I’ve just returned from a “fitness salon” run by Ben Fleming where we covered a wide array of health & fitness areas while tangenting off into relevant philosophy, history, and even AGI topics. Learning about our bodies and how they work consistently triggers feelings of awe and wonder. I loved the mix of physical movement with deep learning across the biomechanics (muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, fascia), metabolism (muscle nuclei, energy stores, adrenal state), control (nervous system, fight/flight response, proprioception), and much more that I’m probably forgetting about already after drinking from such a wide firehose.
I kept thinking of elegant solutions, and how there is so much to marvel at in how the body can work when we are lucky enough to not have medical conditions limiting function, and also when we choose the right inputs. The former is mostly out of our control, and the latter is do-able but hard and can be costly in the short term. And while I find it relatively easy to put in certain inputs (limiting most processed foods and alcohol; walking daily; gym), it’s much harder for some (I do love bakeries).
The more I learn about how our bodies’ systems work, the easier I find it is to make the healthier decision because I don’t just vaguely know it would be better to make the healthier decision. Rather, I know that if I make this choice now, I can trust that my body will respond to it in a balanced way; inversely, if I choose DOUGHNUTS, I’ll be adding an imbalance that I’ll need to put effort or cost into rebalancing later, so it had better be a good one (link) or the best one I’ve ever had.
This topic is timely for the phase of life I’m in now, having been on a sabbatical for 7+ months while I experiment into my elegant solution for balancing all the facets of life. For a while, I was optimizing my career towards fungible assets like skill development & experience (optionality and marketability) as well as compensation potential (the most fungible of fungible assets). However, doing so was a rather inelegant solution as there were other costs incurred which then required me to spend effort and money elsewhere to rebalance (e.g. high stress in a tech job -> more money spent on massages and time spent on managing too much stress).
During this sabbatical, I’ve been experimenting with processes that help keep me in that just-right zone of enough stress to grow in the ways I want and need, yet so too much as to incur other costs elsewhere. I’m looking forward to re-integrating work efforts now and adjusting the system accordingly. I don't expect there to ever be a steady-state where it's all just working, so I'd rather call this pursuit of an elegant process, not solution.
With thanks to: Ben for hosting; Mike for being a lifting buddy for 2023
Written from: what might be my new home now that I live outside of central London
