The Olympic Flag, which consists of five interlocking coloured rings, was created by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games, and unveiled in 1914.

Coubertin said that the five rings represent the five parts of the world embracing "Olympism" and competing against each other: Africa, The Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The interlacing of the rings represents the unity and coming together of athletes from all parts of the world. Coubertin did not associate individual rings with individual continents.

The six colours of blue, dark yellow, black, green, red and white—the field on which the rings are set—"reproduce the colours of every country", and at least one is found on every national flag (I believe that’s still true).

I was thinking of including a sketch of each of the Olympic sports, but depending on how you count them, there are 32 sports and over 300 events.

You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about the history of the Olympic Flag in The Story of the Rings by Karl Lennartz (pdf). 

The Olympic flag and various other Olympic Properties (like the rings, torch and motto) are © IOC.

Great Britain, the British Isles, the United Kingdom - eh?

The Olympic Flag

Anchors and tugboats. One holds you back, and one pulls you forward.

Negativity can act like an anchor holding you back, narrowing your focus and restricting your potential.

Positivity, by contrast, acts like a tugboat pulling you forward. It's expansive. It opens us up to the opportunity we have, gratitude or joy.

I heard this analogy from sports psychologist Justin Ross. It's a curious thing, he points out, that we don't actively learn how we should talk to ourselves; it just happens. If you're out running and things get tough, or if you're having a hard time at work or as a parent, our self-talk starts about how things are going and how we got here. But rarely do we consciously think about how we should talk to ourselves. To get to positivity from a place of negativity, he says, the first step is awareness and noticing the negativity anchoring us down. Only then can we think about transforming the negative thoughts into positive ones and starting to feel the pull of the tugboat.

This example is sports psychology, but it applies throughout our lives.

Justin discusses this from 29:40 in the Löw Tide Boyz podcast episode 193.

Anchors and tugboats

A self-serving bias is one where we attribute our failures to external factors and our successes to our own admirable qualities and efforts.

So, a tennis player might internally credit their athleticism and skill for their victory, while the loser may blame the umpire's decisions, their racket or the court. You might have seen it in professional sports.

Self-serving bias may be rational and positive, maintaining our self-esteem and a positive view of ourselves. Conversely, it can hide reality (and give referees and umpires a more draining job) or cause us to reject negative but objective feedback.

Self-serving bias is a form of attribution bias where we misattribute behaviours or events to characteristics rather than circumstances or vice versa.

Self-serving bias is covered nicely (pdf) by Donelson R. Forsyth in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition.

Self-serving bias

It's something I like to keep in mind after a big workout, particularly on the legs — get the weight off them!

Stand sit lie

Physics envy refers to the wish that a field of study would turn out to be as precise, as predictable, as repeatable, and as amenable to modeling and theory that replicates practice as physics is.

As it turns out, most fields that involve people — such as economics and the social sciences — are rarely so tidy and orderly and neatly mathematically modeled. They are instead usually messy, uncertain, and filled with context, nuance, history and confounding factors such that making sense of them in broadly applicable ways is rather difficult. And while we do our best to quantify and identify effects, or cleanly isolate our cognitive biases or our quirks of behavioural psychology, rarely are they able to live up to the purest standards of physics. It's enough to turn one green with envy.

It reminded me of the best laid plans of our Saturday sports coaches turning for their substitutes to execute their plans, only to find the players climbing trees in the adjacent field.

Physics Envy

The fun scale acknowledges that not all fun is created equal and includes the different types of fun, including Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 fun.

I assumed fun is all the same. Fun is fun. But then, when I first heard about Type I and Type II fun, I had to admit there was some validity in there being different types of fun.

Type 1 fun is like eating ice cream, or skiing with ski lifts to whisk you back up to the top — you love it while you’re doing it, and when you think back on it you remember how good it was. Straightforward— sounds like fun.

Type 2 fun, on the other hand, is the sort of enjoyment you get from something like running a marathon or climibing a mountain. You often have to admit that it wasn’t necessarily all fun at the time. In fact, it could have been quite hard and might have hurt a bit. But when you look back on it, you think of it as often more fun and fulfilling than the Type I fun.

Type 3 fun is usually type 1 or 2 fun that went wrong. Though it was supposed to be fun, things actually got a little hairy – like you got lost, or it got dark, and it got cold, or you had to be rescued — but…it sure makes a great story when you make it back.

The fun scale is probably my favourite sketch that didn't make it into my new book. If you like this one, you'll love the book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

HT: my brother shared this with me having learned it from his mountain guide doing classic Type II fun.

