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Notice what happens to many people when they get a little alcohol in their brain. It should drop their energy immediately because it's a depressant; often, though, the energy lifts, at least initially. Why? The alcohol is depressing something--it's' shutting down the negative self-talk and uncomfortable visions that are going on in those folk's minds

Getting Things Done | David Allen | p.259

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most people think good listening comes down to doing three things:

Not talking when others are speaking

Letting others know you’re listening through facial expressions and verbal sounds (“Mmm-hmm”)

Being able to repeat what others have said, practically word-for-word

In fact, much management advice on listening suggests doing these very things – encouraging listeners to remain quiet, nod and “mm-hmm” encouragingly, and then repeat back to the talker something like, “So, let me make sure I understand. What you’re saying is…” However, recent research that we conducted suggests that these behaviors fall far short of describing good listening skills.

We found some surprising conclusions, along with some qualities we expected to hear. We grouped them into four main findings:

Good listening is much more than being silent while the other person talks. To the contrary, people perceive the best listeners to be those who periodically ask questions that promote discovery and insight. These questions gently challenge old assumptions, but do so in a constructive way. Sitting there silently nodding does not provide sure evidence that a person is listening, but asking a good question tells the speaker the listener has not only heard what was said, but that they comprehended it well enough to  want additional information. Good listening was consistently seen as a two-way dialog, rather than a one-way “speaker versus hearer” interaction. The best conversations were active.

Good listening included interactions that build a person’s self-esteem. The best listeners made the conversation a positive experience for the other party, which doesn’t happen when the listener is passive (or, for that matter, critical!). Good listeners made the other person feel supported and conveyed confidence in them. Good listening was characterized by the creation of a safe environment in which issues and differences could be discussed openly.

Good listening was seen as a cooperative conversation. In these interactions, feedback flowed smoothly in both directions with neither party becoming defensive about comments the other made. By contrast, poor listeners were seen as competitive — as listening only to identify errors in reasoning or logic, using their silence as a chance to prepare their next response. That might make you an excellent debater, but it doesn’t make you a good listener. Good listeners may challenge assumptions and disagree, but the person being listened to feels the listener is trying to help, not wanting to win an argument.

Good listeners tended to make suggestions. Good listening invariably included some feedback provided in a way others would accept and that opened up alternative paths to consider. This finding somewhat surprised us, since it’s not uncommon to hear complaints that “So-and-so didn’t listen, he just jumped in and tried to solve the problem.” Perhaps what the data is telling us is that making suggestions is not itself the problem; it may be the skill with which those suggestions are made. Another possibility is that we’re more likely to accept suggestions from people we already think are good listeners. (Someone who is silent for the whole conversation and then jumps in with a suggestion may not be seen as credible. Someone who seems combative or critical and then tries to give advice may not be seen as trustworthy.)

good listeners are ... someone you can bounce ideas off of — and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking. They make you feel better not merely passively absorbing, but by actively supporting. This lets you gain energy and height, just like someone jumping on a trampoline.

Levels of listening. 

Not every conversation requires the highest levels of listening, but many conversations would benefit from greater focus and listening skill. Consider which level of listening you’d like to aim for:

Level 1: The listener creates a safe environment in which difficult, complex, or emotional issues can be discussed.

Level 2: The listener clears away distractions like phones and laptops, focusing attention on the other person and making appropriate eye-contact.  (This  behavior not only affects how you are perceived as the listener; it immediately influences the listener’s own attitudes and inner feelings.  Acting the part changes how you feel inside. This in turn makes you a better listener.)

Level 3: The listener seeks to understand the substance of what the other person is saying.  They capture ideas, ask questions, and restate issues to confirm that their understanding is correct.

Level 4: The listener observes nonbverbal cues, such as facial expressions, perspiration, respiration rates, gestures, posture, and numerous other subtle body language signals.  It is estimated that 80% of what we communicate comes from these signals. It sounds strange to some, but you listen with your eyes as well as your ears.

Level 5: The listener increasingly understands the other person’s emotions and feelings about the topic at hand, and identifies and acknowledges them. The listener empathizes with and validates those feelings in a supportive, nonjudgmental way.

Level 6: The listener asks questions that clarify assumptions the other person holds and helps the other person to see the issue in a new light.  This could include the listener injecting some thoughts and ideas about the topic that could be useful to the other person.  However, good listeners never highjack the conversation so that they or their issues become the subject of the discussion.

Each of the levels builds on the others; thus, if you’ve been criticized (for example) for offering solutions rather than listening, it may mean you need to attend to some of the other levels (such as clearing away distractions or empathizing) before your proffered suggestions can be appreciated.

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On people who believe they encountered aliens or UFOs

From “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)” | Carol Tavris | p.139-146 

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Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) | Carol Tavris | p.51-54

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A philosophical breakdown of problem with gender essences. 

