I'm really enjoying the articles and podcasts of Farnam Street, where Shane Parrish is the writer/host. Here is an important lesson he offers: "Learning How to Think: The Skill No One Taught You." This lesson is to avoid multi-tasking. Researchers have found that the more one multi-tasks, the less effective one is at learning. When you multitask, you are always restarting, never going down to the next level. I want to be someone unique, at least sometimes. I love the good ideas of others. I swim in them most of my hours on the planet. But at least once in a while, I’d like to step out of the echo-chamber and contribute something original to the world. What I have found is that when I'm distracted by phone calls or texts even once every 15 minutes, I never develop high quality ideas of my own. That's why I need to shelter myself in blocks of many hours when I'm writing. At least 3 hours at a time. That's when good things happen. On this point, Shane cites to "Solitude and Leadership," an essay by William Deresiewicz:

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.

I stumbled across this detailed article on twenty techniques used by Narcissists (and other malfunctioning types of people) in personal relationships -- or is it an article about Donald Trump? The full title: "20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You." The bottom line caveat: "If you think you’re going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness." In short, conversations are often attacks that only look like conversations.

In the hands of a malignant narcissist or sociopath, your differing opinions, legitimate emotions and lived experiences get translated into character flaws and evidence of your irrationality.

Narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths and otherwise toxic people do this because they wish to divert attention back to themselves and how you’re going to please them. If there is anything outside of them that may threaten their control over your life, they seek to destroy it. They need to be the center of attention at all times. In the idealization phase, you were once the center of a narcissist’s world – now the narcissist becomes the center of yours. Narcissists are also naturally pathologically envious and don’t want anything to come in between them and their influence over you. Your happiness represents everything they feel they cannot have in their emotionally shallow lives. After all, if you learn that you can get validation, respect and love from other sources besides the toxic person, what’s to keep you from leaving them?