The Long Game 76: Human Performance, Efficiency, Discovering New Ideas, Do Design
The Long Game 76: Human Performance, Efficiency, Discovering New Ideas, Do Design📉 Dating Statistics, Ethereum, Covering the Desert with Solar Panels, Space Travel, and Much More!Hi there, it’s Mehdi Yacoubi, co-founder at Vital, and this is The Long Game Newsletter. To receive it in your inbox each week, subscribe here: 📣 We are hiring at Vital, help us build the “Strava for Health.” We are now looking for:
We are offering $1,000 in Bitcoin if you refer to us a candidate we end up hiring. In this episode, we explore:
Let’s dive in! 🥑 Health📖 Learn About Human Performance, Nutrition, Physiology, Strength & ConditioningAfter too many months without a gym during the lockdowns, I’ve been back to intense training for the last three months, and I love it. When I train a lot, I like to learn about how to optimize performance. I’m currently doing a 12-week focused period on bodybuilding to regain the muscle I had lost (and add more!) After that, I’ll switch to 12 weeks with a focus on strength (powerlifting movements.) I find that switching between different priorities helps to stay highly motivated in the pursuit of improvement. A great resource to learn more about these topics that Andrew Huberman recommended is the Lab of Andy Galpin. Some other resources I recommend:
🌱 Wellness🛣 The Errors of EfficiencyEfficiency is a trap. After building the whole society around it, we finally start to understand it.
The author makes the case against efficiency in the marketing/advertising world, but it can also be applied in life in general. I think most startups underinvest in brand marketing.
There’s a lot of value to seeming bigger than you are, keeping a constant drumbeat of awareness, building communities, and telling compelling stories.
Often underinvested in because people focus too much on short term ROI. 🧠 Better Thinking💡 Discovering New Ideas > Being SmartPaul Graham wrote about an important idea recently. He explains that the ability to discover new ideas is more important than being smart. There is a ‘cult of smart’ in society that makes us value the wrong things:
So discovering new ideas is more important than being intelligent. What’s the best way to do it?
It means we have more agency to do great things than if it was only dependant on being smart (IQ — mainly genetics.) Paul Graham ends the essay here, but I can already imagine the following steps: many of those other things could be genetics as well: agency, the ability to work hard, etc. This debate can easily be circular and always end up with the same conclusions! thinking about how agency is unevenly distributed and some people have significantly more than others. and it’s personality-based, not just bc of external circumstances + ⚡️ Startup Stuff👨🎨 Do Design — Why Beauty is Key to EverythingI am not a designer nor an artist, but I’ve been obsessed with products masterfully designed for a long time. I always think that beauty and superior design is a long-term winning strategy because it creates an indescribable feeling of love from the user. After I tweeted this, Sandor recommended Do Design by Alan Moore. I listened to the book over the weekend.
A crucial part of designing better products is a curiosity about the world that surrounds you.
In terms of masterfully designed apps, Endel and Notion come to mind. At Vital, we aspire to be one of the most beautifully designed mobile apps in the world. A little bit related to this, I re-read this article by John Palmer on the need to update the playbook of early products:
More specifically, the famous ‘build anything and just ship fast’ might need a rephrasing: MVP Thinking
A great example of this is Notion:
🇯🇵🎏
We're launching in Japanese!
In 2015 @simonlast and I travelled to Kyoto & restarted
@NotionHQ. We learned a lot from our surroundings: details, craftsmanship, and dedication...
Now we can finally serve our users there. Excited and looking forward to the future! Notion @NotionHQ Konnichiwa ✌️ Notion is now available in Japanese! ついに、Notionが日本語でご利用できるようになりました。 https://t.co/W1l1AX5rly📚 What I Read🍿 On the Chapelle ControversyMike Solana is one of the best cultural commentators out there:
Ξ Ethereum WhitepaperAlways read primary sources:
📉 These statistics show why it’s so hard to be an average man on dating appsAs dating apps gain more traction, we now have data on dating, and it’s fascinating:
I’m finishing The Wires of War and will try to summarize it in next week’s episode. 🎙 Podcast Episodes of the WeekThis week in podcasts:
🍭 Brain Food👟 The Sneakers WarI remember watching the first documentaries about the Supreme craze on Complex a while ago, and it doesn’t surprise me that the trend only got bigger. The reselling market got so big that most hyped collections are now selling out in a few minutes.
It’s funny because our office is on top of a big Nike Store, and every week, for every new release, I see a line of teenagers from 8 am waiting to buy the latest drop to resell it online later at a higher price.
Because of the possibility of reselling these sneakers, many people are now using bots to make sure they manage to buy them before they sell out. 🎥 What I’m Watching☀️ The Problem with Solar Energy in AfricaAs a Moroccan, I have always been interested in why we aren’t covering the desert with solar panels? Well, here’s the answer: 👩🚀 When Will Space Tourism be Affordable?It might take longer than expected! Once it’s available, would you go? 🔧 The Tool of the Week⏳ Rize — Time TrackerI’ve been using and enjoying the time tracker Rize for a few months now, and I confirmed my initial thoughts. It’s a great product, and it’s very useful to put numbers on how much you work and where you spend your time. Most likely, tracking time will lead you to be surprised in one way or another (working more or less than you thought, or spending a lot or not enough time on some tasks.) If you want to try it, my friend MacGill, co-founder at Rize, was kind enough to give a promo code for readers of The Long Game: use ‘MEHDI’ at checkout. 🪐 Quote I’m Pondering
— Alan Moore If you enjoyed this newsletter, make sure to subscribe if you haven’t 👇 👋 EndNoteThanks for reading! If you like The Long Game, please share it on social media or forward this email to someone who might enjoy it. Podcast reviews are also gratefully received. You can also “like” this newsletter by clicking the heart just below this, which helps me get visibility on Substack. Feel free to email me or find me on Twitter if you have any feedback or questions. Until next week, Mehdi Yacoubi PS: Lots of newsletters get stuck in Gmail’s Promotions tab. If you find it in there, please help train the algorithm by dragging it to Primary. It makes a big difference. If you liked this post from The Long Game by Mehdi Yacoubi, why not share it? |
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The Long Game 75: Chronic Pain, Project Blueprint, Changing Your Mind, Tech x Bio
Monday, October 18, 2021
🌐 The Wires of War, Cold Plunges, Japan, Giving a Presentation, Outliers, and Much More!
The Long Game 74: Vital, Knowing Yourself, Narrative Distillation, Biology, Endurance
Monday, October 11, 2021
📈 Axie Infinity, Peloton, Sand, Oil, Conscious Leadership, Curiosity, DAMN, and Much More!
The Long Game 73: Hacking Darwin, Dream Teams, Inspiration4, Good Predictions
Monday, October 4, 2021
💉 Theranos, Learning a New Language, Callin, Walking Away, Munger, and Much More!
The Long Game 72: Air Quality, the Cream of Life, Science Fictions, Getting Luck on Your Side
Monday, September 27, 2021
🎰 The Bet, India's Plan to Counter China, MET Gala, Saudi Arabia's Oil Problem, App Fuel, and Much More!
The Long Game 71: The Price of One More Healthy Year, Measuring Life, Early Setbacks, UX Research
Monday, September 20, 2021
💊 Getting Crypto-Pilled, Web3, Japan Tech, Social Habits, India's Private Town, and Much More!
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