Alberto's weekly email: Stillness is the Key, Metrics and Recycling! 🚀
Hi All!
What I am reading 📚
When it comes to buying new books I always try to filter them by age. I try to mostly read old ones. Time is a very good filter. But, when Ryan Holiday publishes a new book I get it instantly. When he announced his latest one, Stillness is the Key, I pre-ordered a copy and read it as soon as it came out!
It didn’t disappoint. His first book on Stoicism, The Obstacle Is The Way, completely changed my view of life and philosophy. In Stillness is the Key, Ryan advocates for calmness 🧘, focus and presence, for removing distractions and focusing on the things that actually matter: “Tolstoy observed that love can’t exist off in the future. Love is only real if it’s happening right now. If you think about it that’s true for basically everything we think, feel, or do. The best athletes, in the biggest games, are completely there. They are within themselves, within the now.”
If you’re curious go read all three books in the trilogy: The Obstacle is The Way, Ego is the Enemy and Stillness is the Key. They will change your life.
Nerd Corner 🤓
If you’ve been reading these emails you probably know that lately I’ve been experimenting with fasting, cold exposure, and a 100% carnivore diet 🥩. While running these experiments I like to keep track of some metrics like fasting hours and mood in order to try to find the best times for me to do deep work.
Keeping track of fasting hours is particularly tedious because I might eat at different times depending on the day and might lose track of how many hours I’ve gone without eating. Luckily I found Zero. This is an app that helps you track your fasts, allows you to set custom reminders and also lets you export all your data. In my case this is super helpful so I can run analysis offline and correlate the different metrics I keep track of!
Also interesting 🤯
This article (and the sources it cites) has led me to think twice about recycling. I used to separate everything into their different bags and bins 🗑. Now, I am more selective and only do compost, paper and metal recycling at home ♻️.
If you haven’t heard about the boom and (almost) bust of WeWork, this article has a nice summary about it. Pretty crazy if you ask me 🤑.
Refined sugars are bad for you 🍭. This article recounts what happened to the author when he completely gave up refined sugars: “By the end of Day 4, I would have sold my dog for a brownie.” If you’re skeptical just try it for yourself and see the results, experiment 😉.
Feedback 🚀
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Have an awesome week!