But once I started taking sleep seriously in my mid-20s, I was frustrated to find that I still felt exhausted every day! I’ll skip the rest of the story and get to the stuff that actually worked for me, five years later:

1. Cutting my caffeine dose 75%

Surprisingly, going caffeine free didn’t help that much. I’d get anxious and depressed on days after a poor nights sleep because I had no “pick me up” to look forward to, causing a vicious cycle of anxiety and poor sleep. (Exercise, I learned, makes me feel drained rather than energized if I’m already sleep deprived.)

Resetting my tolerance to a smaller caffeine dose gave me the best of both worlds: fully worn off by bedtime and a small energy boost to look forward to each morning.

The only downside? I’ve become that guy who asks for a “quarter caff” coffee at his local coffee shop.

2. Buying a Chilipad (and a BedJet)

I haven’t had AC in my apartment in over 7 years (sigh, Bay Area), so bedroom temperature in the summer is always a struggle. Especially with a Casper foam mattress.

The three main options I tried for cooling down my bedroom without AC:

• A fan with the window open
• A BedJet
• Chilipad

Using a fan didn’t really help. Keeping the window open helped cool things down, but the street noise was too much of a disturbance.

The BedJet was the first specialty product I tried for cooling you down while sleeping. I used it for two years (including the layered sheet they sell as an accessory), but I couldn’t find a consistent sweet spot. The mobile app was super clunky, and the ambient temperature made too big of a different as to whether the airflow was too chilling or not chilling enough. I was constantly fiddling with the controls.

I see that the newer BedJet models have a more feature-complete remote control, which might make it easier to the cooling/warming settings without opening the app, but I really don’t feel like paying full price again for an upgrade when I wasn’t happy with the previous model.

So I eventually decided to try a Chilipad, which is a mattress pad of sorts which goes under your sheets and circulates cool or warm water through your side of the bed. I’ve found that this works much better for me, though it does have downsides (which I’ll discuss below).

Starting with the good, my sleep tracker app saw an immediate and sustained increase in “deep sleep”, i.e. less tossing and turning all night once the Chilipad cooled down my bed (see image below from AutoSleep for Apple Watch).

Now let’s talk about the bad…

1. You have to clean it monthly with some hydrogen peroxide, so the maintenance on it is non-trivial.
2. You can definitely feel the tubes that circulate water beneath you, which makes the bed feel less cozy and more “medical”, if that makes sense.
3. My room isn’t big enough to give it the required air space clearance to work “optimally.”
4. As a result of not having enough air space for the Chilipad, on days when it’s in the high 70s in my bedroom, it isn’t nearly powerful enough.
5. The blue light on the screen takes 2–3 minutes to go away after modifying the temperature or turning it on, which is annoying when I want it as dark as possible in the bedroom.

Moving forward, my goal is to only need to use the Chilipad during the summer. I also noticed they have a fancier, more expensive “OOLER Sleep System” version, which I might upgrade to in a year or two if they invest in a great mobile app experience.

For those of you who are completely sold on the water cooling idea and want it more deeply integrated into your mattress, I’ve heard good things about The Pod mattress by Eight Sleep. My co-worker has one and enjoys it. However, I won’t be purchasing this mattress because the only showroom is on the other side of the country, and I find the return process for mattresses too annoying to take a risk on a mattress I’ve never sat on before, especially when there’s potentially-uncomfortable tubing involved.

If you do decide to purchase anything listed in this section, I’d recommend waiting for a sale, which can often drop the price by hundreds of dollars.

3. Buying a comfortable sleep mask

I didn’t do a good job setting up blackout curtains on our big bedroom windows, and we get a lot of street light, so I’d always have a light halo around the curtains waking me up too early. I bought one of the top rated sleep masks from the Wirecutter and it helps me sleep in a little later when I need it. My medium term plan is to invest in a better window blackout solution, like blackout shades, but for now, the sleep mask helped me resolve a big chunk of the problem.

Here’s a link the $10 sleep mask I use, from Amazon.

4. Napping, in moderation

For years I followed the advice to avoid napping if you have trouble feeling sleepy at night, and to always wake up at the same time every morning. This advice was also reinforced in a CBTi online course I took last year.

But I DJ as a hobby and not allowing myself to nap or adjust my sleep schedule after a late night just caused me accumulated sleep deprivation that took longer to sleep off. After allowing myself naps and a variable sleep schedules (in moderation), I’ve found it definitely works better for me. On the other hand, if I overdo it on the naps or nap too late in the afternoon, I definitely find it harder to get to sleep at night.

