“I always say to young shooters: Bad sights, good first target. Good sights, good first target.” | Ginny Thrasher, Olympic Gold medalist.
Her advice is to not let the pre-match practice – whether it involves “good sights” or “bad sights” – get in the way of a great performance.
In other words, you’ve got to let go of how you feel during the warmup and realize that you can show up and perform your best anyway.
Because you can.
On the occasion of his 99th birthday, “The Times” shared an op-ed from Sir David Attenborough.
My earliest memory of the ocean is of a tropical lagoon. Ammonites rose and fell in the warm water column, occasionally propelling themselves forwards, their curled ram’s horn shells surprisingly streamlined in the water.
This tropical lagoon was in fact in my imagination, fired as I explored the old limestone quarry near my childhood home in Leicester, some 60 miles from the coast.
For a small boy in the 1930s this was a marvellous place for adventures, and the knowledge that millions of years ago it would have been a warm and wild lagoon only increased its appeal. Here I could spend days searching for treasure buried in rocks laid down in ancient tropical seas. Holding the fossils of long-dead sea creatures that I had chipped out of the rock, knowing my eyes were the first ever to see them, ignited my curiosity. I would spend much of the rest of my life wondering what lived below the surface of the ocean.
(Sir David in 1979 filming “Life on Earth”)
I have been fortunate enough to live for nearly 100 years. During this time we have discovered more about our ocean than in any other span of human history. Marine science has revealed natural wonders a young boy in the 1930s could never have imagined. New technology has allowed us to film wildlife behaviour I could only have dreamt of recording in the early stages of my career, and we have changed the ocean so profoundly that the next 100 years could either witness a mass extinction of ocean life or a spectacular recovery.
To date we have done such a good job of telling the stories of demise and collapse that many of us can all too easily picture a future ocean of bleached reefs, turtles choking on plastic, sewage plumes, jellyfish swarms and ghost towns where fishing villages were once full of life. There may be much to fear in the near future, yet it could also be the most exciting time to be alive.
We know already that the ocean can recover. Mangroves and kelp forests can regrow, whales can return and dying coastal communities can flourish once again.
We now understand how to fix many of the biggest problems we face as a species, and we have centuries of progress to draw on for inspiration. Indeed, in the past 100 years alone we have dramatically reduced infant mortality, suppressed many of our most feared diseases, increased access to education and healthcare, acquired scientific knowledge that has transformed our understanding of the world and co-operated on global issues to a degree never seen before.
Young children playing on a beach today will live through perhaps the most consequential time for the human species in the past 10,000 years. They will grow up to see how this story ends, to see how our choices play out. If we use our great discoveries, apply our unique minds and direct our unparalleled communication and problem-solving skills to restoring our ocean, then those children will bring their own into a world where the biggest challenges our species has ever faced have already been navigated.
They will witness decades of recovery and restoration. They will see shoals of fish, roosts of seabirds and pods of whales beyond anything anyone alive has ever laid eyes upon. They will experience the rebirth of coastal communities and the turning point in the stabilisation of our climate. But more than that, they will live in a world where our species, the most intelligent to exist on Earth, has moved beyond trying to rule the waves and instead has learnt to thrive alongside the greatest wilderness of all.
I will not see how that story ends but, after a lifetime of exploring our planet, I remain convinced that the more people enjoy and understand the natural world, the greater our hope of saving both it and ourselves becomes.
The whole piece is beautiful – he goes on to share some of his favorite maritime encounters.
The note, though, was spectacular. I am hopeful he’ll be relieved at how the story ends and reflect with pride on his contribution.
So much of perspective is reminding ourselves that it could always be worse.
Great league teams notch three kinds of victories.
The first are the easy ones – they see off lower ranked teams with ease.
The second kind are the spectacular victories in high stakes contests. The last minute winner and the wonderful team goal just when they needed it feature here.
The most important, however, is when they summon the character and work ethic to grind out a victory when the circumstances aren’t ideal. On days when referee calls don’t go their way or when they’re not coming together as a unit, they still manage to out run the opponent to win.
Applies just as much to how we work as professionals. Quick wins are great, high stakes goals are memorable… but it is our ability to grind out results when the going is tough that makes the difference in the long run.
After a point, looking back and rehashing the scars of the past is only useful if it is helpful in generating forward momentum.
Over the past year, I tried multiple AI tools – spending most of my time on Perplexity and Claude. I have, however, come back to ChatGPT. It works for me.
My workflow on ChatGPT has evolved quite a bit since I first used it. 3 of the biggest changes have been –
Every time I reflect on ChatGPT, I realize my favorite feature is the lack of any growth hacks. There is no gamification, no streaks, and no notifications. I use it every day for the simple reason that it is… useful.
It is an inspiring reminder as someone who builds technology products for a living.
Useful is all we need.
It is the ultimate goal – the one worth building for.
PS: I just read that Open AI crossed $10B in revenue, 2.5 years after the launch of ChatGPT. A by product of a good product.
