I highly recommend Foundation Training to every athlete and every person who wants to feel stronger. But also and especially to anyone dealing with baI highly recommend Foundation Training to every athlete and every person who wants to feel stronger. But also and especially to anyone dealing with back pain.
I threw my back out badly in April (herniated disk), and in June I still couldn't sit in a chair for more than 20min. I was doing some PT and pilates strengthening stuff that was definitely helping - the McKenzie method took my back from totally in pain to maybe 70% recovered. But when I started this, my recovery accelerated 3x, and 2-3 months later, I was pretty much fully recovered! I now intend to make these exercise part of my ongoing routine, because I think they give you a strong "foundation" (it's well named!) to be strong for other activities. It's very understandable why Kelly Slater, Derek Fisher, and many other top tier athletes have endorsed it. My wife, who was almost a professional ballerina and also knows pilates, says many of the techniques in here are similar to ballet and pilates, so I don't think they are necessarily new, but have been nicely packaged.
I mostly used the DVD set and did the exercises there, but I found the first few chapters of the book to be useful for understanding some of the science of it. These quotes give you the high level:
I threw my back out and had a coworker (Thanks Libby) and my new PT recommend this same book on the same day. I read it, and 2 days later, I am on theI threw my back out and had a coworker (Thanks Libby) and my new PT recommend this same book on the same day. I read it, and 2 days later, I am on the right path! Assuming that trend continues, this book is magic!
It basically says that many of us who work sitting down all day have bad posture and lose our lordosis (the curvature of the lower back). If this happens it puts strain on your disks while can easily lead to a strain and thus throwing out your back. The fix is simple - to do stretches that push the back to have lordosis again.
Fascinating telling of the last 20 years of the journalism industry, through in depth looks at four companies: The New York Times, the Washington PostFascinating telling of the last 20 years of the journalism industry, through in depth looks at four companies: The New York Times, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice. I knew a lot of this having followed and worked on some of it (eg social media rise), but I still learned some things that made the book worth it. I also didn't agree with the way she characterized some of the things I knew about.
The story of the news industry in the last twenty years, is one of managed decline. The Posts revenue was ~30% of what it had been when Jeff Bezos purchased it, and their newsroom had shrunk by almost half. Similar trend for the Times. Print circulation provided all the revenue but it was declining, digital was growing but providing no revenue, and classified advertising, which used to account for ~40% of revenue, was taken almost entirely out by Craigslist, Monster.com and the internet. Shrinkage led to a shortage of young people working there, and a lack of a culture of innovation.
In recent years, the Times, Post, WSJ, and others have finally figured out how to embrace digital and make digital subscriptions work. Maybe people just needed a decade or two before they were willing to pay for online content, or maybe the publishers could have innovated faster, it's a very interesting question - but I tend to think innovation could have been much faster (but not overnight). But as of mid 2020, the NYT has 6 million subscribers, who provide 64% of their revenue.
One of the themes the book talks about a lot is the separation between church and state in a newspaper - the notion that advertisers should have zero influence over what journalists write or cover. Church and state have been separated for a long time for a good reason - if they aren't, the truth can be hidden by paying money. But the declining legacy print business and the loss of classified meant better online advertising needed to be figured out to save the papers. And upstarts like BuzzFeed and Vice led the charge in figuring out what it looked like - basically an in house ad agency that produced fully native advertising. These articles, which were paid for and thus positive, were mostly clearly marked but not in obvious ways. Church and state got intermixed, and the result at Vice and BuzzFeed has been that advertisers can control content. Less so at NYT/Post, but still a tension that you have to believe influences things.
But the biggest issue is that with online, we have ability to measure clicks, and clicks mean pageviews which mean ad dollars. So now we live in a world where editors value content that generates clicks, and a scoreboard can be created. Impressively, at Buzzfeed salaries were tied to how many clicks a writers pieces generated. And while the editors at the Times knew that human judgement mattered more as to what news people should know, even there clicks started to rule the day.
If even the NYT falls to clicks, and BuzzFeed/Vice/HuffPo/etc are all about clicks, this leads us to content that is good at getting clicks. More specifically, content that plays on our emotions, usually fear, anger, outrage. Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now talked about this trend. And then things like this can happen, where someone good at making clicks comes along:
I think clicks are the wrong metric. And optimizing for that metric has led our media industry astray. You combine that with a publishing industry that is cutting costs and thus not innovating as well as having to cut quality checks, and it explains a bit why the media is now so polarized and not as trusted as "the newspaper of record" should be.
