Wednesday

Halfway through another week, depending on what your week looks like. Today, we will talk about cognitive overload and why it's counterproductive. We follow up overload with a 12-year-old who invented a fire detection system (faster than a smoke detector). Next, a TED Talk on photo stacking and bird patterns, and finally, an interview with Dolly Parton by Paramore's Hayley Williams. WooHoo!

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The founder of Jotforms and author of the book Automate Your Busywork, Aytekin Tank, is making the rounds and guest posting in various pubs. I wrote a brief review of his new book and made it a quarter through the Audible of the book. Today, Tank takes a part of his automation process and discusses our brains and our overloads.

In a Medium publication called The Startup, Tank writes a quick but poignant piece on how much we can lose when we overload the brain with too much stuff. In the simplest terms, you can improve what your cognitive load has to focus on by automating functions. If you have paper lists, sticky notes, and file folders all over your desk, you are putting additional burdens on your brain. Putting the lists and task work into an app or even a spreadsheet reduces what you must mentally think about. 

An engineer will tell you that if you over-stress a structure over time, it will degrade its capacity and, at some point, fail completely. The same is true for your cognitive machine; in addition to overwhelm and overload, stress caused by the overload or anything else going on will also reduce the output. It's a vicious cycle if you have been in it, you know it, and once you get organized, your stress levels reduce, and more critical work gets done. A virtuous cycle, if you will!

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Shanya Gill is a 12-year student who just won an award for a new Fire Detection System that differentiates heat sources. A fire detection system as opposed to a smoke detection system, which only works after a fire has begun. Gill was inspired to design a better system after a fire burned down a restaurant near her home. Nice News brought us this story; below is a video where Gill talks about her invention. After seeing her video and reading about her innovative spirit, we say get her on Shark Tank now!

Additional information about Gill is on the Society For Science website, including a complete workup on her project. The future looks bright – thanks, kids!

Artist Doris Mitsch was recently highlighted in one of our TED Talk newsletters, and Mitsch does one of our favorite things. Take something ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary using art and creativity. She has her TED Talk below, and you will see how to photo stack the flight patterns of birds.

Final quote that says it all:

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After her recent induction into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, Dolly Parton is preparing to release a new album called Rockstar. Put Dolly Parton into whatever genre you like; she is music royalty; at 77, this musician, singer, and songwriter took on the world with a combination of fierce confidence and grounded humility like no other.

In a cover story on CONSEQUENCE, Dolly Parton sat down with Hayley Williams from Paramore for an interview between artists. In the interview, you can tell Williams is star-struck interviewing a hero, and Parton asks Williams questions about songs she's written as if she's sitting with another songwriter, a colleague. Parton is a treasure, a lot to live up to, Williams, but you've shown you to have what it takes if you want it.

Crazy by R.E.M..

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

5 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

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