Classic Haiku -- Yuzuru Miura

Classic Haiku -- Yuzuru Miura

1.
春の海
�日(ひねもす)
のたりのたりかな
�� 与��村

In the spring sea
Waves undulating and undulating
All dat long -- Yosa Buson

2.
花散(ち)りて
木の�の
寺となりにけり
�� 与��村

With the cherry blossoms gone
The temple is glimpsed
Through twigs and branches -- Yosa Buson

3.
原中や
物にもつかず
�(なく)�雀(ひばり)
�� 松尾芭蕉

Amidst the grassland
Sings a skylark
Free and disengaged from all things -- Matsuo Basho

4.
山�けの
明かりに下る
夜舟(よふね)哉(かな)
�� 小林一茶

A night boat
Sails away
Illuminated by a wildfire -- Kobayashi Issa

5.
御�(みほとけ)や
寝てござっても
花と�(ゼニ)
�� 小林一茶

Buddha the Savior
Gets offerings of flowers and money
Even while sleeping -- Kobayashi Issa

6.
一重(ひとえ)づつ
一重づつ散(ち)れ
八重�(やえざくら)
�� 正�子�

Double cherry blossoms
Flutter in the wind
One petal after another -- Masaoka Shiki

7.
�(しずか)さや
岩にしみている
蝉(せみ)の声
�� 松尾芭蕉

Calm and serene
The sound of a cicada
Penetrates the rock -- Matsuo Basho

8.
明�(めいめつ)の
いづれ悲しき
�かな
�� 川端茅舍

Flickering lights
Of fireflies
Forebode their short lives -- Kawabata Bosha


9.
�しさや
�を�るる
�の�
�� 与��村

Coolness!
The sound of the bell
Leaving the bell -- Yosa Buson

10.
限り有る
命の暇や
秋の暮(く)れ
�� 与��村

An autumn eve :
An hour of leisure
In a fleeting life -- Yosa Buson


11.
ものいわず
客と亭主(ていしゅ)と
白菊(しらぎく)と
�� 大�蓼太

Silent communion
Between the guest,
The host, and the white chrysanthemum -- Oshima Ryota


12.
落�ふんで
人道念(どうねん)を
全(まっと)うす
�� �田蛇笏

My mind
Is calm and resigned
As I tread the fallen leaves -- Iida Dakotsu


13.
淋しさに
又(また)��(どら)打つや
鹿火屋(かびや)守(もり)
�� 原石鼎

Pressed by loneliness
The kabiya keeper
Sounded one gong after another -- Hara Sekitei


14.
山�に
かへす�(こだま)や
啄木�(けらつつき)
�� �田蛇笏

A woodpecker's drilling
Echoes
To the mountain clouds -- Iida Dakotsu


15.
赤とんぼ
さらさら流る
茜(あかね)空
�� 三浦�

Red dragonflies
Flowing like a ripple
Toward the crimson sky -- Miura Yuzuru


16.
茶の花に
�れん坊する
雀(すずめ)かな
�� 小林一茶

Sparrows
Playing hide-and-seek
Among the tea blossoms -- Kobayashi Issa


17.
寂しさの
底ぬけてふる
みぞれかな
�� 内藤丈草

The sleet falls
As if coming through the bottom
Of loneliness -- Naito Joso


18.
冬海や
落花(らっか)の如(ごと)く
�(かもめ)浮(う)く
�� 中村草田男

On the winter seas
Seagulls float
Like fallen flowers -- Nakamura Kusatao

A way of Being

Carl Rogers, in A Way of Being : one of the most satisfying feelings I know ... comes from my experiencing an individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset.  People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a sunset is that we cannot control it.  When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don't find myself saying, "soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and a little more pink in the cloud colour." I don't do that. I don't try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds.

Out of our minds

Out of our minds

The apparently impersonal process of scientific inquiry involves a very personal commitment by the scientist in 4 ways:
(1) the choice of problems; (2)the methods of scientific inquiry;
(3)personal judgement; and (4)standards of objectivity.

