21.25: Random Thoughts of the Week
Ideas I’ve shared
- Peter Attia has had a huge influence on the development of my nutritional and fitness regimes. I’ve always liked his pragmatic point of view and data-driven approach to science. For example, his elegant three-dimension nutritional framework gracefully depicts the levers at reach for dietary regulation. This time around, in his latest appearance in the Tim Ferriss Show, he nerds out about the structural benefits of improving movement by focusing on the four components of exercise: stability, strength, aerobic efficiency, and anaerobic performance.
- Do you know that feeling when somebody acutely writes down something you had a sense of but always struggled to pin down? This is exactly what Julie Zhuo has done in her recent post at Future, the brand new a16z’ publication. In there, she goes deep into what she calls Product Thinking, or the skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people.
Things I was into
- This week I’ve been over the moon, not just figuratively, but almost literally. This is because I’ve finally completed the LEGO NASA Apollo Saturn V. For almost three months I’ve indulged myself with a single building chapter each week to lengthen its construction delight. To set the mood, I also re-listened to The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon, an Audible Original about the story of John C. Houbolt.
#TIL the Space Task Group was initially favoring direct ascent, instead of Lunar orbit rendezvous, as the procedure for landing humans on the Moon. It was only after engineer John Houbolt' endless perseverance — and public discredit — that it was taken into consideration.
— Marc Collado (@MarcCollado) August 8, 2019
- From time to time I revisit this classic of mine. I’d say I’ve been struggling with this for years now. Yet whenever I feel like some of us are spending more than 60 hours a week solely optimizing for the only asset we shouldn’t care as much and already have more than we need to (capital L) Live, I pull this one out to bring some sanity across the board.
We buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.
—— Fight Club