[personaldev] Intellectual sandboxes

Some of you have been asking what I'm planning to do work-wise.  Basically, my plan is to spend the next six months or so converging on a new idea for a business.  I'm going to start by creating an intellectual sandbox which allows be to brainstorm widely and play around, and then I will gradually start to focus in on what's most likely to succeed.  Here's how I break it down:

Phase 1:  Gather & play
-    Go to lots of meetups and conferences on different topics of interest.  Meet experts in various fields and talk to them.
-    Play around with lots of different technologies and pieces of content.
-    Create a big cluster chart of areas of interest.
-    Maintain lists of complaints about the world as it is as well as ideas

Phase 2: More targeted play
-    Pick up skills and do small projects in areas of interest.
-    Do more targeted brainstorms with others around specific projects.

Phase 3: Focus
-    Evaluate various efforts, and pick most promising one.
-    Areas to consider around a promising business idea:
     -    Where I can most leverage my existing skills
     -    Where I’m most passionate
     -    Short time to proof of concept?
     -    Short path to profitability?
     -    Who else I find that shares passion for the idea
     -    Competitive landscape

[personaldev] Increasing your intelligence

Today I ran into a very interesting study from 2008 that claimed that anyone can increase their fluid intelligence (the general ability to solve new problems) by increasing working memory (the number of bits of information you can manipulate at once).  Prior to this, it was believed that working memory and fluid intelligence were more or less fixed and tended to decline after young adulthood.   A very reputable psychologist is cautiously optimistic about the study, but points out numerous areas for further research. 

If this is true, it's like the holy grail of self-improvement... improve this and EVERYTHING ELSE gets better.  I suppose there are a few holy grails with broad effects on intelligence (eg exercise, diet, sleep, environment/peer group.)

It looks like there are a lot of follow-up studies in the works to see if these claims are warranted.

It also appears there are already a few implementations of the task used to improve working memory, including two for the iphone.  The time commitment required for improvement is apparently not huge... just half an hour a day over 20 days.  Not a huge commitment. 

I'm going to try the open source MacOS version.