References

I. Philosophical Foundations

  1. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now (New York: HarperOne, 2017), 18.

  2. Hamlet, directed by Michael Almereyda (2000; Burbank, CA: Miramax, 2001), DVD.

  3. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 203: “In the last analysis, the human world is always the product of man’s amor mundi, a human artifice whose potential immortality is always subject to the mortality of those who build it and the natality of those who come to live in it. What Hamlet said is always true: ‘The time is out of joint; O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!’”

  4. The Doors, “Riders on the Storm,” on L.A. Woman, Elektra Records, 1971, vinyl LP.

  5. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

  6. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 7: “Action, the only activity that goes on directly between me without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.”

  7. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).

  8. The Dhammayut Order in the United States of America, “Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection,” in A Chanting Guide: Pāli Passages with English Translations (Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, n.d.), 25, accessed [Date of Access], https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/ChantingGuide/Section0007.html.

  9. Christopher Cherniak, Minimal Rationality, new ed. (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, 1990), ix, 7–8.

  10. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, On the Path: An Anthology on the Noble Eightfold Path Drawn from the Pali Canon (Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 2017), 125. In this section, Ṭhānissaro explains the interactions between these two principles by way of systems theory. Together, they create a complex non-linear system, even if the principles themselves are relatively simple. Scientists have found that many complex non-linear systems, including physical and social systems, exhibit behavior similar to the causal interactions related to suffering and the path to ending suffering. These systems often contain feedback loops, which can be positive, intensifying the original event, or negative, working in opposition to each other to maintain balance. The presence of these loops in the causes of suffering can make it difficult to discern the causal patterns and can also make it hard to predict how quickly the effects of actions will be seen. This unpredictability can be discouraging for those trying to bring about change. However, the advantage of a system containing many feedback loops, such as those found in human patterns of behavior, is that it is neither strictly deterministic nor totally chaotic. This allows for the possibility of creating desired outcomes by applying knowledge of the principles underlying the system to push it in a particular direction. In particular, skillful feedback loops in the mind, created through appropriate attention, can amplify throughout the system and push it towards ending suffering.

  11. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, reprint ed. (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2014), 3–4, 32.

  12. Patrick McKee and Clifton Barber, “On Defining WISDOM,” The International Journal of Aging and Human Development 49, no. 2 (1999): 149–64, https://doi.org/10.2190/8G32-BNV0-NVP9-7V6G.

  13. George E. Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012), 201.

II. The Principles Behind Keeping Principles

  1. Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker, The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016), 185.

  2. Bernard Williams, “Ethical Consistency,” in Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 173. Williams uses the example of Agamemnon to illustrate a tragic dilemma: “Agamemnon at Aulis may have said ‘May it be well’, but he is neither convinced nor convincing. The agonies that a man will experience after acting in full consciousness of such a situation are not to be traced to a persistent doubt that he may not have chosen the better thing; but, for instance, to a clear conviction that he has not done the better thing because there was no better thing to be done. It may, on the other hand, even be the case that by some not utterly irrational criteria of ‘the better thing’, he is convinced that he did the better thing: rational men no doubt pointed out to Agamemnon his responsibilities as a commander, the many people involved, the considerations of honour, and so forth. If he accepted all this, and acted accordingly: it would seem a glib moralist who said, as some sort of criticism, that he must be irrational to lie awake at night, having killed his daughter. And he lies awake, not because of a doubt, but because of a certainty. Some may say that the mythology of Agamemnon and his choice is nothing to us, because we do not move in a world in which irrational gods order men to kill their own children. But there is no need of irrational gods, to give rise to tragic situations.”

