Steli Efti

Philos Of Philosophy

Although I'm Greek, I don't consider myself a philosopher - I'm much more of a "Doer" then a "Thinker".

But, knowing the meaning of the word "Philosophy" ( friend of truth, wisdom, knowledge) I would say I'm definitely a "philos of philosophy" ( a friend of the "friends of truth" ).

Reading some of Aristotles work today inspired me to share some of the wisdom of my friends with you in this post.

Warning: there is a catch: One of those quotes is actually MY quote. I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone will find out which one is from me ( and if it makes any difference ). Enjoy the wisdom...

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
Plato

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."
Aristotle

"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."
Aristotle

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Aristotle

"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do."
Aristotle

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Archimedes

"We know all there is to know, but we don't do all there is to do."
Socrates

"Let him that would move the world first move himself."
Socrates

P.S.

Here are some interesting links I found searching for philosophy blogs:

Experimental Philosophy Blog

Facebook Experimental Philosophy Group

MySpace Site of Experimental Philosophy

Seems like "Experimental Philosophy" is big on the net. Though am not exactly sure what it is. Hmm...I'll get back to you on this one.

smart Vs. intelligent

What's the difference between being smart and being intelligent? Here's the analogy I came up with in 6th grade:

If we imagine intelligence as the capacity of our brain, smartness would be the art of filling it. In other words, maybe your room ( intelligence) isn't really big but you are very good in filling it and using it most effectively ( smartness).

I can't tell you what's more important. I guess the best is to have lots of both of them. But if I would have to choose - I'd always rather go with smart then intelligent. But I'm biased on this one ;)

How do you differentiate between smart and intelligent?

Think Outside The Fast-Food-Box

Here's a challenge: You have to translate two full Chinese sentences ( 13 kanji symbols out of a total of approximately 47,035 in the  Kangxi dictionary ) in 1 hour. Let's suppose you can't speak or read Chinese and you don't know anyone who can ( just like me ).

Let's look at the obvious options:

1. You go to an "expert" website like kasamba and pay around $30.00 to get it right away
2. You can try to google it ( it's "free" but a waste of time )
3. You call a paid translation service ( cost at least $50.00 and they need forever to get back to you)
4. You send an email to friends who might know someone who can help you ( again free but uncertain)
5. You post it on a blog, on twitter or on facebook and ask your social network ( same things as email to friends )

This task is perfect for a "think-outside-the-fast-food-box" solution:

What I did two weeks ago ( when I had exactly this problem) was I called a local Chinese restaurant with delivery service to order sweet-sour chicken and rise. 30 minutes later, the delivery boy brought me my food and I asked him if he can help me translate this 2 sentence document for an extra tip of $3.00. He was more then happy to help me and had a fun time explaining to me the meaning of the symbols and the sentences. It was great!

There I was...sitting on my desk with the solution to my translation problems: Delicious Chinese Fast Food! Mmmhhh....

Any other good stories on how to solve challenging problems in unusual ways?

Supercool Meditation

Watch these youtube videos if you´re interested in learning something new today.

My good friend Bert is really a great educator and a extraordinary personality. You can watch the interview I made with Bert during a flight to San Francisco here.

And you can learn something new about your mind and the power of your unconscious NOW.
Because learning is more then a activity - it´s a state of mind. Meditation can help you learn better - try it out!

You Wake Up As The Man You Went To Sleep.

One of the most powerful lessons I refuse to learn is this: If you want to change anything - you have to start the change before you go to sleep. Only start - even if it is a tiny step. Anything will do it. But you gotta do it before you go to sleep.

Take it from a hypocrite: Don´t persuade yourself at the end of a day without action that you´ll do it tomorrow. If you are really ready to stop the procrastination you will start now. Before you go to sleep. Your chances are pretty good to wake up as a new man/women and continue your work then.

It´s 2:50 am and  I refused to start till now - but I refuse to go to sleep before starting too...let´s see if I get some sleep soon  ;)

I´ll keep you up-to-date about my learning progress in the comment section. Sweet dreams...

