A Learning a Day

Calm under extreme pressure is the hallmark of an elite performer.

That calm enables a clear-eyed focus on their performance – and helps dim all the other noise that gets in the way.

A marker of wisdom is the ability to deal with reality without negative emotion when it isn’t favorable.

It often means saying things like…

That game didn’t play out the way I hoped.

I made a costly mistake that my team will unfortunately have to pay for.

That person hates me for reasons that aren’t particularly fair.

There’s no repairing that error.

… without necessarily letting ourselves become overcome with frustration or anger.

Those emotions rarely help.

There’s no point screaming at the large pothole on the road outside our home everyday.

Either fix it or find a way around it.

In either case, the emotion isn’t necessary… or helpful.

“Make a rule to never think twice about investments in yourself. Books, quality food, fitness, and personal development all fit into this bucket. These investments pay dividends for a long time. Think about material purchases instead—wait 24 hours to complete an order to see if you still want it.”

I can’t remember where I saw this. Thank you to whoever shared it.

It resonated.

A trait found among those who regularly succeed at moving groups from ambiguity to clarity is their propensity (bordering on obsession) to document everything.

Writing both creates and scales clarity.

Effective communication often comes down to our ability to match the mood and energy of the person we’re communicating with. | Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators (paraphrased)

This rang true as I thought of many high stakes settings where this “matching principle” was violated. The conversation/discussion felt like a car crash simply because of an inability to read the mood and energy of key folks in the room.

We watched a couple seasons of Masterchef with our kids over the past months – focusing on seasons that were most loved. While I have a few reflections coming on the whole experience, one of my favorite moments was in the semi-final of season 4.

Jesse, one of the three semi-finalist, forgets butter and asks her fellow contestants. Natasha, who always was “hardcore” about her approach to competition, refused to give her butter even though she had multiple sticks sitting around.

Luca, on the other hand, just tossed her a stick without her even asking him. He shared a lovely behind the scenes note about the moment – “I don’t think a piece of butter is going to make her dish stand out that much. If it does, good for her. I’m going home. Tomorrow I can still look at myself in the mirror. I’m a good guy. Forget about it.”

The irony here was that Natasha was in need just a couple challenges ago and relied on Luca’s generosity to help her out.

Luca went on to win the season. He demonstrated visible growth in his abilities over the course of the season.

But it was this moment I found most inspirational.

I wrapped up my 4 week experiment with the Continuous Glucose Monitor/CGM a week ago. Here are the 4 reflections from the 4 weeks –

(1) Sleep’s impact on metabolism was fascinating to watch. The single biggest distortion I saw in my metabolism was when I was sleep deprived. My glucose trends were fairly steady on most days. Then there came a day when I only slept 4 hours – the next day’s glucose graph read like the stock market.

(2) My ability to metabolize glucose slows significantly toward the evening. The same meal would cause steeper and longer glucose spikes in the evening. Ergo – eat lesser in the evening and leave at least 2 hours before bedtime.

(3) Moving after a meal has a big impact on our metabolism. This was my biggest takeaway after my first week. This held true throughout. Movement helps us use the glucose from the meal and, in theory, prevents it from being stored as triglycerides. I say “in theory” because I look forward to validating this when I get blood work done in a few weeks after keeping up this habit.

(4) Ordering of nutrients can have a near magical impact. Starting with fiber/salad, moving to protein, and ending with carbs is dramatically different vs. simply eating the same carbs without anything else. That sounds like an excuse to eat more and an invitation to gain weight. But a good friend who went through this process and lost weight said one of his biggest takeaways was that quality of nutrients matters a lot more than quantity.

These 4 weeks with the CGM were transformational. Getting to observe my body’s response to food was both educational and empowering – I’ll never look at food and lifestyle the same way again.

If you have 5 or more priorities, you have no priorities.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” | Richard Feynman

Indeed.

A while ago, a teammate shared the “this is fine” meme.

We have this dog drinking coffee and saying “this is fine” in a room on fire.

She shared it as a way of sharing what she felt she was going through. We all laughed.

I’ve thought about that meme many times since. We all go through ups and downs. As we navigate the downs, we can take a lot of inspiration from this dog.

This is fine.

It will also be fine in the end.

Even this will pass.