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On Living Well

While I’m not usually a fan of these, 12 Signs You’ve Done Well in Life is a keeper.

Strength training is the true fountain of youth.  Training with resistance boosts brain health while simultaneously making you less fragile.

The Mediterranean Diet may slow the aging process by 5 years.  As usual, this headline is a bit on the extreme side.  But “there is an increasing amount of evidence that eating a healthy diet rich in fish, vegetables, legumes and nuts is good for your brain.”

Speaking of diets, many of you probably read the (many) articles about how red meat is “proven” to cause cancer.  Of course, it’s tempting (though dangerous) to read too much into articles like those.  If you’re looking for a breakdown, the following articles are good reads: 1) What Does the WHO Report Mean For Your Meat-Eating Habit, and 2) So Will Processed Meat Give You Cancer?

On Productive Work

Jack Dorsey picks themes for days of the week in order to effectively run two companies at once.  If you have the flexibility to do, focusing on one area (and nothing else) for specific days throughout the week is a great idea.

Great article about The Effort Trap.  In short, “it’s dangerously easy to feel as though a 10-hour day spent plowing through your inbox, or catching up on calls, was much more worthwhile than two hours spent in deep concentration on hard thinking, followed by a leisurely afternoon off.”  Since society values hard work – and it can be just as tiring – it’s easy to congratulate yourself even though you didn’t actually get any meaningful work completed.

In 5 Ways to Improve Your Work-Life Balance Now, there are some great tips for staying sane in a busy world.  I’m especially fond of treating weekends like vacations.  Protect your weekends and you’ll more effectively recharge and come back ready to go on Monday morning.

How does the brain multi-task?  Using a “switchboard” which is “continuously filtering sensory information and shifting more or less attention onto one sense — like sight — while relatively blocking out distracting information from other senses, including sound.”

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On Working Creatively

I found this post on LinkedIn by a fellow Amazonian to be particularly insightful about what the “secret to success” really is.  It’s not clear all of these are learned traits – but there isn’t a single one of them I disagree with.  Being tenacious, constantly observing and analyzing, having high integrity, and being predictable aren’t things you see on lists like these often enough.

Along those lines, the Six Habits of Ambitious People piles on.  One thing both articles have in common: you are the company you keep.

If you aren’t an active reader, and if you don’t read FAST, it’s going to be hard to be successful.

In How to Vacation Like It’s 1999, the benefits of disconnecting are discussed.  I’ve been doing this more and more (even on weekends) and it’s been a great complement to meditation, training, and healthy eating for hitting the reset button.

I’m a big believer in a consistent morning routine.  If your routine isn’t working, you may want to read about Why Your Morning Routine Isn’t Working.

Learn from the Stoics in “Controversial Exercise That Guarantees You’ll Have a Good Day“.

On Fueling Your Body

According to Your gut is telling you what to eat – and you’re not listening“, one of the easiest ways to fix your nutrition is to pay attention to “negative post-ingestive feedback” — or your body telling you that you’ve done it a disservice with the food you just ate.

I’ve recently started eating a lot more kimchi and fermented foods.  Given its natural probiotic qualities, it has tons of health benefits most people don’t realize.

Exercise doesn’t work for weight loss without the right nutrition.  The right nutrition without exercise will work, but the right exercise and the right nutrition works best.

Random Musings

A great, long read. “How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are—and is a fundamental part of being human.”

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Could our gut microbiome be affecting our mood?  Making us happier?  Possibly.  And there may even be an evolutionary reason for it: “happy people tend to be more social. And the more social we are, the more chances the microbes have to exchange and spread.”

How do you hang onto that post-vacation feeling as long as possible?  Plan, Reminisce, and Retreat according to an interesting New York Times Travel article.

I love this stretch.  In less than five minutes, hit the hip flexor, shoulder, and back.

Top 6 Kettlebell Exercises for Building Mass.  While I’m not as into “building mass” as I was in my 20s, I know these double kettlebell exercises will pack on muscle like no other.

How the “war against GMO” is mislead and full of lies.  Warning: this is an epically long article.

I love what Juliet and Kelly Starrett are doing to bring standing desks into the classroom.  I’m anxious for my kids’ school to take this approach as well to increase overall fitness and attention in the classroom.

CrowdCow is pretty amazing.  It coordinates the purchase of a cow directly from a local rancher.  We went with the 100% grass-fed and finished beef from Spanaway, WA.

Stress isn’t all bad.  “The higher the nations stress index, the greater the GDP and life expectancy, the more satisfied people are in that nation with their live, with their work, their communities, their own health. The happier they are.”

Another long one, this time on the crazy effects of sleep deprivation.  “Losing sleep can cause hallucinations, psychosis, and long-term memory impairment. Some studies have linked sleep deprivation to chronic conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and bipolar disorder.”

Long-form Reads

I thoroughly enjoyed reading My Fight / Your Fight by Ronda Rousey (UFC Champion – Women’s Division) and Maria Burns Ortiz (her sister).  It was one of the most complete descriptions of what it takes to be a champion regardless of the sport.  The sacrifices, the struggles, the emotional roller coaster… all described in great detail along with fantastic motivational quotes like “you have to be good enough to win on a bad day”.  And one of my own personal favorites: “Once you’ve conquered the worst things that could happen, there is no need to fear the unknown. You are fearless.”  It was a far better read than I expected it to be.

You can always follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading.

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On High Performance Work

How much does your state of mind matter during the work day?  Quite a bit.  94% of leaders reported that Calm, Happy and Energized (CHE) are the states of mind that drive the greatest levels of effectiveness and performance.

Humans are meant to move a lot during the day, and most office workers are unlikely to do so. WellnessFX has 5 mobility hacks to improve your morning routine.  Get moving.

A positive mood allows your brain to think more creatively.

Being happy at work matters.  People want a meaningful vision of the future, a sense of purpose, and great relationships.

What sets people with high emotional intelligence apart at work?  I particularly like #4 – they focus on the future and are willing to let go of the past.  They know that failure isn’t permanent or a reflection of themselves.

“Resilience is essentially a set of skills–as opposed to a disposition or personality type–that make it possible for people not only to get through hard times but to thrive during and after them.”  How can you become more resilient?  Hint: it involves meditation.

