Naar aanleiding van een grote overzichtstentoonstelling in Fotomuseum Den Haag gaf Hollands Beelden een speciale editie uit met alleen werk van Eddy Posthuma de Boer. De eerste helft zijn zwart-wit beelden, meest straatfotografie, met zijn typische humoristische toets. Het tweede deel is kleur en gemaakt in opdracht, voor de wereldtentoonstelling in Osaka in 1969. Het werk in kleur is meest geposeerd maar heeft toch een typisch EPDB stijl.
Ultralearning by Scott H. Young is a comprehensive book on, well, ultralearning: how to master a complex skill as quickly as possible.
The combines theory with practice. Young grew his experience in the field through various experiments he undertook himself, like acquiring an MIT degree within a year, learning 4 languages in a year, and learning to draw within a month.
Ultralearning is: a well planned strategy, self-directed and intense.
In a world where average is over and lower skilled jobs are quickly overtaken by machines, Ultralearning may be a strategy to ensure employment of all sort.
Young identifies a number of steps.
Metalearning
This phase determines your strategy. What to learn, which materials and methods to use, how to learn. Planning phase. May take up to 10% of total time spent.
Focus
You need focus for fast learning. So you need to plan time, opportunity, venture, etcetera to fit the ultralearning activities into your life.
Directness
As doing is best, plan for a direct method of learning. Prefer speaking a language over studying idioms.
Young identifies some ways to achieve this
Transfer: apply subject in a new context.
Do a project.
Go sit in the environment in which the skill must be practiced.
Simulate practical application.
Overkill, for example, aim to become world champion.
Drill
Find the bottleneck in your skill development (Young call this the rate determining step) and drill it. Ways to drill:
Time slicing.
Focus on a specific cognitive component (for example: pronunciation).
Copy others.
Deep dive a specific subtopic.
Try something, see what’s holding you up, focus on that (Young call this prerequisite chaining).
Retrieval
Immediate feedback is essential to achieve expert level. But also be assess what advise to ignore.
Kinds of feedback you can seek for:
Outcome feedback (a test result)
Information feedback (what was done wrong)
Corrective feedback: information feedback with also advice how to do better. This of course is best feedback.
Retention
Repeat to remember. Spread learning and repeat systems. Proceduralize, overlearn, use mnemonics.
Joshua Foer in Moonwalking with Einstein builds a memory palace to memorize 52 playing cards in a minute or 2.
Intuition
Great example here: Richard Feynman.
Richard Feynman
I think it is more discipline than intuition.
Principles:
Don’t give up on hard things.
Prove to understand – reproduce, explain yourself.
Don’t fool yourself.
Experimentation
Experiment to find your own path.
Diverge from your teachers and mentors.
Experiment with learning systems, technique, style.
According to Knight herself, an inspiration for her book (and unintentional title) is Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
The book helps the reader identify and prioritize the things you should and shouldn’t give a fuck about. We give way too many fucks according to Knight. For a happier and more comfortable life, it’s good to get rid of many of those joyless fucks and get more committed to the fuck you do care about.
Knight categorizes the fuck into 4 groups: Things, Work, Friends and Family. Each of these categories are explored by Knight and for each she comes up with an approach.
Halfway through the book, I called it a day and flipped through the rest of it. Fuck It. There’s no point in reading it anymore.
An addition to the more lyrical and tactically oriented DevOps foundation books from Gene Kim, this book presents a method to scale agile in large organizations.
Mik Kersten introduces the Flow Framework, a way of linking product development planning, the activities around product development and the integration of supporting tools.
The different types of “flows” (work that must be done do improve the product – my words) that Kersten identifies are Features, Defects, Risks and Technical Debts. Flows must attribute to some business result, whether improved product value, cost (reduction), better quality or customer happiness.
The small book “Martin Parr” from Phaidon has a relatively extensive introduction (I mean: for such a small book) to the work of Martin Parr. We see how he develops from a black and white photographer of British life into the critical flash & color photographer of life’s peculiarities as we know him today.
The book furthermore is a guide to how you can read a picture. Maybe a bit over the top now and then:
… the picture recalls Bernini’s sculpture of Daphne sprouting leaves and branches… (picture of girl on school party).
It must also refer to the psychological complexity of attending school”(boy with mother a grammar school).
Wonderful pictures of a stuffed owl, sausages, a cup of tea, and many other ordinary objects and scenes depicted in Parr’s unique manner.
I stumbled upon the YouTube channel from Mark Frauenfelder, Editor In Chief of the Cool-Tools website and had great fun watching the video they made of the first podcast.
