Put aside the readings you’ve been doing about ego destruction and dissolution of self for a moment, because I want to talk about you.
Or, to be truthful, any part of this universe in the process of selfing into a person.
Lifespan
This is typically what people are referring to when they talk about improving health. Quitting smoking and eating less food typically improves the absolute time you’ll be alive and kicking.
This is the first and foundational measure – the raw material. Without time actually alive, there’s nothing to be optimising.
Healthspan
But being alive isn’t much fun if you can’t articulate your meatsuit or remember how you got here. This is one of the core arguments of Peter Attia’s book Outlive – in which he outlines the idea that we should be striving to be fit and healthy for as long as possible. Living the twilight decades as a shadow of our former selves (when we have the most highly leveraged knowledge and experience) isn’t what we should be aiming for.
The key insight I’ve derived from this dimension is that the healthier you are, the more optionality you enjoy. If you struggle to run up a flight of stairs, you probably can’t hike up a mountain – which means you’re limiting the total addressable market of experiences you can have.
Presence
Do you remember your last commute to work? Me neither. That’s because we drop out of being present all the time. But if you try to answer the question: what are the 5 moments in your life that would make it to a trailer in a biopic about you? You’ll probably references times when you were really behind your eyeballs.
If you’re not present or you can’t pay attention to a moment that’s unfolding, the value of that moment diminishes significantly, almost entirely. The value is in crossing the finish line in first place, not pointing to the medal on your wall. It’s the deep sense of accomplishment you feel viscerally, not what someone else writes on your Wikipedia page.
It’s the taste of the first sip of your morning coffee and the smell of the match in the moments after you blow it out. It’s every single moment, regardless of the value your society places on it.
New Contender: Economics
Many people focus on just obtaining material wealth and money. But it’s equally important to understand what you want. This is something Alex Hormozi has spoken about – happiness = haves – wants – it’s ultra-reductive as is his style, but this doesn’t make it any less valuable.
There’s a large class of experiences that are only accessible by trading with cash. If you truly desire to drive a nice car or live in a fancy house with a pool, you likely need good economics. Tim Ferriss has written extensively about the fact that most people don’t want to be millionaires – they want to live like millionaires.
So, this category is both about reducing what material wealth you go around telling yourself you want, and increasing your income until you’re net positive. And ensuring that you don’t blindly (because you’re present) keep dialling up the hedonic treadmill just because you can.
Making it Practical
- Live as long as you can
- Avoid the highest-risk activities – focus mostly on two way doors
- Listen to your gut – if it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it
- Get to a healthy baseline of diet and exercise before getting to peak health
- Sleep like your life depends on it (because it very much does)
- Stay in peak health
- Don’t put hyper processed things in your pie hole
- Only eat as much as you need most of the time
- Lift heavy things every week
- Get your heart rate up every week
- Immediately address and remove any chronic sources of stress
- Increase your total present hours
- Enjoy every emotion – can you enjoy that knot in your stomach?
- Meditate – formally, or just go and look at a tree really carefully
- Label gratitude (out-loud to people, or in a journal)
- Journal – set some goals and track progress, or just write what happened in your week (your memory will fade)
- Invest in your:
- Family
- Friends – great friendships are no accident – call people, go on holiday with friends
- Community – talk to your neighbours, ask that waiter how their day is going and really care, volunteer
- Figure out who you are – ask why you are doing something and what that emotion feels like
- Economics
- Haves:
- Surround yourself with people doing cool shit
- Work on things that increase your total present hours
- Flow state is a good hint that you’re doing the right thing
- Play to your strengths
- If something feels like play to you but work to others – this might be a winner
- Wants:
- Avoid media like the plague – all forms of advertising are designed to make you think you want something
- Interrogate your thinking with journaling
- Cool-off periods when spending any significant amount of cash – just wait a week or a month
- Haves:
The nice thing about this way of looking at things is that they build on one another: more life → health → presence → economics – the longer you live well and appreciate it with resources to direct as you desire – the better your quality of life.
This also applies on a micro level – take sleep – if you skimp on sleep one night the next day you turn up less able to do the things you want to do. You probably shouldn’t operate heavy machinery and you probably can’t focus too well on a book. Inattention to these building blocks impairs our ability to show up. But the good news is that we’re able to easily dial in factors in each dimension to create significant positive impacts on our lives.