My Weekly Learnings #99 (12.02.23 – 18.02.23)

The concept of ‘My Weekly Learnings’ is to share highlights and/or content pieces that caught my eye this week and provided more value than I could imagine.

1. 10 Signs You’re Becoming Emotionally Healthier:
– You can recognize your patterns
– You know when you’re using coping to self-soothe (like eating, watching Netflix, or scrolling.)
– You’re being less hard on yourself
– You recognize your thoughts are not truths
– You’re taking things less personally
– You understand it’s ok to feel sad or any perceived “negative” emotion and don’t judge yourself for it
– You’ve started setting boundaries
– You’re being vulnerable and talking about what you’re feeling even when it’s uncomfortable
– You’re not looking at people to “complete” you
– You’re able to laugh at yourself and not take it all so seriously [Dr Nicole LePera]

2. Life Hack: Make a rule to never think twice about investments in yourself.

• Books
• Quality food
• Fitness
• Personal development
• Mental health

These investments pay dividends for a long time.

Think twice about material purchases instead.

Use the 24-Hour Rule:
After putting something in your cart, wait 24 hours to complete the order.
If you still want it, order it.
If not, skip it.

This has saved me tons on stupid impulse purchases that would have gathered dust.

“Lifestyle creep” with investments in yourself is typically a good thing.

For example:
Level 1 may be investing in a gym membership.
Level 2 may be investing in a nicer gym membership for better equipment.
Level 3 may be investing in a home gym to save you commute time. [Sahil Bloom]

3. People aren’t judging you as much as you think they are.

And if they are, they’ll forget about it when the next distraction pops up. [Dan Koe]

4. Jeff Bezos, on why Amazon banned Powerpoint presentations in favour of six-page memos:
“We have study hall at the beginning of our meetings… The traditional kind of corporate meeting starts with a presentation. Somebody gets up in front of the room and presents with a PowerPoint presentation, some type of slide show. In our view you get very little information, you get bullet points. This is easy for the presenter, but difficult for the audience. And so instead, all of our meetings are structured around a 6-page narrative memo.

When you have to write your ideas out in complete sentences, and complete paragraphs it forces a deeper clarity… Time doesn’t come from nowhere. This way you know everyone has the time. The author gets the nice warm feeling of seeing their hard work being read… If you have a traditional PowerPoint presentation, executives interrupt. If you read the whole 6-page memo, on page two you have a question but on page four that question is answered… And so that is what we do, we just sit and read.”

5. It was easy to idolize someone in the past as it was harder to know details about your icons.

As icons get overexposed, it’s easy to see their flaws efficiently.

Maybe in future, all icons may be people who are dead and can’t err and we can’t find details of their flaws. [Kunal Shah]

My Weekly Learnings #62 (29.05.22 – 04.06.22)

Amidst all the content I consume every week, through this weekly series of ‘My Weekly Learnings’, sharing highlights of content pieces that caught my eye and provided more value than I could imagine.

(P.S. Every Sunday, I share a list of what to read, listen to, and watch, in my weekly series, The Last 7 Days. You can check out the editions here).

1. Of course you’re interesting. There’s something about what you’ve done, what you say, how you show up in the world that’s worthy of interest.

But that doesn’t mean that people are interested.

We each have a noise in our heads, an agenda and something urgent that’s grabbing our attention. And so, the amount of interest you receive (or don’t receive) has little to do with how interesting you are and a lot to do with how the people you seek to serve have organized their priorities long before you got there. [Seth Godin]

2. Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.

But most decisions aren’t like that — they’re changeable, reversible — they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. [Jeff Bezos]

3. ‘Because’

It’s an old study now known as the photocopier study. The experiment had the experimenter try to cut in line at a copy machine at a University campus. The researchers found that when the ask was small — just 5 pages to copy — asking to cut in line with the rather circular reason of ‘because I have to make some copies’ was almost as successful as asking to cut in for the valid reason of ‘because I’m in a rush’, and both of them beat providing no reason at all. The effect disappeared with a larger ask of 20 pages.

The theory was that with a small ask just providing any reason after the word ‘because’ may trigger an automatic script of ‘Favour + Reason –> Comply’ — if we don’t really think about it we just see the pattern and act. This suggests that a) if you have a small ask you might be better off providing a reason for it, no matter how small, and b) if we want to avoid acting mindlessly when people ask a favour it may benefit us to pay closer attention.

