Remember more after reading the text

How to remember more after reading the text?

Start with questions.

Before every unit (title, paragraph) - ask questions that you would like to be answered in the text that follows.

Connect main ideas with pictures in your head.

While reading, when you find the answer to a before-asked question or main idea worth remembering, connect that answer/idea with a picture you are familiar with.

When connecting more ideas, use the "mutant method", i.e. connect the first picture with the second by combining them. For example; if the first association is a fish, and the second is a ball; to connect the first and second associations, use the body of the fish and change the head with the ball.

Disable sub-vocalization

If you have questions in your mind and pictures to hold, sub-vocalization slows down your reading and understanding.

Sing a song, or repeat some sayings so that your sub-vocal voice is busy.

Teach someone

Read with attitude to teach someone what you have read.

Statistics for future forecasting

How to understand if past financial data could be used for future forecast

Understand the concept of information

Purpose of an information is to communicate message and support reasoning.

Best way to achieve that purpose is by using summaries and visuals. In our case we will use only summary numbers.

Calculate mean

Mean is a single value that represent typical value of a dataset.

Means is calculated as adding all item values (x1, x2, ...) and then dividing that sum by the number of items

Mean of dataset: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is (1+2+3+4+5) / 5 = 3.

Calculate relative standard deviation (RSD)

Standard deviation is an average difference between the observed value and the mean. Wording 'relative' compares that standard deviation with the mean.

RSD is calculated using 2 numbers: mean and standard deviation.

1) Every value in a datasets is subtracted from the mean and the result is then squared.

(1-3)^2, (2-3)^2, (3-3)^2, (4-3)^2, (5-3)^2

2) Results from the first step are added together.

4+1+0+1+4 = 10

3) Sum from second step is divided by the number of items in a dataset (if sample is used, second number ie. denominator is subtracted by 1).

10/5 = 2

4) The square root is taken from the third step result.

Sqrt of 2 = 1,4142

5) The result from the fourth step is divided by the mean and multiplied by 100 (note that if mean is a negative value instead of relative standard deviation we call the result coefficient of variation).

(1,4142) / 3 * 100 = 47%

Make conclusion

In our dataset (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) mean is 3, and RSD is 47%.

What that means? It means that for observations like in our dataset typical future value will be around 3 with 47% imprecision.

Smaller RSD means higher precision of dataset. In practice up to 25% RSD is satisfactory.

Focus or fail

Intro

Once upon a time, there were two men, Uni and Multi. Uni was a carpenter and Multi had a many jobs, he was a little carpenter, then a mason, then a farmer, etc.

Uni knew only carpentry, and Multi knew a bit of everything. Uni can make a chair, a door, even he can build a wooden house. Multi can build a desk, but poor one, he can build a house, but the walls were often slanted.

People often asked Uni to build them wooden things. But people rarely ask Multi to build anything. Maybe they were not convinced by quality of Multi work, maybe Multi had a bad marketing, or maybe Multi wasn't focused enough.

What is focus?

The focus is when thoughts, energy and behavior turn into that one thing. When you eat and sleep that one thing.

On average, we are all average people, with average capabilities and possibilities. But some average people become above average in some way. There are some richer people, some stronger people, some better writers, etc.

Many of them are extraordinary because they aligned thoughts, energy and behavior towards that one goal. They were focused, and that is why they succeeded. Average capabilities with times become better than average.

So, how to succeed?

Today to succeed is not hard, because many people are distracted by virtual reality. They think about irrelevant items and relations. They don't learn about life or to get a better future, but they entertain themselves, it is the easiest to do so.

But you, you can become more focused. Reduce that virtual life presence. Recall what you wanted to become, feel again what you want to do. All that time spent virtual can be used more productively and effectively.

Invest more time in relations with your nearest family. And friends. What about your job? Probably you dislike it, so think about how you can use your job to become what you wanted to become and gave up some time ago.

What that all has with company?

If company is like a person, only focused will succeed.

Use communication to impact people

# communication is a tool

Do you know that achieving goals is possible only in one way - with people.

And all of us have one tool to impact other people; it is a communication.

The main idea is achieving results with people.

Sometimes, it would be your goals, and sometimes you will be responsible for goals of others, let's say if you are a manager in a company, you will be responsible for many goals, set by someone else.

# with manual for use

It is believed that one with proper communication can achieve very best results.

One with great talent but without communication skills won't succeed.

# and this tool is used for specific tasks

If you are a person who leads other people, all around you have expectations from you, like: i) achieve results, ii) customers' satisfaction, iii) a good relationship with people, iv) efficient business operations.

# but before starting to use, take some safety equipment with you

Believe in yourself and show it by attitude.

Believe in other people and communicate so.

Believe in purpose and inspire others.

Don't avoid leadership and management roles.

Don't passively indicate mistakes, errors or omissions (key is passive into active).

# it is very important who is using a tool

We all have biological defect - being right is more important to us than achieve a goal.

When we must sacrifice our ego, we don't let him easily, even if that means failure in goal completion.

If we only could be little humble.

# don't presume that tool won't work

When we face some problem, or need to communicate with another person, we presume many things.

We presume; they will attack me, they won't understand me.

In fact, 90% of our thoughts about future never come true.

# your tool have 4 modes, use them accordingly to have effective impact

We can group people in four categories.

