"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."
—Andre Gide
We show you how to make investments in your future and achieve success. This is done with the one resource we all share equally. That resource is TIME. No matter who you are, there are 24 hours in a day and 168 hours in a week.
Our brains are prediction machines helping us navigate the uncertain future. Mindset guides the future predicting models our brain creates for each of us. We have a choice about the predictive models we create and thus, we have a choice about the content of our mindset. The mindset choice determines the level of motivation we have for investing our TIME in that uncertain future. Psychologist Carol Dweck is a mindset expert. Dweck explains our mindset along a continuum, with two kinds of mindset categories anchoring each end of that continuum. [i] Those opposing mindset categories are the growth mindset and the fixed mindset.
Growth Mindset: The growth mindset describes a way of viewing challenges and setbacks. People with a growth mindset believe that even if they struggle with certain skills, their abilities aren’t set in stone. They believe that with work, their skills can improve over time. The growth mindset is generated from a personality psychology known as an internal locus of control. [ii]
Fixed Mindset: People with the opposite belief — that abilities are what they are and won’t change — have a fixed mindset. They think their skills won’t improve over time, no matter how hard they try. Or, even if they do improve their skills over time, the fixed mindset worries their improvement will not be rewarded with opportunity. The fixed mindset is generated from a personality psychology known as an external locus of control.
Not surprisingly, the growth mindset provides a higher degree of motivation to capture future opportunities, as compared to the fixed mindset.
In this article, we will focus on using a growth mindset as a catalyst for investing our TIME. But first, we will paint the picture from the ultimate fixed mindset, that is, someone believing in determinism. After painting the picture, the article provides a framework for rising out of a fixed mindset and pursuing an internal locus of control. This leads to prioritizing your time via the growth mindset for maximizing your value. The hero of the article is the garbage picker. But it could be anyone. Together, we will explore how to leverage a growth mindset to make massive investments in your future and achieve success.
Table of contents
Introduction
Painting the fixed mindset picture with determinism
The source of the garbage picker's opportunity
The framework for capturing the garbage picker's MASSIVE opportunity
How the garbage picker makes high-value choices
Conclusion and Notes
About the author: Jeff Hulett is a career banker, data scientist, behavioral economist, and choice architect. Jeff has held banking and consulting leadership roles at Wells Fargo, Citibank, KPMG, and IBM. Today, Jeff is an executive with the Definitive Companies. He teaches personal finance at James Madison University and provides personal finance seminars. Check out his new book -- Making Choices, Making Money: Your Guide to Making Confident Financial Decisions -- at jeffhulett.com.
2. Painting the fixed mindset picture with determinism
Neuroscientist and endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky explains why our world may skew toward a more deterministic outcome. Sapolsky’s rationale for “Determinism” is that people, owing to their environmental and genetic endowment, are hardwired for certain outcomes. The policy implications for Sapolsky’s premise are enormous. It calls into question all forms of criminal justice. How can society punish people if they are not to blame for their actions? It also calls into question free will. How could our choices matter if we are hardwired for certain outcomes? At the extreme, it calls into question an underlying premise of the American constitutional government. The Declaration of Independence boldly states the American objective as "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Determinism calls into question the breadth and degree to which happiness can be pursued or if our path to happiness is already determined.
The prototypical example Sapolsky gives is that of the garbage picker. The example starts by describing a university graduation. The university grounds crew cleans up after graduation and the garbage picker is part of the grounds crew. The garbage picker is the model and hero of this article. However, the hero could be almost anyone.
Sapolsky paints the scene – a glorious spring day for college graduation. Super proud and well-dressed families are in attendance. Some first-generation college graduates have broken the family’s education barrier to a hopeful future. The attendee's support and excitement are alive!
Then, as the ceremony wraps up, the grounds crew swoops in to tidy up the graduation space. So now, Sapolsky compares that new graduate to the garbage picker. Sapolsky points out that the graduate and the garbage picker likely had very different influences from:
Nature → Genes and inherited traits from their past and
Nurture → Our environment in the womb up until the moment before graduation.
His theory is that the garbage picker’s life was determined by the life capacity wholly impacted by their nature and nurture. The garbage picker’s nature and nurture past put them on a very different deterministic path than that newly minted college graduate.
