Myelin

"1. Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electrical signal traveling through a chain of neurons - a circuit of nerve fibers
2. Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increase signal strength, speed and accuracy.
3. The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our movements and thoughts become.

... Everything neurons do they do pretty quickly. It happens with the flick of a switch, ... But flicking switches is not how we learn a lot of things. Getting good... Takes a lot of time, and that's what myelin is good at.

What do good athletes do when they train?... They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire--lots of bandwidth, a high-speed T-3 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us.

Q: why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective?
A: because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement.

Q: why are passion and persistence key ingredients of talent?
A: because wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don't love it, you'll never work hard enough to be great.

Q: What's the best way to get to Carnegie Hall?
A: Go straight down Myelin Street."

- The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

Practising deeper

The author presents 2 columns (A and B) of related words and asks the reader to read the words.
Column A: ocean/breeze leaf/tree ...
Column B: bread/b_tter music/l_rics ...
Now He asks the reader to recollect as many words as possible from both lists. I had recollected more words from column B. This is why (in author's words): "When you encountered the words with blank spaces, some-thing both imperceptible and profound happened. You stopped, You stumbled ever so briefly, then figured it out. You experienced a microsecond of struggle, and that microsecond made all the difference. You didn't practice harder when you looked at column B. You practiced deeper... Deep practise is ... experiences where you're forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them...One real encounter, even for a few seconds, is far more useful than several hundred observations... It's all about finding the sweet spot... There's an optimal gap between what you know and what you're trying to do. When you find the sweet spot, learning takes off." This is why pilots learn better in flight simulators. The pilots "could dive, stall, and recover, spending hours inhabiting the sweet spot at the edge of his capabilities in ways he could never risk in an actual plane."
- "The Talent Code' by Daniel Coyle

Operating at the edge of ability

"The people inside the talent hotbeds are engaged in an activity that seems, on the face of it, strange and surprising. They are seeking out the slippery hills... They are purposely operating at the edge of their ability, so they can screw up. And somehow screwing up is making them better. "

- "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle

Moments of slow, fitful struggle

"When I started visiting talent hotbeds, I expected to be dazzled... those expectations were met and exceeded - about half the time... During the other half I witnessed something very different: moments of slow, fitful struggle,... They slammed to a halt; they stopped, looked, and thought carefully before taking each step. Making progress became a matter of small failures, a rhythmic pattern of botches, as well as something else: a shared facial expression. Their taut, intense squint..."

- "The talent code" by Daniel Coyle

Discipline

"Discipline, in essence, is consistency of action - consistency with values, consistency with long-term goals, consistency with performance standards, consistency of method, consistency over time. .. True discipline requires the independence of mind to reject pressures to confirm in ways incompatible with values, performance standards, and long term aspirations, having the inner will to do whatever it takes to create a great outcome, no matter how difficult."

Great By Choice
- Jim Collins

Interpreting word through one's own opinion

"I can often figure out someone in a course or conference heard what I said, interpreted through their own opinion and came up with something I never meant. Words are a dangerous thing"

- Mike Cohn

Our personhood is carved by the flow of our habits.

"The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits."

- Jonathan Safron

How can I gravitate towards something I would like and what people will accept?

"What else can I do? How can I gravitate towards something I would like and what people will accept?"

-- A.R. Rahman (source)

When you just do things for the sake of doing your work, it shows

"When you just do things for the sake of doing your work, it shows. It becomes boring for everyone, even his own team, if he’s not allowed to explore different directions, given the limitations."

--  A.R. Rahman (source)

If there’s honesty in something, it works.

" if there’s honesty in something, it works."

- A.R. Rahman (Source)

Instead of engaging the world in an anxious mental state, plunge head first into the experience of life

"When our children are just being themselves, they are unconcerned about the things we parents so often obsess over. How things look to other people, achievement, getting ahead - none of these issues that preoccupy adults are a child's agenda. Instead of engaging the world in an anxious mental state, children tend to plunge head first into the experience of life, willing to risk all."

- The Conscious Parent, Shefali Tsabary, PhD

If we are super-successful, we expect our children to be super-successful

"...If we are super-successful at what we do, we are likely to expect our children to be super-successful also...If we were an academic wizard in school, we tend to carry a torch for our children to be brilliant. If we didn't so well academically and have struggled in life as a result, we perhaps live in fear that our children will turn out like us, which causes us to do everything in our power to ward off such a possibility."

- The Conscious Parent, Shefali Tsabary, PhD

Best in the world have best attitudes and best behaviour patterns and a good, hard, ruthless culture

The Australian cricket team suspended 4 players today and a few tips on success from the couch in the explanation of the suspension

"I wanted three points from each of them technically, mentally and team as to how we were going to get back over the next couple of games, how we were going to get ourselves back into the series...We pride ourselves on attitude. We have given the players a huge amount of latitude to get culture and attitude right,...We believe that those behaviours with what we want to do with this team, how we want to take this team to be the best in the world, teams that are the best in the world have best attitudes and best behaviour patterns and a good, hard, ruthless culture. "

Arthur said to become world-beaters, the Aussies will have to fall in line when it comes to discipline.

- Mickey Arthur(Australian cricket team couch)

End of superiority, inferiority, and equality is end to suffering

“one who has truly penetrated this threefold conceit of superiority, inferiority, and equality is said to have put an end to suffering.”

- The Buddha (Source)

Natural scenery in a camera

"This is the hardest stuff in the world to photograph. You need a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree lens, or something. You see it, and then you look down in the ground glass and it's just nothing. As soon as you put a border on it, it's gone."

- Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig 

On how a beautiful natural scenery cannot be completely captured in a camera.

Maintaining Personality

"Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it.  This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers and, depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends."

- Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

If somene's ungrateful

"If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything."

- Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

Difference between @Autowire and @Resource

1. @Resource is part of JSR-250. @Autowire is part of Spring framework.
2. @Resource can inject by name only(to inject into a field named "xyz" look for a bean named "xyz"). @Autowire can inject by name, type(to inject into a field/parameter of type "Abc", look for a unique bean of type "Abc") and many more.
3. @Resource can inject into a field only. @Autowire can inject into field, constructor and method parameters.
3. @Resource can inject List, Map and other Collection types. @Autowire cannot.

Sources: [1] [2]

Wave and water

" To represent the two dimensions of reality, we use the images of the wave and water. Looking at the dimension of the wave, the historical dimension, we see that the wave seems to have a beginning and an end. The wave can be high or low compared with other waves. The wave might be more or less beautiful than other waves. The wave might be there or not there; it might be there now but later not there. All these notions are there when we first touch the historical dimension: birth and death, being and nonbeing, high and low, coming and going, and so on. But we know that when we touch the wave more deeply, we touch water. The water is the other dimension of the wave. It represents the ultimate dimension.
...

If the wave is capable of touching the water within herself, if the wave can live the life of water at the same time, then she will not be afraid of all these notions: beginning and ending, birth and death, being or non-being; non-fear will bring her solidity and joy. Her true nature is the nature of no-birth and no-death, no beginning and no end. That is the nature of water."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

I have arrived, I am home

"I have arrived, I am home
In the here, in the now
I am solid, I am free
In the ultimate I dwell.

...
You can recite the poem above as you breathe in and out. You can practice this poem when you drive to your office. You may not have arrived at your office, but even while driving you have already arrived at your true home, the present moment. When you arrive at your office, this is also your true home. In your office, you are also in the here and now. Just practicing the first line of the poem, “I have arrived, I am home,” can make you very happy."

- Thich Nhat Hanh