During the Great Attrition, millions have left their jobs in search of better chances of advancement. A recent large-scale study found that skills acquired on the job, as opposed to through formal education or outside-of-work vocational training, are linked to half of the average person's lifetime earnings, making continuous learning critical to raising incomes.

Continuous learning 

The average worker switches roles every two to four years. 80% of moves over a decade were people moving from one employer to another. <ul><li>Companies can position themselves in the flow and learn to ride the tide gracefully.</li><li>Companies that build a reputation for career development can attract the best out of the huge talent pool that is always searching.</li><li>Employers can also benefit from making job movement within the boundaries of their organizations more fluid.</li></ul>

People grow and add skills by varying their work experience

It may feel more comfortable to let someone competent continue doing the same thing year after year rather than helping them grow. However, filling roles from within can benefit employers and employees alike. <ul><li>Research found that people who worked for employers offering more internal opportunities were more likely to be upwardly-mobile for the rest of their careers.</li><li>Internal opportunities can include lateral moves, which can enable people to recharge, expand their skills, or find a position that is a better fit.</li><li>Companies can celebrate people who go on to bigger and better things.</li></ul>

Internal opportunities

Stashed ideas

The best way for companies to build their talent pool: Embrace employee mobility

<ul><li>When we’re facing uncertainty, mindfulness skills may help us to interpret situations as more positive than negative</li><li>Throughout the day, our brain must interpret the meaning of many kinds of emotional, physical, and social stimuli</li><li>Research in the field of psychology has found that people tend to have a default negative reaction to these cues</li><li>Individuals who have a negative valence bias are at a greater risk of developing symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders</li><li>It may be possible for us to reduce our tendency toward a negative bias, and shift to a more positive interpretation of uncertainty.</li></ul>

Mindfulness In Uncertain Times

The number of articles published on the effects of mindfulness has grown exponentially in recent decades and has revealed the significant benefits that mindfulness-based interventions can have for our ability to feel and express our emotions. However, there are some limitations to this dataStudies have mainly focused on short-term outcomes of the MBSR program and have not assessed the long-term impacts beyond the end of the intervention. Researchers rely on self-report measures, which could mean that participants alter their responses based on how they think the researchers want them to answer

A Look at the Mindfulness Literature

When we're facing uncertainty, mindfulness skills may help us to interpret emotional situations as more positive, a recent publication shows.

Can Mindfulness Change How We Interpret Emotional Situations? - Mindful

Dr David Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard, a co-director of the Paul F Glenn Centre for Biology of Aging Research, and an author. His research and biotech companies focus on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects.

Dr David Sinclair's introduction

The new idea of ageing is that it’s not just random stuff in your body going wrong. There’s actually a program that starts at birth. The Horvath clock or epigenetic clock is the biological clock that is ticking all the time. The clock is measured by the methylation of the DNA. A chemical called methyl is added to the DNA and it stays there and ensures that cells have their identity and play the right genes for the rest of your life.  What you do in your 20s and 30s will impact how healthy you are in your 70s, 80s, and 90. There are ways to work on ageing that can keep the whole body young.

Why we age

The brain age ages slower than the rest of the body. The brain has super protective mechanisms that keep the brain younger for longer.  After the age of 40, the volume of the brain reduces about 5% per decade. However, you can slow that process down and even reverse it later in life.

The brain ages different to the body

<ul><li>mTOR, responds to low amounts of amino acids, particularly leucine, isoleucine, valine.</li><li>AMPK pathway. AMPK senses low energy, low glucose levels, and makes more energy, more mitochondria, boost NAD.</li><li>Sirtuins. The sirtuins require a fuel called NAD that can be activated by certain chemicals. As we age, we make less NAD and burn more of t.</li></ul>All three factors work together to protect the body. They turn up metabolism, burn fat, repair DNA, remove senescent cells, they lower inflammation.

Three main longevity factors that respond to adversity

While your body clock is ticking away, the loops and bundles of the DNA are getting messed up. When a cell is overstressed and damaged, the sirtuins have two jobs:<ol><li>They have to make bundles of DNA and ensure the cell has its identity. When the chromosomes break or you crush a cell, the sirtuins rush in to help repair the broken DNA.</li><li>Sirtuins then have to reestablish that structure. They can put back 99.9% of those structures to how they were. But that .1% never goes back and accumulates over time. That is called ageing. </li></ol> To mitigate that, we need to upregulate the sirtuins through NAD boosters.

The role of sirtuins when it comes to ageing in the brain

All three pathways play a role in autophagy (cleaning out damaged cells), but mTOR is the most potent. mTOR responds to insulin signalling and fasting. In response, it mobilises proteins to be recycled and made into new proteins when you’re hungry.  When we get older, we have misfiled proteins: In the eye, they’re called lipofuscin. In Alzheimer's, they’re plaques and tangles of proteins. To get rid of them, you need deep cleansing called chaperone-mediated autophagy.Changing our diet ensures all three pathways are working.

