Thinking fast-twitch, thinking slow-twitch
Today:
- Working style: are you a fast-twitch or slow-twitch thinker?
- Dad wisdom: giving your kids what you never had vs. giving them what they need
- Frying up actualization
- Wolfe Island retreat
- Dad Joke
Thinking fast-twich, thinking slow-twitch
Fast-twitch athletes populate most of our track and field events. Sprints, throws, and such. Slow-twitch athletes thrive with longer but less intensive work periods (and less rest overall). In MMA, I tend to see twitch athletes having the greatest chances in the early rounds and the advantages of “grinders” increasing with every subsequent round. So, it’s not about one type of athlete being better than other—it’s about coordinating their training and strategy with their unique abilities.
I said all of that so that I could say this:
I’ve been considering that folks with ADHD may be more akin to fast-twitch athletes. That means they do their best work in short, intense bursts followed by longer rest periods. This requires a different working style and may explain why formal education and more conventional office environments can feel like such a grind. Does this resonate with you?
Giving your kids what you never had vs. giving them what they need
A common dad refrain is that we work to give our kids what we never had. Before we orient our lives and identities around these things, though, it’s worth asking if these are the things that our kids really need. Not as a one-time event, either, but as a continuous process. This isn’t about always looking for deficits so much as maintaining an ongoing and evlolving dialogue with our kids—because maybe that’s where the magic is.
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Frying up actualization
Factoid: Maslow never drew it as a pyramid. I imagine that he saw human needs as more of a donut than a linear process.
A recent piece of research sketches out a much more detailed series of domains—15 in all—associated with psychological wellbeing (full list in table below). Of those, the researcher found that affiliation had the highest correlation with well-being.
This says something about the power of community.
Other prominent domains included status, attractiveness, resource accumulation, and justice. It’s a fascinating mixture of base and enlightened human traits. Once again, these may all be far tastier when mixed, fried, and served up together.
These ingredients are tastiest when mixed together
Dad joke
Why did the coffee file a police report?
It got mugged.