Determinists make a valid point concerning our ability to choose between various life paths. Making changes from our default nature and nurture-impacted life paths can be challenging. This article addresses how to overcome the fixed mindset associated with determinism. Achieving a different future starts with creating a different mental model of the uncertain future. Thus, the growth mindset is essential for changing the default life path. To build the opportunity framework, we explore the economics and Stoic philosophy enabling our hero's opportunity. The garbage picker's investment opportunity is demonstrated along with how to deploy a growth mindset. The goal is to overcome deterministic challenges in the service of leading a flourishing life.
3. The source of the garbage picker's opportunity
First, our world is incredibly diverse. Our diversity is on a continuum defined along the nature and nurture dimensions containing all people. There are about 8 Billion people on the planet and about 350 Million people in the United States. Let’s say a small proportion, like 1%, are born into the world with an extreme condition making someone very challenged to achieve much more than survival. Maybe they have extreme Cystic Fibrosis, an overwhelming and untreatable form of schizophrenia, or profound, non-verbal autism. [iii] For this article, we are assuming the garbage picker is in the 99%. This article assumes that 99% of people, plus or minus, have enough life capacity to find occupations and ways to flourish made possible because of their diversity, not despite their diversity.
Our garbage picker hero likely has a comparative advantage enabling their occupation choice. Comparative advantage is a time-tested economics concept initialized by David Ricardo in the early 1800s. It has since been built upon and refined by many economists. [iv] Comparative advantage is diversity's economic validator and the great source of opportunity for our garbage picker hero. Comparative advantage describes how people do not have to be the best at anything and still create economic value. Because we all have the same TIME fixed resource, it makes more sense for a person to specialize because we all cannot do everything. In fact, it is this specialization that has created great global wealth for market economies like the United States. It is comparative advantage and specialization that gives great opportunity to our diverse population, including the garbage picker. [v]
A comparative advantage example: Please consider the 2 people already mentioned in this article, both of whom have the same TIME fixed resource.
Dr. Sapolsky - is a well-educated neuroscientist and endocrinologist. Throughout his career, he taught at fine universities, accomplished amazing research, and was - and still is - a prodigious author. In a head-to-head comparison with our garbage picker hero, for this example, Sapolsky is superior at both neuroscience and garbage picking.
Garbage picker ("GP") hero - has little formal education and is relatively young. Our GP hero finished high school and is not sure if they will pursue additional formal education. In a head-to-head comparison with Sapolsky, our GP hero is inferior at both neuroscience and garbage-picking.
The question is, who should do the neuroscience and who should do the garbage picking - Sapolsky or the GP hero? The initial response may be: "Hey, Sapolsky is better at both neuroscience and garbage picking, so he should do both." Ricardo teaches us that the initial response is wrong. The market signals Sapolsky to pursue a specialization in neuroscience because the demand for neuroscience pays more than garbage picking.
Here is the thing, if Sapolsky does garbage picking, it will take away from his time available for neuroscience. Since Sapolsky has a fixed amount of time, he is better off specializing in neuroscience. For Sapolsky, dedicating any of his valuable TIME to garbage picking creates an opportunity cost. This leaves an opportunity for our GP hero to pursue garbage picking or ANYTHING ELSE outside of Sapolsky's market-signaled specialty AND in the context of the TIME that Sapolsky has available for that specialty.
Now, let's add a nuance. What if Sapolsky enjoys garbage picking as a relaxing diversion? That is different. We all need to relax and recharge. That is separate from the time we use for our vocations. I, the author, love being outside and gardening. Does this mean I am at odds with landscapers. No. It just means I enjoy piddling outside at something that helps me recharge.
Of course, there is not always a clean line between vocations and diversions. The point is, via the price mechanism, the market signals how society values economic activities. Since our time is fixed, anything we do outside one economic activity creates an opportunity cost for another.
Stoic philosophy has much to say about our choices, in terms of free will and determinism. [vi-a] Stoic philosophy recognizes the determinism found in part of our life. Stoicism recommends we focus on what we can control. Stoicism suggests the good life is found in what we can control, mainly our actions and our judgments. The Stoic dichotomy of control is found in 3 levels.
