Hello and welcome to 4-Minute Friday where I share, in four minutes or less, the latest things I’m doing to enhance my health, develop a better mindset, make day-to-day life easier, and other shenanigans.
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Diversifying Your Portfolio:
Wooooo, I imagine many of you got sick to your stomach just from reading that last word.
And for all those subscribing to HIB premium, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there will be a 40% tariff placed on your monthly invoice starting end of day.
All jokes aside, this section isn’t another clickbait newsflash to inform you that your retirement account is quite literally getting lighter fluid poured on it while being mowed down by a flamethrower.
Rather, it’s a message about diversifying the contributions to our self-worth.
As normal humans – flawed and all – we often view our identity narrowly.
Mother.
Or athlete.
Or medical professional.
Or political figure.
Apologies for circling back to this, get out your barf bag… but like trading individual stocks, this can be a dangerous habit to get into.
Akin to investing in something like the S&P 500, a smarter choice is diversifying the way you characterize yourself.
That way, you are no longer worthless when you have a bad golf outing.
You let loose of the crippling anxiety when a patient doesn’t leave you a 5-star review.
You can sleep soundly at night even if you weren’t fully present during the couple hours you had with your kid.
When you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, you not only raise the floor of your self-worth potential as one bad moment won’t tank your value – the ceiling rises as well.
Investing in being a runner, and spouse, and father, and reliable factory worker opens the door for a more fulfilled, fruitful life than say just seeing yourself as a father.
Take a minute to list out a couple identifiers you put on yourself.
Are these diversified or is there an opportunity for some rebalancing?
Shoot, maybe just sell the lot and wait to buy the dip once you hit rock bottom.
All jokes.
The Phone App We All Need:
Speaking of the current landscape of the world, we all could probably afford to spend a little less time doom scrolling.
In fact, I just realized that I’ve yet to hear a single person declare that their life would improve if they could just spend a little more time on their phone.
Especially when the Sundays come around and the iPhone screen time report confirms that we’ve gone overboard, a reset is often in order. But these apps are, to the definition, addicting and incredibly challenging to resist – they are an instant cope for boredom and social awkwardness, two undesirable features of being a human.
Fitting into this concept like a puzzle piece, a phrase that’s been popularized this past year is “touching grass”. Simply put, it means turning off your device and getting out into the real world – soaking up nature and what not.
Taking advantage of this, a much smarter individual than myself decided to make an iPhone app that locks down social media platforms until you go outside and literally take a picture of grass.
The Touch Grass app, creatively named and all, embraces the description that it’s designed to “end phone addiction”.
I’m all for it.
And in need of it.
The free version of the app allows you to connect two social media platforms and put limits on the amount of time you can spend on them until you go outside and, well, touch grass.
Might not be a bad idea.
Alternative to the Ol’ 10k Step Count Goal:
We’ve all heard, from me and many others, that achieving 10,000 daily steps is a great goal for baseline health.
Nope, 9,500 isn’t going to cut it… not even 9,990.
Those 10 steps are the difference in tacking on a couple extra years.
Obviously not true although some of us tend to impulsively act like it is.
I’ll be the first to raise my hand in that conversation.
Recently though, biomedical science researcher Dr. Rhonda Patrick proposes an alternative daily goal that may even be more beneficial.
Instead of 10k steps, she votes for 10 minutes of vigorous daily activity.
And even more interestingly, she presents research to show that it doesn’t even have to occur in a single sitting.
The particular study she alludes to revealed that subjects who performed 10 bodyweight squats every 45 minutes throughout the workday improved blood glucose regulation more than the individuals who performed a 30-minute daily walk.
What is “vigorous” you might ask?
Any activity that gets your heartrate to ~80% of its maximum.
A simple way to estimate your maximum heart rate is subtracting 220-age.
Not sure what to tell those who are over 220 years old and still receiving social security checks… I’ll have to go back to the drawing board on that one.
Does this mean you should throw out the belief that achieving a hefty number of daily steps isn’t going to benefit you?
Absolutely not, I’ll always propose at least 8,000 daily steps should be a goal for everyone.
However, it is to say that there’s a larger majority of people not participating in higher intensity activity that could absolutely profit from getting that heart rate up to a higher threshold than a leisurely walk allows for.
What else?
Mid-April means local farmer’s markets popping up left and right. There isn’t a much better way to spend a Saturday/Sunday morning than getting out for a coffee and purchasing some local honey to fight those seasonal allergies!
Life is too vast to pigeonhole yourself. Be all that you want to be.
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DISCLAIMER
This is NOT Medical advice. Consult your medical professional before starting any supplement, diet regimen, or workout program.