Better Human - Jan 16, 2020
36 hours of driving in 3 days, Clarity, What your memory is not
Fellow Human,
I LOL at the things I do sometimes.
I drove 18 hours from Texas to Clearwater Florida this past Tuesday.
My theory was I could speed up my recovery by getting out of Texas and removing cedar from my environment.
So the first day I get there I have a telemedicine appointment with an allergist and she gives me a steroid. She tried to give me an antibiotic but I told her no. (Most doctors don’t get this, so I told her I don’t want to destroy my gut bacteria.)
She thinks I have a sinus infection which was likely a lingering issue from whatever I came down with the week before.
So I do my standard work-from-a-coffee-shop thing and then head back to the beach house I’m staying at with a friend.
It’s rainy, cold, and I feel out of place. I don’t have my home setup and routine.
If I’m going to feel not great, why don’t I just stay home?
So I contemplate driving back home the next day.
And I did.
Tuesday: 18-hour straight drive to Florida
Wednesday: Hang out in FL
Thursday: 18-hour straight drive back to Texas
It’s ridiculous, but I’m not a great traveler. I think too hard and get impatient when I break my routine. It’s something I’m working on.
The thing is, I don’t consider the trip a failure.
I was able to get a lot of thinking done, I read a few books and listened to like 40 podcasts. I also got some brainstorming in with a good friend I haven’t seen in years.
-Colin
“You learn to swim by jumping into the water and swimming, not by sitting in a classroom studying aqua-dynamic theory.”
-Jed McKenna
Something I Improved This Week
Clarity
I’ve made some decisions about what I want to do next.
I'm starting a small investment fund focused on buying apps and saas companies and other cash-flowing assets. But instead of going all-in right now, I decided to wait until a couple of other things are done.
I’m also currently building the Better Human school.
I don’t know my launch strategy just yet, or how fast I want to kick this off. So I’m taking my time. Making the decision to take my time has removed the pressure to feel like I need to do something. Sometimes that’s what we need to do: decide to take our time rather than create false anxiety around what we think we should be doing.
Something I Enjoyed This Week
Writing my first Tweetstorm: The Actual Human Diet - Worth a read for principles of the natural human diet.
I like the idea of writing these permanent posts that I can send people to in the future.
I don’t like the idea of it being on Twitter, but it is the current winner in the micro-blogging space.
My strategy for using Twitter is to not pay attention to mentions so I don’t get pulled into pointless discussions and to follow only big thinkers rather than anything mainstream or current affairs focused.
Something I've Been Thinking About
How to ask more questions and make fewer statements.
From How To Win Friends and Influence People:
His method? Did he tell people they were wrong? Oh, no, not Socrates. He was far too adroit for that. His whole technique, now called the “Socratic method,” was based upon getting a “yes, yes” response. He asked questions with which his opponent would have to agree. He kept on winning one admission after another until he had an armful of yeses. He kept on asking questions until finally, almost without realizing it, his opponents found themselves embracing a conclusion they would have bitterly denied a few minutes previously.
We must accept the reality that most of the things we say are not accepted/understood by our audience.
We feel good when we make statements. We feel like we made our point and the matter is settled.
As Geroge Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.
MOST PEOPLE DO NOT ABSORB WHAT WE SAY.
And the rest of the time, they absorb only bits and pieces while adding their own bias.
The better way is by asking questions.
When you get your listener to say then things you want him or her to accept, you actually have a chance they will.
Ask more questions and make fewer statements and you’ll be more persuasive and have more successful communication.
Don’t fall for the trap of talking. Talking feels good but it’s ineffective.
Something Worth Listening to
A Tweetstorm by Naval and the podcast discussing it. 2.5 hours of pure gold.
I’ve listened to this 3 times now.
Something Worth Knowing
Your memory is not a hard drive
Research shows that our memories are updated every single time we recall them based on our current mental state.
Meaning your memories right now of a past event is different than your memories of the same event 6 months ago or 1 year ago, etc.
Be skeptical of your memories.
A Big Idea
The Success Formula
Action -> Feedback -> Action -> Feedback……
If you uploaded every book ever written into your brain, would you wake up tomorrow and become successful?
You won’t.
You’ll have a massive advantage, sure, but if you don’t get out in the real world and take actions and learn from those actions, you won’t get results.
Most people get stuck in the information accumulation phase—they believe the next book, article, podcast, or course will be the final bit of information they need to finally figure out how to be successful.
So they keep acquiring information in lieu of taking action.
That is an illusion.
Get out there and do things. Then learn from that doing. Then iterate. Then keep repeating this process.
As long as you keep going, you’ll manufacture success.
Podcasts
It was an honor to have Joel on the podcast.
Talking Corrupt Corp with Brian Sanders of Sapien.org
This was recorded earlier this year when I was into current events. This show is pure entertainment. I have nothing more to say about any of it.
YouTube
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Resouces
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My new book is only $2.99 in the Kindle shop: 50 Tips For Real Food
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Who am I again? I’m a CEO, Investor, Entrepreneur, Father, Podcaster, Thinker, Obsessed with Building Better Humans. Bio page
Thank you for reading… it means a lot to me…
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