For some, naps can be a useful tool. Others may do better with avoiding naps altogether. A visit to a sleep doctor, or with a CBTi trained therapist would be a good way to develop a plan that works for you.

I’d also recommend books like Why We Sleep by Matt Walker if you want to learn more about sleep and general best practices.

5. Experimenting with pillows for sleep posture

A few years ago I started waking up with tension headaches from poor sleep posture and excessive caffeine use. Reducing caffeine helped one part of the equation, and massage therapy for a few months and investing in a better pillow helped with sleep posture.

It took me a while, but I learned that I like low-loft pillows with neck support, and a leg pillow helps me sleep properly on my side, instead of twisting into a weird half-side/half-stomach sleeping position that is bad for my neck and shoulders. Here are the pillows I use:

• Everlasting Comfort 100% Pure Memory Foam Knee Pillow
• Low Profile Memory Foam Neck Pillow — Double Contour

I’ve also tried the Nest Side Sleeper pillow and the Dr. Loth SpineAlign pillow. They aren’t my go-to pillows, but I still keep them around to periodically test different memory foam levels, since I’m still figuring out exactly what my head, neck, and shoulders need to sleep pain free.

In the long term, a less firm mattress should also help my posture. I decided to upgrade my mattress this past Labor Day and I’ll update this guide if it makes any improvement.

Conclusion

Even with all of that, my sleep isn’t perfect, but I feel like I’m a normal, functioning human being again, rather than a zombie who is wired on caffeine yet still tired all the time. And for someone who has always struggled with sleep, that’s a big win.

Five Years Later: The Five Strategies That Actually Improved My Sleep was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In an attempt to work on this, I’ve been re-discovering strategies I’ve tried over the years to maintain a helpful and motivating perspective on time. Here are the four that have worked best for me:

1. Count down to something meaningful

Counting down to an upcoming, meaningful experience can build excitement through anticipation. A good example of this can be found in a NYTimes article on the benefits of anticipating a vacation:

Wish you were on vacation right now? Don’t. Taking a vacation won’t necessarily make you happier. But anticipating it will.

I first explored this idea while reporting an article about happiness in 2010, the same year that a psychological study about the connection between anticipation and happiness was published online in a journal called Applied Research in Quality of Life. The authors of the study, researchers from the Netherlands, interviewed more than 1,500 people, including 974 vacationers, and found that the vacationers felt most happy before their trips.

One of my favorite ways of keeping this excitement high is by using a countdown app on my phone and Apple Watch. I’ve tried half a dozen apps, and Today is: D-Day Widget is my current favorite.

Today is: D-Day Widget on the App Store

I use this app to count down to vacations, anniversaries, birthdays, and more. It’s all about maintaining awareness and engagement with a future event that you’re looking forward to.

I’ve noticed that tracking my important events improves my mood, especially during dull weeks, and also reminds me to better plan my vacations, which enhances the vacation itself.

2. Count down to an estimated end of life

Reminding yourself of your mortality is fairly popular right now. Some people love this idea, as it inspires them to make the most of the present moment. Other people find this idea stressful and counterproductive.

Lifehacker guru Tim Ferriss recommended a countdown-till-I-die watch called Tikker in a recent weekly email. He writes:

I was exposed to this watch by Chris Cole, an investor and principal at Artemis Capital Management. If you want a constant memento mori — a reminder of your mortality and encouragement to make each hour count — this might be for you.

I don’t recommend this watch due to its price, but the fact that it even exists indicates that people appreciate this concept.

Countdown watches aren’t the only way people keep track of their progress through life. Wait But Why author Tim Urban has written about counting down your life and even sells an accompanying Life Calendar to visualize your life in weeks on a poster.

I used to own this poster, but unfortunately there was no good place to put it in my current apartment, so I’ve adopted digital strategies for keeping track.

If you have an Apple Watch, you can achieve the same thing for free. On my Apple Watch, I have a countdown to the day I turn 90, which I call my “Enjoy Life” countdown, which utilizes the Today is: D-Day Widget app(discussed above).

There’s also this Apple Watch app project, which doesn’t seem live yet.

Regardless of which approach you take, maintaining awareness of your mortality can spur you to action and appreciate more about your present situation.

3. See how your year is progressing

Similar to maintaining awareness of your life count down, focusing on how the current year is elapsing can also offer benefits.

Here’s what I see everything morning when I open a new tab in my browser:

I do this through the Year Progress Chrome extension, which you can download here:

Year Progress

In the same way that a life countdown can spur you to action, see the % of the year completed can also spur you into working on those goals you set in January before it’s too late.

