Mark Hunter MBE (Olympic Rower): A story of true resilience
October 18, 2020
Reflections October 2020 – Week 4
October 26, 2020
Agency musings
Learn from the winners and the losers – avoid Survivorship Bias
It’s interesting how agency leaders most often seek the advice from people who succeeded, rather than those that failed. Why is that? And what is the potential danger? Read more
Inside Polymensa
Team Mintaka
We continued our “Time Management” theme with...
Last week our Team Mintaka had the opportunity to meet Olympic gold medalist rower - Mark Hunter MBE. He told us his extraordinary comeback story from being last in Athens 2004 - and against all odds winning gold in Beijing 2008. We also explored his perspective on time management. Here are some highlights from the session
Monthly HR Peer Perspective Calls
Join our pilot monthly HR sessions on Friday at 11am - 12pm.
The purpose of these calls is to bring together People/HR Directors of agencies (minimum £1M+ fee income) to debate challenges and come up with ideas to jump the hurdles.
We have 2 ‘free’ slots left for the pilot - register here if you are interested
Slack discussions catch up
Exploring new ways to write employee contracts
What multiples do agencies go for these days?
What are your plans for team Christmas parties this year?
What is your north star / vision statement
Love this colour wheel to map the team at Strategiq against their Insights Discovery profiles - thanks for sharing Andy!
The beautiful mind
How an hourglass can help you retain information
Well I used this first hand today, to reflect on the past week. Here’s the full article (also includes Time Management tips)
Why learning something new can be really hard sometimes?
This is an extract from the wonderful knowledge blog Farnam Street.
"The greatest enemy of learning is what you think you know. When you think you know something, learning something new means you might have to change your mind, so it’s easy to think there’s no room for new ideas. But not wanting to change your mind will keep you stuck in the same place. Overcoming our egos can be one of the big challenges of learning. Therefore, being willing to admit when you’re wrong and adjust your thinking is the thing that will help you learn the most. The first step to learning is recognizing your ignorance and deciding to do something about it."
The Five Big Personality Traits
I came across this answer on Quora while exploring definitions of complex concepts: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-complex-concepts
A complex concept is the idea that each person's way of achieving a sense of meaning is different depending on the personality traits that are inherent within themselves.
Openness to Experience: People that are high in this trait derive meaning from variety and by expressing their creativity.
Conscientiousness: People that are high in this trait derive meaning from achieving and excelling at fulfilling their roles and duties in society (i.e excelling as a friend, at their job, as a family member, etc).
Extraversion: People that are high in this trait derive meaning from connecting with others.
Agreeableness: People that are high in this trait derive their meaning from being in a relationship.
Neuroticism: People that are high in this trait derive their meaning from a sense of peace and security.
Quotes
“Nothing good lasts forever and nothing bad lasts forever.”
Forgot the source - eek
“You need to let go of trying to look smart, and focus instead on trying to be smart.”
Shane Parrish - Farnam Street
"Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market.”
Ed Seykota - Commodities Trader
Company spotlight
Pipe
It’s a way for ‘subscription model’ businesses to get paid an annual fee upfront, without forcing customers to pay annually. While investors benefit from the annual discount.
Veed
I find adding subtitles to a video such a painful job. Here’s a tool that will make it a lot easier.
Book reflections
The Art Of Learning
I am currently reading The Art Of Learning written by Josh Waitzkin. He tells his story of personal achievement and shares the principles of learning and performance that have helped him become a Chess Master and Tai Chi Chuan World Champion.
Highlights from the book so far:
Implicit theories of intelligence: Entity vs incremental
This refers to the belief in us whether or not we can achieve a level of intelligence
Entity intelligence believers will say: “I am good at English, but I am bad at Math.”
Incremental intelligence believers will say: “I am not good at math right now, but if I try harder I will eventually become good at it.”
“Like a hermit crab, when you outgrow your shell, you need to be vulnerable while you find a new shell.”
Investment in loss
Michael Jordan has made 25 game winning shots (only Kobe Bryant had more 26) in the NBA. But he also missed 26 game winning shots. Josh refers to this as an investment in loss. Making the conscious decision to risk putting yourself through a ‘loss’ - to understand what it feels like to improve from that position.
Learn numbers to leave numbers
What this means is to know the basics of what you are learning so well, you no longer consciously have to think about it and can advance (like walking or talking your native language). This is obvious - but always a good reminder when learning new things.
Random information (some useful, some useless)
Vesna Vulovic survived falling from a plane at 33,000 feet (10,000 metre) - It is a Guinness Book World Record and I take no responsibility for new world record attempts!
The Carolina Reaper chilli is the hottest on earth and delivers an average of 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
"To disappear into the ether" Ether in a spiritual sense is ‘emptiness’.
Deductive reasoning test: Wason Card Selection
I heard a rumour last week, that I had to check out. Taiwan - who have one of the lowest COVID deaths per person in the world - was using humour to squash rumours about COVID - watch the report on BBC Click
Conspiracy theory mapped out:
Thank you for reading.
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Be an infinite learner.
