Mental Pivot #42: Never Too Old to Pivot
The inspiring story of Cliff Young, how to remember what you read, and the many obstacles to rationality.
I received a snail-mail letter recently that included a touching obituary for an aunt who had passed away. The obituary provided a small opportunity to celebrate her life and included many biographical facts I knew, such as her 40-year career as an accountant.
What I didn't know was that when she retired from accounting, she had secretly started a new career as a writer at the age of 61. It was her lifelong dream. In her final decade, she wrote and published 12 romance novels.
Her books never made the bestseller list, but she developed a small, enthusiastic niche following. Her accomplishments were unknown to most of her family; she was exceedingly modest and she published all her work under a pseudonym.
I found her story inspiring. It was a powerful reminder that no matter one's age, there's still tremendous time and opportunity to chase your dreams and work on new things. It reminded me of the inspiring story of Cliff Young.
Cliff Young was an Australian potato farmer who took up long-distance running in his late 50s and became a national hero.
In 1983, at the age of 61, Young registered to compete in the inaugural Sydney-to-Melbourne Ultramarathon. The race was a grueling 596 miles (960 km) and required the better part of a week to finish. The competitive field included some of the best distance-runners in the country.
Young, an outsider by all accounts, is alleged to have arrived at the starting line wearing a jacket, trousers, and boots. Almost immediately, Young was left in the dust by his younger, speedier competitors. Unfazed, Young pressed forward with his odd shuffling gait and his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides. He told the reporters that he had to remove his false teeth because they rattled too much.
It would have been easy to dismiss him altogether, but that would have been a mistake.
Five days and fifteen hours later, Young won the race. It wasn't even close. He finished nearly 10 hours ahead of the second place runner.
How did he do it?
At the time, conventional wisdom held that ultrarunners should race for 18 hours and rest for 6.
Young didn't receive the conventional wisdom memo.
He didn't stop to rest. While his competitors slept, he kept moving. And Young's curious gait, which came to be known as "The Young Shuffle", helped him maintain a relentless pace while conserving energy.
Young credited growing up on a sheep farm with developing his stamina: "I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors…whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2000 sheep on 2000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days."
Young received $10,000 for winning. He was taken aback when told about this, he had no idea there was a prize. He ended up giving the money to the other finishers of the race, taking nothing for himself.
Although he never won the Sydney-to-Melbourne Ultramarathon again, he continued to compete and run well into his late 70s.
You can read more about Young's exploits in this 2003 obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald or watch video footage of the Young Shuffle.
My aunt and Cliff Young are testaments to the fact that it's never too late to pivot or try something new.
Now onto this week's recommendations…
Productivity:
How to Remember what You Read: A solid overview by Shane Parish (Farnam Street). There's nothing earth-shattering here, just a host of practical ideas for getting the most out of your reading.
How to Learn Stuff Quickly: Software developer Josh Comeau distinguishes between "guided" and "unguided" learning. Guided learning includes working through a tutorial, taking a course, or watching a YouTube video. Unguided learning involves personal projects from scratch. Comeau suggests a hybrid approach that incorporates the best of both worlds.
The MoSCoW Method of Prioritization: Anne-Laure Le Cunff looks at a straight-forward categorization scheme for priorities: must, should, could, and won't. If you're looking for an even more blunt tool in the same vein, you can always roll with Derek Sivers' "Hell Yeah! or No" framework.
Articles:
5 Commonly Used Idioms in the Tech Industry: Using real-life examples, Karina Chow gives us the low-down on Bikeshedding, Yak Shaving, Rubber Duck Debugging, Bus Factor, and Dogfooding. Which prompts the question: why isn't there an Urban Dictionary for business-speak and workplace jargon? (If you know of one, please send my way)
The Case against Crisis-Mongering: Matt Yglesias serves up a sober reminder that "we are living through some problems that are both serious and difficult, but not necessarily any more serious or more difficult than the problems of the past."
The Creator Economy Is in Crisis, Now Let's Fix It: Li Jin notes parallel problems between the gig and creator economies like worker oversupply, lack of job security, and platform power and taxation. She proposes solutions such as community-owned platforms, content-neutrality, and creator-friendly business models.
Kevin Kelly: The Case for Optimism: Not the best written piece by Kelly, but his ideas are always worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the seven trends driving progress and prosperity: urbanization, connectivity, AI ubiquity, sustainable energy, accelerated innovation, bio-engineering, and generational handoff.
Nail Your Startup Pitch: Use Pixar's Story Formula: Ashwin Kumar asserts that 90% of a startup founder's job is storytelling. I don't entirely agree with this, but I do appreciate Kumar's crash-course in storytelling and the "story spine" concept that can be used to generate a short, compelling elevator-pitch.
What is Elite Overproduction?: Economist Robin Hanson continues to be one of the best observers on the topic of status and social hierarchies.
Why China's Crypto-Cowboys Are Fleeing to Texas: The Chinese government cracked down on crypto earlier this year which sent crypto miners and traders scrambling. Why Texas? Cheap energy and deregulation.
Why Is it So Hard to Be Rational?: My favorite article this week. Joshua Rothman's longform piece for The New Yorker examines why we fail at rationality alongside helpful but hard-to-implement cures. A few culprits: probabilistic thinking is hard, cognitive biases are abundant, and egos are obstinate.
Odds & Ends:
Remove-js.com is another handy tool you can add to your arsenal when sharing links from sites with annoying popups or subscription walls. Sure, you can disable JS locally, but this is a nice option to use when sending a Medium link to a friend.
NPR polled readers and came back with a list of the 50 Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade. If you're a fan of these genres, this list is a boon for your TBR list ("to be read"). Moreover, the 2010s are a real boon in terms of creativity, diversity, and even literary quality—it's not just swords, elves, and spaceships anymore.
Nestflix is a fun project from designer Lynn Fisher. She catalogs all the fictitious films and TV shows that appear in real films and TV shows using a Netflix-style interface. For example, you'll find entries for "McBain" and "Itchy & Scratchy" from The Simpsons and "Threat Level Midnight" from The Office.
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This is so cool. Loved the story of Cliff Young, never heard of that at all before!