Dana Allen

Managing Director, Talent at Gauge Capital (top LMM PE). Prev exec search (2 top 5 firms) & marketing exec (PepsiCo). Co-founder of Ark of the Rainbow.

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

Cynicism is not a mark of intelligence. It's a defense mechanism to avoid being exploited.

192k adults, 30 countries: People with poor reasoning skills are more likely to see human nature as selfish and untrustworthy.

A sign of wisdom is refusing to expect the worst in others.

[Dickie Bush 🚢 @dickiebush]

Reminder to self:

Life becomes so much FUN when you view everything as an opportunity.

Flight delay? Time to flex the patience muscle

Rude service worker? Time to flex the empathy muscle

Unexpected fire at work? Time to flex the problem solving muscle

Easy mindset shift.

Instant life upgrade.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@FitFounder Cooling bed (I have Chili Ooler, but 8sleep same idea) = better/deeper sleep.
Concept2 RowErg. Adjustable bench w/ adjustable dumbbells. --> home gym = reduce barriers to exercising more often

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@FitFounder Zone 2 while listening to audio (podcasts, sermons, books, etc) - two birds with one stone.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@GuyDealership What is your configuration with the car seats? We had success with a current (‘21) Sienna putting two car seats in the two middle captain seats and the older car seat in the middle of the back row (still reachable, but older kid can usually climb in ok).

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

Three questions determine 99% of the happiness in your life:

1. What am I working on and why?
2. Who am I spending time with and why?
3. How well am I treating my body and why?

Everything else is noise.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

“A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.” – @kevin2kelly

Always so much great insight in anything from @morganhousel

Smart Words From Smart People https://t.co/hZrH55lslV via @collabfund

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@_DanielSinclair Would you mind sharing a link to the recipe?

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@realEstateTrent Our approach to avoid this, while still giving choice/empowerment to the kid, is to order several options online (eg Zappos), let the kid pick from a curated selection (including a couple of sizes), then return the rest. Win-win with everyone happy.

[Dan Go @CoachDanGo]

30 things no one tells you when you reach the age of 40:

1. No one prepares you for the fact you will go to more funerals & this will increase as you get older. The people you love will eventually pass, so we must cherish them now while we have them.

[Morgan Housel @morganhousel]

"One of the simplest ways to improve your quality of life is to reduce how long it takes to have a difficult conversation once you know you need to have it." @david_perell

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

Great insight from Saban on what it takes to achieve greatness. Very similar to Discipline is Destiny, the great book by @RyanHoliday

[Teddy Mitrosilis @TMitrosilis]

Nick Saban was asked a question after practice once.

His response was 70 seconds of gold on what it takes to be successful in life.

Here’s Saban on the Illusion of Choice:

“These guys, they all think they have this illusion of choice. Like I can do whatever I want to do.

“You have a younger generation now that doesn’t always get told no. They don’t get told this is exactly how you need to do it. So they have this illusion that they have all these choices.

“But the fact of the matter is, if you want to be good you don’t really have a lot of choices. It takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful.

“You have to make the choices and decisions to have the discipline and the focus to the process of what you need to do to accomplish your goals.

“All these guys that think they have a lot of choices are sadly mistaken. As we all have done with our own children, they learn these lessons of life as they get older.

“Sometimes the best way to learn is from the mistakes you make, even though we all hate to see them have to make them, and we don’t condone it when they do.”

–

I’ve studied Saban for 12+ years, and the Illusion of Choice is one of the most powerful concepts I’ve come across.

Some key takeaways:

1. Excellence has a price. We can complain about that, but it’s a fact of life.

2. Most people don’t want to pay that price. They just haven’t admitted it to themselves.

3. Saying you want to be excellent is easy. Becoming excellent is hard.

4. There may not be one way to become great, but there are very few. And they all have discipline and consistency in common.

5. Every action we take is a choice. We’re choosing to make progress, or we’re not.

6. The formula for becoming successful: Your Daily Choices x Time. It’s simple, but we make it complicated.

7. Sometimes we learn more by making the wrong choices. Reflect on them, pull out the lessons and move on.

8. You have to choose what you do every day. Don’t follow your feelings. Choose to do what will make you better.

9. There are no long-term hacks. It takes what it takes.

|||

Hope this is helpful. Follow me @TMitrosilis for more writing.

I also write a weekly newsletter on the process of improvement → https://t.co/Akm89Spodg

[Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE]

This is the most important video you'll see today!

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

Always great content from @morganhousel , summarized nicely here by @AlexAndBooks_ on reading books & getting the most from them

[Alex & Books 📚 @AlexAndBooks_]

21 Reading tips from bestselling author @morganhousel:

1) Every smart person I know is a voracious reader who also says “every smart person I know is a voracious reader.”

2) Years ago I heard Charlie Munger say “Most books I don’t read past the first chapter. I’m not burdened by bad books,” and it stuck with me.

3) Reading is a chore if you insist on finishing every book you begin, because the majority of books are either a) adequately summarized in the introduction, b) not for you, or c) not for anyone.

4) Slogging through to the last page of these books – a habit likely formed early in school – can turn reading into the equivalent of a 10-hour work meeting where nothing gets done and everyone is bored.

5) Once you see reading through that lens, your willingness to pick up another book wanes. Which, of course, is tragic. “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them,” said Mark Twain.

