#8: Don’t Force Anything

Limits and death, Wu-Wei, breathing, tombstone exercise, and product team structure.

Mar 03, 2023

👋 Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Pursuit. I spend over 10 hours each week learning about building great products and living fulfilling lives. I created "Pursuit" to share these discoveries with a larger community and connect with others who share similar interests.

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This week’s discovery:

⛰️ The importance of limits- #death
🧘🏼‍♂️ What is the wisdom of wu-wei? - #zen
🌬️ How to Breathe Correctly for Optimal Health, Mood, Learning & Performance - #health
🪦 The Tombstone Exercise - #death
👥 4 Effective Product Team Structures for 2023 #product
⭐ A tool and music tracks…

The importance of limits

According to philosopher Mark Freeman, death is necessary for a fulfilling life. Freeman argues that limits, obstacles, and mortality give life meaning, purpose, and urgency. Without them, we would not improve and thrive. Freeman cites an experiment where mice provided with perfect conditions suffered and died, whereas mice with obstacles and competition for resources did well. This supports the idea that too much freedom can lead to a lack of success.

🎧 4-min

What is the wisdom of wu-wei?

The wisdom of wu-wei is based on knowledge of the tides and drift of things, understanding when to use action and when to be passive, and recognizing that there is a time for action when it is necessary. It is also the art of sailing rather than the art of rowing, and it involves suspending one's ideas and opinions in order to observe the world as it truly is without preconceived notions.

The man of superior virtue [conscious of] his virtue. and in this way he really possesses virtue. The man of inferior virtue never loses [sight of] his virtue and in this way he loses his virtue.

📺 10-min

How to Breathe Correctly for Optimal Health, Mood, Learning & Performance

This Huberman episode is seriously life-saving! I couldn't cut the summaries any shorter, so make sure you find time to listen to the whole thing. But if you're in a rush, no worries, I’ve picked the best snippets for you.

How to breathe to reduce stress

Huberman explains the optimal breathing technique for reducing stress and improving health, mood, learning, and performance. The technique involves inhaling twice through the nose and then exhaling slowly through the mouth. This optimally balances oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body. We all need to become nasal breathers! 🎧 4-min

Sleep Apnea increases the chance of stroke

Sleep apnea, when people under-breathe during sleep, can lead to hypoxia, which is when there is less oxygen in the body than is necessary. This can lead to cardiovascular events, sexual dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, and accelerate age-related cognitive decline. Excessive daytime sleepiness and snoring are signs of sleep apnea, and people with excess weight are more prone to experiencing it. 🎧 4-min

How to measure your carbon dioxide tolerance

To measure your carbon dioxide tolerance, inhale deeply through your nose and exhale slowly through your nose until your lungs are empty. If it takes 20 seconds or less, you have low carbon dioxide tolerance, 25-45 seconds indicates moderate tolerance (mine was around 35 seconds 😊), and 50 seconds or longer indicates high tolerance. Improving your carbon dioxide tolerance can be achieved through practices such as box breathing, cyclic sighing, and cyclic hyperventilation, which have been shown to reduce stress and improve sleep and mood. 🎧 4-min

Meditation or breathwork?

Studies found that deliberate breathwork practices done for five minutes per day over a month led to greater reductions in stress than a five-minute daily meditation practice. Three types of breathwork were explored, and cyclic sighing was found to be the most effective for stress reduction, sleep, and mood improvement. 🎧 4-min

The Tombstone Exercise

This article discusses the tombstone exercise from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a way to awaken to our unlived life. The exercise involves writing an ideal epitaph that represents your values and a feared epitaph that summarizes what your life and behavior has been about. By exploring the gap between these two epitaphs, you can shed light on your unlived life and make intentional choices about how you want to live. The article provides examples of ideal epitaphs and suggests that if an epitaph starts to feel like a rigid standard, it may be time to explore new words that feel more alive to you.

📖 9-min

4 Effective Product Team Structures for 2023

Figuring out the most effective team structure for product teams can be a daunting task. It depends on the stage and maturity of the company, along with its business metrics. The Product Organization Matrix can help product leaders make the necessary trade-offs and explicit decisions to build an effective product team structure. There are four possible product team structures: Outcome Owner, Outcome Facilitator, Feature Development Owner, and Feature Development Facilitator. The right structure for a product team should reduce uncertainty about the role of the product manager and match the team's strategy.

📖 8-min

Top Random Picks of the Week

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