The RNDM #07

Play Punch Buggy

Welcome to Issue #07 of The RNDM

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This week:

  • Chatter by Ethan Kross

  • Inversion - The Mental Model That Will Change Your Life

  • QR Magic

  • The Science of Longevity

  • Play Punch Buggy

Chatter by Ethan Kross

The little voice inside your head can drive you to greatness or make your life hell. Ethan Kross, acclaimed Psychologist and author of Chatter, has experienced how the negativity of the voice in your head can affect you mental and physical health. He suffered from anxiety and set out to research how we can learn to control the voice in our head to allow us to be happier, healthier and more productive. Kross does a great job of explaining how we can use psychological techniques, like self-distancing to improve our confidence and perform better.

The mind is flexible, if we know how to bend it. If you have a fever, you can take something to bring it down. Likewise, our mind has a psychological immune system: We can use our thoughts to change our thoughts—by adding distance.

The book is available to order from Amazon

Inversion - The Mental Model That Will Change Your Life

What could go wrong?

We often think of this as a negative question.

What if you could harness this way of thinking positively?

Use it to improve your thinking, improve your chances of success and achieve your goals.

Inversion is a mental model that utilises this way of thinking. It involves trying to solve a problem or approach something from an opposite viewpoint.

Humans are lazy. Sometimes working the conventional way to solve a problem can be complicated and hard.

As Charlie Munger, the successful investor, says

"Avoiding stupidity is easier than achieving brilliance".

Figuring out what stumbling blocks you might come across and working only on avoiding those can be an easier path to success. It may sound simplistic, but the shift in perspective opens your mind to factors you may have otherwise been blind to. Planning to avoid failure makes starting easier by reducing the complexity. You start by just focusing on doing the opposite of what would lead to failure and build momentum and consistency.

Inversion can be used to improve your productivity. Instead of focusing on what could make you productive, try to think of what could hinder your productivity and then aim to not let that impact you. For example, if you know your phone will distract you, put it on silent or if you're like me, use your laziness against yourself and put it out of reach.

A great example of the use of inversion is the Premortem planning tool. It was created by Gary Klein to help teams make better decisions. At the start of a project you split your team in to two groups. One group imagines it is one year later and imagine the decision led to a massive failure. They then note everything that could have gone wrong to make it a failure. The other group does the opposite. They imagine the decision was a great success and list all the things that went right.

The benefits of this technique are:

1. Helps you to overcome blindspots

2. Allows you to bridge short term and long term thinking

3. Dampens excessive optimism and allows you to be more real on the outcomes

4. Allows members of the group to voice concerns or issues with the decision without fear of punishment for their negativity.

Now inversion isn't limited to just productivity. It can be used to address your fears. Tim Ferris, the host of The Tim Ferris Show podcast, has shown how he used inversion to tackle his fears through fear setting. It involves addressing your fears logically and figuring out how you would tackle them. Check out his Ted talk below on Fear Setting to learn more about this.

Once you understand the power of inversion and apply it to your life, it can be a game changer.

If you want to learn more about inversion and applying it to your productivity, achieving goals and your life in general, then I suggest checking out the articles below by James Clear and Shane Parish.

Inversion: The Crucial Thinking Skill Nobody Ever Taught You

Inversion and The Power of Avoiding Stupidity

The Science of Longevity

Rich Roll’s interview with Dr Peter Attia is an absorbing lesson on the science of longevity. The small life changes you can make which can compound to long term health benefits are definitely worth listening for and implementing into your life. I highly recommend listening to this podcast episode. You won’t be disappointed!

 Check out this short clip to get a taster and check out the full podcast here

QR Magic Explained

Ever wonder how QR codes work?

This Twitter thread does a great breakdown of what makes the magic happen when you scan a QR code. Definitely thought-provoking!

Play Punch Buggy

With so much information in the world today it's easy to get overwhelmed and lost in a plethora of ideas and what you want to focus on. One novel way to get over this is to focus on one core idea and let that drive your goals. While some may think, negatively, that if you only have a hammer then you'll only see nails, in some cases this can be a gift rather than a curse.

Many of you, as I did and still do, will have have played the game "Punch Buggy", where you try to spot a yellow car and if you do you punch the person next to you in the arm. What you would have noticed when playing this game is that you, almost without realising, begin to notice more and more yellow cars than you would have generally noticed if you weren't playing the game. This same idea applies when focusing on one core idea from which others stem.

A successful and well known example of a person who has practiced this with some positive returns is Richard Barton. Richard focussed on one idea, "Power to the people". With this core idea Barton founded Expedia, Zillow and Glassdoor. Richard's focus on bringing the power of Information to the people underpinned all three of these successful companies. By removing the middle man Barton brought important data to consumers in a useful way so that they could make better decisions on travel (Expedia), real estate (Zillow) and jobs (Glassdoor). Prior to such platforms existing the data and information behind these industries was largely opaque.

Richard made generally hidden, obscure or not easily accessible information related to travel, property and jobs available to the masses in a user friendly and useful manner so that they could decide if that company they were interviewing for was a good fit for them for example. He had almost exactly the same motivation for Expedia and Zillow, opening opportunities to users to be able to search travel, hotel and properties data and get useful information to help them make decisions.

With that motivation in mind, go find your idea, commit to it and run with it. You may just fine your "why" and this could be the start of so many interpretation and realisations of your core idea.

For a more in depth look at this topic make sure you check out David Perrels great video on it here:

Until next time.

Kash.

That’s all for this week. We hope you enjoyed reading.

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