At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Sarah Chen found herself compulsively scrolling through social media feeds between hospital shifts. What started as professional diligence soon became an overwhelming digital flood. “I couldn’t stop checking my phone,” she later told her colleagues. “Every notification felt urgent, every update seemed crucial. But the more information… Read More »The Perils of Information Hoarding
Reading scientific papers effectively is a skill that can significantly improve your academic writing and overall understanding of your field. With the right strategies, you can remember key points from every paper you read and confidently use that knowledge in your own work. Here’s how: 1. Read slowly and deliberately Focus on quality over quantity.… Read More »How to read a scientific paper
Close your eyes and picture this: An ancient Egyptian scribe, circa 3000 BCE, meticulously carving hieroglyphs into a stone tablet. Now open them and look around. You might see a student typing away on a laptop in a lecture hall, a business executive dictating notes into her smartphone, or maybe just your own scribbled reminders… Read More »The Evolution of Note-Taking from Ancient Scribes to Digital Minds
Have you ever woken up with the solution to a problem that seemed unsolvable the night before? As it turns out, a good night’s sleep is often the key to unleashing your innate creativity and knack for problem-solving. Sleep scientists have discovered that a specific type of brain activity called spindle events occurs primarily during… Read More »The surprising link between sleep and problem-solving
When it comes to user participation in online communities, the 90-9-1 rule highlights the stark imbalance in online engagement. 90% are consumers, 9% leave a comment here and there, and only 1% are creators. It’s a distribution that would make even the most uneven game of Monopoly look fair. Stop hoarding and start creating! The… Read More »The 90-9-1 rule
Struggling to focus? There’s a frequency for that. Need to chill out and recharge? Another frequency. Want to soak up new information like a sponge? You guessed it – another frequency. By strategically exposing your brain to specific frequencies, you can shift your mental state from laser focus to deep relaxation to accelerated learning. The… Read More »Brainwave entrainment for better focus, memory and sleep
Do you know what links reciting the alphabet, remembering your first kiss, and taking a multiple-choice test? On the surface, not much. But these everyday acts show off three distinct ways your brain retrieves information. 1. Free recall Free recall is when you retrieve information without any specific cues or prompts. Imagine emptying your pockets… Read More »Definition of Free recall, Cued recall and Serial recall
Remember playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? That game where you try to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon through their movie roles? Your personal knowledge can work the same way, with ideas connecting to other ideas in fascinating chains of discovery. Let’s explore how to capture and organize these connections in ways that make… Read More »The art of connected note-taking and knowledge trails
Remember the satisfying scratch of pen on paper? That tactile sensation may be the secret to reaching your intellectual potential. In our digital age, it’s easy to dismiss analogue tools as relics of the past. We’ve been conditioned to believe that faster is always better – that tapping away on a laptop is the pinnacle… Read More »The analogue revolution: Why handwritten notes are making a comeback
The medieval peasant has been down on his luck lately. The weather has been particularly unforgiving, with scorching heat and drought withering the crops in the fields. As he toils under the relentless sun, his hands blistered and his back aching, he yearns for a glimmer of hope in his bleak existence. One day, a… Read More »The knowledge worker