6) My reading strategy is to start as many books as I can but finish few of them.

7) College tuition at $25,000 a year comes out to roughly $100 per lecture. Good books – sometimes written by the same professor – can be purchased for fifteen bucks and can offer multiple times as much life-changing insight.

8) Most books don’t need to be read to the end, but some books can change your life – means you need two things to get a lot out of reading: Lots of inputs and a strong filter.

9) If you only pick up books you know with certainty you’re going to like you’ll confine yourself to reading the same authors on the same topics.
10) It’s better to have a low bar in what books you’re willing to try, and even the faintest tickle of interest should be enough to make the cut. Kindle samples are free, so excuses are minimal.
11) Similar to dating, a book you’re not into after 10 minutes of attention has little chance of a happy ending. Slam it shut and move on.

12) You’re not a failure if you quit a book after three pages anymore than if you reject the proposition of a 10-hour date with someone you just met who annoys you. Lots of fish in the sea.

13) Don't turn reading into a game of trying to read as many books as possible.

14) When you try to read as many books as possible in a month, "You're just doing it for the number because when you blow through books that quickly, you're not thinking about it."

15) "You're not reading a book and then meditating on what you've just read and thinking about the points...You're just like how can I get through this as fast as I can."

16) Now Morgan reads 1-2 books a month. He purposely reads slower and spends more time thinking about the ideas in the book instead of just trying to finish the book as fast as possible.

17) I do all my reading on Kindle and I highlight passages that I think are interesting.

18) When I go back through and read something a second time, I definitely find things that I didn’t pay that much attention to the first time because maybe the first time I read it, I was thinking about work or I was falling asleep in bed. I’m definitely a fan of reading things again.

19) I, like everybody, miss holding a physical book and the smell of a book, but I’m a hundred percent Kindle now just because I can search and archive things so much better.

20) Read more history and fewer forecasts.

21) Reading is a skill most of us stop practicing around 4th grade. But what you read, where you read, how you read it, and how you take extract value from what you read is a serious skill that requires honing throughout your life.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." — Henry Ford

Learn with no end in mind. Learn for no reason at all. Learn to learn.

- @SahilBloom

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@SahilBloom Do you mind sharing what type of sauna you got and how you selected? I'm curious any key factors or features that drove your decision, as I'm looking to create a similar setup w/ sauna + cold plunge.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

"In the internet age, the problems we talk about aren't always the biggest problems -- it's the problems that have the best click-through rate or SEO."

@george__mack & his newsletter have great insight on various lenses to look at the world differently

[George Mack @george__mack]

This week's internet rabbit holes -- without the distractions.

The 0.1% of ideas I've found this week.

7 examples:

1. Global Sunshine Hours

An interesting part of British Culture:

Some Brits talk about summer holidays like a prisoner talks about escaping Shawshank.

When you see the sunshine hours visualized, it begins to make sense.

2. Why Is The Aging Population Not Headline News?

It's such a serious topic -- but it doesn't scare our monkey brains in the same way as a terror attack or a new virus.

I'm convinced it's because it's so subtle. (Largely caused by people not giving birth)

In the internet age, the problems we talk about aren't always the biggest problems -- it's the problems that have the best click-through rate or SEO.

If you want people to care about the biggest problems in the world -- don't forget to hire marketers.

The only graph I've found that gives you goosebumps is this one:

3. The Network Razor

If you have 2 quality people that would benefit from an intro to one another, always do it.

A 30-second intro email or WhatsApp can compound for decades.

One of the highest ROI things you can do.

"Networks don't divide as you share them, they multiply" - @ChrisWillx

4. Daily > Weekly

If you do a task daily rather than weekly, you achieve 7 years of output in 1 year.

If you apply a 1% compound interest rate each time, you achieve 54 years of output in 1 year.

5. The Impact Of Winning & Losing On Your Biology

When a soccer team beats another soccer team, the testosterone of the winning team goes up -- and the testosterone of the losing team goes down.

The crazy part?

It happens to the fans of the teams too. (Via the incredible @GadSaad)

If you're an Inter Miami fan, get ready for the Lionel Messi testosterone boost.

6. How A Young Jeff Bezos Fixed His Dating Life

"Bezos thought analytically about everything, including social situations.

Single at the time, he started taking ballroom-dance classes, calculating that it would increase his exposure to what he called n+ women...

Jeff Holden, who worked for Bezos at Amazon, says he was “the most introspective guy I ever met. He was very methodical about everything in his life.”

A fascinating passage from @BradStone in the wonderful "The Everything Store".

7. How To Visualize Exponential Growth

Truly incredible.

Our monkey brains really struggle to understand and appreciate this.

PS. If you enjoyed this - I send the best rabbit holes to my newsletter list each week.

Get it for free in the tweet below.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

Yikes!

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

@jspujji Boy Scouts (popcorn) & Girl Scouts (cookies) are still doing this. While not 100% the same, but still gets them out asking for a sale. Our kids have also added a door-to-door element when they setup a lemonade stand.

[Dana Allen @danalallen]

Very cool idea. Could be great for parking lots (offices, malls, etc) as well for another win-win.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Crops under solar panels can be a win-win, and in dry places, shade can reduce water use, increase CO₂ uptake and water-use efficiency; and crops are on average 30% bigger and healthier

[read more: https://t.co/oVIvbWpQV2]
[📹: https://t.co/w3kO53ksVI]