  3. For perspectives on the laws of physics in this context, see Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, The New Millennium Edition, vol. 1, Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat (Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology, 2010), 1–2: “We said that the laws of nature are approximate: that we first find the ‘wrong’ ones, and then we find the ‘right’ ones. Now, how can an experiment be ‘wrong’? First, in a trivial way: if something is wrong with the apparatus that you did not notice. But these things are easily fixed, and checked back and forth. So without snatching at such minor things, how can the results of an experiment be wrong? Only by being inaccurate. For example, the mass of an object never seems to change: a spinning top has the same weight as a still one. So a ‘law’ was invented: mass is constant, independent of speed. That ‘law’ is now found to be incorrect. Mass is found to increase with velocity, but appreciable increases require velocities near that of light. A true law is: if an object moves with a speed of less than one hundred miles a second the mass is constant to within one part in a million. In some such approximate form this is a correct law. So in practice one might think that the new law makes no significant difference. Well, yes and no. For ordinary speeds we can certainly forget it and use the simple constant-mass law as a good approximation. But for high speeds we are wrong, and the higher the speed, the more wrong we are. Finally, and most interesting, philosophically we are completely wrong with the approximate law. Our entire picture of the world has to be altered even though the mass changes only by a little bit. This is a very peculiar thing about the philosophy, or the ideas, behind the laws. Even a very small effect sometimes requires profound changes in our ideas.”

  4. Christopher Cherniak, Minimal Rationality, new ed. (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, 1990), 16–17, 20, 51.

  5. Drew A. Hyland, Plato and the Question of Beauty, Illustrated ed., Studies in Continental Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 17–18.

III. Human Cognition, Intelligence, and Rationality

  1. See Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. 1st edition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, and Keith E. Stanovich. What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. Yale University Press, 2009.

  2. Robin M. Hogarth Educating Intuition. 1st edition, University Of Chicago Press, 2001.

  3. Keith E. Stanovich. What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. Yale University Press, 2009, p. 41.

  4. Ibid., p. 63-66.

  5. Andy Clark. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. 1st edition, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. xviii, 207, 217, 222. 10. See also Heidegger, Being and Time.

IV. Mindfulness

  1. “MN 19: Two Kinds of Thought,” in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, based on an earlier translation by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995).

  2. Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness (New York: Harmony, 2018): “The brain naturally and routinely scans for bad news out in the world and inside the body and mind. When it finds what it is looking for, it focuses tightly on it, often overreacting to it. It fast-tracks the experience into emotional, somatic, and social memory, becomes sensitized through repeated doses of the stress hormone cortisol, and thereby becomes even more reactive to negative experiences, which bathe the brain in even more cortisol, creating a vicious cycle.”

  3. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, “The Arrows of Emotion,” in Gather ’Round the Breath: Dhamma Talks Cited in With Each & Every Breath (Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 2011), 281.

  4. Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, reprint ed. (New York: Vintage, 2006). For the introduction of predictive styles alongside Seligman’s original concept of explanatory style, see also Martin E. P. Seligman et al., Homo Prospectus, 1st ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 285: “Explanatory style is the past and present side of the coin, however, and the future side has been neglected. To appreciate the shortcomings of explanatory style theorizing and to appreciate why predictive style is an advance, we must return to the scientific atmosphere of the late 1970s. Behaviorism was just giving way to cognitive psychology, but cognitive psychology was exclusively about memory (past) and perception (present), and it was deliberately silent about expectations of the future. When explanatory style was formulated (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978), theorizing about mental life had just become acceptable, but only if the mental life was about the present and the past. This unstated premise of avoiding future-oriented cognitions plagued both explanatory style theory and Beck’s theorizing as well.”

  5. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, On the Path: An Anthology on the Noble Eightfold Path Drawn from the Pali Canon(Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 2017).

  6. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation (Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 2012).

  7. “MN 20: The Removal of Distracting Thoughts,” in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, based on an earlier translation by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995).

  8. Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, reprint ed. (New York: Scribner, 2018), 14–18, 30, 91–97, 143–46.

  9. Jordan D. Metzl, The Exercise Cure: A Doctor’s All-Natural, No-Pill Prescription for Better Health and Longer Life (New York: Rodale Books, 2014).