On Sleep & Nutrition

More reasons to eat (high-quality) dark chocolate!

Want to sleep like your ancestors?  Turn your lights off at dusk and leave them off until dawn.  That’s easy in Seattle in the summer (since dusk is at 9:51pm tonight – dawn is 4:30am) but in the winter would be brutal.  The cool thing is that after about 3 weeks of this, people were in a “different state of consciousness” between two distinct periods of sleep.  A period of distinct security, quiet, and peace that we’re completely lacking in the modern world.

Eating more spinach, kale, collards and mustard greens to your diet could help slow cognitive decline, according to new research.

Another meta-analysis shows that your kids aren’t rowdy at birthday parties “because of all the sugar”.  Specifically, they “found that sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children. The strong belief of parents may be due to expectancy and common association.”  I’ve stopped correcting people though… since people really don’t care if it’s true or not.

Great infographic of the Paleo Diet by RobbWolf.com and NordicTrack.

A third of all “wild” salmon coming from Alaska isn’t really wild – it’s “hatch and catch”.

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The post States of Mind, Resiliency, and Cognitive Performance (Sunday Reads #16) first appeared on Refocuser.

This week I’m posting it on Monday because… well… Memorial Day.

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On Creativity and Focus

Creativity can reduce stress and become a habit.  “Productivity on meaningful work encourages engagement with that work, and this engagement fosters creativity.”

A new study has found that a Mediterranean diet with antioxidant-rich extra virgin olive oil or mixed nuts was associated with improved cognitive function in older adults in Spain.  The control group ate a low-fat diet.

Dark chocolate can boost attention.  At least a few times per week I substitute an afternoon coffee or tea with some sipping chocolate (85%) – not only is it incredibly tasty, it helps me focus.

A new study has found that participating in an eight-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on how the brain functions even when someone is not actively meditating.  I’m on Day 21 of the Headspace program and I already feel a noticeable difference in my overall stress levels, clarity of thought and ability to focus.  I really couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

Meditation can be secular.  Meditation for Strivers in the The New Yorker challenges common perception head-on by reviewing 10% Happier by Dan Harris.  “Meditation suffers from a towering PR problem.… If you can get past the cultural baggage, though, what you’ll find is that meditation is simply exercise for your brain.”

On Getting Strong & Eating Well

Women find boost in ability and other benefits in strength training.  “Women don’t need giant muscles. But to do functional stuff, we do need muscles.”  Absolutely.  “Do something you never thought you could do, like three push-ups or a pull-up, and it creates a big change in you. It opens the door to other tasks. You want to jump higher, lift heavier, run faster.”

Two new large-scale studies show that “the ideal dose of exercise for a long life is a bit more than many of us currently believe we should get, but less than many of us might expect.”  People who don’t exercise at all are at the highest risk of premature death.  Strive to meet or exceed the guidelines (at least 150 minutes of activity per week, with 20 to 30 minutes of that considered vigorous).

If you don’t know how to do them, avoid these exercises.  I would add kettlebell swings to this list for sure.

There are lots and lots of misperceptions about paleo/primal.  Chris Kresser covers the 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Paleo.  It’s not about eating bacon with every meal, it’s about “eating nutrient dense, toxin-free, whole foods, moving our bodies regularly, sleeping at least 8 hours a night, managing our stress, and playing and having fun.”

Random Musings

Rush Club is an interesting take on functional fitness competition.

How could you really become like Batman?

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Prelude: Two weeks ago I participated in the StrongFirst Level 1 Kettlebell Certification event.  It was three full days of learning, training, coaching, and being put to the test.  While I was pretty nervous going in, it turned out to be an incredibly rewarding experience – even the day of testing, which included a brutal 5-minute timed snatch test (100 overhead snatches with a 24kg kettlebell in 5 minutes).  It took me almost a full week to start training again – and when I did, it was with a newfound appreciation for the power of the kettlebell.  I’m now part of the StrongFirst family as a certified instructor and will start training for Level 2 later this year.

At some point, I will likely write about my training protocol over the long months of preparation, along with some of the strange things I did that I found to work… including “straw breathing”, voodoo flossing, and regularly using a micropedi on my callused hands.  But that’ll have to wait.  For now, onto the links!

Nuts are a nutritional powerhouse according to a study conducted among more than 200,000 men and women in the Southern United States and Shanghai, finding that the more nuts people consumed, the lower their death rates from all causes.

In Why Exercising is a Higher Priority Than My Career, the author makes the case.  In my own life I’ve found that exercising is my master habit – it improves my mood, my energy levels, my work output, my relationships, and increases my confidence.  While I occasionally have to sacrifice it for work, I don’t let this itself become a habit that lasts more than several days.  Work will always fill the time you give it, so as the author says, “exercise must come first, or it’s unlikely to happen at all.”

Find focus with just 18 minutes each day according to Harvard Business Review writer and published author Peter Bregman.  This simple program takes 5 minutes in the morning, 1 minute each hour, and 5 minutes each evening.

Scientists find physical clutter negatively affects your ability to focus or process information.  This is why I quickly straighten up my office at the end of each day.

Why you need the combination of grit, routine, and vision to live life as an adventure.  You are what you do most of the time, not some of the time.  The author references a few apps that may help you, and being the app geek that I am I’m listing them here: Way of Life, Full, and Balanced.

I also talked about a fun new meditation app a few weeks back (Buddhify).  And now that I’m regularly using Headspace, I can highly recommend it if you’re interested in learning how to meditate.  It’s fantastic.

Here’s a blog post on life that I really appreciated: The Days are Long but the Decades are Short.

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Sorry for the lack of posts over the last two weeks; my family and I were traveling (without opening a laptop!) Next week there won’t be a Sunday Reads either as I will be participating in the StrongFirst Instructor Certification for three full days (Fri, Sat, Sun) – wish me luck!  Sunday Reads will be back the following week (May 3rd).

On Fitness, Nutrition, and Sleep

Greatist asks if cheat meals are hurting your health – or at a minimum being positioned incorrectly as something that is ‘bad for you’, resulting in guilt.  My personal experience is that cheat meals are a gateway drug that eventually opens the door to cheating more often – so I very rarely allow myself to have a complete cheat meal or a cheat day any longer (I’ve had two “cheat” meals since September).