Autophagy

A good Mediterranean-type diet protects the brain from ageing and can even reverse aspects of ageing in the elderly. A Mediterranean diet includes olive oil in the diet, red wine, and very little red meat.<ul><li>Red wine has polyphenols that directly activate SIRT1.</li><li>Olive oil has oleic acid, which is also found in avocados and can also directly activate the enzyme.</li><li>Low levels of protein and a plant-based diet.</li></ul> The Mediterranean diet mimics adversity. Your body has to work a bit harder to get everything it needs.  Aerobic exercise and walking improve cognition, particularly as we age.

Diet and Exercise

<ul><li>If you eat a plant-based diet, supplement with vitB12, B6 and B3. These B vitamins ensure you have the methyls that control the DNA methylation clock.</li><li>Low levels of B12 can cause deficiency and errors in DNA methylation and can accelerate heart disease and dementia.</li><li>Omega-3s are building blocks of the brain. If you don't eat enough fish, consider supplementing to achieve proper ratios of omega-3: EPA:DHA.</li><li>The brain needs fat to protect the brain from inflammation and damage.</li></ul>

B vitamins and omega 3s

<ul><li>High blood sugar is bad for brain activity and leads to dysfunction in all tissue.</li><li>Metformin has had good success in improving brain health.</li><li>Taking 250mg of nicotinamide riboside (NR) daily will likely increase NAD and decrease inflammation.</li><li>Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) seems to be more effective than NR at improving vascular tissue</li></ul>

Other supplementation

In this episode of the Lifespan podcast, Dr. David Sinclair and co-host Matthew LaPlante dissect the topic of brain aging. They explore evidence suggesting that the brain ages more slowly than other parts of the body and highlight how cognitive function is impacted by aging. Different interventions aimed at preserving brain health are also discussed, including a plant-based diet, exercise, metformin, NAD boosters, and sufficient sleep. Thank you to our sponsors:   Athletic Greens - https://athleticgreens.com/sinclair  Levels - https://levels.link/sinclair   InsideTracker - https://insidetracker.com/sinclair  Our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/davidsinclair  Lifespan book: https://amzn.to/3sUqurT Dr. David Sinclair Social:    Instagram   Twitter   Facebook  Matthew LaPlante's Social:    Twitter  To stay up to date with David's work to democratize biological age testing and insights, visit tallyhealth.com. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Introducing Episode Seven: Aging of the Brain (00:04:39) Thanking the Sponsors (00:07:38) Ex-differentiation as a Driver of Aging (00:09:22) The Brain Ages Slowly (00:14:17) Cognitive Function and Plasticity (00:17:44) Three Longevity Pathways: mTOR, AMPK, and Sirtuins (00:23:26) Plant-based Diets and B-vitamins (00:28:32) Homocysteine, Plaque, and Vasculature (00:32:35) Fatty Acids (00:35:48) Physical Activity (00:39:14) Metformin (00:46:02) NAD Boosters (00:50:33) Increasing Blood Flor (00:53:20) Sleep (00:58:02) Overall Message: Keep your Brain Healthy (00:58:50) Next Week’s Episode and the Future of Medicine (01:01:21) Options for Subscription for Support For the full show notes, including the peer-reviewed studies, visit the Lifespan podcast website. Please note that Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair is distinct from Dr. Sinclair's teaching and research roles at Harvard Medical School. The information provided in this show is not medical advice, nor should it be taken or applied as a replacement for medical advice. The Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair podcast, its employees, guests and affiliates assume no liability for the application of the information discussed. Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Special thanks to our research assistants, Adiv Johnson & Sarah Ryan.

The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy | Episode 7

The human brain doesn’t retain a lot in terms of memory, and 19th-century psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve shows just how rapidly new information is lost if we don’t have the opportunity to put it into practice quickly.
Just 12 percent of professionals use their newfound skills right away.
This means taking people out of work and putting them through a formal, structured class (where they might even be tested with the accompanying assumption they know what to do if they pass) and then putting them back in the workplace doesn’t actually influence the performance.

The Forgetting Curve

Being expected to retain large volumes of information all in one go is like trying to drink from a firehose—sure, you absorb a little bit, but the majority washes over you without sinking in.  Fortunately, though, there are employee education tactics to make knowledge “stickier” and avoid the forgetting curve.

Too Much Information, Little Retention

Microlearning is also an effective way to improve uptake and engagement.
Eighty-five percent of all educational content is either forgotten or rendered useless within six weeks of learning it, which indicates that traditional training might not be the most effective way for people to learn.

Microlearning: Give Workers Access To Bite-Sized Learning

Having team members share how they’ve applied what they learned is one of the most effective ways to overcome the forgetting curve and to ensure behavior change (which is usually the goal of employee education). These informal interactions can be brief; think of them more as a huddle than a formal check-in, as discussing what has been learned in conversation can help make knowledge stick.

