Useful Lists (of what's to come)

Hey - hope your 2024 is off to a great start.

One of my favorite things in the world is a good list.

One that’s succinct & actionable is even better.

So today’s newsletter will cover:

• The topics coming in 2024 from Wellness Unbound

• A brief write up & actionable step for each

• An exciting announcement (I’m hiring)

Let’s dive in.

Workplace Wellness

I’m fascinated with the idea of workplace wellness.

• How can we perform at our best & foster an enjoyable work environment?

• What tools & practices encourage effectiveness & ease?

Reflecting on my diverse work experiences, I’ve identified two key areas as crucial contributors:

Brain Nutrition:

Nutritional psychiatry is an emerging field that studies how food impacts the brain.

Early in my career, through trial & error, I realized the power of my first meal.

If I ate a nutrient-dense, high-protein breakfast, I could work easefully until the afternoon. 

But if I had any sort of fast-digesting carb, like bagels or donuts, I crashed hard. Just two hours into the workday, I couldn’t focus if my job depended on it.

Luckily, I found the work of Max Lugavere, who explores the link between food & cognitive health.

In his book Genius Foods, he explains an eye-opening study conducted by the Food and Mood Center at Deakin University in 2017.

It found that depression can be treated by making dietary changes.

When participants in the study cut sugar, fried food and processed meats from their diets, while eating more vegetables, olive oil, nuts, fish, whole grains, legumes & lean red meat, their depressive symptoms were significantly reduced.

Here’s a few practices I learned and now can’t live without.

• Prioritize protein for breakfast

• Wait 90 minutes for coffee.

• Avoid canola oil & other seed oils

• Limit sugar when possible - especially early in the day.

Movement & Sleep Practices:

One of the biggest realizations I had early in my career is antithetical to today’s hustle culture.

Taking 30-60 minutes to walk in the middle of the day lets me get more done; not less.

How’s that possible?

Same way that getting a good night sleep makes a world of difference.

When we are feeling clear, it’s easier to solve problems & handle stress.

I don’t know about you, but 5 hours of sleep vs. 8 hours feels like night & day.

As does 2,000 steps a day vs. 8,000.

Here’s a few ways I’m optimizing for both movement & sleep:

• Incorporating breaks in the day for movement or stillness

• Balancing my training methodologies: lifting, walking, running, & practicing yoga.

• Stretching throughout the day: while I’m waiting for a file/site to load, for example

• Using blue light blockers, especially late in the day

• Investing in technology that encourages movement & sleep

  • Whoop Fitness Wearable, Under the desk treadmill, Apollo Sleep Wearable

Understanding the Food System

Ever wondered why you can walk into any convenience store and snag a Twinkie for less than $2?

It’s because nearly every ingredient in it is subsidized by government funding.

An old but illuminating study, “Apples to Twinkies 2012” compared subsidy payments between 1995 and 2011.

Get this.

• $18 Billion in subsidizes sponsored the four most common junk food additives:

  • Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy oils (which are eventually processed into hydrogenated vegetable oil). 

• Apples, on the other hand, received only $637 million in subsidies.

  • Not to mention apples are one of the few fresh fruits or vegetables that have a significant federal subsidy.

  • Comparatively, that amount is approximately 3% of the total amount of subsidies allocated to the junk foods listed above. With our tax dollars nonetheless.

Just imagine if the subsidy system was reimagined… if our tax dollars went into funding healthy foods rather then ones that are fueling the obesity epidemic.

This is one of the dozens of strategies the country could take to enhance the food system.

And that’s a big freaking deal.

As Dr. Mark Hyman discusses in Food Fix, “Food is at the nexus of most of our world’s health, economic, environmental, climate, social, and even political crises.”

Here’s some other solutions that I plan to cover in newsletters to come.

• Growing produce at home

• Shopping local and at farmer’s markets

• What to look for in the grocery store

• Reducing food waste

• Hydroponics

Human Potential:

Ever since completing the Philadelphia marathon in 2021 - a challenge I initially deemed impossible - I’ve come to recognize that humans possess reservoirs of untapped potential.

Often, what is possible is self-determined.

That’s why I’ve become fascinated with human potential.

• What processes & systems bring the best out of people? 

• What barriers typically get in the way of an individual’s realization // expansion?

Currently, these three key elements are most interesting to me.

Focus & Peak Performance:

Flow is one of the most powerful forces in the world.

In his groundbreaking book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes it as:

“The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

When you’re so in the moment that you lose track of time, that’s flow.

Whether it’s playing a sport, writing, or even having an engaging conversation, flow is the space between focus & surrender.