And it's not just clicks, social media engagement is not the right metric either:
Side note on Vice - I must have not been in the target audience for them, and while I know I have occasionally read things on their website, I was wholly ignorant of their story, or the fact that they had and have a big video arm on YouTube and HBO - I don't think I've ever seen any of their videos! I guess I was never counter-culture... but I was glad to learn their story.
Side note - the author Jill Abramson was accused of lifting some of her passages from magazine articles about Vice/Buzzfeed/etc, and not crediting the original source. It looks like this is true for a few paragraphs at least, but the overall narrative constructed is not plagiarized, so I don't think this is a big deal at all in whether or not to read or trust this book....more
A beautifully written and poetic book. It captures the heart of a slice of Africa in the 1920's and 30's. Worth reading for the prose alone, and to geA beautifully written and poetic book. It captures the heart of a slice of Africa in the 1920's and 30's. Worth reading for the prose alone, and to get a sense of what Africa was like. It was horse racing, old cars, old airplane adventures, and hunting. This quote was a good summary:
I read this while in Kenya, and it really brought it to life. There is a bit of ancientness in Africa that is innate, inside us, that can be brought out even now. Such as when we heard lions roar, it does something to your insides that makes you uneasy in a way you can't explain.
My grandfather and father were both hunters, and I think there is something romantic about what hunting in Africa must have been like. But also the amount of risk (health-wise) and cost it must have taken to be an elephant hunter (let alone what we now know it did to the population) seems crazy.
Magical descriptions and prose of the authors life in Provence, France. Full of humor, and tantalizing descriptions of French food, and French life. WMagical descriptions and prose of the authors life in Provence, France. Full of humor, and tantalizing descriptions of French food, and French life. Written in the 90's but still likely relevant (I'd be curious how much Provence has changed, but I'd bet this book still applies). Biggest takeaway was that the national sport of the Provencals, at least according to the book, is food.
A captivating memoir, well written, easy to tear through, and kind of heartbreaking. It was positioned by some as a way to understand what is happeninA captivating memoir, well written, easy to tear through, and kind of heartbreaking. It was positioned by some as a way to understand what is happening in America, and you certainly got to see a family that is off the grid and very poor. But I think it was much more a story about abuse. Emotional and physical, Tara's story is most impressive that not only did she break out and get an education, but she escaped the abuse from her father and brother that kept all the rest of her family in check. Her father in particular sounds like he has mental illness, and the consequences of his not getting care for that - because he was intentionally off the grid and doesn't trust doctors - was severe on his family.
The best book about how to eat healthy and the reasoning behind it that I've yet read. Well backed with science and uses studies to make all his pointThe best book about how to eat healthy and the reasoning behind it that I've yet read. Well backed with science and uses studies to make all his points. Highly recommended for everyone (the title is misleading, its not just for obese people).
The main theory of the book is that the root cause of obesity and weight gain is a complex hormonal imbalance, that stems from high blood insulin levels. High insulin levels are responsible for obesity, and to a smaller degree, so can high cortisol levels (being overly stressed can lead to weight gain). High insulin levels are a direct result of poor diet, and are 95% of the cause of obesity. Exercise is 5% of it (I would have said it was 70/30, so this was interesting). The foods that contribute to weight gain are largely a result of too much sugar and too much refined carbohydrates. Obesity can also be "genetic" and passed to kids in the sense that if a mother has high insulin levels it will be passed to the child.
A fascinating part of the book was that while many of us would intuitively say sugar and processed carbs are the culprit, the prevailing wisdom by all official sources is different - eg look at what the NHS website says: "Obesity is generally caused by eating too much and moving too little.". This theory of calories in minus calories out, has prevailed for 50+ years, and the book makes a good case for it being wrong. The kind of calories make all the difference. To prove this, the book goes into all the data it could find about weight loss studies done, and found that generally, diets don't work. Shocker, I know, because again intuitively we all know that - its easy to go on a diet and lose weight, but then it always comes back. Why is this?
Basically, our bodies are like thermostats in our houses - they are set to a certain weight, and our bodies do their darnedest to keep our weight there. To change our weight, we have to change our "body set weight" first. To do that, we have to lower our insulin levels, by eating less things that make them spike.
