Much of society is built on the premise that we do most of our learning in our ‘informative years’ of going to school and college and perhaps at our first job, but if you want to grow as a person then you must embrace continual education and self-improvement. This is where personal interests, aspirations, career, and hobbies would totally personalize your specifics, so I will just provide some general commentary.
Especially in the age of the internet, information is at our fingertips, so nobody should be lacking on content. The important skills to develop are appropriate filtering mechanisms. You will never be able to consume even 1% of what is available on any topic, so apply some extreme versions of Pareto’s principle and try to find the most impactful summaries to start out (my aspiration is that this can serve as that summary for your health improvement). As your network of trustworthy people and sources grow that filter will improve. Your media type can also vary, whether it’s print (books, internet, etc.) or audio (podcasts, radio, audiobooks, etc.) or videos. We all have our favorites that are likely shaped by how you best learn/interpret information and what fits your lifestyle and schedule (e.g. do you have more time when your ears are free rather than your eyes, such as a driving commuter).
So I’ll leave it at this: find a manageable number of inputs and make the time to feed your brain. But keep in mind the third quote at the end of this page, because despite the saying, information by itself is not power. More specific suggestions will appear on the resources page.
Personal Tracking Devices and Approaches
There are so many wearables and tools today that enable a level of bioinformation that just 20 years ago would have required hospitalization, extremely large instruments, or very invasive devices/sampling to achieve. Add to this what can be done with biofluid-based diagnostic testing and you can take self-quantification to a whole different level. I am resisting the urge to go down a lot of rabbit holes here, because this is where my professional career overlaps with my health hobbies. Contact me for more information if interested, but here are a few recommendations:
- Athletes, particularly endurance athletes, should give serious consideration to monitoring heart rate variability (HRV), which is a terrific guide to how well your body is recovering from previous workouts.
- Tracking actual heart rate during workouts, and figuring out your heartrate zones, is important for any cardiovascular training (see physical fitness page). Wrist or ring-based devices work well for resting heartrate, but nothing beats a chest strap while exercising.
- Track your sleep. Though your intuition may be a good judge here, you may have a few surprising findings and/or trends.
- Here are some podcasts that have a lot of shows focused on these topics, in order of most ‘layman’ to most technical:
For those who want even more tips and links to gadgets, see the resources sub-page, which will grow over time. Beware the possibility of going down a lot of rabbit holes though…
Of course I would encourage everyone to share the tips, tricks, and advice with other loved ones or acquaintances whom can benefit from the content. Keep in mind the quote on the quote board about not being a prophet in your own land, and, like they tell you on the airplane to fasten your own seat belt before helping others, you definitely want to clean up your own house before critiquing others!
Inspiration
Finally I’ll ask you to end with my ‘quote board’. Please visit!