Something seems to be missing the article’s discussion. It rightfully identifies that people have tastes, some of which are associated with a specific gender. (These tastes could, of course, be associated with other identities, like race or social class). Where there is a difference between the individuals gendered tastes and the expectations of others (social norms) there is pressure for the individual to alter their tastes to conform. This pressure need not be exclusively oppressive. The differences can also be empowering. For example, if someone wants to draw attention to themselves, an easy way is to break a gender norm. 

The more an individual’s tastes deviate from their perceptions of others peoples’ expectations, the greater pressure to conform. This social pressure is also greater the more an individual identifies with their differently-gendered tastes (the more important it is to them). Finally, the social pressure is greater the stronger the individuals need to belong. 

One of the ways of righting the social pressure is to switch gender so that an individual’s tastes better match their perceptions of the gender norms. (As an interesting side observation: One thing I have noticed is that the people who transition from one gender to another, their perception of gender norms tends to be extremely stereotypical)

There is no need to talk about essences. All that is required is the individual's perception of gender norms, which varies from person to person. There is, of course, similarities from person to person--which in the collective we call gender stereotypes--but at the level of the individual they vary greatly from individual to individual. 

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There are currently four well-established types of humor that psychologists agree on: 

self-enhancing humor, or using humor to cope with stressful situations; 

aggressive humor, which improves feelings about the self at the expense of others; 

affiliative humor, which reduces tension between people and improves relationships; and 

self-defeating humor, which enhances relationships, but at the expense of oneself. 

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BULLSHIT!

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So we are now very familiar with the claim that all humans everywhere have rights. But we are much less familiar with the notion that rights are protected by the fulfillment of duties. 

Thirty years ago, when the human rights movement was in its infancy, philosopher Onora O’Neill commented, “Although serious writing on human rights acknowledges that any right must entail correlative obligations, we find no Universal Declaration of Human Duties, and no international Human Obligations Movements.” This omission of duties might have grave consequences for rights protection itself. Consider that, from their president on down, few Americans seem to believe that a right to be free from torture might translate into a duty to prevent and punish torture.

Our age of rights, lacking a public language of duties, is a historical outlier. The consequences are significant. Human rights themselves wither when their advocates fail to cross the border into the language of duty; insofar as compliance with norms on paper is sought, the bearers of duties have to be identified and compelled to assume their burden. But duties may have an even larger role to play than simply completing the circuit of rights fulfillment. Though we face environmental catastrophe and the inequities of neoliberalism, few think to pick up the traces of Mazzini’s and Gandhi’s cosmopolitan responsibility, which might help to confront these global-scale menaces.

Of course, it would be a grievous mistake to insist ... that enjoyment of rights ought to depend on assumption of duties first. And it is undeniable that the rhetoric of duties has often been deployed euphemistically by those whose true purpose is a return to tradition won by limiting the rights of others. The misbegotten “Asian values” debate of the 1990s, which saw Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and others contend that Western norms ran afoul of local visions, promoted duties as a surreptitious means of scanting rights. .... Most perniciously, when the language of duties has been revived, it has often been for the sake of libertarian ends, notably in debates over state provision—for example, in the longstanding critique of welfare, which holds that individuals are duty bound to cultivate personal virtue and take responsibility for their lives rather than depend selfishly on the “nanny state” to minister to their needs.

But it ought to be clear that the need to guard against destructive ideas of duty is a poor excuse for ignoring beneficial liberal ones. Indeed, rejecting duty entirely means rejecting a public vocabulary that might save a range of values from continuing neglect, whether socioeconomic equality, global justice, or environmental welfare.

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Good summary of the lived experience of having schizophrenia.

A much-liked meme on Facebook circulated months ago, in which a chart listed so-called advantages to various mental illnesses. Depression bestowed sensitivity and empathy; ADHD allowed people to hold large amounts of information at once; anxiety created useful caution. I knew before reading it that schizophrenia wouldn’t make an appearance.

In previous eras people who experience delusions and psychosis were highly regarded for their perceived ability to talk to the spirit realm (e.g. mystics and diviners) and predict the future (e.g. fortune tellers). This is still the case in some indigenous societies still today. What are the special characteristics that schizophrenics and other people who experience psychosis have that should be recognized as valuable to society and other “mentally healthy” people? 

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Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) | Carol Tavris

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When people cite feelings or personal experience [in an argument], “you can’t really refute them with logic, because that would imply they didn’t have that experience, or their experience is less valid,” Ms. Chai told me.

“It’s a way of deflecting, avoiding full engagement with another person or group,” Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, a historian at Syracuse University, said, “because it puts a shield up immediately. You cannot disagree.”

