I’ve been having a lot of fun (and finding an eager audience) sharing my notes with my new team at Fin. By extension, I’ve now cleaned up and made four new summaries ready to publish: Escaping the Build Trap (Melissa Perri), How to Measure Anything (Douglass Hubbard), Zero to One (Peter Thiel), and Inspired (Marty Cagan).
Fascinating examination of expertise in comparison with those who have experience but do not become experts. Includes a straightforward explanation of the process of expertise, the nature of creativity, and how it is related to wisdom. Leans into examples from education, since it is a primary focus of the authors’ research.
We have a habit of trying to capture how we feel with a single word. More often, we’re actually feeling a number of completely different emotions woven together.
Succinct distillation of Jennifer Garvey Berger’s extensive research. Five ways our brains (due to our social evolution) lead us astray in complex modern situations, with two of the more effective strategies to diffuse each.
When we use creativity as a main constraint for decision making, we often end-up with a series of disconnected, incoherent ideas. When we use promisingness as a main constraint for decision making, we are more likely to find creativity as an emergent quality of our work.
Some of the more powerful educational experiences are those that tap into our natural inclination for play. Lifelong learners are those who have learned, first and foremost, that learning can be playful.
Personifying idealized wisdom is a powerful way to make it easier to relate these ideas to our daily lives. Judging teachers by idealized standards of teaching, however, can be dangerous.
Operating from the empowerment model is powerful whether we work with teachers, parents, or even the students themselves (e.g. when encouraging meaningful project work). Sadly, many in the industry operate from the deficit model.
Reggio Emilia teachers appreciate the importance of being a reflective practitioner, drawing on Schön's research. This describes the metacognitive layer of teaching, where an awareness of their own biases helps them be a better teacher.
The real world is not often as alien a landscape as the forest within which my brother and I were lost for over eight hours. But navigating the real world is often just as confusing and mysterious. Good teachers are a compass in that exploration.