I find most “new tab” Chrome extensions to be annoying, but this is the first one that I’ve found to be perfectly minimal in its purpose. Seeing how far my year has elapsed is a nice motivator to keep making similar progress with my yearly goals.

4. Use small time blocks in your work day

The Pomodoro Technique is one of my favorite productivity hacks. It slices you day into small chunks of time that prevent me from burning out from sitting for too long without taking a break.

Instead of seeing my work time as 8 hours, I see it as X number of Pomodoros (usually increments of 25 minutes).

I find that when I use Pomodoros to manage my workday, I take more breaks, drink more water, and remember to eat when my body needs refueling.

By shifting my perspective on work to bursts within a unit of time (25 minutes) instead of a solid block of 8 hours, I’ve discovered a lifesaver for keeping my energy and focus high throughout the day.

I use Be Focused Pro for Mac and iOS for as my Pomodoro timer.

Whereas the other strategies help you maintain perspective on larger durations of time, this strategy helps you manage your responsibilities by dividing your day into smaller durations of time. I’d highly recommend it.

Do you have any strategies or hacks for motivating yourself through perspectives on time? Share them in the comments below!

Time Is a Great Motivator. Here’s How to Use It was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Health

Health has been my biggest theme of 2017. Mostly because I’m trying to resolve two stubborn, difficult issues: a foot injury and poor sleep.

Physical Therapy

I’ve had dozens of doctors visits this year to work on a chronic injury I developed in both feet in my early 20s (see this post for more). Putting in all of this time has paid off; my feet are in better shape now than at any point since the diagnosis.

Unfortunately, all of these doctor and physical therapy appointments came at the cost of working on my other goals, which I’ve had much less time for.

The proverb “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is absolutely true. In 2018, I will be spending more time on prevention through core and balance training, stretching, and generally taking better care of my body.

Sleep

Sleep has long been a weak area for me (I never seem to sleep well), so I’ve been working super hard on optimizing it this year. A few tools/approaches that have proven helpful:

• BedJet for bed temperature regulation
• Switching to decaf to reduce caffeine in my system at bedtime
• Increasing my sleep to 8.5 hours per night
• Melatonin when traveling across time zones
• Red-tinted glasses 1–2 hours before bed to block blue/green light
• Sun exposure (or light therapy lamp) within the first hour of waking

I’m still working on some sleep tension issues (especially in my shoulders), which I suspect is either a stress management or body position issue. I think the right pillow will help with this (search still in progress). I also think that melatonin as a regular sleep aid is unsustainable, so I will be looking into other options as found in the Examine.com sleep guide.

Stress Management

I’ve stopped meditating because I just wasn’t enjoying the apps I tried. 20 minute blocks of time were also hard for me to find if I also wanted to work out that day.

Breathing exercises have been very helpful in the place of meditation apps.
Quick breathing exercises (like those found in the Oak app or in the Apple Watch Breathe app) are much easier to find time for, and have a similarly de-stressing effect.

I’ve also been using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) apps to help me work through unproductive thought patterns. By far, the best app for this is the excellent Moodnotes app.

Career

Startup life is both amazing and stressful. Working in biotech has allowed me to contribute to projects that actually help people live healthier lives. Finding purpose in my work has been a long time coming, and I deeply appreciate this intersection of health and technology.

On the other hand, the demands of a fast growing company can be intense, and my work-life balance has suffered. Unfortunately, there is a vicious cycle that can form when you’re stressed and fatigued from busy weeks, which causes your productivity to drop, which then requires you to spend even more time at the office to finish your work, which then stresses you out even more, etc.

Catching a downward spiral of stress and productivity decline before it becomes an issue is a key skill for anyone in a fast-paced job, and is something I will learn to get better at in 2018.

I also plan to get better at identifying stress-reducing and energy-building activities in both my work and personal life that will allow me to make it through the day with less fatigue and anxiety. Inspiration for this project came from the awesome book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

Technology

Like many people, I’m addicted to my phone. It got worse this year, so I’ve followed in the footsteps of Kevin Rose, who has invested in an Apple Watch Series 3 (with LTE) to make it easier for him to leave the house without needing his phone. Disabling all notifications except for calendar, fitness and mindfulness reminders makes this even better for detaching.

I can wholeheartedly agree with Kevin’s approach; having a data-connected watch for emergencies makes it much easier to leave your phone at home for casual outings. I look forward to seeing the improvements to my day-to-day life by detaching from my phone. Already I’m noticing more awareness of my surroundings and more engagement with the people I’m with.

