“Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”
-Michael Pollan

How Corn is Killing You

What should you eat to achieve optimal health? Food writer and journalist Michael Pollan sums up the scientific evidence in three short phrases:

• Eat food.
• Not too much.
• Mostly plants.

Whole Foods
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? In his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Pollan shows that while the advice is simple, the reasons are often far from obvious. Take the first phrase: “Eat food.” It seems self-evident. You wouldn’t eat non-food items like dirt or diamonds. But what Pollan means is you should eat whole foods that have not been processed. For example, an apple is a whole food whereas apple juice is a processed food. Eat the apple, don’t drink the juice. Similarly, oatmeal is a whole food whereas Kellogg’s Corn Flakes is a processed food.

What about buying a steak from the grocery store and barbecuing it yourself? Isn’t steak a whole food? After all, it has one ingredient and it hasn’t been processed. Technically, that’s true. But the problem is the steak came from a cow that grew up eating processed food. Processed corn, to be precise.

Cornfed to Death
What’s wrong with that? The problem is cows are not designed to eat corn, they’re designed to eat grass. When cows are fed a concentrated diet of corn, it leads to a buildup of acid in their stomachs. Acidotic cows paw and scratch their bellies, eat dirt, and suffer from weakened immune systems. Over time, the acid eats away at the stomach wall, allowing bacteria to enter the bloodstream. The bacteria end up in the liver, where they form pus-filled abscesses. At slaughter, 15–30 percent of feedlot cows are found to have abscessed livers. To prevent cows from dying from their corn diet, they are pumped full of antibiotics: Rumensin buffers acid in the stomach, helping to prevent acidosis, and Tylosin, a form of erythromycin, lowers the rate of liver infection.

If corn causes so many complications, why do ranchers feed it to their cows? Like most businesses, it’s all about the money. Cornfed cattle get fatter faster. And thanks to generous government subsidies, corn is dirt cheap. In the 1900s, ranchers raised cows on grass and it took 4–5 years to get cows ready for slaughter. Nowadays, a calf goes from 80 pounds to 1,100 pounds in 14 months by eating tremendous amounts of corn-based carbohydrates, protein, and fat.

While cornfed beef is much cheaper than pasture-fed beef, the two types of meat have dramatically different effects on your health. Cornfed beef is high in saturated fat and the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids is 10:1 (seeds such as corn are high in omega-6, whereas leaves and grass are high in omega-3). In contrast, pasture-fed beef is low in saturated fat and the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is 2:1. Why does this matter? Too high a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 contributes to heart disease because omega-6 helps blood clot, whereas omega-3 helps it flow.

Corn Chips with Legs
As Pollan points out: “You are what you eat eats.” And what we North Americans have become is “corn chips with legs.” So says Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist. Dawson discovered this unsettling fact by using a mass spectrometer to analyze human tissues for the ratio of carbon 13 versus carbon 12 (corn plants have higher ratios of carbon 13 compared to other plants, therefore the higher the ratio in a person’s sample the more corn has been in her diet, or in the diet of animals she ate).

In a follow-up experiment, Dawson used his mass spec to determine the proportion of carbon coming from corn in a McDonald’s meal. The results?

• Soda: 100 percent corn (from high-fructose corn syrup)
• Milk shake:  78 percent
• Salad dressing: 65 percent
• Chicken nuggets: 56 percent
• Cheeseburger: 52 percent
• French fries: 23 percent

Considering that one in three kids in the United States eats fast food every day, it’s no wonder that North Americans score so high on the cornfed scale.

Back to the Land
Now that we’ve exposed the insidious effects of corn in your diet, what can you expect if you follow Pollan’s three food rules?

The answer comes from a 7-week experiment conducted by Australian nutritionist Kerin O’Dea. In the summer of 1982, she recruited a group of 10 Aborigines who were overweight and had type 2 diabetes. They were living in settlements near the town of Derby in Western Australia and their diet consisted mainly of flour, sugar, rice, soft drinks, beer, powdered milk, fatty meat, potatoes, and onions. For the experiment, O’Dea and the Aborigines traveled to an isolated region of northwest Australia. The idea was to leave civilization behind and eat only what could be hunted and gathered from the land.

The Aborigines started on the coast, where their diet consisted mainly of seafood, supplemented by birds, kangaroo, and witchetty grubs. After 2 weeks, they moved inland beside a river and their diet included freshwater fish, shellfish, turtle, crocodile, birds, kangaroo, yams, figs, and bush honey.

After 7 weeks in the bush, blood tests showed striking improvements in the Aborigines’ health. Their triglyceride levels had fallen into the normal range and their levels of omega-3 fatty acids had increased dramatically. Everyone in the group lost weight—an average of 17.9 pounds per person—and had lower blood pressure. Signs of diabetes such as glucose tolerance and insulin response to glucose were greatly improved.

You don’t have to move to the Outback and eat grubs to improve your health. All you have to do is eat whole foods, not too much, and mostly plants. It’s time to switch your diet to what Mother Nature intended you to eat.

References
Pollan M. (2008). In defense of food: An eater’s manifesto. Penguin Press.

Pollan M. (2006). The omnivore’s dilemma: A natural history of four meals. Penguin Press.

O’Dea K. (1984). Marked improvements in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in diabetic Australian Aborigines after temporary reversion to traditional lifestyle. Diabetes. 33(6): 596–603. Abstract.

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“I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome.”
-Julius Caesar

Is it Better to be a Big Fish in a Small Pond?

I’m a biotech entrepreneur based out of Ottawa, Canada. When I’m visiting friends or clients in the United States, I invariably get asked when I’m going to move to Boston or the Bay Area. After all, that’s where the action is in my field (and the winters are warmer!).

Talent Clusters
So should I move? On one hand, there are fewer biotech entrepreneurs in Canada compared to the United States, so there is less competition for funding, talent, and other resources. On the other hand, there are more opportunities south of the border. The reason, as Richard Florida points out, is because “In today’s creative economy, the real source of economic growth comes from the clustering and concentration of talented and productive people.” This clustering force “makes each of us more productive, which in turns makes the places we inhabit much more productive, generating great increases in output and wealth.”

So is it better to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?

Gifted Schools
To investigate this question, Australian psychologist Herbert Marsh looked at the performance of students in gifted and non-gifted schools. He and his colleagues analyzed over 100,000 15-year-olds from 26 countries. Their results showed that students in schools with higher average achievement levels experienced lower levels of academic self-concept. Self-concept is the psychological need to think and feel positively about yourself. In other words, students in gifted schools had lower confidence in their abilities and felt less positively about themselves.

Some parents and teachers might argue: “Who cares how students feel as long as they perform better?” The problem is self-concept can directly influence performance.

Competition and Comparison
In an Israeli study with over 1,000 gifted students, researchers found that gifted students in mixed-achievement classes had higher academic self-concepts, lower anxiety, and higher school grades than gifted students in specialized classes with other gifted students. Other studies have shown that elite swimmers with high physical self-concepts perform better at international events than swimmers with comparable rankings but lower self-concepts. Similarly, employees who feel confident in performing a task will actually perform better and will try harder when things go wrong.

It’s a self-reinforcing cycle: How you think and feel about yourself both affects and is affected by your performance. Perhaps the underlying question is: What’s the optimal balance between the size of the fish and the size of the pond?

Stretch Goals
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology professor at Claremont University in California. He studies flow, the state of peak performance and peak experience. According to Csikszentmihalyi, “the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

There is a zone, the line between overexertion and underexertion, where we perform at our best and enjoy what we are doing. It occurs when the activity is appropriate for our skill level; when it is neither too hard nor too easy. If it is too hard, we experience anxiety. If it is too easy, we become bored.

Finding Your Level
Imagine you are learning to play tennis. One day, your coach surprises you. He has scheduled you to play top-ranked Roger Federer at center court in Wimbledon. How do you feel? Will you enjoy getting thrashed with the world looking on? Will you enjoy wasting Roger’s time?

Whether you are a tennis player, gifted student, or entrepreneur, look for a pond that’s challenging to swim, but not so deep that you’ll drown.

References
Florida, Richard. (2008). Who’s your city?: How the creative economy is making where to live the most important decision of your life. Random House.