The study was led by Ellen Langer who has since gone on to write a host of books on mindfulness. [Tim Urban]

4. Pythagoras coined the word philosopher to describe himself as a “lover of wisdom” — a love of the subject which he encapsulated in a short, insightful meditation on the uses of philosophy in human life.⁣
⁣
When asked why he lived as a “philosopher” rather than an “expert” in any one of the classical arts Pythagoras said: “Some are influenced by the love of wealth while others are blindly led on by the mad fever for power and domination, but the finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself. He seeks to uncover the secrets of nature. This is the man I call a philosopher for although no man is completely wise in all respects, he can love wisdom as the key to nature’s secrets.”⁣ [Neurohacker]

5. Research by UT Southwestern Medical Center (2015) shows that two hours of sitting cancels out the benefits of 20 minutes of exercise for our cardiorespiratory fitness levels.

Many of the positive health effects of cardio and resistance training are offset by sitting too much.

So what can we do? Try alternating with standing throughout the day. Even taking 3 or 4, 10 minute walks throughout the day can help.

My Weekly Learnings #35 (21.11 – 27.11)

Amidst all the content I consume every week, through this weekly series of ‘My Weekly Learnings’, sharing highlights of content pieces that caught my eye and provided more value than I could imagine.

(P.S. Every Sunday, I share a list of what to read, listen to, and watch, in my weekly series, The Last 7 Days. You can check out the editions here).

1. Anything that uplifts your consciousness is spirituality. Anything that brings you more peace of mind, that’s spirituality. Anything that gives you confidence, self-confidence, is spirituality. Anything that helps you to communicate better with people and anything that promotes a better understanding of yourself, of others, and of the universe, that’s spirituality. (Listen here more to understand about spirituality) [Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar]

2. Beware of confusing attention with admiration. Being noticed isn’t a substitute for being respected.

Don’t mistake recognition for appreciation. Knowing who you are doesn’t mean people value what you do.

The point of sharing isn’t to gain followers. It’s to make a contribution. [Adam Grant]

3. “Many people use deliberate cold exposure specifically to increase their metabolism and fat loss. Because many people also combine deliberate cold exposure with a sauna or hot showers, I asked Dr. Susanna Soeberg, Ph.D. (expert in human cold therapy science and first author on a recent landmark study about cold exposure for metabolism), whether or not heat should be done before or after cold exposure.

Dr. Soeberg’s answer is what I now call “The Soeberg Principle”: which states that even though you can alternate heat and cold *if your main goal is to increase metabolism then you should end with the cold* because it forces your body to use its own energy to heat back up.

Remember: you can still get benefits from a cold exposure if you end with heat but you won’t get as great a metabolic effect.” [Andrew Huberman]

4. The Illusion of Self

Source: grantdraws

5. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, isn’t a fan of the phrase “work-life balance.”

Bezos said new Amazon employees shouldn’t view work and life as a balancing act. Instead, Bezos said it’s more productive to view them as two integrated parts.

“It actually is a circle,” Bezos said. “It’s not a balance.”

“And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off.”

“If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy,” Bezos said. “And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy.” [Jeff Bezos via Business Insider] (Read more here)

My Weekly Learnings #14 (27.06 – 03.07)

Amidst all the content I consume every week, through this weekly series of ‘My Weekly Learnings’, sharing highlights of content pieces that caught my eye and provided more value than I could imagine.

(P.S. Every Sunday, I share a list of what to read, listen, and watch, in my weekly series, The Last 7 Days. You can check out the editions here).

1. “If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with.”
— Jeff Bezos

2. A fantastic piece by Balaji Srinivasan, on the problem with social media today and the evolution of the space with the help of a decentralized blockchain. (Shared this via Amol Telang)

3. The absence of mental illness doesn’t mean the presence of mental health.
Even if you’re not depressed or burned out, you might be languishing—feeling a sense of emptiness and stagnation. Meh. [Adam Grant] (Read more here – https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html)

4. In absence of future data, we use conventional status signals to indicate trust, be it money, power, good-looks or degrees. Quite weirdly “wasting money” signals massive status. [Kunal Shah]

5. Andre Agassi shares how he started beating Boris Becker regularly after his initial losses. Check it out here – https://youtu.be/3woPuCIk_d8