Welcome!
Here is what I picked up during the month of February: Preparing your meetings as a coach prepares their practice ❋ Why you do not quit when you should ❋ Rest is necessary for your brain ❋ We naturally feel first and think second ❋ People earning most are not the smartest ❋ ChatGPT often answers questions incorrectly. Just like humans ❋ Show what you accomplished and what remains to be done: send a weekly email summary.
- Laëtitia Vitaud identifies 5 toxic forces that prevent you from quitting when you should. A worthy read.
- I just heard a quote from John Wooden, one of the most revered coaches in college sports, in which he says that the most important part of his job was the preparation and running of practice sessions. It made me wonder about what would happen if managers thought about meetings in the same way.
- Jens-Fabian Goetzmann says you should send a weekly email summary to your manager and your team. Very easy to do if you, as I suggest we all do, keep a journal.
- According to Samantha Artherholt, a psychologist and clinical associate professor in the UW School of Medicine Department of Rehabilitation, “the same consolidation activities that happen in our brains when we’re asleep also occur when we rest. Your brain gets a boost from rest because you have different electrochemical brain states based on what your brain is doing.” So, go ahead and take a few breaks. You’re not being lazy; you’re giving your brain what it needs to be more alert.
- Ingrained irrationality: “Our brain is hardwired, and the chemistry of the brain guarantees that we feel first and think second,” David Ropeik, an author and expert in risk perception, told Big Think. “That worked pretty well when the risks were lions and tigers and bears and the dark, oh, my. It’s not as good now when we need to rationalize and reason and use the facts more with the complicated risks we face in a modern age.” Solutions: think like an outsider, think with a dispassionate viewpoint, and outsource your brain’s thought process to friends, family, or even anonymous internet forums.
- A recent study finds that cognitive ability is strongly linked to higher earnings — until the very top of the income ladder. Intelligence among the top 5% of earners plateaus and even decreases slightly. In other words, the highest earners in society are by no means more intelligent than the rest of us.
- According to researchers at the New York Public Library, up to 75 percent of books published before 1964 might now be in the public domain, that is, no longer protected by an intellectual property law. “Around 65 to 75 percent of rights holders opted not to renew their copyrights.” How does your company manage its innovations, whether they be in products, services or processes?
- Ryan Avent is leaving The Economist and will no longer produce his newsletter. I have been reading Ryan for a good while now. I will miss his clear thinking and sober writing.
- This is the chatGPT entry for this month. More to come.
I hope you are well. I really do.
Let’s fill the month of March with, what Rudyard Kipling would call, thirty-one days’ worth of distance run.
And, as always, keep it on the one.
Richard