Creative organisation :
-- gives people freedom to take risks
- - allows people to discover and develop their own natural intelligence
-- a place where there is no stupid questions and no right answers
-- a place that values irreverence

The task of teaching is not to teach subjects: it is to teach students.

In teaching for creativity, teachers aim to:

- promote experiment and inquiry and a willingness to make mistakes
- encourage generative thought, free from immediate criticism
- encourage the expression of personal ideas and feelings
- convey an understanding of phases in creative work and the need for time
- develop an awareness of the roles of intuition and aesthetic processes
- encourage students to play with ideas and conjecture about possibilities
- facilitate critical evaluation of ideas

Decisive by Chip Heath

Decisive by Chip Heath

4 villains
1. Narrow framing
2. Confirmation bias
3. Short-term emotion
4. Overconfidence

Usual procedure:
- you encounter a choice
- you analyse your options
- you make a choice
- then you live with it

- (you encounter a choice) narrow framing makes you miss options
#WIDEN YOUR OPTIONS#

- (you analyse your options) confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving info
#REALITY-TEST YOUR ASSUMPTIONS#

- (you make a choice)
short-term emotion tempt you to make the wrong option
#ATTAIN DISTANCE BEFORE DECIDING#

- (you live with it)
you will often be overconfident about how the future will unfold
#PREPARED TO BE WRONG#

WRAP -- using the process forces you to switch from auto-spotlight mode (most accessible and recent info automatically become more important) to manual spotlight mode (looking and correctly frame information)


WIDENING OF OPTIONS

Widening of options
-- Distrust "whether or not" decisions
-- Think of opportunity cost
-- you won't think up additional alternatives if you aren't aware you're neglecting them
-- focusing is great for analysing alternatives but terrible for spotting them
-- Vanishing options test

Multi tracking -- considering more than one option SIMULTANEOUSLY

Multi tracking keeps egos in check and gives a better landscape view of the problem

Not too many options -> leading to decision paralysis

Prevention focus = avoiding negative outcome
Promotion focus =
Pursuing positive outcome

Adding promotion mindset to prevention mindset or vice versa will encourage a shift in "spotlight" and reveal more options.

Push for "this AND that" rather than "this OR that"

Find someone who has solved your problem:
- look outside (competitive analysis, benchmarking, best practices)
- look inside (for bright spots) and try multiply the bright spots
- ladder up via analogies


REALITY-TEST YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Confirmation bias = hunting for info that confirms our initial assumptions

3 ways to fight against confirmation bias:

-- invite constructive disagreement by making it easier for people to disagree with us
-- ask "disconfirming" questions = questions that are more likely to surface contrary info
-- become the "opposition" = consider the opposite, make mistakes deliberately

ZOOM OUT
Trust the Average (base rates) --
We should trust outside view (=how things generally unfold in situations like ours) more than inside view (=our evaluation of our specific situation)

If you can't find base rates, ask experts to help you estimate base rates (NOT predicting your success rate)

ZOOM IN
A close-up can add texture that's missing from outside view
#Note that Zoom-in is NOT taking an "inside view"

OOCH
Ooching=running small experiments to test our theories

Why try to predict when we can ooch?

Ooching should be used as a way to speed up the collection of trustworthy info, not as a way to slow down a decision that deserves our full commitment.


ATTAIN DISTANCE BEFORE DECIDING

Overcome short-term emotion by attaining some distance

10/10/10 forces us to consider future emotions as much as present ones. It's irrelevant whether our future emotions are correct or not, the crux is to remove the over-focus on short-term emotions

Our decisions are often altered by 2 subtle short-term emotions:
(1) mere exposure=we like what's familiar
(2) loss aversion=losses are more painful than gains are pleasant

(1)+(2)= status quo bias

Take an observer's perspective 旁�者清
-- what would I tell my friend to do in this situation?

