Better Than Before, Neuroplasticity and Oumuamua
Some books/stories that I came across last month:
I am a sucker for books/articles on habits. Given this context, I read yet another book on the topic — Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin. While the book carried a good review of all the key principles of habits, it didn’t really work for me, for many of the principles seemed to be borrowed less from research and more from personal experiences (which may not work for everyone). Anyhow, what made the book worth reading was the chapter on rewards. Rubin makes an interesting but often overlooked point that at times our rewards are counterproductive, i.e., we would reward ourselves for week long carb fast with an ice-cream! Ruben prompts us to be more mindful of how we reward ourselves for good behaviours. For instance, why not buy a new pair of gym shoes instead of a cake or an ice-cream to reward yourself? Ruben also touches on the topic of keystone habits and her list of these habits include sleep, movement, eating healthy and getting rid of clutter. I believe the last one doesn’t get its due much, at least in my life, and I plan to build that habit in the coming weeks.
The only podcast I have been listening to is Andrew Huberman’s. Huberman, as I wrote earlier, does a deep dive on various topics for a month. This month’s theme is learning and neuro-plasticity. What makes us learn, and how can we learn better, are the key questions that Huberman addresses. The interesting takeaway for me was that yes, learning slows down after the age of 25, however, it’s possible to train your mind to still learn new things. A few techniques to support this is to learn in 90 minute-intervals and having even shorter focus periods within this timeframe (which could be as short as 7 to 20 minutes). Also, failing at learning is actually good! Such failures and associated frustrations indicate to the brain that it needs to reconfigure new patterns. So shorter time intervals for learning, and bringing myself to the point of failure are the takeaways that I plan to implement while learning something new (which in my case is learning Swedish these days).
The Economist came out with a set of fantastic stories on space explorations and the possibility of alien life last week. While the whole section is worth a read, the story — a review of Avi Loeb’s book ‘Extraterrestrial’— stood out for me. One specific citation in the book was on ‘Oumuamua’, a 400 metres long, shiny flat piece of rock (perhaps) that crossed the solar system. ‘It was thought most likely to have been an asteroid or a comet; but as 2017 drew to a close, the available data continued to puzzle scientists. Their analyses indicated that ‘Oumuamua was’, as the article states, ‘shinier than any asteroid or comet seen before’. The object accelerated to 200,000mph under the sun’s gravitation but it’s trajectory took it out of the solar system instead of crashing into the sun, which is cited as an anomaly and led Loeb to postulate that Oumuamua was created by an intelligent civilisation beyond the Earth. It may sound crazy, and Loeb may not be right about this object, but the article seems to be about challenging our conservative views about possibility of life existing beyond the Earth and perhaps worth a read.
A quote that I came across last week:
In an unpredictable world, a good routine is a safe haven of certainty.
