The Master of Learning

Avthar's Weekly Wisdom #39 (01/24/2021)

Jan 24, 2021

Welcome to edition #39 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 — (and new from Avthar)

The Master of Learning: Nic Voge is the person I call the most for learning advice. I had the pleasure of working under Nic as a learning coach at Princeton University. He’s one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever met when it comes to learning and education in high performance, high intensity environments.

Here’s what we talk about during the podcast:

(2:37) How this learning and teaching expert found his strengths
(8:29) What’s it like helping students at America’s best university?
(17:44) Textbooks aren’t designed for students
(23:31) Why “transfer” is the most value skill to learn
(28:58) Learning coach vs tutor, Collaborative strategizing
(40:48) Self worth theory and life beyond grades
(47:58) How college changes your self image
(51:51): Procrastination and Identity
(1:00:00) Motivation Stacking
(1:07:38) Can Extrinsic and Intrinsic rewards Coexist?
(1:11:18) Quickfire questions
(1:20:05) Success is an internal experience
(1:22:20) Why is college so hard
(1:47:03) Closing gratitude and get in touch with Nic Voge

🎧 You can listen to the full audio on:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | online.
📺 And for the first time, the full video podcast is available on Youtube!

Please subscribe to my Youtube channel while you’re at it. I’ll be posting more full episodes, podcast clips and special videos there for you to learn from and enjoy!

🚀 On Startups —

Justin Kan @justinkan

I just gave a talk to the W2021 YC batch. It's my favorite startup audience to talk to. Here are some of the highlights:

Twitch co-founder’s 21 pieces of advice to early stage founders: Justin Kan is the cofounder of the live-streaming platform Twitch, which was acquired by Amazon for $970 million in 2014. He was previously a partner at Y-Combinator, the world’s most prestigious startup accelerator, and founder of Atrium, a law-tech company.

In this tweet storm he shares how to measure startup success and lessons from his success with Twitch and failure with Atrium when it comes to product-market fit.

💪 On Health —

Brain Networks and Energy Expenditure: In keeping with my theme of rhythms, cycles and the neurobiology of living well, this podcast goes into the role that circadian rhythms play in energy expenditure and how brain networks affect this process.

It’s valuable information around how to align activities in your day with the brain’s energy expenditure rhythm -- for example, aligning important work with peak energy periods, exercising during the day vs at night, eating protein during the evenings rather than in the morning.

🙏 On Happiness —

Here’s a except from “Direct Truth” by Kapil Gupta that forever changed the way I think about anger and ego:

(Q = question asker, A = answerer)

Q: Why do I get angry when I am insulted?
A: Because you entertain the verity of the insult.
A: If someone calls you a bird, would you become angry?
Q: No.
A: Why not?
Q: Because being called a bird is not an insult.
A: Very well. If someone were to call you a bird that was too stupid to flap its wings, would this make you angry?
Q: No.
A: Why not?
Q: Because it isn’t at all true.
A: Yet when you are called stupid, it makes you angry. Because something within you entertains the possibility that you might, in fact, be (stupid). Then something else within you grows irritated by the idea that you might be. This internal conflict manifests itself as anger.
Q: I see. So, if not a single iota of a belief about being stupid existed within me, then anger would not arise.
A: That is correct.

It really brings home the truth that all conflict is self-conflict.

“Direct Truth” is one of my essential reads for 2021.

👨🏽‍💻 What I'm up to these days:

I’ve been pondering the idea of “Service via Mastery”. It’s the idea that you will have your biggest positive impact on humanity if you focus on developing mastery and becoming world class in your areas of strength. Service rings connotations of doing good in the world, mastery is striving for excellence and discovering what you uniquely bring to the table. Combining the two is authentic self expression that leads to greater good in the long run.

This week on Learn with Avthar, I’ll be interviewing venture capitalist Bayo Okyusana. In a few weeks, I’ll be talking with Rhodes Scholar Jordan Thomas. Send over any questions you’d like me to ask them!

🙏 Thank you again for reading and for your support! Wishing you a week of happiness, success and peace!

Avthar

🐦 @avthars

🌐 avthar.com

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