  10. Mark Rippetoe and Andy Baker, Practical Programming for Strength Training, 3rd ed. (Wichita Falls, TX: The Aasgaard Company, 2014).

V. The Grit to Persevere Through Difficulties That Mature Our Coping Mechanisms and Broaden Our Perspectives on the World

  1. Mahyar Mofidi, personal correspondence with the author, June 21, 2020.

  2. On this last point, see George Eliot, Middlemarch (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), 96: “Character too is a process and an unfolding” with “virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding.” See also Daniel Gilbert, “The Psychology of Your Future Self,” TED Talk, March 2014, video, https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.”

  3. David Allen and James Fallows, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2015).

  4. Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, 1st ed. (New York: Scribner, 2016).

  5. Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, 1st ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 171–72. Studies have found that the number of years one has been doing something correlates only weakly with the level of performance. To improve, we must watch ourselves fail and learn from our mistakes: “Amateur musicians, for example, are more likely to spend their practice time playing music, whereas pros are more likely to work through tedious exercises or focus on specific, difficult parts of pieces. The best ice skaters spend more of their practice time trying jumps that they land less often, while lesser skaters work more on jumps they’ve already mastered. Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.” One way to do that is to put yourself in the mind of someone far more competent at the task you’re trying to master and try to figure out how that person works through problems: “Benjamin Franklin was apparently an early practitioner of this technique. In his autobiography, he describes how he used to read essays by the great thinkers and try to reconstruct the author’s arguments according to Franklin’s own logic. He’d then open up the essay and compare his reconstruction to the original words to see how his own chain of thinking stacked up against the master’s. The best chess players follow a similar strategy. They will often spend several hours a day replaying the games of grand masters one move at a time, trying to understand the expert’s thinking at each step. Indeed, the single best predictor of an individual’s chess skill is not the amount of chess he’s played against opponents, but rather the amount of time he’s spent sitting alone working through old games.”

  6. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, 1st ed. (Boston: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

  7. Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 2008), 107. Waitzkin, the subject of the child chess prodigy film Searching for Bobby Fischer who later became world champion of Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands, describes the challenge beginning students of the martial art often have letting go of their ego in practice and investing in losses to learn: “If a big strong guy comes into a martial arts studio and someone pushes him, he wants to resist and push the guy back to prove that he is a big strong guy. The problem is that he isn’t learning anything by doing this. In order to grow, he needs to give up his current mind-set. He needs to lose to win. The bruiser will need to get pushed around by little guys for a while, until he learns how to use more than brawn. William Chen calls this investment in loss. Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process.”

  8. Ibid., 130–33.

  9. Ibid., 143–44.

  10. Ibid., 141-42, 283–84: “Now, returning to the scene that initially inspired this movement of thought in my life—does this type of trained enhanced perception I’ve been discussing come from the same place as those wild moments in life when time slows down in the middle of a car crash or, in my case, when my hand shattered in the ring? The answer is yes and no. The similarity is that a life-or-death scenario kicks the human mind into a very narrow area of focus. Time feels slowed down because we instinctively zero in on a tiny amount of critical information that our processor can then break down as if it is in a huge font. The trained version of this state of mind shares that tiny area of conscious focus. The difference is that, in our disciplines of choice, we cultivate this experience by converting all the other surrounding information into unconsciously integrated data instead of ignoring it. There is a reason the human mind rarely goes into that wild place of heightened perception: if an untrained fighter were to focus all his energy on his opponent’s breath pattern or blinking eye, he would get punched in the face.” See also Martin E. P. Seligman et al., Homo Prospectus, 1st ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 47–49: “Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.... Experts are those who have more stored solutions, are quicker at spotting cues, and more adept at calling them up and putting them into practice.”

  11. Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, ed. Peter D. Kaufman (South San Francisco, CA: Stripe Press, 2023), 487.