Metabolic slowdown effects are seen when sleep is reduced by only a few hours.  In other words, you don’t need to miss an entire night’s sleep for your metabolism to be affected, all it takes is a few hours missed.

An apple a day doesn’t keep the doctor away based on a new research study.  But I will keep eating one because they’re tasty.

Dan John tackles what it takes to get stronger.  For those who don’t know of Dan, he’s one of the best strength coaches in the industry.  I listen to what Dan has to say.  I love this quote from Brett Jones in the article: “Absolute strength is the glass. Everything else is the liquid inside the glass. The bigger the glass, the more of everything else you can do.”

If you’ve been reading Sunday Reads this year, you probably recognize the power of the microbiome.  Well, scientists have discovered the most diverse collection of bodily bacteria ever in a remote Amazonian tribe of southern Venezuela.  Per the article, “the findings offer yet more evidence that modern lifestyles reduce the diversity of our microbial ecosystems, with potentially far-reaching consequences for our health.”

Mark Sisson covers 25 Ways to Improve Your Insulin Sensitivity.  Number 1?  Lift weights.

On Success, Memory, and Spending Money

I love this story about how “success is often a result of committing to the fundamentals over and over again” and how using visual cues can help.

This meditation app looks quite cool.

Is typing destroying our memory?  A recent study found that writing things down with a pen, and not with a keyboard, will result in better recall of that information.   “Because we write by hand less quickly, those who took notes with pen and paper had to be more selective, choosing the most important information to include in their notes. This enabled them to study the content more efficiently.”

One of my former professors at Cornell University covers the science of why you should spend money on experiences, not things.  “Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods,” says Gilovich. “You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences.”

It’s possible that “power poses” may not be so powerful after all.  Regardless of the conflicting results of the two research studies, if it works for you, don’t stop doing it.

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Work-Life Balance, Boredom, & Creativity

In Work-Life Balance Is Dead, author Ron Friedman says that “providing employees with more control over their schedule—to the extent that flexibility is possible—motivates them to work harder, produce higher-quality work, and develop greater loyalty for their company.”  Anecdotally, this feels right to me.

Finding ways to cope with boredom may help make you more creative according to a recent study. In this study, participants who had been asked to complete a boring writing task were more creative afterwards than a control group who had done more interesting work.  In other words, being bored may prime your brain for creative work.

First boredom, now distraction.  A new bit of research suggests that the kind of distractions from email, social media, and the like could actually boost your creativity.  Being open to distraction “may help people integrate ideas that are outside of focus of attention, leading to creativity in the real world.”

An old article, but a good one: How to Win the U.S. Memory Championship.  To become a grandmaster of memory, you have to “memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes.”  Truly amazing.

Find yourself responding emotionally to things?  It could be due to lack of sleep.  One of the findings in a new book on sleep: “A person’s loss of sleep can be connected to their likelihood of reacting emotionally to a stressful situation.”  While not surprising, it’s a healthy reminder that your responses aren’t always rational, they could be a direct result of how well you’ve slept.

Food & Fitness

Protein powders from major companies like MusclePharm (which Arnold Schwarzenegger promotes) may not contain the amount of protein they claim according to a new lawsuit.  Sad, but not surprising if true.  The nutritional supplement industry has been known for this kind of stuff for decades.

I recently started using Naked Whey which has only one ingredient: 100% Grass-Fed Whey. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners and no taste (which is a good thing).

White rice isn’t known for its nutritional content, though it’s been making a bit of a comeback in the ancestral/primal/paleo world, especially for athletes.  But what if a little chemistry through cooking could improve upon white rice by cutting its caloric content and “converting” it into a resistant starch?

Scott Rdella covers The Awesomeness of the Turkish Getup, one of my all-time favorite movements. Learning it is more like learning a martial art or an elaborate dance move than an exercise.  If I could only do one movement for the rest of my life, the getup would go head-to-head with the deadlift for my weapon of choice.  Don’t know what it is?  Check out this video.

Could intermittent fasting work differently for women than it does for man?  An article on Precision Nutrition discusses the potential differences and offers some advice for how to experiment with it.

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Getting Creative Work Done

If you struggle to declutter your magazine pile, a technique called ABR – Always Be Reading may be for you.  As someone who spends many hours a week focused on helping people read more (with a Kindle preferably) this approach sounds interesting, and is actually pretty aligned with what I personally do.

Are you a manager?  Your late-night or very early-morning emails may be hurting your team.  Being always-on hurts team results in a big way.  I’ve been in the habit for years of delay-sending the email I write after 6:30pm on Friday or over the weekend until late Monday morning.

If you’d like to form successful habits, you need to know what motivates you.

A recent study showed that heavy cellphone users report higher anxiety levels and dissatisfaction with life than their peers who use their phones less often – and another showed a correlation between stress levels and the barrage of alerts and notifications.  This app automatically tracks how much you use your iPhone or iPad each day and helps you set limits.

Not only is it stressing you out, but your smartphone may be making you a lazy thinker.

Grit has been shown to be the common trait amongst leaders and high performers.  Talent matters, sure, but no matter what natural talent you have, you need to put in the work.  You need the passion to start it, live it, and breathe it – and you need the perseverance to do it until you get it done.

Train (and Sleep) Like an Athlete

What do the best athletes do that you don’t?  They don’t look for a quick fix, they set their goals and then raise them, and they constantly seek out new information… and more.

They also love what they do.  In Exercise Is Not a Final Destination: How to Enjoy the Journey, the author provides three life lessons to maximize your fitness journey: 1) Stop Looking at Exercise as a Means to an End, 2) Seek out Coaches, Mentors, and Heroes, and 3) Find Exercise With Deeper Meaning and Purpose.  YES.

What a fantastic infographic about getting lean & the various tradeoffs involved.  Having personally been at all but the two most extreme levels described, the tradeoffs seem spot-on.

Using melatonin could provide more and better quality sleep compared to using an eye mask and earplugs in a simulated noisy and illuminated environment, according to research.  This is especially important in hospitals, airplanes, and other noisy (aka annoying) places to sleep.

