Keep Your Brain Guessing and it Will Reward You
How many times in the past year has your Go-To podcaster surprised you? Are your friends downloading their world view? Are you feeding your brain a varied diet? Does the golden question apply to you?
In Never Stop Learning this week I will be covering the following 1-2-3:
One Big Thing - Exploring issues around the voices we expose ourselves to.
Two Recommendations - Two podcasts that bring the theme of good brain food together.
My Top 3 articles of the week
Enjoy.
One Big Thing: Feeding Your Brain A Varied Diet
I know my post last week may have upset some.
I know it might have made some think twice about opening and maybe even about unsubscribing.
Fine.
I don’t care. Actually I do care, but not for vanity reasons or because I “want to grow my subscribers”. Ya de ya ya.
I care because we need a range of voices in our lives
Last week I posted about Obama. In fact, it wasn’t really about Obama the President or even Obama the politician. It was about learning from Obama for his speech delivery. I think he’s a master at it and I wanted to share that.
If I’d considered Trump better at speech delivery I would have equally have been happy using his speeches in that post. But I don’t. So I didn’t.
Last weeks post was about speech delivery. This weeks is something totally different.
This weeks post isn’t even about being left or right or black or white or whatever. It isn’t about choosing a side or thinking a certain way.
It’s about your diet
Yes, it’s about what you consume.
It’s about what you feed your brain on a daily basis. It’s about how you build your knowledge and about finding new ways to look at the world.
It’s about finding balance through the exploration of opposing views but most of all it’s about being able to draw on those perspectives and form your own thoughts and opinions. There’s nothing new or ground breaking here but as a society we are losing these skills.
So many people these days are predictable
I’ve worked on many marketing projects through my career. One thing marketeers like to do from time to time is segment their market. Some might say segmentation. Others might say pigeon holing.
Whatever.
When you undertake a segmentation you seek to find common threads through your customer base and seek to divide them into groups that can then be targeted in a specific way with a specific offer or experience.
So we might have the “Empty Nesters” or the “Tight Trevors”. Each one having similar consumer habits. You get the point. It’s relatively easy to get to a decent segmentation with a nice dataset and spreadsheet wizard.
The difficulty lies in trying to pigeon hole a new customer to your business. You don’t have much information about this new person. They may not even have bought anything from you yet. So how do you tell whether they are an Empty Nester or a Tight Trevor?
This gets us to the “Golden Question”
A golden question has been quietly identified by your spreadsheet wizard back at the start of this exercise. This question can (9 times out of 10) identify the exact segment this person falls into just from how they answer that golden question.
It could be “which newspaper do you read regularly?” Or “do you like anchovy and pineapple pizza?” (Yup, it’s a thing- ask Joe Rogan)
Personally, I hate this type of pigeon holing exercise but the thing is the world is quickly becoming a parody of this.
Think about someone you know who isn’t a close friend. Maybe an old school friend is a good example:
What was their take on COVID?
What’s their view on Israel?
Do they believe in a deep state?
What’s their view on climate change?
The list could go on.
But what we see more and more is the alignment of a set world view. People seem to be downloading that view and defending it to the exclusion of all other views. We follow our favourite influencers and we like what they say about certain issues or even genuinely agree with them.
Then over night the world changes
News breaks that X country has invaded Y country. We look, consciously or subconsciously, to our favourite influencers. What do they think? You take on their views because of everything you’ve believed so far from them. It’s powerful stuff.
Your influencer is the human embodiment of the golden question in reverse.
So what we need to ensure is we are consuming a variety of voices
For this, there’s a very effective test.
Ask yourself:
How many times in the past year has this person surprised me?
Have they deviated from the golden question at all?
If they haven’t, then you’ve got a problem. You need to vary your diet.
The best thing you can do is strive to listen to different voices. That’s why I listen to Obama. I regularly listen to Joe Rogan. I listen to Elon Musk. I listen to Trump and Biden.
Think about how your ideas can evolve out of what you’re hearing. Don’t simply parrot back what you heard.
The art is in the formulation of new connections while listening to a variety of views.
Two Recommendations - what to consume this week
1. Dr Jordan Peterson - How to Destroy Your Negative Beliefs
I include Jordan Peterson here particularly because he became a divisive figure 2-3 years ago. This was primarily because of how his views were adopted by certain narratives around “toxic masculinity”. This depiction is unfair. I do wonder how many of his critics have actually listened to what he has to say. Yes, he comes from a more conservative viewpoint but his arguments are well reasoned and his teaching has helped many people over the years.
2. Mary McAleese - Building bridges as the President of Ireland
Again, building on the theme of this post of the need to listen to all sides. For all of the divisiveness in the world at present, peace on the island of Ireland has been one of the most successful examples of how people can begin to forgive and come together.
Top 3 articles of the week
Finding great articles on Substack can be difficult. Fear not, I have been digging deep into the discovery areas of the platform so you don’t have to.
Here are my top three posts to read this week:
A quest for readers, Part I by
ofA primer on gold, part 2 - What drives the price? by
ofLearning to Let People Be Disappointed by
ofSubstack Recommendations
A big part of this newsletter is the community we are building. Never Stop Learning recommends these Substacks that I suggest you check out.
- new recommendation this weekLast week’s post
In case you missed it:
Plus, catch up on my latest How To Substack post:
If you liked this post, please click the ♥️ below.
Thank you for reading and see you next week.
Broadening our views is welcome, but listening to different views doesn't mean we'll think more open-minded. We have to make an effort to truly consider each viewpoint, not just find things to agree with. Filter this based on your value system, and you then take the appropriate action. It is easy to get into the nodding dog syndrome to fit in the crowd. It is hard to admit others might be right. We need humility to question our own beliefs. Thanks Martin
I do agree that it's very important for us to not blindly follow opinions and points of view from other people/sources.....even those that we've trusted for a long time. Ultimately, we need to think critically, and make our own judgements.
This is because there's many factors and a lot of information to understand about the various topics and issues in the world........many of these things, simply aren't black and white, as some sides would like for us to believe and perceive them.