SD#59: Habits, happiness and GPT-3
March 26, 2023
Welcome to the 59 edition of Seven Dawns, a weekly newsletter by me, Tomas Ausra, with a focus on getting better every day. A very warm welcome to the new subscribers who joined since last week. I’m glad you’re here.
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Hi friends,
Today’s newsletter delves into many topics. The recent craze about GPT-3 has so far fascinated me but one topic I didn’t expect to see it at – journaling. It makes sense when you think about it, right? If we’re speaking to an intelligent robot for search results, why can it not help us better understand our emotions? Not only that, it can take on various forms whether it’s Jungian ideas or a modern counsellor. If you’ve been struggling to get into journaling just like me, perhaps this will be a guided gateway that will open up many doors.
đ Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Productivity) When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do The Two-Minute Rule states âWhen you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.â Youâll find that nearly any habit can be scaled down into a two-minute version: âRead before bed each nightâ becomes âRead one page.â âDo thirty minutes of yogaâ becomes âTake out my yoga mat.â âRun three milesâ becomes âTie my running shoes.â The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start. Anyone can meditate for one minute, read one page, or put one item of clothing away. This is a powerful strategy because once youâve started doing the right thing, it is much easier to continue doing it. A new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. What you want is a âgateway habitâ that naturally leads you down a more productive path. You can usually figure out the gateway habits that will lead to your desired outcome by mapping out your goals on a scale from âvery easyâ to âvery hard.â For instance, running a marathon is very hard. Running a 5K is hard. Walking ten thousand steps is moderately difficult. Walking for ten minutes is easy. And putting on your running shoes is very easy. Your goal might be to run a marathon, but your gateway habit is to put on your running shoes. Thatâs how you follow the Two-Minute Rule. đ James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) |
2. (Psychology) If you know how to use it correctly and want to use it for this purpose, GPT-3 is journaling on steroids Journaling is already an effective personal development practice. It can help you get your thoughts out of your head, rendering them less scary. It shows you patterns in your thinking, which increases your self-awareness and makes it easier for you to change. But journaling has a few problems. For one, itâs sometimes hard to sit down and do it. It can be difficult to stare at a blank page and know what to write. For another, sometimes it feels a little sillyâis summarising my day really worth something? Journaling in GPT-3 feels more like a conversation, so you donât have to stare at a blank page or feel silly because you donât know what to say. The way it reacts to you depends on what you say to it, so itâs much less likely to get stale or old. (Sometimes it does repeat itself, which is annoying but I think long-term solvable.) It can summarise things youâve said to it in a new language that helps you look at yourself in a different light and reframe situations more effectively. In this way, GPT-3 is a mashup of journaling and more involved forms of support like talking to a friend. It becomes a guide through your mindâone that shows unconditional positive regard and acceptance for whatever youâre feeling. It asks thoughtful questions and doesnât judge. Itâs around 24/7, it never gets tired or sick, and itâs not very expensive. đ Every |
3. (Marketing) The single most effective way to improve corporate profitability is not to increase unit sales or cut costs. It is to raise prices. Even a single percentage point bestows dramatic fiscal benefits The world of business is fixated on top-line revenues. Most managers mistakenly believe this figure to be the âlifebloodâ of their business. And yet, it is clearly no such thing. Revenue is a distracting means to a much more valuable end. Just look at sales promotions. If you think the purpose of marketing is to generate revenues, you cannot do enough promotional activity and discounting. But if you relish the higher focus on profit, youâd run as few sales promotions as possible because, while they may drive demand, they eviscerate immediate and longer-term profits. Those who are more revenue-minded scratch their heads and worry about losing customers, or the declining unit sales that might occur if we put prices up. Both are likely consequences of price increases, but so are higher profits. And research has confirmed that, in most cases of incorrect price setting, most marketers err on the volume side of the equation at the expense of value. They sell more stuff but make less money. đ Marketing Week |
