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French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon – 8/10

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French Food Rule #1: Parents: You are in charge of your children’s food education.

Healthy eating is one of the most important skills that parents help their children develop. Underlying this focus on food education for young children is a simple principle: Regardless of their future, how and what my children eat will be of great importance to their health, happiness, success, and longevity.

Kids who have authoritative parents are more likely to eat more vegetables and to have a healthier weight. In contrast, children whose parents are overly controlling tend to be less eager to taste new foods and less able to effectively regulate their own eating habits.

Forcing kids to eat their vegetables may actually increase dislike of those vegetables and reduce their willingness to accept new foods; studies have shown that children of strictly controlling parents actually eat fewer vegetables and more high-fat foods.

An authoritative parent is kind but firm, sets clear limits for children’s behaviors, respond to children’s needs, and helps children reach their goals. The goal is not to control what they eat, but to teach them how to eat well.

Tips for Authoritative Family Food Lessons

  • Healthy eating is about how, when, and why you eat, as much as it is about what you eat.
  • Create House Rules about food, and stick to them. For example, kids always have permission to reach for a piece of fruit but have to ask permission for anything else.
  • Give your children simple choices about vegetables (eggplant or spinach this evening?), but don’t let them plan your menus or ask them to make all of the choices.
  • Be firm rather than hesitant when serving meals. Rather than “Are you going to come eat now?” try saying “It’s time to eat now.”
  • Rather than “Will you try this?” try a warm but firm statement like: “Here’s the delicious dish that I prepared for us.”
  • Kids do as we do, rather than as we say. Model positive eating behaviors. If parents eat well, chances are that children will too.

French Food Rule #2: Avoid emotional eating. Food is not a pacifier, a distraction, a toy, a bribe, a reward, or a substitute for discipline.

  • French parents don’t punish (or reward) with food because it disrupts children’s ability to regulate their eating habits and increases the risk of eating disorders.

Tips:

  • Teach your children to seek out good foods (rather than avoiding “bad” foods).
  • Teach your children that while food is a source of pleasure, eating should not be emotionally driven. For example, offer fruit (like an apple) or vegetable as comfort food instead of candy.
  • Encourage children to focus on food as a source of sensory pleasure. Teach children to use words to describe food beyond saying “it’s good” or “it’s bad.,” Ask them to describe the sensations. “It’s dry.” “It’s spicy.” “It’s soft (or hard).” Ask them, “How does it feel on your tongue?” “How does it feel when you swallow it?”
  • Try “logical consequences” rather than punishments. “First we eat our vegetables, then we eat dessert.” Note that framing dessert as a reward (“ Eat your vegetables, or you won’t get dessert”) may encourage children to devalue or even dislike vegetables. Instead, French parents establish a logical sequence for meals, which creates an easy routine of “first this, then that.”

Mealtime Rituals

The French never, ever, eat without putting a tablecloth on the table. They dignify the table, and themselves, through clothing it with the appropriate item to be worn for the most important moment of the day.

Food is never eaten standing up, or in the car, or on the go. Food is not eaten anywhere, in fact, but at the table.

  • Food is only served when everyone is at the table. Everyone waits for everyone else to be served, and for the ritual “Bon appétit!” to be said before beginning the meal.

Market Freshness

  • Buying food at the market ensures it is fresher. Vendors ask, “When do you want to eat it?” The customer’s response identifies not only the day, but also the meal at which the item was to be consumed. “Tomorrow for lunch!” Or “Dinner on Saturday!”

French Schooling & Food Education

  • Everyone eats the same thing.  If the kids don’t like what’s being served, they go hungry.
  • In French schools, mealtime is meant to allow students to socialize, to take pleasure in new foods and to discover them in a relaxed environment.
  • At school, under the influence of peers, children taste and eat things that would have them turning up their noses at home (peer-induced behavioral change is also confirmed by American research).
  • Government regulations ensure balanced meals. Vegetables had to be served at every meal: raw one day, cooked the next. Fried food could be served no more than once per week.
  • Instead of the usual “What did you do in school today?” Parents asked, “So how did you like your lunch?”
  • A typical question one French parent will ask another is: “So, what does she like to eat”?

French Food Rule #3: Parents schedule meals and menus. Kids eat what adults eat: no substitutes and no short-order cooking.

The primary way in which French parents control their kids’ access to food is through strictly scheduling mealtimes. Food is not provided on demand. Food is provided when adults decide it should be provided.

Traditionally, the French believe that children who have not yet reached the age of reason (~age of seven) shouldn’t be allowed to decide about many things, most certainly not what and how they eat.

Tips:

  • Decide on a set time for at least one sit-down family meal per day (like dinner).
  • Set the table (this is a good chore to assign!), and keep mealtime as structured as possible.
  • Make sure there is always one thing on the table your child likes. Other than this, kids eat what adults eat. This means no substitutes. It also means an end to being a short-order cook. Yes, this does mean that your children may leave the table hungry now and then (but they won’t starve). The French believe that they’ll simply eat more at their next meal.
  • Take a look at your schedule, including kids’ extracurricular activities. Is your busy lifestyle preventing you from eating proper meals? Being able to manage one’s schedule in order to make sufficient time for healthy eating is an important skill to teach your children.
  • Offer choice within appropriate boundaries. For older children, set up weekly menus like a “food contract.” Or offer menu options for the week. Once decided, the menu is fixed.
  • Serve smaller portions and allow them to ask for more if they want. Don’t force children to finish everything on their plates. Children who retain a sense of control over eating are healthier eaters as adults.

French Food Rule #4: Food is social. Eat family meals together at the table, with no distractions.

  • The French never eat alone (at home or at work) if there is someone else to eat with.
  • From quite a young age, kids accompany their parents through long dinners, which sometimes start very late by North American standards. And in France, get-togethers with family and close friends, especially meals, are often multigenerational affairs. In this case, everyone was not only welcome, but also expected to come.
  • Only when everyone had been served, and the maîtresse gave permission, could kids begin to eat; anyone who gave in to temptation had their dessert promptly taken away.

French food culture core principles:

  • Convivialité (“feasting/ socializing together”) – for the French, eating is inherently social. People of all ages tend to eat together, whether at home with their families or at work with colleagues. Also, they are expected to eat the same thing together. Meals are about the collective enjoyment of a set of dishes, not individual choice about what to eat.
  • Le goût (“taste”) – for the French, it is very important that things taste good, and people spend a lot of time making sure they do, even for the smallest of children.

Rule #4 Tips on Eating Together

  • No TV, radio, phones, or other electronic devices: mealtime is family time.
  • Meals are moments during which children get your undivided attention. How much misbehavior at the table is simply attention-seeking?
  • Conversation can capture your children’s attention, keep them at the table, and put them in a positive frame of mind for eating. As soon as my children sit down, I sit with them and start talking.
  • Create rituals. One of our favorites is asking each person in turn to tell a story about his or her day.

French Food Rule #5: Eat vegetables of all colors of the rainbow. Don’t eat the same main dish more than once per week.

The Strategy:

1. Explain the rules in advance.

2. All rules must be obeyed.

3. Once introduced, stick to the new rules. Absolutely no backing down.

Things to Say when my kids objected:

  • If you eat well at mealtimes, you won’t be hungry in between.
  • You’re still hungry? I guess you should have eaten more at your last meal.
  • Or, on a more positive note: You’re hungry? Great! You’ll really appreciate your next meal. It’s in only … [fill in blank] hours.
  • “Didn’t like it? That’s okay. You’ll try again later.”
  • Or, “Great, you liked that olive? Try this one.”
  • “Taste this, you’ll like it” works better than “Eat this, it’s good for you.”
  • If your children don’t like something, encourage them to believe that they eventually will. “Oh, you don’t like it?” I’ll say to my children. “That’s okay. You just haven’t tasted it enough times yet. You’ll like it when you grow up.”

Tips on Eating a Variety of Healthy Foods

  • Make variety fun! Try “taste training” with your children. Encourage them to move beyond judging food by its color or appearance— and use their other senses to assess foods.
  • The “stuff sack” is one game played in French schools: place a “mystery food” in a bag, and allow children to feel it, then guess what it is. The results will often surprise adults as well as kids. Or try taste-testing blindfolded. Adults participate too!
  • Create your own Family Food Rule for variety: We won’t eat the same thing more than ___________ every __________. For example, we try not to eat the same dish more than once per week.
  • Build variety on top of what kids already like. If they enjoy one type of cheese, try others. If they like pasta, serve it tossed with broccoli one day, spinach leaves the next.
  • Introduce variations on your children’s favorite dishes. Try pasta with olive oil one time, canola oil the next, and butter the next. Or try store-bought grated cheese, then grate your own Parmesan with your child. Sprinkle a bit of parsley on cooked carrots one night, and a bit of dill the next. The options are endless, and all of them help teach your children that variety is okay.
  • Don’t disguise or hide variety: make “healthy” foods obvious and appealing. Try making little “happy face” plates (I often do this with two tomatoes for eyes, half a grape for a nose, an apple slice for the mouth, grated carrots for the hair) to serve at the start of a meal.
  • What do you do if your child resists variety on the plate (e.g. if he or she is fussy about multiple foods, or about foods touching)? Encourage your child, gently, to grow out of this habit. Try combining two ingredients they like. Or let them do it themselves, using this method: at a moment when your child is calm and ready to eat (hungry, but not too hungry), place two complementary foods in two separate bowls in front of them (e.g. yogurt and jam, or pasta and cheese). Give them a third, empty bowl, and encourage them to mix the ingredients themselves. You might want to model the same mixing exercise yourself with your own bowls and see if they follow your lead.

French Food Rule #6a: For picky eaters: You don’t have to like it, but you do have to taste it.

  • It is important not to enter into a power struggle: if their kids refused food, their parents would simply take it away, with little fuss. But no substitutes would be provided— and parents held firm to this rule.
  • “Opposition to food can’t persist if there is no opponent. In the face of a child’s refusal to eat, the best parental response is serene indifference. Parents should remind themselves: ‘I know this will pass. My child will not continue refusing to eat if I simply refuse to react.’”

French Food Rule #6b: For fussy eaters: You don’t have to like it, but you do have to eat it.

  • French advice focuses on teaching young children to get used to variety in taste, texture, and color, for example.
  • Children shouldn’t be forced to eat (or, even worse, to clean their plates) but simply to taste the things that are served.
  • Don’t serve the new food in isolation. Serve it as part of an enjoyable meal. Make sure there is at least one thing that your child likes on the table.
  • When encouraging children to try new foods, serve small portions of new things. This may work better than larger portions.
  • Don’t offer new foods unless you are in a sufficiently relaxed mood, and sufficiently attentive and available, to make the experience pleasant for both you and your child.
  • Try simple textures. We often introduce new foods in purees or soups, even for our older daughter. Children get used to the taste and can then move on to the “real” texture of the food.
  • Try an indirect, low-pressure way of offering a new food. Place a little plate with a small portion of the new food on the table, near but not directly in front of your child. Taste a piece or two, with clear enjoyment. Then leave it. Chances are, your child will pick up a piece and try it. If not, remove anything your child has not eaten after a short while, without a fuss. Above all, don’t substitute with anything else.

