Health Tips Article

I love science fiction. All kinds. The B-grade kind, the kind which has more budget for a famous actor than for a thorough script, the Sharknado kind, etc. In many of these science fiction movies, comics, and books, the idea of a brain that is capable of god-like things is a popular trope- Martian man, Prof. Xavier, the many characters from Heroes, Doctor Manhattan, Vision, Doctor Strange. Similarly, there are tonnes of stories of people who claim to move things with their mind, see the future, predict unknowable events, etc. Today, let us look at a specific category of brain powers seen in science fiction & these personal stories from people - The capacity to create causal effects using just the power of the mind. Science fiction is deliberate fiction, it is not a product of evolution, nor is it engineered in a material sense. So most things check out under the mask of fiction. What happens when we logically tackle these psychic/psionic/extrasensory powers in the realm of reality?...

Friend's sight -  a mental tool for evaluation & decision making There is a handy mental tool I use when evaluating my work or making decisions. It is a simple question I ask myself. In this very short post, I'll show you how you can use it meaningfully! Sometimes, it is very hard to evaluate your own work because you are restricted by your prior knowledge and ideas. However, my guess is, more often than not, you feel you need a fresh set of eyes to evaluate your work and make progress. Perhaps it is a decision you want to evaluate. What would you do? You are probably aware of your own tendencies and are inclined to opt for a certain path. But, you are unsure whether it is a good idea or not. And because you are uncertain, all options that you have seem to lack a certain conviction. If this happens to you. Ask the following question: What would X do/say?  Replace X with the following: Your best friend Your closest friends Your parents Your grandparents Your professors Your...

We all work for someone or something. That work is probably tangible. That means, it can be observed, evaluated, referenced, used, and improved upon. You submit a thesis draft to your professor, or you submit a report to your employer. You then ask for feedback because good work gets you ahead. More often than not, that feedback is a question mark. It is just hard to understand what the feedback means. It is probably vague, contains a remark, and delayed. Have you always found such feedback useful? Feedback should be F.A.S.T. Quality Feedback has structured components. Sometimes you get feedback which has no tangible value. Let us say you drafted a plan for a promotional event.  Imagine that your employer replies to you after 1 week with the following: "Thanks, I checked your work. Improve it a bit.". And then your thoughts start flooding your brain. Improve what? What did you check? I spent 50 hours on it. I checked everything. Is something wrong? Did I miss something? What...

Today, I will discuss some of the main problems of popular psychology. These are related to mass awareness of certain concepts and data. Because we have access to so much psychology, a lot of trash is generated. Psychology is a science. However, people seem to corrupt the scientific endeavour and turn it into quackery. Take, for example, the widespread understanding of personality based on the Myers Briggs type inventory (MBTI). At least 2 million people take the official test every year. How many million more take its ripoffs on BuzzFeed and Meaaw? The test is questionable. Its ripoffs.. even more so! Yet, people label their lives based on its results. Are people drowning in the incorrect use of psychology? This article may sound harsh but it'll give you plenty to think about. I am not accusing people who believe the following, I am underscoring how pervasive the spread of incorrect information is . I generally find the following aspects of popular psychology bothersome. There i...

The Kiki-Bouba effect: Deep inside your brain, cross-modal correspondences make you human. Which shape do you think is 'KIKI' and which one do you think is 'BOUBA'? ... ..... ...... ....... What is your answer? .... ..... ...... ....... Do you think the left one is KIKI and the right one is Bouba? .. ... ... Yeah? Or do you think it was the other way round? No problem if you thought it was the other way round. But it is just striking that.... 95% of the people think the left jagged shape is KIKI and the right bulbous shape is BOUBA!! You just demonstrated cross-modal correspondence. Something in your brain thought the sound of Kiki matched the left shape and something in Bouba matched the other right shape. Today, I am going to dive deep into my favourite topic in psychology and neuroscience - The Kiki-Bouba effect. It is something that may always separate us from the robots. Perhaps it holds the key to making robots more human. We don't know to what extent this may...

Mental models or Mental model thinking can help you learn better, get creative, and gain immense insight into the world. A recipe to genius: Mental modelling. The future of structured thinking   For a minute, think that your mind is a blank canvas.  But that can't be true. You are alive and are learning something, absorbing some information, this information.  Let's now put that blank canvas on top of your brain. Think of something crazy. That thing you just thought of, draw it on the canvas. The brain will now try to absorb that content and assimilate it into a bio-psychological framework built out of neural structures and a way to access it in meaningful ways.  Think of a square, a circle, a building. These are objects that the brain has assimilated as concepts.  Let us now expand the idea of this canvas drawing. Imagine for a moment that you can lay down amazingly complex concepts, big ideas, and processes from many topics onto this canvas. And then, you lear...

The average person spends 6-8 years of their life studying formally. This is, in fact, largely spread over 20 years of education and a 30-year career. A lot more of skill learning happens depending upon the person's career choice. In essence, you'd be spending 11-18% of your life acquiring information and skills ( I did some rough calculations for a college graduate with a 25+ year career, feel free to contest these estimates and improve the accuracy). Wouldn't you want to know how to make the most of those 11+ years by knowing how to study well? Find out how to study efficiently and be relaxed before exams. I'll discuss a few critical and efficient study tips and learning techniques which you can implement in your life as well as teach others who spend time studying. These are not just simple study tips. These are hardcore study methods developed based on psychological research on learning. In this article, I'll show you how to implement each technique for 3 categ...