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Ulysses Contract

Few years ago when I joined a gym, I used to set an alarm 10 minutes earlier than my waking time. So I have 10 minutes extra to get up and about. Many people do this. But I noticed that those days when my kids had a holiday and I had a choice not to go to the gym then I would not get up. These 10 minutes made my mind think of few reasons to procrastinate.  Then I read the story of the Odisseus in the book "Thinking in bets" by Anne Duke. Odisseus in ancient times was a sailor who used "mental" travel before setting off on the real journey.He once heard about Siren Island . Whenever the sailors traveled to that part of the sea, they heard beautiful songs of  Siren Island  and steered their boat towards it. But the boat never reached the island, it was battered by the rocks around it.  Sailors never seemed to avoid  Siren Island  due to the sweet and melodious songs coming from it. So Odisseus made a pact with his boatmen. He asked them pour beeswax into their ears so
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Knowledge Illusion

I am avid reader. To be precise I read around 64 books in the year 2016 and patted myself on my back for reading so many books. Then one day when I had just finished reading book "Thinking in the bets" my son asked me what was I  reading. I thought I liked this book a lot and understood it completely. But when I started telling him about this book, lo and behold, not even 10% of it came out right.  I thought to myself, why wasn't I able to tell him about the book? Did I not read it correctly? In fact I had read book from front to back but it was definitely not the correct way to read the book. Just reading book from front to back is not enough to retain knowledge.  So how does one read to understand and retain knowledge? My quest for this is ongoing. I read book "How to read book" by Mortimer Adler. I still haven't finish it.  But reviewing book, writing review, telling others about it is suggested as good step to retain knowledge. So that is what I started
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