Welcome to Litsy!

1. My mom's (now mine) Christmas cactus blooming a second time in 2025

2. My third betta fish in as many weeks. This one is intent on living, as opposed to the two previous little guys.

3. A new leather sunglass chain

4. A really nice day, despite the gusty winds, to run errands and sit quietly in a small library in a town half an hour away

5. A Book Circle meeting yesterday at a branch of the Ocean County Library

@DebinHawaii #5JoysFriday

It‘s been a whirlwind of a month, but I finally have free time this weekend, so I‘m hoping to finish at least two of these!

#weekendreads

I started this one a while ago & finally finished it. I love books by psychologists, or maybe I just enjoy academic writing but without the tediousness of reading academic papers. Adam Grant is definitely one of my favorites. I appreciated Grant‘s ideas on different ways to think about problems. I like the ideas of thinking like a scientist & using different methods to approach complicated matters.

Another psychology audio that covers the power of rethinking our perspectives, beliefs and even exam questions — Encourages thinking things through like a scientist. The book also discusses ways we can persuade others to think again. Really enjoyed this and I can see myself using the tools presented in my career to help convince colleagues of the value of environmental sustainability.

“We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995.”

🧐🧐🧐

This was my #rememberingJenny choice to commemorate the lovely @ReadingEnvy . She was re-reading it when she passed away unexpectedly.

First, I also plan to reread this. It‘s just chock full of great suggestions to improve our communication skills. But fundamentally it‘s about how we think and allow ourselves to rethink our beliefs. One read is not enough to absorb everything.

Full review https://www.TheBibliophage.com #thebibliophage2022

“Our convictions can lock us in prisons of our own making.”

“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don‘t know is wisdom.”

“This book is about the value of rethinking.”

This was a very interesting book that brought to mind two famous quotes:

“You don‘t know what you don‘t know.”
~ John F. Kennedy

“Think different.”
~ From an old Apple ad featuring His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Think Again delves into the territory of cognitive errors, biases, prejudices, and mental blind spots. It explores our failure to change our ideas once we have established them.

From his Insta account.

Tackle the TBR 🤓📚 #boleybooks #ThinkAgain #adamgrant #bookbeast #bookjoy #nonfiction
What are you reading? 😊

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book was a great mental chew toy! I took so many notes in my phone while listening that I want to revisit regularly, for both professional and personal inspiration. Some of my favorite thoughts were centered around the joy in being wrong, the value of task conflict and a challenge network, and how to use motivational interviewing to generate openness and flexibility on both sides of a conversation. ⬇️

🤔

This definitely helped me make the best decision about my career and needed changes were done! Definitely recommended!!

#WeeklyForecast
Top 2 left are hardcovers - the Grant is due soon from the library and the Q book is for work, Good Bones is poetry, the Clarke is audiobook ~8 hours remain at 1.6 speed,
Hood Feminism is eBook from Libby via Kindle, and the Winterson is a tradeback I got at a secondhand bookshop.
@Cinfhen

Today, Sept 26 is Key Lime Pie Day 🥧

Great! Another excellent @Reggie recommendation (…Reggimmendation? 😁). The audiobook was good, and cute: bleeped curse words, the author smiling with his voice/chuckling, etc. But, as @wanderinglynn noted, this one begs to be highlighted, so print might have worked even better for me. Among my lessons learned:
- OMG I‘m a logic bully!
- Vaccine whisperers are a thing and why haven‘t we deployed thousands of these?!
- There‘s joy in being wrong.

The gist is to try and think like a scientist. Put an answer out there to try for and try to not only prove it but also disprove it and adjust accordingly based on data that may or may not change. I learned a lot. Some that would be applicable to my job and some to how I have evolving feelings towards books I read a year ago. Grant was gentle and had humor that kept me engaged. This kind of nonfiction is not my jam but this book is a pick!

I‘m totally guilty of kummerspeck and shemomedjamo.

Really enjoying this book. He does some entertaining experiments that speak to much larger truths.

I found this book insightful and thought-provoking. Grant provides the information in a well-organized, easy to follow, and engaging way. I also appreciated that he not only encourages individuals to embrace being wrong and seek out constructive conflict, he also uses examples from his own life to illustrate his points. I feel that what I learned from this book will be applicable to many areas of my life, especially professionally.

“We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995.”

Only on page 4 and so much is resonating with current events.

Love love love this book! I wish everyone could read this and maybe the world would look different! The author encourages readers to think like a scientist, to have an open mind, and even how to (potentially!) change the mind of others. Crazy that this was written before all of the misinformation about Covid vaccines were circulating around and it fits perfectly with the current issues surrounding it. Now I need to read his other, Originals.

