Last year I bought a strength training program from a Canadian bodybuilder named Jeff, and it kind of made me better at everything. The program was designed for people who don’t have much time to train – busy people cramming 35-minute workouts into lunch breaks. Because you only have time for one or two working sets per exercise, you have […]

I forget who pointed this out, but Netflix has a subtle feature where it periodically tries to inspire you to get off the couch and live the life you really want. Whenever an episode of the show you’re watching ends, and the next is queueing up, there’s a moment in which the screen goes black, allowing you to glimpse your […]

Bananas used to be a lot more difficult to eat than they are now. The seeds were huge and plentiful, and ran throughout the flesh of the fruit, which itself was starchier, stringier, and less sweet. Other foods were similarly obtuse. Watermelons, for example — instead of having contiguous pink flesh throughout, the good part was hiding in small, seed-riddled […]

Just as your eyeballs are, your mind is always pointed at something, and it matters what it is. If you spent most of your day preoccupied with thoughts about a past failed relationship, for example, that makes for a different kind of day than one in which you’re preoccupied with solving a computer programming problem. Your mood, your actions, and […]