Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
Obesity Spreads Through Social Networks.
A Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego study observed that obesity is hardly a private matter. The researchers found that when an individual gains weight, it dramatically increases the chances that their friends, siblings, and spouses will likewise gain weight.
Here are some highlights for you to think and reflect on:
A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if they had a friend who became obese in a given interval.
If one sibling became obese, the possibility that the other would become obese increased by 40%.
If one spouse became obese, the likelihood of the other spouse becoming obese increased by 37%.
A person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size.
People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are obese, and this sensibility spreads.
An individual’s health is embedded in their network.
Read more.
The Art of Rough Drafts With George Saunders.
Here’s a conversation between Adam Grant, legendary Organisational Psychologist and George Saunders, who has published over two dozen short stories in The New Yorker and is the author of several books.
Here are some thoughts and ideas from the conversation:
Why it is important to embrace uncertainty while starting to write.
Writing is a great tool for gaining clarity.
Knowing how to handle criticism when you write.
Be close enough to your work to know how to solve problems, but learn to be far enough from your work to see the problems.
Learning to say only one thing that helps the writer take the draft from one level to the next is vital when reviewing a draft.
Learn to stop over-identifying with your work and look at your work from a distance.
Learn to practice ‘Disinterested Love’ when it comes to your work.
When you want to write, internalise other people's styles you admire. And try to think of what fight you would pick with them about their writing.
Engaging with uncomfortable ideas helps you improve your critical thinking skills.
A writer’s job is safe, even in the age of AI, as long as there are good readers and there are writers with sensibilities weaved with their real-world experience, which AI can never replace.
Listen to the entire episode:
Spotify | Amazon Music | Google Podcast
Rishi Sunak & Elon Musk: Talk AI, Tech & the Future.
Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk talk about AI, Tech and the future. For somebody like Elon Musk, who has had a profound impact on technology and innovation in recent times, it is surprising to see him talk about the need for safety and regulatory policies for AI.
Here are critical thoughts to read and reflect from this conversation:
‘AI looks like a ‘magic genie’; magic genie stories never end well!’ - Elon Musk.
Elon is a proponent of the importance of governments doing safety testing of models before release. He says having a referee is a good thing.
Elon Musk makes a provocative statement that technology people are too optimistic about the technology they build, and it may need to be reviewed and relooked at.
The importance of ‘Algorithmic Transparency’ when it comes to AI and open source models.
AI and threat to jobs: ‘There will come a time when no jobs are needed.’
‘Consensus-Driven Truth’ - How Community Notes help drive this idea.
‘Being comfortable with failing’ culture.
You can watch the video by clicking the above link.
Mediocrity is Contagious.
Much like obesity, mediocrity is also a contagious disease in workplaces.
When you work in a company - be it a small, medium, or large company it’s the people around you who shape the way you think about your work and the job you do. You tend to get influenced by what you see people doing and the attitude they carry to work daily. It’s pretty standard to hear conversations like these:
“Why should you learn this if you are not going to get paid for it?”
“Why do you work so hard?”
“Is it your job definition or role to do this?”
“That person has been unfairly promoted. It’s not worth giving your best here?”
“This year’s increment is not good for the work you did. You deserve more.”
“My friends in the other companies do not work long hours like us, but they get paid better than us.”
“That person is not as good as you but gets paid more.”
Workplaces are also places where you build your social networks. It’s the place where you spend most of the time of your life. It is only natural for you to start believing the community when you hear people talk and there is a high decibel of chatter going around - putting in the effort, what’s in it for you to learn, unfair treatment meted out to people at work, compensation anomalies, more comfortable work environments etc.
There can be truths and realities to all of them, but remember, all these have an indirect influence on your work ethic. Before you can realise it, you catch the mediocrity virus. It’s a virus that affects the way you show up to work and the effort you put in, starts to affect your learnability, slowly makes you lose your focus, become cynical about how life is always unfair to you, drives you towards opportunities to earn easy money, breaks your faith in discipline and effort, develops a tendency to compare yourself with others. You soon start to settle for comfort over competency. You then start behaving more like many people around you at work.
What must you do?
You must shut yourself away from this chatter and continue building on your dreams, aspirations and beliefs, irrespective of your circumstances. Focus on the process, and the results will be there for you to see. It may not be apparent in the short term, but you will realise the benefits over time. That’s when most people around you would have already given up or faded away, even though they had the potential and talent.
Mediocrity is contagious, and developing an immunity against it is vital.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Social networks influence your attitude and behaviour. You must stay mindful of its consequences and build filters around yourself before it starts affecting you.
Your writing has a direct correlation to your clarity of thought.
Don’t let AI ‘blindly take over’ but use it judiciously to ‘aid you in taking control’ of your life and decisions.