Learning
... See moreUniversities need new inter-disciplinary courses. For example, in March 2014 Stanford announced new undergraduate degrees such as Computer Science and English. It would be great if Oxford created alternatives to PPE such as ‘Ancient and Modern History, Maths for Presidents, and Coding‘. Instead of bluffing through essays on competing views of macro
Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it.
Paul Graham • How to Do Great Work
When assessing your progress on producing things of real value (the best path to building a rewarding and well-rewarded life), consider your own capacity for hard focus. Most important accomplishments boil down to this single, often overlooked ability.
Cal Newport • On the Value of Hard Focus - Cal Newport
... See moreIn our busy and distracted society, deep reading is increasingly rare. Deep reading changes people. When you interact with people, you can tell who reads seriously and who doesn’t. This isn’t just a matter of mental ability or intelligence. There is a difference between raw cognitive horsepower and time spent immersed in complex and intricate ideas
On reading stories: “You have not grasped the whole story until you can summarize its plot in a brief narration—not a proposition or argument. Therein lies its unity.”
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book
People learn by creating their own understanding. But that does not mean they must or even can do it without assistance. Effective teaching facilitates that creation by getting students engaged in thinking deeply about the subject at an appropriate level and then monitoring that thinking and guiding it to be more expert-like.
Four basic questions when reading a book: 1) what is the book about as a whole? 2) what is being said in detail? 3) is the book wholly or in part true? 4) what is the significance of its meaning and truth?
From How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
If a 20 year old could both study Bismarck’s critical decisions in the 1860s (and the principles underlying them) and be given practical experience in some of the best managed organisations in the world, they would be much, much better prepared for senior jobs than our leading politicians are now.
... See moreThe value of a graduate student (not to mention, an assistant professor), I’ve come to realize, is directly proportional to the quantity and complexity of their technical tool kit. If you study algorithms, for example, the more corners of the literature you’ve mastered, and the more mathematical analysis techniques you’re comfortable with, the more