This book was recommended to me by my doctor, as I did some bloodwork which said I high slightly high cholesterol and should lose 10 pounds. He recommended I start doing 8/16 fasting, and when I asked for reading material to learn about it, he recommended this book. I can report after 2 months, it really works. I don't miss breakfast - I just have coffee on many mornings, and am fine - and lost the 10 pounds! The reason fasting works is well described in the book, and its a huge new tool in my arsenal. Basically, our bodies need time to process insulin in our bodies, and if we don't get it, it leads to continuous elevated insulin levels, which leads to weight gain. So by not eating for 12 hours a day (overnight), or 16 hours (overnight plus skip breakfast), you can lower your insulin levels. This is a neat trick as now I know if I have a huge dinner, its not necessary to have breakfast. It's also helpful as snacking, in particular late night snacking, is one of the worst things for you. In fact:
Fasting may sound like a terrible hungry hangover, but it's actually very natural and a part of our human history. It's also a very effective weight loss tool:
The reason that most of us don't know how to eat well? Because nobody really knows the truth, because the food industry has spent money to conceal it, being subsidized by the government all along. The book Salt Sugar Fat goes into more depth on this topic, but with such big dollars at stake you couldn't exactly declare that everything that Nestle or Proctor & Gamble makes is bad for you (it is). Their first scapegoat was fats, and thus was born several decades of focus on "low fat foods" - however, there are no studies that actually find a correlation between low fat diets and lower cholesterol and thus reduced heart disease. It just didn't exist - the whole "low fat" diet thing failed. Now there is another scapegoat:
Soda and all sugary drinks deserve a large portion of the blame. The data of the rise of soda and obesity are strongly correlated, and happened over the same years. If you are still drinking soda or any drink other than water or sparkling water, stop!
But then a good thing happened, and in the 21st century in the US we started to recognize the evils of soda and drink less. Profits for Coca Cola fell. So then:
So far I've only talked about avoid sugar and processed carbohydrates generally - but the book does a great job of better explaining why processed carbohydrates are so bad. Basically, the processing removes all the "good stuff" they come with that offset the effects of the carbs.
The author, Matthew Walker, makes a compelling case for sleep that frankly even after having read many articles about the importance of sleep, and eveThe author, Matthew Walker, makes a compelling case for sleep that frankly even after having read many articles about the importance of sleep, and even watching his TED talk, changed my perspective. It has convinced me that I have likely been under-slept much of the past 10 years (3 kids and a busy job will make it hard), and that has been a negative contributor to my health and well being. Specifically, I have always been of the belief that I am a person who can subsist on 6-7 hours of sleep, but this book makes me believe I need to be getting 8, and that the difference is material to both my mental and physical health.
But more so, it warns of a global sleep epidemic. And this really rings true. Sleep is something we spend (if we are doing it right), a third of our lives doing, and which should be put up there with eating well and exercising. And yet how often have you heard recommendations for eating well and exercising that don't also include a recommendation to sleep enough? The book makes a strong case that we are vastly under educating people about the benefits of sleep. This sentence for instance, both rings true and is one of the scariest in the book:
If this isn't an epidemic, what is? Like me, many of us have a notion that we should work hard during the week and "catch up" later or (pre-kids) on the weekend. Interestingly, this notion is false - we can never catch up, the damage has been done.
It's not just our culture of working too hard and looking at screens too much, there are a few specific cultural things the book rants against. First (and in my opinion, justified) is a rant against schools that have start times that are too early - teenagers in particular still have forming brains and need their sleep. Second and most ironic is our medical schools culture of 24 or 48 hour shifts - the medical community should know better, and if they don't, it's no wonder the rest of us don't take it seriously enough.
So why do we sleep? One big reason is that it literally stores your memories from the day - it moves them from short term to long term storage, and if you don't get good sleep, you just lose the memories! I shudder to think of how many classes I crammed for during college on no sleep and then promptly forgot it all :(. The phrase "let me sleep on it" exists in every culture because it works - our brains will be better on a problem the following day, because the information has been moved to long term storage, and intermingled with our neural net of everything else in our brains.
One fascinating insight was the studies that showed that the last 2 hours of sleep (from hour 6 to 8) were some of the most key hours for deep NREM sleep, which does your memory storage. When you short those by only getting 6 hours, it matters a lot!
The bits about physical performance for athletes was solidly backed and fascinating. I'd heard that "Federer gets 9-10 hours" and the such for similar top performers, but this backed it up - you really do perform 30-50% better with more sleep, AND recover 30-50% better with more sleep the next night.
The book had several convincing chapters about the improved health risks of sleeping more. It reduces chances of cancer and probably about everything else, since sleep is what helps your body repair itself. These bits were scary to read, and intended to be so. His "convincer", that he opened his TED Talk with, is that men who are sleep deprived have 30% reduced sperm count, lower testosterone, and smaller testicles.
While the book was great at the science of what we know about sleep, it didn't go enough into what is known about how to improve sleep. But it did have good high level tips:
I did want more tips on beating jet lag, which the book didn't really go into, other than to say it will take 1 day to adjust 1 hour, so it takes a week to adjust to a move from the US to EU (which I knew).