Passion Projects

DJing

The biggest change this year from last year was that I picked up DJing as a hobby.

I’ve long been involved in the dance music scene in San Francisco, and taking this step into DJing felt right. About a year ago I purchased a Pioneer DDJ-SX2 and found a good DJ instructor in San Francisco.

This was definitely one of my big wins for 2017. There are two DJ sets I played in the Bay Area this year (one of them being an epic nighttime beach party along the San Francisco coastline) that are on my shortlist of best experiences of 2017. Finding flow is definitely one of the keys to happiness and DJing has definitely been a source of flow for me.

Travel

I traveled more in 2017 than in the 3 years before it combined. See below:

• January 6–11: Florida/Bahamas
• March 24–28: Austin
• April 1- 9: Santiago, Chile
• May 20–21: Austin
• May 25–30: Atlanta
• June 10–17: New York
• June 25-July 2: Santiago, Chile
• July 14–16: Seattle/Tacoma
• August 30- Sept 6: Santiago, Chile
• September 14–18: Seattle / George, WA
• October 12–15: Pasadena
• December 10- 18: New York
• December 22–29: Southern California

The multiple trips to Santiago were for work. I love that I get to travel to new countries for work, but I think 3 international work trips per year is my limit, especially because I’m there for a week at a time and the time zone adjustments can be quite difficult (not to mention sleeping on planes is a pretty awful experience).

Where have I fallen short in 2017?

1. I’ve wanted to quit caffeine since January ’17. It took me until November ‘17 to finally switch to decaf without caving a week or two later.
2. I spent months caught in the vicious cycle of unresolved stress + fatigue and a resulting significant decline in productivity. Many of my personal goals needed to be deferred while I caught up on work.
3. I spent a good chunk of money on Amazon buying stuff I didn’t really need. I thought it might help some of my goals (like sleep or fitness), but ended up being unnecessary.
4. I’ve stopped cooking this year, which has resulted in increased food costs and more sluggishness from restaurant meals with lots of starch or oil.
5. My fitness goals were derailed multiple times by stress, poor sleep, travel, or getting sick. I haven’t hit any of my strength targets.

I plan on working on each of these areas in 2018. On that note…

What does 2018 have in store?

1. Moving to Oakland
   Thinking about the where of happiness, I’m realizing that Oakland is where I’d like to be next year. It’s more affordable than the neighborhood I live in now, it’s closer to the music I love (the Fox Theater is a great venue) and will allow me a shorter commute to work.
2. Re-focusing on friends
   This year has been so busy with work and travel, I’d like to spend time in 2018 reconnecting with friends. Living in Oakland will make this easier too, since it’s more central compared to where I’m living now.
3. More DJing
   It takes time to figure out what type of gigs make a DJ happy and which end up being a burden. I’m hoping 2018 will allow me to keep reaching out and exploring different kinds of DJing opportunities.
4. Europe trip
   I’ve never been to Europe, and my girlfriend and I are planning a big trip there, which will be amazing.
5. Cooking more often
   When I move, I hope to have a larger kitchen that will be easier to cook in. I also bought a sous vide cooker to help with cooking proteins.
6. Learning to be truly on and truly off
   There’s this awful state in between productivity and relaxing where you’re triaging emails or checking Slack messages, but not really doing anything of real substance. Nor are you re-energizing yourself because you’re “working”. In 2018 I’m retraining myself to fully disconnect as needed, and be fully engaged with my work at work.

Do you have any 2017 reflections or 2018 goals you’d like to share? Write them in the comments below!

What I’ve Been up To: 2017 Yearend Edition was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We have a tendency to take things for granted while we have access to them. And as soon as we lose that access, we feel regret, wishing we had appreciated it more while we still could.

For thousands of years, Stoics have advocated a technique to handle this problem, commonly known as negative visualization. This technique allows you to better appreciate your current lot in life by vividly imagining how much worse off you could be. While no doubt effective, this approach is a little intense.

Another approach is starting a gratitude journal. One study suggests that logging gratitude in a journal even just three times per week can have a positive impact on our happiness.

In my experience, gratitude journals are more effective when paired with techniques for working with emotions and attachments (e.g. mindfulness meditation or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)). Otherwise, you may feel nagging anxiety while expressing gratitude for something, because deep down, you’re afraid of losing that thing. So along with gratitude journaling, I use Calm for meditation and Moodnotes for CBT.

More recently, though, my favorite exercise for finding happiness in the present moment is what I call stepping into the future.