Honour your core priorities
-- identifying and enshrining your core priorities will allow easy resolution of present Nd future dilemmas

Knowing is not the same as doing. Need to carve out space to pursue our core priorities

PREPARE TO BE WRONG

The future is not a "point" forecast but a "range". No point predicting the point as the likelihood is you will miss the forecast. It is best to consider the range

Bookend the future
-- When we think about the extremes, we stretch our sense of what's possible, and the expanded range better reflects reality

Pre-mortem (lower bookend) and Pre-parade (higher bookend)
-- Prospective hindsight seems to spur more insights because it forces us to fill in the blanks between today and a certain future event

Use a safety factor to prepare for unforeseen future

Anticipating the range of future allows us to prepare, prevent, and cope with the outcome.

Tripwire -- needed to jolt us out of unconscious routines and make us aware that we have a choice to make

At some point, the virtue of being persistent turns into the vice of denying reality

Types of tripwires::
Deadlines give reminders
Partitions set boundaries

Tripwires remind us that we have a choice to make

Decision making Process

Decisions made by groups must've seen as fair

Allow for "bargaining" will not only improve the decision making process (more options, vanishing option, reality testing, .. ), but will also encourage buy-in and the decision will likely be seen as a fair outcome

Groups must trust that the process is just

Success emerges from the quality of the decisions we make and the quantity of luck we receive

Know what you don't know -- Michael Roberto

Know what you don't know -- Michael Roberto

It is important that when present with problems, a leader must have the know how and decision-making process to solve them. However, it is of equal importance, if not more, for leaders to DISCOVER problems. He or she must figure out what problem needs to be solved before beginning to make decisions. Identifying the true problem facing an organization often proved to be the most difficult challenge that ­leaders face. In many instances leaders do not spot a threat until far too late. At times, leaders set out to solve the wrong problem.

SEVEN sets of skills and capabilities that leaders must master if they want to become effective problem-finders.

1. Circumvent the "gatekeepers" (i.e. those who control filters and other barriers)
---- you must recognize that people around you filter information, often with good intentions. They hope to conserve your precious time. Sometimes, though, they filter out the bad news. Problem-finders learn how to circumvent these filters.

2. Become an ethnographer (observe carefully, ask questions, listen intently, etc.)
-- you must learn to behave like an anthropologist who observes groups of people in natural settings. You cannot simply ask people questions; you must watch how they behave. After all, people often say one thing and do another.

3. Hunt for patterns (e.g. identify verifiable causal relationships)
-- the most effective problem-finders become adept at searching for and identifying patterns. They learn how to mine past experience, both personal and organizational, so that they can recognize problems more quickly.

4. Connect the dots
-- you must refine your ability to "connect the dots" among seemingly disparate pieces of information. Threats do not come to us in neat little packages. They often remain maddeningly diffuse. Only by putting together many small bits of information can we spot the problem facing the organization.

5. Encourage useful failures (i.e. those that are small, brief, inexpensive, and informative)
-- effective problem-finders learn how to encourage people to take risks and learn from their mistakes. They recognize that some failures can be quite useful, because they provide opportunities for learning and improvement. You must distinguish between excusable and inexcusable mistakes, though, lest you erode accountability in the organization.

6. Teach how to talk and to listen (also when and why)
-- you must refine your own and your organization's communication skills. You have to train people how to speak up more effectively and teach leaders at all levels how to respond appropriately to someone who surfaces a concern, points out a problem, or challenges the conventional wisdom.

7. Watch the "game film" of past performance (make adjustments, practice deliberately)
-- the best problem-­finders become like great coaches who watch film of past performances and glean important lessons about their team's problems as well as those of their principal rivals. You must become adept at review and reflection, as well as how to practice new behaviors effectively.

"What Kind of World Do We Live In?" (not finished)

"What Kind of World Do We Live In?" (not finished)
--- Michael Crichton, introduction to his book "Micro".


