A Learning a Day

Dr. Eric Topol published a thoughtful breakdown of why VO2 max has become an overrated marker for cardiorespiratory fitness.

Three simple problems.

• Cardiorespiratory fitness is measured in METs – a practical, real-world measure of how your heart and lungs perform during actual activity. VO2 max, by contrast, requires a lab, a specialized mask, trained technicians, and exercising to absolute exhaustion. Most people use smartwatch estimates that carry a 10-15% error rate.
• Nearly all the data linking fitness to longevity outcomes comes from MET-based studies – not VO2 max studies. Peter Attia conflated the two, calling VO2 max the single most powerful marker for longevity while citing research that never measured it.
• The practical consequence is that people are now stressing over an unreliable number while ignoring what matters – living an active life that improves cardiorespiratory fitness.

I’d add a couple things.

First, metrics should never get in the way of common sense. If you want better cardiorespiratory fitness, sprint up a hill regularly. Or play basketball every week. Go for a brisk walk and occasionally sprint. These are all tests of the very thing you’re trying to improve. It’s important to focus on the actions, not the number.

Next, if you do track VO2 max on a wearable, the absolute number is less useful than the trend. In my experience, even if the reading is imprecise, the direction it moves maps well to periods when I’m consistently active. Trends are often the signal even when the number is noise.

And finally – be careful about treating any one voice as gospel. I read Outlive and it genuinely changed how I think about exercise. Breaking it down into cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, stability, and mobility gave me a framework that pushed me toward a health journey I’m grateful for.

While Dr. Peter Attia’s work has been valuable to me, I’ve also been upfront about my gripe with his push for expensive scans and statins (and his fall from grace recently has been sad to see).

All in all, a reminder to read widely, think critically, and don’t let metrics get in the way of common sense.

When you work with competent leaders – the ones who are genuinely in the details – any attempt at self-preservation has the opposite of the intended effect.

You might withhold knowledge to seem more valuable. Or obscure a problem to look good. Or try to spin a failure into a learning.

All of it backfires. Every time.

Competent leaders will see straight through.

Honesty, ownership, and a good attitude are a significantly better strategy.

Episode 3 of The Last Dance on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls is essentially a documentary within a documentary – it’s the Dennis Rodman episode.

Rodman was a character in every sense of the word. Off-court drama that was considerable. A rebel and a maverick whose antics made the rest of the NBA nervous. The only reason he stayed functional during those Bulls years was a combination of Phil Jackson’s incredibly wise man-management and the no-nonsense inspiration of Michael Jordan, backed by the steady presence of Scottie Pippen.

And yet – Jordan and Pippen both speak about Rodman with enormous appreciation. Big smiles. Genuine warmth.

Because they knew exactly what he brought.

Rodman averaged maybe 5 to 7 points a game. But that stat tells you everything about what kind of player he was – a master class of a defender who did all the dirty work, freed Jordan and Pippen to do what they did best, and made the second three-peat possible in ways that don’t show up in those offensive stats.

When Pippen was asked what it was like integrating Rodman into the team, he didn’t hesitate. He said – “Like a hand in a glove.”

Great teams recognize complementary players. They give them space to be who they are. They don’t try to sand down the edges – they build around them.

The Chicago Bulls had tremendous success before that era and none after it. But during that window, they were arguably the greatest team the NBA has ever seen. And a big part of why is that they knew how to take someone like Dennis Rodman – someone the rest of the league couldn’t figure out what to do with – and make him the final piece of an impressive puzzle.

That’s what great teams do.

“The years teach much which the days never know.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can’t rush important lessons. You can’t shortcut them. They come from playing long-term games – and then stopping long enough to reflect on what they’ve taught you.

The most profound lessons only reveal themselves over time.

One of the biggest challenges in any organization is figuring out organization structure. Because you’re going to have to decide what you solve for. Do you solve for the right structure? Or do you solve for people?

You’re often – if not always – going to have people to solve for.

I’d posit that the default assumption should be to solve for structure and velocity of decision-making first, and people second. In that order. With very rare exceptions.

The reason is that your ultimate role as a leader is to solve for the organization. And that means solving for high-quality decisions made at high velocity.

Every time you solve for people – by creating a role, or bringing together or breaking apart teams in a way that doesn’t structurally make sense – you inevitably trade that off.

And if you do that enough times, you’re in effect trading off the long-term health of the organization.

