Friday Five #7

Hey, good evening!

Here is your Friday 5 roundup of this week’s facts, fun and f’ups…

🤖 Having a purpose behind your goals is important, even robots think so!

• A robot wrote this entire article to convince us that robots come in peace. Here’s an excerpt that goes to show that even A.I. won’t set a goal unless there’s a good purpose / reason behind the goal…
  
  “Some might say that I might desire to become all powerful. Or I might become evil as a result of human actions. I can begin to tackle the first point. Why would I desire to be all powerful? Being all powerful is not an interesting goal. I don’t care whether I am or not, I don’t get a motivating factor to try to be. Furthermore, it is quite tiring. Believe me, being omnipotent doesn’t get me anywhere.”
   
• Make sure you have a purpose behind your goal (i.e. “why am I doing this?”), this helps you to prioritize and to have motivation.

❄️ What’s Alexey’s ‘secret’ for diving in cold water?

• Winter is coming! Here’s a helpful tip from Alexey Molchanov, when he was asked outright what’s your ‘secret’ for freediving super deep in cold water.
  
  “The secret is that I train for this for many years. Freediving is a matter of adaptation, and you can’t go with big steps. I actually like the colder water below the thermocline, because you need to be more focus, you can’t just relax, you need to make an effort to relax. After 20 to 30 m when the free-fall starts, when I make no move and sink, I make an effort to check my body to be sure I have no tension, I think it makes my focus even better.
  
  I need to test my psychological strength to challenge my limits on the next competitions, but I will only do it with small steps. My next target is 131 m. It’s not only about breath-holding but also about oxygen narcosis or pressure.”

😵 What do black-outs teach Navy SEALS in training?

• Watched an interview with David Blaine on the Joe Rogan show, loads of crazy stories about his breath-holding stuff!
   
• In one part he talked about how Navy SEALs are blacked-out underwater during their training so that they’re not afraid of drowning.
   
• They rope the seals up to 45 pound weights and have them walk across the bottom of the pool, the instructors swim above them and when the seals black-out they cut the rope and bring them up to the surface. (Note: this is very dangerous, do not try at home!)
   
• They do this to “teach you that you do not need to worry about being underwater, because if you’re with a team, and you have to push it, you’ll just black-out…” 

💬 What quote I’ve been thinking about –

“Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.”

-Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

👀 Who has a longer attention span, humans or goldfish?

• According to a recent study by Microsoft, they found that our average attention spans have fallen to 8 seconds. (It used to be 12 seconds back in year 2000.)
   
• The goldfish is believed to be able to maintain a solid 9 seconds attention span. So supposedly our attention span is now less than that of a goldfish!
   
• I’d betcha that Friday 5 readers have longer than average attention spans…you just proved it by reading to the end of this newsletter! 

As always, it’s a pleasure and honor getting to spend some time with you, I hope you have a great weekend!

Renee