If I’m waiting for the subway, shopping at the grocery store, or am in a reflective mood, I think about what life will be like, ten or even twenty years from now. The more vividly I can do this, the better.

I then step into the life of my future self and try to emulate how I would think about the present day. Will I wistfully remember certain aspects of my youthful days? What about today will I wish I could go back and experience again? Will my life be drastically different that far into the future due to new obligations or age-related problems?

This exercise typically results in a bittersweet feeling of happiness and acceptance that my future self will likely not have the same lifestyle freedom nor youthful vitality that I currently possess. It almost feels like, for a moment, I was my future self and have just been given the gift of traveling back through time to live as the younger version of myself again. A sci-fi-esque chance to relive my youth; to make the most of time and opportunities I might be at risk of wasting.

It’s impossible to know what your future will look like, but you can safely assume that you’ll continue to age and face the challenges that come along with that. For that reason, this exercise is a strong reminder to appreciate the aspects of your life you may not be able to enjoy in future decades. It’s a reminder that certain goals and dreams should be acted on sooner rather than later. It’s a reminder to choose happiness in the moment.

Step into the Future: A Simple Technique for Being Happy in the Moment was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But what if I told you that there’s promising research demonstrating that the stress associated with pushing ourselves is beneficial to our health, especially as we age?

In a recent article New York Times article, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and the author of the forthcoming book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, writes:

Which activities, if any, will increase your chances of remaining mentally sharp into old age? We’re still studying this question, but our best answer at the moment is: work hard at something. Many labs have observed that [critical brain regions] increase in activity when people perform difficult tasks, whether the effort is physical or mental. You can therefore help keep these regions thick and healthy through vigorous exercise and bouts of strenuous mental effort. My father-in-law, for example, swims every day and plays tournament bridge.

The road to superaging is difficult, though, because these brain regions have another intriguing property: When they increase in activity, you tend to feel pretty bad — tired, stymied, frustrated. Think about the last time you grappled with a math problem or pushed yourself to your physical limits. Hard work makes you feel bad in the moment.

Long-term health often requires us to be uncomfortable in the short term. Less cake now for a healthy body later. Pushing ourselves now for a sharper mind into our later years. Goals often operate this way: short term discomfort for long term comfort.

It’s important to note that not all kinds of stress are beneficial in this way. A common way to divide stress is by eustress, moderate or normal psychological stress interpreted as being beneficial for the experiencer, and distress, extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain.

If you’re in a toxic work environment, that’s distress. But if you’re pushing yourself to learn a new skill, and feel stressed out as a result, that’s eustress. When it comes to healthy aging, you’re looking to add eustress into your life.

Ambitious Living = Healthy Living

Perhaps it’s time we start thinking of healthy living as compatible with ambitious living? Examples are easy to find:

• Optimizing your sleeping habits helps you perform better at work. (This idea that has gained mainstream attention in the last decade.)
• Eating healthier meals avoids the dreaded food coma that keeps you glued to the couch for hours after dinner.
• And as we just learned, pushing yourself past your comfort zone, physically and mentally, can keep your brain sharp and healthy as you age.

It’s possible some caveats will emerge regarding how different ways we push ourselves affect our brain health, but for now, the best research available tells us that a healthy brain requires us to strive, set goals, push ourselves to achieve them, and repeat.

Keep on pushing.

—

Image credit romankphoto

Push Yourself to Achieve: An Emerging Secret to a Sharp Mind was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One approach to this problem is to scour the available scientific literature on the subject and make educated guesses wherever the research is lacking. Unfortunately, conflicting studies in the sphere of nutrition (e.g. studies on saturated fat consumption) are often twisted or cherry-picked to fit the agenda of dogmatic groups claiming to possess the true formula for optimal health. Should you follow a paleo diet, or finally commit to being a vegan? Are eggs good for you if eaten daily, or is the high cholesterol content slowly killing you?

In addition, nutrition researchers themselves often fall prey to influences that hinder unbiased research (e.g. clinging to old beliefs or ties to big business), as The Guardian reported on earlier this year.

When the research is unclear about how to best live a healthy life, another approach is to identify communities across the globe that already live significantly longer than us and look for common factors that they share. Yes, it’s possible that some factors are missing or misunderstood, but this perspective is still a valuable one, as the TED talk below demonstrates.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

When the research regarding a food or lifestyle habit is open to interpretation, I’ll happily defer to the healthiest societies on the planet. (If you have another approach that has worked well for you, please do share in the comments below.)

If you enjoy the TED talk and want to learn more, here’s a follow-up on the nine commonalities attributed to longevity.

