I'm really getting a lot out of Tim Ferriss' podcast http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/ lately. Especially the episodes with Kelly Starrett, Josh Waitzkin, Sam Harris, Peter Attia, Pavel Tsatsouline and Whitney Cummings.
I think at a certain point you start to recognize that more tech isn't helping as much as it was (diminishing returns perhaps) and that a more holistic approach to improving is necessary.
This crowd might particularly enjoy his interview with Samy Kamkar (of MySpace worm fame). It gave me a few laughs and provided some inspiration to just try things and get stuff done, rather than over-analyzing everything and just sitting there spinning my wheels... a reminder I seem to need every couple of years or so :)
+1 for this! Here were some of the concepts from Tim's interviews that I still think about:
1. Meditation comes up in a lot of the podcasts as a performance practice (as opposed to spiritual practice). It's good to hear that reinforced by a lot of successful people.
2. I use a technique from the Josh Waitzkin episode about priming your brain with hard problems to work on while you sleep. You finish your work day with your most intractable problem. That primes your subconscious to think about it overnight (assuming your evening isn't very taxing). Then I journal in the morning to see if I've had any insights. I often find the intractable part was emotional and whatever happens in my brain while I sleep helps me figure that part out.
3. I like the Pavel episode (the Russian strength coach) for reminding me that a lot of strength training is neurological and that not every workout needs to be done to exhaustion. His Russian athletes had a thing they called Grease the Groove, which was essentially to do lots of short sets spread throughout the day. That basically saved my strength work because weights are the part I'm most likely to skip at the gym for time.
4. There's a segment in the Tony Robbins episode where he denies being a motivational speaker. Essentially he thinks he's a strategist that also happens to care about sequencing and packaging his strategy advice in a way that people can hear it. I think that concept comes up all the time at work: it's not enough to be right, people also need to hear you.
Josh is a revelation: Making smaller circles (there's an article on this on his blog and in the book that is a great read). Also, everything he learned, he's able to apply to something from a completely different field to speed up his progress.
Do you think it's not helping as much due to narrower and narrower specialization, that is it isn't helping as broad a community that it once did but helping many small communities scattered about?
It's more that things are changing faster and faster. At the same time, my life is progressing (wife, kids, commute) and I have less time to focus and devote to learning.
At some point, I feel like I have to focus on the whole package and being a rounded human instead of knowing all the new hotness. Thats what I really feel Tims podcast fosusses on; doing less with more and optimising life with whatever advantage is at hand.
I think at a certain point you start to recognize that more tech isn't helping as much as it was (diminishing returns perhaps) and that a more holistic approach to improving is necessary.