French Food Rule #7: Limit snacks, ideally one per day (two maximum), and not within one hour of meals.

  • Kids tend to self-regulate the total calories they eat over the course of a day. So if they don’t eat a lot at breakfast, they’ll have a bigger midmorning snack. Or if they eat lots at after-school snack, they won’t have a big dinner.
  • Teach your children the difference between feeling satisfied and feeling full. Encourage them to stop eating when comfortably full (but not stuffed). Most young children have a natural “fullness feeling” to which they are sensitive, so don’t push them to override and suppress this.
  • Think of snacks like mini-meals: they should be mostly made of healthy, unprocessed foods, just like at (say) dinnertime. Snack only at the table.
  • Create a snacking rule that suits your family: for example, children never have to ask to reach for a piece of fruit, but they do have to ask permission for anything else.
  • If your child doesn’t eat much at one meal, advance the timing of the next meal rather than giving an extra snack.
  • Water, for the French, is like a food group. Drink water at snacktime. Teach your children to distinguish between feelings of thirst and feelings of hunger.

French Food Rule #8: Take your time, for both cooking and eating. Slow food is happy food.

  • American’s spend just over one hour per day eating, while the French spend more than two hours per day eating
  • The French believe the most important thing is to enjoy your food.
  • Rather, enjoyment is the goal of eating. You can’t enjoy yourself if you are wolfing down your food, or worrying about your weight, counting calories, keeping score of micronutrient consumption, or rushing from one place to another in the car.
  • Parents will encourage kids to eat until they are satisfied. They don’t ask “Are you full?” but rather “Are you satisfied?” or “Have you had enough?”
  • Children are naturally slow eaters. Slow down your eating to their pace, just as you slow down your walking pace.
  • Encourage (and model) food choices based on maintaining good health and pleasure. Being positive about food will have better results in the long run.
  • Praise those who eat well rather than punishing those who don’t.
  • Don’t create a negative emotional setting (pressure, demands to hurry, criticism, tension).
  • Make the table festive. Use an “every day” tablecloth, and get the kids to help decorate it. Use your imagination!
  • Don’t be anxious: don’t hover, don’t worry, don’t get irritated, remain calm. Relax and enjoy and your kids will too.

French Food Rule #9: Eat mostly real, homemade food, and save treats for special occasions.

  • Anything processed is not “real” food.
  • Only eat fast food on days starting with F.
  • Try just a dot of butter, rather than ketchup, on vegetables. Fat is an essential nutrient (everyone needs it in small quantities), and the French believe that butter (in moderation) is best! Plus, kids have fun watching it melt!
  • Limit junk, fast, and “fake” foods to a once-per-week treat.
  • The average French household spends one-quarter of its food budget (excluding desserts) on vegetables. What would your weekly menus look like if you did that?

French Food Rule #10 (The Golden Rule): Eating is joyful, not stressful. Treat the food rules as habits or routines rather than strict regulations; it’s fine to relax them once in a while.

  • Avoid excesses in eating. Excessive control of food and obsession with healthy eating are to be avoided, just as much as indulgent or unrestrained eating of poor-quality food. The principles of moderation and balance guide the French.
  • This is even true for their own food rules: you have to be moderate in following the rules, not overzealous and strict.
  • Forcing children to clean their plate, for example, can disrupt children’s own internal cues and responsiveness to feelings of hunger and fullness— literally teaching them how to overeat.

New Routine:

  • Eat four meals per day: breakfast, lunch, after-school snack , dinner.
  • No more random, extra snacks, especially bedtime snacks.
  • Eat only at the table.
  • No eating in the stroller, car, or anywhere else.
  • Eat slowly.
  • No gulping or gobbling.
  • Every bite has to be chewed slowly.
  • Children eat what they are served.
  • Adults, not children, decide what is served.
  • No substitute or replacement dishes, and no extra “fillers” like bread and butter.
  • Kids eat what adults eat.
  • No special dishes for the kids.
  • Don’t eat the same dish more than once a week.
  • Stop relying on pasta and bread.
  • Eat processed foods only once a week.
  • Shop only at the local market.
  • No ketchup, except on hot dogs and hamburgers.
  • No complaining about food.
  • If you complain about something, you have to eat a second serving.

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt 9/10

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Introduction: Overwhelming Obstacles

  • The core of strategy work: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.
  • A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.
  • Bad strategy tends to skip over pesky details such as problems. It ignores the power of choice and focus, trying instead to accommodate a multitude of conflicting demands and interests.
  • Unlike a stand-alone decision or a goal, a strategy is a coherent set of analyses, concepts, policies, arguments, and actions that respond to a high-stakes challenge.
  • A good strategy includes a set of coherent actions. They are not “implementation” details. A strategy that fails to define a variety of plausible and feasible immediate actions is missing a critical component.
  • Executives who complain about “execution” problems have usually confused strategy with goal setting.
  • A good strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.
  • The guiding policy specifies the approach to dealing with the obstacles called out in the diagnosis. It is like a signpost, marking the direction forward but not defining the details of the trip. Coherent actions are feasible coordinated policies, resource commitments, and actions designed to carry out the guiding policy.
  • Bad strategy is more than just the absence of good strategy. Bad strategy may actively avoid analyzing obstacles because a leader believes that negative thoughts get in the way. Leaders may create bad strategies by mistakenly treating strategy work as an exercise in goal setting rather than problem solving.

Part I: Good and Bad Strategy

Good Strategy: having a coherent strategy — one that coordinates policies and actions.

A good strategy doesn’t just draw on existing strength; it creates strength through the coherence of its design. Most organizations of any size don’t do this. Rather, they pursue multiple objectives that are unconnected with one another or, worse, that conflict with one another.

Chapter 1: Good Strategy is Unexpected

Good strategy requires leaders who are willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests.

Strategy is at least as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does.

Chapter 2: Discovering Power

Half of what alert participants learn in a strategy exercise is to consider the competition even when no one tells you to do it in advance.

Use your relative advantages to impose out-of-proportion / asymmetric / exorbitant costs on the opposition and complicate his problem of competing with you.

Language of business strategy: identify your strengths and weaknesses, assess the opportunities and risks (your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses), and build on your strengths.

Chapter 3: Bad Strategy

Bad Strategy Components

Fluff – Fluff is a form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high – level thinking.

Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognize or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy or improve it.

Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.

Bad strategic objectives. A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.

Bad strategies are long on goals and short on policy or action. It assumes that goals are all you need. It puts forward strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impracticable. It uses high-sounding words and phrases to hide these failings.

  • If the challenge is not defined, it is difficult or impossible to assess the quality of the strategy. And if you cannot assess a strategy’s quality, you cannot reject a bad strategy or improve a good one.
  • If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, you don’t have a strategy. Instead, you have either a stretch goal, a budget, or a list of things you wish would happen.

A strategy is like a lever that magnifies force.

  • What key strength are you building on or what change in the industry can open up new opportunities? Can you clarify what the point of leverage might be here, in your company?
  • To obtain higher performance, leaders must identify the critical obstacles to forward progress and then develop a coherent approach to overcoming them. This may require product innovation, or new approaches to distribution, or a change in organizational structure.
  • Good strategy works by focusing energy and resources on one, or a very few, pivotal objectives whose accomplishment will lead to a cascade of favorable outcomes.
  • A leader may successfully identify the key challenge and propose an overall approach to dealing with the challenge. But if the consequent strategic objectives are blue sky, not much has been achieved.
  • The purpose of a good strategy is to offer a potentially achievable way of surmounting a key challenge. If the leader’s strategic objectives are just as difficult to accomplish as the original challenge, there has been little value added by the strategy.
  • When a leader characterizes the challenge as underperformance, it sets the stage for bad strategy. Underperformance is a result. The true challenges are the reasons for the underperformance. Unless leadership offers a theory of why things haven’t worked in the past, or why the challenge is difficult, it is hard to generate a good strategy.

Chapter 4: Why So Much Bad Strategy?

One common reason for choosing avoidance is the pain or difficulty of choice. When leaders are unwilling or unable to make choices among competing values and parties, bad strategy is the consequence.

A second pathway to bad strategy is the siren song of template-style strategy — filling in the blanks with vision, mission, values, and strategies. This path offers a one – size – fits – all substitute for the hard work of analysis and coordinated action.

A third pathway to bad strategy is New Thought — the belief that all you need to succeed is a positive mental attitude.

When a strategy works, we tend to remember what was accomplished, not the possibilities that were painfully set aside.

  • “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”

When organizations are unable to make new strategies – when people evade the work of choosing among different paths into the future – then you get vague mom-and- apple-pie goals that everyone can agree on. Such goals are direct evidence of leadership’s insufficient will or political power to make or enforce hard choices. Put differently, universal buy – usually signals the absence of choice.

The general outline goes like this: the transformational leader (1) develops or has a vision, (2) inspires people to sacrifice (change) for the good of the organization, and (3) empowers people to accomplish the vision.

The template generally looks like this: The Vision: Fill in your unique vision of what the school / business / nation will be like in the future. Currently popular unique visions are to be “the best” or “the leading” or “the best known.”

For example,

  • Dow Chemical’s vision is “To be the most profitable and respected science – driven chemical company in the world.”  Enron’s vision was “to become the world’s leading energy company.”
  • The Mission: Fill in a high – sounding politically correct statement of the purpose of the school / business / nation. Dow’s mission is “To passionately innovate what is essential to human progress by providing sustainable solutions to our customers.”
  • The Values: Fill in a statement describing the company’s values. Make sure they are noncontroversial. Dow’s values are “Integrity, Respect for People, and Protecting Our Planet.” Enron’s were “Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence.”
  • The Strategies: Fill in some aspirations / goals but call them strategies. For example, Dow’s corporate strategies are “Preferentially invest in a portfolio of technology – integrated, market – driven performance businesses that create value for our shareholders and growth for our customers. Manage a portfolio of asset – integrated building block businesses to generate value for our downstream portfolio.”

Jack Welch said: “The first step of making strategy real is figuring out the big ‘aha’ to gain sustainable competitive advantage — in other words, a significant, meaningful insight about how to win.” He also said, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”

Chapter 5: The Kernel of Good Strategy

The kernel of a strategy contains three elements:

  • A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often-overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical.
  • A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis.
  • A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy.

In business, the challenge is usually dealing with change and competition.

  • The first step toward effective strategy is diagnosing the specific structure of the challenge rather than simply naming performance goals.
  • The second step is choosing an overall guiding policy for dealing with the situation that builds on or creates some type of leverage or advantage.
  • The third step is the design of a configuration of actions and resource allocations that implement the chosen guiding policy.

In many large organizations, the challenge is often diagnosed as internal. That is, the organization’s competitive problems may be much lighter than the obstacles imposed by its own outdated routines, bureaucracy, pools of entrenched interests, lack of cooperation across units, and plain – old bad management. Thus, the guiding policy lies in the realm of reorganization and renewal. And the set of coherent actions are changes in people, power, and procedures. In other cases, the challenge may be building or deepening competitive advantage by pushing the frontiers of organizational capability.

