artyboy

[no.mind @the_no_mind]

Caffeine makes you better at doing while making you worse at thinking.

Yes, caffeine can increase dopamine release, elevate mood, improve alertness & reaction time.

But its benefits are strongest for tasks requiring speed, not tasks requiring intellectual power.

Research described by Stephen Cherniske — biochemist and author of Caffeine Blues — found that assembly-line type work can improve on caffeine while more complex reasoning gets worse.

Michael Pollan — author and journalist, who abstained from caffeine for 3 months as part of his research for This Is Your Mind on Plants — noticed this firsthand when he drank coffee again for the first time.

He described himself as compulsively getting things done, focusing on each task with single-minded intensity.

“Another task suddenly demanded my attention: it was time to tackle my closet. This is not something I have ever done of my own free will, but at that moment I wanted nothing more than to take all my sweaters off the shelf and sort them into four piles.”

That same trade-off shows up in memory research.

In one study, non-habitual caffeine users received 0, 100, 200 or 400 mg of caffeine.

As little as 100 mg increased false recall and false recognition — while true memory did not improve.

Meaning, caffeine didn’t improve what they actually remembered.

It increased the number of memories that weren't real.

Another study gave subjects 100 mg before an auditory-verbal learning test.

They listened to spoken word lists and were asked to recall them.

The caffeine group recalled fewer words.

Working memory shows the same pattern.

Working memory is what you use to hold information in mind for a few seconds, like a phone number or a short list.

A 2013 behavioral and fMRI study found that caffeine’s effects were more consistent with a detrimental effect at higher working-memory loads than with enhancement.

The same pattern appears in creativity.

In one experiment using caffeinated gum, creative fluency significantly decreased compared with placebo.

The pattern is consistent: caffeine trades depth for speed.

Caffeine makes you feel switched on.

It makes you attack the task in front of you.

But that is not the same as thinking better.

For a founder, in the AI era, that distinction matters.

Pushing through tasks is not the scarce skill.

Judgment is.

[Chris Orlob @Chris_Orlob]

In his book SPIN Selling, Neil Rackham identified a unique behavior that separates the most successful salespeople from the rest.

His research team shadowed 35,000 sales calls.

They discovered a major breakthrough in sales methodology at the time:

Top performers asked 53% more “Implication” questions than their peers.

Rather than just uncovering the buyers' situation and problems, these questions ask about something bigger:

The consequences of leaving those problems unsolved.

None of this is news. 

Most sellers today know that finding “implicated pain” is critical

But here’s what is news:

We analyzed 300,000 B2B sales calls against eight behaviors that measure skill level in what we call Value-Based Discovery.

“Negative Consequence Questions” are one of the eight behaviors.

And despite their universally-accepted importance to sales success?

That skill ranked SECOND TO LAST in proficiency among all eight selling behaviors.

Translation:

Sellers today struggle with one of the skills that most separates top performers from the rest.

But there is a solution.

We’ll teach a framework called Consequence Mapping.

It works like a charm.

Read about it here: https://t.co/RjLdzSuRhZ

[Dan Go @CoachDanGo]

Train your mind to think everything is happening in your favor

[Race 🕊️ @multiplanet1]

A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life.

At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday."

He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy.

Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system.

He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting.

He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."

The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.

[Tim Denning @Tim_Denning]

Neuroplasticity will make you a millionaire.

[Leo | Phalanx Labs @SpartanPsyche]

Neuroplasticity works faster under high emotional intensity. If you can resist a craving when it's at its peak, you get a bigger rewiring effect. This is why the hardest moments matter most, they're not setbacks, they're high-voltage opportunities to change.

[Michael Easter @Michael_Easter]

The Blue Zones—places where people supposedly live past 100 at extraordinary rates—aren't real.

A 🧵 on what went wrong: bad record keeping, pension fraud, and lots of money.

[Chris Williamson @ChrisWillx]

You are what you do daily.

“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” – Ernest Dimnet

[Zayan @Zayan_coder9]

HABITS I STOLE FROM A McKINSEY PARTNER WHO MADE SENIOR DIRECTOR AT 34.

Simple habits. Better decisions. Stronger execution.

1. The Sunday Scan. 👇

[Robert Greene @RobertGreene]

You become what you think, your daily thoughts your reality.

[Dan Martell @danmartell]

Your first $100K is from skills.
Your first $1M is from hiring.
Your first $10M is from systems.
Your first $100M is from building leaders.
Your first $1B is from brand.

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

Advice to new managers:

1 tell people their work matters
2 hire for attitude (agency), train for aptitude (IQ)
3 break bread with your team
4 earn trust by giving it first
5 feedback in private, praise in public
6 in a celebration, lead from the back
7 in a crisis, lead from the front
8 always communicate intent
9 value high rate of learning
10 do not speak poorly behind others
11 admit when you are wrong
12 do not blame anyone for poor outcomes
13 remove bad apples quickly
14 be a mentor and a sponsor
15 open doors as often as you can
16 when stuck, as for help
17 be on time and eat last
18 do not brag about how busy your are
19 do not intensity focus on shortcuts
20 deliver on your promises - meet deadlines

[Dickie Bush @dickiebush]

Here's my go-to morning kickstart:

• Make a fresh double espresso
• Crack open my Muji notebook
• Answer 5 questions with 1 sentence each:

1. What's 1 thing I'm grateful for?
2. What's 1 thing I'm excited about?
3. What's 1 virtue I want to exhibit?
4. What's 1 thing I'm avoiding?
5. What's the 1 thing I need to do?

5 minutes max, elite daily clarity.

[Peter Kazanjy @Kazanjy]

Founders: The winning sales deck structure:

1. Market forces (why now)
2. Current challenges (their pain)
3. Future vision (the dream)
4. Your solution (the bridge)
5. Proof points (why believe)
6. Next steps (the path)

Tell a story, don't list features.

[Codie Sanchez @Codie_Sanchez]

Incredible truth from Elon Musk: "Go get your fucking confidence back. Without it, you'll fail miserably no matter how skilled or smart you are."

[Leila Hormozi @LeilaHormozi]

Most people think self-respect is something you earn. But the truth is self-respect is a daily set of behaviors. You don't feel self-respect. You DO self-respect.

[Alex Hormozi @AlexHormozi]

How to fix underperformance in your business fast:

1) Pick the correct North Star metric
2) Put it on a big, obvious, scoreboard that’s in the way
3) Shorten comms cycles (switch to daily or multiple times per day + start mtgs w the metric)
4) Incentives (align w/ outcomes)

[TJ @salesxsaas]

Sales tip: Break sales process into micro sales

1. Cold call ➞ Sell the curiosity
2. Discovery ➞ Sell the problem
3. Demo ➞ Sell the solution
4. Closing ➞ Sell the results (ROI)

Focus on ONE step at a time

[AnderSon @Ambrose0_X]

"Sorry for the late reply" makes you look junior.

Senior leaders never say it.

Here are 6 things they say instead:

[Chris Williamson @ChrisWillx]

Tax the rich.

“New IRS data finds that the top 0.1% of taxpayers (roughly 154,000 returns) paid $440 billion in federal income taxes in their most recent year.

The bottom 80% paid $350 billion.

Meaning the top 0.1% paid more than the entire bottom 80% combined.” — h/t IRS, @Rothmus , @profstonge