Creating the conditions for flow to occur is a key to peak performance, fun, and fulfillment.

Check out this visual from Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model, along with five tips for getting into flow more often.

5 Tips for Finding Flow:

• Remove Distractions

• Engage in Something You Love

• Allocate a Solid Time Block

• Set Clear Goals

• Challenge Yourself... A Little (but not too much)

Habits:

Since reading James Clear’s best-seller, Atomic Habits, I’ve been obsessed with habits.

• How can we make healthy decisions as easy & enjoyable as possible?

• Similarly, what steps can we take to hinder negative habits?

Both questions can be answered by the “4 Laws of Behavior Change,” explained in Clear’s book and summarized below:

Making habits obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying has become an ongoing passion of self-experimentation for me.

Newsletters to come will summarize what I’m finding.

Purpose:

The Japanese have a secret for living meaningful & joyous lives.

Ikigai - the philosophy that lies at the intersection of:

• What do I love?

• What am I good at?

• What can I be paid for?

• What does the world need?

Answering these questions, together, can reveal what we’re here to contribute.

As renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once said, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.”

There is a related concept in Hinduism & Buddhism, known as “Dharma,” which roughly translates to one’s duty or role in life.

Jay Shetty distills this concept down to a formula in his book, Think Like a Monk.

Dharma = Passion + Expertise + Usefulness 

This diagram he provides is quite useful as well:

When we combine the things we love, with what we’re good at, with what’s useful to those around us - we unlock a new level of performance. 

All while actually enjoying what we’re doing as well. 

Spirituality

Mindfulness & Meditation:

I think about my life in two major segments; before & after learning meditation.

Before, I was over-thinking all the time and stressed because of it.

Afterwards, I’ve become grounded & present (most of the time, definitely not always).

But getting started with a consistent practice was challenging.

Luckily, I stumbled upon the book Stress Less, Accomplish More, by Emily Fletcher that shared stories & science that was hard to contend with.

Here’s one of my favorite studies:

Conducted by Harvard in 2015, an eight-week daily meditation program showed unmistakable physical changes in the brain. 

Specifically, subjects experienced a shrinking of the amygdala (brain’s fear center) and the expansion of the brain stem— the area in which feel-good neurochemicals dopamine & serotonin originate. (Schulte, 2015).

Interested in learning more?

Here’s a prior newsletter, my favorite app, and a meditation with my favorite teacher.

OPEN is my favorite app for meditation, breathwork & yoga.

If you click the link above, you can try 30 days out for free ✌️

Philosophy:

Philosophy is a never-ending body of work - one that I know little about.

I plan on learning & sharing more here, but until then - here’s a list of philosophical questions that might reveal themselves in newsletters to come.

They’re also just worth thinking about…

• What is the meaning of life?

• Do we have free will?

• What is the nature of consciousness?

• What is the relationship between the mind and the body?

• What is the role of art in society?

"The more you know, the more you realize you don't know." - Aristotle

Writing & Creativity:

I’m finding myself more fascinated by creativity by the day…

• Where does it come from?

• What blocks it from flowing?

• What practices or ways of seeing the world help us tap into our creative potential?

I explored each of these questions in a previous newsletter, shown below.

But in the future, I plan dive in further in & share what I discover in my own creative journey.

Here are a few practices that are keeping me creative at the moment.

• Morning Pages: a daily practice of writing 1-3 pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness thoughts first thing in the morning.

• Long Walks: A still mind is a creative mind. Long walks, especially in nature, help ground me & prime my mind for writing.

• Notepad / iPhone Notes: Anytime a new idea comes up, I write it down. Same thing with learning something new on a podcast. Keeping track of topics that excite me is fundamental to my creative process.

• Inspiring Workspaces: Our physical surroundings play a crucial role in our creativity.

  • Minimalism is helpful - as illustrated by Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La.

  • Novelty is too, which is why Julia Cameron recommends a weekly Artist’s Date.

Do these topics sound interesting?

If so, great. You’re in the right place.

If you or anyone you know is interested in diving deeper - let me know. 

I’m currently hiring. 

I’m looking for someone to assist me in developing my Second Brain— that is, a system of organizing information to enhance its storage & retrieval.

This approach, popularized by productivity expert, Tiago Forte, and is a centerpiece of the emerging creator economy.

What this means in terms of the position - is that you’ll be paid to read books, such as those quoted above, which I’ve already outlined.

I looking for assistance in consolidating these outlines into a database, stored in Notion.

Interested? Or know someone that might be?

Shoot me a message and feel free to reach out with questions.

Thank you for reading

Hope you have an awesome week ahead.

With gratitude,

Aidan