Diagnosis: ‘What’s going on here?’: A great deal of strategic work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation.

  • At a minimum, a diagnosis names or classifies the situation, linking facts into patterns and suggesting that more attention be paid to some issues and less to others.
  • When a diagnosis classifies the situation as a certain type, it opens access to knowledge about how analogous situations were handled in the past. An explicit diagnosis permits one to evaluate the rest of the strategy.
  • In business, most deep strategic changes are brought about by a change in diagnosis – a change in the definition of the company’s situation.

Guiding Policy: Like the guardrails on a highway, the guiding policy directs and constrains action without fully defining its content.

  • A good strategy is not just “what” you are trying to do. It is also “why” and “how” you are doing it.
  • A good guiding policy tackles the obstacles identified in the diagnosis by creating or drawing upon sources of advantage.
  • A guiding policy creates advantage by anticipating the actions and reactions of others, by reducing the complexity and ambiguity in the situation, by exploiting the leverage inherent in concentrating effort on a pivotal or decisive aspect of the situation, and by creating policies and actions that are coherent, each building on the other rather than canceling one another out.
  • But, absent a good guiding policy, there is no principle of action to follow.

Action: “Without action, the world would still be an idea.”

  • The actions within the kernel of strategy should be coherent. That is, the resource deployments, policies, and maneuvers that are undertaken should be consistent and coordinated. The coordination of action provides the most basic source of leverage or advantage available in strategy.
  • On the other hand, the potential gains to coordination do not mean that more centrally directed coordination is always a good thing.

Part II: Sources of Power

A good strategy works by harnessing power and applying it where it will have the greatest effect.

In the short term, this may mean attacking a problem or rival with adroit combinations of policy, actions, and resources.

In the longer term, it may involve cleverly using policies and resource commitments to develop capabilities that will be of value in future contests.

Chapter 6: Using Leverage

A good strategy draws power from focusing minds, energy, and action. That focus, channeled at the right moment onto a pivotal objective, can produce a cascade of favorable outcomes. I call this source of power leverage.

In general, strategic leverage arises from a mixture of anticipation (e.g. behavior of others, especially rivals).

To achieve leverage, the strategist must have insight into a pivot point that will magnify the effects of focused energy and resources.

A pivoting point magnifies the effect of effort. It is a natural or created imbalance in a situation, a place where a relatively small adjustment can unleash much larger pent-up forces.

Returns to concentration arise when focusing efforts on fewer, or more limited, objectives generates larger payoffs. These gains flow from combinations of constraints and threshold effects.

“Threshold effect” exists when there is a critical level of effort necessary to affect the system. Levels of effort below this threshold have little payoff. When there are threshold effects, it is prudent to limit objectives to those that can be affected by the resources at the strategist’s disposal. For example, there seems to be a threshold effect in advertising. That is, a very small amount of advertising will produce no result at all. One has to get over this hump, or threshold, to start getting a response to advertising efforts.

Chapter 7: Proximate Objectives

One of a leader’s most powerful tools is the creation of a good proximate objective — one that is close enough at hand to be feasible. A proximate objective name a target that the organization can reasonably be expected to hit, even overwhelm.

  • An important duty of any leader is to simplify the complexity and ambiguity of the situation – one that is solvable (e.g. war on drugs = hard to achieve/not feasible)
  • Many leaders fail badly at this responsibility, announcing ambitious goals without resolving a good chunk of ambiguity about the specific obstacles to be overcome.
  • The proximate objective is guided by forecasts of the future, but the more uncertain the future, the more its essential logic is that of “taking a strong position and creating options,” not of looking far ahead.

One does not win a chess game by always selecting moves that are directly aimed at trying to mate the opponent or even at trying to win a particular piece. For the most part, the aim of a move is to find positions for one’s pieces that

  • a) increase their mobility, that is , increase the options open to them and decrease the freedom of operation of the opponent’s pieces and
  • b) impose certain relatively stable patterns on the board that induce enduring strength for oneself and enduring weakness for the opponent.

What one single feasible objective, when accomplished, would make the biggest difference?

Chapter 8: Chain-Link Systems

  • A system has chain-link logic when its performance is limited by its weakest link.
  • In a business context, this typically means each department is dependent on the other such that if one department underperforms, the performance of the entire system will decline.
  • Quality matching – if you are in charge of one link of the chain, there is no point in investing resources in making your link better if other link managers are not. The whole chain must be strengthened.
  • I learned that in assessing a property’s potential, one should identify the limiting factors. If a house is near a noisy highway, that is a limiting factor. No matter how much marble is put in the bathrooms or how fine the cabinetry is in the kitchen, the noise will limit the house’s value.
  • If you have a special skill or insight at removing limiting factors, then you can be very successful (e.g. we don’t have enough leads, our profit margins aren’t meeting targets, etc.).

Chapter 9: Using Design

A good strategy is design, and design is about fitting various pieces together, so they work as a coherent whole.

These principles mean that resources and tight coordination are partial substitutes for each other. If the organization has few resources, the challenge can be met only by clever, tight integration. On the other hand, if more resources are available, then less tight integration may be needed. Put differently, the greater the challenge, the greater the need for a good, coherent, design-type strategy.

A strategic resource is a kind of property that is fairly long lasting, that has been constructed, developed over time, designed, or discovered by a company and that competitors cannot duplicate without suffering a net economic loss. A high – quality strategic resource yielding a powerful competitive advantage makes for great strategic simplicity.

Success leads to laxity and bloat, and these lead to decline. Few organizations avoid this tragic arc.

Chapter 10: Focus

“Focus” has two meanings. First, it denotes the coordination of policies that produces extra power through their interacting and overlapping effects. Second, it denotes the application of that power to the right target.

At the core, strategy is about focus, and most complex organizations don’t focus their resources. Instead, they pursue multiple goals at once, not concentrating enough resources to achieve a breakthrough in any of them.

Chapter 11: Growth

Growing the size of the business is not a strategy – it is the result of increased demand for your products and services. 

Chapter 12: Using Advantage

In real rivalry, it is the leader’s job to identify which asymmetries (differences) can be turned into important advantages.

You must press where you have advantages and side-step situations in which you do not. You must exploit your rivals’ weaknesses and avoid leading on your own.

The basic definition of competitive advantage is straightforward. If your business can produce at a lower cost than can competitors, or if it can deliver more perceived value than can competitors, or a mix of the two, then you have a competitive advantage.

Defining “sustainability” is trickier. For an advantage to be sustained, your competitors must not be able to duplicate it. Or, more precisely, they must not be able to duplicate the resources underlying it.

For that you must possess what I term an “isolating mechanism,” such as a patent giving its holder the legally enforceable right to monopolize the use of a technology for a time. More complex forms of isolating mechanisms include reputations, commercial and social relationships, network effects, dramatic economies of scale, and tacit knowledge and skill gained through experience.

Increasing value requires a strategy for progress on at least one of four different fronts:

  • Deepening advantages – widening this gap by either increasing value to buyers, reducing costs, or both.
  • Broadening the extent of advantages – looking away from products, buyers, and competitors and looking instead at the special skills and resources that underlie a competitive advantage. In other words, “Build on your strengths.”
  • Creating higher demand for advantaged products or services – when the number of buyers grows and /or when the quantity demanded by each buyer increases.
  • Strengthening the isolating mechanisms that block easy replication and imitation by competitors.

Chapter 13: Using Dynamics

Create new opportunities and competitive advantages through pure innovation or exploit a wave of change.

  • Waves of change are largely exogenous — they are mostly beyond the control of any one organization.

When change occurs, most people focus on the main effects – the spurts in growth of new types of products and the falling demand for others. You must dig beneath this surface reality to understand the forces underlying the main effect and develop a point of view about the second – order and derivative changes that have been set into motion (e.g. GLP drugs > weight loss > decrease cravings > impacts snack foods)

To aid my own vision into the fog of change I use a number of mental guideposts. Each guidepost is an observation or way of thinking that seems to warrant attention.

First – transition induced by escalating fixed costs. This increase may force the industry to consolidate because only the largest competitors can cover these fixed charges

Second – transition created by deregulation – major changes in government policy.

Third highlights predictable biases in forecasting:

  • People rarely predict that a business or economic trend will peak and then decline; the faster the uptake of a durable product, the sooner the market will be saturated;
  • Standard forecast will be for a “battle of the titans.” This prediction, that the market leaders will duke it out for supremacy, undercutting the middle – sized and smaller firms, is sometimes correct but tends to be applied to almost all situations.
  • Future winners will be, or will look like, the current apparent winners.

Fourth marks the need to properly assess incumbent response to change (expect incumbent firms to resist a transition that threatens to undermine the complex skills and valuable positions they have accumulated over time).

Fifth guidepost is the concept of an attractor state (describes how the industry “should” work in the light of technological forces and the structure of demand).

  • An attractive state provides a sense of direction for the future evolution of an industry.

Chapter 14: Inertia and Entropy

In business, inertia is an organization’s unwillingness or inability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Even with change programs running at full throttle, it can take many years to alter a large company’s basic functioning. Similarly, weakly managed organizations tend to become less organized and focused.

Successful strategies often owe a great deal to the inertia and inefficiency of rivals.

  • Netflix pushed past the now – bankrupt Blockbuster because the latter could not, or would not, abandon its focus on retail stores.

Understanding the inertia of rivals may be just as vital as understanding your own strengths.

An organization’s greatest challenge may not be external threats or opportunities, but instead the effects of entropy and inertia. In such a situation, organizational renewal becomes a priority.

  • Transforming a complex organization is an intensely strategic challenge. Leaders must diagnose the causes and effects of entropy and inertia, create a sensible guiding policy for effecting change, and design a set of coherent actions designed to alter routines, culture, and the structure of power and influence.

Organizational inertia generally falls into one of three categories: inertia of routine, cultural inertia, and inertia by proxy.

Routines: Inertia due to obsolete or inappropriate routines can be fixed. If senior leaders become convinced that new routines are essential, change can be quick.

Culture Inertia: The first step in breaking organizational culture inertia is simplification. This helps to eliminate the complex routines, processes, and hidden bargains among units that mask waste and inefficiency. Strip out excess layers of administration and halt nonessential operations – sell them off, close them down, spin them off, or outsource the services.

  • Coordinating committees and a myriad of complex initiatives need to be disbanded.
  • After the first round of simplification, it may be necessary to fragment the operating units. This will be the case when units do not need to work in close coordination — when they are basically separable.
  • In general, to change the group’s norms, the alpha member must be replaced by someone who expresses different norms and values. All this is speeded along if a challenging goal is set.

Proxy: A business may choose to not respond to change or attack because responding would undermine still – valuable streams of profit. Inertia by proxy disappears when the organization decides that adapting to changed circumstances is more important than hanging onto old profit streams.

