The Best of Everything
The Mission Newsletter, 7/17/18
“The gladdest moment in human life, me thinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” — Sir Richard Burton
The Best of Everything
Episode 57 of The Mission Daily
Certain things in life bring us more joy than we expect. In this episode, Chad and Stephanie discuss the best of what they’re watching, listening to, reading, and buying that is bringing more happiness and fulfillment to their lives.
Listen to Episode 57 of The Mission Daily.
The Mission Daily is a podcast dedicated to accelerated learning and helping you become healthier, wealthier, and wiser. It is designed to help you learn — as fast as you possibly can.
The Ultimate Guide to Income Share Agreements
Here is what you’ll get in this exclusive 3-part guide:
- A Lightning Quick Overview of What Income Share Agreements are and How they Work
- The Present State of ISAs and How Innovative Universities are Using Them
- The Future of Higher Education and ISAs
In this guide, we’ll show how we can use and improve income share agreements to reduce and help solve the student debt challenge. We’ll also show how ISAs can help universities create outcomes-based accountability systems that align incentives between a school and a student.
Read: The Ultimate Guide to Income Share Agreements
Shoutout to our friends at Vemo Education for making this article possible!
News That Matters
Health
The use of smart drugs is defined as the non-medical use of drugs to increase our concentration. They’re also known as pharmacological cognitive enhancements (PCEs), and they are on the rise.
A recent study indicated that worldwide 14% of people reported using smart drugs at least once in the year 2017, which was 5% higher than just two years before.
“The study suggests that the spread of US-style practices in ADHD treatment is driving the trend and making drugs more available: countries with higher rates of ADHD diagnoses, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, have higher rates of non-medical prescription-drug use for cognitive enhancement.”
The jury is still out on whether or not PCEs actually enhance brain function over the long term, or what the tradeoffs will be.
Wealth
Billionaire Marc Andreessen didn’t start out that way. He came from a small town and moved to Silicon Valley. What he found was a place unlike any other, one where creating new things was the norm.
The culture and real history of Silicon Valley are still not widely known. One of the biggest examples of the level of grit ingrained in the SV culture is in the history of HP, which started in 1936. The founding team started the company in the great depression, had some success, and then put the company on hold while they all went and fought WWII. They came back in 1945, and “reactivated” the company.
Grit + patience + hard work = wealth.
This new, wide-ranging interview also dives into some of Marc’s favorite books.
Wisdom
Noted author, philosopher, and historian Rene Girard published nearly 30 books during his life, most of which contain (terrifying) observations about the world we live in.
One of Girard’s quotes is, “All desire is a desire for being,” which provides a window into what makes people tick.
Essentially what Girard means is that we want what others want because we believe the “other” possesses an inner perfection that we do not. We become consumed by the wish to be the “perfect” others. We hope that by acquiring their trappings (their cars, their clothes, their friends), we will acquire their metaphysical goods — authority, wisdom, autonomy, self-fulfillment (which are largely imagined!) — and that we will gain fulfillment. What’s so sad about this is that this “other” that we so often seek is ourselves.
Tech Trends
If you’ve ever wondered how dinosaurs got so big, some new research and recent discoveries might have the answer for you — and they may help us further understand the evolution of all creatures.
For a long time, it was thought that the earliest giant creatures walked the earth during the Jurassic period. Prior to that there were dinosaurs, but on a smaller scale. Recently, though, paleontologists discovered fossils of a giant from an earlier period, the Triassic period, which was 30 million years before when they thought the first giant, the Titanosaurus, walked the earth.
In studying the bones, the scientists found that the new dinosaur, called Ingentia prima, grew in a different way that their later cousins. Ingentia prima grew in quick bursts that would happen seasonally. The dinosaurs from later periods grew in a more consistent and constant pattern.
Learn more about the new dino here.
Marketing Trends
Did your follower count all of a sudden seem a lot lower last week? That’s because Twitter has been cracking down on bot accounts and wiping them from the site.
The social platform says that they are trying to build trust with their users, so deleting the inactive accounts, which were inflating user numbers, will hopefully bring back some goodwill.
This means that brands, celebrities, and other popular Twitter users could see significant drops in their follower numbers. But, the followers that remain will be the more active users, which could yield a bump in user engagement percentage. Find out more about the purge here.
Education Trends
At The Mission, we’re always advocating for looking at the inputs and outputs in our lives, and science continues to back up our approach.
In a new study, researchers found that children with ADHD who took part in after-school activities saw less severe symptoms of the disorder (40% of those surveyed) and missed fewer school days than those who did not participate in the activities (60%).
Those behind the study believe that the structured activities, and less of a focus on screen time, could be part of the reason for the results.
“Study co-author Dr. Nicole Brown, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York City, said the findings suggest that strategies to treat ADHD shouldn’t just consist of medication and behavioral therapy.
‘There are a lot of other resources in the community that can potentially lower symptom severity and improve outcome,’ she said. ‘This is one potential strategy to think of at a community level.’”
More details here.
The Best of What We Are Up To
Yesterday, we hosted our third Book Club Live event!
We discussed the key takeaways from Peter Thiel’s phenomenal book, Zero to One. Topics included:
- Contrarian truths; What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
- Creative monopolies and why you shouldn’t be afraid of competition
- There are secrets left to be found
- And much more!
If you weren’t able to catch us live, you can watch the discussion here. Feel free to keep the conversation going in the comments below the video!
Our Media
The Mission is a new kind of media company. We publish stories, videos, and podcasts to help smart people get smarter. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or learn more about us here. We’d love to connect!
Custom Podcasts
The Mission helps mission-driven companies build trust and connect with customers in a new way.
We create custom podcast sponsorships for enterprise companies. To learn more about why companies like Salesforce trust us to produce results, connect with our team here.