Marsh HW, Hau K. (2003). Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect on academic self-concept: A cross-cultural (26-country) test of the negative effects of academically selective schools. American Psychologist. 58(5): 364–376. Full Article.

Marsh HW, Byrne BM, Yeung AS. (1999). Causal ordering of academic self-concept and achievement: Reanalysis of a pioneering study and revised recommendations. Educational Psychologist. 34: 155–167. Full Article.

Zeidner M, Schleyer EJ. (1999). The big-fish–little-pond effect for academic self-concept, test anxiety and school grades in gifted children. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 24: 305–329. Abstract.

Csikszentmihalyi M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.

“There’s a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.”
-John Erskine

How Important is a Personal Touch?

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. First Lady, wife of a billionaire, she was at the center of power for most of her life. How did she do it?

Personal Notes
We know about Jackie’s style, elegance, and grace. But less well known was her skill at writing personal notes and letters. According to journalists Shelly Branch and Sue Callaway: “Jackie used her trademark stationery (light blue sheets with embossed white lettering) and loopy script to curry favors, charm lovers, maneuver out of tight spots, and evoke her famous wrath—usually in effusive fashion.”

Jackie wrote people’s names in large letters, and began lots of sentences with “you.” When writing on her tiny 3.5” x 4.5” notecards, she made use of every inch, often writing on the back and up the sides. Longtime Kennedy family aide Melody Miller remembers that Jackie’s notes usually opened with something personal up front. For example, she might write “what a spectacular soufflé!” and then follow up with a more generic “thank-you for a memorable evening.”

If it worked for Jackie, will it work for you?

The Power of Personalization
At Sam Houston State University in Texas, behavioral scientist Randy Garner tested the effect of personalized notes on response rates for mail-in surveys. He randomly selected 150 university professors to receive one of three packages:

• 50 received a survey with a handwritten Post-It note that said, “”Please take a few minutes to complete this for us. Thank you!”
• 50 received a survey with a handwritten letter with the same message as the Post-It note.
• 50 received a survey with no handwritten note or letter.

Results showed that the response rates were 76 percent for the handwritten Post-It notes, 48 percent for the handwritten letters, and 36 percent for the no-message group. A Post-It note is such a small personal touch. Why does it cause such a big difference in response rates? And why does it outperform handwritten letters?

Norms and Forms
The answer lies in the difference between social norms and market norms. Social norms are the standards of behavior we expect from friends, family, and community members. It includes the friendly requests we make of neighbors, or the way we help an old lady cross the street. There is a feeling of goodwill and helping others. In contrast, there is nothing sentimental about market norms. You get what you pay for. It’s the world of salaries, prices, rents, interest, and cold calculations.

When you receive an unsolicited survey in the mail, you see it as work. Why should you fill it out if you’re not getting paid? If it includes a handwritten letter, it tells you that at least someone took the time to write. It’s better than a form letter, but not by much. In contrast, a handwritten Post-It note looks and feels friendly. It makes you think of the notes you got from your mom in your lunchbox when you were a kid. Or the love note you got from a Valentine in sixth grade.

Write a Note
A handwritten Post-It note nudges you into the warm and fuzzy world of social norms. You fill out the survey and mail it in because it feels like the right thing to do.

Learn from Jackie’s example. Write someone a personal Post-It note today.

References
Branch S, Callaway S. (2006). What would Jackie do? An inspired guide to distinctive living. Gotham Books.

Garner R. (2005). Post-It® note persuasion: A sticky influence. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 15(3): 230–237. Abstract.

“It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”
-Marlene Dietrich

How Much are Friends and Family Worth?

Friends and family are important. But money is important too. Money pays for food, shelter, health insurance, and sending your kids to college. It can also buy you more time to spend with friends and family.

Social Capital
What’s the right balance between making more money and spending more time with friends and family? It seems like an impossible question to answer. After all, how can you put a dollar value on the joy you get from playing in the park with your kids, or spending Christmas with your parents and grandparents?

It turns out there is a way. It involves taking a random sample of people, recording their happiness levels at different points in time, and then using regression equations to work out the implied “shadow price” of different life conditions.

Happiness and Relationships
Using this method, economist Nattavudh Powdthavee at the University of London analyzed responses to the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from 1997 and 2003. The BHPS asked over 10,000 randomly-selected people the same question: “How dissatisfied or satisfied are you with your life overall?” There were seven possible responses, ranging from “1. very dissatisfied” to “7. very satisfied”.

In addition, respondents were asked the following two social questions:

• “How often do you meet friends or relatives who are not living with you, whether here at your home or elsewhere?”
• “How often do you talk to your neighbours?”

There were five possible responses, ranging from ““1. never” to “5. on most days”.

Among working-age adults, 43 percent of men and 50 percent of women said they met up with their friends every day. The numbers were slightly less when it came to talking with their neighbors: 33 percent of men and 39 percent of women did so every day. In terms of happiness, three-quarters of men and women rated themselves higher than 4 on the life satisfaction scale.

Pricing Happiness
How did Powdthavee use this information to calculate the dollar value of friends and family? Suppose there is a woman who sees her friends “once or twice a month” at the beginning of the survey. By the end of the survey, she is seeing her friends “on most days” and reports a 1-point increase on the life satisfaction scale. Therefore, the shadow price of seeing her friends more often is equivalent to the income required to generate the same 1-point increase in life satisfaction. The actual calculations are more complicated because they control for variables such as marital status, health, education, employment status, children, hospitalization time, and so on, but the rationale is the same.

Crunching through the BHPS numbers revealed that someone who only saw his or her friends or relatives less than once a month required an extra $94,500 a year to be just as satisfied with life as someone who saw his or her friends or relatives on most days.

Here are the shadow prices for other life situations:

• Talking to neighbors on most days versus less than once a month: $60,000/year
• Getting married: $96,000/year
• Moving in together: $81,000/year
• Going from very poor health to excellent health: $450,000/year
• Getting separated: minus $86,000/year
• Getting divorced: minus $33,000/year
• Being disabled: minus $92,000/year
• Being unemployed: minus $99,000/year
• Widowhood: minus $300,000/year

Note that these are huge effects considering the average annual household income per capita was $14,700 in the BHPS sample.

Of course, these shadow prices are only estimates based on averages. Your life situation may be far from average. But if you get a job offer in New York City at double your salary, you should consider the social cost of missing your friends and family.

References
Powdthavee N. (2008). Putting a price tag on friends, relatives, and neighbours: Using surveys of life satisfaction to value social relationships. Journal of Socio-Economics. 37(4): 1459–1480. Full Article.

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“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.“
-Muriel Rukeyser

The Simple Way to Make People Remember What You Say

Chip Heath is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His students are among the best and brightest in the country. But there is a simple way for community college students to out-communicate anyone in his class—even if they speak English as a second language.

Made to Stick
In Made to Stick, Heath explains how he discovered the secret. During one of his classes, Heath asked his students give a 1-minute speech on a topic such as crime patterns in the US. After each speech, students rated each speaker. Not surprisingly, the most polished speakers usually got the highest ratings. The surprise happened 10 minutes after the last speaker. Heath asked the students to pull out a sheet of paper and write down every idea they could remember for each speaker.

The class was shocked to discover how little they recalled. For some speeches, students couldn’t remember any ideas. In the average 1-minute speech, speakers used 2.5 statistics. Only 1 in 10 told a story. But when it came time for recall, 63 percent remembered the stories, compared to 5 percent for statistics.

Sticky Stories
Results showed that speaking talent had almost no effect on making ideas stick. According to Heath, “The stars of stickiness are the students who made their case by telling stories, or by tapping into emotion, or by stressing a single point rather than ten.” He confides, “There is no question that a ringer—a student who came into the exercise having read this book—would squash the other students.”

Why are stories so powerful? Heath believes it’s because stories are like flight simulators for the brain. When you tell a story, your audience imagines they are there with you. It’s the next best thing to first-hand experience.

So the next time you’re giving a speech or presentation, remember that stories are your secret weapon to making ideas stick.

References
Heath C, Heath D. (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. Random House.

“People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Warren Beatty

Why Coke Tastes Better Than Pepsi

Warren Buffett is the world’s greatest investor. He has made his fortune by investing in companies such as Kraft Foods, Mars Candy, Wrigley, and Coca-Cola. What do these companies share in common? They make brand-name products that customers buy over and over again.