Part III: Thinking Like a Strategist

In creating strategy, it is often important to take on the viewpoints of others, seeing how the situation looks to a rival or to a customer. Advice to do this is both often given and taken. Yet this advice skips over what is possibly the most useful shift in viewpoint: thinking about your own thinking.

Chapter 16: The Science of Strategy

A good strategy is, in the end, a hypothesis about what will work. Not a wild theory, but an educated judgment.

The ultimate worth of a strategy is determined by its success

This process of learning — hypothesis, data, anomaly, new hypothesis, data, and so on — is called scientific induction and is a critical element of every successful business.

Chapter 17: Using Your Head

Being strategic is being less myopic — less shortsighted — than others. You must perceive and take into account what others do not, be they colleagues or rivals.

Being less myopic is not the same as pretending you can see the future. You must work with the facts on the ground, not the vague outlines of the distant future. Whether it is insight into industry structures and trends, anticipating the actions and reactions of competitors, insight into your own competencies and resources, or stretching your own thinking to cover more of the bases and resist your own biases, being “strategic” largely means being less myopic than your undeliberative self.

Most people, most of the time, solve problems by grabbing the first solution that pops into their heads — the first insight. Our instincts can often produce amazingly good judgments. But our instincts also tell us, incorrectly, that our instincts are always right.

  • You should recognize which situations require deeper reflection. Are competitors or nature leading us into a trap? Can we set a trap for less-wary adversaries?

To guide your own thinking in strategic work, you must cultivate three essential skills or habits.

First, you must have a variety of tools for fighting your own myopia and for guiding your own attention.

  • Problem – Solution Many attempts at strategy lack a good diagnosis. Hence, it is useful to have mental tools for working backward from a guiding policy to the realm of diagnosis and fact.
  • Shift your attention from what is being done to why it is being done, from the directions chosen to the problems that these choices address.

Second, you must develop the ability to question your own judgment. If your reasoning cannot withstand a vigorous attack, your strategy cannot be expected to stand in the face of real competition.

  • Trying to destroy your own ideas is not easy or pleasant. It takes mental toughness to pick apart one’s own insights.
  • When I face a problem, or have generated a first hunch, I turn to this panel and ask, “What is wrong with this approach to the situation? What would you do in this case?”

Third, you must cultivate the habit of making and recording judgments so that you can improve.

  • To commit to a judgment is to choose an interpretation of which issues are critical and which are not and then to choose an implied action.
  • By committing to a judgment — especially a diagnosis — you increase the probability that you will disagree with some of the assessments of others, and thereby increase the chance of learning something.
  • The same principle applies to any meeting you attend. What issues do you expect to arise in the meeting? Who will take which position? Privately commit yourself in advance to some judgments about these issues, and you will have daily opportunities to learn, improve, and recalibrate your judgment.

Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey (8/10)

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Introduction

Every game is composed of two parts, an outer game (plays against an opponent) and an inner game (takes place in the mind of the player and is played against obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt, and self-condemnation.

The secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.

The process doesn’t have to be learned; we already know it. All that is needed is to unlearn the habits that interfere with it and then just let it happen.

Chapter 1: Reflections on the Mental Side of Tennis

The typical tennis lesson has the instructor telling students to improve and focus on six or seven things at once. Over-teaching reduced the likelihood of the desired outcome from occurring.

The results were much better after he learned these lessons:

  • Images are better than words
  • Showing is better than telling
  • Too much instruction is worse than none
  • Trying often produces negative results

Achieving a state of “unconscious” play—where the mind is focused and at one with the body’s movements—enables players to perform at their peak.

Chapter 2: The Discovery of the Two Selves

There are two self’s – Self 1 the conscious, instructive mind) and Self 2 (the subconscious, executing mind). Harmonizing these aspects is crucial.

By thinking too much and trying too hard, Self 1 has produced tension and muscle conflict in the body.  Self-1 does not trust Self-2. Self-1 is responsible for the error but blames Self-2, which undermines their confidence in Self-2.

Enhancing performance involves refining this relationship through:

  1. Learning how to get the clearest possible picture of your desired outcomes
  2. Learning how to trust Self 2 to perform at its best and learn from both successes and failures
  3. Learning to see things “nonjudgmentally”: that is to see what is happening rather than noticing how well or how badly it is happening.

All of these skills above need the art of relaxed concentration.

Chapter Three – Quieting Self 1

Peak performance can only be reached when the mind is quiet and focused.

The first skill to learn is the art of letting go (be non-judgmental) the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.

Self-judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies.  You start to become what you think.

Be clear about this: letting go of judgments does not mean ignoring errors. It simply means seeing events as they are and not adding anything to them.

Judgment results in tightness, and tightness interferes with the fluidity required for accurate and quick movement. Relaxation produces smooth strokes and results from accepting your strokes as they are, even if erratic.

We learn best when we see and feel what we are doing.  Self-2 can work to improve and better, while Self 1 is quiet.

It is impossible to judge one event as positive without seeing other events as not positive or as negative. There is no way to stop just the negative side of the judgmental process. Remain non-judgmental.

Chapter 4: Getting it Together

It is Self 1’s mistrust of Self 2 which causes both the interference called “trying too hard” and that of too much self-instruction. The muscles tense up and the attempt fails.

Trusting your body in tennis means letting your brain and body hit the ball.  The key word is let.

The important thing for a beginning layer to remember is to allow the natural learning process to take place and to forget about stroke-by-stroke instructions.

How to Train Self 2:

  • Watch – absorb visually the image in front of you
  • Practice – when you do, don’t think about what you do. Feel how it is to imitate those images
  • Repeat

Self-2 learns by watching the actions of others, as well as by performing actions itself.  Getting the clearest possible image of your desired outcomes is a most useful tool for communicating with Self 2. Once you have the image, allow the body to do what is necessary to hit it there.

“Asking for Qualities” describes role playing (“imagine you’re the #1 player in tennis) and can elevate your game by getting into that character’s role.

Chapter 5: Discovering Technique

Technique discovery emphasizes feeling and experiencing actions without over-reliance on instructions, maintaining a connection to natural learning processes.

Although it is obvious that we can learn a great deal by watching better players play tennis, we have to learn how to watch. The best method is to watch without assuming that how the pro swings is how you should be swinging.

Chapter 6 – Changing Habits

When one learns how to change a habit, it is a relatively simple matter to learn which ones to change. Once you learn how to learn, you only have to discover what is worth learning.

Learning to change habits involves recognizing and cultivating new habits with a fresh, unencumbered approach, rather than combating old habits directly.

Making a Change, Step-by-Step

Step 1 – Nonjudgmental Observation – awareness of what is, without judgment, is relaxing and is the best precondition for change.

Step 2 – Picture the Desired Outcome – imagine the feel, sound, speed, etc.

Step 3 – Trust Self 2 – let it happen. But no matter what the results, Keep Self 1 out of it.  Trust the process, and let it happen.

Step 4 – Nonjudgmental Observation of Change and Results – Put trust in the natural process and you will not fall in the bucket of trying too hard.

The more you let yourself perform free of control on the tennis court, the more confidence you tend to gain in the beautiful mechanism that is the human body. The more you trust it, the more capable it seems to become.

Chapter 7 – Concentration: Learning to Focus

As one achieves focus, the mind quiets.  As the mind is kept in the present, it becomes calm. Focus means keeping the mind now and here.

To learn this art, practice is needed.

To improve deep concentration, don’t just focus on the ball, focus on the pattern of the seams on the ball as it spins. Once the mind is preoccupied with the seams, it tends not to interfere with the natural movement of the body.

Remember: it is almost impossible to feel or see anything well if you are thinking about how you should be moving.  Forget should’s and experience is.

Since the mind seems to have a will of its own, how can one learn to keep it in the present? By practice. There is no other way. Every time your mind starts to leak away, simply bring it gently back.

How to stay concentrated in the here and now between points? Focus attention on breathing.

Chapter 8: Games People Play on the Court

People don’t just play tennis on the court. They play other social games (good, friends, health or fun).

We live in an achievement-oriented society where people tend to be measured by their competence in various endeavors (e.g. you are a good person and worthy of respect only if you do things successfully)

However, we are what we are; not how we performed/played. The score of a tennis match may be an indicator of how well I performed, or how hard I tried, but it does not define me, nor your self-worth.

*Chapter 9: The Meaning of Competition*

Many children believe that their self-worth is tied to how they perform at tennis and only by being a winner will they be able eligible for love and respect they seek.

Some children desire to fail by making no effort to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an alibi: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t count because I really didn’t try.” What this really means is if they had really tried and lost, then yes, it would count, and their self-esteem/sense of worth is crushed.

Real victory lies in overcoming obstacles, with the journey and process offering more value than the outcome.

In tennis, your opponent will be the obstacle to unlocking your highest potential.

True competition = true cooperation.  Both grow stronger and each participates in the development of the other.

When I’m concerned only about winning, I’m caring about something that I can’t wholly control. Whether I win or lose the external game is a result of my opponent’s skill and effort as well as my own. When one is emotionally attached to results that he can’t control, he tends to become anxious and then try too hard. But one can control the effort he puts into winning. Focus on the things you can control (effort).

It is said that all great things are achieved by great effort. Although I believe that is true, it is not necessarily true that all great effort leads to greatness.

Only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to overcome the obstacle.

Chapter Ten – The Inner Game Off the Court

There are two games in tennis: outer games (against opponents for external prizes) and inner games (mental and emotional obstacles for the knowledge and attainment of your potential).

Building Inner Stability

Those who succeed are the ones who can remain calm in the midst of rapid and unsettling changes.

Inner stability is achieved not by burying one’s head in the sand at the sight of danger, but by acquiring the ability to see the true nature of what is happening and to respond appropriately.

Freedom from stress does not necessarily involve giving up anything, but rather being able to let go of anything, when necessary, and know that one will still be all right. It comes from being more independent and more reliant on one’s own inner resources for resilience.

The message of the Inner Game is simple: focus. Focus of attention in the present moment, the only one you can really live in, is at the heart of this book and at the heart of the art of doing anything well.

Focus means not dwelling on the past, either on mistakes or glories; it means not being so caught up in the future, either its fears or its dreams, that my full attention is taken from the present.

The ability to focus the mind is the ability to not let it run away with you. It does not mean not to think—but to be the one who directs your own thinking.

Stability grows as I learn to accept what I cannot control and take control of what I can.

“Abandon” is a good word to describe what happens to a tennis player who feels he has nothing to lose. He stops caring about the outcome and plays all out.

Focus, trust, choice, non-judgmental awareness were all recommended as tools for this end.

Conclusion

“The Inner Game of Tennis” transcends sports coaching, offering profound insights into mental and emotional well-being. Its core message of focus, trust, and non-judgmental awareness serves as a guide for excelling in any endeavor.

