Important New MOOC on Hong Kong Cinema Jan 20, 2017

Cheery Friday greetings to our Learning How to Learners!

Book of the Week

This week’s book recommendation is The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time, by Maria Konnikova. No matter how tough and smart you think you are, there are ways that grifters and swindlers can slip past your defenses and hurt you. This book provides insight by telling stories of how scamming can occur—often using some of our best traits, such as our empathetic kindness. This recommendation comes to us from Senior Mentor (and Amharic Lead) Marta Pulley, who notes some similarities to Barb’s book Cold-Blooded Kindness, a science-based study of a seemingly empathetic killer. Incidentally, Barb is just finishing the audio version of Cialdini’s masterpiece Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, (which we mentioned last week and which is also mentioned in The Confidence Game). Influence also gives great insight into how to avoid being manipulated—which is important if you truly want to help others!

Important New MOOC on Hong Kong Cinema

We have to tell you about a very exciting new MOOC, Hong Kong Cinema through a Global Lens, beginning on February 7th. We’re huuuuge Jackie Chan fans—and, as it turns out, the entire first week of the MOOC is devoted to Jackie’s work. This wonderful MOOC, instructed by our friend Gina Marchetti, Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at University of Hong Kong, and her world-class colleagues, considers “how the local and the global intersect to make Hong Kong cinema an integral part of popular culture around the world as well as a leading force in the development of world cinematic art.” Don’t miss it!

Jackie Chan’s Autobiography—with Competition from the Terminator

While we’re mentioning Jackie Chan, don’t miss his autobiography I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action. It’s an inspiring loser-to-champion story that’s one of our favorite autobiographies ever. Okay, well, we also really loved the inspiration and practical (and sometimes fiendishly clever) guidance on achievement in Arnold Schwarzenegger’sTotal Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story.

The Craft of Building Books that Matter

Here’s an insightful blog post by “bookitect” David Moldawer about book packaging. David writes of the craft of building books that matter. In his post, he speaks of our MOOC Learning How to Learn, its underlying “backbone” book, A Mind for Numbers, and Barb’s upcoming Mindshift. This post is especially because it provides critical insight about the selection of book titles.

Process Instead of Goals

In Learning How to Learn, we emphasized the importance of process over product. Here’s a great article by writer James Clear, Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead, that emphasizes precisely the importance of process.

Books on Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving

Learning How to Learner Joshua Anthony was looking for a good book on analytical thinking and problem solving. We recommended Polya’s classic How to Solve It, which Joshua found a bit narrow for his needs. Instead, he found another book he wished to recommend to Learning How to Learners: Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics. Joshua highly recommends it as a book for students “looking to retrain and reinvent themselves to be more analytical in their thinking.”

Thomas Maier Transplant Fund

And speaking of truly helping others, a little boy, Thomas Maier, who lives several miles from Barb’s home, was born with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. Thomas can remain alive if he’s able to receive a heart-lung transplant. The family is fighting to help Thomas survive to be able receive the transplant. If you’d like to help (we donated $100), please go here.

That’s all for this week. Have a happy week in Learning How to Learn!

Barb, Terry, and the entire Learning How to Learn team

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