An incredible story about a high school girl who could become the best runner ever.  This particular quote about the improved performance of runners over the last 14 years is astounding: “In 2001, only two high-school girls ran the 1,600 meters in under 4:50, and only one ran faster than 4:45. Last year, 46 girls ran faster than 4:50; eight broke 4:45.”

If you want to improve your performance in work and life, should you remove gluten from your diet – or is that just a fad?  Chris Kresser weighs in.  As I’ve said in the past, it’s quite easy to get out of hypotheticals – at least for yourself – through experimentation.  Don’t believe what anyone says at face value; just test it yourself.

Random Musings

Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and luminary in Silicon Valley, is investing in an aging cure.  As today’s billionaires start to age, and biotech companies start to function (and get funded) more like software startups, I believe we’re going to see an huge uptick in the advancement of anti-aging.

Humans: The Next Platform covers the growth of biohacking, nootropics, and extended longevity.

James Clear talks about The Art of Zanshin in Everyday Life.  Focus on the process, not the end result, and achieve your goals.

Apple has been using its own employees to test out the Apple Watch’s health and fitness features for almost two years.  Pretty cool to see the “secret workout lab” at Apple HQ.  Expect to see a lot more of this leading up to the late April launch.

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On Creative Work

If you still think you couldn’t possibly be creative, the 5 Creativity Myths You Need to Stop Believing should help.

One of the most important thing you can do for lifelong learning & creativity is to read a lot.  According to Warren Buffett, knowledge builds up like compound interest and reading is the mechanism to enable it.  This article introduces the 10% Rule; a new system for reading more books on Amazon’s Kindle.

Omar Shahine tells us how to hit Inbox Zero every time you check your email.  I bounce at zero daily most days, but I haven’t tried this approach yet.

Children are natural born mindfulness practitioners.  So perhaps you could learn mindfulness by watching a child.

Great write-up on Farnham Street on Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset research.  If you’re a parent, you need to read this.  Everybody else should as well

A short analysis of INTJ, a specific Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that I just happen to be.  “They tend to be both methodical and perfectionistic, and they have the drive to put their ideas into action and the persistence to realize their dreams.”  I’ll take that.  There are articles on other personality type indicators linked from that article as well.

Could your company have 9-5 hours, a full hour for lunch every day, 5-7 weeks of annual vacation, and zero email on nights and weekends… and still thrive?  Tony Schwartz believes so.

How to automate your life so you don’t suffer from decision fatigue on Mark’s Daily Apple: “The infinite freedom of endless options has degraded our ability to make good decisions and exercise self-control.”

On Fitness, Nutrition, and Sleep

The House of Cards characters have terrible sleep hygiene.  I can’t say I haven’t noticed this and commented on it more than a few times myself.  Imagine how much more effective they’d be as world leaders if they were well-rested!

Joining legions of other scientists, Bill Nye is changing his mind about GMOs.  Choice quote: “…scientists assess GMOs’ safety based not on whether they’re GMO, but on what their new genes actually do and the resulting changes in the plants.”

Gluten-free fanatics (myself included) may indeed be onto something.  This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study showed that intake of gluten in those without celiac disease or wheat allergy resulted in significantly increased abdominal bloating and pain, foggy mind, and depression.  That’s no joke.

Still struggling with back pain?  Here are 10 Short Daily Drills to Combat Back Pain.

Random Musings

Seven reasons why sleeping naked is good for you.

Mark Sisson covers Our Primal Fear of Dying – it’s well worth the read.  This, in particular, really resonates with me: “The lack of exposure to death can oddly make us fear it all the more, I think.”  This is one of Mark’s best posts.

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On Work/Life Balance, Anxiety, and Habits

A new study in the Journal of Marketing Research: “Emotions such as guilt about where time is being spent or fear over loss of income both generate stress, and make a person feel more pressed for time than they actually are.”  I’ve always been of the opinion that work/life balance and “lack of time” isn’t the problem, it’s the underlying feeling of trading off the things that matter most to you. Missing your daughter’s piano performance for a mind-numbing meeting evokes feelings of guilt and resentment regardless of how much time you’ve spent at work or with family.  So what do you do?  One tip from the study is to pause to breathe more often.

Being mindful about anxiety can help to reduce it.  “The solution isn’t identifying why you’re anxious in the first place (though that knowledge has its place), but recognizing the signs of anxiety before nervousness, panic and rapid breathing hijack your emotional wellness.”

Using quotations from others can help improve your self-talk.  For almost 15 years now, I’ve been working on my own self-talk as I realize how important it is to overall well-being.  Here’s one of my favorites from this list:

The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join in the dance. —Alan Watts

Great post by James Clear on habit triggers, something I’m a big proponent of.  Using Time and Location triggers have been instrumental in a number of my own personal habits, including a new one to “do at least 10 minutes of mobility work every day” thanks to Kelly Starrett’s new book, Ready to Run.

People who multitasked with multiple types of media were worse at focusing on a single task and less effective at switching between tasks than those who multitasked less.  This probably goes without saying, but multitasking is just not worth it most of the time.

On Chronic Pain, Nutrition, and Longevity

Neck pain is something many creative people deal with as a result of being hunched over a computer, a notepad, or a musical instrument.  It’s important to realize that – like most things – neck pain doesn’t have to be a constant in your life; you actually have the power to fix, tweak, adjust, and otherwise improve yourself.  On that note, here are 5 Simple Exercise to Eliminate Neck Pain.

Meditation can also be an effective treatment for reducing chronic neck pain according to research reported in the Journal of Pain.

We know that vitamin D and marine omega-3 fatty acids can improve cognitive function.  A new paper suggests that serotonin production could be the reason why.  “…Serotonin is a critical modulator of executive function, impulse control, sensory gating, and pro-social behavior.”

On that note, I’ve been supplementing with Jarrow Krill Oil and Thorne Vitamin D/K2 for some time after experimenting with virtually every brand under the sun.  Here’s an article comparing Krill Oil and standard Fish Oil on the Bulletproof blog.

Our environment, not our DNA, is the primary driver of health and longevity according to Chris Kresser.  Genes only account for 10% of disease, so what’s responsible for the other 90%?  Diet, lifestyle, and environment.

Random Musings

The Psychology of Wonder on Psychology Today: “The wonder of science and art lies in their capacity to alter our model of the world, and thereby alter our conception of ourselves.”  Couldn’t have said it any better!

