#13: Practice vs. Ritual
#intention #feedback #life #health #conflict #AI
đ Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Pursuit. In a world where we are drowning in information but starving for wisdom, I spend over 10 hours each week learning about living a fulfilling life, productivity, and building great products. I feel grateful to bring the highlights of my findings to you, saving you time in your search for wisdom. So go ahead, give it a try, and subscribe now if you havenât already.
This weekâs discovery:
âšÂ Practice vs. Ritual #intention
đđŒÂ How to Ask for Feedback Effectively #feedback
đ«Â 40 Lessons From 30 Years - #life
đ„Â Is There Evidence That Anticipation Helps Digestive Functions? - #health
đ Â The Rubber Band Theory: Navigating Organizational Conflict - #conflict
â A quote, ChatGPT, and music tracksâŠ
âšÂ Practice vs. Ritual
A practice is simply something you do to achieve a desired outcome, but a ritual is an offering of your attention and time to something beyond yourself. Take a walk in nature, for example. You could approach it as a disciplined practice, aiming to get your steps in and improve your physical health. Or, you could approach it as a devotional ritual, allowing the woods to invite you into something deeper and more meaningful. The choice is yours. Remember, it's not just about what you do, but how you do it. So, choose to approach your everyday routines and activities with devotion and intention, and watch as your life becomes more vibrant and alive.
đ§Â 6-min
đđŒÂ How to Ask for Feedback Effectively
If you want to get better at receiving feedback, start by asking the right question. Instead of asking if someone has feedback for you, ask what you can do or stop doing to make it easier to work with you. Embrace the discomfort that comes with hearing honest feedback, and listen with the intent to understand rather than to respond. When you receive feedback, reward the candor by fixing the problem and asking the person if you overcorrected or undercorrected. If you disagree with the feedback, find the 5 or 10% that you can agree with and give voice to that. Then, have a respectful disagreement and remember to listen, challenge, and commit.
đ§Â 4-min
đ«Â 40 Lessons From 30 Years
Couldnât make this one shortâŠ
Itâs never the right time. Any time you catch yourself saying âoh itâll be a better time later,â youâre probably just scared. Or unclear on what to do. There is never a right time for the big things in life: having kids, changing jobs, breaking up, getting engaged, married, moving in together. And no itâs never an amount of money, either. Your conception that itâs too early is just your fear, and once you dive in youâll figure it out. Old people tend to regret the things they didnât do, or didnât do earlier. Not the things they did.
You have more time to build a career than a family. You can complete great work well into your 80s and 90s. If you want to know your grandkids as adults, you only have until your mid 30s to start a family. Every year you spend waiting is another year you lose with your future family.
Money is a tool for freedom. The best reason to accumulate wealth is to buy yourself freedom from anything you donât want to do, and the freedom to do the things you do want to do. Money is not an end in itself. If you sit on it and never use it, youâve wasted your life.
Trust your negative gut, not your positive gut. If you have a great feeling about something, you might just be excited or gullible or not thinking it through, so take your time. But if you have a bad feeling about something, youâre almost certainly right about it.
đ 7-min
đ„Â Is There Evidence That Anticipation Helps Digestive Functions?
If you want to optimize your digestion, it's important to be consistent with your eating schedule. Our bodies have an anticipatory signal that helps us prepare for meals, so switching up meal times can throw off our digestive system. In fact, eating healthy food at the wrong time can be just as harmful as eating junk food. Additionally, our digestive system has natural rhythms that slow down at night, so eating late can lead to poor digestion and even a "food hangover" the next morning. To avoid these issues, stick to a consistent eating schedule and try to eat earlier in the evening to give your body time to properly digest your food. Remember, consistency is key when it comes to optimizing your health and well-being.
đ§Â 4-min
đ Â The Rubber Band Theory: Navigating Organizational Conflict
Approaching conflict with the mindset that it will bring ideas, perspectives, and people together, including strengthening relationships, is very powerful. It reframes conflict not as a problem with one solution but as an opportunity to generate new solutions that meet the needs or criteria of multiple people.
Hereâs how you can reduce and redirect tension during conflict:
Understand perspectives and name assumptions
I might be missing something. Can you help me understand how you arrived at this conclusion?
Identify and explicitly name the source(s) of conflict
Whatâs most important to you about this decision?
Generate all possible outcomes
What do you see as the best possible outcome?
(Re)Establish a shared external goal you both agree on
Whatâs the big goal that we both agree on?
Clarify the criteria for how youâll make a short-term resolution
What information might we be missing that would help each of us move forward?
Actually commit to the decision
đ 13-min
â A quote, ChatGPT, and music tracksâŠ
I think it was George Saunders who wrote stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more. We only start to make real relationships when we stop hiding, when we open up
ChatGPT Plugins: This video is mind-blowing. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has the potential to become the dominant attention grabber on the internet. If they get the business model right, they could become a significant threat to Google and Meta. If you want to geek out further, read this long essay (28-min read).
đ§Â Youâll find mostly Ethnotronica, Organic House, World, and Organic Electronic here:
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Gems!