OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

Back in the day, we chatted about Cal Newport’s Deep Work Equation...

In our last +1, we did some detective work and discovered that sugar is often disguised with 61 different names. Note: The one name that the clever food marketers (ahem) don’t use is the one they probably should: “Candy for cancer cells.”

A couple +1s ago (right before taking out the carbage yesterday), we had a brief chat about the links between sugar consumption and depression, highlighting the fact that we went from consuming essentially NO sugar 500 years ago to consuming 150 POUNDS every year.

In our last +1, we talked about the fact that 500 years ago we basically consumed NO sugar. Then we started nibbling on 5 lbs of sugar per year a few hundred years ago. Now we vacuum up 150 lbs of sugar on average per person every year.

Continuing our brief tour through Kate Hefferon’s textbook on Positive Psychology and the Body, let’s flip open to the chapter on “Positive Nutrition.”

In our last +1, we spent some time on the cortisol-melatonin teeter totter, reminding ourselves to give our melatonin a chance to have some nice, relaxing fun by turning off our cortisol-spiking inputs nice and early.

Not too long ago we chatted about the good ol’ Snow Globe in our brains. As you may recall, we want to avoid shaking it late at night if we want to get a good night of sleep and wake up feeling nice and refreshed the following morning.

In our last couple +1s, we chatted about The Snow Globe (don’t shake it late!) and my adventures with “Shut-Down COMPLETE!” (vs. “ALMOST Complete!”).

In the last couple +1s, we talked about The Shattered Vase (and the power of taking those pieces and making a beautiful new mosaic) then we practiced The Art of Precious Scars (as we chatted about “golden repairs”).

Have you ever heard of “hedonic treadmills”? We talked about them briefly a few years ago in the context of this +1 on the science of hedonic adaptation.