garry’s subposthaven

Our minds and bodies draw from the same source of strength. But what is this source? Matthew Gailliot, PhD, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, argues that the fuel of willpower is glucose. In a way, this should be no surprise, since glucose is the primary fuel of the body. It’s the same fuel that skeletal muscles use to exert their strength, and the same fuel that the brain uses to perform its many tasks. What is surprising is the fact that willpower uses a lot of it, even when the body is at rest. According to Gailliot, willpower is a particularly expensive mental act, engaging many areas of the brain and requiring high levels of fuel (Gailliot et al. 2007).

Gailliot and his colleagues have demonstrated that simple acts of self-control both require and lower blood glucose levels. In one recent set of studies (Gailliot et al. 2007), participants were required to control their thoughts, emotions or behavior. Immediately following each act of self-control, participants’ blood glucose levels dropped. Levels did not drop during similar tasks in which participants were not exerting self-control. Participants were then asked to repeat the acts of self-control. Those whose blood glucose levels had dropped the most from the first task performed the worst on the second attempt. Participants given a sugary drink between tasks (replenishing their blood glucose levels) were better able to exert their willpower in the second attempt.

There’s this great quote in Frost/Nixon that goes like this: “In boxing, there’s always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger’s face. It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab.  It’s kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along.”

It’s one thing to know how strong the champ can hit, and something quite different to feel it.

That’s kind of what it’s like to start a company: “Yeah, yeah … I know it’s going to be hard – everybody has told me it’s going to be hard – but I’m ready for it, and I can handle it.”

Trust me, you’re not, and no matter how much you think you know about what it’s going to be like, when that first jab comes, you’ll begin to truly understand for the first time.

Really insightful post by WePay. They share a lot of critical lessons.

Stats collected by Tynt, a pretty cool url shortening javascript plugin that makes it easy to let users link back to snippets of text from web pages.

Activision lawyers grilled Zampella and West in a windowless room for six hours on President’s Day. They interviewed other Infinity Ward employees. The attorneys were allegedly seeking information about attempts by the founders to contact Electronic Arts and other potential competitors.

Infinity Ward’s lawsuit says this was simply an attempt to “manufacture a basis to fire West and Zampella.” Activision Blizzard lawyers had demanded that the founders surrender their cell phones, PCs and other communications devices. When they refused on privacy grounds, the lawyers asserted that this was an additional act of insubordination. The company fired them on March 1.

West and Zampella sued Activision Blizzard’s Activision Publishing division on March 3, saying that the company was trying to get out of paying them $36 million.

Activision bought Infinity Ward for $5 million, and the studio has since made them BILLIONS in sales.

And this is how the developers get repaid? Ouch.

Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest." Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.