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 […]

You spend your life doing things. Some of the things you do make themselves happen, and some don’t. Sweeping the floor, even if you don’t love doing it, will eventually make itself happen, because you’ll get annoyed by walking through filth every day. Same with things like getting groceries, sleeping, taking out the garbage, and getting dressed. Whether or not […]

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 […]