notes from 4 hour body

  • Ginger & Sauerkraut for muscle
  • experimentalists keep theoreticians honest- Michio Kaku
  • Separation of expertise means both sides suffer sub-optimal results
  • The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.
  • 2.5% provides 95% of the result, 30% provides 98%
  • look for hypotheses worth disproving- proactively skeptical, not defensively skeptical
  • How do you become more productive? “Work out.” – Richard Branson
  • MINIMUM EFFECTIVE DOSE: Smallest dose that will provide the desired outcome (non-scalable- consider Tipping Point) Boil water at 100 deg, not 150 deg.
  • Everything popular is wrong- Oscar Wilde
  • Know the rules so you can break them effectively- Dalai Lama XIV
  • CHARLES MUNGER- right hand man to Buffet, super good thinker, De Bono style, READ HIM
  • Counting calories is parking lot science- looking for your keys under the street lamp because you can see better there, even if you lost them elsewhere
  • Underexploited paths- heat and hormones
  • STICKINESS- WILL IT STICK
  • Avoid methods with a high failure rate, even if you believe you’re in the diligent majority- everybody does when they begin.
  • THE DECENT METHOD YOU FOLLOW IS BETTER THAN THE PERFECT METHOD YOU QUIT
  • causality- short bodybuilders- why short? why bodybuilders?
  • absence/presence- vegetarians live longer because less meat, or more veggies?
  • specific demographic- yoga makes you healthier- healthier people do yoga?
  • “maintaining peak condition year-round is a ticket to the mental ward”
  • cycling- key ingredient in body redesign
  • “healthy/fitness/optimal”- weasel words. BE SPECIFIC. ACTIONABLE.
  • IT’S NOT WHAT YOU PUT IN YOUR MOUTH THAT COUNTS, ITS WHAT MAKES IT TO YOUR BLOODSTREAM.
  • 3 factors: Digestion, protein/carb/fat ratio, timing.
  • fourhourbody.com/wisdom
  • fourhourbody.com/almanac
  • fourhourbody.com/stoicism
  • friends
  • fourhourbody.com/munger
  • Swaraj: Dispassionate self-assessment, ceaseless self-purification and growing self-reliance
  • WHY NO CHANGE
  • 1: Consistent tracking, even if you have absolutely no knowledge of what you’re doing, will often beat advice from world-class trainers
  • 2: Need a sufficient reason for action- pain not painful enough
  • best way to experiment- follow the scientific method- follow a rigid template and make observations
  • INJURY PROOFING REQUIRES CORRECTING L/R IMBALANCES
  • what gets measured gets managed
  • MAKE IT CONSCIOUS
  • MAKE IT A GAME
  • MAKE IT COMPETITIVE
  • MAKE IT SMALL AND TEMPORARY
  • every model is wrong but some are useful
  • observer/Hawthorne effect- people are more productive when they think they are being observed
  • measurement = motivation
  • do something at least 5 times to START building a habit, 30 times to have it
  • fear of loss/benefits of comparison
  • use peer pressure to your advantage