📚 A&B #183

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👋 Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

• 27 Reading tips from Nassim Taleb.

• 20 Books to learn 20 valuable life skills.

• Outline for my upcoming course “The Art of Reading.” Let me know if there are any lessons you’d like to see added.

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🤓 Course Update:

I added 3 new lessons to the course this week:

• How to Remember More of What You Read

• How Reading Too Much Can Be Dangerous

• How To Become A Top 1% Reader On Any Topic

And here’s a new student testimonial:

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📚 Book Summary:

This week’s book is “The 5 Resets” by Aditi Nerurkar.

Dr. Nerurkar is a Harvard physician who has spent 20+ years studying the effects of stress and burnout. In her book, she shares tons of strategies to overcome stress and burnout.

Here are 3 lessons from it:

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1) Only Make 2 Changes At A Time

While training at Harvard, Dr. Nerurkar was taught to recommend only two changes at a time to patients.

Otherwise, there was a high chance that the patient wouldn’t stick to any of them.

This is because changes (even positive ones) register as stress to the brain and body. And making more than two changes at a time can overload and overwhelm the person to the point where they don’t do anything.

The scientific term for this is the Resilience Rule of 2.

So the next time you’re offering someone advice, try to only recommend two changes at a time.

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2) Decrease Your Screen Time

Here are two quotes from the book that blew my mind:

“Research shows that your relationship with your phone has a great impact on your level of stress and consumes most of your attention and mental bandwidth, much more than your relationship with your partner or kids or even your extended family and work colleagues.”

Yes, you read that right. Your phone has a bigger impact on your stress and attention than your partner, kids, or family!

Also:

“Recent statistics show that almost half of us spend five or six hours on our phones, and we physically touch our phones about 2,617 times a day!”

No wonder our phones have such an impact on us, 50% of us spend 5-6 hours a day looking at it and touching it 2,500+ times a day.

Here’s how to fight back and reclaim your time:

1. Whenever you use your phone, set a 20-minute timer to avoid spending too much time on it at once.

2. Opt out of push notifications and pop-ups.

3. Keep your smartphone at least 10 feet away from your workstation (and at home) to avoid being tempted to check it.

4. Keep your phone out of your bedroom (50% of people check their phone in the middle of the night and 62% of people check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up).

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3) Increase Your Sleep Time

You’ve heard this a million times before, but if you aren’t getting good sleep, everything in your body goes out of wack.

Here are a few stats that will hopefully encourage (or scare) you into taking your sleep seriously:

• Sleep-deprived adults have a 2x risk of becoming depressed later in life.

• People who go to sleep at midnight or later have a 25% higher likelihood of heart problems.

• Sleep-deprived adults have a 30% higher chance of developing chronic health conditions.

And here are a few tips to get the sleep you deserve:

1. Aim for a 10-11pm bedtime. If your current bedtime is after that, slowly set your bedtime 30 minutes earlier every 2 weeks until you reach your ideal bedtime.

2. Set a 1-hour alarm before your bedtime to encourage you to start transitioning into sleep mode.

3. Create a relaxing bedtime routine. Try reading a book, listening to relaxing music, or doing some gentle yoga before bed as a way to wind down for the night.

4. Avoid looking at any screens 2 hours before bedtime to reduce the amount of blue light you see.

5. Put your phone on silence and keep it in another room. Replace it with a regular alarm clock to avoid scrolling your phone late at night or early in the morning.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) When giving advice, only give 2 recommendations at a time:

• If you’re giving a friend advice, only recommend 2 changes at a time.

• If you give too many pieces of advice, chances are they'll be overwhelmed and do none of them.

2) Try to minimize the time you spend on your phone:

• Turn off all notifications and pop-ups.

• Keep your phone at least 10 feet away from you while working or at home.

3) Start taking your sleep seriously, your body and mind will thank you for it:

• Follow these instructions to turn off the blue light on your phone.

• Put your phone on silent and leave it in another room before going to sleep.

📖 Reading Lesson:

250+ Reading tips from the 10 most prolific readers I've come across.

💎 Weekly Gem:

Profound Lessons:

1) Dancing has the largest effect of any treatment for depression. And any form of exercise is more effective than SSRIs.

2) A little tip to help you have dramatically more intimate, engaged, meaningful conversations.

Thank you for your support, read on everyone!

-Alex W.