The Problem with Nutrition Research, and an Easy Workaround was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Almost everyone can agree on the consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and a plant-based diet overall. But animal foods, legumes, and grains are constantly under fire.

Respectable MDs and nutritionists in the vegan camp champion whole grains and legumes, and demonize animal products as unhealthy and unethical. From Cornell MD Michael Gregor’s non-profit website NutritionFacts.org:

“Animal products, including eggs, dairy, meat, and animal protein in general may increase inflammation. A single meal of meat, eggs, or dairy may cause a spike of inflammation within hours that can stiffen one’s arteries. Several factors may account for this, such as heme iron, endotoxins, saturated fat, a high bacteria load, TMAO, tapeworms, advanced glycation end products or AGEs, and NeuGc, a foreign meat molecule that may increase the risk of heart disease and cancer.”

(For links to each of the factors mentioned above, visit Gregor’s site by clicking here.)

On the other side of the fence is the paleo crowd. Saturated animal fat? For most people, eat plenty of it! Beef tallow > canola oil. Grains are the devil (especially wheat). From the book Perfect Health Diet by Paul and Shou-ching Jaminet: “Cereal grains — the seeds of grasses — are rich in toxins that poison humans. They are the most dangerous foods.” They then dedicate many pages of their book to backing up this claim.

Both sides offer good points. I’ve found relief from IBS symptoms by removing wheat from my diet, but I also find that I do better with certain legumes than I do with a lot of paleo-friendly starches such as yucca and plantains. Even after a decade of experimenting with my diet, I still have much to learn. Thankfully, I’ve learned a lot along the way. Here are the rules that have given me the most success in optimizing my diet (and sticking to it):

1. Don’t get lost in the details. Have high-level strategies you can always come back to.

I used to get lost in the weeds when learning about diet. I’d read about goitrogenic foods, for example, wonder if the health implications of those foods applied to me, and then spend two hours tweaking my diet. I would do this a few times a week and end up with a constantly-changing diet. I’d forget what was “good” and what was “bad” to include in my diet. And when you’re hungry and sitting in front of a menu — unsure of what the latest version of your diet lets you eat — you often give up and order the tastiest thing that just might squeeze into some version of your diet, even if it’s far from the healthiest option. Oops.

The same issue can emerge from jumping back and forth between dogmatic diets (e.g. paleo to raw vegan to fruitarian to the latest weight loss diet).

Lately, I’ve done much better by remembering the three simple rules proposed by food author Michael Pollan: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” No matter how deep into nutrition research (and dogma) I delved, falling back on these rules has always proved helpful in deciding what to eat when I’m put on the spot.

2. When in doubt, opt for moderation.

Paleo people say grass-fed meat is great for you. Vegans say all meat will put you at risk for a shorter life span. From a nutritional perspective, both sides have research to back up their arguments.

Unless you have a PhD or truly enjoy digging through hundreds of thousands of research papers, your best bet is to find the moderate middle between those two approaches. E.g. cut your meat consumption by 50%, and make sure to have some grass-fed meat and some fish a few times per week, while completely avoiding CAFO meat.

Using this example, if you feel better by cutting meat consumption, see what happens if you take out even more meat from your diet. Keep calibrating until you find the range that works best for you.

3. Keep an eye out for food sensitivities.

Unless you’re extremely lucky, there’s likely to be at least one food out there that doesn’t work well for you. Over the years, I’ve learned that my body doesn’t tolerate tomatoes, cream/cheese, wheat, industrial vegetable oils, chocolate, coffee, inulin/chicory root fiber, and heavily fermented foods (e.g. fish sauce). I can get away with a little bit of these foods, but I experience side effects if I overdo it (poor digestion, lethargy, joint pain, acne, etc.).

I did a rotation diet called the Autoimmune Paleo diet to discover my food sensitivities, along with a food journal. If there are any nagging health issues you deal with, identifying sensitivities is a worthy endeavor. I won’t go too much into detail here, but if you have questions around food journaling or discovering sensitivities, leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

4. Data about your health and nutritional status is important too.

In an effort to optimize my diet, I’ve done lots of lab work (both covered by insurance and out of pocket). A few tests that I’ve done to optimize my diet and overall health:

- Blood sugar testing (finger prick)
- Blood work to determine nutritional status, omega-3/6 levels, heavy metal levels, and small, dense LDL levels
- Organic acids test (I’m still unsure how scientifically validated this test is)
- SIBO breath test
- uBiome microbiome tests every few weeks
- Gut health stool test
- Cortisol test

At a minimum, I’d recommend blood sugar testing (very affordable and useful information), blood labs at least twice a year, and working with a gastroenterologist for testing SIBO/gut health if you have gut issues.

