Join 📚 Roger's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .
Creativity Creativity is another characteristic shared by all the self-actualized people Abraham Maslow studied. For much of my life I thought of creativity as destiny’s rare gift visited upon a select few. I thought that it only applied to artistic endeavors, such as composing music or painting a canvas. But Maslow greatly broadened my definition. He affirmed that a first-rate soup is better than a second-rate poem, and that one can run a business, build a motorcycle, or raise a family in a creative way. Robert Pirsig amplified this idea in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he said, “The Buddha resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.” When hesitating to take on a new creative activity, remembering Kurt Vonnegut’s recommendation has been helpful, “To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make you grow. So do it.” Looking foolish at the beginning of any new endeavor goes with the territory.
The Ball's in Your Court
Michael Lewis
As long as I could connect every new thing I learned to this universe, I had an easy time with math. And I noticed that classmates who had problems with math weren’t struggling with math; they were struggling with connections. They were trying to memorize equations, but no one had successfully shown them how those equations connect with everything they had already learned. They were doomed. At some point along their path, their interconnected math universe had shattered into fragments, and they were trying to learn each piece in isolation—an extremely difficult proposition.
Fluent Forever
Gabriel Wyner
Pascal’s shot needed to be totally rebuilt. He was starting it by winding it around from his left side, and that’s probably what he had been doing since he first picked up a ball in Cameroon. A lot of players develop habits when they are not strong enough to get the ball up to the hoop, and those idiosyncrasies follow them right into professional basketball. They have a comfort with their style—an attitude that it’s just the way they shoot—and when they’ve got enough other skills to dominate at lower levels, nobody tries to change them. And many times, they are resistant to change. Pascal did not have that issue. He came into the gym the day that season ended, and I remember him saying to me, “I need to learn how to shoot.” I went over to a basket with him and gave him a marked-up ball. I had put a stripe on it so he could square himself up correctly. It was like I was running shooting camps again, and we were working with the Nurse’s Pill, or a version of it. I said, “Here’s your workout: Take 150 of these shots from three feet, with this new way I’m showing you. Take a hundred free throws, a hundred corner three-pointers, and a hundred three-pointers from the top of the arc.” Most of it is just mechanics. Most important, the ball has to come off your hand consistently, the same every time. It can’t go right and it can’t go left. It can be long or short, but if it’s wide, you’re doing something wrong. You have to groove the proper form and then be able to repeat it every time, like a golf swing—except in golf, there’s not a six-foot-eight guy flying at you just as you’re about to complete the process.
Rapture
Nick Nurse and Phil Jackson
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise