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my top quality of life improvements

the foundation

going to start with some of the obvious stuff first. most of my takes here are influenced by stuff i’ve read from peter attia & andrew huberman.

  1. prioritizing quality sleep: sleep is so important & underpins almost every single human biological function. when i consistently get poor sleep, my cognition slows, my focus plummets, and my overall ability to be an effective human being just disappears. concretely, i’ve found i get better quality sleep when i do things like going to bed/waking up at the same time everyday, avoiding caffeine intake after lunch, and avoiding heavy food or drinking a lot of water before bedtime.

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    my dog squishy sleeping awe so cute

  2. eating healthy: this can mean different things to different people, but to me this means eating a variety of mainly whole foods, consuming an obnoxious amounts of vegetables, and paying attention to my protein intake. i also wore a continuous glucose monitor for a while & was paying attention to the glycemic index of certain foods & how certain meals affected my blood sugar.

  3. weightlifting & staying physically active: there are so many mental and physical benefits of weightlifting i’ve discovered that i could probably write a whole blog just dedicated to the subject. the really obvious benefit is that there it is a extremely effective way to put on muscle mass, which has a direct link to reducing all-cause mortality/quality of life, especially as we age. it’s also extremely satisfying to watch yourself get stronger in very measurable ways & i feel more confident when i feel physically strong.

    picking up & putting down heavy things is something i recommend to everyone. i’ve been especially pushing my parents to get into it, because after age 40, there is about a ~1% decrease in muscle size, but this can be offset by resistance training. weights are also phenomenal for bone health!

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    flexing my top percentile bone density 💪

  4. incorporating fun cardio into my life: running can be fun, but it can also feel like a drag. there are other forms of cardio though, that feel always fun, and when i get super into it also have this meditative-trance like state since they require lots of focus. for me, these are dancing and playing tennis.

  5. sun & forward ambulation early in the morning: for me, this means doing morning walks, bike rides, runs, or (more recently) rollerblading. seeing sun early in the morning helps me wake up and sets in motion the biological clock for healthy melatonin release later on in the day. the forward ambulation part just refers to any forward movement— there are interesting mood benefits from the visual experience of moving forward!

social

  1. living near friends: i’ve lived in communal housing/dorms/co-ops ever since i started college. being within walking distance from friends for so long spoiled me & i now the thought of friends being >15 minutes away feels absolutely unacceptable. almost all my friends in sf live within a 1 mile radius of me.
  2. hosting things regularly: a year ago, i moved to sf knowing about 1.5 people in this city. a year later, i now have great friendships & continue to meet awesome people in the city. i attribute a large part of being able to make and maintain friendships because i took a lot of ownership in just hosting things myself instead of waiting for the social events i wished existed to appear. i think i developed the hosting muscle in college when i was an RA and it was my literal job to host events & invite people & think about the dynamics of what makes a good event. also being a socratica host helped me hone the skill more.
  3. having an extremely liberal guest policy/letting friends crash whenever: i believe one of the best ways to catch up with a friend i haven’t seen for a while is to just spawn on their couch (or vice versa) and have a sleepover. i always tell my friends that they are welcome to visit me and crash with me anytime. lots of my friends also reciprocate this and as a result i usually get to have a multi-day sleepover with a friend whenever i visit a major u.s. city.
  4. became less shy: i think i was pretty shy when i was younger & now i don’t feel shy at all & it’s rare for me to feel socially anxious or shy. it’s hard to attribute the exact reason for this, but i want to say a large part of it was just a natural consequence of becoming older and then becoming more confident and self-assured, which then made me less afraid of being judged or disliked, which allows me to have more bonafide and wholesome social interactions.
  5. learned how to have hard conversations: being a human that interacts with other humans means there will be conflict sometimes & avoidance will only beget more conflict.

autonomy

  1. made my own money & taught myself basic financial literacy: i was financially dependent on my parents until about freshman year of college when i got my first programming job. my parents would’ve graciously let me leech off them for longer, but i felt a lot of independence living off my own earned W2 paychecks & paying for college all on my own. chat it’s crazy, having your own money is actually key. it lets you buy convenience and lets you walk away from bad circumstances e.g. a toxic relationship or job.
  2. moving to california: the weather here is so nice. i love how sunny california is and how i have the ability to be outdoors without freezing my butt off. i love minnesota and am nostalgic for it, but am very happy to be in sf now.

you can do things like sit on the roof in march. no such activities like this would occur in minnesota where the ground is frozen over 7 months of the year.

  1. having goals that i’m working towards and pursing sidequests: making progress towards goals feels great! i feel like feeling in motion/purpose in your day-to-day is really important & life feels quite flat when i’m not in pursuit of something. also sidequests are awesome. getting into things lets me see reality at higher resolution. like i feel like at the surface of any domain, you first learn the terminology, rules, facts & techniques, but once you start going deeper, you encounter these very versatile structures and principles that are domain agnostic. for example, when learning chess, you learn how the pieces move and different positions and plays but the more time you spend with the game the more you start to learn generally applicable things like how to make decisions when you can’t foresee all the possibilities or reading the room and hypothesizing what your opponent is trying to achieve. i feel like this is true in almost anything, be it chess, brazillian ju-jitsu, or rubick’s cubing.

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    i recently became a part of the 5% of people in the world who know how to solve a rubick’s cube! thanks lexi for teaching me :)

  2. learning how to create things: i love being able to have ideas and then use my skills to actualize them into reality. programming allows me to do this & i also want to learn how to make music, hardware things, and generally explore more mediums for making stuff.

increasing awe

  1. dancing
  2. playing music
  3. being in nature

yosmite!

Taoyuan mountains in Taiwan!

tetons! most magestic moutains i’ve ever seen