This is a really challenging place to be. You obviously cannot be absolutist about this rule. But it’s one of those places where you realize you can say all you want about playing to win. About what you value. About the value of winning as a team and as an organization.

And then make decisions that do the opposite.

Values are not values until they cost you something.

A few years ago, I had a workflow for photos that I dreaded.

I love keeping my memories organized. But every few months, I’d sit down to sort through a massive backlog – hundreds of photos, videos to label, memories to organize. The task had inevitably grown so large it felt like a punishment. I’d put it off, which made it worse, which made me put it off more.

Then I changed one thing. Every weekend, clear the week’s backlog. That’s it.

The same task became something I actually looked forward to. A few minutes of looking at the best moments from the week, processing memories while they’re still fresh. It made for a lovely change.

I thought about this recently because I had the same problem with ironing. A pile would build up over a month, sometimes longer. Getting a steam iron didn’t help – it just meant the same painful backlog, slightly faster. So I finally applied the same fix. Every week, clear the backlog.

A few weeks in, it’s already transformed how I feel about ironing. I don’t even think about it anymore.

My late grandfather had a saying in my mother tongue – “Madiyan mala chomakkum.” It means – “the lazy person will carry the mountain.” Because when you avoid the work, the mountain keeps growing.

Carry it a few rocks at a time, and it never becomes a mountain at all.

It never gets old.

Imagine something happened today that didn’t go the way you wanted. Or the way you’d expected it to go. Maybe it was a decision you made that didn’t work out. Or a decision somebody else made that impacted you. Your choice, your circumstance.

We have a range of reactions we can reach for. They range from curiosity on one side to frustration and anger on the other. We all have defaults.

But as we accumulate wisdom, the most worthy defaults are those that swing the dial to the side of curiosity.

As I was mulling this idea after a few experiences recently, I realized this is just another way of articulating the idea of a learner mindset versus a judger mindset – from Marilee Adams’ book, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life.

It comes down to whether we habitually ask ourselves and others learning questions or judging questions.

And whether we do it when things are not going our way.

Especially when things are not going our way.

An investigation into Meta’s AI Smart Glasses by two of Sweden’s most established newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten took them to Kenya where Meta’s data annotation partner Sama employs human data annotators. These workers help make the glasses “smart” by annotate/label the various images users see.

As part of this job, the annotators get a window into the lives of the wearers – except sometimes the window is much more revealing than the glass wearer might realize.

“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room. Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes”, one of them says.

“Someone may have been walking around with the glasses, or happened to be wearing them, and then the person’s partner was in the bathroom, or they had just come out naked”, an employee says.

“There are also sex scenes filmed with the smart glasses – someone is wearing them having sex. That is why this is so extremely sensitive. There are cameras everywhere in our office, and you are not allowed to bring your own phones or any device that can record”, an employee says.

One annotator sums it up: “You think that if they knew about the extent of the data collection, no one would dare to use the glasses”.

There’s a cost to smart glasses getting smarter. It helps to be thoughtful as to when we’re comfortable for our data to be training data.

There’s nothing good that an “um” or a “like” adds to a sentence. Beyond making you sound less thoughtful.

I’ve known this for a while. Gone through phases where things got better. Then regressed.

But this is one of the projects I want to go after now. Sixth time (given at least five recorded attempts from the past) is a charm.

No new insight here. No clever framework. Just the recognition that it’s time to try again – and that the right system for me is simple: frequent check-ins and daily reminders.

Let’s see where it goes.

In 2015, two geographers noticed solar panels popping up on houses in their small US state of Connecticut. Curious, they set out to see if they could figure out what predicted who had them. Would they be in richer homes? Or in areas with higher population density?

Early adopters of solar panels tend to be people who are interested in innovative technology, who find an installer they trust, and who think having solar panels will benefit them.

But once an early adopter made their choice, the geographers found, a cluster would spring up around them. Having solar panels on a house near you, where you could see them and talk to a real live person who had them, it turned out, was the biggest predictor of whether you’d get them yourself. 

Soon the Connecticut study was being replicated – in Sweden, in China, and in Germany, where they actually put a number on it. Rooftop solar installations were most influential, they found, on neighbors who lived within one kilometer (source: TED ideas).

The truth, of course, is this applies well beyond installing solar panels. Solar panels are just physical manifestations of the proximity principle.

People who prioritize their health are more likely to have friends who prioritize their health. And so on.

We become like the people we choose to be around.