Play away
I’m based in Christchurch for much of this week, working with a playful attitude. How much play can you bring to your life?
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After some flight disruption, I managed to get to Christchurch to MC and Keynote the PPTA Leadership Summit for most of this week. I get home on Friday night. It’s been a packed and thought provoking agenda so far, featuring speakers like the Minister of Education (Chris Hipkins) and the Director of the New Zealand Security Intelligence (Rebecca Kitteridge). One of the major themes that has emerged has been the importance of identity and sense of belonging. But an attitude that I have noticed through the Summit has been one of openness allied with playfulness.
It’s been an absolute pleasure to be here this week. I thought playfulness might be a good theme for today’s newsletter. So, let’s get into a couple of big news issues, before we play a little.
The epidemiology of reinfection
Reinfections and infections after vaccination are on the rise. Reinfection misinformation is at an all time high, both at the same time. This leaves people with a lot of questions. Here’s your primer on what’s going on from epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina.
Our immune system is complex and has multiple defense walls, including antibodies, T-cells, and B-cells. Reinfections can occur for several reasons:
The virus mutates to skirt around our first line of defense—called neutralizing antibodies. Omicron keeps mutating to do this better and better. But importantly, Omicron can’t fully escape. This is why immunity can still prevent infection for some.
Antibodies wane over time, so our first wall of defense gets shorter and shorter.
Some people don’t mount an immune response after a primary, and typically mild, infection.
So unfortunately, with more transmission, a rapidly evolving virus, and a virus that recently mutated to become less severe, we can expect SARS-CoV-2 reinfections.
TL;DR Wearing masks, staying up to date with vaccines, and improved ventilation will help. But this isn’t anywhere near over yet.
‘They are preparing for war’
Professor Barbara Walter, an expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists are taking the USA. This interview is from back in March, but its still well worth a read to help you cut through the noise.
After January 6th of last year, people were asking me, “Aren’t you horrified?” “Isn’t this terrible?” “What do you think?” And, first of all, I wasn’t surprised, right? People who study this, we’ve been seeing these groups have been around now for over 10 years. They’ve been growing. I know that they’re training. They’ve been in the shadows, but we know about them. I wasn’t surprised.
Banter is all well and good but it’s no foundation for friendship
Recent research by the mental health charity Movember, for example, suggests that one in three men have no close friends.
I’ve been lucky in my life, with a handful of close male friends. But most of them are far away on the other side of the world. And for much of the time, that feels hard.
Dr Robin Dunbar, leading evolutionary anthropologist and the godfather of friendship research, believes there is. He argues that men don’t become less likely to have intimate friendships; they are born that way. “What’s become very clear in the last decade,” Dunbar told me, “is the completely different way the social world of men and women works.”
This is an interesting and personal take. I’d be interested in hearing yours. Friendships can be hard in modern life - yet we need them more than ever.
Who do you learn from?
Remember Ben Ryan? He coached a Fiji team comprising hotel porters and a prison warden to Olympic rugby sevens gold. Pretty impressive.
Impressive enough such that an English Premier league FOOTBALL club has appointed him as their Director of Elite Performance.
Asked whether it was possible to transfer skills between football and rugby after a session at AFC Wimbledon on the eve of last season, Ryan said: “Sometimes someone coming in from another sport just gives you a different perspective. It depends what your background is coming in, but I think it can freshen up your thinking sometimes. As coaches, we all want to be curious.”
Do you have people from left-field in key leadership positions in your organisation? If so, how has that worked out for you?
If not, why not?
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Hangry is a real thing
We’ve always known it was true, haven’t we?
Writing in the journal Plos One, the psychologists describe how hunger was associated with stronger feelings of anger and irritability and lower levels of pleasure.
“It turns out that being hangry is a real thing,” said Swami. The study does not propose any radical solutions, but Swami believes that being able to recognise and label the emotion can itself be of help. “A lot of the time, we might be aware of what we are feeling but not understand the cause of it. If we can label it, we are better able to do something about it,” he said.
More here.
How about one mental health day per month?
Sounds good doesn’t it? Better than spending your one-day-a-year-duvet-day catching up on paying bills and other life admin. And that’s if you’re lucky enough even to get one of those.
A US-based Psychologist is recommending we take one mental health day per month.
People are reaching such high levels of exhaustion that many are quitting their jobs — 47 million in the last year, to be exact. Now more than ever, you should be taking at least one mental health day a month to recharge, says Michele Nealon, a clinical psychologist and president of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
If you had one mental health day every month, how would you spend yours?
Be as wild as you like and tell us all about it. I’m sure your idea will be inspirational.
Growth + Stress-Can-Be-Help = Effective intervention for Teens?
A promising short new intervention appears to particularly helpful for students who previously had a fixed mindset and believed stress to be debilitating.
The Nature paper describes how a combination of work from Carol Dweck and colleagues on cultivating a growth mindset can be combined with reframing how moderate amounts of stress can provide impetus to engage with challenges. The intervention lasts just 30 minutes and seems to be linked with beneficial changes in cognitive and physiological reactions to stress. Well worth a look in these times when resources are scarce.
Watch, listen, read
I’ve been watching: Dipping in and out of Season 2 of For All Mankind with my wife, as she catches up so we can watch Season 3 together.
I’ve been listening to: Lost in the Dream by The War on Drugs. An old favourite I haven’t heard in a while.
Still reading: Life after life by Kate Atkinson