Time, open water swimming and artificial intelligence
TRIBEathlon Podcast
Episode 68: Keri-anne Payne is a South African-born British swimmer, specialising in marathon open-water swimming, and long-distance freestyle swimming in the pool. She is a two-time 10-kilometre open water world champion, and an Olympic silver medallist. Since retiring from competition, she has been involved in several businesses in the world of swimming, most recently training open water swimming coaches at a phenomenal rate given the sports explosion in popularity.
I wanted to chat to Keri-anne about open water race tactics, making wild swimming safer, the pros and cons of sea life encounters and her recent support of Tom Daly's monster triathlon.
What I’ve Been Reading
What if you stopped trying to do everything so that you could finally get round to what counts? We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about 4,000 weeks. Hence the title of Oliver Burkeman’s excellent book Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace Your Limits. Change Your Life. This book definitely got me thinking about time, and how we don’t spend it…we are it!
App I’ve Found Useful
Since the start of the pandemic, the popularity of open-water swimming has skyrocketed and I, for one, was swimming with friends in the River Nene last year. However, there are issues to consider: where are the best spots to swim? how to swim safely? how to meet others to swim together? etc.
In her TRIBEathlon interview, Keri-anne Payne introduced me to an app called Wild, which aims to make open-water swimming safer, more sociable and more accessible for all. Check it out if you are keen or intrigued by wild swimming!
TED Talk I’ve Found Interesting
Try talking to yourself without opening your mouth, by simply saying words internally. What if you could search the internet like that - and get an answer back? In the first live public demo of his new technology, TED Fellow, Arnav Kapur, introduces AlterEgo: a wearable AI device with the potential to let you silently talk to and get information from a computer system, like a voice inside your head. Learn more about how the device works and the far-reaching implications of this new kind of human-computer interaction in his TED talk How AI could become an extension of your mind.
What I’ve Been Watching
Whiplash is a 2014 American psychological drama film that follows an ambitious jazz drummer who is pushed to his limit by his abusive and ruthlessly strict bandleader at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory. It is a gripping film that raises may questions about how the best become the best, and whether it is sometimes at too great an expense. A really compelling watch.
Quote of the Week
“As more and more artificial intelligence is entering into the world, more and more emotional intelligence must enter into leadership.”
- Amit Ray
Finance Theme I’ve Been Considering
As we enter a new tax year, the allowances are back, so don’t wait around to use them or lose them. The sooner your money is growing tax free, the better, so dive in to make the most of the opportunity.