Most recently, I’m concerned with optimizing my sleep, so I have an appointment with a sleep specialist to rule out any issues such as sleep apnea.

5. Learn to cook.

Let’s say you discover that you’re sensitive to soybean and corn oil. If you can’t cook, you’re at the mercy of restaurants who are likely to use these oils without making it explicit on their menu. Having at least a few recipes you can confidently make is like creating a safe space for your dietary needs. It gives you control to put only the healthiest foods on your plate. But at the same time…

6. Find some safe restaurants in your area.

This isn’t feasible for everyone, but if you live in an area that caters to specialty diets, you may be able to identify one or a handful for restaurants that work for you. I’ve written about this topic at length because of how important food and dining out is for your social life.

For many people, the stress of doing a strict diet outweighs any marginal gains in nutrition, especially when you’re sacrificing your social life to stick to the diet. Knowing where you can compromise to maintain a happy life is important.

In California, I’ve found a vegan restaurant and a paleo restaurant that fit my dietary needs quite well.

Conclusion: Diet optimization is a lifelong process.

Your body changes, research evolves, willpower waxes and wanes, and our industrial food supply trudges forward. Therefore, it’s advantageous to stay connected to the latest in health and nutrition. Unfortunately, there’s so much dogma out there, it’s hard to know who to trust. Dr. Michael Gregor of NutritionFacts.org and Paul Jaminet, PhD from the Perfect Health Diet are the two people I trust more than others, so perhaps they may help you as well.

Here’s to your health.

—
Featured image credit: Gemma Billings

Six Commonsense Rules for Optimizing Your Diet was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A great example is Tai Lopez, who puts on a facade of a modest, yet uber-successful entrepreneur who possesses the secret to becoming wealthy. (His latest sales tactic: humblebragging about his supposed million-dollar home as he gives you a tour.)

His successful marketing tactics have inspired both satire and copy-cat marketers (like the guy below):

Who are these marketers targeting? People who want to be more successful, live a better lifestyle, go viral online, and/or build a business around their passions. People who want to be in the middle of this diagram:

[caption id=”attachment_2549" align=”alignnone” width=”300"]

Image credit: Eskimon[/caption]

Finding this intersection between a lucrative career and doing what you love is difficult and unpredictable, so these marketers do their best to convince you that a) success is completely formulaic and reproducible, and b) they are the ones who know the formula better than anyone else. In other words, these people are getting rich by selling you the secret to getting rich.

Thankfully, the internet is also packed with artists, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals who publish their work without trying to sell you a magic formula. They focus on perfecting their craft and adding value to the world through their hard work. If you pay attention to the advice they give out, you hear a different story about success.

One such artist is Darius Kazemi. Having published over one hundred creative projects on the web since 2013, Kazemi has seen many of his most ambitious projects stay in obscurity and many of his silly projects go viral quickly. From this experience, Kazemi believes that internet success is a lot like winning the lottery.

“I believe that beyond a certain level of work you put into your project, success is entirely out of your hands,” he says on stage during his 2014 talk at XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon. “Conceiving of a creative project and building it, that’s buying a lottery ticket.”

In other words, hard work, perseverance, and the right kind of promotion all improve your chances (i.e. earn you more lottery tickets), but there’s no guaranteed formula for success.

Some people may find this advice fatalist and demotivating, but I disagree. Ignoring fame and financial success in favor of execution and skill in the short run may actually improve your chance of success in the long run.

For example, Rick Rubin, the former co-president of Columbia Records, has said that when an artist is first starting out, “any commercial considerations usually get in the way.” In other words, a premature focus on money and fame can distract and misguide.

Kazemi concludes his talk by advising us to ignore those who claim to have the secret to winning the lottery, i.e. the magic formula to go viral or make more money online:

“There are two kinds of creative advice that I think you can get from creative people. The first is how to buy more lottery tickets and the second is how to win the lottery. I think the former can be extremely useful and I think the latter is nonsense.”

Since snake oil salesmen aren’t going anywhere any time soon, it’s up to us to choose who we pay attention to. My personal rule of thumb: the more confident someone is that they have an ironclad formula for success, the less likely they’re worth paying attention to.

“If there was a secret formula for becoming known, I would give it to you,” writes Austin Kleon, artist and author of Steal Like an Artist, “But there’s only one not-so-secret formula that I know: Do good work and share it with people.”

