Saks Snacks #33 - Family Tech, Deliberate Breathwork, and more
Saks Snacks #33 - Family Tech, Deliberate Breathwork, and more
What daily habits can you dial in now that you'll thank yourself for in a decade?
Hi friends from Marin, CA 👋,
Reading is and should be fun. I encourage you to explore what interests you most. Let’s get into today’s content:
👨💻 Health Tech Bite of the Week - deliberate breathwork
🥑 Ancient Snacks of the Week (x2) - family tech + understanding your why
💥 Spark Moment of the Week - a meaningful journal entry from June ‘22
🎙️ Podcast of the Week - play, social connection, and sleep as a reservoir
👨💻 Health Tech Bite of the Week x2
#1 Deliberate Breathwork Hits Different
How’s your breath right now? Mastering your breath remains a meta skill that will serve you well for a lifetime.
A new paper from Cell Reports Medicine shows how it facilitates autonomic control, apparently more effectively so than meditation. It costs $0 and is well suited as a starting point in our modern Western lives...
There’s a reason I spent several hours writing about how breathwork can be our superhero…
🥑 Meals of the week (2 articles)
Family tech: Here’s Betty Chang’s article on family tech, the $46B opportunity of new wave, tech-enabled products and services that “give women, individuals, and parents the agency to care for their modern families”. An insightful read that breaks down four tailwinds enabling a paradigm shift towards the “modern family” and family tech.
With any goal, etc. you’ve set for the new year or are working towards… why? This article brilliantly explores fitness and health goals with a focus on mimetic desires. The author provides several prompts to reflect on, experiment with, and experience.
💥 Spark Moment of the Week - June ‘22 journal
The questions you pose to yourself are powerful devices.
The following question has been at the top of my list since early 2022:
What daily habits can I dial in now that I’ll thank myself for in a decade? What about in 50 years?
Last June I asked reflected on “What would I have told my 20 year old self about health habits and behaviors?“
June 14th, 2022 evening reflection, 11:15pm:
I’ve learned a tremendous amount in the last 2 years about my own health, wellness, habits, and what lights me up, but I’ve disliked writing about it. I’ve avoided it so I couldn’t be labeled as “preachy”.
Why would anybody care?
To free myself up and properly reflect, I approached this through the lens of “what I’d tell my past self” if I could pass along 6 meta pieces of wisdom.
Movement is medicine. Explore what types of movements make you feel your best. Pay close attention to how you show up in everyday life on the days you feel your best and reflect on the types of movements. Orchestrate your life around these movements. You’re the artist of your own life - be an artist with how you think about movement.
Thoughts have bodies. They’re tangible. You get to be the gardener of your mind, planting seeds that spring to life later on. You can inject thoughts to intersect the normal waking consciousness that typically flows through our minds. Thoughts will dictate your life’s direction. Remove the governor (the limiting side of your mind) and upgrade it with 10x, 100x thoughts and actions. You can do whatever you set your mind to, so you might as fell start telling yourself this story and believing it at your core.
Sleep more (or at least enough). Sleep is the foundation that all other health pillars rely on, so you should optimize it. There’s a difference between chronic and acute sleep deprivation. Get a tracker that’ll prove this truth you’ve been avoiding for the first 2 decades of your life. Your data, paired with how you feel, is irrefutable. The BS of “you can sleep when you die” is false. Learn the principles, but never forget your grit you’ve created on the days when you don’t get sleep. The consistent, consecutive patterns are what matters. To achieve your wildest dreams, you’ll need to be your sharpest, mentally, physically, emotionally, strategically… sleep will get you there.
Nutritional choices + keeping it simple: Lock in your nutritional intake to the best of your ability. Get rid of your emotional eating habits and be confident that you can break any bad dietary habits that have ridden parts of your family. You can be the one to break the chain with intentionality, commitment, resolve, education, knowledge, planning, and accountability. You don’t have to go on this path alone - share your weaknesses and bring others. Recognize when your diet is out of whack and understand why it’s occurring. Stay curious and determine the best diet for you. Keep it simple - try to eat almost all whole foods, drink a ton of water, and adapt your dietary needs based on the cycle you’re in (during training periods for endurance races, things will change), physically and how much you’re pushing your body.
Write + reflect daily. Write what makes you happy, energized, and curious. Conversely, tune into what drains you, makes you hesitant, sad, or stuck. Explore these pain points - you’ll find insight, repeated past stories that you can unshackle by deliberately addressing point #2 above. You’re the narrator of your own life, which can be a beautiful thing, if you allow it to be. Once you’ve identified what energizes you, you get to seek out more of those experiences. How beautiful.
Simplify: Less is more. Throw the need to please everyone out the window. Only hang around people that are congenial, that you vibe with, that you say “f*** yea” to invites with. Anything short of this should be a no, where you build and invest in yourself and the dream life you’re building.
🎙️ Podcast of the Week - 1 of this week’s listens
Jocko Willink & Andrew Huberman discussed a wide range of topics, including mental health, physical health, and performance.
A quote that resonated: Most people discount the impact that social connection and play have on us at an emotional level. It’s why I remain so bullish on any type of fitness community that successfully combines physical activity and social connection. We crave it, and it’s so good for us. “Play, social connection, and sleep are the reservoir - they’re the location that you go to refill the candle”. It’s healthy to have 2 tough men openly discussing this.
✨Endnote + Calls to action
You’ve given consistent feedback that you want to feel more of me come across in these writings - to share about my own personal experiences.
My primary audience for this journal entry from June was for myself. It was a reflective piece to get a new POV. I feel a bit strange sharing it out, but why not?
What did you think? Please share any and all feedback - I hope to hear from you!
😍 Loved | 😄 Great | 🙂 Good | 🙁 Meh | 😠 Bad
And if you enjoyed this Saks Snacks, why not share it with a friend?
Have a creative week ahead,
Adam