[TT 001] Goal setting, Master Plan, metabolic switches, PKM, bird song, origami
Happy Thursday Thrivers,
Today is an exciting and very humbling day.
Exciting because this is the first Thriving Thursday newsletter, so it marks the beginning of a beautiful new era of sharing openly online for me. Thanks for being here to celebrate with me, and I warmly welcome any reflections you care to offer.
Humbling because it feels very vulnerable and naked. I recently published my 50-year Master Plan and it’s so absurdly ambitious anyone could (rightly) write me off. Goodness gracious, I can barely believe that is my life’s path, but that doesn’t make it any less so …
2021 is Year 1 so, to make sure I started out on the right footing, I did 2 well-regarded goal-setting workshops at the beginning of the month. I found “goals” to be a limiting construct so I created “value forest” as a more resonant framing for my intentional, deliberate growth practice. Way more attractive and smells better than my dingy goals of years past.
Enough about me, on to this week’s round up.
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On food as medicine & “metabolic switches”
🍲😋 Nutrition is a rapidly evolving science and the best advice of even a decade ago doesn’t jive with our current knowledge. And diet fads sure don’t help.
Shawn Stevenson in his book Eat Smarter breaks down some simple science of nutrition in a digestible way and makes a solid argument on food as medicine:
Food isn’t just food … it’s the key controller of our state of health or disease … It’s the building blocks that create our brain … It’s the very stuff that makes up our bodies. It’s the thing that makes us who we are.
The book covers a lot of ground, and I appreciated that the author is such a great storyteller and pretty hilarious.
For the purposes of the Unified Theory of Thriving (UTT), I appreciate the concept of “metabolic switches” that dictate how efficiently our bodies are processing what we consume. Two people consuming the same exact meal with the same exact calorie load can have vastly different metabolic responses. Specifically, Stevenson points to 3 high-level considerations
- Microbiome health (including inflammation)
- Macro & micro nutrients (including deficiencies)
- Hormone function (including disregulation)
When done thoughtfully, our food can improve healing, protection, energy, clarity, emotional regulation, sleep, and, of course, how we look and feel. At the end of the book, Stevenson also bridges into some compelling thoughts on the socio-economic and social justice considerations of access to quality, healthy “real food”.
I’ll do my more intensive Roamkasten method on this book soon and it’s definitely worth the read or listen for anyone interested in healthy living with a healthy diet.
Fun pro: the author reads his own book and he’s got a great narrative flair and charming delivery.
Annoying con: There are probably >50 studies casually referenced, but no bibliography so I can look up the primary research. I emailed him and will let you know if I get a response.
On drinking enough water (no, it’s not 8 cups a day)
🥛🍵 Hydration is important for the regulation of literally every system within our bodies include cells, hormones, muscles, and more. That makes sense - our bodies are >50% water so when we get dehydrated bad things happen.
Knowing how much to drink can be a challenge, but don’t believe the hype on 8x8 (8oz cup x 8 time per day). Dr. Peter Attia did a great writeup parsing academic literature and he was blunt up front
There is no science supporting the “8 x 8” concept.
Turns out, evolution developed a really great tool for knowing when to hydrate: feeling thirsty.
This is all to say that eating a typical diet and drinking when thirsty is adequate to avoid dehydration.
A couple more interesting points:
- Caffeinated beverages, like a standard cup of coffee, are net hydrating (though not by much)
- Alcoholic beverages at 5% and above are net dehydrating
- Feeling thirsty does not mean you’re already dehydrated (but it does mean you’re getting there)
- Thirsty athletes may have worse performance (but that’s not driven by dehydration - mind over matter)
Basically, only you can know your body. If you’re thirsty, drink some water or other net hydrating beverage.
If you’re not, don’t let anyone force you to relive your multiplication tables under the pretense of hydration.
On personal knowledge management (PKM)
🧠🏡 The phrase personal knowledge management was coined by two UCLA professors and really took off because of the rapid proliferation of information on the internet. The dramatic trends noted in 1999 have only accelerates in the last 20 years so the question becomes: how do we turn information into knowledge that empowers instead of overwhelms?
Paul Dorsey has a wonderful exposition on the theory and practice of PKM. Together with his colleagues, he outlined 7 key skills for effective PKM: retrieval, evaluation, organization, collaboration, analysis, presentation, and security.
I’ll add two more that I find critical: synthesis and ease. For the former, it’s not just analyzing the information but also understanding how disparate pieces fit together. For the latter, if the system is too complex or has too much upkeep overhead, then I won’t use it. In short, a PKM system should make my life easier and reduce cognitive load as opposed to stress me out with a bunch of extra work.
As I build out a robust body of knowledge around physiological, psychological, and relational Thriving, I’m very keen to understand how to organize that information internally and, ultimately, in a shareable format. But I sense there is more depth to the concept of PKM.
Since PKM grew up around “knowledge workers” and in business schools, it usually points to “use information to do more stuff”. I appreciate the “do” state a lot, but I’m also interested to explore how a PKM can support an experiential “be” state. In other words, I think a PKM has value even if I never “do more” because it helps me show up in the world in a more precise and aware way. Same tool, different application, and I’ll be noodling on that for years to come.
On reading primary academic research
📜🤯 Speaking of organizing information, reading academic literature can be very painful, even for the people who do it for a living. A big part of my Master Plan is synthesizing and distilling the current state of academic knowledge in [insert important field or topic here] to an accessible format for non-academics. Yes, I am a masochist, why do you ask?
Most popular science articles, especially in mainstream media, grossly misunderstand or overstate the conclusions from scientific literature. Or they just repeat what someone else said because it’s easier to hit their print deadline without rigorous fact checks (example: drink 8 glasses of water per day). I find it very meaningful to go to the primary source and see what the authors actually studied and actually found.
If you’re interested in strengthening this intellectual muscle with me, my favorite write up so far has been Sun’s Q-P/C method in the National Science Review. In short, the method suggests
- approach with questions
- predict the methods, findings, and conclusions
- then compare with what the authors actually did with what you predicted.
This is definitely time-consuming and geared toward professional academics, but I appreciate a lot of the system design that went into framing it this way. I’ll try it on for size and see what fits.
On singing prettier during lockdown (for serious)
🐦🎶 The global pandemic has impacted just about everything, including how birds sing. Turns out, when birds stop screaming over our machines they sing higher quality songs. Researchers in San Francisco found male sparrows sang quieter, with higher frequency range, and were presumably sexier to their mates.
Let’s be honest, we’re all expecting to see a population surge in 2021, and not just in pandemic puppies.
On teeny, tiny folds (for funsies)
📄⚔️ This origami samurai is just breathtaking. The creative drive never ceases to amaze me.
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In the words of a famous suidae, “That’s all folks”
~Henry