Brain Food – No. 571 – April 7, 2024
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Welcome to Brain Food, a weekly newsletter full of timeless ideas and insights you can use in life and work. (Read the archives).
FS
We tend to measure performance by what happens when things are going well. Yet how people, organizations, companies, leaders, and other things do on their best day isn’t all that instructive. To find the truth, we need to look at what happens on the worst day.
— You’re Only as Good as Your Worst Day
Insights
1.
“Clients who haggle over their agency’s compensation are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Instead of trying to shave a few measly cents off the agency’s fifteen per cent, they should concentrate on getting more sales results from the eighty-five per cent they spend on time and space. That is where the leverage is. No manufacturer ever got rich by underpaying his agency. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.”
— David Ogilvy
2.
“Wrong decisions are part of life. Being able to make them work anyway is one of the abilities of those who are successful.”
— Warren Buffett
3.
“Instead of asking how many tasks you can tackle given your working hours, ask how many you can ditch given what you must do to excel.”
— Morten Hansen
Tiny Thoughts
1.
If you don’t value your time, don’t expect other people to respect it.
Consider pointless meetings. The more you attend, the more you get invited to.
Great work requires long stretches of uninterrupted focus. That means saying no to low-value things and concentrating on the few that matter.
2.
Extraordinary results come from doing ordinary things exceptionally well for a long time.
Take writing, for instance. Anyone can sit down and write a few paragraphs. There’s nothing extraordinary about putting words on a page. But if you commit to honing your craft, day after day, year after year, you can achieve something remarkable.
3.
Whenever you’re stuck, try inverting the problem. Ask yourself, What do I want to avoid?
If you want to be a better partner, ask yourself, What does a bad partner do? Poor partners don’t invest in or spend enough time on a relationship, break trust, and don’t communicate well. Avoid these behaviors and you’ll become a much better partner.
If you want more opportunities at work, ask yourself: What does someone do who is not getting opportunities? Chances are, the person is unreliable, low-energy, and tends to complain. Avoid these if you want to advance.
If you want more money, consider how people squander wealth and get into financial trouble. They take on as much debt as they can handle, spend on a bigger lifestyle than they can afford, and live as if good times will last forever.
Using the “avoid it” method is low-hanging fruit. Only after becoming aware of obvious causes of failure and avoiding them, should you focus on proactive approaches that might help you achieve your goals.
(Share Tiny Thought one, two, or three, on X).
TKP Podcast
Dr. Rhonda Patrick on heat exposure:
“What is that doing? Well, that is actually kicking on a physiological response that is in many ways very similar to moderate-intensity aerobic exercise because when you’re exposed to the ambient increases in temperature, you are elevating your core body temperature, which is what’s happening with physical activity. Your heart rate increases, your plasma flow increases, your stroke volume increases. All these things that are happening during physical exercise are happening during this deliberate heat exposure. And so there’s somewhat of a mimicking effect of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. And there have actually been studies that have compared that head to head. They’ve looked at being on a stationary cycle doing, not anything crazy, but like 120 watts, and then comparing that to sitting in a sauna for 20 minutes, so doing each of those for 20 minutes. And they were comparable in terms of heart rate elevation during the physical activity or during the heat exposure—the changes in blood pressure during the activity and then the improvements after. Blood pressure improved after the stationary cycling. Blood pressure improved after the deliberate heat exposure. Resting heart rate improved after the stationary cycling, and resting heart rate improved after the deliberate heat exposure.“
— If you’re interested in the essentials for healthy living, listen to the entire episode (Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript ) or dive right into the part on heat exposure here.
Thanks for reading,
— Shane
P.S. I didn’t know goldfish could look like this.
P.P.S. Last chance to join me in May to unlock your personal and professional leadership and position yourself for the next step.