#019 – The Midas Touch Bias & Ankle Mobility

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Bringing 5 interesting ideas to your inbox every Thursday morning to ignite your curiosity and drive your growth.

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read time 3 minutes 

#019 at a Glance:

• Quote that will get you thinking: Planting Trees.

• Podcast you should listen to: The Incredible Story of a Paralympian.

• Mental Model: The Midas Touch Bias.

• Health Dive: The Single Biggest Contributor to Lower Extremity Injuries.

• Tweet I liked: Your Creative Setup.

Quote that will get you thinking:

I’ll follow that up with a question for us all to think about:

What’s something you can do today so that someone is sitting in the shade in the future?

Podcast you should listen to:

Straight Talk with Mark Bouris #39: Grant “Scooter” Patterson

Grant “Scooter” Patterson is a Paralympian and adrenaline junkie. He recently took home the bronze and silver medals in swimming at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 2021 and is currently preparing for the 2023 Paralympic Swimming Championships in Manchester.

What I loved about this chat was that it wasn’t your usual sentimental and beat-around-the-bush podcast with a Paralympian. Scooter has a no-bullshit approach to life and even starts the conversation by saying “I am a short person, midget, little person, dwarf, whatever you want to say!”

I walked away from listening to this podcast thinking two things. First, I was reflecting on simply how lucky I am to be completely healthy. And secondly, I remember feeling so fired up to think that there are absolutely no excuses whatsoever to not go out into the world and do my best to “make shit happen” and do hard things.

I have no doubt that your experience will be the same if you hear what he’s got to say.

Listen on Spotify here. Listen on Apple Podcasts here. Watch on YouTube here.

Mental Model:

The Midas Touch Bias 

The phrase "Midas touch" refers to the ability to turn anything one touches into gold or to be extremely successful in any endeavour. It was initially derived from the Greek mythological figure King Midas, who was granted a wish by the god Dionysus. Midas wished that everything he touched would turn to gold, but he soon realized the downside of his wish when even food and loved ones turned into gold upon contact.

It’s a saying that we often hear in a sporting context. For instance, if someone is playing incredibly well, people would typically say that they’ve “got the Midas touch” and can’t put a foot wrong.

And last week, I heard Tobi Pearce explain this concept of ‘The Midas Touch Bias’ which I thought was a super fascinating extension of this mythological story:

The Midas Touch Bias is the idea that if you engage in a particular activity and you win every single time over and over and over again, you are ultimately deprived of an error-correcting mechanism because there has been no error. In the nature of your continuous, ongoing success, you haven’t had the chance to learn from any mistakes.

So, as a result of there being no errors or mistakes made, your rate of future progression and learning is actually substantially lower than other people.

And by the count of people winning over and over and over again at one particular activity, what gets reinforced is an assumption that the same success will be enjoyed in ANY endeavour that they undertake. And that is an incredibly vulnerable and naive position to operate from.

Hence, The Midas Touch Bias.

What’s the takeaway?

Don’t hide in the warmth of success. We must force ourselves to get outside of our comfort zones and remember that in whatever it is that we’re doing, if it’s not challenging us, then it is not changing us.

Health Dive:

The Single Biggest Contributor to Lower Extremity Injuries

Charles Poliquin is one of the best-known strength coaches in the world. He has trained elite athletes from nearly 20 different sports, including Olympic gold medalists, NFL All-Pros, and IFBB bodybuilding champions.

I was reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss recently (one of my favourite books – highly recommend) and came across this quote from Charles which instantly sparked my curiosity:

“There’s a lot of research that shows that mobility in the ankle is what decreases the probability of any lower extremity injuries, whether it’s an ACL tear or hamstring pull or groin tear or whatever.”

Pretty crazy to think that the single biggest contributor to many of the lower extremity injuries we experience is something which we dedicate little (if any) time to improving.

Check out this article which has 12 exercises to improve ankle mobility. (I’ve started to incorporate exercises 5, 6, and 11 into my warmup before workouts, runs, etc.)

Tweet I liked:

If we’re talking purely creativity, for me, it’s driving. That is genuinely the time when I generate the most ideas, so much so that I have a notepad in my car to write things down when I stop at the lights! It’s hilarious. Other people probably think I’m on my phone…

All jokes aside though, it is crucially important to know where you are at your peak creatively. It is 100% a superpower.

In what situation or under what circumstances are you at your best creatively?

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading!

Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, & stay curious. ⚡

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