The Chomp #026

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to The Chomp—your weekly dose of the best content from the internet and beyond, designed to expand your mind and get you thinking. This week marks six months since the start of this newsletter. Thank you to everyone that's followed along so far. I started The Chomp on a bit of a whim and wasn’t really sure where it would go or what would come of it. Six months later, I have a much clearer vision for the future of The Chomp. Going forward, I'll be reducing the number of articles/essays I share but will be providing a more thorough analysis of each I include. I also plan on sharing more original writing of my own in the coming months.

With that, let’s dive into it.

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Quick Bite

• Learn Like an Athlete: “Knowledge workers should train like LeBron, and implement strict “learning plans.” To be sure, intellectual life is different from basketball. Success is harder to measure and the metrics for improvement aren’t quite as clear. Even then, there’s a lot to learn from the way top athletes train. They are clear in their objectives and deliberate in their pursuit of improvement.” (4 Min)

  For the past five Sunday nights I was glued to the tv watching The Last Dance documentary on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Seeing the work that Jordan put into winning six rings was nothing short of captivating. Jordan had a singular goal of achieving greatness and never stopped refining his craft to elevate his game. He followed a strict training regiment and was religious about practicing. In reflecting on the show, I realized that most knowledge workers don't have 'training regiments' to hone their skills. There is a lack of deliberate practice when compared to athletes, musicians, and artists. This got me thinking about ways that I can start to improve my process. Naturally, I set out to figure out who else has spent time thinking about this.

  My research led me to this excellent piece from David Perrell. In it, he explores this topic in more detail and lays out a model for knowledge workers to train like athletes. He also includes an incredibly useful template that you can utilize in your training going forward. Definitely check this one out.

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Deeper Dive

• The Three Sides of Risk: “I don’t know if Brendan and Bryan’s death actually affected how I invest. But it opened my eyes to the idea that there are three distinct sides of risk:

  • The odds you will get hit.

  • The average consequences of getting hit.

  • The tail-end consequences of getting hit.

  The first two are easy to grasp. It’s the third that’s hardest to learn, and can often only be learned through experience.” (13 Min)

  Risk is something we're all familiar with and have individualized tolerance of. For many of us, our relationship with risk evolves throughout our lives. In areas where we were once risk-taking, we grow to become risk-averse. This is a naturally occurring process that many of us don't give too much thought to. It's a change that gradually takes place and unfolds at the back of our minds. As this process occurs, few people take the time to probe deeper and critically think about what risk means to them.

  We all weigh the risk of doing something before making a decision. However, we often fail to incorporate the tail-end consequences of what can happen in our thought process. It's easy to think through the odds that X will happen, or what the average consequences of a decision will be. It's much more difficult to envision the low-probability, high-impact outcomes. Yet, these are the ones that truly matter.

  In this incredible essay, Morgan Housel tells a heartbreaking and deeply personal story that led to his idea of there being three sides to risk. He does an impeccable job of tying his story into the framework he built. This is one of the best pieces I've read in recent months and is one that will certainly stick with you long after reading it.

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Tweet of the Week

James Clear @JamesClear

You can attract luck simply by telling people what you are working on.

Song of the Week

Apple Music Link

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Books

Currently Reading

Recently Read

• After committing to going deeper into the work of Rene Girard, I spent some time researching the best place to start. Many of the comments I came across recommended starting with his interviews rather than his original works. Girard is a complex thinker and diving straight into his work can be quite a challenge. This is especially true for those not familiar with his theories. Having already spent a bit of time acquiring a baseline knowledge of his work, I settled on this book as my jumping-off point. This ended up being a great decision. Reading the Bible with Rene Girard is an annotated transcript of conversations Girard had with the author, Steven Berry. These conversations peel back the curtain on both the formation and application of Girard's Theory of Mimetic Desire. I highly recommend this as a starting point for anyone else looking to learn more about Girard. (4/5)

• René Redzepi is one of the world's best chefs as well as one of its most interesting people. His restaurant Noma has been rated #1 in the world four times on the 50 Best Restaurants in the World list. I've long been fascinated with Redzepi and his uncompromising attention to detail. In Hungry, Jeff Gordinier gives us his fascinating account of traveling with Redzepi and getting to know him over the past decade. This one is well worth a read for anyone interested in the food world as well as those more generally interested in understanding the inner workings of someone at the top of their craft. (4/5)

• This was a masterclass on the topics of command and leadership. Through analysis of Alexander the Great, Wellington, Grant, and Hitler, John Keegan does an incredible job of distilling 2,000+ years of military command into 350 pages. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in history or leadership in general. (5/5)

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Parting Thoughts

This Week in History

• On May 20th, 1927, American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh took off on the world’s first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. It was also the first-ever nonstop flight between New York and Paris. (Source)

 "Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope."

—Epictetus

If you found something that piqued your interest this week, please help me out in expanding the reach of The Chomp by forwarding it along to a friend or sharing it with others in your network. Until next week.

-Cody