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On Fitness, Food, Sleep, and Smiling

Are organic fruits and vegetables actually healthier and more nutritious?  The British Journal of Nutrition crunched data from 343 studies and found that organic fruits and vegetables deliver between 20-40% higher antioxidant activity and “lower cadmium concentrations and lower incidence of pesticide residues”.

“Researchers have found that a compound produced by the body when dieting or fasting can block a part of the immune system involved in several inflammatory disorders such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Instead of a structured program focused on changing poor sleep habits and a nighttime routine, older adults improved sleep quality through mindfulness meditation.

A good night’s sleep also keeps your stem cells young.

A new study shows that after 4 weeks of either kettlebell training or circuit weight training for women, there was a significant increase in the aerobic capacity in the kettlebell group.  Best part is they only trained three times per week for 20 minutes… and they were highly trained individuals (imagine what would happen for a layperson?)

Fun post on the king of all exercises for burning fat, improving posture, getting stronger or improving your hormonal profile: the deadlift.

A woman received a fecal transplant from her obese daughter and became obese herself.  Just a crazy story that further demonstrates how little we know about how the gut affects our health. Only that it does.

Smiling – even if you fake it – can change your brain.  Bottom line: practice doing it and you’ll reap the benefits.

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On Food as Fuel and Athleticism

Not that this is a surprise to most of you, but the science behind low-fat diet advice was undercooked.  “An international team of health scientists has completed a systematic study of the evidence available back in the 1970s and ’80s and concluded that a relationship of causation between fat consumption and coronary heart disease was never established.”

The U.S. is also dropping it’s crusade against cholesterol.  Another example of how misled we’ve all been for so long.

The flavonoids in dark chocolate have anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-cancer, and anti-diarrheal properties.  My favorite dark chocolate is Green & Blacks and I eat a cube or two every evening.

Is there a better way to become the ultimate athlete than the randomness of Crossfit?  Max Shank puts forth a dedicated system with programming to be as strong as a gymnast, as fast as a sprinter, and as flexible as a martial artist.

The Incredible Power of Sleep

If you want to reduce body-fat levels, insulin resistance, and systemic inflammation, you should sleep in a dark room and avoid blue light before you sleep.

This one is weird, but night owls tend to be more exploitive and entitled than early risers.

The benefits of mindfulness meditation just keep piling up.  “According to a new study from Carnegie Mellon University, mindfulness impacts physical health via stress reduction pathways inside your brain.”

Fall asleep in less than a minute with the 4-7-8 breathing exercise by Dr. Weil.

A short nap can help relieve stress and bolster the immune systems of men who slept only two hours the previous night, according to a new study.

On Creative Work and Listening

Once awake, you should have a morning routine according to Mark Sisson.  As usual, he nails it.

The most creative people in history “devised a schedule and a set of habits that suited their temperaments and life circumstances” and “organized their days (and, by extension, their lives) around creating the best conditions for their creative work.”

Boredom is important as it “helps to restore the perception that one’s activities are meaningful or significant.”  I need to explain this to my kids.

To become a better listener, the first thing you need to do is start caring about what people have to say.

Procrastination has a lot to do with unexpressed emotion, but there are ways to motivate yourself to get things done.

Random Musings

Are you obsessed about aging?  If so, here are some recommendations to get over it.

I love this Google Chrome extension called Momentum that changes your new tab page to a beautiful photo and a reminder to focus on what’s important to you.  Given the number of times I open a new tab, I’m finding it to be a helpful reminder throughout the day.

Why testosterone is the drug of the future.

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On Brain Stuff and Careers

The kind of instinctive decision-making advocated in best-selling popular psychology books like ‘Nudge’, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ and ‘Blink’ is not backed up by reliable evidence, a study concludes.  My view is that inaction is almost always worse than wrong action.

What is the #1 predictor of career success?  Having an open network vs. a closed network.  In a closed network you’re surrounded by people with the same ideas and beliefs as yours, while in an open network you’re challenging one another.  So surround yourself with people who don’t think like you do.

A study on musical training “adds to mounting evidence that musical training not only gives young developing brains a cognitive boost, but those neural enhancements extend across the lifespan into old age when the brain needs it most to counteract cognitive decline.”

Positive emotions can signal your immune system to work harder… especially the awe, wonder, and beauty brought on by nature, art, or spirituality.

Lots of interesting biohacking apps (including those for brain training) listed on the Bulletproof blog.  Interested in the movement?  Check out one of my earlier posts on self-tracking.

Sleep & Food for Fuel

Sleeping in can lead to a feeling of jet lag by throwing off your biological clock. Consistency in your sleep habits is really what matters.  I ‘slept in’ until 7am today after a week of 5am wakeups – so I’m testing this today

People still won’t believe it (the media of the 70s and 80s messed with our belief systems) but “a growing body of research suggests dietary advice to limit red meat is unnecessarily restrictive and not supported by current evidence.”  Lots of studies cited in this meta-analysis.

And while you’re eating healthy red meat, here’s a guide to buying the best meat at the grocery store.

Can intermittent fasting twice a week boost your energy and decrease your appetite?  Certainly possible. Happy to say I haven’t had so much as a sniffle in well over a year now!

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On Creative Work

How many times have you found yourself thinking “that really didn’t need to take an hour”?  Brad Feld has some experience with that.

“People sitting at messy desks are less efficient, less persistent, and more frustrated and weary than those at neat desks.”  I find it easier to keep my desk clean than to actually clean it, so at the end of every day I take 20 seconds to reset it before I leave the office.

18 Habits of Highly Creative People pulls together some great recommendations for how to do incredible things.

On Stress and How to Cope

Technology has made life different, but not necessary more stressful says Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times.  “Frequent Internet and social media users do not have higher stress levels than those who use technology less often. And for women, using certain digital tools decreases stress.”

Stress isn’t all bad.  In one longitudinal study, stress levels alone didn’t predict mortality risk—stress was only associated with mortality for respondents who also believed that stress affected their health. So what you believe about stress is more important than you may think.

Mindfulness training changes the brain and can help you both resist distractions and make better decisions in uncertain conditions.  It also helps with resilience – which is quite important in the inherently stressful business world.

