Letters Remain

Category: personal-development

  • Mental Math and Memory Techniques at the Mentat Wiki

    In the novel Dune, ‘Mentats’ are humans trained to mimic computers: human minds developed to staggering heights of cognitive and analytical ability. With this in mind, you may be able to guess what’s in store at the Mentat Wiki, which calls itself “a collaborative environment for exploring ways to become a better thinker”: ‘Mental Math’…

  • A Guide for Learning Foreign Languages (Resources)

    Latin was probably the single most useful subject I was taught in school. I despised it at the time, but now I have come to realise its importance and many applications–the greatest of which is how it has helped me learn other languages. In learning languages (although none to fluency… yet) I have found the…

  • Being Creative with gapingvoid

    You may know gapingvoid from Hugh MacLeod’s “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards“. Now he’s telling us How To Be Creative. So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years: You are responsible for your own experience. Everybody…

  • Top Speeches and Motivational Videos

    American Rhetoric is a “speech bank” holding over 5,000 full text, audio and video on some of the most famous speeches, lectures, debates and interviews of all time. Recently they released a list of the top 100 speeches in American 20th century politics (complete with transcript and audio). Martin Luther King, Jr. – “I Have…

  • 100 Items or Less

    No, it’s not the new checkout lane at the supermarket, but Dave Bruno’s purging goal (summary): And honestly, it is difficult to purge.  What goes?  That is a hard decision.  But I have an idea.  A spontaneous idea that might change my life forever.  I’m calling it the 100 Thing Challenge.  And I’m taking it.…

  • Great Speeches: Oprah and Obama

    A couple of speeches currently getting rave reviews: Oprah’s Stanford Commencement, 2008 Barack Obama’s Father’s Day Speech, Chicago Stanford always seem to nail that commencement speech. via Ramit’s del.icio.us links and 37signals’ Signal vs. Noise

  • Peak or Trough – You Are a Start-Up

    Are you on a peak or in a trough? Looking for a kick-start? Then you can do worse than reading, absorbing, and taking to heart Ryan Holiday‘s article, This is My Life: [Look at developing yourself] like a start up. You are a start up. Don’t worry about monetization. Or a safety net or health…

  • Don’t Follow Your Passion – Fix Your Lifestyle

    Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there. A novel take on the typical inspirational graduation speech. It’s not about following your passion or not taking yourself too seriously. They’re important, but this is different. The idea is to not think of your ideal job, but to think of your ideal lifestyle. To…

  • Six Habits of Highly Effective Mentees (and My Start-Up Life Excerpts)

    Personally and professionally I always thrive to learn. Nine months ago I moved from programming into systems/business analysis: I knew what the job entailed and knew I could do it well. I still asked for a mentor. Specifically, I asked that my mentor be the person in our organisation who is always lauded as being…

  • Tips on Mini-Retirements from Tim Ferriss and JD Roth

    How to Take a Mini-Retirement: Tips and Tricks from Timothy Ferriss is the first part of a two-part interview between JD Roth (of the excellent personal finance site, Get Rich Slowly) and he of 4HWW fame, Timothy Ferriss. There’s an apt quote in the interview on something I’m currently struggling with: The hardest part is…