And So It Goes

Sleep Even Better

November 7, 2019 keithleong

You hear of an amazing breakthrough in the overall treatment of your health problems. This breakthrough enables you to live longer, obtain a greater memory and makes you more creative. In addition, you find it easier to maintain your ideal weight, and you feel less inclined to give in to your unhealthy cravings. Furthermore, it shields you from cancer and dementia, colds and the flu, heart attacks and stroke, and even diabetes. You’ll be happier and more well-adjusted. And it’s…

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On Being Elastic

August 1, 2019 keithleong

The habits of thinking we need to thrive in today’s world differ markedly from those of the past. Leonard Mlodinow, a theoretical physicist, who, in his recent book, Elastic, suggests just what those new habits of thinking are. This article, then, intends to share some habits of thinking, and some habits more generally that will help us thrive in today’s world. Some may not be novel or surprising to those who read around this area. I did, however, find his…

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Building Great Teams through Radical Candour

June 18, 2019 keithleong

If you’ve had a fair share of bosses, you’d probably come to see that they can make or break your working experience. Some bosses are caring and empathetic, some are exacting yet fair, and others might be dismissive, incompetent, or downright mean. Without knowing what it’s like to be in that position ourselves, however, it can be difficult to understand why they act the way that they do; i.e., what kind of pressures they are facing, what other considerations are…

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Outliving Mean Takers: A Concise Guide

May 14, 2019 keithleong

On Failing to be a Human Being What kind of difficult people do you face most often? Since Professor of Organizational Behaviour Robert Sutton wrote his book The No A-hole Rule in 2007 about how to build workplaces devoid of soul-sucking jerks who make others feel oppressed, demeaned, disrespected, or de-energized, he has been inundated with more than 8000 emails requesting personalised advice on how to deal the a-holes the senders have had to face during the course of their…

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How the Best Ideas Win: The Story of Ray Dalio and Bridgewater Associates

December 25, 2018 keithleong

The Idea Meritocracy Imagine that you are the CEO of the largest hedge fund in the world, a hedge fund that has produced more net gains than any other firm in history. Now imagine that, after an important meeting, you receive this email from a subordinate, CC’ed to other senior people: … you deserve a “D-” for your performance today in the ABC meeting […] This was especially disappointing for two reasons: 1) You have been great in previous meetings…

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Fishing for Love

December 4, 2018 keithleong

Romantic love. Obsessive love. Passionate love. Infatuation. Call it what you will, men and women of every era and every culture have been ‘bewitched, bothered, and bewildered’ by this irresistible power. Being in love is universal to humanity; it is part of human nature – Helen Fisher Love, or the kind of love associated with romance, is a fundamental human drive. Or so Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who has spent her academic career exploring this topic, proposes. She further…

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Emotional Intelligence Addendum: The Agents of Change

October 18, 2018 keithleong

If you resonate with this website, it’s a good bet that you’ve read or heard about the marshmallow experiment and what it says about the relationship between the ability to delay gratification (read: willpower) and success. For those who aren’t familiar with the test or would like a refresher. here’s a pick-me-up that includes some fresh updates from replications of the experiment. While the study may be common knowledge to many, the late and great Walter Mischel, who conducted the…

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Dissolving Educational Fictions

September 4, 2018 keithleong

Education Nation(s): The State of Play The best of intentions, untempered with robust evidence and adaptive planning, can and have led to maladaptive decisions and policies. Spheres of education in the ‘West’, i.e., the Anglo-American domain, aren’t exempted. For the past few decades, State Boards of Education in America have tried to weather the unwelcome intrusion of pseudo-scientific principles into their science classrooms by misguided fundamentalists, sometimes without much success. Quite aside from that, the recent No Child Left Behind…

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The Lowdown on Emotional Intelligence

July 15, 2018 keithleong

Emotional Intelligence, like mindfulness meditation in the days of yore and intermittent fasting today, gets bandied about much in the self-improvement literature. While that might fatigue readers like us, it’s not without good reason that these ideas appear to overstay their welcome. People the world over have found themselves embroiled in national emergencies, corporate failures, and familial breakdowns more times than they’d like to count. And, as we shall see, there are good reasons to think that these will continue…

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