Long-form Reads

I finally picked up Ready to Run by Kelly Starrett (of mobilityWOD fame) and T.J. Murphy.  This beautiful book focuses on the practice of running, preventing injuries, and how to incorporate mobility work into your day.  Even though I don’t run as frequently as I used to, this book is a master class in how to move.  I particularly love his “no days off” rule and am doing that now as I train for StrongFirst certification.

Want to read more?  This Forbes article recommends listening to Audible books on your commute, or using the Kindle app on your phone to read in quicker bits.

(You can always follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading.)

Other Bits

January is a great time for “soul searching over the Western obsession with stuff”.  Consider that we are living in “the most materially rich society in global history, with light-years more possessions per average family than any preceding society”.  Conclusion?  Focus on experiences, not things, to get the most enjoyment.

Research shows that “by writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves”.  Writing things down is always my first suggestion for people looking for change.

People who are able to read other people’s emotions tend to make more money than those who can’t. So it literally pays to be emotionally intelligent.

The post Creative Work, Stress, and Being “Ready to Run” (Sunday Reads #5) first appeared on Refocuser.

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High-Performance Work and Life

Research shows that workaholism is related to many negative outcomes including burnout, job stress, work–life conflict, and decreased physical and mental health.

Checking your email too often is stressful.  There can be a significant reduction in stress when people check email less frequently.

Better posture equals less stress.  A recent study “found people who sat upright with straight shoulders coped better emotionally with a stressful task than people who were hunched over.”

Researchers compared 10 psychological strengths on their ability to predict goal attainment and the greatest changes in overall well-being using a sample of 755 people.  Which strengths won?  Curiosity and grit.

Should work be fulfilling?  If so, how do you find it?  Alain de Botton explains how in this great video (courtesy of http://ma.tt)

People who take more initiative at work have better relationships with their bosses, and a more positive outlook overall (link to 2010 study).  This relates to a tweet I saw recently: “Today you can catch up on email, go to meetings, or do real work.  Choose one.”

Leaders have to practice self-regulation and not let their emotions get the best of them, says Daniel Goleman.  Finding a state of “relaxed alertness” and deciding what you want to focus on can help you (and your team) recover more quickly from stress.

Sleeping for Focus

More on a topic that’s close to my heart: chronobiology. “Research into our internal body clocks—what’s called chronobiology—shows that people have naturally different sleep patterns and therefore work best at different times of the day.”  I covered this previously on Refocuser in How to Become a Morning Person.

The brain area which enables self-reflection is larger in lucid dreamers, which could mean they have greater ability to turn on self-reflection while awake.  I covered lucid dreaming several years back on Refocuser.

Research shows that pre-sleep alcohol acts as a sedative at first but ultimately will negatively affect overall sleep quality   So having a little scotch to help yourself fall asleep isn’t the best idea – you’d be better off managing your stress in ways that don’t hit your performance the next day.

More on the process behind the assumption that all-nighters don’t work.  If you want to ace the test the next day, you’re better off studying less and sleeping more.

People who stay up late and get less sleep also have more repetitive negative thoughts and worry more than those who go to bed early.

High-Tech Help

Evernote is like having an extended brain; it’s where I do all my research, writing, and collecting.  This post explains how to add Evernote to your iOS Today screen.

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High-Performance Work and Life

Fantastic post on the differences between a high-performer and a workaholic.  In my experience as someone who could maybe appear to be a workaholic from the outside, the conclusion rings true: “The big difference isn’t how many hours are logged, but how the individual feels on the inside about who they are in relationship to their work.”

When it comes to creativity, the “myth of epiphany” is commonplace.

An amazing episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast with Pavel Tsatsouline on the Science of Strength and the Art of Physical Performance.

A lack of exercise could be killing twice as many people as obesity in Europe, a 12-year study of more than 300,000 people suggests.  Ultimately this doesn’t matter much – you shouldn’t want to be obese or inactive – but if you’re already thin and still inactive, get moving.

A new study finds that just closing your eyes can help boost memory recall.

We’re naturally bad listeners, even with loved ones.  Practicing active listening, which sounds a lot like mindfulness, could help improve your relationships at work and home.

Having trouble getting stuff done?  Some great tips from the Nectar Collective that help can get you unstuck.  My single biggest hack to start a project is to make sure you have a block of time allocated on your calendar to start ONLY that task; nothing else.  Then the rest of this applies.  But if you don’t make the time, it simply won’t “just happen”.

Food for Fuel

From the American Heart Association, “individuals on a moderate-fat diet who ate an avocado every day had lower bad cholesterol than those on a similar diet without an avocado a day or on a lower-fat diet.”  I don’t eat one every day, but I do have about four per week.

People drink diet soda because they believe it’s healthier than regular soda.  New research shows that there’s a “profound increased risk for diabetes in those consuming artificially sweetened drinks”. Numerous other studies on this have found the same (like this one which found that overweight people who drink diet soda consistently overate compared to overweight people who didn’t) and the bottom line is: avoid ALL sodas if you want to be healthy.

Just one night of binge drinking affects the immune system, and it can happen within just 20 minutes of ingesting alcohol.

Mark Sisson breaks down some of the benefits of intermittent fasting including increased cognitive function   People think I’m crazy when I tell them I fast for 16 hours a couple of times per week, but I now better understand my relationship with hunger and don’t have to eat all the time.  Fasting for three days can also rejuvenate the entire immune system.

More on the microbiome: could the bacteria in our gut trigger Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Long-form Reads

I’m currently reading The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload and it’s a very readable and fun romp through the science of attention and organization.  Definitely recommended.

You can always follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading.

Random Musings

Plastic may have negative effects on the brain (even BPA-free) according to a new study from the University of Calgary.  I replaced my BPA-free plastic water bottles with Kleen Kanteens after reading this… it was the last straw.

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The post Boosting Memory, Perils of Diet Soda, and Getting Unstuck (Sunday Reads #3) first appeared on Refocuser.

On Moving, Eating, and Sleeping

The healthy human microbiome is the new frontier.  All the more reason why I’m surprised I didn’t know about uBiome (10% off with that link!) – it’s similar in spirit to WellnessFX and 23andMe.  They send you a sample kit for only $89 (!) so you can learn more about your body’s own bacteria in an effort to improve your overall health.  Don’t need to twist my arm to do this – I’m in!  We’re super early in this citizen science movement but I love it.  You can also learn more on Fast Company.