Predictable Profits
This means there is little need for research and development. Mars sells you the same chocolate bar year after year . It doesn’t have to invest money in improving the recipe.
In contrast, a company such as Intel spends over $5 billion a year to sustain its technology lead. If it stopped, its competitors would catch up and surpass it.

Another advantage of selling brand-name products to loyal customers is that retailers have to stock them to stay in business. For example, imagine if McDonald’s stopped serving Coke and replaced it with a no-name cola. Customers wouldn’t be happy. As Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger says, “If I go to some remote place, I may see Wrigley chewing gum alongside Glotz’s chewing gum. Well, I know that Wrigley is a satisfactory product, whereas I don’t know anything about Glotz’s. So if one is 40 cents and the other is 30 cents, am I going to take something I don’t know and put it in my mouth, which is a pretty personal place after all, for a lousy dime?”

Battle of the Colas
But what if McDonald’s substituted Pepsi for Coke? What would happen then? After all, Pepsi is a brand-name product. And blind taste tests show that many Coke-drinkers prefer the taste of Pepsi over Coke. But if that’s true, why isn’t there a mass defection of Coke drinkers over to the Pepsi side? Why do people keep drinking Coke?

At Baylor College of Medicine, Samuel McClure and his colleagues set out to find the answer. They gave Coke and Pepsi to volunteers under two scenarios:

1. Blind taste test: Volunteers drank from unmarked cups.
2. Non-blind taste test: Volunteers drank from cups marked with Coke and Pepsi brands.

While the volunteers were drinking, the researchers scanned their brains using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). This is a technique that reveals how brain activity changes in response to different conditions.

The results showed that branding had a dramatic effect on brain activity. In taste tests with Pepsi, there was little difference in brain activity when volunteers knew they were drinking Pepsi. In contrast, Coke-drinkers strongly preferred drinking Coke out of Coke-branded cups versus unbranded cups. Brain scans showed a sharp increase in activity in the hippocampus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and midbrain. These regions of the brain are known to modify people’s behavior based on emotional memories.

Warm and Fuzzy
The Coca-Cola company spends over $2 billion on advertising every year. Their creative teams have won awards such as the Gold Lion from Cannes and Time magazine’s Top 10 best ads of 2007. Does their advertising pay off? Well, how do you feel when you think of Coca-Cola? For me, I feel happy as I remember drinking Coke on a hot summer day while fishing with my dad.

These warm and fuzzy feelings are why Coke tastes better than Pepsi. And indirectly, it’s the reason why Warren Buffett is Coke’s largest investor.

References
Buffett M, Clark D.  (1997). Buffetology: The previously unexplained techniques that have made Warren Buffett the world’s most famous investor. Rawson Associates.

McClure SM et al. (2004). Neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Neuron. 44(2): 379–387. Full Article.

“For 37 years I’ve practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius.”
-Pablo De Sarasate

The No-sweat Way to Improve Your Skills

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.” Psychologist Anders Ericsson confirmed this when he studied violin students at Berlin’s prestigious Academy of Music. By the age of 20, elite performers had put in about 10,000 hours of practice, compared to 8,000 hours for good students and 4,000 hours for mediocre students.

It’s All in Your Head
Deliberate practice is the foundation for success. But what if there were a way to practice without getting sweaty? There is—it’s a training technique called mental practice. How does it work? It’s simple. You sit quietly and visualize yourself performing the task successfully from start to finish. For example, a violinist would practice Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by thinking through the notes, or a golfer would picture the motions for a perfect putt.

How effective is mental practice? In research funded by the US Army, James Driskell and his team reviewed 35 studies on mental practice involving over 3,000 subjects. Overall, they found that mental practice is about two-thirds as good as actual physical practice.

In addition, they discovered two easy ways to maximize the benefits of mental practice:

• Practice at least once a week. Mental practice just before the actual activity provides the biggest boost in performance. The benefit drops by 50 percent at 14 days, and is negligible at 21 days.
• Practice for about 20 minutes. Practicing longer doesn’t help much.

Mind Games
Mental practice has been proven to work in a wide range of activities, including dart throwing, welding, trombone playing, figure skating, and estimating the volumes of chemical substances.

The next time you’re sitting in an airport or waiting for the bus, pass the time with some mental practice. It’s the no-sweat way to improve your skills.

References
Ericsson KA, Krampe RT, Tesch-Romer C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review. 100(3): 363–406. Full Article.

Driskell JE, Copper C, Moran A. (1994). Does mental practice enhance performance? Journal of Applied Psychology. 79(4): 481–492. Full Article.

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“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.“
-Hippocrates

What Chinese Villagers Can Teach You About Nutrition

Joel Fuhrman is a family doctor in New Jersey who specializes in nutrition. He’s also a former world-class figure skater who placed second in the US National Pairs Championship in 1973. On top of these accomplishments, Fuhrman has written Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss.

China Study
In his book, Fuhrman discusses the findings of the China-Cornell-Oxford Project. Called “the Grand Prix of epidemiology” by the New York Times, the “China Study” compared the diets, lifestyles, and diseases of 65 rural Chinese counties in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the county-dwellers ate completely plant-based diets, while others ate a significant amount of animal products.

Results showed a strong association between the prevalence of heart disease and cancer, and the proportion of animal products in people’s diets. In other words, people who ate extremely low amounts of animal-based food were virtually free of heart attacks and cancer.

Power Plants
Fuhrman recommends eating according to the “90 percent rule”: 90 percent of your diet should be unrefined plant food. Processed foods and animal foods should be used as condiments, and make up 10 percent or less of your diet. In addition, his “One pound-One pound Rule” advises you to eat at least 1 pound of raw green vegetables a day, and 1 pound of cooked/steamed or frozen green vegetables a day.

The Life Plan Food Pyramid summarizes his recommendations:

Healthy Weight Loss
What benefits can you look forward to if you change your diet? First, you’ll lower your risk for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Second, Fuhrman’s Life Plan will help you become thin and fit. He says, “I have tested my recommendations on more than 2,000 patients. The average patient loses the most weight in the first 4–6 weeks, with the average being about 20 pounds…Those following the program continue to lose about 10 pounds the second month and about a pound and a half per week thereafter. The weight loss continues at this comparatively quick rate until they reach their ideal weight.”

Eat to Live is a compelling book. After reading it, I’ve been eating more vegetables and less animal products such as beef, chicken, and pork. Maybe you should give it a try too.

References
Campbell TC, Junshi C. (1994). Diet and chronic degenerative diseases: perspectives from China. Am J Clin Nutr. 59(suppl): 1153S–61S. Abstract.

Brody JE. (1990). Huge study of diet indicts fat and meat. New York Times. May 8. Full Article.

Campbell TC, Parpia B, Chen J. (1998). Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of Coronary Artery Disease: the Cornell China study. Am J Cardiol. 82: 18T–21T. Abstract.

“If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.”
-James Lovelock

Why Angus Beef is Bad for Your Heart

The China Study found that villagers who ate animal protein had a higher risk of developing heart disease and cancer. Yet field studies of modern-day hunter gatherers have found that they are generally free of heart disease, even though their diets consist of about 65 percent animal food and 35 percent plant food. Why the contradiction?

Wonderfully Wild
It’s quite simple, actually. Hunter gatherers eat wild animal foods, and wild protein is high in heart-healthy monounsatured and polyunsaturated fats, and omega-3 fatty acids. For example, white-tailed deer meat has a polyunsaturated fat content of 16 percent, compared to only 7 percent for grain-fed beef. Similarly, the amount of omega-3 fatty acids is almost twice as high in white-tailed deer meat.

Live Like a Caveman
Not everyone has access to wild meat. Instead, you can choose to eat heart-healthy animal protein such as fish or omega-3 enriched eggs. Another option is getting your protein from plant foods such as tofu, nuts, beans, peas, lentils, and other legumes.

Eat like a caveman, exercise like a caveman, and your body will reward you for years to come.

References
Cordain L et al. (2002). The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic. Eur J Clin Nutr. 56(Suppl 1): S42–S52. Full Article.

Cordain L et al. (2002). Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease. Eur J Clin Nutr. 56: 181–191. Full Article.

