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.
Jeff Bezos - Seven Year rule
Read this fascinating perspective and quote from Jeff Bezos:
“If everything you do, needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people… Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavours that you could never otherwise pursue.”
Bezos, Musk, & Buffett see the world differently because they see time differently.
Read more here
Performance Nutrition with Dr. Greg Wells
In this podcast, Dr. Greg Wells is in conversation with Dr Melissa Piercell.
Dr. Melissa Piercell developed her love for holistic wellness and decided to further her education by completing the four-year Naturopathic Doctor program at The Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine.
In this conversation, Dr. Melissa Piercell talks about:
Protecting your health and brain for optimal performance starts with proper nutrition.
The importance of goal-setting when it comes to nutrition.
It is critical to keep the daily nutritional goal commitment, come what may.
It is strict adherence to health and nutrition routines that make success inevitable.
Some practical examples of what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, including snacking healthy and how this can help improve your performance.
Inside Apple Factory: Software Design in the Age of Steve Jobs
Ken Kocienda is a software engineer who worked at Apple in the final years of the Steve Jobs era -- "The Golden Age of Apple". In this conversation, he offers an inside look at Apple's creative process in his widely acclaimed book, Creative Selection.
Here are some key topics that you can listen to from this conversation:
The concept of “Directly Responsible Individual” at Apple
The role of demos in Apple’s software development process
What is it like doing a demo for Steve Jobs
The culture of secrecy at Apple
Thinking Open Source at Apple
Stories and experiments around designing novel user interfaces for iPhone
How the creative-decision making process was done at Apple
Recalibrating Time, Rethinking Secrecy
When you give yourself a longer time horizon for any goal - either for your business or yourself, it allows you the time to think, experiment, fail, improve and continuously get at being better at whatever you aim to do. It removes the pressure to show short-term success - which may not be sustainable in the future. It also helps you acknowledge that achieving sustainable goals takes time to reach, built on a solid foundation. It requires consistent practice and relentless execution over the short term, but success compounds non-linearly over time.
Often we talk about a company culture that is transparent and open. We have also heard many people say creative/workplace environments require an open and transparent environment more than others. Is secrecy anti-creative culture?
It does not look so. In a company like Apple, the ‘purple’ project, the code name for the iPhone project, was kept entirely under wraps. A small, hand-picked team worked on it. Imagine a working culture in the firm, where everyone knows something is happening with a close colleague in the group but cannot talk much about it.
It just feels that it will breed a ‘trustless’ culture among employees and one that is not open, which is not very conducive to working creatively.
More than just using words like open and transparent on a company’s signboards and posters or in town-hall meetings, if there is an underlying culture of trust with the alignment of a common purpose & values, even utmost secrecy can be handled and accepted with ease by the people working in a firm.
‘Secrecy with a Purpose’ will work.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
When you change the time horizon of your goals, you compete with fewer people.
Its commitment to routines that make health and nutrition goals successful.
Secrecy is not necessarily anti-creative culture.