In her 2001 book “Race Experts,” Dr. Lasch-Quinn … argued that the vogue for therapeutic self-help [ensuring people don’t get upset] has steered the American left off course, encouraging well-meaning activists to push for sensitivity training seminars instead of real gains in racial and economic equality. The phrase “I feel like” is a mundane extension of this pattern, a means of avoiding rigorous debate over structures of society that are hard to change.

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American politics has always been prone to single storyism — candidates reducing complex issues to simple fables. This year the problem is acute because Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the giants of Single Storyism. They reduce pretty much all issues to the same single story: the alien invader story.

Every problem can be solved by finding some corrupt or oppressive group to blame. If America is beset by wage stagnation it’s not because of intricate structural problems. It’s because of the criminal Mexicans sneaking across the border or it’s because of this evil entity called “the banks.”

Worse, the stories have become identity markers. .... In order to express your solidarity with the virtuous team, you have to embrace the socially approved story. If you differ from the official story — the way Bill Clinton differed from the official progressive crime story a few weeks ago — it is not so much a sign that you are wrong (truth is not the issue). It is a sign that you have false allegiances. You must embrace the approved story to show you are not complicit in a system of oppression.

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Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.

Notes below the cut:

Upside of grit: It helps you get stuff done, be successful.

What is it that makes extraordinary people successful? Is it talent, genius, luck? Or is it grit? ... It’s both, the perseverance is hidden in years of practice

... somebody like Einstein or Picasso ... had a certain ability or a sensitivity, a sensibility ... talent is one way to name that  .... other thing that they did ... was to work furiously hard with a kind of obsessive love for a very narrow, in the end, you know, domain in which they decided to go forward and not kind of diversify  .... being able to focus for a long time on something that you love and that's so important to you that it kind of wakes you up every day and is the last thing you think about before you go to bed ...

those hours and hours of laborious effort, of misfires, of poorly written drafts, of, you know, falling on your butt when you're trying to do a turn, those things are hidden.

Where do excellence come from?

... excellence is really the confluence of many, many, many small acts, each of them doable, each of them able to be honed with practice. When you put it all together, there is a kind of mystery to it or a magic to it. He [Dan Chambliss] titled his article on this "The Mundanity Of Excellence" to suggest that really, if you ask the question whence it became, you do get to this kind of, like, oh, 10,000 small acts, each of them very doable and none of them terribly interesting. 

Deliberate practice: it's the quality of practice in addition to the quantity that really matters. 

Study success in spelling bees and grit:

we found is that kids do three things to win the spelling bee broadly. 

They read a lot, which they love to do. And they rate it about as effortless and as about as enjoyable as eating ice cream. 

They also get quizzed by mom or dad, you know, by a computer. So your mom says, ursprache, you say ursprache, U-R-S-P-R-A-C-H-E, ursprache, ...

And the last category would be deliberate practice, you know, usually done alone, you know, working on things that you can't do, like word origins that are not familiar to you, you know, trying to respell words and write vertically on a page, you know, words that you've misspelled before, the kind of honing in on your weaknesses that is really crucial to the kind of deliberate practice that Anders has found in other experts. 

And what we found is that the quantity of deliberate practice was far more predictive of how far you would actually get in final competition when you compare it to the other two kinds of practice. ... 

So if you look at deliberate practice, it's that which kids found to be the most effortful of the three kinds of practice and the least enjoyable. 

Finally, we found that of all the personality traits that we looked at, grit was the best predictor of how much deliberate practice you would actually get done. So stitching this altogether, we see a narrative where, you know, very gritty individuals may accumulate more of this very high quality, effortful, not always enjoyable practice. It makes them better, and it pays off in their achievement.

Passion and perseverance to undergo deliberate practice

nobody that I've ever interviewed who I would consider a paragon of grit who does not passionately, like ardently, love what they do and get a thrill from it, get a sort of visceral and intrinsic satisfaction from thinking about it, from doing it, no chef that I've ever interviewed, no musician, no academic, no CEO. ...

where does the habit of being passionate and persevering about something come from? I really think that you can trace the origins of grit to four psychological assets, which, again, themselves can be acquired, practiced, cultivated. 

One is an interest. I mean, you can't be gritty about something that you're not interested in, so understanding your own interest, cultivating them, deepening interest. 

The second thing is the capacity to do deliberate practice. Part of that is knowing what deliberate practice is and what it's not and being willing to do it. Part of it is habit. 

The third thing that I find that's a psychological asset of gritty people that I think can be acquired or cultivated is a sense of purpose. I mean, there isn't a single paragon of grit that I've interviewed - and I'm not saying that there aren't those out there who might be this way - but I have interviewed person after person who I think exemplifies passion and perseverance. And 201, they have sense of how what they do, day in, day out, is meaningful and beneficial to people who are not them, a beyond-the-self outlook, a beyond-the-self purpose. ... 

