Saks Snacks #31
Saks Snacks #31
Quality Time Billionaires, Magic Pill of Life (non-existent), Transitional Intelligence, Creation vs. Consumption, Inspired by the Music
Hi friends, from Delray Beach, FL 👋,
Welcome to the 20 new Saks’ Snackers since the last newsletter. If you don’t know me, I’m Adam Saks, a Digital Strategy Lead at Google, Co-founder of RunWithMe and a creator focused on the emerging intersections of health and tech.
This week, you might notice a new newsletter format! More details in the endnote about future changes you can expect.
Let’s get into today’s content:
🥑 Snacks of the Week x2 - Biological Aging + “Magic Pill of Life”
🍽️ Meal of the Week - Quality Time Billionaires)
🎙️ Podcast of the Week - Chip Conley
💥 Spark Moment of the Week - creation vs. consumption
✨Endnote: Changes you can Expect + Calls to action
🥑 Snacks of the week (x2)
The questions we ask ourselves dictate the lives we live. Check out these thought-provoking tweets and a few questions you can ask yourself over the long weekend.
#1: Biological aging
We’ll be able to quantify our biological age sometime sooner than you think. If you had access to this data… what would your pace of aging be?
#2: What’s in your formula of the “magic pill of life”?
What’s your formula for the “magic pill of life”?
I reflected on my own “magic pill of life” after seeing this tweet. Let me be clear before sharing the ingredients in my metaphorical pill: there’s no pill for this.
Sure, there’s simple best practices for our health that will serve us well, but I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. I’ve been scrutinizing my own habits and prefer to live in constant beta, because without our health… what do we have?
Adam’s formula: 8 hours of sleep + eating healthy food + mindful movement + intentional media. + intellectual stimulation + daily sun + extreme hydration + disconnected from tech + limited sugar (curbing the sweet tooth) + no/limited alcohol + solid purpose + love / intimacy + social connection (family + friends) + great music (intentional soundscape) + creative expression + dancing (occasional)
If I were to nail even 80% of these, I’d be a happy camper and fire on all cylinders. When I consistently get 8 hours of sleep, I’m my best self, showing up for all those around me. Realistically, I’m closer to 7.
What I find interesting is that some components to my formula are more or less intuitive to me. For whatever reason, I’ve only recently realized the importance of social connection, creative expression (writing) + dancing (more concerts / music exploration lately). In the last 6 months, I’ve realized I relish my alone time, serving as my sanctuary to create, read, explore ideas, and bring simple ideas like these to you.
What’s in your pill? What do you relish? What simple area can you improve? I expect your answer to be different than mine based on what makes you tick.
🍽️ Meal of the week (Article) - Quality Time Billionaires
I loved this article that explores a fascinating investing thesis of “Quality Time Billionaires”. Doug Clinton shares 3 broad subcategories that these QTB’s must optimize to improve their physical & cognitive performance: Performance Medicine, Nutrition, and Fitness.
I reflected on my own “health-stack”, and current shortcomings, and resonated with the visual he offered to understand where we can make the biggest impact on our own health journeys. I asked myself this question, and I offer it to you:
If you were to visualize performance medicine, nutrition, and fitness as three separate mountains, which mountain do you have the furthest distance to climb?
At any given time, you’ll be further up relative to the others. The higher you scale any single QTB mountain, the harder it is to generate incremental physical or cognitive benefit from that effort.
This article / content is geared towards the 1%’ers/optimizers crowd. but looking forward, I remain optimistic that there’s an opportunity to bring the “least accessible parts of high performance health to broader audiences”.
🎙️ Podcast of the Week - 1 of this week’s listens
Prolific entrepreneur Chip Conley discusses a wide range of topics. Here are 3 bullets that resonated with me:
Wisdom is metabolized experience.
We should move from resume values ➡️ Eulogy Values. This message resonated. I’m still learning how to maximize my impact on this world and those around me through my work. This message, as well as his apparent latent desire to be an entrepreneur hit home.
“Transitional intelligence” - We know what IQ or EQ stands for… what about TQ? Chip coined this term “transitional intelligence”. Most people take 4-5 years to go through major life transitions because nobody taught us how to do this! Chip teaches mid-life adults how to transition through life stages at the Modern Elder Academy down in Baja California, and this concept applies much broader.
Transitional Intelligence means understanding and embracing our "what's next" as a source of curiosity, wonder, and awe. We rely on our core strengths and inner values as a compass north and a growth mindset to learn new skills.” It’s common to feel alone in the midst of a transition. While your inner experience may feel singular or overwhelming, we have found that wisdom is not taught or discovered. It is shared. - Transition IQ
💥 Spark Moment of the Week - music
The last 2 months have been filled with music. It started with San Francisco’s inaugural music festival, Portola at the end of September. I left inspired by several musicians’ talents, creativity, and commitment to their crafts. It led me to check out 4 other artists in the ensuing weeks.
Perhaps this appreciation stems from my own creative pursuits. I’ve been dialing in a new habit: creating “morning pages” - prioritizing my writings first thing in the morning. Through writing a simple ol’ newsletter & publishing some essays here, I’ve acquired a deeper appreciation and inspiration for music and other creative crafts.
I’ve viewed these artists through a different lens - a lens of admiration and respect for their craft. Just like music leaves its impact on the listeners crowd, so do our thoughts and ideas. I’d previously written:
Genes and ideas spread similarly - through replication. There’s 1 key difference: Genes can be replicated when dormant.
Knowledge is only replicated when expressed.
We all have the power to change the world with our ideas. Allowing your ideas to remain dormant is one of the last things you want to do. If you keep your ideas to yourself, you're robbing yourself of the chance to influence the lives of others.
Experiencing several artists’ music made me want to create even more. To hone my craft as a writer. To deeply study how technology is impacting our health and ensure we’re reminded of ancient principles on how to live well. To inspire others through actions and stories.
It made me want to share more publicly about the downs of my health journey, the process of kicking my sweet-tooth, finding fitness after my identity as a college athlete was stripped away, and more.
It reminded me of a journal entry from over 2 years ago when a podcast guest’s words hit me like a brick wall.
9/6/20: Sloan Davidson talked about creation vs. consumption.
I am .5% creation, 99.5% consumption.
Her introducing this concept makes me want to create and simply make that 1% progress and do. Remember: done is better than perfection.
All of this is to say, I’m eager to continue sharing with each of you, and if there’s anything that interests you most, please let me know so I can go down the rabbit hole with you.
✨Endnote + Changes you can Expect + Calls to action
What did you think?
😍 Loved | 😄 Great | 🙂 Good | 🙁 Meh | 😠 Bad
I’ve reflected on the types of writing I’d love to keep writing about. I want to write about both long-form content and retain my newsletter content. But I want any and all of my newsletter content to be “evergreen” by nature and have ties to ancient wisdom. I want the newsletters to age like fine wine. I’ve felt like past content is a bit “quick” - while synthesized industry updates are great, they aren’t as relevant months or years down the road.
For my short-form newsletters, I’m challenging myself to keep it even more short-form, yet timeless.
Want to read more? Check out any of my latest essay on flow states, alcohol, dopamine, or our malleable identity. As always, let me know what you think!
Follow along on Twitter for quicker, more frequent updates. And if you enjoyed this Saks Snacks, why not share it with a friend?
Hope you have a creative, restful, and reflective rest of your long weekend.
Adam