I wrote about conviction and evidence in the Good Energy approach yesterday. It’s worth calling out that this framework of conviction and evidence is applicable in most things that matter in this life.
I think of it every day in my daily work as a product manager. Good products show up when we first have conviction in an idea and pour effort into bringing that conviction to life.
If that conviction is borne out of a deep understanding of the user’s problem and if our follow through involves that magical combination of good decision making/judgment, taste, and systems thinking, it is likely we’ll see evidence backing up that judgment.
If we see evidence, we should invest further. If we don’t, we should stop investing.
The role of good leadership is to build conviction in novel approaches to solving problems early. You do that enough and you reap the benefits that come from leading your domain.
Bad leadership, on the other hand, seeks evidence without taking the time to build conviction in the right things.
I’ve written a lot about “Good Energy” in the past year. When I wrote about the book, I wrote about cleaning up my act and revisiting every aspect of my lifestyle – from diet to movement .
All of this came from conviction in her recommended approach.
Conviction is useful. But the sign of conviction in the right things is when we have evidence.
The first bit of evidence came from a close friend who shared that he’d gone from being pre-diabetic to normal in a matter of 3 months by making these lifestyle changes. That was great to hear and validating.
However, there was one wish I had.
Over the past 15 years, every time I’ve gone in for routine bloodwork, I’ve emerged with a key ratio looking off – the ratio of Triglycerides to HDL or High density Lipoprotein (commonly called good cholesterol).
My ratio has consistently hovered between 3-4. The optimal is 1-1.5 and 2 is considered normal. I’ve had rare moments (after a set of smaller lifestyle changes) when the ratio has been closer to 3. But it’s never sustained and typically hovers around 3.5.
I’ve been off on both of these numbers by quite a bit. The ideal HDL for men is in the 60-80 range (I barely touched 40) and the ideal Triglycerides number is 40-60 (I’ve typically hovered around 130).
Going into this set of lifestyle changes 8 months ago, I hoped I’d see an improvement in these numbers. But, admittedly, it felt like one of those half-hearted hopes where I didn’t have confidence in myself and expected to be disappointed.
I’m pleased to report that my latest numbers show a 63 mg/dL HDL and 43 mg/dL triglycerides. I’ve swung from “at risk” to optimal in one go – a ~6x improvement in that ratio.
4 reflections –
(1) I think the process of building confidence in ourselves is when we know we have the ability to follow through with action. I’ve gained confidence over the years that I’ll be able to follow through on what I say I’ll do. I just didn’t have any strategy to improve these specific metrics. And I’m grateful to Dr Casey Means for the strategy.
(2) Speaking of strategy, this is the biggest gripe I have with Dr Peter Attia’s Outlive. His immediate solution to this ratio being off was to recommend statins. For all his focus on medicine 3.0, it felt like a medicine 2.0 quick fix solution. Dr. Means’ approach of fixing lifestyle first resonated tremendously.
(3) I’ve written about the lifestyle changes I’ve made in a combination of other posts. But I’d like to share a summary in case you find it useful –
I’m not regimented about all of this. I’ve had to take breaks when traveling and definitely skip Saturdays. I have a sweet tooth – so I’ve binged on plenty of white chocolate and Indian sweets along the way. But I’ve attempted to be consistent more often than not in the past 6 months. I just didn’t know if it would all show up in the results.
(4) That brings me to the final note. I’ve felt better than ever since making these changes. Unless the blood work showed a worse situation, I’d have continued doing these anyway.
But it is always heartening when we keep getting evidence that good results do follow good process.
A collection of Canadian researchers published a seminal study following a set of 889 individuals after they underwent chemotherapy for colon cancer.
Over a 3 year period, half the participants received health education materials and half the participants underwent a structured exercise program with a coach. The coach met with patients every few weeks for three years, helping them establish and maintain an exercise regimen including walking, biking, kayaking, skiing, swimming, or running. They aimed for the equivalent of at least three 45- to 60-minute walks each week.
Eight years on, the intervention group saw a 28% reduction in cancer recurrence and 37% fewer deaths (study summary).
One of central tenets of Peter Attia’s book is that exercise is, by a distance, the most effective drug we know for a healthy life.
It is heartening to see randomized controlled trials that push for exercise-based interventions like this – and, of course, wonderful to see the results.
A few months before I got married, I spoke to a family friend. He’d been around the block and shared a reflection about marriage and careers.
He shared that the effect he’d seen was fascinating as it was binary more often than not.
After marriage, strong performers either became superstars or went through a severe regression in their performance.
In effect, 1+1 was either much greater than 2 or it was..0.
I’ve thought about that reflection over the years – in marriages and in teams.
Strong teams are generally a sum of their parts. The complementary skill sets come together to make them great.
And, in most other cases, you can’t help get the feeling that the team’s performance is less than the sum of its parts.
All in all, a useful rule of thumb. Teams/partnerships either work great… or not.
There’s rarely middle ground.
A Learning a Day 