INTRODUCTION
1. Dr. George Miller outlined the amount of information the human brain could process and retain at any given time in “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Ability to Process Information,” originally published in Psychological Review 63, no. 2 (1956).
2. “The Lollapalooza Effect” was coined by Charlie Munger in a June 1995 speech to the Harvard Law School.
CHAPTER 1
1. “The noise of the urgency creates an illusion of importance.” Steven R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013).
2. “Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.” Abstract from Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand over Laptop Note Taking,” Psychological Science, April 23, 2014.
3. “Do Written Goals Really Make a Difference?,” on a study by Dr. Gail Matthews, Dominican University, UGM Consulting, August 26, 2011, www.ugmconsulting.com/Do%20written%20goals%20really%20make%20a%20difference%20UGM%20Briefing%2026%20Aug%202011.pdf.
4. A concise description of and previous research about behavioral inertia appears in Raymond B. Huey, Paul E. Hertz, and B. Sinervo, “Behavioral Drive vs. Behavioral Inertia in Evolution: A Null Model Approach,” American Naturalist, March 2003. B. F. Skinner’s research was called “quantitative behavioral analysis.”
5. Bluma Zeigarnik’s research on “the influence of tension in the achievement of memory” originally appeared in a paper called “On Finished and Unfinished Tasks,” Psychologische Forschung, 1927. Twenty years later, Kurt Lewin, one of Bluma Zeigarnik’s earliest mentors, expanded on the concept of task-specific tension in his research; see his “Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science: Social Equilibria and Social Change,” Frontiers in Group Dynamics 1, no. 1 (1947).
6. “The 19th century geometrist Jacobi once said that one should always try to invert every geometrical theory. But his advice applies much more widely! Choose any class of relational frames and you can study its valid modal axiom.” Johan van Bethem, “Man Mass Immer Umkehren,” Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, January 2007.
CHAPTER 2
1. “Einstein said there are five ascending levels of intelligence: smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius and simple.” “Understanding Circle of Competence and Knowing the Edge of Your Competency,” Forbes, GuruFocus, January 2, 2015.
CHAPTER 3
1. Mike Berardino, “Mike Tyson Explains One of His Most Famous Quotes,” Sun-Sentinel (Florida), November 9, 2012.
CHAPTER 4
1. Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s original book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was published in 1960 by Prentice-Hall. It has been updated and republished many times since.
2. “How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit?,” article published by the University College London in the UCL News website about research performed by UCL’s Phillippa Lally and the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, August 4, 2009, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0908/09080401.
HALFTIME
1. Anne Kathrin Barbeck and Thomas Neumann from West-falische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster gave an extensive description of Dr. Jean Pol-Martin’s research in their paper “Lernen durch Lehren (LdL) in Theory and Practice,” for the seminar Learner-Centered Approaches, Wintersemester 2005/2006.
CHAPTER 5
1. Dr. Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (New York: James H. Silberman Books, 2007).
CHAPTER 6
1. Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960).
2. The quotation, in context, reads: “The human mind is like a fertile ground where seeds are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant a seed, a thought, and it grows. The word is like a seed, and a human mind is so fertile!” Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing, 1997).
CHAPTER 7
1. Steve Jobs’s presenting skills were detailed extensively by Marcus Wohlsen in “The Apple Watch Is Steve Jobs’ iPod Launch All Over Again,” WIRED, September 10, 2014, and by Carmine Gallo in “11 Presentation Lessons You Can Still Learn from Steve Jobs,” Forbes.com, October 4, 2012.
CHAPTER 8
1. David K. Randall, “The Day the Stocks Bottomed Out,” Forbes, March 8, 2010, recounted the 2009 cratering of the stock market.
2. Gene Wojciechowski recounted the pivotal moment in the 2011 World Series in “Game 6 Defines What Baseball History Looks Like,” ESPN.com, October 28, 2011, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?page=wojciechowski-111027.
3. In the Seinfeld episode “The Engagement,” 1995, Kramer says, “What are you thinking about, Jerry? Marriage? Family? They’re prisons! Man-made prisons. You’re doing time. You get up in the morning, she’s there. You go to sleep at night? She’s there. It’s like you gotta ask permission to go to the bathroom. ‘Is it all right if I go to the bathroom now?’ And you can forget about watching TV while you’re eating. . . . You know why? Because it’s dinnertime. And you know what you do at dinner? You talk about your day.”
EPILOGUE
1. Joshua Wooden, “Timeless Wisdom Creed Cards,” reproduced for the John Wooden Course, available at woodencourse.com.
2. Suzuki said, “If you lose the spirit of repetition, your practice will become quite difficult.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Boston: Shambhala, 2011).