  12. David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2021), 11–13, 20–21, 30–33, 52–53, 189.

  13. Ronald A. Heifetz et al., The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, 1st ed. (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2009), 69–72.

  14. Robert Kegan, and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization. 1 edition, Harvard Business Review Press, 2009.

  15. Ibid., 585-638.

  16. Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), 127. Waitzkin, The Art of Learning, 131–33. The suit of armor metaphor is extended by me but originates with Dweck. Waitzkin describes a young chess player who, praised for his winning streak, becomes terrified of losing and avoids any real challenge, thus stunting his growth: “He was a big fish in a small pond and he liked it that way. The boy avoided chess throughout my visit. He didn’t want to play in the simultaneous exhibition and was the only child at the event who was resistant to instruction. His winning streak and the constant talk of it had him all locked up—he was terrified of shattering the façade of perfection.”

  17. Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, ed. Walter Isaacson, 1st ed. (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020), 142–43.

  18. Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, 1st ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), 329–33. Kahnemann and Tversky may be correct about how people typically make decisions and how they feel before making them, but not about how they actually feel about the result of those decisions, especially over the long term.  They may anticipate feeling worse about an action they have taken than an inaction, but according to Daniel Gilbert this affective forecasting is often faulty.  See Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness. Vintage, 2007, p. 197.  See also Jeff Bezos, in Invent and Wander, p. 9: “To make the decision [to start Amazon], Bezos used a mental exercise that would become a famous part of his risk-calculation process. He called it a “regret minimization framework.” He would imagine what he would feel when he turned eighty and thought back to the decision. “I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have,” he explains. “I knew that when I was eighty, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.”

  19. Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, 118–19. The anticipated pain experienced from a delay in waiting for an object of desire for today until tomorrow is much greater than the anticipated delay in waiting for an object of desire for 365 days instead of 364.

  20. Ibid., 137.

  21. Timothy Ferriss, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 200–201. Ferriss proposes a method for identifying and tackling one’s most important task: write down the 3–5 things making you most anxious, and for each, ask, “If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?” “Will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later?” Put another way: “What, if done, will make all of the rest easier or irrelevant?”. Then, block out 2–3 uninterrupted hours to focus on just one of them.

  22. Benjamin Hardy, Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success, reprint ed. (New York: Hachette Books, 2019), 85–88.

  23. Cal Newport, The Time-Block Planner: A Daily Method for Deep Work in a Distracted World (New York: Portfolio, 2020), 2, 10–12.

  24. James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, illustrated ed. (New York: Avery, 2018), 16.

  25. Ibid., 18.

  26. Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 2012).

  27. Clear, Atomic Habits, 34–35.

  28. Ibid., 36–41.

  29. Duhigg, The Power of Habit, 115–19.

  30. Clear, Atomic Habits, 130–31. The Four Laws of Behavior Change can be inverted to break bad habits: “1. Make it invisible; 2. Make it unattractive; 3. Make it difficult; 4. Make it unsatisfying.” The book provides a detailed “Habits Cheat Sheet” for both creating good habits and breaking bad ones (ibid., 218–20, 143–44). Before building new habits, one must become conscious of existing ones. As Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” The Habits Scorecard is a tool for this, involving listing daily habits and labeling them as good, bad, or neutral (ibid., 154–55, 176–80).

  31. Ibid., 158–59. An “implementation intention” links a new habit to a specific time and place (“I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]”), which significantly increases follow-through (ibid., 160–62). A related strategy is “habit stacking,” which links a new habit to an existing one (“After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”), using the momentum of an established routine to build a new one (ibid., 72–73, 173–74).

  32. Ibid., 84–86, 156–57. Redesigning one’s environment to make cues more obvious is a key strategy. For example: “If you want to practice guitar more frequently, place your guitar stand in the middle of the living room.”

  33. Ibid., 129–32.

  34. Ibid., 110–11. “Temptation bundling” links an action you want to do with an action you need to do. For example: “After I call three potential clients (need), I will check ESPN (want).”

