Precision Nutrition studied 1000 clients over 12 months and found that being at least 50% consistent with workouts and healthy eating habits results in measurable differences.
Stephen Wolfram has published a fascinating long-read on his personal infrastructure. He details all the tech he uses in his everyday life and how he organises and categorises everything, most of which are processes which he has optimised over the last 30 years. It is inspiring how efficiently he organises everything, down to having labelled plastic envelopes of devices, tech and accessories for travelling, hotel stays, car hire trips etc.
One of Seth Godin's blog posts this week really hit home with me. Seth talks about how the emotion filled arguments on important issues between two sides rarely result in anything constructive. Seeing things from other peoples point of view is how you can work to change the narrative, the position or the issue. This works at all levels, from people to nations. This is how the momentous Good Friday Agreement was ratified by all sides. This is not how Brexit has been executed.
More platinum wisdom was delivered by Seth Godin in his blog this week when he talks about the perception of problems. If you are dealing with a deep water problem, like swimming in a deeper pool than normal, the effort needed to swim is the same as in a shallow pool. The same effort just a bigger landscape. However, if you usually surf 6 foot waves and try to surf 25 foot waves, a huge additional effort is needed in a similar landscape. Learning to tell the difference is important! :-)
A study from the University of Leeds says that there is a 66% chance of keeping temperature increase below a 1.5 degree increase if a fossil fuel phaseout begins immediately. The research assumes a lifespan for powerplants of 40 years, cars 15 years and planes 26 years. It also assumes a rapid end to beef and dairy consumption. If the phaseout doesn't being until 2030, the chances reduce to 33%.
If you are in need of some extra motivation this weekend, then look no further than Mr.Universe himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This motivation speech by Arnie is fantastic. Say what you want about him, but the man has succeeded, and failed, in bodybuilding, hollywood, politics and philanthropy at the highest levels.
Bill Gates has published a post on gatesnotes.com describing his work learnings for 2018. The interesting read highlights trends he noticed with Alzheimer's disease, Polio and the global energy landscape. Gates also ponders the future of gene-editing and dealing with global epidemics, as well as defining his focus topics for 2019, privacy and innovation, and technology in education.
Coglode are back with another great behavioural pattern called Reactance. This is the scenario where controlling people's sense of freedom can trigger an angry motivation to regain it. An example in commerce is an online shop to uses too many scarcity game dynamics to scare the user into purchasing because there are only "2 seats left at this price" and the "offer ends in 2 minutes 12 seconds". Reactance occurs when the user is so put off by this that they decline to purchase anything out of spite.
I'm working my way through past episodes of The Blindboy Podcast and this week I listened to his live interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. The episode starts with an emotional preamble where Blinboy describes how an incident while out running brought him face to face with the shortness of life. That story in itself would have been enough to go away with and ponder on, but what followed was an amazing live interview with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.
Here is an excellent, hard hitting post from Seth Godin about self-motivation. External coaching is all well and good, but at some point, the motivation gained from external coaching will need to be generated by self coaching.