“Be master of mind rather than mastered by mind.”
-Zen proverb

How Not Thinking Helps Athletes Win

In ancient Japan, Musashi Miyamoto and other legendary samurai achieved a state of mind known as mushin no shin, a Zen expression meaning mind of no mind. It refers to an absence of anger, fear, or ego. There is no thinking or judging. The fighter is free to act and react without hesitation.

Acting Without Thinking
Swordsmen trained for years to achieve mushin. They repeated the same movements thousands of times until they could perform them spontaneously without conscious thought. In The Book of Five Rings, Musashi wrote: “With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.”

With his mastery of mushin, Musashi was undefeated in over 60 duels. Why is acting without thinking so powerful?

Brain Delay
In the 1960s, psychologist Arthur Jensen discovered the answer. Jensen found that most people have minimum reaction times of 250 milliseconds. When he asked subjects to deliberately slow down their reaction times by a small amount, he was surprised to find that they could not. Their minimum reaction times jumped from 250 msec to 500–1,000 msec. There was no in-between. In other words, if you consciously perform an action, your minimum reaction time is 250–750 msec slower than if you act without thinking.

A lot can happen in half a second. Consider these examples:

• A hummingbird flaps its wings 10 times in 100 msec.
• If the phrase “one Mississippi” represents 1 second, then “one Miss” is about 300 msec.
• In the 2004 NBA playoffs, Derek Fisher of the LA Lakers caught an inbounds pass and hit a turnaround jump shot at the buzzer to beat the San Antonio Spurs. Total time? 400 msec.

No wonder Musashi was undefeated. In the time it took for his opponents to decide what to do, Musashi had already cut off their heads. Whether you’re a samurai swordsman or a weekend warrior, thinking means failure if reaction time matters.

References
Libet B. (1981). The experimental evidence for subjective referral of a sensory experience backwards in time: reply to P. S. Churchland. Philosophy of Science. 48(2): 182–197. Abstract.

Eligon J. (2006). Basketball; When a blink of an eye is an eternity. New York Times. December 22. Full Article.

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“If you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.”
-Count Basie

The Secret to Reading Body Language is Not What You Think

Joe Navarro spent 25 years as an FBI agent in the areas of counterintelligence and behavioral assessment. Over his career, he became an expert on nonverbal communication. In his book What Every Body is Saying, Joe reveals the secrets to speed-reading people.

Your Secret Weapon
Why should you care? Researchers estimate that nonverbal behaviors account for 60 percent of all interpersonal communication, and up to 100 percent during lovemaking. Reading body language can give you a big edge in business negotations, understanding your friends and family, and meeting cute guys and girls.

Look Down
According to Joe, the common misconception is that you should focus on a person’s face. The problem is that people train themselves to mask their emotions. For example, it’s not socially acceptable to show disgust when you meet someone you don’t like.

That’s why Joe recommends observing people’s feet to get a truer indicator of how they feel about you. Unlike their faces, most people have not trained their feet to hide their feelings. Also, millions of years of evolution have conditioned our feet to react instantaneously to danger. It’s an instinct that’s hard to fight.

Meet My Feet
Here are Joe’s top tips for reading feet:

• People are genuinely welcoming you if they move their feet along with their torso to face you. If they just swivel their torso but don’t move their feet, then they’d rather be left alone.

• When two people talk, their feet normally face each other. If one person turns her feet away or repeatedly moves one foot in an outward direction, you can bet she wants to get away.

• If you see someone pointing his or her toes upward, it usually means the person is in a good mood or hearing something positive.

• Crossing your legs is a sign that you feel comfortable and confident. The reason is because it significantly reduces your balance and makes it hard to run away from danger. Your brain only lets you do this if you feel safe and secure.

• If you don’t like someone or don’t feel close to them, you will immediately move your feet away if they touch you accidentally with their feet. This is one of the early warning signs that a couple is having problems with their relationship.

• “Happy feet” is when you’re bouncing on the balls of your feet. It’s a strong indication that you’re excited or getting something you want.

The next time you’re at a party, try reading people’s feet and see if it matches what they say to your face.

References
Navarro J. (2008). What every body is saying: an ex-FBI agent’s guide to speed-reading people. HarperCollins.

“Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.”
-Wilt Chamberlain

Why You Should Bet on David and Not Goliath

In the Book of Samuel, the Bible describes how the Philistine army had gathered for war against Israel. Goliath, the Philistine champion, was over 9 feet tall. Thick bronze armor covered every inch of his body. Each day for 40 days, Goliath came out and mocked the terrified Israelites. No one was brave enough to fight him.

Little and Lethal
Finally, the Israelites sent out David, a young shepherd boy who was scarcely old enough to shave. David staggered under the weight of his full battle armor. He could barely lift his sword. Facing off against Goliath, David realized he had no chance if he played by Goliath’s rules. So David took off all his armor and dropped his sword. His only weapon was a slingshot and some stones.

Goliath laughed when he saw David approaching. How could a shepherd boy possibly hope to win against him? Of course, we know that David made Goliath pay for his cockiness with a stone between the eyes.

As Wilt Chamberlain said, people love rooting for the underdog. But was David really at a disadvantage?

The Weakness of Strength
The Correlates of War is a data set of 197 wars fought around the world from 1800 to 1998. Out of this total, there were 170 wars where strong actors started off with military advantages of 5:1 or more against weak actors. Despite the overwhelming odds, weak actors were victorious nearly 30 percent of the time. In fact, the trend is that weak actors are becoming more successful over time. From 1800–1849, weak actors won only 12 percent of these asymmetric conflicts, but this increased to 55 percent from 1950–1998.

Crazy Like a Fox
How is this possible? When a weak actor is attacked by a strong actor, there are two main options: (1) direct defense, such as meeting the enemy head-on, or (2) indirect defense, such as guerilla warfare. The goal of direct defense is to stop the enemy’s attack quickly, whereas the goal of guerilla warfare is to destroy the opponent’s will over time.

Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung explained it this way: “In guerrilla warfare, select the tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west; avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision. When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws. In guerrilla strategy, the enemy’s rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points, and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted, and annihilated.”

Successful Strategies
Political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft summarizes how to be successful: “Strong actors are more likely to win same-approach interactions and lose opposite-approach interactions.”

Out of the 170 asymmetric wars fought from 1800 to 1998, strong actors won 76 percent of all same-approach interactions, and weak actors won 63 percent of all opposite-approach interactions. Same-approach interactions lasted an average of 2.7 years, whereas opposite-approach interactions lasted an average of 4.9 years.

So if a strong actor directly attacks a weak actor, and the weak actor responds with guerilla warfare, how should the strong actor respond? The answer is that indirect defense should be countered with indirect attack. There are two parts to an indirect attack: (1) Prepare expectations for a long drawn-out war, and (2) Send in special forces trained for counterinsurgency operations.

War and Business
These findings have applications outside of military strategy. For example, Clayton Christensen’s “Theory of Disruptive Innovation” recommends that companies not compete directly against incumbents. Instead, companies should either:

1. Target the low-end of the market with “good enough” products and services. Incumbents don’t usually care if they lose these budget-minded customers.
2. Target new customers in new markets. These new markets are typically too small to be of interest to incumbents, at least at first.

By not going head-to-head against an entrenched competitor, Christensen showed that the odds of success increased from 6 percent to 37 percent.

In a similar way, martial arts such as judo and kung fu teach you to turn your opponent’s force to your advantage rather than to oppose it directly.

Victory
Victory is a matter of choosing the right strategy based on your circumstances. Chinese general Sun Tzu was one of the greatest military strategists of all time. He said: “It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy’s strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, engage them; if equal, be able to divide them; if fewer, be able to evade them; if weaker, be able to avoid them.”

References
Arreguin-Toft I. (2001). How the weak win wars: a theory of asymmetric conflict. International Security. 26(1): 93–128. Full Article.

Christensen CM. (1997). The innovator’s dilemma. Harvard Business School Press.

“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.”
-Irish proverb

Why Party Animals Catch More Colds

Have you ever noticed that you’re more likely to get sick after a weekend of drinking and dancing? You’re not imagining things. It’s true.

