23 High-impact Ideas for Living Life Well

Here’s my list of 23 high-impact ideas (for work, fun, health, etc.) that I’ve internalized over time:

Health

1. If you don’t like exercise, instead of forcing or avoiding it, find ways to make it fun so that you actually want to do it (e.g., find a different type , such as a sport that engages you, or allow yourself to watch your favorite TV show or listen to your favorite podcast only while you’re exercising, etc.).
2. Sleep is invaluable to our health and worth improving! Through experimentation, find the best combination of conditions ( e.g. eye mask/no eye mask, earplugs/no earplugs, blackout curtains/no blackout curtains, pillow thickness, room temperature, pre-sleep routine, and mattress type) that are best for you.
3. When you’re considering taking medicine or undergoing an important treatment, combine your own research with that of a doctor (in other words, don’t assume that you can figure out more than your doctor knows, you probably can’t, but also don’t assume your doctor will tell you everything you would want to know, or that your doctor has read all the latest randomized controlled trials). Read scientific papers on your own, but be sure to discuss the information with your doctor to gain a full understanding.
4. It’s a lot easier to eat healthy if you incorporate it into your routine (e.g., every day for lunch, eat a salad and only stock healthy snacks at home) than if you have to make a decision each day between the healthy option and unhealthy option

Socializing

1. Avoid spending time with bad people (whether bad influences, immoral people, or destructive people).
2. Organize group activities (at least occasionally) so that you can still see friends when life gets busy, and so that your friends get to know each other.
3. Channel your warm feelings for those you care about when you greet them so that they can viscerally tell you value them.
4. Be warm and friendly at the start of emails (even really short emails), because otherwise, some people will think you’re curt or demanding.
5. If you meet someone at an event who you’d like to see again, show initiative in following up with them, rather than waiting for them to follow up with you. Relatedly, it’s better to ask for business cards for valuable contacts so you can initiate follow up communication, rather than to just to give your card and hope they get in touch.
6. Be conscious about how you allocate time between social events with strangers and quality time with current friends or acquaintances. Try to figure out what your own ideal balance is, between the two.
7. It’s possible to find something of mutual interest in almost any interaction. The key skill is to ask questions to discover which of the things you’d enjoy talking about or hearing about that would be interesting or exciting to the other person as well.
8. When someone makes a great point or says something really interesting or funny, tell them that you enjoyed what they said!

Fun

1. Adventure is more often intentional than accidental. They typically involve adopting a mindset of openness and being on the lookout for novel opportunities that present a challenge.
2. Try new things regularly and shake up your routine, even if you’re not sure what to expect. It could lead to amazing experiences or a new life long hobby. Either way, you learn more about yourself, make your life richer, and avoid ruts.
3. It’s easy as an adult to stop having “play” where you do something creative or wacky or funny just for the joy of it, but forgetting how to play is actually a huge loss.

Work (much of this list applies mainly for work done at a computer since that’s the sort of work I do)

1. If you are serious about making a long term project succeed, get another person involved in some capacity (this could be a cofounder, but not necessarily). You should involve someone else even if the other person has a more limited role than you.
2. Figure out how to make your work environment as comfortable and non-distracting as you can; it is well worth the investment (e.g., get the right headphones, office chair or standing desk, computer, beverage access, room temperature, and internet setup, set expectations with colleagues for how often you’ll be available, turn off the distracting computer and phone notifications, etc.).
3. Each week, schedule at least a few uninterrupted blocks of free work time (>2 hours per block ideally) to use to work on those “high context” projects that can’t be effectively worked on in 30-minute increments.
4. Ask the people you work with what you can do to improve (and emphasize your determination to improve and need for honest feedback) even if there is no formal review process at your job.
5. Always invest time in learning new skills or knowledge related to your work (and beware when you’ve been at a job for a year and feel like you’ve scarcely learned a new thing).
6. If you manage people, ask them periodically how you could help them more or support them more in their work, and what is most frustrating to them or blocking them.
7. When networking (e.g., at an event), there are lots of people to meet, so if you’re not naturally connecting with someone, just move on to someone else that you connect with more naturally, don’t force connection.
8. The way to really make a positive impression when networking is to add genuine value to the people you meet, so be on the lookout for how to you can create value (sometimes a low effort action on your part can really help another person).
9. Be wary of introducing people to each other just because they work in the same industry (or have some other surface-level commonality); usually, people in an industry know a lot of others in that industry already, so that kind of introduction is not usually valuable and in fact can waste everyone’s time.