Agency.

What's in Store

1. Quote of the Week

2. Community Spotlight

3. Something We Learned this Week

4. Recommendation of the Week

Quote of the Week

Talent is privilege. Remove any sense of privilege from your mind. We live in a meritocracy where your inputs equal your results and if they don’t you haven’t worked long enough or hard enough.

Community Spotlight

Cam Boddie

Race: Chicago Marathon (Sunday October 13, 2024)

A Note from Cam

I’m running the Chicago Marathon for Good Sports, which is a non profit that raises money to provide sports equipment for disadvantaged youth. The Good Sports cause means so much to me. As a youth athlete myself, the opportunity to play sports was so formative for me. I made life long friendships, and what it mean’t to be a good teammate. The skills and values I picked up from sports made me who I am today and unfortunately every kid doesn’t have the same opportunity to get into the games they love. Please if you are able, donate to the cause so we can give another kid the same opportunity. Good Sports, Chicago, and running mean so much to me so I’m excited and honor to take the streets in October.

Link to Donate: https://donate.hakuapp.com/donations/new?fundraiser=a85e98a1fb48b473e6b3

Join our Strava Run Club → Join

Something We Learned this Week

“VO2 may be the single greatest predictor of lifespan out of any measurable number we have.”

Based research from Peter Attia and other sources he’s aggregated, the best way to increase your longevity is to maintain an elite level VO2 for your sex and age group over the course of your lifespan.

If you have a fitness watch, compare your VO2 max with the chart below.

more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpCkJs6DKCw

Recommendation of the Week

“We’re a team, not a family”. At Netflix you have to fight for your position on the roster day in day out.

A common question people ask what would you tell the younger generation, kids coming out of college, or a younger version of yourself. I believe there are only two mental tools you need to excel. velocity and recovery.

You want to drive 1,000 miles an hour at your mistakes. You will fuck things up but you want to fuck up sooner rather than later. Your mistakes are you most instrumental moments in growing and learning so you should always be on offensive. Attack. Attack. Attack. Run into ambiguity head on. Be resourceful by leveraging your colleagues, network, and your instincts to move through roadblocks. Wasting time hesitating about what to do next only prolongs the opportunity to reach a solution or make a mistake, from which valuable lessons can be learned.

The second important tool, which follows your mistakes, is how you are able to recover from them. First and foremost, you must completely own your mistake by taking full responsibility without blaming others. Jocko Willink actually has a whole book on this idea called Extreme Ownership. Framing the mistake as completely your fault allows you not only fully recognize your blindspots but also probes the interesting question of, if there were other people implicit the mistake “how did I let them down”. Using this lens not only forces you to grow but also makes you a better teammate and leader.

My first job out of school was at one of the largest companies in the world. There was so much red tape, reviews, and approvals. Honestly, they assumed their employees were idiots. They had a bias against employee learning and an aversion to individual mistakes in order to protect the brand of the larger organization. Hell, I actually don’t blame them. Today the average employee leaves after two years of employment so why would they be willing to bear the burden of their mistakes but not receive any of the upsides after they’ve learned the lesson. To them we were just data monkeys to increase organizational productivity. Making a difference or an impact was never in the cards for us.

At my second job, I had a lot more autonomy and agency. I had to bring my own ideas, execute on them, and was held accountable for their success or failure. And fucking failed all the time. But I learned more in the first month than I had in the entire first year at my first job. After I failed I examined the gaps in my knowledge or attitude. I never made the same mistake twice.

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