EXPLORE YOUR CURIOSITY

1. "You look at Katie and you realize the differentiator is between the ears. And their hearts. Their appetite for competition, their unwillingness to lose, and their embracing the challenge. And not just the challenge on competition day, which is a huge part, but the challenge of the training grind."

— How Katie Ledecky became better at swimming than anyone is at anything

2. "When it comes to making decisions, your environment matters. Just as it’s hard to eat healthy if your kitchen is full of junk food, it’s hard to make good decisions when you’re too busy to think. Just as the kitchen influences what you eat, your office influences how you make decisions. ... Most of us make decisions in an environment where it is very hard for us to behave rationally."

— Your Environment Shapes Your Decisions

3. "We habitually view the world through a series of mental models that shape our understanding of our circumstances, our relationships and ourselves. ... Philosopher Alford Korzybski said "A map is not the territory it represents," and a mental model is not the reality it seeks to depict. But we can easily mistake our mental models for reality and apply them inappropriately.

We construct our mental models out of the meaning we extract from experience, and there's inevitably a loss of fidelity as we focus on certain aspects of an experience (while ignoring others), interpret that data, and then conceptualize it as a general principle.

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[I]n many other aspects of life the limits we place on ourselves derive from outdated or inappropriately applied mental models. We see solid walls instead of flimsy cornstalks, and we allow ourselves to feel trapped instead of simply walking through the corn."

— Corn Mazes