Outlive by Peter Attia – Full Summary (10/10)

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Chapter 1 – The Long Game: From Fast Death to Slow Death

  • Odds are overwhelming that you will die as a result of one of the chronic diseases of aging that I call the Four Horsemen: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, or type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction.
  • Longevity has two components.  The first is how LONG you live, your chronological lifespan, but the second and equally important part is how WELL you live – the quality of your years (HEALTHSPAN)
  • Nutritional biochemistry – how the combinations of nutrients that you eat affect your own metabolism and physiology, and how to use data and technology to come up with the best eating pattern for you
  • One macronutrient, in particular, demands more of our attention than most people realize: not carbs, not fat, but PROTEIN becomes critically important as we age.
  • Exercise is by far the most potent longevity “drug”
  • Emotional suffering can decimate our health on all fronts, and it must be addressed.
  • Longevity demands a paradigm-shifting approach to medicine, one that directs our efforts toward preventing chronic diseases and improving our healthspan – and doing it now rather than waiting until disease has taken hold or until our cognitive and physical function has already declined. It’s not “preventative” medicine, it’s PROACTIVE medicine.

Chapter 2 – Medicine 3.0: Rethinking Medicine for the Age of Chronic Disease

  • Medicine 1.0 – conclusions were based on direct observation (pure guesswork).
  • Medicine 2.0 – advent of germ theory of disease – created the scientific method.  This represented a philosophical shift from observing and guessing to observing and then forming a hypothesis.  
  • Medicine 3.0 – focuses on prevention than treatment, considers the patient as a unique individual, and the starting point is the honest assessment and acceptance of risk – including the risk of doing nothing. Pays more attention to maintaining healthspan.
  • Medicine 3.0 demands much more from you, the patient: You must be well-informed, medically literature to a reasonable degree, clear-eyed about your goals, and cognizant of the true nature of risk.

Chapter 3 – Objective, Strategy, Tactics: A Road Map for Reading This Book

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the nose before defeat

Sun Tzu
  • Objective > Strategy > Tactics. To achieve our objectives, we first need to have a strategy: an approach, a conceptual scaffolding or mental model that is informed by science, is tailored to our goals, and give us options. Our specific tactics flow from our strategy, and the strategy derives from our objectives. We know what the object is, but the strategy is the key to victory.

Three Areas of Healthspan Decline:

  • 1. Cognitive Decline – our processing speed slows down.  Our memory begins to fade.
  • 2. Physical Body Decline – lose muscle mass and strength, along with bone density, stamina, stability, and balance.  Assess what “activities of daily living”, a checklist used to access health and functionality of elderly people.  
  • 3. Emotional Health – as important as physical health

Tactics fall into 5 broad domains:

  • 1. Exercise – strength, stability, aerobic efficiency, and peak aerobic capacity – increasing limits in each of these areas is necessary if you are hoping to reach your limit of lifespan and healthspan.
  • 2. Nutrition – focus more on how much you eat: how many calories you take into your body (rather than what you eat).
  • 3. Sleep – poor sleeptriggers a cascade of negative downstream consequences, from insulin resistance to cognitive decline, as well as mental health issues.
  • 4. Emotional Health – “Why would you want to live longer if you’re so unhappy” – Ester Perel
  • 5. Exogenous molecules, meaning drugs, hormones, or supplements.

Chapter 4 – Centenarians: The Older You Get, the Healthier You Have Been

  • Study of Scandinavian twins have found that genes may be responsible for only about 20-30% of the overall variation in human lifespan.
  • Need to understand detailed family history – when your relatives died and why?
  • Centenarian genes have brought them a phase shift in time – that is, their entire lifespan and healthspan curve has been shifted a decade or two (or three!) to the right. Not only do they live longer, but these are people who have been healthier than their peers and biologically younger than them, for virtually their entire lives.
  • The e2 variant of APOE, on the other hand, seems to protect its carriers against dementia.
  • CETP and APOC3 (two other cholesterol-related genes) are correlated with extreme longevity (and may explain why centenarians rarely die from heart disease).
  • In the end, I think that the centenarian’s secret comes down to one word: resilience.  They are able to resist and avoid cancer and cardiovascular disease, even when they have smoked for decades. They are able to maintain ideal metabolic health, often despite a lousy diet.

Chapter 5 – Eat Less, Live Longer: The Science of Hunger and Health

  • mTOR – mechanistic target of rapamycin – one of the most important mediators of longevity at the cellular level
  • Rapamycin tends to slow down the process of cellular growth and division.  Lowering mTOR – reduces division and slows down aging
  • Rapamycin boosted mice’s remaining if expectancy by 28% for males and 38% for females. Rapamycin might extend lifespan “by postponing death from cancer, by retarding mechanisms of aging or both”
  • Caloric restriction (CR)- can be found to length the lifespan of a mouse or rat by anywhere between 15 to 45 percent.
  • AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK) works to inhibit the activity of mTOR, the cellular growth regulator. Instead of making new proteins and undergoing cell division, the cell goes into a more fuel-efficient and stress-resistant mode, activity an important cellular recycling process called autophagy, which means “self-eating” (or better yet, “self-devouring”).
  • By cleansing our cells of damaged proteins and other cellular junk, autophagy allows our cells to run more cleanly and efficiently and helps make them more resistant to stress. But as we get older, autophagy declines.  Impaired autophagy is thought to be an important driver of numerous aging-related phenotypes and ailments, such as neurodegeneration and osteoarthritis.
  • A small but growing number of people, including me and a handful of my patients, already take rapamycin off-label for its potential geroprotective benefits. 

Chapter 6 – The Crisis of Abundance: Can Our Ancient Genes Cope with Our Modern Diet

  • “Normal” is not the same as “healthy.” The reference ranges for these lab tests are based on current percentiles, but as the population in general becomes less healthy, the average may diverge from optimal.  Average is not necessarily optimal.
  • Not everyone who is obese is metabolically unhealthy, and not everyone who is metabolically unhealthy is obese.

Metabolic syndrome (or MetSyn) is defined as:

  • 1. High blood pressure (>130/85)
  • 2. High triglycerides (>150 mg/dL)
  • 3. Low HDL cholesterol (<40 mg/dL in men or <50 mg/dL in women)
  • 4. Central adiposity (wase circumference (>40 inches in men or >35 in women)
  • 5. Elevated fasting glucose (>110 mg/dL)
  • If you meet three or more of these criteria, then you have the metabolic syndrome.
  • Nearly 10 million Americans are normal weight (BML 19-24.9) but metabolically unhealthy.
  • I insist my patients undergo a DEXA scan annually – and I am far more interested in their visceral fat than their total body fat.  You can have 20% body fat (maybe 50th percentile), but 4.5 pounds of visceral fat and would be considered exceptionally high risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
  • While in may be in vogue to vilify high-fructose corn syrup, which is 55% fructose and 45% glucose, it’s worth pointing out that good old table sugar (sucrose) is about the same, consisting of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. So, there’s really not much of a difference between the two. 
  • But the first thing I look for, the canary in the coal mine of metabolic disorder, is elevated insulin.
  • Studies have found that insulin resistance itself is associated with huge increases in one’s risk of cancer (up to twelvefold), Alzheimer’s disease (fivefold), and death from cardiovascular disease (almost sixfold) – all of which underscores why addressing, and ideally preventing metabolic dysfunction is a cornerstone of my approach to longevity.

Chapter 7 – The Ticker: Confronting and Preventing Heart Disease, the Deadliest Killer on Our Planet

  • Autopsy data from young people who died from accidents, homicides, or other non-cardiovascular causes have revealed that as many as a third of sixteen-twenty-year-olds already had actual atherosclerotic lesions or plaques in their coronary arteries when they tied. As teenagers.
  • Should get a CT angiogram – can identify the noncalcified or “soft” plaque that precedes calcification.  Calcium scans only show calcified plaque, while CT angiogram shows “soft” plaque too.
  • If you have a history of premature heart attacks in your family, you should definitely ask for an Lp(a) test.
  • The only real treatment for elevated Lp(a) right now is aggressive management of apoB overall.
  • When I look at a patient’s blood panel for the first time, my eyes immediately dart to two numbers: apoB and Lp(a).
    • ApoB not only tells me the concentration of LDL particles (which is more predictive of disease than the concentration of cholesterol found within LDL particles, LDL-C), but it also captures the concentration of VLDL particles, which as members of the apoB family can also contribute to atherosclerosis. Even someone whose apoB is low can still have a dangerously elevated Lp(a).
  • High quantities of extra virgin olive oil, macadamia nuts, and avocados (among other foods) promote better cholesterol.
  • The sooner we lower apoB exposure, thus lowering risk, the more the benefits compound over time – and the greater our overall risk reduction.

Chapter 8 – The Runaway Cell: New Ways to Address the Killer That is Cancer

Three-part strategy to dealing with cancer:

  1. Prevention: the associated between obesity, diabetes, and cancer is primarily driven by inflammation and growth factors such as insulin. Need to avoid being insulin resistant to type 2 diabetes, where our cancer risk is clearly elevated.  Getting our metabolic health in order is essential to our anticancer strategy.

2. New Treatments: Use newer and smarter treatments (e.g. CAR-T) to help treat cancers.

3. Early Detection: Most important tool in our anticancer arsenal is early, aggressive screening.

  • Out of dozens of different types of cancers, we have agreed upon reliable screening methods for only five: lung (for smokers), breast, prostate, colorectal, and cervical.
  • In my practice, we typically encourage average-risk individuals to get a colonoscopy by age forty – and even sooner if anything is their history suggests that they may be at higher risk.  Why? Out of all the major cancers, colorectal cancer is one of the easiest to detect, with the greatest payoff in terms of risk reduction.
  • My bottom line is that it is far better to screen early than risk doing it too late. Think asymmetric risk: It’s possible that NOT screening early and frequently enough is the most dangerous option.
  • The pap spear for cervical cancer is another well-established, minimally invasive test that I recommend my patients do yearly.
  • Out of the Horsemen, cancer is probably the hardest to prevent. The only modifiable risks that really stand out in the data are smoking, insulin resistance, and obesity (all to be avoided)
  • If the first rule of cancer is “Don’t get cancer”, the second rule is “catch it as soon as possible.”

Chapter 9 – Chasing Memory: Unlocking Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases

  • I always check in patients is their APOE genotype, the gene related to Alzheimer’s disease (e4 allele – higher risk of Alzheimer’s; e4/e4 can have up to twelve times greater risk).
  • Developing complex skills such as speaking a foreign language or playing a musical instrument, the more resistant to cognitive decline we tend to be. 
  • People with better movement patterns, and a long history of moving their bodies (athletes) tend to resist or slow the progression of Parkinson’s compared to sedentary people. Boxing is a primary treatment/prevention strategy for Parkinson’s.
  • Robust blood flow seemed to be critical to maintaining brain health. Alzheimer’s is more likely to be diagnosed in patients who have suffered a stroke which blocks blood flow to specific regions of the brain.
  • Having type 2 diabetes doubles or triples your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease

To reduce Alzheimer’s:

  • Address metabolic issues (improve glucose metabolism, inflammation, and oxidative stress).  Switch to mediterranean-style diet, relying on more monounsaturated fats and fewer refined carbohydrates, in addition to regular consumption of fatty fish and possibly supplementation with omega-3 fatty acid DHA (found in fish oil). Cut out added sugar, refined carbohydrates, and alcohol. 
  • The single most important item in our preventative toolkit is exercise, which has a two-pronged impact on Alzheimer’s disease risk: it helps maintain glucose homeostasis, and it improve the health of our vasculature.  Focus on steady endurance exercise to improve her mitochondria efficiency.
  • The greater someone’s grip strength, the lower their risk of dementia.
  • Sleep is also a very powerful tool against Alzheimer’s disease.
  • Sauna – at least four sessions per week, of at least twenty minutes per session at 179 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter seems to be the sweet spot to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by about 65% (and the risk of ASCVD by 50%).

