I spend several hours every week exploring and discussing content on technology, business, and society, with a focus on mindfulness and well-being.
Every other Sunday, I send out a summary of the best material and themes I've found over the previous two weeks and some new ideas from me. These can include articles, podcasts, books, shows, gadgets, research papers, quotes, practices, practical tips, and more.
If you aren’t subscribed yet, join other smart, kind, and curious folks by subscribing here!
Hi friends 👋,
This week, I’m focused on preparing a mindfulness workshop for a charity event - more on this later. But first, some pointers you may enjoy checking out.
4 Top Picks
I. 🙊 Neuralink’s monkey plays MindPong
This week, I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you to watch a monkey equipped with Elon Musk’s Neuralink device play Pong with its brain (via TechCrunch).
My first reaction: think how many lives this technology could improve by enabling people with paralysis to directly use their neural activity to operate computers and mobile devices! My subsequent reaction: let’s also figure out the first and second-order effects of this in areas like security and ethical concerns. The future is going to be… interesting.
II. 🎙 Dan Goleman on Armchair Expert
Armchair Expert #312 with Dax Shepard and Daniel Goleman. Dax Shepard is a great interviewer - witty, relatable, vulnerable, and able to create a safe space for his guests to open up. Pair him together with Daniel Goleman, the author and science journalist who popularized the concept of Emotional Intelligence, and you get the recipe for an amazing podcast episode.
💡 Ideas (but I recommend listening to the full episode)
Some schools are starting to introduce SEL (Social and Emotional Learning, a pedagogy focusing on the study and application of Emotional intelligence) in their curriculum. Goleman is very supportive of this movement and thinks we still need to make a lot of progress in this direction.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) consists of self-awareness (knowing what you’re feeling, naming the feelings), empathy (knowing what other people feel), and cognitive control (being able to manage your emotional centers so they don’t take over your thinking brain - particularly the amygdala, which is always looking for threats).
IQ is a good measure of success in school, but not as much after that. A study showed that when measuring success at work for engineers, there was little correlation with IQ and a very high correlation with EQ.
IQ doesn’t change much through life. EQ is learned and learnable, it can be continuously trained and improved.
🔗 Links
Dax Shepard Is Listening (The New York Times) - good profile of the interviewer and his show
III. 🎼 4’33”, a three-movement silent composition
4′33″ ("four minutes, thirty-three seconds") is a three-movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage.
From Wikipedia: “it was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs performers not to play their instruments during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements. The piece consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed […]”.
Funny, I know, but I believe the composer was onto something, as it’s proved by the popularity of the work to this day. By leveraging prestigious venues and the social status of the composer and performers, 4’33” got large groups of people to reconsider the meaning and value of silence (with a touch of humor).
They missed the point. There's no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn't know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.—
John Cage speaking about the premiere of 4′33″
Thanks, Ray, for recommending this after my last email!
IV. Park / meditation center in LA that I just discovered
Lake Shrine, a “spiritual oasis where people of all cultures and all religions can experience peace”. I had a chance to visit this beautiful place during a recent trip and I would recommend checking it out when in the Los Angeles area.
1 Idea from Me
🧘♂️ “Building Mindfulness and Compassion” workshop
If you’ve been following this newsletter and wondered why I’m so interested in mindfulness, I’m happy to let you know that next Saturday, on April 24th, 2021, I’ll be facilitating a 90-minute workshop on this very topic.
What’s even better? 100% of the (tax-deductible) donations go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Did you know that:
47% of the time our attention is wandering, but research shows that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
Emotional Intelligence, as we saw from the Armchair Expert podcast earlier, is a skill that can be deliberately practiced and cultivated.
Compassion is a success strategy at the individual, group/team, and societal/company level.
We’ll talk about the science and practice of these and many other topics. You’ll also get to connect and share with other participants.
No prior experience required! You will learn and experience something new whether you're unfamiliar with meditation, an expert meditator, or maybe a little skeptical or in a difficult relationship with it.
More info and sign-up on the GoFundMe page.
A request for you: would you please share this event with friends and family? We’d love to have a large and diverse learning group for this session.
I hope you’ll make it. This is going to be fun!
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this content, please click on the like button below and leave a comment - this will help others find the article on Substack. You can also forward the email to a friend or share the web link.
Be well and be kind,
Matteo