Regrets of the Dying – Bronnie Ware
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance.
What's the Best Workout For Longevity?
“NEAT is actually what helps people manage their overall body composition the most,” Dr. Galpin says, saying that examples of this type of physical activity include pacing while on the phone, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, doing household chores, gardening, and playing with your kids or pets.
12 lessons to overcome whatever is holding you back
This week’s insights: 12 Lessons To Overcome Whatever Is Holding You Back, How to Avoid Family Conflicts Over Inheritance, and Why We’re Less Happy in a Better World.
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AI stocks aren't like the dot-com bubble. Here’s why
Today’s craze over generative artificial intelligence is different, Godes said. He now teaches at Johns Hopkins, and his students aren’t leaving for Silicon Valley any time soon. They’ve got a healthy skepticism of the emerging technology, he said. That’s just one reason why he sees excitement about AI as entirely unlike the early internet era.
Survivorship Bias
There's a huge difference between a team that asks, "What went wrong with the failed trials?" and a team that only asks, "How can we repeat this success case?" Failed trials reveal what we lack and what we need to fix. Successful ones show a few of many ways things can work well.
Family offices now rival hedge funds as a way for the ultra-rich to hoard their wealth
The richest families in the world are projected to see their wealth grow even more – ultimately reaching $9.5 trillion by 2030 – as single-family offices continue to grow and expand their assets, according to a new report from Deloitte.
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Wisdom is a Virtue, But How Do We Know if Someone Has It?
Our team explored who is considered wise in cultures with contrasting philosophical traditions. The results surprised us Imagine you’re facing a life-altering decision. You have been offered a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity abroad, but it means leaving behind your partner who can’t relocate. Torn between your career aspirations and your commitment to the relationship, you start wondering what the wisest way would be to make such a decision. Should you approach the dilemma with a cold mind and weigh all the pros and cons in an analytical and logical manner, or would it be wiser to tune into your feelings and make a decision in line with your heart? Moreover, which one of these ways to handle the dilemma would your friends and family perceive as wise?
How to Think About Risk with Howard Marks
Oaktree co-chairman Howard Marks explores the true meaning of risk in a new ten-part video course. He discusses the nature of risk, the relationship between risk and return, misconceptions about risk, and much more.
Thinking Set Free
We take it for granted that thinking helps us to understand the world and make good decisions. And to think is to reason. But there is a risk this is not the whole story. Studies into flow states where individuals are single mindedly focussed on a single task, without self reflection or reasoning, have identified that less deliberation rather than more leads to better performance.
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Why toilet paper keeps getting smaller and smaller
These days, a regular Charmin Ultra Soft roll, if you can find one, has 56 sheets. Even the roll they market as “Double” doesn’t have 170 sheets — it has 154. And the 1992 rolls are hardly the largest — the back of the package includes a note from parent company Procter & Gamble explaining these rolls have fewer sheets than a previous version.
How Will You Measure Your Life? By HBR
One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.
Brain-driven prosthesis marks scientific advance for people with amputations
It’s a scientific advance that allows for a smoother gait and enhanced ability to navigate obstacles.
“This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges. No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human’s nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm,” says Hugh Herr, a professor of media arts and sciences, co-director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT.
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Dr. Jim Loehr: Change the Stories You Tell Yourself
What if reaching the next level of success wasn't determined by another skill, degree, or course but by something that changed on the inside?
New anti-ageing therapy extends life of mice by 25%
Scientists have discovered that deactivating a protein called IL-11 can extend the healthy lifespan of mice by nearly 25%, raising the potential for similar benefits in humans.
The Folly of Certainty
Sometimes things go as people expected, and they conclude that they knew what was going to happen. And sometimes events diverge from people’s expectations, and they say they would have been right if only some unexpected event hadn’t transpired. But, in either case, the chance for the unexpected – and thus for forecasting error – was present. In the latter instance, the unexpected materialized, and in the former, it didn’t. But that doesn’t say anything about the likelihood of the unexpected taking place.
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Howard Morgan: Insights from an Uber Successful Tech and VC Legend
Howard Morgan’s inimitable career began with his early and prescient interest in computers. In fact, Howard has been on email for 51 years! He is currently the Chair and General Partner of B Capital. He is considered one of the pioneers of early-stage investing, having co-founded First Round Capital alongside Josh Kopelman, which was the first professional seed stage fund and the first institutional investor in Uber.
Prior to First Round, Howard helped found Idealab with Bill Gross, and served as President of Renaissance Technologies, which he co-founded with Jim Simons. Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time, and its mysterious and famous Medallion Fund is considered to be the most successful fund ever.
A.I. Revolution
Can we harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve the world’s most challenging problems without creating an uncontrollable force that ultimately destroys us? ChatGPT and other new A.I. tools can now answer complex questions, write essays, and generate realistic-looking images in a matter of seconds. They can even pass a lawyer’s bar exam. Should we celebrate? Or worry? Or both? Correspondent Miles O’Brien investigates how researchers are trying to transform the world using A.I., hunting for big solutions in fields from medicine to climate change.