Summary:

  • What’s good for the heart is good for the brain.  That is, vascular health (meaning low apoB, low inflammation, and low oxidative stress) is crucial to brain health.
  • What’s good for the liver (and pancreas) is good for the brain.  Metabolic health is crucial to brain health.
  • Time is Key. We need to think about prevention early, and the more the deck is stacked against you genetically, the harder you need to work and the sooner you need to start. As with cardiovascular disease, we need to play a very long game.
  • Our most powerful tool for preventing cognitive decline is exercise. We’ve talked a lot about diet and metabolism, but exercise appears to act in multiple ways (metabolic, vascular) to preserve brain health.  Exercise is the foundation of our Alzheimer’s prevention program.

Chapter 10 – Thinking Tactically: Building a Framework of Principles That Work for You

  • Five tactical domains to alter someone’s health: exercise (most potent domain of its impact on both lifespan and health; VO2 max), diet, sleep, emotional health, and drugs / supplements / hormones.

Chapter 11 – Exercise: The Most Powerful Longevity Drug

  • If you adopt only one new set of habits based on reading this book, it must be in the realm of exercise.
  • Peak aerobic cardiorespiratory fitness, measured in terms of VO2 max, is perhaps the single most powerful marker for longevity. VO2 max represents the maximum rate at which a person can utilize oxygen.
  • The fitter I am, the more oxygen I can consume to make ATP, and the faster I can run up that hill.
  • An average 45 year old man will have a VO2 max around 40 ml/kg/mi, while an elite endurance athlete will likely score in the high 60s and above.
  • Muscle may be almost as powerfully correlated with living longer (in addition to cardiorespiratory fitness and longevity).  It’s not the mere muscle mass that matters, but the strength of those muscles, their ability to generate force.
  • Falls are by far the leading cause of accidental deaths in those ages 65+.  Someone with more muscle mass is less likely to fall and injure themselves, while those who are less likely to fall for other reasons (better balance, more body awareness) will also have an easier time maintaining muscle mass.
  • Just as with VO2 max, it is important to maintain muscle mass at all costs. This is why I place such an emphasis on weight training – and doing it now, no matter your age.
  • Therefore, I find a way to lift heavy weights in some way, shape or form four times per week, no matter what else I am doing  or where I may be traveling.
  • The Centenarian Decathlon – framework of the most important physical tasks you want to be able to do for the rest of your life (e.g. get up off the floor under your own power, using a maximum of one arm for support, pick up a young child from the floor, life a 20 lb, suitcase in the overhead compartment of a plane, have sex, do five pull ups, dead hang for one minute, etc.).
    • So if you want to pick up that 30 lb. grandkid when you’re 80, you’re going to have to be able to lift 50-55 lbs. now.

Chapter 12 – Training 101: How to Prepare for the Centenarian Decathlon

Three dimensions in which we want to optimize our fitness are aerobic endurance and efficiency (aka cardio), strength, and stability.

Cardio: long, steady endurance work, such as jogging, or cycling, or swimming, where we are training in what physiologists call zone 2, and maximal aerobic efforts, where VO2 max comes into play.

  • Zone 2: going at a speed slow enough that one can still maintain a conversation but fast enough that the conversation might be a little strained. It translates to aerobic activity at a place somewhere between easy and moderate. If you can’t speak in complete sentences, you’re likely in zone 3. If you can comfortably converse, you’re likely in zone 1.
  • If you know your maximum heart rate, the highest number you’ve ever seen on a heart rate monitor, your zone 2 will correspond to approximately 80% to 85% of that peak number, depending on your fitness levels.
  • Four times a week, I will spend about an hour riding my stationary bike at my zone 2 threshold.
  • Benchmark for a reasonably fit person – take weight in kg (160 lbs = 72.7 kg * 2 = 145 output)
  • Ideally, I want to target the “elite” range for their age and sex (roughly the top 2%). If they achieve that level, I say good job – now let’s reach for that elite level for your sex, but two decades younger.
  • To train VO max = supplement our zone 2 work with one or two VO2 max workouts per week (HIIT intervals).
  • Intervals: four minutes at a maximum pace you can sustain for this amount of time – not an all-out sprint, but still a very hard effort.  Then ride or job for four minutes easy, which should be enough time for your heart rate to come back down to below about one hundred beats per minute.  Repeat this four to six times and cool down. Also, be sure to give yourself enough time to warm up and cool down from this intense effort.
  • Ideal VO2 max pace is about 33% more than zone 2 pace. So if zone 2 pace represents an output of 150 watts, your VO2 max training pace should be about 200 watts for four minutes. If you know your functional threshold power (FTP), you should target 120% of this for 3 minutes and 106% of this for eight minute intervals and adjust for everything in between.

Strength – it takes much less time to lose muscle mass and strength than to gain it, particularly if we are sedentary. It is very difficult to put on muscle mass later in life.

  • Track Bone Density (bone mineral density – BMD) – at least every few years. Optimize nutrition, focusing on protein and total energy needs and do heavy loading-bearing activities. Strength training, especially with heavy weights, stimulates growth of bone
  • Rucking – basically means hiking of walking at a fast past with a loaded pack on your back. Three or four days a week, I’ll spend an hour rucking around my neighborhood, up and down hills.  A good goal is to be able to carry one quarter to one third of your body weight once you develop enough strength and stamina.

Strength Training:

  1. Grip strength – There is an enormous body of literature linking better grip strength in midlife and beyond to decrease risk of overall mortality. If you have the strength to grab a railing, or a branch, and hold on, you may avoid a fall.
  2. One of my favorite ways to train grip strength: farmers carry – where you walk for a minute or so with a loaded hex bar or dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand. One standard for males – carry half of their body weight in each hand (so total body weight in total) for at least one minute.
  3. The most important tip is to keep your shoulder blades down and back, nut pulled up or hunched forward.
  4. Another way to test your grip is by dead-hanging from a pull-up bar for as long as you can.  We like to see men hang for at least two minutes and women for at least ninety seconds at age 40.
  5. Attention to both concentric and eccentric loading for all movements.  We need to be able to lift the weight up and put it back down, slowly and with control.  Focus on the “down’ phase of lifts ranging from pull ups to pull-downs to deadlifts to rows; rucking downhill, carrying a weighted pack is a great way to build both eccentric strength as well as spatial awareness and control.
  6. Pulling Motions – at all angles form overhead to in front of you (pull-ups and rows)
  7. Hip hinging movements, such as deadlift and squat, but also step ups, hip thrusters, and countless single leg variants of exercise that strength the legs, glutes, and lower back. Bend at the hips and not the spine!

Chapter 13 – The Gospel of Stability: Relearning How to Move to Prevent Injury

  • Stability lets us create the most force in the safest manner possible. The goal is to be strong, fluid, flexible, and agile as you move through your world.
  • Twice a week, I spend an hour doing dedicated stability training, based on the principles of DNS, PRI, and other practices, with 10-15 minutes per day on the other days.
  • Stability training begins at the most basic level, with the breath.
  • The idea behind breath training is that proper breathing affects so many other physical parameters: rib position, neck position, the shape of the spine, even our position of our feet on the ground.
  • An ideal inhalation expands the entire rib cage front, sides, and back – while the belly expands at the same time, allowing the respiratory and pelvic diaphragm to descend.  Key is to inhale as quietly as possible.
  • Toe Yoga – try to lift all toes off the ground and spread then as wide as you can. Now try to put your big toe back on the floor, while keeping your other toes lifted. Trickier than you’d think, right? Now do the opposite: keep four toes on the floor and lift only your big toe. Then lift all five toes, and try to drop them one by one, starting with your big toe.
  • One key test in our movement assessment is to have our patients stand with one foot in front of the other and try to balance. Now close your eyes and see how long you can hold the position. Ten seconds is a respectable time; in fact, the ability to balance on one leg at age 50+ has been correlated with future longevity, just like grip strength.
  • There is a strong correlation between having a weak rotator cuff (shoulder) and weak grip strength.
  • I urge you to film yourself working out from time to time to compare what you think you are doing to what you are actually doing with your body.
  • doing to what you are actually doing with your body.

Chapter 14 – Nutrition 3.0: You Say Potato, I say “Nutritional Biochemistry”

  • There is one perfect diet that works for ever single person – is absolutely incorrect.

Nutrition 3.0:

  • 1. Are you undernourished or overnourished?
  • 2. Are you undermuscled or adequately muscled?
  • 3. Are you metabolically healthy or not?

Simple rules for nutrition: don’t eat too many calories, or too few; consume sufficient protein and essential fats; obtain the vitamins and minerals you need; and avoid pathogens like E. coli and toxins like mercury and lead.

Two issues around diet
1. Compliance – how well can you stick to the diet?
2. How a given diet affects you, your individual metabolism and other risk factors.

Chapter 15 – Putting Nutritional Biochemistry into Practice: How to Find the Right Eating Pattern for You

The farther away we get from the Standard American Diet (SAD), the better off we will be (e.g. junk food, processed foods)

Three strategies:

1. Caloric Restriction (CR) – eating less in total, but without attention to what is being eaten or when it’s being eaten. From the standpoint of pure efficacy, caloric restriction (CR) is the winner hands down. However, the catch is that you have to do it perfectly – tracking every single thing you eat, and not succumbing to cheat or snack or it doesn’t work.

2. Dietary Restriction (DR) – eating less of some particular element(s) within the diet (e.g. meat, sugar, fats). Conceptually simple: pick a type of food and then don’t eat that food.

3. Time Restriction (TR) – restricting eating to certain times (intermittent fasting), up to and including multiday fasting. One significant downside of this approach is that people who try it end up very protein deficient.

Caloric Restriction:

  • Calorie counting is agnostic to food choices – you can eat whatever you want so long as you stay within your daily allowance.  But if you make too many poor decisions (e.g. eating snickers bars), you will be very hungry (as opposed to eating chicken breasts and broccoli).
  • There appears to be a strong link between calories and cancer – CR monkeys had a 50% lower incidence of cancer.
  • The quality of the food you eat could be as important as the quantity.  If you’re eating the SAD, then you should eat much less of it.

Dietary Restriction:

  • Any form of DR that restricts protein is probably a bad idea for most people, because it likely also impairs the maintenance or growth of muscle.
  • A more significant issue with DR is that everyone’s metabolism is different.  Some people will lose tremendous amounts of weight and improve their metabolic markers on a low-carb or ketogenic diet, while others will actually gain weight and see their lipid markers go haywire – on the exact same diet.

