Social Awkwardness & Making Better Decisions
Article Round-Up: 8.21.22
Enjoy this week’s curated list of articles, podcasts, and more from the web.
Featured Thoughts:
“What Matters More In Decisions: Process or Analysis?”
Takeaway: Analysis is considering your choices in the moment. Process is having a plan so that the decision has already been made for you.
Let’s look at the differences through the contextual lens of nutrition.
Having a keen level of awareness in your food choices is important. Being able to analyze, in the moment, whether you’re being driven by genuine hunger or an emotional reaction is crucial to understanding what triggers your bad eating habits.
But sometimes this analysis just gives you more time to convince yourself to eat the cookies.
Building the right processes means you’ve created an environment where facing those decisions—cookies or not—isn’t even a question in the first place. I.e. keeping junk food out of the home, avoiding the cookie aisle at the store, etc.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean avoiding these types of highly palatable junk foods forever. It simply means creating an environment where you seldom stumble upon them by accident or without intention.
I’m betting we need good processes to guide most decisions, and good analytic skills to identify changing circumstances.
”Are You Your Biggest Enemy of Change?”
Takeaway: Change is scary, but change within ourselves is the scariest of all. Success is equally about putting in the effort as much as it is about letting go—Letting go of your life as it currently is to experience something better.
The idea expressed in this article is important for reconciling many plateaus you’ll experience in improving your health.
“Attentional Focus May Influence Strength Development” [Research Review]
Takeaway: The idea of attentional focus during weight lifting is an interesting concept. External focus involves keeping your attention on the outcome that you want. Internal focus involves placing your attention on the specific muscles as they work.
For example, during a bench press, and external focus targets your attention on moving the bar from point A to B, while an internal focus targets your attention on feeling the chest muscles contracting.
Other studies have shown that an external focus is better for strength development (producing greater force), while an internal focus is better for building muscle tissue.
This analysis looks specifically at whether attentional focus only affects performance acutely (in that specific moment), or if it also impacts these variables (strength and muscle mass) in the long-term as well.
It’s interesting stuff but a bit nerdy and data heavy too. Suffice it to say this: the data shows that external focus might impact long-term strength development, but it’s probably too early to make definitive claims.
“The Great Perils of Social Interaction”
Takeaway: I found this piece so relatable and comical about the daily struggles of human interaction. The “Handshake/Hug Decision of Doom” is the bane of my existence. Enjoy.