4. (Investing) What worked in the past 20 years might not work for the next As always, the below is not investment advice. David Swensen is the famous CIO who ran the Yale endowment from 1985 until he died in 2021. His big innovation was that long-term funds, like college endowments, should stay away from low-return asset classes like fixed income and commodities and allocate heavily to equity-related asset classes, especially private equity. Over time equities should outperform bonds and are better at protecting against inflation. Later in 1990 when Swensen was CIO he shifted the Yale portfolio from a traditional allocation of 65% domestic stocks and bonds to just 10% with the rest in PE, VC, natural resources and international equities. The defining move though was the outsized allocation to private equity and venture capital. That is the allocation which made Swensen famous and why most colleges follow his approach. The problem with the Swensen approach is that what was edgy and innovative 30 years ago has become crowded and consensus. Everyone is copying the private equity and VC overweight, which has created record inflows into the private equity asset class. Hartnett has this view the inflation paradigm has changed from deflation to inflation and potentially everyone is invested in the wrong assets. To perform in the next ten years you need to sell what worked (Tech, PE, VC, Growth) and buy what didnât (International, EM, Commodities, Gold, Value). The good thing is if this switch to international and EM public equities is correct the trade will work for years. It will take the mega funds overallocated to private equity years to get out of their positions and years for the board of directors to think about changing the allocation targets. So after 5 years of EM and International outperforming there will still be another 5 years of outperformance still to go as Yale and Stanford have finally disposed of their money-losing fintechs and are ready to buy. đ Your Weekend Reading |
5. (Philosophy) Do less, better Matthew McConaughey in the Daily Stoic podcast said he shut down his production company and his music label because he was making Bâs in five things, but he wanted to make Aâs in three things. Those three things: his family, his foundation, and his acting career. Marcus Aurelius would say that doing less âbrings a double satisfaction.â You figure out whatâs really essential and you do those things better. âIf you seek tranquillity,â he said, âdo less.â And then he follows the note to himself with some clarification. Not nothing, less. Do only whatâs essential. âWhich brings a double satisfaction,â he writes âto do less, better.â So much of what we think we must do, so much of what we end up doing is not essential. We do it out of habit. We do it out of guilt. We do it out of laziness or we do it out of greedy ambition. And then we wonder why our performance suffers. We wonder why our heart isnât really in it. đ The Daily Stoic |
6. (Marketing) When your buyers are inundated with copycat marketing campaigns, you have to stand out. Use pattern interrupts to stop buyers in their tracks and make them notice your brand Perception is relative. We donât see things as they are but how they compare to others things in the same environment. When something breaks the pattern of whatâs expected, we pay attention. We like the familiar. It makes our lives easier by taking less mental energy. Itâs the reason we prefer to take the same route to work every day, shop at the same grocery store, order takeout from the same restaurants. But, this familiarity can get interrupted by an unexpected stimulus (like a hilarious meme). When youâre looking through baby pics, boring business advice, and generally âmehâ content online, youâre in a pattern of scrolling. And when a pooping unicorn suddenly appears on your screen, it breaks the pattern. You freeze for 1/25th of a second trying to figure out what is happening. But if your ad blends into the organic feedârather than breaking the patternâpeople may also scroll right by it. Buyers need a Pattern Interrupt to notice your content. When your buyers are inundated with copycat marketing campaigns, you have to stand out. Use pattern interrupts to stop buyers in their tracks and make them notice your brand. When done right, a pattern interrupt can make people fall in love with your brandâeven if itâs a poop-y product. đ Customer Camp |
7. (Society) Agriculture, logging and forestry have the highest levels of self-reported happiness and lowest levels of self-reported stress of any major industry category Envy the lumberjacks, for they perform the happiest, most meaningful work on earth. Or at least they think they do. Farmers, too. Agriculture, logging and forestry have the highest levels of self-reported happiness â and lowest levels of self-reported stress â of any major industry category, according to our analysis of thousands of time journals from the Bureau of Labor Statisticsâ American Time Use Survey. While our friends the lumberjacks and farmers do the least-stressful work, their jobs are well-known to be particularly perilous, and they report the highest levels of pain on the job. To puzzle out why, we zoomed out to look at activity categories beyond work. The most meaningful and happiness-inducing activities were religious and spiritual, which doesnât tell us much about farming or forestry â at least not as itâs commonly practised in the United States. But the second-happiest activity â sports, exercise and recreation â helps crack the case. The most stressful sectors are the industry including finance and insurance, followed by education and the broad grouping of professional and technical industries, a sector that includes the single most stressful occupation: lawyers. Together, they paint a simple picture: A white collar appears to come with significantly more stress than a blue one. đ Washington Post |
đ¨âđŤ Quote of the week:
âThe stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patientâ
Warren Buffet
đ Fun things to click on:
10 powerful visuals that will make you think. Futurepedia.io is a great way to keep up with all the AI tools as theyâre released and currently available in categories like Image, Text, Writing, Video, Design, etc. How to become a truly excellent gift giver – an article delves into three tips how to become good at gift giving. I’m definitely taking notes.
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom