I think I know a lot about many things

Tag: health

  • Quick Theory: you are a tumor

    I often find myself thinking about death, how at some point in time, in the future, I will cease to exist. Given this, and given what I am, I find myself incredibly lucky. There’s a one in a googol’s chance to go from nothing into consciousness, and it becomes exponentially more difficult to be born a human. We have such a broad range of thoughts and emotions, an overabundance of control (that we rarely use), and we have the opportunity to experience life in ways any other living creature cannot even dream of.

    Ok, life is hard. But if you can read this, you are in the best position to tackle it.

    Now think of other creatures that inhabit the earth, that represent life: fish, mammals, birds, insects. They are born into lives of habit that are so ingrained that they have developed instincts for survival. Literally they do not think or reason about a vast majority of their actions, but throughout history, being able to follow these habits to the letter made the difference between life and death, so it got ingrained into a process deeper than thought.

    But one thing they have which we also do, but we forget. The strongest instinct of all: they would do anything for their survival. They don’t have ethics to worry about, and even if they do, they would literally eat their newborn babies to survive (I’m looking at you, marsupials). It doesn’t go more hardcore than this.

    But on the concept of life preserving instinct, there is a form of life that we very often disregard, but that likes to make its presence known from time to time, through some incredibly unlucky circumstances.

    The cell.

    The cell as a living organism

    This discussion thread is quite strongly inspired by a Kurtzgesagt video, which I’ll link below:

    They define the cell as a living organism, which in retrospect, it was surprisingly close to humans.

    A cell lives in a society of many other cells, where they work collectively to keep your body running correctly and smoothly. If everything goes well, your body is in harmony. However, that is rarely the case, since from time to time, the entire body needs to battle diseases, little tears from strain, and many cells die, many others need to sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the cells.

    In all “animal” kingdom, you probably have never seen these kind of ethics before. But this is the life of a cell. They live to support you, and die to prevent you from doing the same (alongside their other more lucky compatriots).

    But what happens if certain strains on their livelihood makes cells “feel” unsafe? They keep seeing cells close to them die and get replaced and die, for reasons that it does not understand. It’s you, drinking alcohol every night, or smoking every day, or eating things that make your cells starve and die due to lack of nutrients, or just kill them off directly because of some chemical you should have never ingested, or haven’t slept and your immune system needs to work extra hard, or bad infections may slip.

    Think about it. The cell becomes scared for its life. And not just one, but multiple. So they start to gather up, rebel, and no longer help sustain your body, but work solely to sustain themselves. That gathering of “rebellious” cells is the tumor.

    And defend themselves from the cells whose ethics are still stable. By any means necessary. A civil war has erupted in your body.

    The civil war you’d fight

    Throughout history, there have been many-a-times when men better than us have sacrificed their lives to protect their country, their families, knowing they at least would live to see another day. Maybe they thought of themselves as unlucky, maybe they were scared. But they did it anyway.

    We like to think of ourselves as that, as brave, as selfless. But this is rare, and society has led us to the conclusion that we would not be helping us or our friends and families if we were to make these sacrifices. We would only protect the people in charge, who don’t care about us.

    So we would run, because we had the chance.

    But what if we could not? What if we had to stay and endure, in the context of us wanting to survive?

    We would rebel. We would fight. We would kill if we had to, specifically those who’d oppose us.

    For an authoritarian country, if enough people gather, they form a civil war against the governing bodies. In your body, if enough cells gather, they form a cancerous tumour against you.

    If you think it’s completely random chance, it is not. You know what you are doing to your body, just as our politicians know what they are doing to us. If we are treated kindly, we leave them in peace. But if there are continuous threats to our livelihood, and we see no work done to keep us safe, well, history finds countries and people that are not so lucky as to survive a civil war.

    Learning empathy

    It’s a little difficult to find out that you are not actually as good and kind as you like to think of yourself. You have this darkness in you, that would activate and make you prepared to destroy everything around you, if that would mean you would live to see another day.

    But you are not alone. Everyone around you has this, to a greater or lesser extent. They can justify it, they may even fight it if they have different priorities. But they have it.

    Literally every cell in your body has this.

    So what can you do, when you are surrounded every day by millions of Damocle’s swords? You learn to love them.

    Weird, and a little close to a Stockholm Syndrome. But your friends, your spouse, even your kids, they exhibit the same behaviour, yet you love them. Your neighbours, not so much, but you get my point.

    You have no closer neighbours than your own cells. But they are loyal motherfuckers. You really need to screw them over again, and again, and again, and again, and again, for ever, for them to say they finally had enough.

    Otherwise, they are there to support you, to give you energy, to push you forward in life, to get you up when you’ve fallen down. They are there to boost your mood, or relax you when you’re in pain, or give you that extra power when you’re in danger. They quietly help you take each and every breath, and the only thing they ask for, is to make their life a little bit easier.

    That’s all they ask. If you can, of course. But even if you think you can’t.

    Try.

  • Don’t make time for the things that matter; shape what matters to you

    This is the third, and currently, planned final installment of the 4 bubbles of life series. You may find the first and second part linked in the words here somewhere.

    We will start with the axioms we defined in the first post.

    Reminder: there are 4 core aspects of a complete life: work, health, leisure and love. There is nothing more, nothing less. You may not have a complete life unless you hit all aforementioned aspects in a sufficient way in your life.

    And the following formula:

    One’s life is k hours/day/week complete if they have spent at least k hours every day for every one of the 4 mandatory aspects of life, averaged over the course of a week.

    Let me give a simple example: Imagine you have spent at least 1 hour taking care of your health, 8 hours (per work day) working, 1 hour with your family and 1 hour relaxing on the couch, every day, every week, over the course of a few months, you have achieved a 1 hour/day/week complete life.

    Well, hear me out on something.

    What if we take the 1 hour relaxing on the couch and 1 hour spent with your family, and do them at the same time? We get 2 hours of relaxing with your family. What if you go out to walk, picnic on some healthy food and play in the park together (assuming kids), and you re-purpose that 1 hour of taking care of your health doing this instead. You have achieved 3 hours of health, leisure and love every day. And now, your k-life score went up from 1 to 3 hour/day/week complete.

    You may think this is impractical, and you may be right. But I hope you got the right idea:

    One who is able to merge his life goals effectively and efficiently will, in turn, achieve a more complete life.

    Merging Work and Leisure: Influencers

    You’ve probably just sighed quite strongly right now. This case study annoys me as much as it annoys you, but trust me, it’s going somewhere.

    And there is a reason why you hate dislike them so much.

    Their lives are more complete than yours.

    If they are smart (and the most popular of them are), they have merged utterly and completely their work and leisure bubbles into a single, cohesive element: their life is their purpose. If they are even more clever, if they do not enjoy the process of:

    • Filming
    • Editting
    • Scripting

    They will offload it to someone else, and they will focus on the core aspect that they enjoy, be that:

    • creative/informational writing
    • education
    • video games
    • sports
    • tech
    • health
    • comedy
    • whatever other niche they love doing

    And they earn money from this. If you ever went back home from a long day of work, just to play a few hours of your favourite game, you probably understand the frustration of learning of PewDiePie, JackSepticEye and others that do not go to work in the first place: they get to play all day long, if they want. Their purpose, again, is doing what they love.

    Work and Leisure into one.

    You can learn from this, but you don’t need to do what they do. Do something that you enjoy doing, earn money from it, and you will never work a single day in your life.

    Merging Work and Health: Athletes

    Here we have another two bubbles that can be connected, depending on the career of choice: sports.

    Many sports require people to get into their peak physical performance, in order to compete against others that will try to achieve the same thing.

    If you’ve ever went to a football match, or tennis, or basketball, you know: you, or your friends, find it entertaining. It’s a leisure activity for them, to watch feats of athletic and strategic prowess.

    But there is a danger lurking in this field: going too far.

    There’s many-a-times you heard of professional fighters, or power lifters, or any other sport where “health” is taken too far, and it is no longer hitting that bubble. They overexert themselves, to get one extra rep, extra kilo, extra kilometer, maybe some performance enhancing (for fields which still allow, like body building).

    There is a point reaching athletic performances no longer takes care of your health, and it should not be considered a merge anymore.

    So thread carefully…

    Merging Work and Love

    I hate the saying “never shit where you eat”. It’s like today’s day and age truly does not want you to be happy, and people collectively don’t want you to be happy either.