Recommended reading:

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
• Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered by Austin Kleon
• Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions — XOXO Festival (2014)
• Rick Rubin on Tim Ferriss’s podcast

The Best Advice I Know for Creative Success: Put in the Work was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gratitude letters are hard to make time for — writing a genuine letter to someone is not a quick, five-minute task. The gratitude apps I saw on the app store were clunky or ridden with ads.

Solutions like The Five Minute Journal worked well for me, but I hated carrying it around with me everywhere. On days when I was traveling, if I didn’t bring my journal in my bag, my journaling habit fell apart. The lack of consistency drove me mad.

That’s why I was so glad to see that the creators of The Five Minute Journal finally created a mobile app. At first, I was a bit turned by the price tag, but given that the hardcover version was ~$20 for a few hundred pages, paying $5 for an app that allowed for unlimited entries and PDF exports seemed totally worth it.

In short, the app is phenomenal. Not only is it significantly easier to do my journaling through my phone on the morning commute, but by allowing photos to be associated with each entry, it encourages me to be more mindful of capturing something great about each day.

Note: I have no association with the app developers, I’m just a happy customer.

In the example entry below, I took a photo of some lab tests I’m looking forward to doing to gauge my health progress since last year. (Is it weird that I get excited by lab tests?)

The prompts are simple enough to do in a few minutes, but effective enough to pull out some real gratitude each morning and evening.

Some people may never be happy, but you you can avoid that fate by expressing gratitude, among other practices. As Naval Ravikant is fond of saying, “happiness is a skill.” I consider this app essential to helping me build that skill.

It may not be the be-all and end-all of gratitude journaling, but The Five Minute Journal app is the best I’ve found so far. You can check out the app here.

How to Maintain Your Gratitude Journaling Habit Once and for All was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I hate to admit it, but at this particular party I was one of those people. Like many, I sometimes struggle to stay present in social situations when my phone beckons with a stream of notifications.

Addiction to technology is nothing new, and rituals such as placing phones face down in the center of the dinner table have emerged to help combat the temptation to use technology at inappropriate times. But it’s not enough — the problem seems to be growing.

Nir Eyal, an expert on what makes technology so addictive, implores us to adjust our social norms to prevent this kind of withdrawn behavior. For example, on the topic of friends who use their phones when they should be present with the group, Nir advises, “The goal is to snap the offender out of the phone zone, and to give him two options: either excuse himself to attend to whatever crisis is happening, or put away the tech.”

In an ideal world, we’d live in a society that has developed such norms and traditions that discourage excessive phone use at inappropriate times. Perhaps some day we’ll get there — but why wait?

Perhaps there’s something we could do today to incentivize ourselves to be more present with our friends, loved ones, and the limited amount of time we have left on this planet?

Enter Forest.

Forest is a handy little app that works like the pomodoro technique, but with a small, gamified twist. As you accomplish 25 minute bursts of work (or any duration you wish), you earn trees that you can plant in a digital forest. If you open a notification or close the Forest app for any reason while the timer is running, your tree dies and you have to start over.

This little bit of gamification goes a long way. By far, Forest has been the most effective app I’ve used to date (and I’ve tried dozens) to keep my phone habits at bay.

I mostly use Forest for maintaining deep focus when I’m writing, coding, or learning. But Forest has a useful secondary purpose: social situations.

Because Forest works by preventing you from checking notifications or opening apps on your phone for a length of time, it works amazingly well for social gatherings.

I recently attended a meetup where this came in handy. I was one of the first to arrive; I didn’t know the early attendees very well. When this happens, I often fall into the trap of playing around on my phone until people I know arrive to help break the ice. But this time around, before entering the event, I set a Forest timer for 45 minutes. Even though it’s technically just a silly game where the goal is to grow trees in your forest, it was the intention I set by using Forest that made all the difference.

By explicitly setting my intention before entering the event, Forest acted as a reminder to stay mindful of my urges to escape into my phone. With that reminder in place, I had nothing left to do but take a deep breath and start introducing myself to the people in the room. Because of this, the night was significantly more enjoyable.

In both our work and social lives, our phones are sapping us of our presentness. While focus apps aren’t a silver bullet, I’ve found that some apps (like Forest) give enough of a nudge to make a noticeable difference. And in the fight to reclaim our lives as they’re happening, every ally counts.

Jon’s Note: What do you think? How can we use small incentives and useful apps to keep us in the present moment amongst friends and loved ones? *Please share this post if you found it interesting.*

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How to Use Gamification to Break Our Addiction to Our Phones was originally published in Living for Improvement on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.