#libraryhaul 📚

I appreciated the points the author put forward in the book - we can always question the assumptions we hold and we should try to make our disagreements more task related vs relationship related.
#booked2021
#newin2021

I just realized there is a match on the cover. lol. P.S. I need to figure out why I love podcasts and can barely endure non-fiction ( or really any) audiobooks. Aren‘t they slightly longer podcasts ? 🤔 🤷🏾‍♀️

This is one of those books I picked up from the front row display at the library. I don‘t usually pick up books like this. The title to be honest is so banal. Except the fact that Bill Gates recommends this, there is nothing from the cover. But as the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. I was so intrigued after reading the first chapter that I finished it in a day. This is by far one of the best non fictions I have read lately.

This is one of the best Adam Grant things I‘ve read. Well researched and thoughtful. It includes plenty of old and new stories about how we fall into patterns and fail to see what‘s right in front of us. Broken into 3 parts: rethinking our own views; opening other people‘s minds; creating communities of lifelong learners. I took away usable information from each section. (My key takeaway quotes are in prior posts organized by chapter.) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ch 11
Our happiness often depends more on what we do than where we are. It‘s our actions – not our surroundings – that bring us meaning & belonging.
… passions are often developed, not discovered…entrepreneurs, the more effort they put into their start ups, the more their enthusiasm about their businesses climbed each week… passion grew as they gained momentum & mastery. Interest doesn‘t always lead to effort and skill; sometimes it follows them.

Ch 10

How do you know? It‘s a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others.

What leads you to that assumption? Why do you think it is correct? What might happen if it‘s wrong?

What are the uncertainties in your analysis?

I understand the advantages of your recommendation what are the disadvantages?

Ch 9.
Even captivating lectures fall short…not designed to accommodate dialogue or disagreement; They turn students into passive receivers of information rather than active thinkers.

Achieving excellence in school often requires mastering old ways of thinking. Building an influential career demands new ways of thinking.

Ch 8
Binary bias. It‘s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories. To paraphrase the humorist Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don‘t.

…psychologists demonstrated that when news reports about science included caveats, they succeeded in capturing readers‘ interest & keeping their minds open.

Ch 7:
This is a common problem in persuasion: what doesn‘t sway us can make our beliefs stronger.

Summarizing: Explain your understanding of other people‘s reasons for change, to check on whether you‘ve missed or misinterpreted anything, and to inquire about their plans and possible next steps.

A good guide doesn‘t stop at helping people change their beliefs or behaviors. Our work isn‘t done until we help them accomplish their goals.

Ch 6:
A rivalry exists whenever we reserve special animosity for a group we see as competing with us for resources or threatening our identities.

When we meet group members who defy a stereotype, our first instinct isn‘t to see them as exemplars and rethink the stereotype. It‘s to see them as exceptions and cling to existing beliefs.

I often find Adam Grant to be a pompous academic. It appears though that he‘s maturing. At several points in this book, he calls himself out for biased thinking and points out where he‘s been wrong in the past. Because of that humility, I‘m enjoying this book much more than much of his earlier writing.

Ch 5
They lost ground not because of the strength of their most compelling point, but because of the weakness of their least compelling one.
Most people immediately start with a strawman, poking holes in the weakest version of the other sides case. He does the reverse: he considers the strongest version of their case, which is known as the steel man.
When someone is losing control, your tranquility is a sign of strength.

Ch 4
People are more receptive to criticism when told “I‘m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know you can reach them”.
Starting a disagreement by asking “can we debate?” sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or prosecutor, and encourage other person to think that way too.
Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus.

Ch 3:
Kahneman: he genuinely enjoys discovering that he was wrong, because it means he is now less wrong than before.
Dalio: if you don‘t look back and think “how stupid I was a year ago” then you must not have learned much in the past year.
Beugoms: I started out just wanting to prove myself. Now I want to improve myself-to see how good I can get.

Ch 2
You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. … What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem.

Ch 1
As we think and talk, we often skip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.

Celebrating the end of report card writing with a few new books 📚 This has been the most exhausting year ever. Can't wait to sit in a chair by the campfire and read! 🔥

You ever want to just slap everyone around you with a book? Try this one! In all seriousness, a good read with great insight on how to feel comfortable with not knowing, being wrong, and finding joy in the freedom that comes with all of the above. I'm good with all three already, but the big help for me is how to engage with others who are definitely not at the same place with their thinking.

Tip: slapping with facts only results in failure.

This was so good! So interesting and thought provoking. This stuff is the reason why I was a psych major, and I still find it so fascinating.

I really enjoyed the first 1/2 of this book and had a lot of thought provoking pieces of data, anecdotes and questions. Applicable to anyone, it is a quick read with a lot to discuss. The part about expert negotiators, education, and scientific thinking were my favorites.

This is just to say that I agree with this quote about best practices. I wish I was allowed to make test prep fun and gauge the results before banning my teaching style for 6 months of the year.

It‘s okay. The book is about being open to new information and rethinking your ideas. Great. But it goes on a bit too long and becomes tedious.

This book is giving me life from the beginning. I enjoy his writing.

This book is amazing. Psychologist Adam Grant discusses the idea of “knowing what you don‘t know” by being open to learning, listening to understand, and making your values (not your opinions) the things you live by. I just finished the audiobook, but I‘m also going to buy the hardcover to reread and mark it up!