    I find nothing more beautiful than to share your purpose with the one you love. I have been a little inspired, on this matter, by the movie Transcendence. I could make a review if you’re interested, but the main gist was this: they worked together, and when they died, they managed to save their consciousnesses in a little haven, where they could spend eternity together.

    Anyway, back on track.

    If you have a partner, or kids, you likely are going through the pain of not seeing them for the vast majority of your every day (or week), because you need to commute, then work, then commute back. At the very least. Then, you are tired, and the time you spend together is limited to few activities, and unfortunately, some of those activities may even be chores (not leisure).

    Wouldn’t it be so much more rewarding to have been, for the vast majority of your day, side by side with your partner, eating together, helping each other on stressful tasks, and achieve something together every now and then, giving you energy and happiness, and reasons to celebrate?

    Of course, there are downsides. You can both be very stressed, and work-related discussions can get more heated than they would with a random co-worker, but at the same time, work stress can reach home anyway. And instead of having the whole day to resolve stressful situations, in the context of both of you having complete knowledge of the circumstance you both are in, you may take your stress out on your partner anyway, without understanding what the other is going through.

    So there are downsides. But those downsides exist anyway, and overall, working together can turn into a life together.

    Which leads me to the following case study:

    Can you have it all?

    I believe the answer is yes. And this is the proof:

    https://www.youtube.com/@BreatheAndFlow

    I hope it’s legal do put this screenshot here, since I did not contact them in any way. Anyway, I do this for you, so you can get annoyed at people living the perfect life.

    For people not aware of who they are, their names are Brie and Flo (I still love the pun in the name of their channel), and they post videos with guided yoga and meditation sessions, where one of them (or both) performs the movements. They sometimes vlog about their lives, they post on instagram, and maybe more stuff, I don’t know.

    They (mostly Flo actually) are who got me to understand what yoga really is, and I would not have been a daily practitioner if not for their channel.

    Literally every hour of every day, their life is their work. And every hour of every day, they do things that benefit their health, because it benefits their channel.

    And they have kids, and they do yoga while their kids play around them and try to follow their movements.

    And from what I hear, they live in an RV and AirBnbs, so they travel around the world to record from different locations.

    Unless you can work remotely, you only travel abroad on holidays. They do everything for a living.

    And they do everything together.

    If this is not a 16 hour/day/week-complete life, I do not know what is.

    Final thoughts: What can you do?

    I hope reading this has been more inspiring than it was depressing. Your work may already be your happy place, or you may already do “healthy physical activity” with your partner, but if you find that you struggle to find time to fit everything in, you are not alone.

    But you can do it all. It’s not easy, and it may be dangerous and scary.

    But it is possible. And at the earliest opportunity, you should do it.

    But how? I’m still working things out myself, so I’m not the best person to give specific advice on it.

    So let’s think together. Think of the intuition, think of the reason why you need to do this. And at the end of the day, it all boils down to how you multi-task your life bubbles.

    Not by doing more things at the same time, but by achieving more with every single thing you do.

  • Quick Theory: Depression vs Anxiety

    I think a lot about stress, and how it affects us. We sometimes have so much to do, and so little time, that we do not know how to do all of it. Our mind, then, has multiple methods to take them all into account.

    It can pay attention to things.

    It can also block things out.

    But how does our mind’s response affect our state of being?

    Here’s my hypothesis:

    Depression and Anxiety are opposite states of mind.

    But people with mental problems sometimes say that they suffer from “high levels of depression and anxiety”. Well, hear me out:

    Depression and Anxiety originate from the same source. It’s our response that gets us into one or the other.

    But what is the source, and what is the response?

    The source of depression/anxiety is a significant amount of tasks, or things to do, or things to think about.

    In other words, whatever takes over your head space and life. And:

    The response of a person to the source is one’s focus apparatus.

    As in, your ability to think about the tasks that you have to do. You may now think my theory has no footing, but bear with me.

    My theory is that people have a limited ability to multi-task, but they also need something to do: they can’t do nothing. One could say that, when you multi-task too many things, you are stressed, but when you do nothing, you are relaxed. And that is true, if we think short-term (a few minutes to an hour of your time).

    I’m not denying anyone’s ability to multi-task for a short period of time, and I’m not forcing anyone to never “chill”. But please think with me on a longer scale. An entire day, a week, a month, for some years of the following:

    You have to do an overwhelming amount of tasks and you’re thinking about many things: job (maybe multiple), mortgage, debts, kids, school, life in general, politics that will affect you, wars over the borders, maybe arguments with your spouse. One day, it’s too much, and you don’t do any of it. Now, it’s your mind’s job whether to focus on all, one or none:

    • If you focus on one aspect, you are concentrated on it. You can do it, then move onto the next. This is what you have been doing all along, most likely, but things accumulated and you got overwhelmed.
    • If you zoom out the lens, and focus, at the same time, on all the things that you have to do, but you don’t do it, you get anxious about all of them, and how they are affecting or will be affecting you.
    • If you close your lens completely, you don’t focus on anything. A part of you knows there’s all the things that you have to do, but you just have nothing in your mind. You are forced into a state of deep relaxation, you likely are on some substance that is helping you. But it is not energizing. You are not happy. When you have nothing to focus on, you are depressed, because you feel like you have no purpose. You are in a continuous state of “fuck it”.

    But you can see how you can fluctuate from one state or the other. Hell, you likely have been in all these states yesterday. But as long as it does not go on for long, you’re fine. But you likely want to balance your own ability and power, be mindful of your limitation of being able to focus on a single thing at a time, and plan things ahead, to avoid the overwhelming feeling that can direct you towards one state or the other.

    Quick final note

    In summary, depression and anxiety are completely opposite responses to multiple sources of stress. If you take it all in at once, you get anxious about all of them. If you ignore them all at once, you risk falling into a depression. The way to avoid either is to use your limited amount of focus to think about and do one thing at a time.

    I hope you liked this format. Sometimes, I have something short and sweet to note down about life in general, but not so short that it fits into a tweet, so I think I’ll put them here from now on, and separate the blog tabs when I feel in the mood for design.

    Either way, this is a theory based on observation of my own self, as well as my general understanding of what people refer to when they are in either state. If you disagree (or agree even, but have more to say), let’s think together down below.

  • Why is health advice so contradictory?

    Aldous Huxley, one of my favourite authors (severely underrated by the way), has come up with his gem of a quote:

    Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.

    Reminder: he lived between 1894 and 1963, way before aggressive crop hybridisation, ultra-processed food, and “health advice” became the staple of informative conversation that is today.

    I will try to summarise all research observations that science has gathered since I was born: we’re more and more unhealthy.

    As a species, as a planet. And we find so many excuses good reasons for it: we only live once, we gotta experiment and experience everything to be happy. Eat this, drink that, it’s ok to get wasted, it’s fine to lose sleep, one puff won’t hurt, you only live once.

    If you do any of the stuff above, this post is likely not for you. This is for the people that have managed to break out of the vicious unhealthy loops that the vast majority of people find themselves stuck into. It took a lot of time, energy, sweat, money and isolation to get there. Ideally, it took some many kilos as well, but you’ve done it.

    You find all the above habits repulsive, and you never want to return to them again (for now, I’ll get to that in a second).

    But now, you want to improve your health. Since you got this far, you want to optimise. Maybe your sleep is not as good as you want, maybe your abs are not as visible as you’d like, maybe you want to lift more, to bend forward at a better angle, to stand with your back more straight, to keep your skin healthy.

    You need a new obsession, a new avenue to put your energy, time and money into, so you turn improving your health into a vice. One would say “there’s worse vices you could have”, but that is the first step towards addiction.

    Either way, like a coffee person (which I am not), I fully support your choice of addiction, and I am here 100% for you to make the most of it.

    But you need to thread lightly, because there is no science that is less exact than the science of your health.

    Bread: to be, or not to be?

    I’m sure you’ve learned of whole grains. Everyone and their mothers talk about how important they are in our diet. Always choose whole bread rather than the more refined ones. Always have some in your sandwich. It’s useful carbohydrate, full of vitamins and stuff to make you feel good (except if you suffer from coeliac disease).

    You’ve eaten bread your whole life (unless exception). And you think you’re fine.

    But you’re not fine, according to this book: “Wheat Belly”, by Dr. William Davis, whom I’ve just heard he’s a cardiologist. Apparently, the wheat we consume comes from an aggressively hybridised branch of wheat, that produces a very high yield, but is very nutritionally blank. And worse, it has an incredibly high glycemic index (a slice of whole grain bread is higher than a bar of snickers, allegedly), is highly acidic (allegedly lead cause of osteoporosis) and is highly addictive (creates a compound that is highly similar to opioids, allegedly). It is full of case studies, of people who have stopped eating wheat, and have started living much much better lives (allegedly).