I updated this sketch in 2023. Here is the original fun scale sketch

The fun scale

Nine-enders are people in the last year of a decade, say, 29, 39, 49, 59. Adam Alter and Hal Hershfield, who introduced the term, propose that as we approach the end of a decade we are more likely to do a kind of "meaning audit" of our lives. And in the years just before the end of a decade, if we may have fallen short or feel there’s something else we want to accomplish, we’re much more likely to do it then than in any other year of a decade.

In practice, as Dan Pink shared in his book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, these are, therefore, the times when we’re more likely to do something extreme like running a marathon for the first time and, sadly, also committing suicide.

Read more in Dan Pink’s Atlantic article: You’re Most Likely to Do Something Extreme Right Before You Turn 30, Dan Pink, The Atlantic

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Dan Pink

People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age, PNAS, vol. 111 no. 48, Alter and Hershfield, 2014.

This sketch, updated and polished, features with a number of others in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

9-Enders (nine-enders)

Parachutes, paragliders, hangliders, kitesurfs, parasails or parakites, all fun ways to get around. Here I wanted to show the main differences between each.

I probably should have added wingsuiting.

Know your flying fabrics

What’s the difference? OK, this is not rocket science, but I remember growing up it took me a while to not be calling them interchangeably. There are so many neat hybrid ways to get on the water now that nothing is cut and dry, but if they look like what’s in the picture then you can be pretty confident you’ll be getting it right.

Kayak vs Canoe

One of the best virtuous circles. One of my more surprising recent reads has been Novak Djokovic’s Serve to Win about diet, discipline, going gluten-free and physical and mental excellence. The guy certainly knows about excellence and it was neat to learn his philosophy on eating — the book contains recipes — and taking care of yourself including some serious respect for sleep. This sketchplanation is just one of the reason’s why. Since reading it I’ve put an alarm on every night to remind me to respect sleep. Night!

The virtuous cycle of exercise and sleep

Swimrun is basically navigating from start to finish through water and over land carrying only the gear you need. What you start with you have to finish with. You will run in your wetsuit and swim in your running shoes. The world championship courses are run by Ötillö. Ötillö means island-to-island in Swedish after the original course created from a drunken bet.

A beautiful aspect of it is that it's a team sport, both run and swum in pairs. Many choose to tether together which dramatically on the swims and keeps you both close.

In 2016 I teamed up with Rob Bell and took part in Ötillö’s UK swimrun in the Isles of Scilly. The Scilly event was a swimrun paradise. Check out the course, and the amazing event photos. The place is gorgeous, go visit sometime. And get into swimrun it’s awesome!

Swimrun

Swim a mile in water 5C or less. The ice mile is hardcore. Respect for crazy, amazing people like Lewis Pugh. Or if you’re in London, check out The Swimmer.

The ice mile

In his post on Zanshin, a state of relaxed alertness, James Clear writes:

Great archery masters often teach that “everything is aiming.” Where you place your feet, how you hold the bow, the way you breathe during the release of the arrow—it all determines the end result.

I like the idea of zanshin, but I like more the insight that everything is aiming. How every piece of your attitude, preparation, body and state go towards influencing how you perform. No detail too small. Tennis coaches, for example, reinforce being in the ready position before a ball even comes your way. Experience teaches you it does matter.

The concept reminds me of one of my favourite quotes which I think pretty much sums up a great approach to life as a whole and also how I view luck:

I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.
—Abraham Lincoln

Everything is aiming

Somewhat improbable name for a simple training technique alternating fast and slower sections. Great if you’re short on time.

Fartlek

Means one in front of another, as opposed to side-by-side. It comes from a tandem harness with two horses pulling with one in front of the other. So technically no matter how many people you put on a bike, if they are in a straight line, they are still in tandem. As opposed to a bike where you sit side-by-side, also known as a sociable.

I had to check this one out as on Friday I’m doing a somewhat crazy cycle on a home-made 6-man bike (all sitting in tandem) from London to Amsterdam for a great cause - KEEN London who provide one-to-one sports for children with special needs. Any donation you can make will make a huge difference to a small organisation. With just one day left, please donate here if you can

In tandem

Surfing breaks: Beach, reef and point

This lot will have you set: house key, Boris bike key, Oyster card, Credit card, a fiver, and a phone for maps and photos. Now you can go anywhere.

London running kit

In other news, I think the offside rule should be changed in football so that the goalkeeper doesn’t count when evaluating offside. Always seems stupid to me when the standard definition involves ‘the last defender’ but the technical definition is the 'second-to-last defender’ because the goalkeeper is usually one of those. Let’s just not count the goalkeeper and make the thing simpler.

Also, Happy Christmas! Thanks so much for reading. Especially on Christmas day.

The offside rule

A mnemonic that has helped me many times.

Repair injured joints

If there are only two people in the changing room, your lockers will be next to each other.

The law of lockers

A worthy ball juggling challenge next time you’re messing around with a football.

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Category: sport