Be aware of the opportunity cost of your time. Use your time as best you can.
Memory works best when:
(a) it can form patterns;
(b) it can make associations with things it is already familiar with;
(c) different senses are involved.
Why rely on your memory when you can write it down?
We tend to remember meaning rather than literally what we see, hear, or read. If we misinterpret the meaning we can delude ourselves as to precisely what we’ve seen, heard, or read.
Memory can be unreliable, for example:
(a) We tend to remember the good times and suppress the bad;
(b) we have a habit of exaggerating or minimising pleasant or unpleasant sensations;
(c) we tend to remember things we agree with or believe and not things we don’t;
(d) we remember the unusual rather than the usual.
You may not appear to others the way you think you appear, and they may not be the way they appear to you. Examples of behaviour which can be interpreted in different ways include: logical/unfeeling; decisive/over hasty; caring/busybody; organised/bureaucratic; flexible/indecisive; cooperative/conspiring.
To interpret a message you need:
(a) a common understanding of what the message is about;
(b) to have a common language;
(c) to want to communicate; (d) not to have the message unacceptably distorted.
Thank people, and praise people, whenever you have a genuine opportunity to do so.
Most productive creativity results from variations on a theme. The trick is to be able to recognise what variations are possible and what variations are likely to lead to something useful. Being able to identify novel analogies is a key way of identifying new variations.