    Thing is, I used allegedly a lot. But every doctor, and their mothers, contradict his claims, because they are “not scientific” and “there’s been no studies to suggest this” and “many important vitamins are in bread, you have to eat it”. But I find myself rooting more for Dr. Davis than the mainstream, solely because, idk, it makes sense to me.

    I ate bread a large portion of my life, and many side effects mentioned seem to have happened to me, including an increase in the adipose tissue around my breast area (disproportionate) which, otherwise, I seem to have no other habit that would create this, other than the alleged claims that it leads to this. I drop wheat totally, utterly and completely, and lose so much weight, and feel so good, that I think it’s true what he says.

    But there may be one more factor in here: Ultra-Processed Food.

    Ultra-Processed Ingredients and People: can we work it out?

    When one discards completely all wheat from their diet (and similar, like barley, corn starches, etc), we discard 90% of the products in our supermarket.

    The biggest contributor to everyone’s suffering, allegedly, being Ultra-Processed Food, or UPF for short.

    The first time I learned of this particular concept is from the book “Ultra-Processed People” by Chris van Tuleken. As a physician and researcher, he always thought that the sources or form of the nutrients don’t matter, but how many of each we get in our bodies. And thought that UPF is just normal food.

    But then more research started coming up, and…it said the same thing! So people kept on eating everything that the supermarket had, and they felt just as great as all the studies showed…NOT. Apparently, you add Nestle products in a remote region, and they become obese and malnutrite overnight! This time, research shows.

    But how is this possible? Isn’t research good and honest? Well no, at least, not nutrition and health-related one.

    Investigation (a type of research) shows that, if you follow the money, all studies that view UPF as positive (or even necessary) somehow have some (usually a lot of) sponsorship from the companies that make those products. And they have final say over whether a research is published or not (it’s in their sponsorship contract).

    And the associations that say “eat this” and “drink that” and “it’s healthy for you”? Those ones which receive money only from the governments? Where do you think those government people go when their job contracts expire? To a company with significantly more money, of course!

    So actually, anecdotes and personal case studies seem to be incredibly helpful, because those people have nothing to gain from mentioning how they are feeling from doing something.

    They feel good or bad. No ulterior motives.

    But everyone who has something that they want you to buy, yes please, you only live once, so buy from me.

    Big Pharma/Food/Grifter Companies

    Then what about health advice that you get from the internet, from people, that you get it for free? Your favourite youtuber, or Instagram influencer? Your favourite nutrition book author? Me? What do they have to gain from all of this?

    Money. Most of them, they gain money.

    Look at Athletic Greens. I do not have enough knowledge on this matter, but people that do, they both advise and don’t advise for it. Look only at this story, about your favourite health podcaster, Andrew Huberman, and see how easily an “expert opinion” can be changed when you know what to dangle in front of him:

    Everyone wants to build a niche. Just like every snack bar needs to be different from the others, for branding purposes, people need to advise for different things to improve the same health benefits. But they can’t advocate for what the others are doing, so they change it up a bit, or a lot.

    Your joints are not mobile enough? You need to stretch. Oh no, actually, you need to flex. Heavy weights are better. No, your body, calisthenics is king. Actually, don’t stretch, because these studies show you run better if your hamstrings are a little stiffer. No, actually, you need to stretch your hamstrings, and knees, and hips, and all, because you need to not strain your muscles. Get these supplements, they will help you do better in this workout. They will increase your energy, weight, weight loss, mass, girth. No, don’t do this, your body can do without, be natural.

    Actually, you need to be vegan. No, research shows we found only animal food in this neanderthal’s stomach, so we’re carnivores. A balanced diet is king. Actually, this and this and that are acidic, so your body will AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

    Fuck you. Each and every one of you. You don’t know shit, you who learn about it know shit, because you’re learning from grifters who earn money from food and pharma companies. I know nothing, WE KNOW NOTHING BECAUSE OF YOU!!!

    Post mental breakdown: you know more than you know

    Old research is the most pure. No, old research is outdated. This new research is good. Actually, this new research is sponsored.

