No #163 | January 19, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

HOW ARE YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS GOING?😆

In all seriousness, one of my resolutions this year is to drink more water in the morning. To encourage this, before I go to bed every night I pour a big glass of water and I put it within immediate reaching distance when I wake up in the morning, thus making it as effortless as possible (and it's working).

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 😜Idioms are Weird
• 💡"Simple Health Tips"
• 🤔Time Spent Alone
• 🤣January Challenge
• 😎Cool Links

😜Idioms are Weird

Right after university, I taught at an ESL school for a few months to pay the bills.

It was a short but memorable chapter in my life, not least because it’s where I met my future wife (she was also a teacher at the school). One part of every lesson I taught was dedicated to English idioms, those quirky phrases that don’t make sense if you take them literally.

An idiom is a common expression or phrase whose meaning isn’t predictable from the words themselves. Native English speakers don’t think twice about using idioms, they just flow naturally in conversation. But when you try explaining them to someone learning English, they can sound quite bizarre.

Here are five of my favourite idioms that I probably overuse, and a little background on why we say them:

“Break the ice”: To initiate conversation in a social setting and make people feel more comfortable.

• ​Background: This phrase originates from ships. In the past, ice-breaking ships were used to clear passages in frozen waters, making way for others. Similarly, in conversation, the “icebreaker” clears the tension and takes up 15 minutes of the start of every meeting.

“Spill the beans”: To reveal a secret.

• ​Background: This phrase likely comes from an ancient Greek voting system where beans were used to cast votes. If someone accidentally (or intentionally) spilled the container of beans, the results were prematurely revealed.

“The ball is in your court”: It’s your turn to act or make a decision.

• ​Background: Borrowed from sports like tennis, this phrase suggests the responsibility has shifted to someone else. In other words, it’s up to them to “serve.”

“Bite off more than you can chew”: To take on more than you can handle.

• ​Background: This phrase dates back to the 19th century when people chewed tobacco. If you took too big a bite, it would be hard to chew and manage, just like overloading yourself with tasks.

“Let the cat out of the bag”: To reveal a secret or spoil a surprise.

• ​Background: This phrase may come from markets in medieval England, where shady sellers would replace a pig with a cat in a bag to cheat buyers. If someone opened the bag before purchasing, they would “let the cat out,” exposing the scam.

💡"Simple Health Tips"

Last week, The New York Times published a list of 35 simple health tips recommended by experts. As a self-proclaimed sucker for list-based clickbait, I couldn’t resist checking it out.

Here are some good onoes:

"I HEARBY DECLARE THIS THE END OF MY WORK DAY"

A fun activity to do with kids too.

I've mentioned this before, but if you need a hype song before giving a presentation, watch the Talking Heads - Life During Wartime.

Make that first step as easy as possible.

🤔Time Spent At Home

Here's a chart to reflect on this weekend (source):

🤣January Challenge

Hang it in the Louvre 🤣(source)

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😎Cool Links

📵My Phone is Making Me Dumb. Whenever I take breaks from my phone, I feel how much cleaner my mind is. How much it feels like it is my own experience animating my awareness, instead of having all of this gunk to clean out that doesn’t belong to me. Gunk that I allow in by reaching for my phone in a moment where I probably don’t want to feel what I am feeling myself.

🤔The Paradox of Expertise. There’s a fascinating paradox in today’s world of expertise: while people with little track record confidently dish out “simple steps” to success, some of the most experienced people I know are becoming less confident about providing answers. Just yesterday, a colleague confided to me their anxiety about an upcoming meeting. Despite undoubtedly being the most knowledgeable person in the room, they were worried about not having immediate answers to problems that hadn’t even been defined yet.

💡The Surprising Power of Team Rituals. We found that the more rituals a team engages in regularly, the higher their members’ engagement: Those working on teams that scored in the top third of the scale felt 23% more committed to their team’s purpose, experienced a 20% boost to their levels of psychological safety, achieved 28% greater interpersonal knowledge, and reported 22% higher job satisfaction compared to those with low levels of rituals.

😻Finally, here is a kitten playing in a giant leaf pile. You're welcome.

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