  35. Ibid., 116–17.

  36. Ibid., 160–61.

  37. Ibid., 173–75.

  38. Ibid., 170–71. A “commitment device” is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future. “If you’re feeling motivated to get in shape, schedule a yoga session and pay ahead of time.”

  39. Ibid., 187–93.

  40. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990).

VI. Generative Work

  1. Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload (New York: Portfolio, 2021).

  2. Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio, 2019).

  3. Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016).

VII. The Capacity to Love and Be Loved

  1. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1995).

  2. “MN 21: The Simile of the Saw,” in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, based on an earlier translation by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995).

  3. Lewis Hyde’s essay “Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking” is quoted and analyzed by David Foster Wallace in “E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction,” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, reprint ed. (New York: Back Bay Books, 1998), 67: “This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks… Third world rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative.”

  4. Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, 1st ed. (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013).

  5. Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love, reprint ed. (New York: TarcherPerigee, 2010), 27–28, 119–22, 188, 216–18. On pages 27–28, the authors explain: “In fact, the need to be near someone special is so important that the brain has a biological mechanism specifically responsible for creating and regulating our connection with our attachment figures (parents, children, and romantic partners). This mechanism, called the attachment system, consists of emotions and behaviors that ensure that we remain safe and protected by staying close to our loved ones. The mechanism explains why a child parted from his or her mother becomes frantic, searches wildly, or cries uncontrollably until he or she reestablishes contact with her. These reactions are coined protest behavior, and we all still exhibit them as grown-ups. In prehistoric times, being close to a partner was a matter of life and death, and our attachment system developed to treat such proximity as an absolute necessity.”

VIII. Questions Concerning Technology

  1. See Martin Heidegger for his discussion of modern technology in the 20th century through his concept of “enframing” in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977), 17: “Whatever stands by in the sense of standing-reserve no longer stands over against us as object. Yet an airliner that stands on the runway is surely an object. Certainly. We can represent the machine so. But then it conceals itself as to what and how it is. Revealed, it stands on the taxi strip only as standing-reserve, inasmuch as it is ordered to ensure the possibility of transportation. For this it must be in its whole structure and in every one of its constituent parts, on call for duty, i.e., ready for takeoff.”

  2. Peter-Paul Verbeek, What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design, Illustrated ed. (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005), 195.

  3. Max Tegmark, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (New York: Vintage, 2018). As Tegmark notes, each of these stages should be viewed as being on a spectrum. If bacteria are Life 1.0, mice are somewhere in the middle, say, 1.1. They have the ability to learn during the course of individual lives, but without complex linguistic representation, they can't pass much learned knowledge onto their offspring. And humans are probably best categorized as something close to Life 2.1. We've made modest strides in modifying our biological hardware—think artificial teeth, knee replacements, and cardiac pacemakers—but we cannot today extend life indefinitely or recreate our bodies on the scale of Godzilla.

  4. For example, imagine you instruct your new AI chef to prepare a meal "fit for a king" and find yourself served a swan pie—a dish beloved by monarchs in the Middle Ages but less appealing to modern sensibilities. If you cry out, "But I wanted a steak!" it might retort, "You asked for royal cuisine!" You would not likely get the same misfire with a highly accomplished human chef.

  5. Ben Shneiderman, Human-Centered AI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

  6. Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI (New York: Portfolio, 2024), 24–25, 27.

IX. Coaching Others, Leading Others

  1. Henry Kimsey-House. Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives. 2nd edition, Nicholas Brealey, 2007. p. 13, 20-21, 38-40.

X. Personal Information Management

  1. Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker, The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016).

  2. William Jones, Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management, 1st ed. (Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2007).