I bought an Oura ring after reading this book, which gives great data and graphs about my sleep, but I am still struggling to get high Oura scores. So I'm still looking for what works for me. But now I'm committed to striving for 8 hours a night instead of 7, which has already made a big difference!...more
Harari is one of my favorite authors of late, and his books Sapiens and Home Deus are among my favorites. This book builds on those, and is equally faHarari is one of my favorite authors of late, and his books Sapiens and Home Deus are among my favorites. This book builds on those, and is equally fascinating. He is one of those clear thinkers who is able to put together multiple macro trends combined with philosophical perspective. Sapiens is about the past, Deus about the future, and this book purports to be 21 lessons about the present. But it is also rooted in the past, and preparing us for the future.
One of Harari's key themes in Deus and this book is AI and what it will mean for humanity in the future. Many people - thanks to Hollywood - equate AI with machines that achieve consciousness - I tend to not agree with that, as I think it more likely that AI will just be exceedingly smart. But regardless, along with nuclear power and climate change it's one of the great risks to our future. And it is being advanced rapidly. This will have a lot of side affects, the top one of which is what will happen to humans. I think this quote might be one of the most key from the book, and certainly a key theme of Harari's:
He goes on to further explain that our whole economic system is causing us to head in this direction, and to - except for a small number of people who opt to prioritize differently - largely ignore how to improve ourselves.
Another consequence of AI that is fascinating is that it can enable intelligence at a scale we today can't comprehend, which can be dangerous if it is controlled by the wrong people. AI is just a function of the data you put into it, so it follows that who holds the data in the future, will hold the power. I think this is a key concept.
Harari talks about trends in globalization, nationalism, immigration, religion, terrorism, and war. A common theme across these is that many people worry a lot that trends in these areas is a cause for concern and causing decline in our world. However the truth is that in most of them, we have come a long way and made a lot of progress - however because we live in an unprecedented age of information sharing - "media" - people are a lot more aware of even small issues in these areas. Also, our governments are predicated on keeping us safe from political violence, so even small issues like terrorism (small in the sense of how many people die from it each year) can have outsized importance to people.
He talks about the danger of propoganda/fake news and fascism and how in todays technological climate there is more risk of them so its better if everyone understands them. He explained this really well in his TED talk - highly worth watching.
But in the end, the only major recommendation Harari makes is around meditation. He impressively meditates for TWO HOURS per day, and TWO MONTHS per year. That is obviously a *huge* time commitment, and yet one he finds fulfilling. If we are going to invest in ourselves, the biggest way might be to start with our minds, and to stop worrying about all of these trends - because in the end, they don't matter to our ability to have a good, happy, loving life.
Best parenting book I've read. And really more than a parenting book, this a book about how to live life well in modern times. The author is a family Best parenting book I've read. And really more than a parenting book, this a book about how to live life well in modern times. The author is a family counselor and over his career of helping many families, has developed a particular theory and philosophy about what is challenging so many families. To simplify (which is the theme of the book), we've become too busy, and that busyness is particularly bad for children.
The boiling pot is of course our busy lives, full of activities, work, media, screens, and more. We live in an era where humans have never been so constantly switched on and busy. The solution: to create space in your life, and time. This leads to a deeper connection between your kids and your spouse.
The book is worth reading, but here are some of the basic takeaways:
2. When a child (or an adult) is having a tough time (a "soul fever") - just like a real fever, give them a few days off and they will heal. This can mean taking a sick day, something I never do and am going to think seriously about.
3. Meditate. So many books and teachers talk about the benefits of this! Or do the modern alternatives, such as sports, music or deep play - anything that really lets you focus without distraction.
4. Simplify toys. The average kid receives 70 toys per year, and most of them are not played with frequently. Many end up missing parts, or broken. Simplify down to ~5 toys out at a time, and toss half and keep the other half in bins in storage. Keep the toys that inspire imagination - simple toys like blocks of wood, basic wooden boats - complex toys like a princess castle with all the trimmings leave little to the imagination. Avoid toys based on popular movie or tv characters for that reason too.
5. Simplify books. This one was hard for me, but it does make sense to leave out ~5 books the child will read a lot, and even make sure their shelf is full of good books, not just any books.
6. Create rhythm in the daily and weekly family life. Establish this with regular family dinners, family meetings, and other customs. Sundays as family days. Reading time as a family.
8. Reduce exposure to media for kids. Our media has become increasingly fear based (which I think is a huge problem that needs solving), and kids just simply don't need exposure to it.
