Let Your Children Play Real Games

Conclusion

1. You want your child to excel at something. Then you need him/her to practice a lot.
2. But then, you want him/her to train on their own, not with you training them minute by minute, face to face, as in an animal training program designed by Skinner or Pavlov, or their modern-day proponents.
3. Then you need to design the activities as a game.
4. The 2 key appeals of games are
   
   
   1. There are a lot of accessible gains, prizes, rewards, providing "instant gratification"
   2. There are pains too but these pains are tolerable or very limited or easily terminable. That is, you can restart a pingpong/tennis/football/video game at minimal costs.

An Ancient Warning

"Do not force ..."
"Do not rush ..."
"Forceful progress is wrong."

versus

"Persevere"
"Persist"
"Perseverance"

Why have I Ching original texts and commentaries included such phrases?

A Writer's Ratio

When a writer read 3 million words and wrote down only 3 words, the input ratios is 1 million. When the writer thought 600 minutes and spent 60 minutes to write down her/his piece, the thinking ratio becomes 10.

The reader's comprehension/digestion/rumination ratio should be proportionate.

Thank you, and good luck.

How to Succeed, Achieve Your Goals

Once you have the right goals, do they materialize automagically by themselves?

Yes, to some degree, but you still have to work.

Then, how do you work, work day in and day out, without confusion, fear, and despair, but with clarity, confidence and energy, and even with a bit of joy?

Mao

One of his axioms was, Despise the enemy strategically. But show him a lot of respect when it comes to tactics.

Sven-Göran Eriksson

Sven-Göran Eriksson, one-time English national football team manager: Great strikers BOTH dare to win AND dare to fail. Thus their comfort zone gets stretched from both ends, top and bottom.

Buccaneer Scholar

Buccaneer Scholar Keep your aspirations high but keep expectations low when studying.

Executive Toughness

Executive Toughness Define your outcome/end result goals sharply. But day-to-day, concentrate on process goals.

Entrepreneurial Instinct

Entrepreneurial Instinct Have a big picture vision, which is your road map. But to keep going, you need a motor, which you get from firing your dopamine centers in your brains. And the best way to activate those reward centers in the brain is by achieving small goals now and then.

What about the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (Pali: bojjhaṅgā)? What are we supposed to do when our mind is lethargic, or when it is hyper-active and agitated?

Ability and Practice | Our New Year Gift - 2

This New Year Gift sure beats

1. Talent is Overrated, or
2. 10,000 Hour Rule, or
3. Mastery, or
4. Loving the Plateau, or
5. Liberation Management, or
6. even Tao ( all of Lao Tzu, Chwang Tzu and Lieh Tzu),
7. or even the synthesis of all. That's why I attempted no synthesis here.

Requirements of Deliberate Practice Commonly Discussed

1. Hard work.
2. Patience. 
3. Awareness or attentiveness.

Together they form a very partial answer. They raise more question than they answer. For instance:

1. How hard is hard enough? How long? How many hours a day? How often?
2. How patient? Remember that tolerance of ambiguity is a sign of intelligence but a high degree of tolerance of ambiguity suggests otherwise? What kind of patience?
3. What should I attend to when I train? How do I focus my attention? What do I do whdn my attention wanders?

Above all, how do I know whether Iam doing a deliberate parctice session or not? How do I know if I am in the "flow" when I am practising?

The Answer

Here's how the Buddha wants us to practice meditation.

You can use it whether you are an atheist or a communist or whatever.

And you can use it to improve your golf swing, to speed up your jeet kune do jab, to learn data structures and algorithms in computer science, to become fluent faster in Spanish, to rev up your carnal game with sensate focus, and so on.

1. Have no longing/ attachment / desire/ clinging /grasping /clasping /greed.
2. Have no discontentment/ill-will/anger/annoyance/aversion.
3. Have target of performance. Know what you want to achieve. Know what you're trying to do at every moment.
4. Monitor your own performance with full, ardent/vigorous awareness.
5. You know you succeed with your parctice when you see finer discriminations, when you see the consequences/impacts/implications of an action farther and wider in scope, when you can build up a good mental model with less and less input.

Compare these ideas with the literature I quoted above.

The best of this planet or the Universe?

You decide.