Carriers
The first reason is because there’s usually at least one or two sick people at any party. When they cough or blow their nose, their germs become airborne for you to inhale. When they touch a door handle or washroom faucet, their germs can get onto your hands without you knowing it. If you then touch your eyes or nose, the germs get transferred from your hands and into your body.

The second reason is because staying out late means getting less sleep. And not enough sleep means you don’t fight off colds as well.

Sleepers
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University proved this by conducting a study with 153 healthy men and women. For 14 consecutive days, the volunteers kept notes on 3 things:

• How long they slept.

• The percentage of time they actually spent sleeping while lying in bed (sleep efficiency).

• Whether they felt rested after sleeping.

Next, the volunteers were quarantined and given nose drops containing a virus for the common cold.  For 5 days after exposure, the volunteers were monitored for cold symptoms and administered lab tests to see if they were infected by the virus.

Less Party, More Pillow
The results? Eighty-eight percent of the volunteers were infected by the virus, but only 35 percent developed cold symptoms after being infected. Sleep losses of 2-8 percent (e.g., 10–38 minutes for an 8-hour sleeper) were associated with 4 times the risk of developing a cold.  About 9 percent of the volunteers had sleep efficiencies less than 85 percent (e.g., lying in bed for 8 hours but sleeping for less than 7 hours). These people had 5 times the risk of developing a cold. In contrast, feeling rested was not a significant predictor of preventing a cold.

The bottom line is that you’re more likely to catch a cold if you’re not getting enough sleep. And even a small amount of missed sleep means you’re much more likely to catch a cold.

References
redOrbit. (2008). Cold germs lurk for days. October 29. Full Article.

Cohen S et al. (2009). Sleep habits and susceptibility to the common cold. Arch Intern Med. 169(1): 62–67. Abstract.

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“I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”
-Dr. Seuss

Why Eating Eggs Helps You Lose Weight

Kathryn Myronuk describes herself as a “knowledge sommelier.” For Ray Kurzweil’s book “The Singularity is Near,” she was the perfectionist who collected and compiled most of the data and references.  At Singularity University, Kathryn is in charge of Library and Knowledge Resources, which is a fancy way of saying we go to her when we have unanswered questions.

Breakfast of Champions
In the NASA cafeteria, I sat down beside Kathryn and noticed we were eating the same breakfast: soya milk, cream of wheat, fresh fruit, and scrambled eggs. As we ate our eggs together, I remembered a study in the International Journal of Obesity recommending 2 eggs rather than a bagel breakfast of equal calories.

Compared to the bagel eaters, people who ate eggs as part of a calorie-reduced diet:

• Lost 65 percent more weight in 8 weeks (2.6 kg versus 1.6 kg)
• Reported higher energy levels
• Saw no increase in their total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or triglyercide levels

Nikhil Dhurandhar was the lead researcher on the study. He concluded, “People have a hard time adhering to diets and our research shows that choosing eggs for breakfast can dramatically improve the success of a weight loss plan.”

Tastes Great, More Filling
Why do eggs work? The reason is because eggs have a satiety index that is 50 percent higher than white bread or ready-to-eat breakfast cereal. Satiety is a measure of how filling a food is. Eggs are mostly protein, and protein takes longer to break down in your gut than simple carbohydrates such as bagels. This makes eggs more filling than bagels.

And when you feel full, you’re less likely to overeat or sneak a bad snack.

References
Vander Wal JS et al. (2008). Egg breakfast enhances weight loss. Int J Obesity. 32: 1545–1551. Abstract.

“Power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.”
-Vint Cerf

How to Give a Great Presentation

At Singularity University, we’ve had some incredible lectures—from Dan Barry’s talk on “Failure is an Option” to Andrew Hessel’s glimpses into the future of Synthetic Biology. David S. Rose is New York City’s “Pitch Coach.” Thanks to his 3-hour workshop on the anatomy of presentations, I now know why some presentations are so much better than others.

Here are 5 keys to success:

(1) Great presentations answer 3 questions well:

• What is your main point?
• Why does it matter?
• If the audience remembers only one thing, what do you want it to be?

(2) The audience is there to see you.

If they simply wanted to read your handout, they would have stayed at home. Therefore, you are the center of attention. And to hold the audience’s attention, you must be passionate and genuine. If you’re not excited about your topic, then you shouldn’t give the presentation.

To be genuine, imagine you’re sitting around a fire and telling stories with your friends. For example, watch how South Bronx activist Majora Carter talks about urban renewal.

(3) Slides should be visual and emotional.
The best slides have few or no words. Just one evocative image that adds an emotional punch to what you’re saying. For example, check out these slides from Chris Landry of the Sustainable Food Lab.

To get images for your presentations, go to iStockPhoto, or check out MorgueFile and Google Image Search for royalty-free pictures.

(4) People have short attention spans.
Scientists have found that students recall the most information from the first 5 minutes of a lecture. Attention drops around the 6-minute mark and stays relatively constant until 15 minutes. Past 15 minutes, many students have a hard time staying alert.

This is why your presentations should be less than 20 minutes. If you must talk longer, then intersperse your 20-minute mini lectures with 2–5 minutes of active engagement. For example, ask students to stand up and share opinions with their neighbors.

(5) Practice makes perfect.
To become a great speaker, you must practice constantly. Violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz once said, “If I don’t practice one day, I know it. If I don’t practice two days, my critics know it. If I don’t practice three days, everyone knows it.” To get more practice, join your local chapter of ToastMasters International. In parallel, watch TED talks for role models and examples.

Knock Their Socks Off
We’ve all sat through countless hours of “death by PowerPoint.” The bar is so low that you’ll distinguish yourself the first time you apply these 5 tips. Then with a bit of practice, watch out as your calendar fills up with speaking requests.

P.S. for the definitive guide to giving great presentations, get a copy of Garr Reynolds’ book “Presentation Zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery.”

References
Burns RA. (1985). Information impact and factors affecting recall. Paper presented at Annual National Conference on Teaching Excellence and Conference of Administrators, Austin TX. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 258 639). Abstract.

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.“
-Winston Churchill

Insights from Singularity University – Part 2

I’m back in Canada from Singularity University, and I’ve had a few weeks to reflect on the mind-blowing experience I had this summer. Yes, it was super cool to learn about bleeding-edge technologies in fields such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. But technology is changing so fast that many things I learned this summer will be obsolete by next summer.

Stories of Success
As I discussed in last month’s newsletter, the most valuable lessons were insights into human nature and psychology. Specifically, what do successful people do to become successful?

Here are some thoughts:

• Dan Barry is a famous retired astronaut. He told me that some of his astronaut friends have their schedules booked up a few years in advance. But Dan does the opposite. He keeps his schedule free by turning down most invitations. This means he’s available when a truly great opportunity comes along, such as the opportunity to teach at Singularity University for 9 weeks.

• Barney Pell is the founder of Powerset, the natural language search engine that was acquired by Microsoft for about $100 million in 2008. For 15 years, Barney knew that natural language search would eventually find its way into the mainstream. In 2006, he judged that the timing was right. He assembled a team of people and technology that he had cultivated patiently for years. It’s a strategy he’s looking to repeat: (1) identify powerful trends, (2) wait patiently for the right time, and (3) assemble the right team.

• There were 40 students in the inaugural class of Singularity University. There were doctors, scientists, bankers, entrepreneurs, engineers and artists from around the world. From these outstanding young leaders, we voted Yonatan Adiri as our Class President, and Vijai Anma as most inspiring student. What made these guys stand out from everyone else?

1. It felt good to be around them. They had positive energy.
2. When they said they would do something, they always did it.
3. They were confident and humble.
4. They were secure in the five Master Life Faster areas: Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, and Social.

Singularity University was a life-changing experience for me. Maybe you should apply for next year’s class?

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“If there was a simple formula for success and it was easy to follow, everybody would be doing it.”
-Edward C. Johnson III

How to Improve Your Odds as an Entrepreneur

How hard is it to build your own business? What can you do to improve your odds of success?

Hard Work
To answer these questions, Paul Reynolds at Florida International University and Richard Curtin at the University of Michigan launched a project called the “Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II” (PSED II). In 2005, they contacted 31,845 adults and identified 1,214 nascent entrepreneurs. Twelve months later, they conducted follow-up interviews.

