Author: alearningaday

One of the most poignant quotes I’ve ever read is “It is easier to fight for your values than it is to live them.”

I think of it every time I read about polarization in mainstream politics. And it’s not unique to any one country or party.

In the U.S. for example, progressives, conservatives, and everyone in between have their own lists of strongly held positions.

• Progressives might assert that police don’t reduce crime, that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, or that workers are poorer today than in the 1970s.
• Conservatives might deny the climate crisis, oppose renewable energy, or dismiss the need for vaccine development.

In each case, there’s a judgment anchored in a value – safety, prosperity, freedom, stewardship of the planet, public health.

But the focus, nearly always, is to win the argument or prove the other side is wrong.

Living the actual value, on the other hand, requires engaging with evidence that challenges us, making trade-offs that feel uncomfortable, and, crucially, changing our mind when presented with a better alternative.

Living our values is harder than fighting for them.

If wisdom is understanding the long-term consequences of your actions, judgment is applying that wisdom to make better decisions.

Judgment, in effect, is applied wisdom.

“Wisdom is understanding the long-term consequences of your actions.”

I came across this in one of Naval Ravikant’s notes.

I love pithy articulations of the meaning of difficult-to-articulate ideas.

A recent such definition was Alfred Adler’s definition of happiness as “the feeling of contribution.” That resonated deeply.

This one resonated just as much.

Every week, I do a “kneeling isometric” for 30 seconds on each leg as part of my mobility practice.

It is amazing how much of a burn one can experience within just 30 seconds.

It’s similar when you are in a plank. Stay long enough and you feel your core burn.

Isometrics are hard because your muscles work intensely to stay in position. With no movement to distract us, we feel the burn immediately.

They test the mind as much as they test the body.

Isometrics are a great reminder of the fact that resilience and grit are not flashy. They’re often built with stillness, and the ability to stay present while enduring discomfort.

Spend as much time preparing to leave a project as you did when you prepared to get onboard.

This means ensuring context is captured, keeping relationships intact, and enabling the team to keep the momentum going.

Our beginnings get the ball rolling. Our execution on the project builds momentum. And the quality of our exit determines how much of that momentum is sustained.

Every beginning will inevitably have an ending. No surprises there.

Both matter equally – best to give endings their due.

Much of character building is learning that we can either choose to be at the mercy of our moods or consistently choose action that transcend moods.

Moods are fleeting.

Our character is built when we do what we said we’d do… despite how we feel.

When someone gives you advice, keep asking why till you understand the framework behind the advice.

That will help you understand if (a) the framework applies and (b) you find it useful.

It is a wonderfully effective way of separating the signal from the noise.

(H/T: Bret Taylor)

I always appreciate when a panel of researchers comes together to share a consensus statement that summarizes deeply researched opinion. This happened in May 2025 on the impact of smartphones and social media on kids. Here was their consensus statement:

To clarify expert opinion, we convened over 120 international researchers from 11 disciplines, representing a broad range of views. Using a Delphi method, the panel evaluated 26 claims covering international trends in adolescent mental health, causal links to smartphones and social media, and policy recommendations. The experts suggested 1,400 references and produced a consensus statement for each claim.

The following conclusions were rated as accurate or somewhat accurate by 92–97% of respondents:

First, adolescent mental health has declined in several Western countries over the past 20 years.

Second, heavy smartphone and social media use can cause sleep problems.

Third, smartphone and social media use correlate with attention problems and behavioural addiction.

Fourth, among girls, social media use may be associated with body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, exposure to mental disorders, and risk of sexual harassment and predation.

Fifth, evidence on social deprivation and relational aggression is limited.

Sixth, the evidence for policies like age restrictions and school bans is preliminary.

Overall, the results of this deliberative process and the set of concrete recommendations provided can help guide future research and evidence-informed policy on adolescent technology use.

---

There are moments when I wonder if we ever needed such a statement. Having experienced the impact mobile phones and social media have had on my life, it is easy to imagine the tumult it can cause in the mind of an impressionable kid.

But I also recognize my view isn’t the mainstream view.

I’m convinced we’ll look back at this time just as we look at cigarette-filled media from the 1980s and wonder how no one came to the conclusion that the smoke would destroy our lungs.

Until then, we need these statements to be read out on speakerphones all over the world.

I came across an article about the newly created Alice Walton (Walmart heiress) School of Medicine. Here’s an excerpt about what’s different about the approach they’re taking.

Instead of drilling young physicians to chase symptom after symptom and perform test after test, Alice Walton wants her school’s graduates to keep patients healthy by practicing something that most doctors today don’t prioritize: preventive medicine and whole-health principles, which involve caring for (and not just treating) the entire person and all of the factors—from their mental health to their living conditions and lifestyle choices—that contribute to wellbeing.

Those aren’t new ideas, of course, but traditional medicine has only paid lip service to them. Experts have noted that while as much as 80% of medical education focuses on biology, about 60% of premature deaths are due to behavioral factors including lifestyle habits like diet, exercise, and smoking.

I also appreciated this excerpt on nutrition.

While the medical school accreditation organization recommends that curriculums devote at least 25 hours of instruction to nutrition, most schools average about 20 hours, in some cases only as electives. AWSOM’s curriculum currently includes more than 50 hours of nutrition-related training, including culinary classes.

Doctors-to-be will spend class time gardening and at a teaching farm, learning about the seasonality of fresh foods and how to cook them—then passing those lessons onto patients. “There is a lack of understanding of nutrition and so much exposure to fast food,” Bunch says of her own struggles with weight and finding healthy food options growing up. “It wasn’t until a doctor talked to me about nutrition in a whole-health way that I understood the mental and psychological aspects of weight, and that empowered me to finally take control of my health.”

Some of the most transformative lessons I’ve learnt in the past year have been on the impact of nutrition on my health. I couldn’t be more excited about Alice Walton’s approach at her School of Medicine.

It lives up to its acronym – AWSOM.

When you hear a prediction, it’s helpful to ask 2 questions –

(1) How much of this prediction is based on logic vs. belief? Belief plays a big role in the outcome of predictions. Moore’s law, for example, held true in part because Gordon Moore’s belief became a self fulfilling prophecy.

(2) Once you have a better understanding of the belief, it is then worth asking – how much of this belief is driven by the predictor’s incentives?

For example, it is common to hear venture capitalists predict the death of incumbents because of AI. It is also completely aligned with their incentives.

Predictions are guesses about the future. They can be useful when we understand which ones have true signal.

Very few of them do however.

And the two questions above help us eliminate a fair bit of noise as we attempt to parse the signal from the noise.