A Learning a Day

One of the biggest lessons I learned from wearing a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) was just how powerful a post-dinner walk is for metabolic health.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Our metabolism slows at night.

If we don’t burn off the glucose from dinner, the excess is converted into triglycerides – not ideal for long-term health. A simple walk helps clear that glucose before we sleep.

2. Digestion affects sleep, and sleep affects everything.

A walk helps digestion, and better digestion often leads to better sleep – another massive lever for metabolic health. It also naturally creates some space between dinner and bedtime.

But I kept wondering: How long of a walk is enough?

I realized it depends on what you ate – a carb-heavy meal requires more effort than one centered on protein and fiber. Still, I found it helpful to have a simple rule of thumb. And with ChatGPT’s help, the rule I’ve settled into is 2,500 steps.

This translates roughly to 30 minutes of walking. Just enough to meaningfully lower post-meal glucose for most dinners.

Every night, I check my step count and aim for 2,500 more before bed. Some days I exceed it, but having the number makes the goal incredibly tangible. And making it tangible has dramatically increased my consistency.

That’s the lesson – the clearer and more concrete we make our goals, the more likely we are to achieve them.

(Typed as I walk my 2500 steps :-))

Sometimes we go through challenging experiences with seemingly little rhyme or reason.

There isn’t always some obvious profound lesson waiting on the other side.

Sometimes we get struck by bad luck/circumstance at an unfortunate moment, and our job is to make our way through it the best we can.

And when we do, absent that profound takeaway, we still emerge a bit stronger and with a bit more perspective.

As always, it is what we make of it.

It’s easiest to find what you’re looking for if you’re clear about what it is you’re looking for.

That sounds absurdly simple – almost obvious. And yet, when we’re searching for a job, a house, a partner, or anything meaningful, it is easy to dive into the search without ever clearly defining the target.

We can then swipe, browse, interview, tour, and explore… but with no clear criteria, everything feels confusing, and nothing feels quite right.

The real work is in getting the clarity upfront. So, take the time. Write it down. Be precise about what matters and what doesn’t.

Once you have that clarity, the decision is almost always simple.

How much you like or dislike an idea has almost no correlation with whether that idea is true.

It’s a hard truth to internalize, because we instinctively assume that the ideas we prefer must somehow be more factual, more irrefutable. But liking an idea doesn’t make it true, and disliking an idea doesn’t make it false.

So much of learning is the humbling realization that the things we once believed with confidence often weren’t so. The world stays the same – what changes is our willingness to check, to question, and to update.

The work, then, is simple: keep testing what you believe, and stay open to being wrong.

Good judgment flows from experience. Experience flows from bad judgment.

One of the simple truths in life is that it’s infinitely easier to review and critique than it is to build.

The barrier to posting a harsh review or a sharp piece of feedback is incredibly low. Anyone can do it in seconds.

But building something – anything – takes time, care, judgment, and heart. And it’s only when you’re in the act of building that you truly appreciate how hard it is to do anything well.

That’s why building things tends to give you far more empathy. You understand the effort behind the work, and you learn not to confuse the ease of criticism with the difficulty of craftsmanship.

One of the great joys of learning is watching things that were once hard become easy.

The first time you try to do 10 push-ups, it feels so hard. Your body shakes, your mind resists, and you want to avoid it the next day. But do it consistently for a few weeks or months, and suddenly 10 push-ups feel easy, almost effortless.

The same is true for running up a hill. At first, even jogging up feels brutal. A month or two later, you can run it. And a little after that, you can sprint it.

The learning is simple: just because something is hard now doesn’t mean it will stay hard.

Progress is the quiet transformation of difficulty into ease. That’s where so much of the joy lives – as we stretch ourselves to accomplish what was once out of reach.

No matter what you do, if you do things based on what you believe, you’ll be doing it wrong in someone else’s eyes anyway.

You might be a chill traveler – which, to someone who plans every minute, means you’re doing it wrong.

You might be an index investor working with a finance advisor – and to someone building AI trading bots, that’s wrong too.

You might be in a job search and you’ll do it wrong a hundred ways anyway. Too much networking? Wrong. Not enough networking? Also wrong.

If you’re blogging in 2025, shouldn’t you be doing a podcast?

Even your workout routine can be wrong depending on who you ask.

For most things in life, there’s no single “right.” There’s just what you are solving for – your goals, your values, your constraints.

So, know that you’re doing it wrong. Know that someone will always tell you you’re doing it wrong.

Then do it wrong – intentionally and on your terms.

When our muscles feel sore after a workout, it’s our body’s way of saying it’s adapting to stress, getting stronger, repairing itself to handle more next time.

When we challenge our muscles in ways they’re not used to, we create tiny micro-tears in the muscle fibers.

Our body responds with a mild inflammatory process – immune cells rush in to repair the damage, releasing chemicals that increase sensitivity and cause that familiar soreness.

Over the next few days, our muscles rebuild stronger and more resilient than before. The soreness, thus, is simply our body learning to handle more.

Growth, in the gym or in life, often feels like soreness first.

Soreness is a feature, not a bug.

I loved this article about a Canadian entrepreneur who is producing paper from sugarcane fiber.

There are some fascinating nuggets – e.g., one large oak tree probably produces 5000 sheets of paper. Roy Minto’s company instead focuses on waste from the sugar manufacturing process – sugarcane “bagasse.”

While the paper production industry continues to decline with fewer people using paper, there’s still a lot of paper manufactured from hundreds of thousands of trees every year.

Paper made from such crop residue is already the norm in China, India, Mexico and many other countries. It makes full use of the crop while being significantly better for the environment.

I’m glad for the efforts of companies like Social Print. We need more of this.

(H/T: The Daily Difference)

We started watching MasterChef together as a family a year or two ago. After watching multiple seasons and recently finishing this year’s season, I’ve come to appreciate that, while we love the drama, we really love the lessons it offers about growth, performance, and mastery.

There are 3 lessons that stand out –

1. You can improve your performance by improving your attitude.
In almost every season, there’s a familiar pattern. Early eliminations often fall into three categories:

• Those with inflated self-images – their confidence far exceeds their skills.
• Those with poor attitudes – these are often folks who have some talent but lack the humility.
• And those who are unwilling to learn – these folks resist feedback from the judges, especially under pressure.

By contrast, the contestants who go far tend to stay calm under pressure. They listen, adapt, and keep improving.

2. The lesser the time available, the higher the ROI from organization.
Whenever we see the judges cook, we always see them take the time to pause, think, and organize their stations before they start cooking. While the contestants inevitably rush in chaos, they move with quiet intent and keep things clean and organized along the way.

That little investment of planning time makes all the difference.

3. The beauty of mental models.
Watching Gordon Ramsay cook is one of our favorites. His brilliance isn’t just in his taste or technique — it’s in his library of mental models. He knows instinctively what flavors pair well, what textures clash, and what compositions will fail.

That’s what expertise is – a deep set of mental models that let you separate signal from noise quickly and confidently.

It’s a delight to watch… and an inspiring reminder to build out my own mental models so the same clarity becomes instinctive in work and life.