High influence: Our choices and judgments. This is our free will.
Partial influence: Health, wealth, relationships, and behavior outcomes flowing from our and others choices and judgments.
No influence: Weather, environment, genetics, and most other environmental factors - this is Sapolsky's determinism focus area. Notice that the Stoics agree.
Anil Seth is a cognitive and computational neuroscience professor at the University of Sussex. Dr. Seth’s research conclusions [vi-b] align with the ancient Stoics’ Dichotomy of Control framework:
“[Free will] is a freedom to act according to our beliefs, values, and goals, and to do as we wish to do, and make choices according to who we are.”
Neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Eric Hoel developed a theory of consciousness suggesting a source of free will. It is called Causal Emergence. [vi-c] The theory indicates the higher scale of a system has stronger causal relationships than the underlying lower scale of a system. Thus, in a network with many integrated systems, the theory posits the higher macroscale systems will exhibit higher degrees of causality than those foundational systems existing at the microscale.
In the garbage picker’s scenario, it could be the microscale training, showing up for work, building confidence, building skills, etc. that are less causal to the garbage picker’s success than the macroscale success opportunities directly causing some desired outcome. [vi-d] The macroscale success opportunity could be acceptance into college, starting a new business, getting a better-paying job, or buying a house. Habits lead to opportunities and opportunities build success.
The challenge is that you never know which habits and activities will lead to opportunities and which opportunities will build success. This is the challenge of the practical application of causality. For example, if you asked a scientist to determine if some activity or habit is causal to a successful outcome, they would suggest developing an A/B test. A randomized control trial is where each test group is independent and made up of similarly situated people who perform different activities or have different habits. The scientist would compare the groups and conclude which set of activities and habits lead to successful outcomes. The challenge is - the garbage picker and all job seekers are a sample of one! There is no alternative universe where they can try something different at the same time. They must make their best guess and adapt as they learn. It takes time for causality to emerge and causality can only be observed in retrospect.
As an aside, the role of parents or role models is to provide a kind of control group. We are comparative creatures. So if a success seeker observes a role model's path to success, they will consider that path as a successful A/B test outcome. While the path to their success may ultimately differ from the role model's path, it provides the success seeker confidence to get started on a path.
It takes time for those lower causal habits and activities to emerge as a higher causal opportunity. Stoic philosopher Seneca provides a very useful aphorism to guide people through the success achievement process, he said:
“Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet.”
To connect Seneca’s aphorism to Causal Emergence, it is the lower scale “preparation” required to meet the higher scale “opportunity,” all in the hunt for what Seneca calls a “lucky” successful outcome. Seneca's luck relates to probability. While we do not know for sure how preparation and opportunity combine for a successful outcome, we do know preparation and opportunity in various combinations lead to a higher or lower probability of success.
So, mathematically, habits and activity are in the denominator and the chance of success is the outcome to the right of the equation. The objective is to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. As such, you are better off building a larger denominator since the numerator is unknown because it is yet to emerge, but the opportunity for a successful outcome does exist.
Preparation is necessary but not sufficient to achieve a successful outcome. You have no idea exactly which preparatory activities or habits or which combination of preparatory activities or habits leads to a successful outcome. This is why preparation is on the low side of causality. This is also why building a large denominator of preparatory activities or habits is helpful to achieving success. This may sound weird, that a higher denominator relates to a high probability. But this is because the lower-level microscales are less causal. You simply do not know which one will lead to an opportunity for success.
Opportunity can be elusive. While the opportunity will be more obviously causally related to the successful outcome, it often takes longer to emerge than we may hope. Also, causal knowledge usually only reveals itself after the fact. So, we only know an opportunity caused our success retrospectively. At the time a decision to pursue an opportunity is made, success is usually NOT obvious. This is why pursuing multiple opportunities is a good idea. A larger numerator will help you increase the likelihood of success.
