Overview of the contents of a manuscript I started back in 2018 and was supposed to finish in 2019. Oh well, what happened. I initially planned to title it as ”Jack: Master of all Trades” because of that greed to “master” several skills in short amount of time. But I guess, mastering several things requires being consistent practicing and learning holistic aspect of a skill. I’ll just share the outline as I think it was able to help me in the past 3 years.
Part 0: Lost and how to genuinely love yourself
- Everyone can be an expert in a different field, they just don’t have much willpower and motivation. Clue: Therapies can help.
- Love yourself. Meaning respecting your previous phases in life, enjoying the current situation, and taking consideration of future dreams. Clue: Be your own compass and direction.
- Optional: Consider if you have mental illnesses in improving yourself i.e OCD, Depression, Mood Swings, etc., and how you can break out in that state or at least have ways to cope.
Part 1: Acquiring knowledge, skills, and talent
- How to learn effectively and efficiently?
- Why you should think outside the box always?
- Why do people think they know enough?
- Why not being hungry in learning is not good?
- What to do: Reduce unnecessary thoughts
Part 2: How our body implements this knowledge, skills, and talent
- Body parts that affect the performance the most — brain, emotion, and guts
- Cognitive and physiology patterns between experts from different fields
- What to do: Reduce unnecessary actions
Part 3. How we can nail it!
- Focus on physical fitness, mental fitness, emotional health
- Science behind the word “soul” — connection with inner-self, connection with the surrounding, connection with people. The balance amount of “soul” on different fields (i.e. art, music, law, teaching, etc.)
- Optional: Psychological effect of not having enough foundational resources i.e. you are less fortunate, being poor, being part of the vulnerable sector
Part 4. Flowing knowledge, skills, talent
- Stay curious. Stay hungry with knowledge. Being a “kid inside” is NOT childish and is actually a mature thing
- How to nail things not only once, but consistently nail them?
- Why everyone should be goal-oriented? There’s this reading “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” by Scott Adams and it talks about people should be system-oriented and not goal-oriented. That was a better way to have direction. Interesting to discuss how to keep moving forward. But I think, he was implying too-specific-goals regarding goal-oriented. I haven’t read the book yet. I believe we have same idea so we have to find out.
Appendix A: Philosophies you can apply in life
- Stoic philosophy
- Kaizen philosophy
- Lean. Note: This is more of a management philosophy, but can be applied in life
Appendix B: Computer analogy “Cognitive” Flow
- Input: Our five senses (touch, smell, hear, sight, taste) and other mental senses
- Process: The mind/brain, the emotion/”heart”, the gut (PS. I just wanted to sort the emotional part of our mind to its rational part. But it’s still the brain.)
- Storage: Long-term memory, Short-term memory
- Output (as input): Brain response (to information processed) i.e. analysis skills, analytical skills etc.
- Output (as output): Body response, Muscle memory i.e. physical skills, creative skills, etc.
- Parallel processing of brain. Interesting insight at Stackexchange https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/1946/difference-between-parallel-processing-done-by-human-brain-and-by-computers
Meditations, Letters, and Metaphors 