The Long Game 88: Cooking & Air Quality, Expectations, Quitter's Day & Walking, Defaults
The Long Game 88: Cooking & Air Quality, Expectations, Quitter's Day & Walking, Defaults🛸 Where Is My Flying Car, Notion Health Tracker, Minimalism, the Problem with Lithium-Ion Batteries, 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: In this episode, we explore:
Let’s dive in! 🥑 Health💨 Cooking and Air Quality,As you might have noticed, I’ve been interested in air quality monitoring lately. I came across this thread about cooking and indoor air quality, and the findings are worth sharing: Over the last two months I've read dozens of studies about gas stoves and indoor air quality.
I also installed monitors in our home and ran my own tests.
Here's a thread on what I learned 🧵 #energytwitter
Here’s a second thread responding to common questions. I haven’t yet found the right device for my place, but I’m now aware of the importance of monitoring air quality as it can easily be a silent killer. Other noteworthy health news:
🌱 Wellness🚶 Quitter’s Day and WalkingToday is quitter’s day, a term coined by Strava to describe the day on which people who have made fitness resolutions are most likely to give them up. Two weeks in 2022, the gym is already less crowded. Stick to your resolutions, after a little while you will start enjoying it, and training will become part of your identity. As it’s getting hard to stick to your resolutions, it can help to lower the bar to make sure the consistency stays high. That’s why walking is so good. It’s still physical activity, but the barrier to do it is very low. From Fitt Insider:
And from Kierkegaard:
🧠 Better Thinking🛣 Expectations MatterOne of the best ways to fail at something is to expect it will be very easy and be completely devastated and unmotivated after realizing it will actually be very hard. The reason I called this newsletter The Long Game is because around two years ago, I understood that there is no quick and easy way to get anywhere meaningful. Anything worthy requires a long time, usually way longer than you’d think. Getting super fit, building a company, you name it. It won’t take one or two years. You need to be thinking in decades. At first, it might be perceived as bad news, but after internalizing this fact and accepting it, you actually become much stronger because you’re ready for the type of effort and intensity it will take. @Krishna79198005 Read a lot of books, build a great mental model of the world, build a prototype of something that would be neat to add to it, inspire other people to join the building it, and then just don’t stop. The “just don’t stop” is the most important part. You need to be reading it “even if it gets very hard, just don’t stop.” If you think you’re going for a 10km run and it gets hard at 8km, you might add the last 2km. But if you’re going for a 100km one, there’s no way you’ll cross the finish line if you initially expected a 10km. Bottom line: expect and prepare for the 100km (or more!) ⚡️ Startup Stuff🥇 The Power of DefaultsJulian Lehr came back with another must-read about network effects and the power of defaults. It’s long and dense but really good. Here’s the introduction:
The conclusion about beliefs as network effect is compelling:
To pair with: The Cold Start Problem 📚 What I Read🛸 Where Is My Flying Car?I finally picked up this book that I had wanted to read for a while. I’m halfway through, and it’s an excellent explanation as to why most of the futuristic things we were expecting decades ago didn’t materialize. To be more specific, all the things that would require a lot of energy didn’t materialize. In the low energy realm, we got even more than we expected. What I find even more interesting are the sociological reasons blocking progress. For example, people calling for fewer humans, less energy consumption, and less impact instead of calling for more technological progress to do more with fewer resources.
However, recently we have some reasons to think we’re back on track with technological progress: We’re starting to realize that progress is as dependent on science as it is on media. After decades of Black Mirror-style coverage, people like Nathan Cheng, Isabelle, Eleanor Sheekey, Cleo Abram are much needed. Write code. But also, make movies.
Make movies on fusion
Make movies on reversing aging
Make movies on flying cars
And invert the dystopianism. Rather than a pastoral present despoiled by technology, begin with our all-too-dystopian reality…that might be saved by technology. We’ll talk more about this book next week as I think it covers a very important topic. 💼 Why LinkedIn Is So CringeI hate LinkedIn so much! This may be why:
🌍 What a WorldSome thought-provoking ideas:
🎙 Podcast Episodes of the WeekThis week in podcasts:
🍭 Brain Food⚫ On MinimalismIt’s fair to say minimalism exploded in the last five years. It’s was hard to avoid this trend (Minimalism Documentary on Netflix, and a lot of YouTubers, including Matt D’Avella and more.) At first, this way of life is very appealing, but it’s not clear it benefits everyone. This thoughtful piece makes a case for buying more things and less experiences:
Maybe the initial appeal of minimalism is because so much of our money is spent on things we don’t really enjoy:
🎥 What I’m Watching🔋 The Problem with Lithium-Ion BatteriesThis is a great video to understand the challenges in the transition to electric vehicles. As always, we face complicated tradeoffs. Pair with: The Electric Vehicle Charging Problem 🇯🇵 Why Tokyo Is Insanely Well DesignedThe size of Tokyo is hard to grasp. 38 million people are living in the Greater Tokyo Area, and all of that with perfect organization and transport system. A real example for a lot of other cities. 🔧 The Tool of the Week📊 Notion Health Tracker TemplateSo many people find value in tracking their health and habits in the same place every day. At some point it will all be possible on Vital, but in the meantime, we came up with a template to do so on Notion! 🪐 Quote I’m Pondering
― Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked 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? |
Older messages
The Long Game 87: Stress & Heart Health, Addiction to Pleasure, Demanding & Supportive
Monday, January 10, 2022
📱 The First 1000 Users, Evil, Amazon, High Output, Covid, Less, Designing a House to Last for 1000 Years, and Much More!
The Long Game 86: Mental Wealth, Not Having Time, the Decline of Rationality
Monday, January 3, 2022
🌐 Web3 and China, Morning Routine, Orcas, Air Purifiers, 2021 Letter, Shein and Much More!
The Long Game 85: Best of 2021, the Power of Positivity, Giving Advice
Monday, December 27, 2021
🧠 Best Podcasts, Best Books, Best Tools, Muscle IQ Test, China in Africa, and Much More!
The Long Game 84: Heart Rate Variability, Fun, Superstition, Strength
Monday, December 20, 2021
🧠 Impact of Covid on Early Child Cognitive Development, Airlines, Annual Review, Egypt, and Much More!
The Long Game 83: Wearable Data & Lifestyle Modifications, Emotional Intelligence, Optionality, Blood Testing
Monday, December 13, 2021
🌇 The Long-Awaited Revolution in Architecture, Pareto Security, Life Beyond 3, Techno-Optimism, Genopets, and Much More!
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