The best cure for rejection sensitivity of any kind is to get rejected a lot.

In particular, endurance and power training appear to contribute significantly to neuromuscular remodeling, and data from life-long athletes indicate that regular exercise in our later years is effective in improving muscle strength and function.

But a cherry picked study gives a stronger, condescending illusion of proof. Much like the religious orthodox who thinks anything not published in their book of choice must be heresy, the “ahkshually” Sciencist (not Scientist, to be clear) has closed their mind off to a more cohesive, fluid, and adaptive worldview. 

But they fell into the exact trap I’m describing here. If you need a research paper to tell you that someone stuck in a cage devoid of any comforts will be more prone to drug addiction than someone stuck in a near-idyllic society, then you are beyond help. Useful knowledge does not need Sciencism. The explanatory power of Rat Park is not because of some science labels that were slapped on it, it’s how the story helps unlock your intuition about behavior change. 

By disposing of the burden of physics-esque rigor, philosophy manages to be more compelling. Seneca isn’t pretending this is some universal law like gravitation which will certainly reproduce under further experimentation. He’s just tellin’ it like it is. 

time anxiety is the fear of wasting your time. It’s an obsession about spending your time in the most meaningful way possible

Think about what your customers life can be like after they buy and use your product. Think of all the positive things that may come their way. Then narrow it down to one core promise that you want to focus on and make sure your entire copy is built around proving how that one promise can and will come true.

For a promise to be extremely effective you want the picture painted by the promise to be something that everyone desires but not many will achieve. This way 99% of our potential customers will see the promise and relate to it since it is something they are still searching for.

The challenge for clinicians is balancing educating patients on the validity of these devices with patients' enthusiasm for objective data. Incorporating the use of sleep trackers into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia will be important as use of these devices is rapidly expanding among our patient population.

In reality, the bottom 80% of men are fighting over the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are fighting over the top 20% of men. We can see this trend in Figure 1

“Greasing the Groove” is a method popularized by Russian fitness instructor Pavel Tsatsouline. The idea is to spread a large volume of specific exercises throughout the day to minimize the recovery time needed

Why doesn’t a rival politician gain power by promising to make convenience great again?  Because “convenience” sounds petty and ignoble.  People love convenience.  They happily sacrifice other values for convenience.  But they don’t want to acknowledge this fact – or affiliate with those who do.

Beyond that, Judge offers specific checklists of advice for us as members of our communities and people of our world — rules of thumb like seeking out shorter supply chains, going direct when possible (but not when it’s impossible), using the fees skimmed by each layer of middlemen as a measure of how important it is to watch what they’re doing (and get rid of them, if possible), and find ways to build direct, non-market, personal relations with others.

Judge operationalizes this insight, producing both a philosophical hymn to the “problems” of disintermediation — the joys of going direct, even if it means losing some convenience or access to low prices. Citing both her own experience and empirical research, Judge convincingly argues that the longer shipping times, extra effort, and other hassles of going direct are more than offset by the delights of going direct to suppliers, whether that’s buying on Etsy or from your local Community Supported Agriculture farm.

There’s a reason organized crime has always been so interested in middleman roles, like stocking jukeboxes and vending machines. When you sit in the middle of a supply chain, you are free to steal from both the suppliers and customers who rely on you, in a way that is hard — if not impossible — to detect.

Shakespeare, she contends, was woke—and for this reason the plays are “primers to awareness and empathy in us,” “a spur to revision and change.” Feelings engendered in her by the plays’ characters, she writes, “made me a better person.

The empath and the activist regard art fundamentally as a delivery system for messages and awarenesses. They believe that the output of an artwork, its effect on audiences, can be controlled and predetermined.

How We Got Here Three major trends have led us to where we are today. dramatic improvements in technology, the overreliance on reason, and the ever-increasing pool of choices.

Find founder peers at the same stage as you, or slightly ahead. Develop relationships with other entrepreneurs who’ll understand what you’re going through and the problems you need help with

Running a company is hard as hell. Even in good times, it can be a grind. It’s definitely critical to carve out personal time, but you should also think about ways to bring more of your life into your work. I like to think of it as work-life integration.

As the saying goes: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. So instead of blindly trusting what the author writes, use these opportunities to hone your skills in reading these pieces with a more critical eye.

In 2 long-term, longitudinal cohorts of women and men, higher optimism levels were associated with longer life span and higher odds of achieving exceptional longevity.

This brings us to the importance of words, the mindset of people, and their impact on health. We know, for example, that optimism is associated with exceptional longevity. On a personal level, I fixed my chronic back pain with a simple book and a change of perception.

“This is part of a greater austerity politics, which is affecting every aspect of our lives,” she told me. She calls it “the privatization of the good life”: Public funding for facilities and programming dries up, and wealthier people buy gym memberships and Pelotons and enroll their kids in private sports leagues

To make exercise instruction and equipment available for everyone, no matter their level of fitness or mobility, would be a public good—improving population health, reducing health-care costs, and making millions of people’s lives better.

The responsibility for figuring out how to help more people find accessible introductions to exercise usually falls to the people who actually need these services in the first place, or to those who were clued into that need in intimate ways. Liu began making his instructional videos after his mom passed away in early 2020; he had spent the previous several years caring for her after a debilitating stroke. “I always think about, Would this be able to help her if she were still around?” he told me. “It never hurts to add an easier step.”

Instead of engendering curiosity about physical activity and giving kids skills to build their capability, PE separated them into the physical haves and have-nots. Public-health officials admitted as much when they discontinued the test in 2013.

But the numbers suggest that there is enormous demand for services such as Liu’s: His super-popular videos make him just one recent example of the teachers and trainers who have found significant audiences by courting true beginners.

Substack’s POV (“A place for independent writing”) wouldn’t work for The New York Times. And that’s the point. That’s why Substack is seen as “different.” Because they don’t see the world the same way. 

Forecasting: Standing in the past, looking forward, thinking about the future.Backcasting: Standing in a different future, and living “as if” that different future already exists today.

“I watched Mark give a fascinating talk which challenged the received view among behavioural nutrition scientists that humans only really seek calories in food. He pointed out, for example, that fine wine, rare spices, and wild mushrooms are highly sought after but are a poor source of calories.

for example ‘fish and chips’ or ‘curry and rice’, seem to offer a wider range of micronutrients than meal combinations generated randomly, such as ‘chips and curry’.  

a faculty which has also been found in other animals, such as sheep and rodents.

we’ve shown humans are more sophisticated in their food choices, and appear to select based on specific micronutrients rather than simply eating everything and getting what they need by default.”

The study doesn’t prove that you can’t ever like exercise. People who exercise regularly report that they come to rely on it and crave more. You could possibly join that club—once you get started. You’ll need to find exercise that works well for you. Pay attention to your response, but also experiment, with the goal of developing a pleasant routine.

According to a Dutch study, genes explain up to 37 percent of differences in our response to exercise.

Cardio is also a way to signal status. A theory of the athleisure class is beyond the scope of this piece, but it is interesting that cardio and endurance sports seem to be getting more common in high-status jobs,

because the gym business is partly a real estate business.

The obvious one is that it's exploiting people who overestimate their willpower and sign up for a product that is, for them, a very bad deal. That can be unavoidable, and there are plenty of other industries that survive even though many people buy their products at a high point in their motivational cycle. I

For these customers, the closest analogue to gym membership is a lottery ticket: for an upfront cost you can buy a semi-credible fantasy about how different your life might be.

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t’s good to understand the general principles, but sticking to something 80% optimal will always be better than not sticking to the 100% perfect