Circling back to graduation day, the garbage picker woke up that glorious graduation day with a job to do. To live the good life of a Stoic, the garbage picker did that which they have in their control TODAY. They showed up to work. This relates to the habit or activity part of the garbage picker's preparation. Our hero is working for a university or a university contractor. They make a modest wage and some benefits - either that or a wage that allows them to obtain medical insurance. Let’s assume the garbage picker has enough essential health care and money to provide simple shelter and food ... a basic subsistence. Nothing fancy for sure, but a baseline. The garbage picker may have some past demons or bad habits. What if they gamble or drink a little too much? More on bad habits are discussed in the next section. The remainder of this article focuses on that which we can control. That is, how we invest our TIME to get the most out of our life.
A Stoic and growth mindset example - Jon B: As a James Madison University undergraduate, a good friend of mine was Jon B. Jon was a kind, happy, and bright college student. He was unassuming and friendly. Jon needed money to support himself in college. So, Jon got a job at the local McDonalds. He cooked fast food and worked the drive-through. He always smiled and McDonald's loved him. He showed up on time and did his job well. Jon graduated with honors and went on to become a doctor.
4. The framework for capturing the garbage picker's MASSIVE opportunity
Now, let’s transition to the garbage picker's opportunity. The biggest opportunity starts with their biggest resource: TIME. The next graphic summarizes an estimate for the great investment opportunity. We separate TIME into 2 chunks. Think of these chunks the way an economist thinks about savings and consumption. Savings is defined as consumption in the future. In contrast, consumption is defined as consumption today. So, the only difference between consumption and savings is the TIME in which we choose to consume the resource. In total, we have about 170 total hours a week in TIME resources. We may consume the TIME resource today OR we may invest it for the future.
The first chunk is our TIME consumption needed for sleep [vii], sustenance, and work. That leaves about 80 hours for saving and investment.
For our second chunk, we need to sleep and eat for our future well-being, exercise, and to manage our life. Everyone's daily needs are a little different so the chunk components may vary.
Please notice that I separate food and sleep between the absolute minimum time needed to survive in the consumption-based first chunk and the food and sleep needed to thrive in the future-based second chunk. This is my hypothesis based on longevity research by Peter Attia and Dan Buettner. [viii]
Of course, treating your TIME as an investable currency takes some practice and discipline. Let's dig into what is meant by the TIME investment. As a rule of thumb, your TIME investment is how you deploy your attention. [ix] It is what we attend to and the quality of that attention that creates, or does NOT create, value for us. As an example of potentially suboptimizing attention, large social media platforms have figured out how to tap into monetizing your attention. Some people would much rather scroll through their social media than attend to other life investments. Check out your smartphone to determine how much time you spend on it. This may be unnecessarily detracting from your TIME investment capacity. We will discuss bad habits in the next section. The point is that success comes from respecting our TIME as our most important investable resource to both improve the quality of and the prioritization of our attention. Success comes from being intentional with how you invest your most valuable TIME resource.
So, after our fixed investments, this leaves about 60 hours per week available for forward, long-term investment! Wow!
Back of the envelope estimate of TIME allocation. Individual allocations may vary. It is the framework that matters.
Dr. Sapolsky and the determinism crowd would say, “Ya, but our ability to realize that investment gets wiped out by nature and nurture." My response is, "The TIME investment is possible in the context of a growth mindset and focusing on that which you can control." To be fair:
Do all those nature and nurture impacts make proper TIME investing more challenging? Sure they do.
Do some social classes have more challenges to make TIME investments than other classes? Absolutely - and it stinks that they do.
But the future is our playing field and the choices we ALL make today have an impact on our future growth opportunities.
"Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today."
- Ernest Hemmingway
5. How the garbage picker makes high-value choices
First, resolving the sins of the past is important. Above, I mentioned a few bad habits like gambling, drinking, or overindulging on social media … but everyone’s situation is different and may relate to your parents' parenting style or other childhood environmental conditions. [x] In the Causal Emergence framework, a bad habit is a negative to the denominator and thus a negative to the opportunity emergence and the chance of a successful outcome. Since our TIME resource is fixed, bad habits will crowd out the good habits enabling opportunity emergence and a good outcome. Bad habits have a way of dominating our TIME resource.
Making headway on our bad habit challenges is important. Neuroscience and behavior psychology teach us that bad habits feel normal. [xi-a] Sapolsky's determinism premise certainly relates to bad habits. If we let our bad habits dominate then our life path is more likely to be determined by our nature and nurture past.