Reynolds and Curtin found that the average time involved in creating a new company was between 1,200 and 1,600 hours of work (30–40 weeks of full-time work). The average amount of startup funding was about $15,000, with 1-in-6 involving $50,000 or more.

High Growth
As part of the study, the researchers analyzed the new companies and attempted to forecast which ones would attain $4 million in sales and/or create 50 jobs within 5 years. Only 6 percent of the startups were judged to be capable of this rapid growth.

These high-growth startups shared the following characteristics:

• Multi-person teams. Average startup team size was 2.5 people, compared to 1.5 people for low-growth firms.
• Industry experience. Seventy-five percent of founders reported 6 or more years of same industry experience, compared to less than 50 percent for low-growth firms.
• Business-to-Business (B2B). About 50 percent focused on providing a product or service to other businesses versus 25 percent of low-growth firms.
• Exports. Almost half of customers were national or international, compared to less than 20 percent for low-growth firms.
• New customers and new markets. High-growth companies were more likely to introduce new goods and services into the market.

There are always exceptions to statistics. For example, J.K. Rowling was a first-time author and single mom when she wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1995.
In July 2000, her fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, sold 3 million copies in its first 48 hours. By 2008, Rowling’s fortune was estimated at almost $800 million.

Nevertheless, the findings from PSED II are useful for understanding how to improve your probability of success. As Damon Runyon said, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

References
Reynolds PD, Curtin RT. (2008). Business creation in the United States: Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II initial assessment. Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship. 4(3): 155–307. Full Article.

“In general, mankind, since the improvement in cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Why Raw Food Helps You Lose Weight

Richard Wrangham is an anthropologist at Harvard University. He believes that cooking was the “killer app” for human evolution—the invention that enabled early humans to evolve bigger brains. What’s Wrangham’s reasoning?

Your Hungry Brain
Your brain has a big appetite. It consumes about 20–25 percent of your body’s energy. A million years ago, early humans were subsisting on a diet consisting mainly of raw fruits and vegetables. This type of diet did not provide enough calories to support the development of a big, hungry brain. Then, several hundred thousand years ago, humans discovered how to cook with fire. All of a sudden, humans were able to get a lot more calories out of their existing food.

For example, researchers have studied digestion in patients fitted with collection bags at the ends of their small intestines. Cooking increases the proportion of food digested in the stomach and small intestine from 50 percent to 90 percent. In other words, cooking almost doubles the calories you absorb from food.

The Miracle of Cooking
How does it work? Cooking transforms food. It breaks down starch molecules into more digestible sugars. It denatures protein molecules into amino acids chains that are easier to digest. Heat also physically softens food, which means your digestive system requires less energy to digest it. All of this extra energy fueled the evolution of our big brains.

Fast forward to modern times. In the developed world, we no longer have a problem getting enough to eat. Instead, we’re eating too much and suffering from obesity. Reflecting on Wrangham’s research, what would happen if we cooked less?

Thin and Raw
Researchers in Germany conducted a cross-sectional survey of people who had been eating a strict raw food diet (70–100 percent of food intake) for an average of almost 4 years. Results showed that men experienced an average weight loss of 9.9 kg compared to 12 kg for women. In fact, 15 percent of men and 25 percent of women had a Body Mass Index (BMI) that was abnormally low (< 18.5 kg/m²). About 30 percent of the women under 45 years of age stopped menstruating, either partially or completely.

In another study, researchers observed that about 50 percent of vegans were deficient in vitamin B12. Typically, this deficiency developed after 2 years on a strict raw food diet.

When it comes to raw food, balance is the key. Too much leads to vitamin deficiencies and excessive weight loss. But the majority of us would do well by eating more fresh fruits and vegetables.

References
Wrangham RW et al. (1999). The raw and the stolen: cooking and the ecology of human origins. Current Anthroplogy. 40(5): 567–594. Abstract.

American Association for the Advancement of Science. (2009). What’s cooking? The Economist. February 19. Full Article.

Koebnick C et al. (1999). Consequences of a long-term raw food diet on body weight and menstruation: results of a questionnaire survey. Ann Nutr Metab. 43: 69–79. Abstract.

Donaldson MS. (2000). Metabolic vitamin B12 status on a mostly raw vegan diet with follow-up using tablets, nutritional yeast, or probiotic supplements. Ann Nutr Metab. 44: 229–234. Abstract.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.“
-H.G. Wells

Insights from Singularity University

I’m currently attending a 9-week program called Singularity University (SU) at the NASA Ames Campus in Mountain View, California. The purpose of the program is: “To assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.”

Accelerating Change
Phew, what a mouthful! I’ve been here for a month, and I’m happy to say that the program is better than the mission statement. We’ve had lectures and workshops from some of the world’s top scientists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers.

They’ve shared their thoughts on the future for 10 fields experiencing accelerating technological change:

• Finance & Entrepreneurship
• Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics
• Space & Physical Sciences
• Nanotechnology
• Networks & Computing Systems
• Energy & Ecological Systems
• Policy, Law & Ethics
• Future Studies & Forecasting
• Biotechnology & Bioinformatics

Voices of Experience
But the most valuable things I’ve learned so far have nothing to do with technology.
Instead, it’s insights into human nature and psychology.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Peter Diamandis has founded ventures such as the X PRIZE, Zero Gravity Corporation, International Space University, and now Singularity University. Peter says that the key to success is launching a new venture in the zone of “supercredibility.” For example, if your venture aims to achieve faster-than-light travel, this is not credible, and you’re doomed to fail. But if your venture aims to offer commercial spaceflights, it’s credible if you’re Burt Rutan, winner of the Ansari X Prize. And your venture becomes supercredible when you sign up partners such as Virgin Galactic, and land paying customers such as Captain James T. Kirk.

• Vint Cerf receives hundreds of e-mails every day. He can’t go through them all in detail. So he triages them quickly. Of course, this means he misses things. But Vint has learned that if something is important, the sender will follow up with him. But the issue often resolves itself without Vint having to get involved.

• George Smoot joined SU because he believes in the vision, and he’s known Peter Diamandis for many years. The lesson is you can sign up Nobel Prize winners if you’re doing something worthwhile. And it helps if you’re already friends.

• Ray Kurzweil says that the reason most startups fail is not due to poor execution or failure of the technology. Rather, it is bad timing—the product or service is too early or too late for the market.

• David S. Rose says that the most important quality for an entrepreneur is integrity. If David doesn’t trust you, he won’t invest no matter how attractive the opportunity.

• At Yahoo Brickhouse, Salim Ismail observed that for any good business idea, there were at least 20 groups working on it around the world. Therefore, success is determined by the best execution mixed with a bit of luck.

• Yossi Vardi has developed a network of the smartest young people around the world. When I asked him how he did it, he replied, “What’s the best way to find the smartest kid in a class? Ask the other kids!”

I wonder what new things I’ll learn at Singularity University in the next 30 days? Read my newsletter next month and find out.

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“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.“
-Confucius

How to Look Your Most Beautiful

In the United States, a wedding costs an average of $28,800. The price tag includes $2,570 for photography and video, $2,048 for flowers, $1,564 for a wedding gown, and $190 for hair and makeup. When you’re spending that kind of money, you want to look your best.

Foxy and Fertile
The surprising thing is it’s all about timing. Scientists have discovered that women are their most beautiful during the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. It’s the time from 5 days before ovulation until 1–2 days afterward.

Consider the evidence:

1. In the Czech Republic, researchers asked women to wear cotton pads under their armpits for 24 hours. Male volunteers were randomly assigned to smell the cotton pads. The least intense and most attractive odours were from women in the follicular phase of their cycle (Day 1 to about Day 14).
2. Researchers from the State University of New York recorded women’s voices at four different times in the cycle. Voice attractiveness increased significantly the closer women were to ovulation. There was no effect for women on hormonal contraceptives.
3. At the University of Newcastle, researchers took photos of women’s faces during the follicular and luteal phases of their cycles. According to male and female volunteers, the most attractive photos were taken during the follicular phase.
4. In a study of lap dancers, women earned about $70/hour in the fertile phase, $50/hour in the luteal phase, and $35/hour during menstruation. Women on the pill earned about $39/hour, and experienced no midcycle peak in earnings.