Alcohol:  my bottom line: if you drink, try to be mindful about it.  You’ll enjoy it more and suffer fewer consequences. I strongly urge my patients to limit alcohol to fewer than seven servings per week, and ideally no more than two on any given day.

Carbohydrates: Leverage a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) – my healthy patients need to use a CGM only for a month or two before they begin to understand what foods are spiking their glucose (and insulin) and how to adjust their eating pattern to obtain a more secure glucose curve. Once they have this knowledge, many of them no longer need CGM.

With a CGM, the first phase is the insight phase, where you learn how different foods, exercise, sleep (especially lack thereof), and stress affect your glucose readings in real time. This leads to the second phase, which is what I call the behavior phase. How are you going to respond by eating the bag of chips?

  • CGM:  are patients’ blood glucose spiking above 160 mg/dL more than I would like? Overall, I like to keep average glucose at or below 100 mg/dL, with a standard deviation of less than 15 mg/dL.

Lessons from CGMs:

  • Not all carbs are created equal (the more refined the carb, the faster and higher the glucose spike – e.g. chips). Less processed carbs are those with more fiber blunt the glucose impact (I try to eat more than 50 grams of fiber every day).
  • Rice and oatmeal are surprisingly glycemic (meaning they cause a sharp rise in glucose levels), despite not being particularly refined; more surprisingly is that brown rice is only slightly less glycemic than long-grain white rice.
  • Timing, duration, and intensity of exercise matter a lot. In general, aerobic exercise seems most efficacious at removing glucose from circulation
  • A good vs. bad night of sleep makes a world of difference in terms of glucose control (sleeping just 5-6 hours vs 8 hours accounts for a 10-20 mg/dL jump in peak glucose.
  • Non-starchy veggies such as spinach or broccoli have virtually no impact on blood sugar. Have at them.

Protein:

  • I typically set 1.6 g/kg/day as the minimum, which is twice the recommended dietary amount in the US. For active people with normal kidney function, should be around 1 gram per pound of body weight per day (or 2.2 g/kg/day).
  • If you weigh 165 lbs, you should aim for 120-165 grams of protein a day.
  • Typically, I will consume a protein shake, a high-protein snack, and two protein meals.
  • The overall quality of protein derived from plants is significantly lower than that from animal products.
  • Whey protein isolate (from dairy) is richer in amino acids than soy protein isolate.

Fat:

  • For most patients, the range we look for is between 8%-12% of red blood cell (RBC) membrane composed of EPA and DHA (marine source fats)
  • Practice eating more olive oil and avocados and nuts, cutting back (but not necessarily eliminating things like butter and lad, and reducing the omega-6 rich corn, soybean, and sunflower oils, while also looking for ways to increase high-omega -3 marine PUFAs (polyunsaturated fats) from sources such as salmon and anchovies.
  • I tell my patients: MUFAS are probably the fat that should make up most of our dietary fat mix, which means extra virgin olive oil and high-MUFA vegetable oils.
  • Take EPA and DHA supplements in capsule or oil form.

Time Restriction:

  • If you are following a fasting diet, it is worth thinking about whether prolonged fasting periods are making it harder to maintain muscle mass and physical activity levels, which are known to be very important factors for long-term health.

Conclusion:

  • It is essential for older people who need to build or maintain muscle mass. But its power to leverage increased lifespan and healthspan is more limited. Bad nutrition can hurt us more than good nutrition can help us.
  • In most cases, addressing the problem means reducing overall intake – cutting calories – but in a way that is sustained for the person. We also have to focus on eliminating those types of foods that raise blood glucose too much, but in a way that also does not compromise protein intake and lean body mass.

Chapter 16 – The Awakening: How to Learn to Love Sleep, the Best Medicine for Your Brain

  • Good sleep is like a performance-enhancing drug.
  • Endurance drops, VO2 max drops, and one-rep-max strength drops with poor sleep.

Low sleep can (6 hours a night):

  • Make you older looking with flabbier skin
    Increase insulin resistance by up to a third.
  • Increase cardiovascular disease by 6-26%.
  • Increase risk of developing dementia. Thus, good sleep in middle age (40s-60s) appears to be especially important for maintaining cognitive health.

How to sleep better:

  • Don’t drink any alcohol period. If you absolutely must, limit yourself to one drink before about 6pm.
  • Don’t eat anything less than 3 hours before bedtime.
  • Abstain from stimulating electronics, beginning two hours before bed.
  • For at least one hour before bed, if not more, avoid doing anything that is anxiety producing or stimulating, such as reading work email or checking social media.
  • Spend time in a sauna/hot tub/warm shower before bed. Once you get into the cool bed, your lowering body temperature will signal to your brain that it’s time to sleep.
  • Give yourself enough time to sleep (at least 8 hours before you need to wake up)
  • Fix your wake-up time and don’t deviate from it even on weekends.
  • Exercise to cultivate sleep pressure, particularly sustained endurance exercise (e.g. zone 2), ideally not within 2-3 hours before bedtime.

Chapter 17 – Work in Progress: The High Price of Ignoring Emotional Health

Why would you want to live longer if you’re so unhappy

Ester Perel
  • Living alone or feeling lonely is linked to a much higher risk of mortality
  • Our Medicine 3.0 thesis is that if we address our emotional health, and do so early on, we will have a better chance of avoiding clinical mental health issues such as depression and chronic anxiety – and our overall health will benefit.
  • “Reframing” – is the ability to look at a given situation from someone else’s point of view – literally reframing it. What does the situation look like through the other person’s eyes? How do they see it? And why is your time, your convenience, or your agenda any more important than theirs?
  • Manage your inner dialogue – what does it sound like?  Is it kind and forgiving or is it harsh and judgmental? How would I speak to your best friend if they had performed exactly as I had done?
  • Changing the behavior can change the mood. You do not need to wait for your mood to improve to make a behavior change.
  • Therapist check-in: how am I feeling? How have I slept? Am I in physical pain? Am I in conflict? Then we dissect and discuss events and issues of the week in minute detail.

Excellence Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly (9/10)

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Personal Growth and Mindset

  • Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
  • A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
  • Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
  • The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high so even in failure it may be a success measured by the ordinary.
  • Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.
  • Tend to the small things. More people are defeated by blisters than mountains.
  • To cultivate a habit, switch your language from “I can or can’t do” to “I do or don’t do.” You shift the weight from a wavering choice to an unwavering identity.
  • You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
  • The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.
  • The foundation of maturity: Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.
  • Be strict with yourself, forgiving of others. The reverse is hell for everyone.
  • What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.
  • The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.
  • We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it 10 years. A long game will compound small gains that will be able to overcome even big mistakes.
  • You can’t change your past, but you can change your story about it. What is important is not what happened to you but what you did about what happened to you.
  • Ask anyone you admire: their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So, embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.

Professional and Career Development

  • Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary and it prevents you from trying to make it perfect so you have to make it different. Different is much better.
  • If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. Hang out with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
  • Don’t be the best. Be the only.
  • If your goal does not have a schedule, it is a dream.
  • When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself, ‘Would I accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow?’ Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
  • If you ask for someone’s feedback, you’ll get a critic. But if you instead ask for advice, you’ll get a partner.
  • Shorten your to-do list by asking yourself, “What is the worst that will happen if this does not get done?” Eliminate all but the disasters.
  • Recipe for success: under promise and overdeliver.
  • Show me your calendar and I will tell you your priorities. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you where you’re going.
  • Finite games are played to win or lose. Infinite games are played to keep the game going. Seek out infinite games because they yield unlimited rewards.
  • Don’t ever work for someone who you don’t want to become.
  • Figure out what time of day you are most productive and protect that time period.
  • Don’t say anything about someone in an email that you would not be comfortable saying to them directly because eventually they will read it.
  • Do more of what looks like work to others but is play to you.
  • For maximum results, focus on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.
  • Go with the option that opens up yet more options.

Leadership Development

  • Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of that same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
  • When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
  • You lead by letting others know what you expect of them, which may exceed what they themselves expect. Provide them a reputation that they can step up to.
  • Nothing elevates a person higher than taking responsibility for their mistakes. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
  • When you’re checking references for a job applicant, their employer may have prohibited from saying anything negative, so leave or send a message that says, “get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great.” If they don’t reply, take that as a negative.
  • Speak confidently as if you are right but listen carefully as if you are wrong.
  • When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.
  • Don’t aim to have others like you; aim to have them respect you.
  • Constantly search for overlapping areas of agreement and dwell there. Disagreements will appear to be edge cases.
  • If you want something to get done, ask a busy person to do it.
  • Always be quick to give credit and to take blame.
  • When you are presented with a task that could be completed in 2 minutes or less, do it immediately.

Relationships and Social Skills

  • You don’t have to attend every argument you are invited to.
  • How to apologize? Quickly, specifically, sincerely. Don’t ruin an apology with an excuse.
  • Treating a person to a meal never fails and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and it’s a great way to make new friends.
  • The more that you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. So to be interesting, be interested.
  • The golden rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all the other virtues.
  • Perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding that is the beginning of wisdom.
  • Friends are better than money. Almost anything that money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways, a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
  • Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never get.
  • When you are young, have friends who are older; when you are old, have friends who are younger.
  • Anything you say before the word “but” does not count.
  • Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people mention is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
  • It is not a compliment if it comes with a request.
  • Outlaw the word “you” during domestic arguments.
  • Don’t reserve your kindest praise for a person until their eulogy. Tell them while they are alive, when it makes a difference to them, write it in a letter they can keep.
  • Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren’t thinking of you.
  • A wise man said: Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates – “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?”
  • Assume no one remembers name. As a courtesy, reintroduce yourself by name even to those you have previously met: “Hi, I’m Kevin.”
  • If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go further, go together.
  • When sharing, one person divides, the other chooses.
  • A proper apology consists of conveying the 3 Rs: regret (genuine empathy with the other), responsibility (not blaming someone else), and remedy (your willingness to fix it).

Parenting and Family Life

  • To build strong children, reinforce their sense of belonging to a family by articulating exactly what is distinctive about your family. They should be able to say with pride, “Our family does X.”
  • When a child asks an endless string of:” Why?” questions, the smartest reply is “I don’t know, what do you think?”
  • Children totally accept – and crave – family rules. “In our family we have a rule for X” is the only excuse a parent needs for setting a family policy. In fact, “I have a rule for X” is the only excuse you need for your own personal policies.
  • For the best results with your children, spend only half the money you think you should but double the time with them.
  • The very best thing you can do for your kids is to love your spouse.
  • Let your children choose their punishments. They’ll be tougher than you will.
  • Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.
  • Invent as many family rituals as you can handle with ease. Anything done on a schedule – large or small, significant or silly – can become a ritual. Repeated consistently small routines become legendary. Anticipation is key.
  • You’ll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.