Also, the challenges that may hinder us may go beyond more typical and changeable bad habits. For example, alcoholism is a disorder that certainly goes beyond drinking a little too much. Recovering alcoholics often consider their condition as permanent, so they completely abstain from drinking any alcohol. For this article, we lump changeable or unchangeable but controllable habits under the "bad habits" umbrella. In a very real sense, breaking free of bad habits is breaking free of the fixed mindset and determinism.
It is possible, our genome may contain DNA markers making us pre-disposed to disorders like alcoholism. Epigenetics teaches us that we have some control over whether or the degree to which we activate those pre-dispositions. [xi-b] Therefore, minimizing bad habits and compensating with bespoke good habits helps us overcome our nature-based pre-dispositions.
Identifying and changing bad habits may be difficult, but is essential. Ultimately, not creating bad habits in the first place is the habit to which we should aspire. Employing a “progress, not perfection” mindset is important. Voltaire got it right – “Perfect is the enemy of good.” So bang away at your demons and ask for help.
Let’s say headway on your past demons is an investment of 10 hours/week. This leaves you about 50 hours for positive momentum! You may want to make headway on those bad habits before jumping into forward investment.
Now, how do you deploy this MASSIVE 60-hour per week investment capacity? Everyone is different and at different life stages to make this investment. Let us assume you are the garbage picker hero of our story and a young adult looking to set a career direction.
If garbage picking is for you, talk to the owner or manager. Do you see a future in garbage picking? I’m serious! What if the university is using a contractor and this grounds crew company has some special technology, competitive advantage, or market relationships? You could get on the ground floor of an entrepreneurial opportunity! If there is a path forward in this company or industry, can you get into management someday? Perhaps you can earn equity in the company? Consider using your 60-hour-per-week TIME war chest to invest in the garbage-picking industry!
What if garbage picking is not for you? Then consider using your massive 60 hours per week to make an educational investment. Start slow. There are lots of very low or no-cost online courses, such as Kahn Academy. [xii] If you did not graduate from high school, get your GED. If you did graduate from high school but do not have much money, go to the local community college and get an associate’s degree. Leverage low-cost community college to bootstrap to an undergraduate degree. The university or contracting firm you work for is a great place to consider. They may have employee education assistance.
What should you choose to study? Our economy is incredibly dynamic. New and growing industries represent the employer's demand for resources. Position yourself to be part of the employee resource supply for that high-value industry. I would go to the government “Occupation Outlook Handbook” and choose a major supporting a job from this list:
Please see the latest list on the BLS website.
How do you position yourself to be highly recruited? Get good grades. A good GPA signals potential employers the 3 Cs:
The first C is “intellectual Competence” → which is the willingness and ability to learn.
The next C is Conscientiousness” → which is a resilient and hard worker.
Finally, the last C is Collaborativeness” → which is a team player.
When recruiting new college graduates, recruiters rely upon the GPA to signal readiness to be successful in their organization. This is helpful to keep in mind when deciding which college to attend. Choose a college where you feel you can achieve a good GPA.
Increasing our smarts is another name for what we economists call "increasing human capital." The experience of how a college employee, like a professor, helps a student build human capital is easy to confuse with what causes someone to increase their human capital. Correlation is not causation. Frankly, many people increase their human capital without college.
However, as a former managing consultant in a large firm that hired thousands of college graduates per year, I have a fine-tuned understanding of the college system's value to an employer. [xiii] First, put yourself in the mindset of a hiring manager. We are so busy doing our day job running a business that we simply do not have enough time to fully research the rich diversity of every college job applicant. To simplify the gathering and processing of recruit information, the college 3 Cs GPA is a singular and heavily relied upon signal. The signal to employers is that you can apply sustained effort over many years to achieve a goal. Employers want to hire people like that! The rest can be trained. Think about what this means. The fact that you got an education is a college byproduct. What employers really want is hard-working, trainable team players.
In the context of college recruiting, after GPA, an employer is likely to use a major field of study to break a tie between new hire recruits. So, the GPA gets you in the door, the major breaks the tie between those invited inside.