    I’m tired. You’re tired. Stop listening to the assholes.

    My advice for you: learn how to listen to yourself. Not the addictive self, there is a difference. People tell you not to listen to yourself, but actually, you know more than you know.

    Back before research started to be “ethical”, there was a study done on kids, babies even. Feel free to disregard it, and comment how inhumane it was. But it was mindblowing.

    They got some kids from their mothers, and left them in front of multiple bowls of food. Greens, pastes, fruit, some sweets, some oils. They measured the kids’ biomarkers, and otherwise, just left them to eat whatever they wanted.

    They were able to improve their own health by themselves. Completely and utterly instinctive.

    The most peculiar case study was one of a kid with certain nutritional deficiencies. Very specific, forgot the details, but it was mentioned in the Ultra-Processed People book. Because of that deficiency, they would leave him some type of oil, which the other kids did not have access to, but would help this kid in particular.

    He would drink a lot of that oil by himself, until his nutritional deficiency dropped. Then, he lowered the dose, and stopped taking it altogether. All on his own.

    This study gave me shivers when I read about it. And now, it’s making me cry. We are so out of tune with what we need. There’s so many voices much louder than our owns, that we feel the need to follow them.

    So give yourself a favour, and listen to yourself. But if you come out of this post, and you strawman my arguments by saying “oh, so if I tell myself I want to eat chocolate and drink whiskey on my couch all day, I should do it”…well, what can I say? Do it. Congratulations. I’m happy for you.

    I’m happy you learned something.

  • Making your life efficient

    This is a follow-up post of the 4 bubbles of life, which you can find here. To summarise, there are 4 cornerstones of a complete life:

    • Health
    • Work
    • Leisure
    • Love

    I would like to define what each category of life activity looks like, what are their benefits and limitations, and by the end of the 4 definitions, I hope I can make a claim that these cornerstones are complete and minimal, as in, there is no other category that fits as a cornerstone of one’s life in a way that is not a subset category of the aforementioned 4, and there is no way to merge either of the categories in a way that doesn’t take away from the meaning of it.

    So let us start with the easy one: Health.

    Definition: A health activity is an action, or a period of time, that is used towards the improvement of ones’ physical health.

    Good examples of the aforementioned are: any type of physical sport, eating (can also be relatively unhealthy food, we’ll get to the distinctions in a bit), sleep, but also nature walks, staying in the sun at the right time etc.

    I have made the focus on the physical health in this category, not that mental health is not important or is not indirectly targeted by physical activity, but because it is targeted by every single one of the bubbles of life.

    This thought literally just came into my mind, so I have to write it down as a corolary.

    Corrolary: All activity bubbles target mental health. There is no activity outside of either of the 4 bubbles that targets psychological health only. However, there are activities that target only the specific activity in each of the categories.

    In terms of health, any form of prescribed recovery-style physio exercise, alongside supplementation, is a form of health activity, without any mental benefits, but no benefits in terms of work, leisure or love either. They unfortunately are the type of activity that, most of us, will consider a chore, so it will not fit in either of the categories.

    Hoping this makes sense. I’m considering whether we could make a claim to give mental health its own bubble or not. For now, I’m trying to keep it separate, because I consider mental health to be the fuel that needs to be balanced by the types of activities from each of the categories. More on that later.

    Now onto the next:

    Definition: A work activity is an action, generally performed over a longer duration of time, that one performs in order to fuel their lives with income.

    I would like to use a very general term for “income” in this instance. This is generally monetary value, but it can also represent favours, or doing something in order to earn value, time, renown, prestige, fame etc.

    You perform a “work” action in order to get some “expendable benefit”. This is a significant cornerstone in everyone’s lives, since without working, in this day and age, we would suffer or die.

    That, or we are already terminally suffering or dying from a condition. Since I have absolutely no knowledge of the types of conditions or people that have to live with a disability, I will refrain from making any form of conjecture on the kind of lives that they can live, and will only generalise my claims to people able in terms of body and mind. I am truly sorry, and I hope you are well and happy.

    I will continue the discussion of work later. Next, in terms of leisure:

    Definition: A leisure activity is an action, or a state of mind, in which one does something (or does nothing) that charges up one (or multiple) of the stores of energy that a human has (i.e. physical energy, mental energy, motivation, etc.)