AI can restore the middle-class jobs lost to automation
AI is indeed changing the labor market, see the flood of news articles on layoffs happening in part due to companies’ priorities shifting to AI. Now a new working paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor says that the shift presents a unique opportunity: AI could enable more workers to perform higher-stakes, decision-making tasks that are currently relegated to highly-educated workers such as doctors and lawyers.
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It was the summer after my sophomore year at New York University College of Arts and Sciences. The year was 1997, and I was looking for something to do over the summer. But it had to be something good–something that would make me stand out later on when I started applying for medical school. Back then, my entire life revolved around my goal to get into a top medical school, so everything I did was geared toward achieving that goal.
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“Everything That Moves Will Become Robotic”
Horsepower. Raw horsepower. After watching NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech at NVIDIA’s GTC conference, I couldn’t help but think about it.
While all of the GTC conferences have centered around artificial intelligence since 2015, this year stood out. It’s all about power this week — computing power… and having the “horses” to accelerate even faster.
Three things to remember in times like these
The key takeaway for me is that the economy is too good to expect a rapid cooling off anytime soon. The faster disinflationary fall we’d been enjoying since the middle of 2023 has now trampolined on us and the data is coming in warmer and warmer. When people are working, people are spending. Almost everyone is working. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
Ed Thorp: Survival of the Fittest Mind
Are you incentivized to chase deals and put money to work, or is there time to follow curiosity and investigate thoroughly? What are you optimizing for: short-term returns or making good decisions?
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Should you confront your worries or try to banish them?
If you have a distressing thought, shoving it out of your mind will only work for so long. It will camp out in the unconscious, biding its time until it can emerge again, often through physical sensations, behaviors, emotions or dreams.
This Investor Raised Billions by Making Complicated Ideas Simple
Want to build influence with great ideas and simple writing? Look no further than Howard Marks. Most smart people use big words and plastic jargon to reinforce the barrier between themselves and “the common folk.” Howard, on the other hand, breaks down this barrier, and that’s why his ideas are so influential.
What is a Family Office and Why Does it Matter? by Ron Diamond
There are roughly 15,000 Family Offices around the globe which currently control approximately $10 trillion in assets. In comparison, there is only $6.5 trillion globally in the entire hedge fund world. But even more important than the size Family Offices currently are, we are about to experience the largest transfer of wealth in history.
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Why you, personally, should want a larger human population
Resources are not static. Historically, as we run out of a resource (whale oil, elephant tusks, seabird guano), we transition to a new technology based on a more abundant resource—and there are basically no major examples of catastrophic resource shortages in the industrial age.
Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
Something’s changed in the past few decades. After the 1970s, American dynamism declined. Americans moved less from place to place. They stopped showing up at their churches and temples. In the 1990s, the sociologist Robert Putnam recognized that America’s social metabolism was slowing down.
Ancient Greek antilogic is the craft of suspending judgment
In Syracuse, 2,500 years ago, there was a famous teacher of rhetoric named Corax. This new discipline was in high demand: mastery of persuasive speaking, it was hoped, led to fame and wealth.
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Scientists Destroy Illusion That Coin Toss Flips Are 50–50
“We can be quite sure there is a bias in coin flips after this data set,” Bartoš says.
What happens to the brain during consciousness-ending meditation?
There’s a meditative state described in ancient Buddhist scriptures that is hard to imagine because it is not something – but nothing. Referred to as nirodha-samāpatti, it roughly translates as ‘the cessation of thought and feeling’, and it is the highest meditative state possible in Theravada Buddhism
This vibrating diet pill may trick the stomach into feeling full
Device cuts food consumption in pigs by 40%, but some experts say it’s unclear whether it will work for humans
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What Will Happen In 2024
As we enter 2024, the capital markets have found their footing and are moving higher. The Fed has taken interest rates as far as they want at this time and inflation has come down. It seems that a “soft landing” is likely. That is good news for the innovation economy because healthy capital markets are a necessary support system.
Ice baths boost sex drive
A group of 17 male and 8 female Czech Army soldiers who participated in 2 min freezing cold water immersion, followed by light exercise for rewarming, reported improvements in sexual satisfaction, reduction in waist size, and reduction in anxiety, compared to controls.
Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You
From social disruptions like economic recessions, pandemics, and new technologies to individual disruptions like getting married, career transitions, and becoming a parent, we undergo change and transformation—both good and bad—regularly. Change is not the exception, it’s the rule. Yet we endlessly fight it, often viewing it as a threat to our stability and sense of self.
