Does this scenario sound familiar? You listen to an inspiring talk, read a captivating book or talk with a charismatic subject matter expert on meditation, diet, exercise, etc., and you immediately change your ways. But it doesn’t last…

Let’s say it’s meditation. You start meditating on a regular basis, and feel so much better knowing you are doing things that your future self will thank you for. But then over time, as the effects of these long-game personal habits aren’t to be felt for many months or years down the road, the new routine slowly fades away. One morning you convince yourself that doing a little bit of extra work is what you want to do instead of spending 30 minutes on the meditation cushion.

And slowly the advice fades into the background, covered up by the more immediate demands of your life. And the routine falls away, leaving you exactly where you started before the influential resource appeared.

That has happened to me over and over, but each time, I do seem to build a quicker muscle memory to take the routine back up the next time I come across some charasmatic guru.

So one way to “keep the motivations fresh” is to put it smack dab on top of my blog. Speaking of which…writing is one of those things. A writing habit, over the long-term, can provide immense pesronal and professional gain in so many ways. A topic for a future deep dive.

Outlive notes

So let’s continue! Le Topic Du Jour is Outlive, a book by Peter Attia. Here’s my notes and thoughts, may they carry forward and remind my future self of a few nice lifestyle changes, and also inspire others to some self-examination before the grip of old age has tightened around your feeble hand:

I guess I do want to be able to say Hello, World when I’m 70, 80, 90 years old…but 100? Time will tell if living to 100 will be a blessing or a curse for those who achieve the centenarian milestone.

Outlive introduces some nice language and knowledge to the lay person ( me ). One thing I am taking away right away is healthspan vs lifespan. Healthspan is the amount of time in your life you spend feeling good ( able to walk, run, hike, bike, etc without that constant pain of injury or old age ), wheraes lifespan is your entire life, including the final years that, for many (most of us), are plagued by the demons of old age.

Fast death and slow death:

Some medical terms, processes, drugs and things to note: autophagy - cleansing of damaged cells and junk - this looks like a nice deep dive on the topic for the lay person. Fasting is one way to trigger this process Lysosome - animal cell’s garbage disposal. A specialized organelle containing enzymes to degrade proteins. During autophagy, the old cell membranes, organelles, detritus, are sent to the lysosome. rapamycin - watch this Tim Ferris quick intro about the discovery and “what is it” here

  • a very potent anti-fungal agent ( watch out, Athlete’s Foot! )
  • inhibitors of mTor (Mammalian target of rapamycin )
  • treats patients after organ transplantation
  • suppresses immune system that would attack the new organ

Here’s a TED talk by the author Pater Attia

More soon as the ebook becomes available to me again through Libby!