Differentiation is made in two areas: focus and emotions: focus on result versus people, and showing versus hiding emotions.

So, there are four colors of people: red, yellow, blue, and green.

And people in such categories behaves in predictable ways: impulsive (yellow), analytically (blue), aggressive (red) or calmly (green).

Different people see world (or are blind on some things) in a way that is most suitable to their way of thinking and behaving (ie. color).

# fine tune a tool

Every person sees a world in her/his unique way, with all experiences, beliefs, fears, and expectations.

And that's the reason why people misunderstand each other.

Next time, when you say something, and see that other person react unexpected (from your point of view), remember that this person differ from you - they have different education, beliefs, knowledge, experience etc., and that reaction is accordingly such a one.

# manage effects of tool

When people feel threat, they respond by one of three emotions: anger, fear or sadness.

Most of the time, person operates on pilot and least of the time is creative.

Threat switches pilot to creative state.

When fear is the cause, aggression is the result.

Being angry gives illusion of control over fear.

Being insecure, apologize very often or being quiet are behaviors lead by our fear from rejection and fear from disappointing others.

Person who give ironical comments, or shows herself as a victim is a person afraid of responsibility.

# use a tool with positive attitude

Use body language (~50%), voice properties (~40%) and words (~10%) to build an attitude.

If your role is a leader in a company, behave with constructive, respectful, secure, positive, motivational, clear and open attitude.

Are you conscious about your posture, your voice, your words - what other see, what impression do I have on them.

# use tool to connect with a person

Meet another person, and build a relationship with them.

We like people who are like us, and other people like people who are like them.

Give another person warmth and respect, and they will be interested to hear our opinion and will trust us.

Connect with another person using attitude, syncronized movements, similar words, experiences, in one word build a rapport.

# use a tool to encourage another person

Have an eye contact, focus on a person, smile, nod, paraphrase what you have heard, listen.

Ask open questions to find specifics, look for essence.

Abandon using Why questions, instead use How come.

# with this tool you can tell your opinion too

Be clear, propose solution, don't attack others.

Set framework and prepare a person on what will be told.

Use construction: when you behave like ... I feel like ... because your behaviour ... and I would like that ... happens.

Give feedbacks.

# use communication and impact world around you

Talk, write, behave and make impact on others.

Conceptual cookbook for start-up (value of doing)

Think about what you can do to make other’s life easier

Research shows that a single person is happy if he makes other people happy. Making money is not strong enough reason, because when get hard, you will find out that there is plenty other ways where you can earn more than in start-up, and quit.

But if your reason is to do something right, you will not quit so easy. Elon Musk used to say that it doesn’t matter if it is hard, expensive, or no probable to succeed, if it is right and must be done to improve humanity, do it.

Write a story

Before written word, knowledge was shared via spoken stories. You can do the same, or write it down. It is good to have a starting point. Something structured, where you present yourself the idea.

Did you have experience, that you solved some problem, just by talking to someone, or by writing it down in e-mail to ask for help, and then throw e-mail because you found the solution?

By speaking, and writing we organize our thoughts. Maybe is a good thing to have a starting point, something that is product of organized thoughts.

But I think more freely and creative, structuring makes me slower and boxed in words. OK, use spoken words, but pretend that you present to someone, and then it will stick in your mind.

Just start

Fear is the biggest enemy of human being. It is triggered by unknown, variable, without pattern. It can be easily avoided, you just do need to do nothing, wait for perfect circumstances, wait forever.

All before is not important as start executing. You can be completely wrong in all previous steps, but will find out when start executing. But I am not sure, if it is right. You will not know it until you start doing real things.

Only ensure reasonable losses i.e. some pilot project, if completely wrong, that don’t lose too much money. But without this step you can’t get pass. You won’t know so important details, and won’t face any problem until get into it.

Expect to be wrong

It is reasonable to expect that some actions will be with good consequences, some with bad. On average, keep going, and repeat the steps.

To conclude, help to some person, organize thoughts, start doing and have attitude that being wrong meaning getting feedback.

One of ingredient of start-up to succeed (know how to build a product)

I wondered, if you have two start-ups, building the same product, which one would you rate as more promising. What criteria would you use to separate them? 

My thoughts are on founder's knowledge to build a product from scratch by itself. 

I used to see start-up being very promising, with great idea, founder was high caliber manager and sales person, starting funding was good, and which failed after a five years. Business started well, capital was raised very fast, revenue grew rapidly, clients were interested to come, new product prototypes were often presented. 

 

Profit was not seemed to be important in these early days. 

And then came the days after the early days, prototypes were great, but customers expected to see, as promised, more quality and more features. There were no responses from the start-up. 

Employees at start-up tried, but faced with problems in execution and didn't succeed, so asked for helping hand, but leader who started the wheels, wasn't the tech guy, who can build the product. He knew all around the product: its future functionalities and capabilities, but not in technical detail how to build it to become so featured and enhanced. 

Start-up is all about the product. 

In very early days of start-up, person with the highest level of energy, motivation, failure and stress resistance is the founder, and it could not be expected from employee to have such capabilities and solve the hardest problems, the founder is the one. 

If founder lack knowledge on how to build a product from scratch, the start-up is weak, and rate of failure is for sure higher. 

To conclude, being founder, manager or sales person in early start-up is not enough, the one should know how to build a product, and then he might succeed.