And then finally, there's hope. And we haven't talked too much about that, but I think, you know, the hope to keep going when hope seems lost, I mean, you can trace this back to growth mindset, to having an optimistic explanatory style for negative events. But I do believe hope and purpose and a capacity to practice and interest, all of these things can be cultivated.

Method to cultivate grit

And what we did [with our kids] was we said, look, you know, from a very early age, we knew that we wanted our kids to develop the capacity for perseverance and to develop a passion, but we didn't to, like, rob them of the opportunity to really direct themselves. So we said, everybody in our family has to do a hard thing. That's the first of three parts, right? So, you know, a hard thing in our family means it requires deliberate practice on a regular basis. So kind of signing up for, you know, pottery class where you just have fun once a week, that's not a hard thing because there's no deliberate practice. But doing viola, you know, or going out for the track team, like, you know, that is. ... 

The second part is you can't quit until the tuition payment is up.  You can't quit, you know, in the middle of the season. You can't quit until the final track meet. You cannot quit, right? So it gave our kids that little push to say, like, I don't want to do it today, but I'm not going to quit in the middle. I'm going to quit at a natural ending point. And the third thing really to get back to that intrinsic motivation was that, you know, yes, you can quit at the end of the semester when the tuition payment is up but not until you've figured out a new hard thing. So you have to kind of go from one right to the other. And nobody picks any of these hard things except for you. 

Downside of Grit: Sometimes it’s better to quit

Sometimes people with high grit might not do the logical, rational thing because their grit compels them to keep going. 

Study 1: Gitter individuals amass larger losses by staying in the game longer rather than cutting their losses by leaving early.

 ... participants were asked to play an online game that presented them with a choice. They could quit and get a dollar or keep playing for the chance to win $2. However, if they lost, they would get nothing. Gritty people and non-greedy people both made the rational choice to keep going if they were winning because their chances of getting $2 were looking pretty good. But if they were losing...

The grittier people were more likely to make that choice to stay in the game, risk and not getting the dollar to win the $2, even though they were losing. And it was a very low likelihood that they were going to end up pulling it off at the end.

Gale Lucas and her colleagues also showed how being gritty might make it hard for you to take timed exams like the SAT. That's because you're supposed to give up when you don't know the answer to a question. You just skip it, go on to the next question.

Study 2: Wasting time solving the unsolvable. 

So we made by definition some problems that couldn't be solved. We used an anagrams task, so unscrambling words. ... They don't scramble to any word whatsoever 

And what we showed was that grittier individuals weren't able to get through as many, and they were persisting on these ones that were unsolvable to a greater extent than the less gritty individuals. ... 

the grittier individuals, they stick at these difficult problems so long that they actually hurt themselves.

Knowing where to quit or carry on is a strategic decision

We think gritty people should learn [when to move on to something else] alongside becoming gritty and being gritty. It's certainly we don't want them to abandon being gritty, but we'd like them to see the benefits that sometimes stopping it with something and going on and moving on is the more beneficial path.

Grit vs Stubbornness 

So there really are two kinds of grit. One is the good kind. It overcomes obstacles, fights through distractions. Albert Einstein and Mark Spitz and Angela Duckworth herself are shining examples. The other kind of grit is obstinate. Against all evidence to the contrary, it presses on. It ignores signals that failure is imminent, digs deeper into the hole. Let's give this grit another name, stubbornness. But here's the thing. I don't think it's easy to tell whether you are looking at grit or stubbornness before you know how something turns out. If I try my hand at the piano and don't get very far after a few years, should I demonstrate grit and press on? Or should I acknowledge my lack of musical talent and tell myself I'm banging my head against a wall? It's the same thing with those volunteers in Gale Lucas's experiment. They're given unsolvable anagrams. But the thing is they don't know the anagrams are unsolvable. There are certainly difficult problems that can be solved if you stick to them. 

Is stubbornness just the name we give to grit when things turn out badly? 

Work by the psychologist Philip Tetlock and others suggests that grit and stubbornness might be two sides of the same coin. The people who press on when times are hard and the people who stubbornly bang their heads against a wall, these might be the same people. We call them gritty or call them stubborn after we know how things turned out in the end.

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When it comes to training people to become better interactionalists and so on. ... We're often taught things that are intuitively plausible. So for example, we might be taught to ... refer to people's names .... to show that we know who the person is that we are trying to establish rapport with them. But I know that that kind of advice--to always say people's names--will sound quite strange if you use them in a quite clunky kind of way. And one of the reasons that will start to grate on people is that they will hear the training of the person using the name all the time ...  So this will start to sound fake. ... So if you look at ordinary conversation and find out when names are used, you will often find them in sequences of admonishments [being told off for something], rather than in sequences where you are trying to [build rapport].

Elizabeth Stokoe [~40:40}

In sum: Don’t repeat people’s names in conversations. It reminds people of being told off.