💡 1 IDEA FROM ME
Every day, you have various amounts of smaller tasks that need to be taken care of. Some of these tasks take 30 seconds (emailing your coworker a question about the report), others might take four minutes (looking up a document someone needs from you).
The best and most effective way to complete your smaller tasks is to batch-complete them. My recommendation is to, at the end of your current workday, calendar out any remaining gaps in your workday for tomorrow. In doing so, schedule when you will work through your smaller tasks.
It could be 30 minutes here or 60 minutes there, and then work through as many of them as you can in that time.
Many times we habitually check our email or do a smaller task here or there throughout the day in between or while doing our more important responsibilities. But all this task-switching severely reduces our focus and can make everything we do take longer.
Instead, pre-plan when you’ll do your tasks, and get them all done at once.
💬 1 HELPFUL QUOTE
Joan Didion on why all of our choices matter:
“That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”
📖 1 BRIEF BOOK REVIEW
Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken
A fantastic book about ultra-processed foods (UPF) and how many of the things we eat today aren’t real food.
At times the book was a bit technical and a little confusing to follow, but I don’t fault the author as some of these concepts are hard to track with if you’re not already familiar with some of the concepts. However, it was a very interesting and understandable read, and I learned a lot.
This book was hard to put down and even makes you angry to read at times to learn how the food industry is run.
While not a book about weight loss, it makes a very strong argument that UPF is the primary culprit for much of our modern world’s problems with weight gain (and not lack of exercise, or overeating, even if those things could be improved) and many of our biggest current health issues can be linked to these foods.
Our food environment is designed for you to fail, and this book is a big help in becoming aware of what to look out for.
My ratings are primarily based on how much I enjoyed reading the book. I would highly recommend this book to everyone, and even more so if you have struggled with your weight and found that nothing you do works. This book will tell you why.
10/10
💯 1 THING I LIKE
The way we think about charity is dead wrong. A TED talk by Dan Pallota
Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend — not for what they get done.
Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this captivating talk, he says: Let’s change the way we think about changing the world.