Earlier, two paths were offered, based on whether or not garbage picking is for you. Of course, garbage picking is a metaphor. Whatever your current situation is, you have a choice to either pursue that occupation or pursue changing the path. The basis for pursuit is your TIME investment. Certainly, there are many other path alternatives.
Generally, whether staying on the path or changing the path, higher education is part of that path. To be clear, higher education is not necessarily a college degree. They are not the same. Not all industries value formal education credentials. Human capital can be acquired by experience and lower-cost certifications. Think of higher education more broadly and in the context of being a lifetime learner. Increasingly, the learning habit can be pursued without the formal, credentialed education system. Please consider the lifetime learning habit as essential for the growth mindset. I recommend a portion of your 60-hour forward investment war chest should always be dedicated to lifetime learning.
Finally, what if after all that, you do not see an opportunity to deploy your TIME investment? Also, what if the time consumed for work does not leave enough investment TIME? Then it is time to move. Economic and social mobility is important. Do not feel like you are stuck. Search for community alternatives providing a better platform for your TIME investment.
"The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
—Nelson Mandela
6. Conclusion
The determinism crowd makes a good point. Our past nature and nurture factors make choosing a different path than the one we are already on a challenge. This article shows an approach to using our amazing TIME investment capacity to make smart decisions about our future. The future is your playing field. Use your choice to play well!
Our diverse neurobiology and the diverse situations of our lives make decision-making a challenge. Building and maintaining a strong decision process is your countermeasure for diversity challenges and leveraging diverse opportunities. My book, Making Choices, Making Money provides frameworks and smartphone resources to help you make the best decisions.
Notes
[i] Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, 2006
[ii] Goddard, Locus of control, Core Psychiatry, 3rd Ed, 2012
[iii] The impact of nature and nurture is explored in the article:
Hulett, The Gene Trade: Making the Market for Gene-altering Interventions and Medical Selection, The Curiosity Vine, 2022
[iv] Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817
[v] Russ Roberts provides a stark but appropriate way of thinking about the power of specialization:
"Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty"
Roberts, The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, 2000
[vi-a] Epictetus, Enchiridion, 125 CE
The Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701-1761) is credited with developing the mathematics to help make judgments based on an uncertain, or probabilistic, future. The probability-based math is called Bayesian Inference and is based on the conditional probability construct. For a deeper dive into how to make choices and impact our belief-informed judgments, please see:
Hulett, Challenging Our Beliefs - how to be Bayesian in our day-to-day life, The Curiosity Vine, 2023
[vi-b] Seth, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, 2020
[vi-d] A similar application of Causal Emergence occurs by an example from C.E.K. Mees:
‘The approach of a scientist to the phenomena which he observes may be realized perhaps by means of an analogy. Suppose you enter a room and see a man playing a violin. You say at once that this is a musical instrument and is producing sound. But suppose that the observer were absolutely deaf from birth, had no idea of hearing, and had never been told anything of sound or musical instruments, his whole knowledge of the world having been acquired through senses other than hearing. This deaf observer entering the room where a violinist was playing would be entirely unable to account for the phenomenon. He would see the movements of the player, the operation of the bow on the strings, the peculiarly shaped instrument, but the whole thing would appear to him irrational. But if he were a scientist interested in phenomena and their classification, he would presently find that the movements of the bow on the violin produced vibrations, and these vibrations could be detected by means of physical instruments and their wave form could be observed. After some time, it might occur to him that the vibrations of the strings and violin must be communicated to the air and could be observed as changes of pressure. Then he could record the changes of pressure produced in the air in the playing of a piece of music, and by analysing the record could observe that the same groups of pressure changes were repeated periodically. Eventually he would attain to a knowledge of the whole phenomenon of music—the form of musical composition and the nature of different musical forms—but none of this would give him any approach to the absolute truth in that he would still be unaware of the existence of sound as a sense and of the part that music could play in the mental life of those who could hear.’
Mees, The Path of Science, 1946 (p. 59)
[vii] "Sleep" could easily be dropped into the 2nd fixed investment chunk instead of the 1st consumption chunk. Science teaches that sleep is an investment in future health. The old adage that "I will sleep when I'm dead" has been flipped. Today, science teaches us that a "lack of sleep will cause me to be dead." This is owing to neurodegenerative disease associated with inadequate sleep.