    In other words, this category of activities helps give you the necessary force to do everything else that you need to do as a human. Without leisure, people enter burnout, become stressed, or maybe literally physically or mentally impaired through overexertion. Many behaviours in this category can intersect the others, but there are a fair few that fit only here, generally bad addictions (i.e. doomscrolling, porn, drugs), but also good habits which have the potential of intersecting work (i.e. painting, learning, playing etc.)

    Finally, we reach the category that I have almost not included, because it felt too close to leisure and/or health.

    Definition: A love activity is an action that is done in a particular state of mind, for the sake of yourself, or another being.

    People more clever than me have tried their hardest to define love, so I will not try to attempt to emulate any of the sorts. These are activities that can fit into other activities, but are not necessarily, or at least primarily motivated by gain, health or chill. In other words, not externally motivated, but internally, against your rationality. Because we are not rational, and we need to be irrational, because we love to love.

    It relates to the times when you make gifts for people, without expecting anything in return, or feeling obliged to make them. It’s when you fix a light bulb, so that both you, and people around you can feel comfort. It’s when you take your pet to the vet, because you can’t bear to feel their pain. It’s when you make your own bed, because you want to do better today than you did yesterday.

    And yes, love activities can also target yourself. You don’t do it enough, and many of your leisure activities aren’t done out of love for yourself.

    Is this a complete model?

    Probably not. There’s too many variables in each person’s life and mind to take them all into account, but for the most part, I believe the essential aspects of everyone’s life is part of one of the bubbles.

    Now, there’s an annex system that I have just realised may be important to bring up. But I can’t take it anymore, I need to share with you a rather significant theory, regarding how your ability (or lack-there-of) to effectively target the 4 bubbles affects how happy and content with your life you are.

    But how you target them has side-effects. And these side-effects will be the topic of our next discussion.

    So bear with me, we’re getting there!

  • The Four Bubbles of Life

    This may sound clickbaity, but it is the most comprehensive theory of life I have ever seen and considered.

    It probably isn’t completely new, but the corollaries are absolutely mindblowing and life changing.

    Here’s a visualising image:

    The axiom is the following:

    Any activity or aspect of life can be catalogued as being a subset of one, or multiple, of the following four aspects: work, leisure, health or love.

    I invite you to prove the aforementioned axiom wrong through one, or multiple counter-examples. I would love to adapt and advance this theoretical model.

    I would like to introduce a concept that should help in expressing a few things that I have in mind, and hopefully explain some of the pains that many of us go through in our life.

    The definition of “life-efficient activity”:

    An activity in one’s life is “life-efficient” if it belongs to an overlap of multiple life bubbles.

    For example: sex. This is a healthy physical activity (health), that you perform to relax (leisure), with your partner (love). By this definition, and the aforementioned model of life aspects, sex is a life-efficient activity.

    The aforementioned axiom and definition make me think of the concept of living a more “complete life”. Not sure if it’s an axiom, or definition, but here it goes:

    A life is “complete” if it targets all life aspect bubbles.

    But by this definition, all lives are complete. We have all, at some point in time, have targeted health, work, leisure and love to a certain extent. But very likely, not all of us do it often enough, or intensely enough, in either of the life aspects.

    A thought just came to my mind. Not sure how much this makes sense, but here it goes:

    Definition:

    A life is “k-hour/day complete” if it targets all life aspect bubbles for at least k hours a day.

    This definition is work in progress, but it finally targets what I’m trying to say:

    Most of our lives are not truly complete.

    Can you say that your life is 1-hour complete? Let’s relax the definition by saying:

    A life is “k-hour/day/week complete” if it targets all life aspect bubbles for at least k hours a day, averaged in a week.

    This relaxation allows people with 4/5 days of 8 hours of work per week to not feel like it’s skewed, or that I’m forcing people to work every day to feel like their lives are complete. But one’s mind generally cannot think further than a week’s time, so I reckon it’s the most reasonable concept to apply for real life.

    Until next time

    Think about how many aspects of your life you are targeting each week, and how does your k-hours/day/week measurement relate to your life. Please note: I theorize this k-value has the potential to reach 16 hours. Maybe you have already figured out how and why. If not, check out the next post, which may have come out already by the time you’ve read this.

    Enjoy life!