The Pill
Why is there no attractiveness effect for women on the pill? The contraceptive pill contains estrogen and/or progesterone. These hormones inhibit fertility by putting the body in a constant state of “hormonal pseudopregnancy.”

Back to weddings: if you want to look your best, schedule your big day during the follicular phase of your cycle. The ideal time is just before ovulation. If that doesn’t work, then remember the words of Miss Piggy: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”

References
Havlicek J et al. (2006). Non-advertized does not mean concealed: Body odour changes across the human menstrual cycle. Ethology. 112: 81-90. Abstract.

Pipitone RN, Gallup GG. (2008). Women’s voice attractiveness varies across the menstrual cycle. Evolution and Human Behavior. 29: 268-274. Abstract.

Miller G, Tybur JM, Jordan BD. (2007). Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus? Evolution and Human Behavior. 28: 375-381. Full Article.

Roberts SC et al. (2004). Female facial attractiveness increases during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Proc R Soc Lond Bio. 271: s270-S272. Abstract.

“Work hard. Be nice.”
-Rafe Esquith

Intelligence or Hard Work?

When it comes to school, is it better to be smart or hard-working? My dad was a teacher, and he firmly believed in the value of hard work. When I was a kid, he posted a sign in our basement that read: “Hard work is the key to success.”

Self-Discipline
A new book by Richard Nisbett suggests my dad was right. In “Intelligence and How to Get It,” Nisbett cites a study from the University of Pennsylvania involving 164 eighth-graders. Researchers gave the students a behavioral delay-of-gratification task, a questionnaire on study habits, and a group-administered IQ test.

Results showed that self-discipline was two times better than IQ at predicting final grades, school attendance, and hours spent doing homework. In other words, it’s no use being smart if you don’t study hard and do your homework.

The study’s authors concluded, “We believe that many of America’s children have trouble making choices that require them to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain, and that programs that build self-discipline may be the royal road to building academic achievement.”

“A” for Effort
How can you encourage your kids to work hard? A proven way is praising them for hard work.  In a study from Columbia University, psychologists Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller investigated the effects of praising fifth graders for effort versus intelligence.

When kids were praised for being smart, they performed worse, didn’t try as hard, and didn’t enjoy working as much. In contrast, when kids were praised for working hard, they performed better, enjoyed the learning process more, and believed they could improve their intelligence by working harder.
It’s natural to be proud of your kids when they do well. But how you praise them may influence whether they continue doing well.

References
Duckworth AL, Seligman MEP. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science. 16(12): 939-944. Full Article.

Mueller CM, Dweck CS. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 75(1): 33-52. Full Article.

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.“
-Harry Truman

Why You Should be an Optimist

Are you the sort of person who sees a glass as half full? A silver lining in every cloud? If yes, then you’re probably an optimist. Daniel L. Reardon says, “In the long run, the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.”

Measuring Optimism
Not only does the optimist have a better time, but the trip is also longer. From 1962 to 1965, 839 patients completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) at the Mayo Clinic. Based on scores from the MMPI’s Optimism-Pessimism scale, 124 were classified as optimistic, 518 as mixed, and 197 as pessimistic.

Better Health
Thirty years later, results showed that optimistic patients were more likely to live longer than pessimistic patients. Patients scoring in the top third of the scale (i.e., more pessimistic) had a 19 percent higher risk of death.

In a similar study from the Harvard School of Public Health, 1,306 older men were followed for 10 years after completing the MMPI. Comparing the top third to the bottom third, optimistic men had less than half the risk of heart attack and heart disease.

As the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” You’ll feel better and live longer.

References
Maruta T et al. (2000). Optimists vs pessimists: survival rate among medical patients over a 30-year period. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 75(2): 140-143. Abstract.

Kubzansky LD et al. (2001). Is the glass half empty or half full? A prospective study of optimism and Coronary Heart Disease in the normative aging study. Psychosomatic Medicine. 63: 910-916. Full Article.

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“The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.“
-John F. Kennedy

How Do You Build a Great Team?

In April, I was invited by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to evaluate proposals for the $520 million Leading Edge and New Initiatives Funds Competition. There were 9 committees in total, and my committee had about 15 members. The organizers said they selected each committee to represent a diverse cross-section of the scientific community.

Different Disciplines
They definitely succeeded with my committee. There was a mix of disciplines, including chemistry, biology, industrial engineering, materials science, medicine, social science, optical engineering, political science, and computer science. There was also a mix of men and women, young and old, industry and academia, and different ethnic backgrounds. We didn’t always agree, but our different viewpoints led to a more balanced assessment of each proposal.

Xerox
During one of our breaks, I chatted with fellow committee member Hadi Mahabadi about the diversity of our group. Hadi is Director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC). He told me that XRCC generates about 1.5 patents/scientist/year, and they launch about 4–6 new products every year.

I asked Hadi for the secret to this extraordinary creativity. His answer was diversity. Xerox deliberately assembles teams that have a mix of business skills (e.g., R&D, sales and marketing, operations, finance), and a mix of demographics (e.g., age, sex, race, culture, people with disabilities). Over years of experience, they’ve found that diverse teams come up with better solutions and more successful products.

All Together Now
Scientific evidence backs up Hadi’s methods. At the University of Illinois, Patrick Laughlin asked volunteers to crack a letter-to-number code by working alone or in teams of 4. He found that teams were better at coming up with solutions than the group’s best problem-solver working alone. Ok, so 4 heads are better than one. But what’s the best composition for a team?

Something Old, Something New
The answer comes from Luis Amaral at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He and his colleagues analyzed all collaborations that led to publications in 7 social psychology journals, 9 economics journals, 10 ecology journals, and 6 astronomy journals. They also analyzed the teams which produced 2,258 Broadway musicals from 1877 to 1990.

Results showed that the most successful teams tended to share 3 characteristics in common:

1. 50–60 percent of team members were veterans in the field.
2. 20–30 percent of team members had never worked together before.
3. About 50 percent of team members were well-connected with others in the field.

Amaral said, “We found that teams that achieved success—by producing musicals on Broadway or publishing academic papers in good journals—were fundamentally assembled in the same way, by bringing in some experienced people who had not worked together before. The unsuccessful teams repeated the same collaborations over and over again.”

References
Laughlin PR, Bonner B, Minor A. (2002). Groups perform better than the best individuals on letters-to-numbers problems. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 88: 605–20. Full Article.

Guimera R et al. (2005). Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance. Science. 309: 697–702. Full Article.

“Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.”
-W. Clement Stone

Why Your Friends Matter

Richard Thaler is an American economist, and one of the founding fathers of behavioral finance. This field investigates how psychology and human nature affect economic activities such as saving, spending, and investing.

Nudge
In Thaler’s new book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, he shows how small changes to your daily life can have big consequences. One of the biggest influences is your choice of friends.

Consider these facts:

• Harvard researchers found that a person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese.
• In a study of how teenagers start smoking, researchers in New Zealand found that 49 percent of 13-year-olds received their cigarette from a friend.
• Researchers at the University of Illinois found that teenagers were more likely to do well in school if they had high-achieving friends.

Birds of a Feather
Take a close look at your friends. Would you be happy if you became exactly like them in 5 years? If not, maybe it’s time to find new friends. As the saying goes, it’s hard to soar with the eagles if you’re surrounded by turkeys.

References
Christakis NA, Fowler JH. (2007). The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. N Engl J Med. 357(4): 370–379. Full Article.

Stanton WR, Silva PA. (1992). A longitudinal study of the influence of parents and friends on children’s initiation of smoking. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. 13: 423–434. Abstract.

Mounts NS, Steinberg L. (1995). An ecological analysis of peer influence on adolescent Grade Point Average and drug use. Developmental Psychology. 31(6): 915–922. Abstract.

“Make money on Wall Street, bury it on Main Street. Take it out of harm’s way.“
-Paul Scharfer

How to Diversify Your Investments

In the 1950s, Harry Markowitz of City University in New York showed that a diversified portfolio increases returns while reducing risk. His work on “Modern Portfolio Theory” (MPT) is the reason why most investors diversify their investments into asset classes such as stocks and bonds.

