SD#78: Happy songs, sleep and hair powder
December 31, 2023
Welcome to the 78 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,
It’s the end of the year and also the festive period. A time to celebrate with family and reflect on the whole year. It’s natural (at least for me) to think I could’ve done more, picked up more skills, completed more projects, sent out more newsletters… But it’s also an opportunity to celebrate what we’ve achieved this year, that we’ve gone through another year, brought many smiles to those around, and simply enjoyed ourselves for another 365 days. Thank you to all those who read this newsletter this year and I wish you a great bloody time!
🔎 Our seven ideas this week:
1. The world is dyed by the colour of your thoughts Marcus Aurelius said “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes the colour of your thoughts.” He also said, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” If you see the world as a negative, horrible place, you’re right. If you look for shittiness, you will see shittiness. If you believe that you were screwed, you’re right. But if you look for beauty in the mundane, you’ll see it. If you look for evidence of goodness in people, you’ll find it. If you decide to see the agency and power you do have over your life (which is largely in how we think), well, you’ll find you have quite a bit. 👉 Ryan Holiday |
2. Intelligent people understand technical details, smart people understand emotional details Some people are intelligent but don’t have a lick of smarts. Their ability to succeed in the world might surprise you on the downside. Others lack intelligence but gush smarts. Their potential will surprise you on the upside. On rare occasions, you meet people who are both intelligent and smart. They run laps around everyone. Intelligence: Good memory, logic, math skills, test-taking ability, rule-following. Smart: High degree of empathy, bullshit detection, organisation, communication skills, persuasion, social awareness, understanding the consequences of your actions. Both are important. But there’s a critical difference in how each is valued. Schools are good at teaching and measuring intelligence, so that’s what people tend to value and aspire to. But in almost any field, smarts is what gets rewarded long term. And it’s why the world is filled with intelligent jerks who have gone nowhere, and middling students who struggled through calculus but go on to live successful, happy lives. The most important decision most people will ever make is whether, when, and whom to marry. But that’s never taught in schools – how could it be? You can’t distil it down to a formula, or a one-size-fits-all answer. It’s a decision that requires lots of smarts and very little intelligence. 👉 Morgan Housel |
3. When people listen to happy songs, the market outperforms Alex Edmans of London Business School and three coauthors gathered data on the average positivity of songs that people in 40 nations listened to on Spotify. The researchers then compared that data with the performance of each country’s national stock market over the same period. They wanted to see if there was a correlation between mood, as reflected by the music played, and financial returns. There was. The conclusion: when people listen to happy songs, the market outperforms. While that sounds like a wacky study, they were trying to raise a serious economic question: is the market driven by fundamentals or by emotions? The efficient-markets hypothesis holds that stock returns should reflect only relevant factors, such as interest rates and unemployment figures. It’s the irrelevance of music that makes the study interesting. In a rational model, factors that don’t affect economic fundamentals — such as investor sentiment — should have no impact on stock returns. 👉 Harvard Business Review |
4. If you sleep less than six hours per night for three nights in a row, your judgement becomes impaired just like you’re drunk Regularly getting less than six hours of sleep a night could cause the same long-term damage as alcohol abuse, according to a worrying new study. For the body, sleep deprivation results in an increased risk of obesity, depression, heart attacks and strokes – causing experts to dub it the ‘modern ill’. However, the most worrying consequences are rooted in the brain and new research suggests the effects are far more destructive than previously thought. Research suggests that being awake for 18 hours results in the same cognitive impairment people get from being drunk. This is so severe that driving while sleep-deprived could be as dangerous as driving when drunk, researchers found. Researchers from Quebec-based digital health company Medisys found people who regularly got less than six hours of sleep a night could suffer terrible cumulative health effects they may be oblivious to. Although the odd night of sleeping just six hours or less will not have a significant effect, frequently not sleeping enough is very dangerous. 👉 Mail Online |
