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The Observe and Rapport Newsletter
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A weekly guide of my favorite books, articles, products, and lifestyle habits.
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July 26th, 2024 | by Kyle Brennan
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Thought of the Week
Patrick Bet-David recently posted a reel on his Instagram detailing a story in which a tennis coach explained the difference between the top 5 ranked tennis players in the world vs. the top 25.
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What separates the five best tennis players in the world vs. the twenty below them?
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The tennis coach gave an interesting response. Surprisingly, he said, when you look at what separates the BEST OF THE BEST vs. the rest, it has nothing to do with talent, speed, how early they started, their parents, or their innate abilities.
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Among the top 25 tennis players, the talent level is pretty much the same.
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The critical difference is mindset.
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When experts analyzed the top athletes in the sport, they looked to understand how they responded after a mistake.
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For players 6-25, after they hit the ball into the net or hit a return wide, they would berate themselves. "I can't believe I made that mistake. I suck! He's probably better than me, I'm not ready to be a champion." Their body language sunk and they carried that negative emotion and energy into their next point.
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When players 1-5 made a mistake, they too berated themselves. The difference was that within 10-15 seconds, they replaced those negative thoughts with positive ones. "Ok, forget that one, let's get him on the next point. Let's go champ, you got this."
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The top players adjusted. They had short memories and made sure to bring their focus back to executing and having fun.
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No one is harder on us than ourselves. We're going to fuck up. It's natural. But how we respond to failure is where our lesson lies. The learning — the avoidance of future failures — only comes once we accept it as part of the process.
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Get mad. Curse out loud. But don't harp on it. Use that energy to accept it, learn from it, and let it go. The quicker you can execute that practice, the quicker you can grow.
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You may not become a top 5 tennis player in the world, but you'll probably do some pretty cool shit...
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What I'm Reading
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I've been a massive fan of Tim Urban's blog, Wait But Why, for years. His blog features some of the most insightful articles about life and philosophy, and his drawings make you feel like you're in a classroom led by an eccentric teacher. His first book, What's Our Problem? came out in February 2023, and needless to say, I was excited to dive in.
Tim Urban is an interesting thinker with a unique talent for taking incredibly complex ideas and just…wandering around in them with you. He zooms way in and way out and explores the peripheries and tangents while making them a) funny, b) digestible, and c) meaningful. He balances accessibility with complex ideas better than maybe anyone else I’ve ever read.
I would describe this book as a modern map explaining how we reached our current political and cultural climate in explicit detail. Tim Urban provides simplistic graphics, stick-figure illustrations, and diagrams to chart America's path over the last century using human psychology, science, and various case studies. He describes the modern phenomena of Social Justice Fundamentalism (wokeness) and how it's taken over our universities and corporations, how Trump's rise to power was in direct correlation with the indoctrination of those ideologies, and how the basic tenets of classical liberalism can sort us out of this mess.
My favorite takeaway from the book is that we tend to view politics on a simplistic left-to-right spectrum of polarization. Tim, however, describes that we tend to overlook the vertical distinction of political reasoning - which he calls High Rung and Low Rung thinking (i.e. using our Higher Mind vs. our Primal Minds). The Higher Mind allows us to engage in complex ideas and science, think rationally, be conscious of our biases, and be willing to say "I don't know." The Primal Mind, on the other hand, is our leftover animalistic tendency to be tribal, unaccepting of different viewpoints, and seek confirmation over truth.
These mental models alone are enough to polarize society. Add in the additional shitstorm of narrowcast media, internet algorithms, and geographic isolation of diverse political thought, we've dug ourselves into a hole that's become increasingly difficult to lift ourselves out of.
Overall, the biggest value of this book is that it encourages you to step back from your views, whether they are left or right, and critically examine why you think what you think, what Echo Chambers you are a part of, what media you consume, what evidence and arguments you have to support your views, and how accurately you understand the reasons for alternative beliefs.
My only issue is that there is no hard-copy version and it can only be purchased on Kindle, but based on the amount of footnotes, external links, and illustrations it made sense.
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Article I'm Reading
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In 1859, John Stuart Mill published a brilliant illumination on the importance of the individual to thrive. Conformity, he said, leads to the decline of civilization.
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Louis Brandeis would famously sum up On Liberty's core premises with: "The right to be free is the right to be left alone."
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I first read about John Stuart Mill in Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy and found his ideas on politics and free expression to be very much in line with my thinking. On Liberty is something I think everyone can find value from, especially in our current political climate.
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Some of my favorite quotes from Mill:
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- Society is free to express its dislike for the views or actions but should not suppress the individual from expressing or acting.
- The worst offense for society is holding individuals with opposing views as immoral.
Concept I'm Loving
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Paul Graham's Book Recommendations
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Bad news: I've got some more reading to do!
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In this FAQ, Paul Graham also answers a question about what philosophy books he would recommend. Here was his answer, which I was intrigued by:
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What philosophy books would you recommend?
I can't think of any I'd recommend. What I learned from trying to study philosophy is that the place to look is in other fields. If you understand math or history or aeronautical engineering very well, the most abstract of the things you know are what philosophy is supposed to be teaching. Books on philosophy per se are either highly technical stuff that doesn't matter much, or vague concatenations of abstractions their own authors didn't fully understand (e.g. Hegel).
It can be interesting to study ancient philosophy, but more as a kind of accident report than to teach you anything useful.
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What I'm Listening To
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Quote I'm Pondering
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“I have led a toothless life.
A toothless life.
I have never bitten into anything.
I was waiting.
I was reserving myself for later on—and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre
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Keith and Kyle sit down to try and figure out just what the hell is going on these days, Tim Urban's new book "What's Our Problem?", John Stewart Mill's "On Liberty", Kamala Harris and the current political climate in general, and their opinions on the origins of "wokeness" and why it seems to have gone as far as it has.
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Books and essays discussed in this episode:
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Check Out My Amazon Favorites Bookstore
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Browse my favorite book selections hand-curated by me. I also earn commissions so if you buy anything, those earnings get reinvested right back into this fancy newsletter ;)
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Kyle's Published Work
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33 Life Lessons on My 33rd Birthday
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Thirty-three was a big one. Mostly because I became a dad. Our daughter was born on New Year’s Eve — a fitting arrival for a kid destined to reset everything. It’s been a beautiful, if slightly sleep-deprived blur ever since. I’ve only been “Dad” for less than ten months, but if I’m being honest, I’ve been preparing for the role for over …
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Depth Over Downloads: Why Spending Time with Books Still Matters
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Everyone wants faster information. But no one asks if faster information leads to better understanding — or a better life. In the age of AI and tweet-sized wisdom, we’ve confused information with transformation. But there’s a massive difference between knowing what a book says and being changed by it. The Delusion of Instant Learning In a recent interview, political journalist Ezra Klein admitted he once believed …
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The Jack Reacher Approach to Never Being Caught Off Guard
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There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.’ Either way, nothing happens.” —Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia I don’t read much fiction, but I’ve always been hooked on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. He’s not your typical …
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