1,086 quotes from books that matter
Overall, I like to keep average glucose at or below 100 mg/dL, with a standard deviation of less than 15 mg/dL. These are aggressive goals: 100 mg/dL corresponds to an HbA1c of 5.1 percent, which is quite low. But I believe that the reward, in terms of lower risk of mortality and disease, is well worth it given the ample evidence in nondiabetics and diabetics alike.
To the team at Avery and Penguin Random House who made this book a reality, thank you. I owe a debt of special thanks to my publisher, Megan Newman, for her endless patience as I continually pushed back deadlines.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.
The harder we cling to an identity, the more brittle we become. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.
“That’s right,” he said. “Driving toward ‘that’s right’ is a winning strategy in all negotiations. But hearing ‘you’re right’ is a disaster.
We need to abolish that decrepit stereotype and create a new narrative—perhaps modeled after the old-school fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who kept doing his usual rigorous daily workout right up until his death at age ninety-six.
Everything that we’ve covered in this last section serves two purposes: as a drill, and as an assessment.
Mitochondrial health becomes especially important as we grow older, because one of the most significant hallmarks of aging is a decline in the number and quality of our mitochondria.
Stacking the above insights—in both directions, positive or negative—is very powerful. So if you’re stressed out, sleeping poorly, and unable to make time to exercise, be as careful as possible with what you eat.
Maybe you didn’t mind when your old car was dirty or dinged—but now that you bought a nicer car, you can’t stand it when it gets muddy, and you lose your mind when someone scratches it in the parking lot. That angst is a social debt
When we are confronted by it, we ignore it, we run away, or we label it in ways that allow us to dismiss it. In negotiations, that label most often takes the form of the statement, “They’re crazy!”
We now know that even one sleepless night can create a state that is the functional equivalent of being legally drunk.
There is still no pharmacological magic bullet for sleep, but there are some fairly effective things you can do to improve your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep—and, hopefully, sleep well enough to avoid all the scary stuff that we’ve been talking about in this chapter.
We are constantly scanning our environment and wondering, “What is everyone else doing?” We check reviews on Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor because we want to imitate the “best” buying, eating, and travel habits. It’s usually a smart strategy.
The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements.
If you look at long-surviving species on Earth, they tend to have a few factors in common: large populations, genetic diversity, wide geographic spread.
When you understand how quickly small expenses compound into enormous lost returns, you view the world differently.
Those who most value extrinsic pride have less bandwidth to pursue intrinsic pride.
Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar. Without good health habits, you will always seem to be short on energy. Without good learning habits, you will always feel like you’re behind the curve.
We talk about their objectives, and the science underpinning our strategy. When it comes to specific tactics, I give them direction to help them create their own playbook. I almost never write out a prescription for them to follow blindly.
Real-time blood glucose serves as a decent proxy for the insulin response, which we also look to minimize.
The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.
The governing class is worried more about their problems than those of the voters who elected them.
The best way to deal with negativity is to observe it, without reaction and without judgment. Then consciously label each negative feeling and replace it with positive, compassionate, and solution-based thoughts.