The Ultraworking Podcast: Recent Episodes
Ultraworking
The Ultraworking Podcast. Exploring peak performance. Operations, business, biochemistry, math, habits, skills... everything. We aim to make every show very special — and potentially life-changing from time to time.
“Think lightly about yourself and deeply of the world” — one of the precepts of the death-bed testimony of Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), one of the greatest swordsmen in Japanese history along with a skilled painter, caligrapher, writer, and philosopher.Ultraworking’s CTO Lee Knowlton joins Sebastian Marshall to talk about Miyamoto Musashi, the Dokkodo, “The Way”, and what modern people could learn from this wonderful document.~~~Jumping-off point to more study:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokkōdō
“Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail” by John Salvatier is a gem of a piece. This show looks to make you aware of the phenomenon and its implications for learning a domain as a beginner vs mastering a domain over time. Link to article: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail
Have you ever thought about why you’re interested in the topics you’re interested in? Chris and Sebastian explore the research paper “Triggering and maintaining interest in early phases of interest development” by Renninger et al, for practical takeaways on how to build more interest in topics by matching the activities to your personality level. Mentioned on the show… The paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210656118301685 PrinciplesYou: https://principlesyou.com
At least implicitly, every project is either scope to time or scoped to quality. But most people don’t do this explicitly and suffer for it. Just learning these phrases will level up your projects a lot.
Discomfort can be pushed through, but actual physical pain as a warning signal should not be disregarded. Ultraworking’s Head of Teamwork, Andi Banez, joins Sebastian Marshall to explore.
Ultraworking’s Chris Natterer and Sebastian Marshall discuss how Chris switched his keyboard layout and typing style from the default “QWERTY” keyboard to the more-efficient “COLEMAK” layout — with some surprisingly informative universal lessons about learning and skill progression.
Standardized Work Without Kaizen -> Bad. Kaizen Without Standardized Work -> Bad. Standardized Work With Kaizen -> Quite possibly good.
Sensors for personal use, like the Oura Ring and Apple Watch, have gotten way better over the last 10 years. While they're still maybe not "fully ready for primetime" — they can already be used to get interesting information and gains. Chris Natterer and Sebastian Marshall discuss Chris's sensors, metrics, and some science around it.
Gray's Biopsychological Theory of Personality, developed ~1970 to ~1982, posits two different brain systems: A Behavioral Activation System (BAS) which prompts and regulates appetitive motivation, goal-seeking behavior, hope, etc — and a Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) which prompts and regulates avoidance of negative stimuli. We overview the science some and then make some inferences about what might be going on in the people's brains, as regards to motivation, in the post-pandemic world.
Greater control of attention? Sounds good, eh? Chris and Sebastian explore implications of Reinhart and Goodman’s 2014 paper “High stakes trigger the use of multiple memories to enhance the control of attention” — some science and some hypotheses on practical short-term and long-term implications. Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23448876/ DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bht057
Chris Natterer and Sebastian Marshall of Ultraworking talk about bringing full focus to planning. A lot of times people do planning somewhat lazily. Which is bad. Discussion of why and cultivating more full focus and intensity.
A lot of attempts to install systems - on a team or individually - fail. Here's how to make it more likely to succeed.
Commentary and extrapolation from Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of Flow State, as applied to the video game EVE Online. Some practical application for emotional management, learning, and systems theory in other endeavors. Relevant links: "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience": https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202 "Is EVE A Bad Game, Or Is It Just You?": https://crossingzebras.com/is-eve-a-bad-game/
Short guidelines for better writing. ACM = Audience, Content, Mechanics Mentioned on the show: "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ "This Sentence Has Five Words" by Gary Provost: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/373814-this-sentence-has-five-words-here-are-five-more-words "On the Sublime" by Longinus: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17957/17957-h/17957-h.htm "Memories of Silk and Straw" by Junichi Saga: https://www.amazon.com/Memories-Silk-Straw-Self-Portrait-Small-Town/dp/0870119885
"A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation." — Richard Rumelt
Exploring why momentum tends to be high at the start and end of projects, and lowest in the middle.
You can get the best of both of worlds in terms of being conservative or aggressive with goals and target-setting by setting by both a conservative baseline target and an aggressive stretch target for the same work session.
A lot of people have tried to explain the importance of ergodicity. We have now also tried to do so.
Add "J-Curve" to both your vocabulary and mental models — it's the type of thing that gets worse before it gets better. Definition, explanation, and useful examples.
Practical episode. Quick mental technique. Takes around 5-15 minutes to do it once. Then it helps a lot with reducing Shiny Object Syndrome.
Some characteristics that are good to have in a weekly review. Some examples. Quite practical.
Some taxonomic arguments. Aesthetics, sensory perception, and regulatory systems. Very abstract at first, some interesting and possibly profitable ways to think about the world.
Damasio's Somatic Markers Hypothesis — and some speculations on practical implications.
NFA: Not screwing around... turns out, you can learn a lot about reality from anything. Everything happens in time and space, math is unreasonably effective at modeling the world, and lessons for learning and performance can come from a lot of different domains.