Follow Up After Training To Reinforce Learning

Another way to bypass the effects of the forgetting curve in employee education is to build learning experiences. For example, an employee would need to be able to demonstrate and apply specific behaviors before learning something else. This type of information “stacking” creates a strong foundation and avoids learning loss. Over time, the lower levels of the “stack” become more and more ingrained.
To ensure that you’re stacking knowledge efficiently, request feedback from your team members. You can always fix something that’s not working.

Stack New Knowledge On Top Of Prior Knowledge

Use laptops, tablets, smartphones and desktops for learning purposes. The more user-centric your learning content is, the more it will become a reliable resource. Calculate which types of devices or learning styles are being used most often by your team. Maybe the majority of employees seem to tune into podcast-style micro-content on their smartphones, in which case you might like to add more audio formats to your learning toolkit.

Create Training Opportunities That Are Easily Accessible

Formal learning has a place in corporate training, as long as it’s equally as engaging and effective as other types of education. Intersperse formal learning with other types of employee education, such as microlearning, feedback loops, and self-directed learning.
When designing your learning processes, go for a blended approach with multiple touchpoints. Don’t just have a lecture-style marathon. Instead, add a post-workshop task and follow-up sessions to round out the learning and reinforce the transfer of knowledge.

A Blended Learning Approach With Formal Learning

The forgetting curve may be a proven phenomenon, but there are certainly ways to overcome it!

When it comes to employee education, it's useful to implement an incremental learning strategy, offering small bits of information over time.

Employee Education: How to Avoid the 'Forgetting Curve'

WhatsApp designs and builds its product with specific principles in mind. These principles are at the core of the decision-making process. Here are some examples of these shared values:<ul><li>The interface should feel native to the device the person is using</li><li>The app should be lightweight and require as little storage as possible</li><li>The interface should be simple</li><li>User actions and animations should be quick to respond</li><li>Features should provide obvious utility so they require little introduction</li></ul>

Strong principles

<ul><li>When working on Facebook, sometimes a designer is tasked with introducing a new feature. This can be challenging because Facebook already has many useful features. One technique they use is alerting people to the new features they might find value in.</li><li>WhatsApp approaches this problem in a different pragmatic way. They try to design and build features that are obviously useful. If the feature needs explanation, it’s not ready.</li></ul>

Utility driving engagement vs. engagement driving utility

Tools help you do your job more easily, but take a step back every once in a while and make sure you can do the work without the help of the tools.&nbsp;At the very least, it helps you keep perspective on how useful the tools are.

Design tools and design skills

<ul><li>At Facebook, you start with a problem. Then you propose a solution. If that gets the team excited, you test it. If it tests well, you start to build it and you take it out for a small test to see if it solves the problem. If it solves the problem well, you build it out to have a rich feature set and release to a wider audience.&nbsp;</li><li>At WhatsApp, you start with a problem. You work on a spectrum of solutions. You start to whittle it down to the solutions that seem to solve it best and adhere to the principles of the app. You grind on the best solution until you think nothing is wrong with it.&nbsp;</li></ul>

Move slow and deliberate

I’ve been a product designer at Facebook close to four years. I’ve worked on a variety of teams such as Groups, Sharing, and Privacy. At this time last year, I got an exciting opportunity to begin…

One Year Designing at WhatsApp

Perhaps the most important thing you can learn to be a better coder is to keep things simple.&nbsp;In the context of identifiers, that means that a single identifier should only be used to represent a single concept.

Keeping things simple

<ul><li>`const` is a signal that the identifier won’t be reassigned.</li><li>`let` is a signal that the variable may be reassigned, such as a counter in a loop, or a value swap in an algorithm. It also signals that the variable will be used only in the block it’s defined in, which is not always the entire containing function.</li></ul>

`Const` over `let` 

`Var` is now the weakest signal available when you define a variable in JavaScript. The variable may or may not be reassigned, and the variable may or may not be used for an entire function, or just for the purpose of a block or loop.

`Var` 

Perhaps the most important thing you can learn to be a better coder is to keep things simple. In the context of identifiers, that means that a single identifier should only be used to represent a…

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Lance Sampson
@lasampson

The best way for companies to build their talent pool: Embrace employee mobility

Can Mindfulness Change How We Interpret Emotional Situations? - Mindful

The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy | Episode 7

Employee Education: How to Avoid the 'Forgetting Curve'

One Year Designing at WhatsApp

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Lance Sampson@lasampson

The best way for companies to build their talent pool: Embrace employee mobility

Can Mindfulness Change How We Interpret Emotional Situations? - Mindful

The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy | Episode 7

Employee Education: How to Avoid the 'Forgetting Curve'

One Year Designing at WhatsApp

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Lance Sampson
@lasampson