Mark Sisson challenges some of our common misconceptions when it comes to calories (part 1, part 2).

How does exercise really affect our brains and how does it really make us happier?  Fast Company set out to understand the science.  Turns out addiction to exercise isn’t a crazy concept since BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor) and those ever-popular endorphins have the same characteristics as nicotine, heroin, or morphine.  Big takeaway: Daily exercise of just 20 minutes is all it takes.

An early start at work and school may be to blame for people’s poor sleep hygiene according to a new study published in the January edition of the Sleep journal   If you suffer from lack of sleep and have some flexibility, you can feel better by starting your day later in the morning or by increasing your overall sleep time.  In other words, watch less late-night television.

Giving up alcohol, even for a month, is beneficial for your liver.  But of course, relying less on alcohol year-round is really the best path.

The bone broth trend continues.  Whether you’re paleo, primal, or just paleo-curious, the benefits of bone broth seem to be worth paying attention to.

Stuff to Focus On

A new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has found that people with positive attitudes and outlook on life have healthier hearts.  (via Christopher Bergland)

Elon Musk, super-entrepreneur (think Tesla, PayPal, and SpaceX), believes in “first principles thinking” – a mode of inquiry that relentlessly pursues the foundations of a problem. “[With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths … and then reason up from there.”  Couldn’t agree more (see my last post on using frameworks for critical thinking).

Super cool interactive chart pulled together from the time management habits of folks like Benjamin Franklin, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Darwin, and Pablo Picasso.  Not sure how actionable this is, but it’s fun.  Bottom line: do whatever works for you.

Fun article on Why Successful People Wear The Same Thing Every Day   I don’t love this idea, though I can understand its value.  Clothing translates to personal expression for many people.  However, I do a similar thing with socks; I buy all the same type at the same time so I don’t have to spend time or energy matching them.  And I too have decided that wearing a tie is not for me.

Gadgets to Improve Your Life?

Lots of gadgets this week at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show.  Some of the more interesting ones as it relates to Refocuser are HugOne (which lets you track the sleep patterns of your family), Valedo (a sensor for resolving back pain) and the Tao Chair (for working out without getting up – which seems incredibly silly).

A Wi-Fi enabled Crockpot.  I’m not sure if this is really necessary, but I still love the idea of Internet connectivity embedded within just about everything I use.

A new app called YOU lets you take pictures of activities (eating, yoga, etc.) and share them with your friends. Not sure why you wouldn’t just use Instagram, but it’s a valid approach for habit change.

Long-form Reads

Brad Feld’s review of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life makes me want to read it.  Every year I try and read a few documentaries of great people, and I loved Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs.  So this one is now on my list to read.  Check out the Kindle book on Amazon, which also has the ability to switch back and forth between the Audible narration and the Kindle book itself.

New research shows that reading long-form fiction can enhance personality traits like empathy; the ability to read other people’s emotions.  Fascinating stuff and fun considering so many people read fiction on Kindle (my day job).

Random Musings

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the Bowhead Whale, a mammal whose lifespan exceeds 200 years.  There could be some positive implications down the line for human longevity.

Older people are happier people according to the literature.

And as I struggle to get this post done, upload photos of my family from a recent trip, pick up the dry-cleaning, do some training, and take down the holiday lights before the short weekend disappears, it’s always worth remembering the shortness of life per Seneca.  Presence matters.

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The post Your Microbiome, Bone Broth, and Fancy New Fitness Gadgets (Sunday Reads #2) first appeared on Refocuser.

It’s human nature to like things to be simple. We don’t like to muster up our cognitive reserves to dig into the rationale, the logic, the reasoning, or the “why” something is the way it is. It’s usually easier to simply believe the so-called experts and focus our energy elsewhere. Quite often this is the right tradeoff to make, in fact. You don’t have to research cyanide to know that you shouldn’t put it in your mouth – it doesn’t rank high enough on the “investment relative to importance” scale to question whether or not it will harm you. Similarly, there’s no reason (for most people at least) to personally test the safety features of their car. You can take it on faith and a small bit of research that the claims made by your car company are valid without putting them to the ultimate test. But there are other things that really DO matter – or at least SHOULD. Things that could make a BIG difference in your life if you spent the time digging into them to understand them just a little bit more… and didn’t assume the answer was correct “just because”.

The definition of dogma: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true; prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group.

Being dogmatic about something could hardly be described as a good thing, yet so many of us cling to dogmatic beliefs without realizing it.  Of course, dogma is typically associated with religion (of just about any kind) but is applied just as evenly across so many parts of modern life. The fitness and nutrition world is rife with cult behavior and half-truths based on pseudo-science. Martial artists believe they can “beat up any attacker” or have a “death touch” despite never actually testing on a real person (thankfully, I guess). Liberals and conservatives believe their way is so obviously right that debates are just a rehearsed show, not any sort of meaningful introspection. Most people who worship a god of some sort believe their god is “the” god, despite the existence of billions of people around the planet who believe something else entirely. You can’t bring up DC Comics with a Marvel fan around, and if you’re a PC gal these days, the Mac crowd won’t let you hear the end of it. And don’t even get me started on sports (but let’s go Yankees anyway).

Carl Sagan once said that “it can be dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true. You can get tricked if you don’t question yourself and others, especially people in a position of authority.” Sagan believed that anything that’s truly real can stand up to scrutiny. So isn’t it worth spending the time to see if your most important beliefs, whatever they are, can stand up to scrutiny?