Scandalous, riveting, and well reported. I tore through this in a weekend. This is an unbelievable story - I literally cannot believe how so many peopScandalous, riveting, and well reported. I tore through this in a weekend. This is an unbelievable story - I literally cannot believe how so many people were duped by this company. It's a story of a Stanford grad dropout who had a vision, and an uncanny ability to make others believe her, and as the pressure piled on, as she started to be compared to Steve Jobs, and get accolades like "first female self-made billionaire", she started to cheat. I'm sure it started small at first - the story of this company spans 10 years, so it's really the story of a boiled frog. But the lying and deception and how she got so many big name people on her board and advising her (Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis) is simply amazing. Of course, none of those people know anything about biotech companies, so it's also a story about investor optimism (and lack of due diligence).
This was a really compelling book for me - it made me think deeply about myself and the world and opened my eyes a bit too. It's no coincidence that mThis was a really compelling book for me - it made me think deeply about myself and the world and opened my eyes a bit too. It's no coincidence that multiple of my smarter friends have told me to read it!
Meditation is a subject that is interesting to me because of how many smart/successful people that I've talked to or read about highly recommend it. I wanted to better understand it, but I didn't predict all the directions this book would take.
One of the main interesting takeaways was how strongly the book ties the theory of natural selection with meditation.
This makes sense, we evolved over millions of years according to an algorithm that simply said: the ones who live pass on their genes. This has a lot of implications however, the foremost being that our ancestors - the ones that passed their genes on to us - evolved to be particularly good at finding food, mating and having kids, being alert to and surviving various dangers, and being positive contributors of their tribe (as outcasts don't survive). They did NOT evolve to be "happy".
This to me was a huge insight. I am constantly seeking new experiences, and am fortunate to have experienced many amazing things. But each thrill quickly fades and I find myself worrying about whatever is next remarkably quickly. To know that we were evolved that way on purpose - because our ancestors who killed a mammoth would only survive if they killed another one next week - is both fascinating and illuminating. This is why it is true that money doesn't make you happy, nor do successes in career.
The book delved into our emotions around human relationships a lot, which I found very interesting. Because as much as I would love to say "I don't care what others think of me", it's simply not true. In fact, random encounters with people I don't know and will never see again - can bother me. Also, encounters with people I do know can worry me quite a lot too. So it's somewhat comforting to realize that we evolved to be this way. Interestingly, interactions with strangers is a newer thing to us and has likely added to our modern day stress. The book also talks a lot about essence, as many of us have impressions of others (eg nice, not nice, helpful, jerk, selfish, weird, etc) that aren't really "accurate" - they are just our perceptions, and by being aware of this, it can better help us interact with such people.
So meditation can help us by recognizing that our mind is running these "algorithms", which come in the form of emotions, and cause us to "worry" about things, instead of focusing on being present in the moment. By observing which emotions and worries pop up, we can become more aware of them, and somewhat strangely - worry a lot less about them.
The book had an interesting section on "the self". Most of us think there is an "I" inside of us that is calling the shots in our lives, or as the book calls it, our internal "CEO". But in Buddhism, one of the key concepts as you advance is you are supposed to learn that there is no self. But we aren't really in control of ourselves - if we were we wouldn't have all kinds of thoughts all day worrying about or contemplating all kinds of random things. The book proposes that what is really going on is that there are a number of "modules" (or algorithms as I prefer to think) that are competing for our attention. There is the "mating" module, the "get food" module, the "look good socially" module, etc. Any thought or anything we see or hear or smell can easily trigger the emotion that starts any of these modules.
So, to summarize, humans suffer from "dukkha" or unsatisfactoriness, which means we have a constant craving or thirst or desire, which can't be quenched because if we attain our desire we will just have a new one. The only solution is to be mindful of the desires we have. To notice when we have a feeling, to examine the feeling, turn it over until you understand its root. By doing this, it loses its power over you. You can also start to recognize patterns in your thoughts if you do this a lot. The book says meditating 20min a day is a great start, but the difference between 30min a day and 50min is huge, as is the difference between 30min and 90min. But it also seems to imply that a weeklong retreat is likely also required if you really want to see benefits.
This all leads to a question that is interesting to ponder but the book only touches lightly on, which is that: is the way we evolved the way we need to behave to be happy and thrive in modern times? The answer is likely not as humans over the past 1000 years have changed a lot - even the past 100 years. So how could we help a lot more people be aware of this and what impacts could that have? A good question!
Book 3 is more of the same: hilarious and wonderful stories about the Durrell's live in Greece. I think this one was even funnier than the last two. IBook 3 is more of the same: hilarious and wonderful stories about the Durrell's live in Greece. I think this one was even funnier than the last two. If there were more of these I'd read them! Most of the funny bits have to do with Gerry and his animals doing crazy things - for instance:
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