Staying power — enduring — is valuable. It's often necessary to accomplish big things. Now... should you consider all the downsides and odds and risk factors or should you absolutely insist no matter and refuse to consider quitting? Looking at points from Richard Machowicz and Ray Dalio to illustrate two schools of thought towards staying power.
Want better communications? Simple but effective — Every meeting has an agenda. All agendas in one place. Everyone can see all agendas and notes. It works great.
Two points that seem to fight against each other: noticing and giving incrementally more effort to physical and mental tasks, while keeping it all very sustainable.
From perhaps the greatest nonfiction adventure story of all time — Xenophon's Anabasis — an incredible moment of standing up when one is not-quite-ready.
When someone tells you, "Tom is really good at tennis" — does that mean he's the best player in your social circle or that he could hold his own against Federer and Nadal? There's two very different scales for "very good" — making the distinction is very helpful.
Not necessarily a fun episode, but potentially very important if you're flying close to the sun. Show notes here but there ain't much of 'em: https://www.ultraworking.com/podcast/icarus
What do most people do when something unhappy and unpleasant comes up? They tend to plaster it with feel-good feelings and encouragement. Here at Ultraworking, we have a reality cop, aka Sebastian Marshall, to stop us from avoiding reality. When something's scary or unfamiliar, we embrace the abyss and work through it. Full show notes: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/reality-cop
How do you start to build the programming thinking model for someone who's lightly technical or non technical? Let’s talk programming with the cofounders of Ultraworking, Sebastian Marshall and Kai Zau. Potentially useful for someone’s who’s lightly technical or non-technical — lots of metaphors to describe the programming thinking model in this episode. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/is-your-programming-project-like-ikea-home-depot-or-an-iron-mine
Have you ever thought about how to take care of your mind and body given all the time you spend at a computer? You're doing a lot of work at your computer, you spend a lot of time in front of it. But we're not thinking about the machine that carries our mind often enough. So, let's become a computer athlete, eh? We can become fundamentally sound at being at the computer. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/computer-athlete
We're going to go through a bunch of military terms and see if you can figure out why the military names stuff so awkwardly. Hint: People will bring their own associations to any word that they've heard before and that they think they understand. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/airland-battle-and-you
Would you like to get your work done faster? I mean, most people just assume a task will take as long as it does... are you sure? We’ve got a new show format for you — we’ve got Lukas and Janet in this episode, talking about classical conditioning and doing 200 tasks in 10 minutes each (yes, really!). Super valuable if you’re trying to get work done faster. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/does-it-have-to-take-that-long
The word of the day is Angespannt. It’s a German word that has no English equivalent, referring to the feeling you have when there's a constant level of tension that's building up (it’s not stress or anxiety). Sebastian and Lukas dive deep into the meaning of the word and talk about the value in being able to know what you're feeling. Full show notes with links here: https://www.ultraworking.com/podcast/big-project-angespannt
So, you are a British commando infiltrating Nazi Germany. You find an unguarded supply depot, do you blow it up? It's surprisingly informative about your character. This simple thought experiment will tell you a lot about how you approach project success rate, risk, chance of failure, big picture thinking, and all the details. You might learn something important about yourself in this show. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/the-nazi-fuel-dump-question
How do we know if we're doing good at the very fundamental elemental skill? A simple ranking system to evaluate how in tuned you are with fundamental elemental skills. Score yourself and you might just be surprised. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/elemental-rankings
The co-founders at Ultraworking, Kai Zau and Sebastian Marshall, talk about estimation. Why is it so hard to know how long things take to complete? So how do we get better at it? How do we simulate and predict the future? Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/estimation
A deep dive on staying out of project hell. Some math. It's simple math. We've got some non-math arguments too. And the show is a little funny, maybe. But yeah, more than one thing at the same time is dangerous. We go deep on it. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/mathematical-arguments-serializing-projects
Turns out making world-class stuff is really hard. Some thoughts from the front on the creative process. Full show notes with links: https://www.ultraworking.com/podcast/rough-creative-process-rough
Interesting, insightful, funny show for you today. We're going to use win-loss rate from video games to understand the math of when our habits are going to fail — as well as the win techniques to improve win-loss rate for habit success. Also maybe useful if you play shooter games, too. Uh, that's not the point though. Habits. This show is about habits. Really. Full show notes with links: https://www.ultraworking.com/podcast/encounter-rate-win-loss-rate
How many focused hours can you work in a week? Interesting question, eh? Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/how-many-hours-can-you-work-in-a-week
How often do you think about why you read? Maybe not often enough! Let's dive deep into better reading - and maybe even some superpowers - from finding great obscure books that you'll be the only person in your circle that's read. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/obscure-books-combo-power
Welcome to the very first episode! In this episode, host Sebastian Marshall explores a topic that’s been almost an obsession for him. It’s something he’s searching for, that might be impossible, but he can’t stop searching for it — it’s the ‘Holy Grail’ of peak performance — whether it's possible to get both the benefits of massive almost manic creative runs and the benefits of radical consistency. It might be impossible — but that won't stop us from searching for it and profiting for the exploration. Full show notes with links: www.ultraworking.com/podcast/the-holy-grail