  3. David Allen and James Fallows, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2015). This book outlines the five core steps of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. The process begins with Capture, getting every “open loop” out of your head and into a trusted system, because “your best thoughts about work won’t happen while you’re at work.” Next is Clarify, where for each item you ask, “What is it?” and, more importantly, “Is it actionable?” The third step, Organize, sorts items based on that question. Non-actionable items are either trashed, incubated for later review (on a “Someday/Maybe” list), or filed as reference material. Actionable items are either done immediately (if under two minutes), delegated, or deferred onto a “Next Actions” list. The final steps, Reflect and Engage, involve reviewing these lists and making trusted choices about what to do. The calendar is used strictly for time-specific or day-specific actions and information.

  4. Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, 1st ed. (New York: Picador, 2011).

  5. David Allen, Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life (New York: Viking, 2008), 219–26.

XI. Human-Centered Design

  1. Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 61, 219.

  2. Ibid., 222. Norman describes the design process as initially divergent, where designers explore many ideas rather than immediately converging on a solution. This is part of the iterative cycle of human-centered design, which involves repeated observation, ideation, prototyping, and testing, often visualized as a spiral to emphasize progress with each cycle.

  3. Ibid., 222–23. This observation phase often uses "applied ethnography," a rapid method for determining human needs for a product. Norman stresses that while cultural context can be important, the primary focus should be on the user’s goals, noting that “what matters most are the activities to be performed. Even when we look at widely different cultures, the activities are often surprisingly similar.”

  4. Ibid., 228.

  5. Ibid., 165–66.

  6. Ibid., 233.

  7. Ibid., 67–68.

  8. Ibid., 173, 199. Norman distinguishes between two types of errors: slips and mistakes. He explains that, paradoxically, “novices are more likely to make mistakes than slips, whereas experts are more likely to make slips.” This is because slips are typically subconscious, attentional failures made by skilled people performing automatic tasks. Mistakes, in contrast, are conscious errors in judgment or planning, often caused by a poor understanding of the system, and are more common among novices.

  9. Ibid., 95. As an example of good design that minimizes cognitive load, Norman suggests: “Automobiles should use auditory presentation of driving instructions and haptic vibration...so as not to interfere with the visual processing of driving information.”

XII. Antifragility

  1. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Reprint edition, Random House Publishing Group, 2014.

  2. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a New Section: “On Robustness and Fragility.” 2 edition, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2010.

  3. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. 2 Updated edition, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005.

  4. Taleb, The Black Swan, 307, 236, 133, 149-50, 203, 208.

  5. Taleb, Antifragile.

  6. Taleb, The Black Swan.

XIII. Personal Finances

  1. J. L. Collins.  The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life. 1st edition, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

  2. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005.

XIV. Leading Change, Leading Teams

  1. J. P. Kotter. Leading Change. Harvard Business, 1996. See also Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. 1 edition, Crown Business, 2010

  2. William Bridges. Transitions: Making Sense Of Life’s Changes. Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2004.

  3. Richard Rumelt. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. Illustrated edition. New York: Crown Currency, 2011.

  4. Patrick Lencioni. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Jossey-Bass, 2002, p. 195-22.

  5. Munger, Charles T., Warren Buffett, and John Collison. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Edited by Peter D. Kaufman. South San Francisco: Stripe Press, 2023. 

XV. Strategic Thinking

  1. Richard Rumelt. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. Illustrated edition. New York: Crown Currency, 2011, p. 93.

  2. Michael D. Watkins. The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking: Leading Your Organization into the Future. Harper Business, 2024.

XVI. Systems Thinking

  1. Donella H. Meadows. Thinking in Systems: International Bestseller. Edited by Diana Wright. White River Junction, Vt: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.

  2. Munger, Charles T., Warren Buffett, and John Collison. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Edited by Peter D. Kaufman. South San Francisco: Stripe Press, 2023.

  3. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, rev. and updated ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2006).

XVII. Statistical Thinking

  1. Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Illustrated ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2015).

  2. Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t (New York: Penguin Press, 2012).

  3. Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data, 1st ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014).