In 2008, the famous naturalist David Attenborough expressed concern that modern schoolchildren could not identify common plants and insects found in nature, although previous generations identified them without hesitation. Modern children, it seemed, were cut off from the experience of nature, and from play in the natural world. Many factors were held up to blame: urban living; loss of open space; computers and the Internet; heavy homework schedules. But the upshot was that children were no longer being exposed to nature and no longer acquiring a direct experience of nature. It was ironic that this should be happening at a time when there was in the West an ever greater concern for the environment, and ever more ambitious steps proposed to protect it.

Indoctrinating children in proper environmental thought was a hallmark of the green movement, and so children were being instructed to protect something about which they knew nothing at all. It did not escape notice that this was exactly the formula that had led to well-intentioned environmental degradation in the past -- the deterioration of American national parks being a prime example, and the American policy of forest fire prevention, another. Such policies would never have been instituted if people really understood the environments they were trying to protect.

The problem was that they thought they did. One can argue that the new generation of schoolchildren will emerge even more certain. If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon--you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and it's violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.

Perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned by direct experience is that the natural world, with all its elements and interconnections, represents a complex system and therefore we cannot understand it and we cannot predict its behavior. It is delusional to behave as if we can, as it would be delusional to behave as if we could predict the stock market, another complex system. If someone claims to predict what a stock will do in the coming days, we know that the person is either a crook or a charlatan. If an environmentalist makes similar claims about the environment, or an ecosystem, we have not yet learned to see him as a false prophet or a fool.

Human beings interact with complex systems very successfully. We do it all the time. But we do it by managing them, not by claiming to understand them. Managers interact with the system: they do something, watch for the response, and then do something else in an effort to get the result they want. There is an endless iterative interaction that acknowledges we don't know for sure what the system will do--we have to wait and see. We may have a hunch we know what will happen. We may be right much of the time. But we are never certain.

Interacting with the natural world, we are denied certainty. And always will be.

How then can young people gain experience of the natural world? Ideally, by spending some time in a rain forest -- those vast, uncomfortable, alarming, and beautiful environments that so quickly knock our preconceptions aside.

The Honest Truth about Dishonesty -- Dan Ariely

The Honest Truth about Dishonesty -- Dan Ariely

>>> SMORC -- simple model of rational crime -- cost/benefit analysis
Not as simple as it seems. --- people would have cheated more if it is based solely on SMORC

>>> Distance from money
The larger the distance, the more likely that people will cheat
Eg, people will not take petty cash to buy pencils to bring home, but will not thing twice taking stationeries home from office
Eg2, people will more likely to cheat if paid in tokens (and then exchange for cash) than in outright cash

>>> Blinded by our own motivations
conflict of interest -- giving people a way to rationalize

>>> Why we blow it when we are tired?
Mental or physical tiredness will cause people to give in to temptation to cheat
Eg, illegal parking, stopping, U-turn

>>> Why wearing fakes make us cheat more?
Having done one small cheating (immoral act), people are more likely to commit another dishonest act

>>> Cheating ourselves
Make belief

>>> Creativity and dishonesty
Creative minds can come up with more ways to rationalize a dishonest act

>>> Cheating as an infection
If you identify yourself with the people who cheat, you are likely to follow the crowd
If you identify the cheater as an outsider (from rivalry group), you will cheat less than normal
Crimes, even very small ones, should not be tolerated else others will be tempted to follow

>>> Collaborative cheating
Altruistic cheating -- aka Robin Hood (benefiting others)
Monitoring by others (big brothers watching)
Relationship between boss and worker will determine

>>> People don't cheat enough
No cultural difference -- all humans are the same when it comes to cheating
The different environment (rules and implementations allowing cheating) causes the difference in amount of cheating in different countries

Forces that shape dishonesty ---

Increase dishonesty :
Ability to rationalize
Conflict of interest
Creativity
One immoral act
Bring depleted
Others benefiting from our dishonesty
Watching others behave dishonestly
Culture that gives examples of dishonesty

Decrease dishonesty :
Pledge
Signatures
Moral reminders
Supervision

No effect :
Amount of money to be gained
Probability of being caught