Sleep was placed in the first chunk because we consume it every day. However, sleep should NOT be considered a source of long-term source of investable TIME. Sure, in a pinch, a night or 2 of little sleep is probably ok. However, persistent sleep deprivation should be avoided.
Hulett, How medical system incentives foster an impaired, health-diminished doctoring environment, The Curiosity Vine, 2023
[viii] Buettner, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest, 2008
Attia, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, 2023
[ix] "... the right hemisphere has a kind of sustained, broad, vigilant attention instead of this narrow, focused, piecemeal attention (found in the left hemisphere). And it sustains a sense of being, a continuous being, in the world. So, these are very different kinds of attention." - Iain McGilchrist
Dr. McGilchrist discusses the different kinds of attention emanating from different brain hemispheres. It is our left hemispheric originated "narrow, focused, piecemeal attention" on point for our evolutionary-based linear focus for survival. It is the understanding of non-linearity needing a "sustained, broad, vigilant attention" associated with our right hemispheric originated attention.
McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009
[x] There is a correlation between parenting style and one's growth mindset predisposition and related opportunity achievement. The authoritative or demanding and responsive parenting style is known as the most likely to start a young adult on a growth mindset trajectory. The authoritarian or demanding but unresponsive parenting style is less likely to enable a growth mindset. For this article, we consider parenting styles as "sins of the past" habits that the child may need to update as a young adult.
Merlin, Okerson, Hess, How Parenting Style Influences Children: A Review of Controlling, Guiding, and Permitting Parenting Styles on Children’s Behavior, Risk-taking, Mental Health, and Academic Achievement, The William and Mary Educational Review, Vol 2, Issue 1, Article 14, 2013
One of my favorite examples of overcoming parenting style is Pat Summitt. Coach Summitt was an Olympic basketball player and women's college basketball coach trailblazer. Based on her memoir, she admittedly grew up in a traditional, southern United States authoritarian parented environment. She transitioned from the fixed mindset of her upbringing to becoming one of the most successful college coaches in history.
Summitt's example also provides a sad, cautionary tale. Related to the TIME investment framework, Summitt appeared to trade sleep from Chunk 1 as a forward investment. In other words, she deprived herself of sleep to invest in her basketball career. Unfortunately for the world, her life was cut short by early-onset neurodegenerative disease. The causes of neurodegenerative disease are complex. However, neuroscience teaches there is a strong correlation between sleep deprivation and neurodegenerative disease. Summitt was famous for sleep deprivation, especially in-season.
Summitt, Jenkins, Sum It Up, 2013
[xi-a] Bad habits, such as those related to drinking, smoking, and social media have their source in the dopamenic processes of our neurobiology.
Hulett, How our neurobiology impacts our life's pursuits: Are you from 'Dope-land' or 'Acetyl-ville?', The Curiosity Vine, 2023
[xi-b] "Alcoholism is a complex psychiatric disorder that has a multifactorial etiology. Epigenetic mechanisms are uniquely capable of accounting for the multifactorial nature of the disease in that they are highly stable and are affected by environmental factors, including alcohol itself. Chromatin remodeling causes changes in gene expression in specific brain regions contributing to the endophenotypes of alcoholism such as tolerance and dependence. The epigenetic mechanisms that regulate changes in gene expression observed in addictive behaviors respond not only to alcohol exposure but also to comorbid psychopathology such as the presence of anxiety and stress. This review summarizes recent developments in epigenetic research that may play a role in alcoholism. We propose that pharmacologically manipulating epigenetic targets, as demonstrated in various preclinical models, hold great therapeutic potential in the treatment and prevention of alcoholism."
Krishnan, Sakharkar, Teppen, Berkel, Pandey, Chapter Three - The Epigenetic Landscape of Alcoholism, Editor(s): Subhash C. Pandey, International Review of Neurobiology, Academic Press, Volume 115, 2014, Pages 75-116,
[xii] A potential future for the higher education system is explored and the use of low-cost educational resources.
Hulett, Higher Education Reimagined, The Curiosity Vine, 2020
[xiii] Hulett, Diamonds In The Rough – A perspective on making high impact college hires, The Curiosity Vine, 2021
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