This Week I Learned #32

““Go to bed smarter than when you woke up””

— Charlie Munger

2019-01-07

Wealthy: Great TEDx talk by Matt Walleart, the man bringing the Chief Behavioural Officer role into the spotlight. Change the conversation from making work about money but rather doing work worth doing. Disengage self-worth from being measured with salaries for that results in individuals feeling "worthless" if they don't make some socially spat out number. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEKgkK6bWsE

2019-01-08

Wealthy: Caught up with a high school friend who used to work a semi-conductor company I had researched for a possible investment opportunity in the past. The company's accelerating growth and acclaimed market-leading position had caught my eye. Though after trying to understand the business it didn't seem that simple and there just wasn't enough information provided in public disclosures for me to feel comfortable. He had recently left the company after many years and he told me how the company had numerous internal issues: 1) Employees becoming competitors by using the IP to start their own company 2) No patent or NDA to protect their IP 3) Poor internal control processes to detect any of this and other organizational processes 4) 2 CEOs were let go, one was for money-laundering. The stock had close to tripled since my time of research but now it's back down to being up about 70%. Researching a small company? Worth talking to employees who've left to see what they have to say about the management.

2019-01-09

Healthy: Sex researcher Debra Soh's insightful chat on Joe Rogan's podcast. Quite the thoughtful discussion on the impacts of simplistic adoption of gender-orientation and the disorientation much of society, especially Canada, has adopted with gender ceasing to be a biological fact but turned into a social construct as science was thrown out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zere8WRepGo

2019-01-10

Wise: “That which is most personal is the most universal” - Carl R Rogers; an insight into identifying whether a market exists for the problem you are looking to solve.

2019-01-11

Wise: Chase Jarvis' interview with Harley Finkelstein of Shopify showcasing their purposeful culture cultivation. Harley refers to Dunbar's Law (the idea that we can only maintain relationships with about 150 people) and how as the company grew to 4000 employees they had to experiment with ways to continuously invest in the culture to stop it from disintegrating, as it happens in many rapidly growing companies. One solution is a bi-weekly internal podcast called "context" to preserve their internal culture where various management leaders talk about what is happening with the company and also try to shed light on who they are for all newcomers. They also do a monthly AMA so the leaders are always present and in tune with the company employees by answering questions that are top of mind for those in the company. https://www.chasejarvis.com/blog/startup-to-15-billion-finding-your-lifes-work-with-shopifys-harley-finkelstein/

2019-01-12

Healthy: Dr. Valter Longo noted a negative of intermittent fasting was on individuals skipping breakfast in order to eat in an 8 hour window. He said a negative of of skipping breakfast was that it increased the risk of cardiovascular disease. It seems a widely sought out study was done in Japan where they ran a test with 80K individuals from age 40 - 79 and found those who led a lifestyle of not eating breakfast had a higher chance of mortality via cancer and cardiovascular disease. What the study does not consider is whether these individuals who skipped breakfast had poor dietary habits, whether they exercised regularly or whether they were even fasting in general. Without such specifics I think it's hard to make a blanket statement that skipping breakfast when doing a time-restricted eating diet is bad for you.

2019-01-13

Healthy: According to Dr. Valter Longo, fasting for 14+ hours in a day can result in an increase in gallstone production. Gallstone production can be produced from many factors like obesity, rapid weight decline, fasting, old age, gender (women are twice as more likely) etc.. There have been a few studies in the 70s and 80s that identified these but the findings were for a small number of women who had a rapid decrease in calorie intake by cutting out meals to induce a 'fasted' like state to lose weight. Bile sludge to gallstones seems most prevalent in the rapid weight loss factor and so without knowing the actual nutrition, diet (i.e. time-restricted or not) and exercise levels of the patients it's tough to conclude that time-restricted eating (i.e. what some people refer to as intermittent fasting) will produce gallstones if you ate in a 8-10 hour feeding window. Multi-day fasts will require medical supervision so that is a different ball game. The last few learnings were on challenging affirmative blanket statements because it stuck out as an opposing view to other research that yielded to the contrary and so far. Time-restricted eating is still in its infancy of research and I do agree that extreme change is not ideal but I also do see promise in maintaining a 8-10 hour eating window.

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Daniel LeeJanuary 14, 2019OMD VenturesTWIL