Correlations
It seems pretty simple: don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. But there are two important details which investors often forget:

1. The asset classes should not be correlated.
2. Your portfolio consists of more than just your financial investments.

When picking asset classes, it’s no use if they rise and fall together. It’s like putting your eggs into two baskets that are tied together with a rope. Pull the rope and both baskets tip over. To make things more complicated, correlations can change with time.

Wake-up Call
This is the harsh lesson that’s been learned by many Baby Boomers. They thought they were smart by diversifying their portfolios into real estate and the stock market. Historically, real estate has had a relatively low correlation with the stock market. But the sub-prime meltdown has shown that real estate and stocks can fall dramatically at the same time.

Bogle’s Rule
Perhaps these investors should have paid attention to “Bogle’s Rule.” Jack Bogle is the founder of The Vanguard Group, an investment company famous for pioneering low-cost index funds. He says, “At a certain stage in life, probably fairly early, your bond position should equal your age.”

For example, if you are 50 years old, then 50 percent of your portfolio should be in ultra-safe bond investments such as Treasuries and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). Bonds are relatively uncorrelated with asset classes such as real estate and stocks because they have locked-in interest rates. This means they can’t go down a lot, which makes them a solid foundation for your portfolio.

What Color is Your Parachute?
The second detail that’s often overlooked is an assessment of your job security and earning power. People with jobs that are highly correlated with the stock market should invest their money in less risky assets. For example, business owners who sell luxury goods should invest more in bonds because their businesses are heavily dependent on the state of the economy.

In contrast, people with secure jobs should invest more in riskier asset classes such as stocks. For example, a tenured university professor should invest more in stocks compared to an entrepreneur. Similarly, young people should invest more in stocks than old people because their portfolios have more time to recover in value if there is a big drop.

Diversification generates higher returns with less risk…but only if you’re truly diversified.

References
Markowitz HM. (1952). Portfolio selection. Journal of Finance. 7(1):77–91. Full Article.

Investopedia. Diversification beyond equities. Accessed on June 2, 2009. Full Article.

Brokamp R. (2008). Jack Bogle on Warren Buffett and beating the market. Motley Fool. December 22. Full Article.

Chen P et al. (2006). Human capital, asset allocation, and life insurance. Financial Analysts Journal. 62(1): 97-109. Full Article.

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“I’m a true believer in karma. You get what you give, whether it’s bad or good.”
-Sandra Bullock

Why It Pays to Be Generous

Altruism is unselfish concern for the welfare of others. It’s when you help an old lady cross the street without any thought of reward.

In a study from the University of California, Riverside, researchers asked students to perform five random acts of kindness each week for 6 weeks. Altruistic acts included donating blood, writing a thank-you note, and dropping coins into a stranger’s expired parking meter. Results showed that do-gooders experienced a significant increase in happiness.

Evolution of Altruism
It feels good to do good. But why did altruism evolve in the first place? In the struggle for survival, it seems counter intuitive that cavemen would help each other out for free. After risking your life to kill a woolly mammoth, why share it with someone else?

Evolutionary biologists have proposed two theories to answer this question:

1. Kin selection
2. Reciprocal altruism

Kin selection means you are more altruistic towards people who are closely related to you. The reason is because you have more genes in common with your relatives than with strangers. Over evolutionary time, people who helped out their relatives were more likely to pass their genes on to the next generation (through their sons and daughters or nieces and nephews).

Payback
Reciprocal altruism is helping others with the expectation they will repay the favor in the future. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Of course, not everyone repays favors. There are always freeloaders and cheaters. But the desire to reciprocate is strongly ingrained in most people.

At Cornell University, psychologist Dennis Regan found that people purchased twice as many raffle tickets from him when he gave them a free can of Coca-Cola beforehand. It didn’t matter whether the people liked him or not—receiving a small, unsolicited gift made them twice as likely to donate.

Good Karma
Can reciprocal altruism explain why you’re predisposed to help old ladies cross the street? It’s unlikely you will see the lady again, and even less likely she’ll be in a position to help you in the future. But if you are generous by nature, the chances are good that others will reciprocate even if the old lady does not. The sum of this reciprocation will probably exceed the cost to you.

Giving is Sexy
There is a third explanation of why altruism is so common. According to evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller, altruism is sexy because it shows potential mates that you are rich in resources. A caveman who was really skilled in hunting could afford to give away food because he knew he could always hunt more. This signaled his fitness to all of the cavewomen, and helped him attract more mates and sire more offspring. In modern times, it’s why men leave big tips at restaurants to impress a new date.

Do something nice for someone today. You’ll feel good, it’s good karma, and it’s good for your mojo.

References
Sheldon KM, Lyubomirsky S. (2004). Achieving sustainable new happiness: prospects, practices, and prescriptions. In A. Linley & S. Joseph. Eds. Positive psychology in practice. pp. 127–145. John Wiley & Sons.

Regan DT. (1971). Effects of a favor and liking on compliance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 7: 627–39. Abstract.

Miller GF. (2000). The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. Doubleday.

“The key to a woman’s heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.”
-William Forrester (played by Sean Connery), Finding Forrester

How to Get More Tips

One of my favorite books is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. It is a must-read if you want others to do what you want. Now Cialdini is back with a new book entitled Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. It explains how small actions can make the difference between yes and no.

Super Servers
For example, Cialdini reviews a number of studies on how servers can get more tips in restaurants. In a study from Monmouth University in New Jersey, servers increased their tips by 3.3 percent when they gave a candy to diners with their bill. When servers gave two candies to every diner at the table, tips rose by 14.1 percent compared with no candy. The ultimate technique was giving everyone a piece of candy, turning away from the table, and then turning back and placing a second piece of candy in front of every diner. With this series of small actions, tips rose by 23 percent.

People feel a strong desire to reciprocate, even if they’re receiving candy that costs only a few cents. And you can increase their reciprocation by making the gift unexpected and personalized.

Liking Yourself
Another study found that waitresses who repeated orders back to customers received tips that were almost 70 percent larger. Rick van Baaren, the lead researcher on the study, explains that we naturally like people who remind us of ourselves. When a waitress repeats our words back to us, we feel a sense of similarity and are more likely to be generous.

Gratuity Guru
For more scientifically-proven advice on how to get more tips, check out this guide from Michael Lynn, professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/wml3/pdf/megatips.pdf

It’s free, but he suggests you reciprocate by leaving him a tip.

References
Stronhmetz DB et al. (2002). Sweetening the till: the use of candy to increase restaurant tipping. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 32: 300–309. Abstract.

van Baaren RB et al. (2003). Mimicry for money: behavioral consequences of imitation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 39: 393–98. Abstract.

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”
-Dale Carnegie

Why Smalltalk is Not a Waste of Time

Have you ever noticed that some salespeople try to get to know you better before making the sale? They’ll make smalltalk about your family, your hobbies, and your dog. They’ll also make a point of sharing some information about themselves. It’s an attempt to establish rapport—to relate to you as a person rather than as a paycheck.

The question is: does it work? Or would salespeople do better if they stuck to business?

Let’s Make a Deal
At the Kellogg School of Management, Don Moore instructed business students to role-play two managers within the same company negotiating over e-mail for the transfer of rights to a new technology. If they couldn’t come to an agreement, both parties were told that the seller would get $5 million and the buyer would get $0.

The students were split into two groups. One group received a package of instructions and the e-mail address of their counterpart. The second group received the same materials, but also received a photograph of their partner, and biographical information such as alma mater, undergraduate major, and interests or hobbies. Before the negotiations started, the second group was instructed to e-mail their partner for an initial “getting to know each other” exchange. The participants were told that the goal was to “break the ice.”

Better Business
After the negotiations, results showed that 29 percent of the first group came to an impasse and failed to agree on a deal. In contrast, only 6 percent of the personalized students came to an impasse. As well, the joint outcome was 18 percent higher for students who reached a deal after getting to know each other first.

Sharing personal information made students less likely to engage in threats and ultimatums. Threats were references to alternatives to negotiation such as: “If you can’t give me the deal I’m looking for, I can always produce this product without your help and make $5 million.” Ultimatums were offers such as “$8 million is my last offer. Take it or leave it.”

Relationship Selling
According to Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson: “Everyone lives by selling something.” Boost your sales by getting to know your customers.

References
Moore DA et al. (1999). Long and short routes to success in electronically mediated negotiations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 77: 22–43. Abstract.

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