Maximizing Effort in Daily Life: Your Most Powerful Health Lever
We know we need to move—a lot—to stay healthy. But our instincts and social norms constantly push us toward the opposite: minimizing effort at every turn. There’s a simple (though far from easy) mindset shift that can turn this around: Consciously seek to maximize effort in your everyday activities. A Real-Life Example: My Commute Each […]
Why are our societal norms so unhealthy?
The Insight: Because they reflect the triumph of our natural instincts We all know the rules of modern life are hurting us — but what’s less obvious is that they’re not random. They’re the fulfilment of instincts we evolved to survive a radically different world. If we want to be healthy in our modern world, […]
Our societies & norms are also the results of our instincts
In our previous discussions, we’ve explored how our natural instincts and modern social norms work against our health. Now, let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. How did we end up in this situation? The answer might surprise you: our current lifestyle is, in many ways, the product of our instincts’ triumph. The […]
Become invulnerable to social awkwardness
We’re social animals whose instincts value immensely social recognition. Being rejected from your nomadic hunter-gatherer group in the past essentially meant death, so evolution selected us to value social conformity. Unfortunately, conformity in our modern western societies also means poor general health and poor physical and mental capabilities. So we have to become comfortable with […]