We Found Someone Who Can Predict the Future

Knowledge Partner: McKinsey & Company

How to brainstorm better. Ever been in a meeting to brainstorm around the next big thing, but left with the feeling that what you’ve come up with is more of the same? Even with the best intentions, these sorts of meetings often aren’t as productive as they could be. A new piece looks at why—and what you can do about it.

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Happy Sunday!

We calculated the results of the 2021 Prediction Game, and we have a winner! Huge congratulations to Chris Hua! He won a grand total of $1,149.94 from the Every Index and some Every swag (which is, of course, priceless.)

Read all about Chris’s winning guesses below:

We Have a Winner

Andre Plaut / The Prediction Game

How did Chris win the Prediction Game? Here are the 2022 events he correctly foretold:

The outcome of the special Senate election in Georgia
Catherine O’Hara’s Golden Globe victory
The volume of Bitcoin ransomware attacks by the dollar amount (a little suspicious Chris)
Joe Biden’s low approval rating at the end of the year

But this is where things got really impressive:

Chris predicted that the DOW would close at $36,069 at the end of the year (it actually closed at $36,338).
And Chris also predicted that Bitcoin would reach a 2021 peak of $69,069 (it actually peaked at $69,000).

Read.

And if you’re new to Every in the past year, you can catch up on the Prediction Game series here.

Now, on to the rest of the pieces we published this week!

How to Win the Great British Bake Off

Kieran O’Hare / Superorganizers

In 2020, Peter Sawkins became the youngest ever winner of the wildly popular baking competition show Great British Bake Off. With that win came fame, fortune, and a coveted cookbook deal. How does the national baking icon juggle all the writing, social media work, university classes, and still find time to make a cake here and there? Sawkins shares his experiences and his best tips in the latest Superorganizers interview with Kieran O’Hare.

Read.

The Psychology of Strategy

Nathan Baschez / Divinations

This week Nathan dives a little deeper into strategy. While it’s easy to focus on the object level (What is this company doing?) or the meta level (What principle of business strategy can we apply here?), theres a third level that demands our attention if we are to see the full picture: the psychology level. In other words, what are the human impulses and desires, the cognitive and emotional instincts that guide our decision-making? And, more importantly, how do these paradigms determine our success or failure? These paradigms are difficult to recognize and even more difficult to break away from, but don’t worry—Nathan has a list of some common strategical fallacies that you can watch out for, as well.

Read.

Spotify’s Quest to Own Your Ear

Evan Armstrong & Dan Runcie / Napkin Math

In this Napkin Math x Trapital collab, Dan and Evan break down the controversial company taking over audio: the one and only Spotify. The look at the Spotify’s payment model for artists, the massive amount of attention it aggregates, and whether web3 will threaten the company’s strong foothold in “owning the ear.” Despite the storm of current events, they argue that, in the end, Spotify wins because it has what matters most—attention.

Read.

Field Guide to the Curve Wars: DeFi’s Fight for Liquidity

Nat Eliason / Almanack

DeFi is essentially a game of incentive design with tens of billions of dollars going to the victor. Nat explores one of the most intriguing battlefronts in the conflict for yield: The Curve Wars. The piece starts with an exploration of one initial protocol (Curve), but quickly veers wildly to reveal multiple layers of combat, with different protocols vying for control of the Token of the Day. This piece is a crazy look into the lightning-paced world of DeFi—and if you skip it you’re probably ngmi.

Read.

Reading Recs:

Sunday Snippets

Ali Abdaal | Sunday Snippets

In recent years, productivity became a bit of a buzzword and with that came a lot of crappy advice that you have to filter through to find what’s valuable. This is what Ali Abdaal does for you in his weekly newsletter—Sunday Snippets. Every Sunday, Ali shares his favourite productivity tips, book recommendations, and systems that he uses to manage his $3M business, 2.6M YouTube channel, book writing, and all sorts of projects. More than 137,000 have already joined.

Check it out.

Stew’s Letter: A thought-provoking email for people short on time

Stew Fortier / Stew’s Letter

It’s been said to you should either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. Stew Fortier attempts to both in his newsletter Stew’s Letter, sharing hard-earned lessons and musings from his daily journey as a startup founder and writer.

Every other week, Stew combines succinct wisdom with a healthy dose of embarrassing personal stories like why you shouldn’t give investment advice to your heroes.

Read here.

Maker Mind

Anne-Laure Le Cunff / Ness Labs

Maker Mind is a free newsletter about mindful productivity where Anne-Laure shares science-based tips to achieve more without sacrificing your mental health. She has written more than 400 articles on her website at Ness Labs, all while studying neuroscience and growing a bustling private community of creators and knowledge workers, so she knows a thing or two about being productive without burning out. Join more than 39,000 other subscribers to receive weekly tips to discover neuroscience-based strategies to cultivate your curiosity, maximize your productivity, and dare to create!

Read here.