"Starting" Is The New "Continuing"

You don´t have to keep going to finish a project. You just have to start. Doesn´t make any sense? It will in a minute...

Most people know how hard it is to finish a project/achieve a long-term goal. But it´s wrong to think that the solution to a long-term goal is a long-term approach. It isn´t. It always comes down to taking action in the moment, day-by-day.

You need to answer these 2 simple questions every day ( not with words but with action):

1. What´s the fastest first step I can take today to make a progress?
2. What´s the next step I can immediately take?

We all know how motivated we can get after taking the first steps. It´s easy to keep going after you started. But it´s hard to start every day. Especially when you know that the goal is long-term. It feels like this thing will take so much time to get done so that one day doesn´t count that much. Bzzzz!!! Wrong answer!!!

Take action every day - early in the day - very very early and get in the "action-mood" as fast as possible. Write down these 2 questions on a piece of paper NOW and put it in a place near your bed. Wake up...read the questions...answer the first one...take action...answer the second one...take action!

And enjoy your day ;)

P.S. This post was written with ScribeFire. I love this tool!!!!! Go and check it out now.

Doing something good makes you dumber!

Actually it should be "Why doing something wrong makes you more intelligent!"

Today a friend of mine called me to give me some feedback about the last Supercool Class I gave. He is a very straight forward type of person ( which I love about him) and so he started right with his "20-things-I-didn´t- liked- in- your- class list :-).
Most of the things on his list where already on my own list so I agreed almost on every point with him. But after the call I started to think about his way at looking at my mistakes. He knows me well so he knew what I´m able to do and wondered why I was making some decisions that had a bad effect on my performance as a speaker.

Let´s look at some critical decisions I made about my Supercool Class:

• Choosing the internet as a medium
• Choosing english as language
• Start giving classes without having much practice

Well if you ask me it´s all about learning. I have some impact as a life speaker when the audience is sitting right in front of me( in my native language - german). I did this for quite a long time and had much fun doing it.

But what´s the point in choosing a way of looking good and doing something you already mastered? If you ask me it´s the way to stuck in your current status (another way of saying  "stay dumb") and not learn much anymore.

Although I have preached a thousand times that you got to go for it and make alot of mistakes to grow as a personality it seems like most people still wonder why I walk the talk :-)

People who know me well and know about my straights wonder why I often choose to look dumber then I am (if you ask me I still try to look smart too much). I do this because I want to learn faster and grow faster then I normally would.

And that´s one of my biggest success secrets. It´s making alot of mistakes and making them fast without hesitation. And then learn as much as possible from the results.

Think about it - success doesn´t have new valuable information for you ( "just" good feelings)
BUT failure has tons of information for us if we just open our eyes, ears and hearts to understand the lessons ( first - always close your ego before opening your sins ).

So you need to change your relationship to failure in order to learn faster. Not by forcing you to change but by learning to have fun producing failure. It´s what I call the Making Mistakes Mastery

Have fun!

Steli Efti, Education Revolutionary

Oppressed curiosity!

Babies are very curious! First they want to find out if there is anything on earth that tastes better then mother´s breast. So what they do in this phase is they take everything they see and stick it into their mouth - no matter what! This way babies learn how to use their mouth to satisfy their curiosity.

Later children learn to speak and our first instinctive use of language is to ask questions in order to satisfy our curiosity! It´s obvious isn´t it?

Now exactly at this point the machinery starts rolling and the oppression of curiosity begins!

The biggest two influential parts of this system are our families and schools. We´ll only discuss the second one here - Schools.

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"Don´t ask stupid questions!" "Read what´s in your book and be quiet!" "It doesn´t matter why - just do what I´m telling you!" "Learn your material!" "This is off topic!" "We don´t discuss this here!" "Try harder to repeat what I´ve told you!" 
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Does this sound familiar to you? To me it does! I remember pretty good what school was all about - repeating the stupid stuff teachers told me and then simply shut the fuck up!
And do you know why they´re doing this? Simply because teachers learned it the same way AND they learned to feel stupid & uncomfortable if they can´t answer all your questions!!!