5. You don’t have to be the best at any one thing. But if you can get pretty good at a few things, you can avoid the pitfalls of trying to be #1 and the status battles that can go along with it Different communities value different things when it comes to conferring status. For example, if you are a competitive powerlifter, your status is determined by how much you can lift (strength) and how many competitions you have won (competitiveness). If you are a VC, your status is determined by what companies you have invested in (network) and how well those companies have performed (money). Status is relative to the context in which it is being evaluated. In other words, VCs don’t care how much you can bench and weightlifters don’t care about your investment returns. Both groups have their standards for judging members of their community and they care much less about everything else. This is why you have to choose your status game wisely. Because whatever status game you choose in life ultimately determines what you optimise for. Choose money and you’ll end up working all the time. Choose beauty and you’ll always want to look better. Choose fame and you’ll constantly be seeking attention. Though the pursuit of status is a hard temptation to fight off, there is a simple way to prevent it from controlling you — play multiple status games at once. Instead of linking your entire identity to a single status game (i.e. richest, smartest, etc.), have multiple things going for you. In other words, diversify what brings you status. 👉 Of Dollars and Data |
6. There are never just two choices. There’s always a third choice and it’s always creative Back in 1795, British Prime Minister William Pitt instituted a powder tax in hopes of raising some bread for the Napoleonic Wars. At the time, powdered hair was all the rage, worn primarily by the wealthy families of Great Britain to signal just how rich they were. Pitt’s powder tax divided the nation overnight as hair powder became a political statement. Those who chose to powder their hair signalled that they were in support of the Napoleonic War. Those who chose not to powder their hair signalled they were against the war and wearing “human blood”. While all this was going on, a playboy by the name of Richard Barry was blowing through his inheritance while pursuing an education at Eton College. Barry was gambling his socks off, screwing everything that wasn’t nailed down and drinking like a man stranded in the desert who just happened upon a fully-stocked saloon. An avid sportsman, Barry played cricket, boxed and raced horses. In the heat of The Powder Wars, Barry and his two brothers showed up in public one day with short-cropped hair that couldn’t take any powder at all. To express the level of shock this had on Great Britain, I’d liken it to the time Britney Spears went crazy and shaved her head. Because of Barry and his band of brothers, powdering one’s hair went out of style overnight and short-cropped hair took its place. All that to say, there are never just two choices. There’s always a third choice and it’s always creative. 👉 Cole Schafer |
7. Our mental energy doesn’t need to juggle between professional and personal life, we can nurture both It seems like we need to make a constant choice between our personal and professional and personal growth. If you want to achieve your entrepreneurial dreams or build a successful career, then your personal development will take a backseat. Or, if you want to get to know yourself better and expand your consciousness, you should disconnect from work. But is it truly a zero-sum game? Recent studies suggest that after an initial burst of effort, people’s motivation shifts from control to reward. This indicates that we don’t necessarily experience a depletion of mental energy, but a change in focus. Let’s say you have a bucket of water and use it to water the plants in a garden. The traditional view of ego depletion suggests that every time you use mental energy, it’s like drawing from the bucket to water the plants. Over time, the bucket will eventually be empty. The newest research offers a different perspective. Instead of a bucket, imagine that you have a hose. After using some water for watering the plants, you may use the hose for something more immediately gratifying, like filling a kiddie pool. Instead of seeing your mental energy as a limited resource you need to ration, breaking free from this scarcity mindset can help you create a virtuous circle where your day jobs and side projects both fuel your productivity and creativity, where your personal relationships inspire you to solve professional challenges and where learning and growth permeate all areas of your life. 👉 Ness Labs |
👨🏫 Quote of the week:
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
Confucious
🎁 Fun things to click on:
Hoodmaps is a crowdsourced map that divides cities up into areas and labels. Experience the dedication of Wikipedia’s contributors through a captivating symphony of sound and graphics (it shows real-time changes with music). Want to hear how a comet or a black hole or a planet sounds? You can listen to the Sounds of Space. 10 charts that capture how the world is changing. 12 questions for life. What does the entire Universe look like? …using cereal. How well can you read emotions of others just by looking at their eyes?
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