, he began to back up. The jaguar saw an opening and attacked. José was mauled, but his life was saved by two villagers who heard the noise of the attack. They did not get a clean shot on the cat as it slipped back into the darkness. After the incident, José went mad. They say his spirit was broken.

Reading with your hand

One way to help improve the speed at which you read is to use your hand. Use your three middle fingers to underline the words on the page. If you get into a quick pattern of moving your hand, your eyes are forced to follow the speed, and it helps keep your attention to the page, since you cannot stop and fall behind your hand.



The red shows how your hand moves across the page. In the normal underlining, your hand simply moves under all of the words (left to right) in a quick motion. The other two are for reading a page more quickly (between 4 and 15 seconds per page). They allow you to use your peripheral vision to see more words and take in the main ideas instead of reading everything.

The Evelyn Wood book suggests studying by doing the following steps.
1. Overview (1 sec per page, subtitles, headings).
2. Preview (4 sec per page, draft an outline in mind)
3. Read (usually faster than normal speed)
4. Postview (around 3-4 sec per page, do it after finishing a chapter)
5. Review (go over recall patterns and notes approximately once per week)

The idea is that rather than reading the material slowly once. You read it quickly (at different speeds) four times. It should take less time than reading it once, and you should comprehend more.

Slash Recall Pattern

This way of taking notes and organizing notes allows you to organize ideas into categories and find connections. The example is how to use Slash Recall with a law case.



For other types of notes, you can start with a circle in the middle (Radial Recall Pattern), to connect everything to a central idea. Also, using a picture or sketch in the middle helps memory with the overall pattern. These ideas came from the Evelyn Wood Book.

5-Count (Craps Strategy)

This strategy for Craps is a way to help improve your odds, albeit slightly. The strategy works off of the idea that there are people who can actually control the way they throw the dice in order to improve their odds. Some people do this consciously and some do it unconsciously. These people throw in such a way to decrease the chances of a seven coming. The strategy was created by a man by the name of "The Captain."

The first part of the strategy is the point numbers = "4, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10"
All other numbers (2, 3, 7, 11 and 12) are non-point numbers

When a new person starts rolling, begin the strategy. 1-Count is achieved when the roller first rolls a point number. So if they roll four sevens off the bat, they are still at 0-Count, not 4-Count.

For 2-Count through 4-Count it is any number for the next three throws without paying attention to point or non-point numbers.

5-Count is achieved when a point-number comes. If a non-point number comes then the roller holds at 4-Count. When 5-Count is achieve, start betting. Usually with COME bets or PLACING 6 and 8.

Examples of rolls:
7 (0-Count), 7 (0-Count), 11 (0-Count), 4 (1-Count), 11 (2-Count), 6 (3-Count), 4 (4-Count), 7 (hold 4-Count), 11 (hold 4-Count), 9 (5-Count) [[Start Betting]]

5 Questions Bar Bet

This actually comes from Neil Strauss (Style).

The game works like this. You make a simple bet with the person (e.g. a drink). You have to ask them 5 questions and they have to get every question wrong. If they get 5 wrong, they win.

The first three questions really don't matter. Where are we? What's your name? What's your favorite bar?

On the fourth question, stop and look a little perplexed. Then ask "wait, what question are we on?" This will get a good number of people. But if they are too smart follow up with this...

When they are reveling in how they weren't tricked say: "Ok, Ok, you got me. You didn't fall for it. (look skeptical) Have you ever played this game before?"

They will usually answer honestly "no" to show just how smart they are. And then you win, because they answered the fifth question correctly.

The fourth question plays on a person's natural generosity. And the fifth question plays on a person's natural ego.

Balanced Resting State

Take a few paperback books and place them about one body-length away from you. Turn your back to the books. Let your body and neck relax, take deep breathes and keep your eyes open. Slowly, go down to one knee then to sitting on the ground with your arms behind you balancing. Lie down on the books so that they support you right below your head. Move the books as necessary. Make sure your neck is not tight but letting it drop a little before placing it on the books. Keep your arms on the floor.

Rest in this position for 10-20 minutes. Gravity will be lengthening your spine and realigning your torso. Keep your eyes open to stay from falling asleep.

After done, slowly roll onto your stomach then to your knees to get up. Try to avoid stiffening any part of your body when standing.

This balanced resting state can actually expand your spine and make you slightly taller immediately afterwards. It is suggested that a person do this twice a day.

Mind Mapping

This is an idea I heard recently that combines the idea of outlining and brain-storming. The thought begin "Mind Mapping" is to organize your ideas without sacrificing creativity. Good uses for this would be preparing for a paper or speech.

Take the subject and draw a detailed picture of it in the middle of a sheet of paper. Use colors. Some subjects are more difficult to draw (e.g. creativity) but just try.

After the drawing is done. Think of all of the keywords that come to mind from the subject. For each one, draw a line coming out of the picture and write them on the line. After that, think of all of the words that come from each of those words and branch further out.

As ideas start to develop, draw more pictures and doodles to help. The idea isn't to create a neat and tidy outline but to engage all of your ideas. You can always clean up the organization later.

Art Museum

I heard this the other day, and it sounded interested. Instead of simply walking through an art museum, turn it into a competition. Go with a friend. Every room you both walk into take about five minutes and look at all of the works. After that time, each of you have to pick your favorite work. If you disagree, you have to convince the other person why you are right and they are wrong. If you both agree on the same work, each of you pick your favorite part of the work and begin the argument from there. This should turn a trip to the museum into a more active experience.

Satan, Lucifer and the devil walk into a bar

I am not sure who comes up with these rules.

Anyway, to be grammatically correct, you must always capitalize "Satan." However, "devil" and "satanic" do not receive such recognition. And just to finish of the unholy trinity of names, you must always capitalize "Lucifer."

Write Drunk...

"WRITE DRUNK, REVISE SOBER"
-- Miller Williams, former poet laureate

Good advice if taken literally. Great advice if taken metaphorically.

The first draft of anything sucks fails to accurately represent what one means. It is through editing that we realize what we actually meant to write.

A book convinced me to write this post

I was reading a section of a grammar book when I came upon an interesting point.

The following phrase is incorrect:
"Timmy convinced me to walk with him to school."

The verb convince cannot have an action follow it. You can convince someone that the world is round (an idea). But you cannot convince someone to act. It is grammatically incorrect to do so. In a nutshell, the verb convince cannot be followed by an infinitive.

The best replacement for the incorrect convince would be the word persuade.
A book persuaded me to write this post.