The Long Game 71: The Price of One More Healthy Year, Measuring Life, Early Setbacks, UX Research
The Long Game 71: The Price of One More Healthy Year, Measuring Life, Early Setbacks, UX Research💊 Getting Crypto-Pilled, Web3, Japan Tech, Social Habits, India's Private Town, and Much More!Hi there, it’s Mehdi Yacoubi, co-founder at Vital, and this is The Long Game Newsletter. To receive it in your inbox each week, subscribe here: 📣 We are hiring at Vital, help us build the “Strava for Health.” We are currently looking for:
We are offering $1,000 in Bitcoin if you refer to us a candidate we end up hiring. In this episode, we explore:
Let’s dive in! 🥑 Health💸 The Economic Value of an Additional Healthy YearHow much would you pay for an additional healthy year? Well, Americans would pay on average $242,000 for one extra year of good health. Of course, the US healthcare system is entirely non-functioning (on the cost side of things), and people routinely have million-dollar bills for a few nights in the hospital. However, it’s still essential to understand how bad people want to live longer and healthier.
🌱 Wellness➕ How Will You Measure Your Life?I tweeted a quote from David Sacks on work-life balance this weekend, and the funny thing is that work-life balance might be THE topic that gets people significantly involved with the discussion. “You want to think about work-life balance, but across your entire life. One of the things you’ll do in your 20s is work much harder to set yourself up for where you want to be in your 50s.”
— @DavidSacks I think the reasons behind this are multiple:
An important resource to solve this problem for yourself is How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen. It will guide you in an exercise to understand what you value most and plan your life and your time accordingly. There is no best answer for everyone. There might be a ‘window of healthiness’ on to how to organize your life, but expect people to value wildly different things. Feel like one of struggles of your 20s is figuring out what your personal metrics of success are in your life. These aren't necessarily explicit numbers, but general feelings that your decisions are optimizing for
This is also largely influenced by who you spend time with What’s really important is to be aligned with yourself. You can’t work relatively little and expect to have an outsized positive effect on society, and you also can’t work 8—11 and claim that family matters to you. Finally, it’s worth noting that there is a fine line between discipline and addiction. 🧠 Better Thinking⛔ The Impact of Setbacks in Future SuccessesI have been thinking a lot about the impact of the setbacks I had in my life. After a few years, I came to the conclusion that setbacks—if taken with the right mindset—are extreme energy boosts that will lead to more sustained efforts and more success in the long run. I tend to think of setbacks as the necessary reminder that you can’t become complcaçent and too relaxed, and this very idea is what leads to perpetual growth and improvement. The tricky thing with those ideas is that they are very hard to generalize. I found this research paper that attempts to do so:
The bottom line: persevere, worship relentlessness, and you will be all right. ⚡️ Startup Stuff🔬 UX ResearchWe’ve been doing a lot of UX research on our new product at Vital lately. I picked up a few books to make sure we’re doing it right: When doing user research, one of the most important—and basic—things is to leave the ego at the door and not to try to guide people to describe your perfectly imagined plan of action. This is harder than it seems and benefits from being repeated a lot! Remember, you want to be right in the long term. You don’t want nor care to be right on your first attempts. One idea from the Mom Test that stuck with me is:
Building a product and company can quickly get overwhelming, and you can be tempted to skip the user interviews. This is a very bad idea. As the author of UX for Lean Startups explains:
The books provide more detailed guidance on conducting interviews and what type of interviews you need depending on where you are in the product development lifecycle. 📚 What I Read🇺🇸🇨🇳 Will the Next American War Be with China?China isn’t wasting time in its pursuit of global dominance:
💊 Getting Crypto-PilledElena Burger on how she got crypto-pilled:
3️⃣ Web3 — Solving Our Trust Issues with MathAn excellent article explaining why web3 will be a huge deal, and most likely the future of the internet: Minimum viable explanation
I highly recommend Chris Dixon’s threads for more: 🎙 Podcast Episodes of the WeekI’ve been doing a lot of walking in Barcelona lately, so I had the time for many great episodes:
🍭 Brain Food📂 The Facebook FilesThe WSJ recently published what may be their biggest hit: The Facebook Files. They are internal documents where Facebook conducted research on the impact of their products on mental health and discovered the mental health harm caused. Of course, Facebook kept these documents secret. The WSJ's "Facebook Files" is the biggest scoop in the company's history. Internal documents prove:
-Facebook knew its algorithm incentivized outrage
-Instagram knew it hurt teen girls
-Facebook has been shielding VIPs from moderation
Here are the shocking revelations... 🧵 Instagram's research found:
Personally, I find the negative effect of Instagram on mental health extremely obvious. Some people might disagree with me, but how could a platform dominated by fake nattys, models, and lavish lifestyles not lead to mental health problems? This goes back to the Center for Humane Technology’s research: I expect the space of ‘Mental Health & Technology’ to grow exponentially over this decade. 🎥 What I’m Watching🇮🇳 India’s Privately-Owned CityAn interesting video on India’s charter city. 🇯🇵 Why Japan Fell Behind in the Tech IndustryWe don’t often hear about Japan these days. Here’s why: 🔧 The Tool of the Week📱 Kin—Social HabitsI have been following the journey of Justin Kan with Kin for a few months. Similar to what we understood at Vital, Justin saw in using social the opportunity to really motivate people to stick to their habits for the long term and create a product that will remain in the lives of its users. 🪐 Quote I'm Pondering
— Sarah Tavel If you enjoyed this newsletter, make sure to subscribe if you haven’t 👇 👋 EndNoteThanks for reading! If you like The Long Game, please share it on social media or forward this email to someone who might enjoy it. Podcast reviews are also gratefully received. You can also “like” this newsletter by clicking the heart just below this, which helps me get visibility on Substack. Feel free to email me or find me on Twitter if you have any feedback or questions. Until next week, Mehdi Yacoubi PS: Lots of newsletters get stuck in Gmail’s Promotions tab. If you find it in there, please help train the algorithm by dragging it to Primary. It makes a big difference. If you liked this post from The Long Game by Mehdi Yacoubi, why not share it? |
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The Long Game 70: Free Time & Happiness, Health Optimization, Dopamine, Optionality
Monday, September 13, 2021
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The Long Game 69: Altos Labs, Chemical Hunger, Obsessive Walking & Great Thinking, Próspera
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The Long Game 68: Zone 2 Training, the Efficiency Trap, Mimetic Desire, Optimism, Tote Bags
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🥛 Whole Milk, Maybe, the Streetlight Effect, How Afghanistan Became a Failed State, Anti-Doping, and Much More!
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🌐 The Metaverse, Climate Change, Time Dilation, Afghanistan, Parasocial Relationships, Reveri, and Much More!
The Long Game 66: Feeling Great, Sacrifice, Cold Emails, How Asia Works
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⏳ Every Hour Matters, Afghanistan, Geothermal Energy, Quantum Gravity, Russia, Khodorkovsky, Saturn, and Much More!
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