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The Roman Empire Fallacy - by Frederik Gieschen
Have you ever looked at the US and thought 'man, this looks a lot like the late stage Roman Empire'? Powerful but divided. Rich but corrupt. Glamorous but dysfunctional. A source of marvelous technological achievements but unable to build things as it used to. Ruled by incompetent politicians, owned by a small elite, its masses trapped by unsustainable debt and distracting themselves with endless mind-numbing entertainment.
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel
Every investment plan under the sun is, at best, an informed speculation of what may happen in the future, based on a systematic extrapolation from the known past. Same as Ever reverses the process, inviting us to identify the many things that never, ever change. With his usual elan, Morgan Housel presents a master class on optimizing risk, seizing opportunity, and living your best life.
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What I Am Reading:
Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results
Rationality is wasted if you don't know when to use it. What I've learned from watching real people in action is that, just like the angry CEO, they're often unaware circumstances are thinking for them. It's as if we expect the inner voice in our head to say, "STOP! THIS IS A MOMENT WHEN YOU NEED TO THINK!" And because we don't know we should be thinking, we cede control to our impulses. In the space between stimulus and response, one of two things can happen. You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation. Or you can cede control and execute a default behavior.
Why a Failed Startup Might Be Good for Your Career After All
Go ahead and launch that venture. Even if it fails, the experience you gain will likely earn you a job that's more senior than those of your peers, says research by Paul Gompers.
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What I Am Reading:
The hottest new programming language? Biology
mRNA is just one example of a synthetic biology technology. As we speak, people around the world are bending biology to all sorts of precise, ambitious, and (at times) controversial ends. A quick list: resurrecting wooly mammoths, reversing disease, growing meat in a lab, editing genes, producing waste-free materials.
The Secret Tool of Elite Athletes for Achieving your Career Goals
The difference between those who succeed and those who fail in their goals is the transformation of identity. "The act of stepping into a new identity that you're unfamiliar with is a surprisingly effective brain shortcut to change. The human mind is wired to protect its identities, even in the face of irrefutable contradicting facts…
The case for reading all of your emails, according to Tim Cook
“I religiously start looking at customer notes every morning, starting around 5 am or so,” he says. It’s not uncommon for him to forward them to other Apple employees, the feedback having sparked an idea.
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What I Am Reading:
Scientists Reconstruct What You're Looking at by Enhancing Reflection in Your Eye
Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed an eerie technique that can reconstruct 3D images from the reflections in your eyes, by building on a neural network model called neural radiance fields (NeRF).
Astronomers detect largest cosmic explosion ever seen
The explosion is more than 10 times brighter than any recorded exploding star - known as a supernova.
The Impact of Stress on the Well-Being of Startup Founders
Startup Snapshot's insightful and provocative research sheds light on the big picture of founder mental health needs and solutions.
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What I Am Reading:
Octopus time
“We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?”
For when someone says “I’ve seen this before, it didn’t work”
“If you’re a founder you’ve probably heard someone say “oh, I’ve seen this idea before - it didn’t work” or “isn’t this just like that other thing that person/company X tried?”
As a founder, I heard this dozens of times. It’s likely to come from investors, but you hear it from other founders, potential employees, advisors, customers, even family members. Like it or not, pattern matching is strong.”
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For every successful business I’ve started, or investment I’ve made, there have been multiple failures: businesses that never took off, investments that went to zero, and times when I was super gung-ho about something, only to have it end up in my Bad Idea Hall of Fame. Want to know more? Let’s take an honest trip down memory lane.
The Kickoff
The first one that comes to mind takes me back to my college years, when I was about 20. I was still in school at the time, and really into kickboxing, which was just becoming popular, with studios popping up everywhere. One day, I had a lightbulb moment for how I could monetize the kickboxing trend.
I bought the domain name Kickboxing.net with the plan of building an online directory of kickboxing studios. To fill out the front end of the site, I put up a bunch of content around the sport, but that was the easy part. The more labor-intensive work was creating the software that would pull information from a database about different locations. During my limited free time, I programmed the whole thing, spending probably about four months on it.
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hat I Am Reading:
Planning Ahead Is the Key to Living With More Spontaneity
“It may seem counterintuitive, but spontaneity often can’t happen without a bit of advanced planning”
23 semi-controversial predictions for 2023
The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works
“To get what you want, deserve what you want. Trust, success, and admiration are earned.”
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A lot of people ask me why I wrote my first business book, NightLife Lessons. The answer is simple: it was mostly a bucket list item for me, and not about making money. Sure, I wanted to help myself by looking back and writing down what I’ve learned over the years, in the hopes of helping other startup entrepreneurs on their journeys. But for the most part, I just wanted to see if I could write a book…and then hold it in my hands. Below, I'll share a bit about the process of writing my book and what it was like for me.
Telling Stories
I’ve been funding and advising startup founders and entrepreneurs for almost a decade now. As part of that role, I often find myself telling stories from my own experiences building startups, to help founders not only deal with their current struggles, but also avoid pitfalls that might lie ahead of them.
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