Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport contrasts two types of approaches to the digital tools that we use and create. We have a lot of powerful social media and network messaging applications, and these tools and applications are often given to us, or seemingly forced onto us, without much choice on our end. If … Continue reading How We Think About Our Digital Tools
Ever since Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler's book The Elephant in the Brain came out I have been seeing the world, especially the world of politics, through a Hansonian framework. Our big evolutionary drive is to ensure that our genes are passed on to the next generation and for a social species that evolved in … Continue reading Self Sufficient
Much of our life, especially if we spend a good amount of time engaging with social media, can feel like a performance of some kind. We have performance evaluations at work, we want to get that photo just right before we post it, and there are mirrors and people everywhere at the gym so it … Continue reading Performances
Ryan Holiday's book Ego is the Enemy helped me to better understand and recognize moments when I was allowing my ego to drive my behaviors and decision making. So much of our desires and motivations we hide from ourselves in an attempt to make ourselves feel better about who we are and what we do. … Continue reading Performances on Social Media
Ryan Holiday's book, The Ego Is the Enemy, is a critique and critical evaluation of the way our ego can dominate our lives and create challenges for us that are hard to overcome. In his book, Holiday addresses the ways in which social media technologies fuel our egos and drive self-congratulatory behaviors. The ability to communicate … Continue reading The Tech Empowered Ego
In his book 59 Seconds Richard Wiseman explains a very simple psychology experiment performed by Phillip Kunz and Michael Woolcott in 1970. In an attempt to study reciprocity, the two psychologists sent christmas letters to randomly selected names and addresses from a local phone book. Wiseman did not provide numbers, but he did say that a … Continue reading An Eagerness to Connect
In James Harmon’s collection of letters published in his book Take My Advice, he includes a letter written by philosopher Martha Nussbaum. In her letter Nussbaum writes about our connection and dependence on others, and what we should focus on to build meaningful and successful lives. Nussbaum writes, “We are all going to encounter illness, loss, … Continue reading Preparing for Life’s Challenges
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote of confidence, relationships, and dependence in her letter to James Harmon to be published in the book, Take My Advice. On dependence she wrote, “even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever … Continue reading How Understanding Dependence can Lead to Gratefulness