Joy, Interval training, Slow compounding, Life lessons
Avthar's Weekly Wisdom #40 (01/31/2021)
Welcome to edition #40 of Avthar's Weekly Wisdom!
🔥 This newsletter is where I share practical wisdom about self-mastery, startups, health and happiness, all to help you live better. My goal is for you to discover one thing that can change your life, in a big or small way, every week.
Life-changing Links
Here's what I want to share with you this week:
🏆 On Self-Mastery —
47 Tips to Transcend Your Education: This week on the Learn with Avthar podcast, I interviewed venture capitalist, entrepreneur and creator, Bayode Okusanya. Inspired by Ray Dalio’s “Principles”, Bayo recently published a handbook of his life lessons aimed at his generation, Generation Z, “to help them overcome the generational curses that plagued those before us, so we can rise to this moment in history.”
The guidebook’s purpose is to “help the youth overcome the struggles of balancing their education and life, and also help anyone who is lost and in search of answers.”
Here are some of my favorite lessons from the guidebook, which I discussed in more detail during the (soon to be published) podcast:
Lesson 44: The secret is that there is no secret.
Lesson 41: View everyone around you as potential teammates and not competitors.
Lesson 33: If you haven’t found your passion yet, or your life’s purpose, then don’t stop searching until you do.
Lesson 14: You need to learn how to ignore the outside noise and follow your own internal compass.
Lesson 18: By simply observing the world, your thoughts, and your reactions to it, without internalizing everything negative that happens, you can begin to grow past your circumstances.
🚀 On Startups —
Chamath Palihapitiya on The Power of Slow Compounding: In a world obsessed with growing as fast as possible, Chamath gives us a sermon on the opposite: slow, methodical compounding.
...if you ask me, who's building the most important indelible company in the world, I think, it’s Jeff Bezos. Part of what he realized was the value of slow compounding. So here's my little theory about company value creation, the faster you build it, that is the half life, it will get destroyed in the same amount of time.
...amassing capital, to me is about finding a smart, useful solution to a very hard, practical problem. And being slow and methodical. Fast money returns can completely decay, long term thinking and sound judgment. And so I'm like, wow, I would really love to just compound at 15% a year. And the reason is, because if I can do that for 50 years, that's 250 billion dollars like some crazy number. So it’s like slow and steady against hard problems.
Chamath also talks about how we have to actively re-wire our brains not to be short term focused:
Start by turning off your social apps and giving your brain a break. Because then you will at least be a little bit more motivated to not be motivated by whatever everyone else thinks about you.
How does posting your waffles online relate to me starting a business and accumulating capital? This is wiring your brain for super fast feedback. It's the same brain you're using to build a company. [Social media apps] where you're spending hours a day are rewiring your psychology and physiology in a way that now you have to use to go and figure out how to be productive in the commercial world.
There's a reason why Steve Jobs was anti social media. I am telling you, I'm not on these apps. I'm not him by any stretch of the imagination. But I am proactively trying to rewire my brain chemistry to not be short term focused.
PS: Want more charismatic Chamath wisdom? Check out an interview with Chamath Palihapitiya from edition #38.
💪 On Health —
The One Minute Workout: Interval training workouts have been a staple of my at home exercise routine during the on-going pandemic. They’re time-efficient, high intensity and fun. Most of what I know about interval training I learned from “The One Minute Workout” by Martin Gibala. He is a professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University. His research on the physiological and health benefits of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has attracted immense scientific attention and worldwide media coverage.
He’ll definitely inspire you to add interval training to your workouts!
PS If you can’t get the book, check out Dr Gibala’s interview on the Tim Ferriss Show:
If you want time-efficient workouts, you have to push yourself.
...the harder you go, the more time-efficient and potent the workout’s fitness benefits.
🙏 On Happiness —
The Book of Joy: Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question. That’s the backdrop for this literary documentary of a book by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The backstory for the book is as follows: In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness’s eightieth birthday and to create what they hoped would be a gift for others (the book). They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question:
How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering?
“The Book of Joy” also contains a reader’s guide at the end, with selected quotes and reflection questions to help you engage with the book’s profound questions.
What the Dalai Lama and I are offering,” the Archbishop added, “is a way of handling your worries: thinking about others. You can think about others who are in a similar situation or perhaps even in a worse situation, but who have survived, even thrived. It does help quite a lot to see yourself as part of a greater whole.”
Once again, the path of joy was connection and the path of sorrow was separation. When we see others as separate, they become a threat. When we see others as part of us, as connected, as interdependent, then there is no challenge we cannot face—together.”
- The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
👨🏽💻 What I'm up to these days:
Starting February 1st 2021, I’ll be taking Seth Godin’s “Podcasting Workshop”, a 7 week long workshop focused on “finding a generous, authentic voice that's worth listening to”. I’m excited to further improve my podcasting, interviewing and question asking skills and deliver more authentic creations to everyone reading this!
🙏 Thank you again for reading and for your support! I wish you a week of happiness, success and peace!
Avthar
🐦 @avthars
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