’What is’ is more important than ‘what should be.’ Too many people are looking at ‘what is’ from a position of thinking ‘what should be’ – Bruce Lee

Yet with so much dogmatic thinking around us, how can you determine the truth about anything? How do you really know what’s for you, what could make the difference? In other words, how do you know how you should apply your limited focus? Here’s one approach that has worked for me:

1. First, figure out what really matters to you. Don’t inherit someone else’s focus areas; really dig deep and identify the things that would have the biggest impact on your life should your beliefs be questioned. I recommend starting with a big thing.  You really want to maximize the impact crater of your research. Questioning a belief about how many days it takes a banana to ripen probably isn’t going to be as impactful as a long-held belief about marriage, parenthood, or disease. The more important the area is to you, the higher the impact it will have on your life should you adopt an updated point of view.
2. Research that area by making it a point to learn about both the “obvious” view you may already have, as well as the contrarian view the “others” have. Keep an open mind and read, listen, and observe as a scientist would with no inherent bias towards the outcome. Have empathy towards those who believe something different, and try to put yourself in their place. In other words, don’t dismiss their position out of hand. Do the research.
3. Identify a set of principles or a framework that underline a specific point of view or way of thinking. A framework is a basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text.  If you can identify with and understand the fundamental principles underlying one approach, you will have a baseline for further testing.
4. Test the framework itself, and iterate over time to build an individualized approach. An open mind at this stage is key as being tied to any outcome means you’re no longer unbiased about the results. However, it’s also important to work at something until you feel some sense of mastery, else you may dismiss something without ever fully knowing it. So start with the framework as-is, and only deviate once you’ve tested it for yourself.  As Pavel Tsatsouline, strength coach extraordinaire, has said, “You would not ask a music student who can’t yet play sheet music to do free form improvisation”. You need to understand it before you can start tweaking.  Is it validating the hypothesis you started with?

All the while, be willing to change your mind or start over with an entirely different framework if it’s not working. This is where having “no dogma” comes into play – if your ultimate goal isn’t to validate a belief you already have, then there’s no harm in changing your mind. There’s a great anecdote about Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com [and my uber-boss]: “He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.”

As a case study, I used these exact steps to arrive at my current approach to diet & nutrition. I determined years ago (step #1) that eating well was going to make a huge difference in my life – if I found my way on this path, I would feel better, look better, perform better, and live longer and healthier. I spent over a year digging into the research (step #2) and questioning many of my own beliefs about fats, grains, dairy, protein, meal timing, and overall food composition. Based on that research, I decided that a framework (step #3) grounded on evolutionary biology principles was as good a starting place as any, and adopted a pretty strict paleo diet for some time. Over the years since, I’ve built upon that baseline, tinkered quite a bit, and formed a more individualized program (step #4) that’s a better approach for me based on tons of my own observation and experimentation. Ultimately how I look, feel, and perform coupled with bloodwork is the ultimate test for me… not what the experts say.  While still based on many of those same paleo principles, my program is more fine-tuned and specific to my biology and psyche. (Of course, after I had done all of this, I found this great article by Chris Kresser distinguishing between the “paleo diet” and a “paleo template” – he says it better than I could). This experimentation and observation is still, and always will be, a work in progress for me.

Something doesn’t work? Start over. Something could be improved? Don’t shy away from progress because of dogmatic thinking.

Ultimately, the end result of this work is a journey to your truth. Not mine, not someone else’s. Yours alone.

The post Finding An Answer: Dogma, Frameworks, and Changing Your Mind first appeared on Refocuser.

These updates will consist mostly of links to other sites with minimal commentary, and will vary in length and depth.  They should be easily consumable… and should be fun.  Here we go.

Reading is Fundamental

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook, believes in the power of reading books.  He says, “I’ve found reading books very intellectually fulfilling. Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books.”  I agree 100% and have joined his book club to follow along.

More on reading books: Reading in the Age of Amazon is a great profile of the people I work with every single day at Amazon and our mission to empower the world to read more every day.  In short, reading is good for you and, of course, Kindle is the best way to do it.

On Fitness, Nutrition, and Sleep

“Optimized meat products higher in omega-3″ reduce body fat more than “optimized” products lower in overall fat. This implies that if we’re going to be eating meat, we should seek out the grass-fed variety. (via Mark Sisson)

Teenagers aren’t getting nearly enough sleep – and neither are the rest of us.  “Insufficient sleep during childhood and adolescence is associated with poorer academic performance, physical difficulties (such as weight gain), emotional difficulties, trouble with social relationships, and a slew of other problems.”

Kettlebell swings have a “What the Hell” effect and can improve almost all aspects of your fitness.  Every week I see people doing swings completely incorrectly – they squat instead of hinge, they swing heavy bells overhead, or their bodies look like wet noodles instead of solid boards at the lockout.  If you want to get stronger and leaner, nothing beats moving weight through space.

Gretchen Reynolds (@gretchenreynold) has a great write-up on how “exercise changes the shape and functioning of our genes, an important stop on the way to improved health and fitness.”  It’s an overview of epigenetics which is about how genes express themselves based on environmental or lifestyle factors.  Bottom line: you can improve the overall quality of your life just through a little exercise (surprise!).

Christopher McDougall (@mcdougallchris) of Born to Run fame has a new book coming out in April called Natural Born Heroes and it looks fantastic.  I’m a sucker for books on unleashing the human potential and learning new things.  This article series had me at the first paragraph, “The Ancient Greeks believed anyone could unlock superhuman potential by mastering the three pillars of heroism: skill, strength, and compassion. And they were right.”

Very interesting article on Outside Online on a “top-secret food that will change the way you eat.”  The claims are massive: “More protein than beef. More omegas than salmon. Tons of calcium, antioxidants, and vitamin B.”  It’s not clear how well they’re delivering, but I’m definitely intrigued, especially because they’ve avoided gluten and phytoestrogenic soy (yuck)… and they claim it tastes pretty good.

Proper Goal-Setting

An older article on the “Goal-Gradient Effect” and how the closer a goal is perceived to be, the faster and harder a person works for it.  The implications of this at home and at work are huge.  This one deserves a longer write-up at some point soon.

Long-form Reads

I finished two books this week that I’d highly recommend to anyone interested in the stuff covered on Refocuser:

• The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
• Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind

You can always follow me on Goodreads to see what I’m reading.

Random Musings

This is the coolest thing I didn’t get for Christmas and now want, though $642 for a toy car is a bit steep.

Time Capsule

Some of my favorites from the Refocuser archives, especially given the start of the new year:

• How the Psychology of Time Can Help You Focus
• Precommitment: Commit in Advance to Keep Yourself On Track

If you’re not already subscribed to Refocuser updates, research shows you’ll be a much happier person just by reading more inspiring stuff.  Subscribe now.

The post Books, Kettlebell Swings, and the Goal-Gradient Effect (Sunday Reads #1) first appeared on Refocuser.