Communication

I've finished my third session on NLP. Quite a lotta material to chew through, but a quickie here.

The effectiveness of our communication largely depends on three aspects: Words, Voice and Physiology. Guess what the percentage ratio (for 'impacting' people with our message) is?

Words - 7%
Voice - 38%
Physiology - 55%!

Whoah! Chew on that!

Now you know why 12 pages of VERY VALID and RELEVANT textual information can do less than 2 minutes listening to someone. Now you know why a 'good' message isn't necessarily one with the most impressive phraseology. Now you know why facial expressions are all-important.

Just In Time Meetings

The idea of Just In Time meetings is that you basically attend a meeting, and once you are done with what you need, you leave. I mean, how many of us have had to suffer through a looong interminable meeting that, for the most part, has nothing to do with us except for a 2 minute status report? Yep... You know what I mean.

June 15th...

...is the deadline to file taxes for US residents who live/work outside the US. I didn't know that. Thanks to Wai Ling for this little nudget of information!

Awesome book!

Go read this. This is DA SHIT!

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

This is about the psychology that goes on behind the scenes when humans make a snap judgement. The main idea is that our subconscious minds are able to assimilate and process tons of data much faster than our conscious minds, and as such where it can take the conscious mind say 10 minutes to reach a calculated decision, the subconscious mind can often reach the same (or even better!) decision in a fraction of the time.

While Gladwell definitely makes a strong case for snap judgements, he goes on to caution the reader about the dangers of how the subconscious mind can be fooled into making the wrong decisions.

The book is an easy read (ie not bogged down with technical jargon and minutely detailed technical descriptions) and is a great study in the art and science of decision making.