Financial Wisdom and Management

  • Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler.
  • Don’t bother asking a barber if you need a haircut. Pay attention to incentives.
  • At first, buy the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
  • Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction, but acquiring experiences will.
  • All great prizes in life in wealth, relationships, or knowledge come from the magic of compounding interest, by amplifying small steady gains. All you need for abundance is to keep adding 1% more than you subtract on a regular basis.
  • Be frugal in all things, except in your passions. Select a few interests that you gleefully splurge on. In fact, be all-around thrifty so that you can splurge on your passions.
  • The general strategy for real estate is to buy the worst property on the best street.
  • Measure your wealth not by the things you can buy but the things that no money can buy.
  • The rich have money. The wealthy have time. It is easier to become wealthy than rich.
  • The natural state of all possessions is to need repair and maintenance. What you own will eventually own you. Choose selectively.
  • It is impossible for you to become poor by giving. It is impossible for you to become wealthy without giving.

General Life Advice

  • You can’t reason someone out of a notion that they didn’t reason themselves into.
  • The best way to learn anything is to try to teach what you know.
  • The purpose of the habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it, you just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth to flossing.
  • Don’t let someone else’s urgency become your emergency. In fact, don’t be governed by the urgent of any sort. Focus on the important. The urgent is the tyrant. The important should be your king. Down with the tyranny of the urgent!
  • When brainstorming, improvising, jamming with others, you’ll go much further and deeper if you build upon each contribution with a playful “yes – and” example instead of a deflating “no, but” reply.
  • Measure twice, cut once.
  • Each time you connect to people, bring them a blessing; then they’ll be happy to see you when you bring a problem.
  • People can’t remember more than three points in a speech.
  • The greatest teacher is called “doing.”
  • Criticize in private, praise in public.
  • When you have good news and bad news, give the bad news first, because we remember how things end more than how they begin. So, elevate the ending with good news.
  • Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out anything that no longer gives you joy in order to make room for those that do.
  • When speaking to an audience, it’s better to gaze on a few people than to “spray” your gaze across the room. Your eyes telegraph to others whether you really believe what you’re saying.
  • The purpose of listening is not to reply, but to hear what is not being said.
  • The greatest killer of happiness is comparison. If you must compare, compare yourself to you yesterday.

Be Like Water My Friend – Shannon Lee – 8/10

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Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup; it becomes the cup.
You put water into a teapot; it becomes a teapot.
You put it into a bottle; it becomes the bottle.
Now water can flow, or it can crash!
Be water my friend.

Chapter 1: The Water Way

  1. “Water, the softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest substances in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.”
  2. “Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.” – the very essence of water – ever finding its own path without limit.
  3. Water is unstoppable. It will carve canyons into mountains over centuries.

Chapter 2: The Empty Cup

  • “Empty your mind” – this first request is perhaps the most important one in our process because it sets us up for everything that comes next. My father believed that this act – of leaving behind the burdens of one’s preconceived opinions and conclusions – had in itself a liberating power.  If this step is the only one you actively work on for a while, you will expand your life considerably.
  • Emptying your mind does not mean forgetting everything you’ve ever learned or giving up everything you believe.  What it means is that you should try to meet each conversation, each interaction, and each experience with a willingness to consider something new without the burden of your judgment in the process. You must give up everything you think you know and believe, for just an instant, in order to fully experience that which you are encountering in the present moment.
  • No judgment – instead of weighing everything good or bad, right or wrong, as it is happening, become a fully sensing organism so that you may see and encounter the experience with your whole being.  
  • “Who is there that can make muddy waters clear?  But if allowed to remain still, it will become clear of itself. Who is there that can secure a state of absolute repose? But keep calm and let time go on, and the state of repose will gradually arrest.”

Chapter 3: The Eternal Student

  • “Each man must seek out realization himself. No master can give it to him.”
  • My father never wanted to be called a master. He said, “Once you say you’ve reached the top, then there is nowhere to go but down.” Instead, he considered himself to be the eternal student – always open to new ideas, new possibilities, new directions, and new growth.
  • One of the core mandates of jeet kune do and my father’s life was this process:

Research your own experience. Reject what is useless. Accept what is useful. And add what is essentially your own.

  • My father would say it’s not what you think but how you think that’s important. The “what” will become quickly influenced when the “how” is directed in the proper direction.
  • “We shall find the truth when we examine the problem.  The problem is never apart from the answer; the problem is the answer.”
    • E.g., 3 + x = 10; need the answer to solve x
  • My father would encourage us, as we sit with our problems, “to be alert, to question, to find out, to listen, to understand, and to be open.” This is a great checklist for ourselves. Was I paying attention? Did I ask all the questions? Did I find out the answers? Was I listening? Do I understand what happened? Was I open to the whole experience?
  • My father would caution us not to work for information, but to “work for understanding,” for “it’s not how much you learn but how much you absorb in from what you learn.”

Chapter 4: The Opponent

  • To learn and to grow, you need a relationship. You need that sparring partner to level up your game. There is no one better than the person standing before you at any given moment to help you see yourself more clearly. Someone who is there, whether they know it or not and whether you’ve known it or not, to show you where the pain points are, to show you how to be better and how to shine your light more brightly.
  • The Six Diseases to Avoid (these diseases rely on competition, which is typically where we go in a relationship the moment any discord pops up.  When we relate to others in these ways, we are disconnecting from them > there is no relationship, no collaboration, and no co-creation.  There is only the winner and the loser.
  • The desire for victory: I have to be the winner. If I don’t win, I’m a loser. If I win, everyone else is a loser.
  • The desire to resort to technical cunning: I rely on the power of my wits to show you how great I am. Who cares about people or their feelings as long as everyone can see how clever I am?
  • The desire to display all that has been learned: Check me out. I know lots of things. I can speak at length about anything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say (especially if it’s dumb).
  • The desire to awe the enemy: I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out! I will wow you to get your approval even if I have to do something shocking and wild to get your attention.
  • The desire to play the passive role: I am so easy to get along with. Who wouldn’t like me? I am so unobtrusive and sweet. I will put anything that’s important to me aside to make sure you see how likable and wonderful I am. How could you not like me when I sacrificed everything just for you.
  • The desire to rid oneself of whatever disease one is affected by: I am not okay as I am. I will perform constant self-work and read as many books as I can and take so many classes to make myself good that you will see that I am always trying to be a good person even if I continue to do lots of shitty things. I know I’m not okay as I am.  And I know you know that I know I’m not okay as I am, which makes it okay not to get truly better as long as it looks like I’m trying.
  • Can you recognize any of these in yourself?  These diseases are traps. They will keep your success always outside of yourself and out of your hands as you chase victory and validation through the eyes of someone else.

Chapter 5: The Tools (for transformation and growth)

I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once. But I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.

  • Tool #1 – Take Aim: Clarity of purpose is important not only because it helps us to move decisively forward with a plan of action, but because when obstacles come, you will need the intensity and clarity of your soul’s purpose to keep you from getting lost in the difficulties you encounter.
  • Tool #2 – Take Action: One mantra of Bruce was, “Be a practical dreamer backed by action.”
  • Tool #3 – Affirm:  Write affirmations in a way that frames them as something you are in the process of, so that they feel more possible and more aligned with where you are now. So instead of “I am strong and fit,” you could write, “I am working every day to be strong and fit.”
  • Tool #4 – Be Symbolic: Have a constant reminder of what you want to be (e.g., a wedding ring or post-it notes with keywords of your affirmations)
  • Tool #5 – Journal: write positive thoughts – what you want, value, believe, wish for, what you’re learning, discovering, and dreaming about.  Work to understand what matters to you and create a personal vision for yourself. Ask yourself questions and try to answer them.
  • Tool #6 – Get physical

Chapter 6: The Obstacle

  • It’s not a shame to be knocked down. The important thing is to ask when you’re being knocked down, “Why am I being knocked down?” If a person can reflect this way, then there is hope for this person. Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary and its punishment is but an urge for me to exert greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth.
  • If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.
  • You are the creator and interpreter of your life in every moment. Things have meaning to you because you give them that meaning – no one else.

Chapter 7: The Rainstorm

  • “The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning, but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it until this moment. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself.”
  • The Eightfold Path (to get out of a tough time)
    • Right View – You must see clearly what is wrong; understand the problem
    • Right Purpose – Decide to be cured; decide to make a change
    • Right Speech – Speak so as to aim at being cured; positive self-talk/affirmations
    • Right Conduct – You must act
    • Right Livelihood – Your livelihood must not conflict with your therapy; don’t let others stand in your way (bad habits, toxic environments, negative relationships)
    • Right Effort – The therapy must go forward at the “staying speed”; trust the process
    • Right Awareness – You must feel it and think about it incessantly; stay focused
    • Right Meditation – Learn how to contemplate with a deep mind.

Chapter 8: The Living Void

  • The first level of awareness is to release you from the prison of your inherently dualistic thoughts – good/bad, right/wrong and to simply see things as they are without attachment.  There is really nothing to try to do but accept, acknowledge, and sense everything that comes up moment to moment, including any residence you may feel.
  • 4 Stages of Cultivation: Path from unconscious to conscious and then to the void (which is both conscious and unconscious)

  • Stage 1: Partiality – “the running to extreme” – no awareness to thoughts, emotions, and actions.  Perceive things in good/bad, right/wrong. Unconscious living.

  • Stage 2: Fluidity – “the two halves of one whole” – acknowledge that you have a lot to learn and begin to work on ourselves. Self Aware.

  • Stage 3: Emptiness – “the formless form” – we and the void are one.  The ability to make the right move in a split second without going through the process of thinking.  Act on intuition.
    • Rather than trying to be more, aim to be less.“Be simply simple – like a sculptor building a statue, not by adding, but by hacking away the unessential so that the truth will be revealed unobstructed.”

  • When Bruce had an idea, he went immediately to the execution of that idea. Now, of course, not all ideas are good ideas, but you have to get the good ones faster if you move through the bad ones faster.  The goal is not to fail; the goal is to fail faster so that the lessons from the failures can be implemented and lead you to success more quickly.

Chapter 9: The Way of the Intercepting Fist

Stage 4 of Cultivation: Jeet Kune Do – requires you to be the quintessential version of yourselves.  Only Bruce Less could be his fourth stage, and only you can be yours.

  • This fourth stage of cultivation is all you – you are the expression of your life, of your heart, of your soul.
  • Don’t put all your focus and energy into your career so that one day you will be content and happy. Work on being content and happy and bring that into your career and the rest of your life.
  • This is what the journey is leading toward: the understanding that the greatest possible expression we can have, and the greatest growth and impact, stems from the very root of our being.

Chapter 10: My Friend

  • How we treat everyone is how we treat everyone.  Be kind to all people – don’t be kind to just the “good people” and bad to the “bad people.”
  • If we are willing to treat some people with disdain, then we are willing to treat the people we care about with disdain.
  • Give people the benefit of the doubt, treat them with compassion, accept them for who they are, and live and let live while being the light and the model for what is it to be strongly and unapologetically kind.
  • “I don’t know what is the meaning of death, but I am not afraid to die. And I go on, non-stop, going forward, even though I, Bruce Lee, may die some day without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I will have no regrets I did what I wanted to do and what I’ve done, I’ve done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can’t expect more from life.”

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