brain train

Every day a different muscle group. That’s what it takes to train muscles. Train them to become larger and more powerful.

Training the same muscles within 24 hours has a detrimental effect. The muscles need a day to restore. Training within the timeframe the muscles require to rest has an adverse impact. It makes the muscles smaller or less powerful.

What is true of muscles is perhaps also true of the brain? Provided that excessive use leads to cramps, how does one train the brain?

What’s the ideal balance between doing something every day to become better at it and resting sufficiently, again, to become better at it?

thin basket

Focus! However, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify, but don’t spread yourself (too) thin. One by one, valuable pieces of advice, yet, combining them makes them somewhat contradictory.

Moderation in all things is certainly one of the keys to success in life. The issue is that the same effort today could feel like you’re spreading yourself way too thin tomorrow, perhaps due to lack of sleep.

Due to the variability, it’s nearly impossible to determine a proper balance between focus and diversification in business activities.

All your eggs in one basket is a risky enterprise. Half an egg per basket is obviously impractical from a logistical point of view. If one egg per basket is the bare minimum, the question begs itself: how many baskets can you carry?

necessary luxury

Today’s gain is tomorrow’s loss.

When you upgrade a vital component to your business, it’s hard to go back to the way things were before.

In theory, it’s easy to downgrade or revert. At least, it should be made easy. Third service providers ideally make it possible to — at the touch of a button — downgrade your plan or subscription with them.

In reality, it’s a lot less straightforward. Psychologically, it feels like taking a step back. This bias is often referred to as loss aversion in behavioral economics. What was once a luxury has become a necessity, just like that.

Suppose you walk into the fanciest audio recording studio on planet earth. Inside, you find a mixing panel as wide as a school bus. Cream of the crop equipment everywhere you look. However, without prior experience with a cheap laptop, two-channel analog mixer, and a microphone built for conference calls, you’ll never be able to operate the top-notch mixing panel properly. You most certainly won’t squeeze all the possibilities out of it.

Introducing a new hard- or software into your business should be done diligently. Start small. Begin with crappy equipment, on purpose. Enabling yourself to learn the ropes. You can always upgrade. Upgrading is easy. Downgrading isn’t.

too much of a good thing is never enough

Growing up as a kid, we used to have a poster in the house with a quote from Garfield saying: too much of a good thing is never enough. The fat cartoon cat was sitting next to what’s left of a pie. I honestly don’t know why that poster was there, it wasn’t particularly visually appealing. However, the saying always stuck with me.

Even though it sounds nice, it’s probably inaccurate and perhaps even dangerous. A tasty pie could definitely be considered a good thing. It could potentially uplift our spirits upon consuming it. Eating the entire pie though, is an entirely different story. Without going into medical details, excessive sugar intake is just plain bad. Not all pleasant things (whatever they may be) are good for us, and inversely, not all unpleasant things are bad for us.

Arguably, there are bound to be some good things where too much is never enough. Let’s take charity for one, would too much charity truly never be enough? Quite possible so. The issue wouldn’t be the amount or quantity of charity going around; it would become a matter of distribution speed.

If Jameela is giving all of her money, after selling all of her assets to charity, Jameela could be considered a wonderful human being; however, chances are she didn’t do the best possible job she could have done. Maybe now she is struggling to get by herself, causing her to no longer contribute to charity. Whereas if she had distributed her giving slower and more evenly, in the end, she could have helped more people, starting a fund or non-profit along the way.

Too much of a good thing is never enough. Only if the speed (and recurrence) with which the item is consumed or distributed is moderate.