Yntro # 3 – Improve your cognitive abilities by learning a language | Create a conversation with your clients | Using our problems as an advantage | How recycling plastic really works? | Explore the world with Carmen Sandiego

I really want to thank all the good comments regarding the last two issues. It really motivates me to know the members of this newsletter find this information interesting our useful. And also, thanks for sending me cool stuff to read and to be share here.

On to Yntro!

Improve your cognitive abilities by learning a language

There is something in learning a new language, besides the ability to understand another culture can enrich your knowledge. But studying a new language also seems to improve brain function, including cognition, memory, concentration, problem-solving, and even the ability to multitask.

There are four skills you need to master to be fluent in a language: listening, reading, speaking and writing. However, also consider what your own interests or motivations are. For lots of people, the ability to write in a language is less important than the ability to speak or vice versa. Either way learning a language can open new possibilities you didn’t know you may have.

Create a conversation with your clients

If you are considering to promote your business online, Facebook may seem the most straight forward solution to acquire more clients. Everybody uses it, you can probably reach a large audience, and it costs for advertising are lower compared to other platforms (around $1.86 per click depending on location and competition). But that is only the first step! Once a client reaches you, or buy from you, keep the conversation going. And make it one-to-one through email marketing. This strategy has the highest return of investment (ROI) that any other marketing tactic.

Make this conversation interesting to your clients by using the Cocktail Party Effect. Discovered by Colin Cherry in 1950, it states that our brain separates overlapping conversations into different auditory streams. Ignoring information that isn’t relevant. Always provide useful and relevant information to your clients, so they can focus on it; and by combining it with personalization, will allow you to differentiate at a human level using behavior as the most important clue about what your clients want and more important, what they need.

Using our problems as an advantage

The phrase “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool to solve a problem. It is known as the Law of the Instrument or Maslow’s Hammer. Instead of see it as a bad thing, we can treat the nails as tremendously useful. The simple fact of having a hammer can lead us to fully appreciate the nails, and in turn expand what we’re capable of. Which means you can learn more by doing and failing, than just to plan everything beforehand to be perfect. There is something in creating and then repeat it in to a second version, that can only experience can teach us. Just do it, fail and learn.

Problems can also be an incentive to learn a specific skill. Project-based learning is more efficient, more practical, and more fun. The key is to find a project that you’re so excited to bring to reality and that you don’t mind pushing through the obstacles along the way. However, with project-based learning, you are both the student and the curriculum designer. It’s easy to start in the middle of the material by accident, or choose a project that’s too hard for your current skill level. I approached cooking this way, hunger was my motivation. At first, I was dependent on recipes. I followed each step blindly without understanding how cooking techniques and rationales work. Now, I make a dish adhering to the best practices but modifying some steps or ingredients based on my own taste.

How recycling plastic really works?

The ugly truth: oil companies promoted recycling to sell more plastic. We all know that all used plastic can be turned into new things. But in fact, there are too many kinds of plastics, hundreds of them, and they can’t be melted down together. They have to be sorted out. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can’t be reused more than once or twice. Making recycling expensive and infeasible for most companies. In contrast, new plastic is cheap to produce. It’s made from oil and gas, and it’s almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh. Analysts now expect plastic production to triple by 2050; and it makes sense, just look at your garbage can to realize how much plastic are you throwing away each week.

Explore the world with Carmen Sandiego

Now you are able to track Carmen Sandiego around the globe to recover a stolen jewel! Though the game is made for promoting the animated Netflix show, it’s still a great collaboration, combining the fun, adventurous aspect of Carmen Sandiego with the immense 3D map resources of Google Earth.

Quick Fact

Karl Benz invented the automobile in 1886, many years prior to Henry Ford’s 1896 Runabout.

Final thoughts

I would like to read your thoughts about recycling plastic. Do you think there are ways to address this problem at society or individual level?

As always, if you’re enjoying Yntro, tell your friends about it (just send them here).

You can read the past issues of Yntro here

Have a great week!

Mauricio