I think this is ridiculous! Do you feel stupid if you can´t answer a question? If you do you should stop. Because the only thing on earth that should be able to make you feel stupid is feeling stupid.

See curiosity works different - it´s like fuel for our world´s progress engine.

We have to stop oppressing curiosity and start empower it so the world starts spinning faster and faster. But how can we do this? ( it´s always easy to complain )

I believe we need a system that democratize the way people learn and empowers their curiosity so they can speed up their learning tempo. A school system that let´s everyone choose for their own what they are curious about and gives them access to classes about anything worldwide. A system that doesn´t try to control everything but gives the power to the people. A global education architecture who marks behavior rather then tests. A imperfect system just like the one we have with the little difference that we empower curiosity and creativity without the need of testing and marking what can´t be marked anyway.

A little difference that could change the world - Supercool School.

Much curiosity to you!

Steli Efti, Education Revolutionary

Imagination is more important then knowledge!

Sooo... last week I had to face the challenge of not being able to write on the "Education Manifesto Ebook" like I wanted to so I thought maybe I can work every day a little bit on the ebook and post it on the blog to see some progress here. If you like you can gimme some feedback about your thoughts & ideas in terms of education!

Imagination is more important then knowledge

Everything new...every invention...every idea...every improvement in our life comes from our imagination - not from our knowledge!

It´s not so long ago there where no cars...no airplanes...no streets...no Internet...no PC´s...even no god damn money on this planet!!! Till someone imagined it to be possible and puffff....it became real!

So all these groundbreaking revolutions on planet earth (and many many more) came with the power of the human imagination - not from the power of human knowledge!
We didn´t know anything about all that stuff till someone came up with them.

So let´s differentiate first:

• Knowledge is the sum of what the human mind has learned and mastered in the past
• Imagination is the the ability of the human mind to dream & hallucinate things into the future!

Hmm...let´s think about the importance of our Imagination in the academic process for a moment...

Dreaming...hallucinating...being creative and coming up with new things that could become real in the future aren´t skills we learn to establish in school. And why should we? I mean it´s more important to be able to repeat what happened in the past and what lessons and thesis our teachers have told us about - right? ( imagine a very sarcastic voice asking here )

I can´t believe that we are still stuck into a worldwide education system that values more importance in the ability to repeat stuff then to come up with new ideas ourselves!!!

Ok...I have to admit that schools would face the problem of students  who start to THINK for themselves rather then just repeating the stupid stuff (alright...sometimes it´s also intelligent stuff...I admit it) a higher authority is telling them.

Imagine a student who get´s a good mark because she tried to invent a new mathematical formula!
Imagine a student who get´s credit for the attempt to create a new thesis for magnetism (something the science still can´t explain)!

It´s pretty hard isn´t it? And the reason why that´s so god damn hard to imagine is because you would have to imagine a Intelligent & Flexible Teacher first ;-)

How do you measure (mark) creativity or imagination when these things aren´t as clear as repeating content from a book or class? Simply you don´t! And that´s the reason why although we all know that our education system on earth has a crisis and companies just like all organizations on earth are begging for more creative employees and better educated people ( which means nothing else then people who are able to think for themselves) - our schools still can´t deliver this!

You have to imagine a Supercool School!
You have to imagine Supercool Teachers!
And you have to imagine Supercool Students!

The old system can´t solve our problems. We need a new one. A worldwide education system who empowers people to study and teach whatever they like and to become lifelong students with unlimited learning resources. We have to give the people the power to educate the people. We have to make a change and use our resources and leverage every single one of us to make a better world.

And all this I predict will start by a few people who can & want to believe that this is possible!
I invite your minds to dream with mine about this beautiful place on earth - Supercool School!

Wish Our Dreams Come True!

Steli Efti, Education Revolutionary