Below is my attempt to summarize patterns across many anecdotal reports. I’d be curious to hear what you think, especially if you currently or have ever suffered from a painful or unpleasant chronic condition that modern medicine doesn’t have good solutions for.

While the evidence on this topic is extremely preliminary, what I say here could turn out to be wrong, and high-quality randomized controlled trials are desperately needed before we can be confident in these approaches being useful, anecdotally, there appears to be a pattern where people with these conditions are reporting substantial benefits (and sometimes even full recovery) from a combination of psychological and behavioral strategies – sometimes even people who have suffered for a decade or longer.

For those who have already tried all the obvious things, ruled out dangerous medical conditions, exhausted all the options presented by knowledgeable doctors, and don’t know what to do next, these ideas may be worth a try.

Important Note: none of what’s below implies that the person in question was never suffering from a disease, or that their pain is any less “real” than any other pain. Additionally, even if this approach works for some people, it will, of course, not work for everyone, and it may even make some people worse, so please explore with caution.

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From what I can tell, the often-repeated common threads reported in anecdotal accounts of those who recover from these conditions (that they attribute their recovery to) appear to have three major elements:

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Element 1: Foundation (this part is boring but important)

A focus on getting the healthy life basics in place, to set yourself up for potential recovery and to help you feel as good as you can (despite the pain). This often includes elements like:

• cutting out junk food and excessive sugar and replacing them with healthy, whole foods, and drinking sufficient water

• focusing on getting enough, high-quality sleep

• daily stress reduction, such as through a daily meditation practice, progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, a yoga routine, or massage

• reduce or cut out drugs and alcohol

• daily sunlight through some spent outdoors, ideally in the morning

• whatever daily movement or exercise feels manageable (even if just a short, slow walk outside)

• scheduling enjoyable activities regularly and aiming to find joy in ordinary pleasurable moments

• regular social connection with people you care about or find interesting

• If you are dealing with a mental health challenge (such as depression or anxiety, which are both common for people suffering from painful chronic conditions), seeking treatment from an expert (e.g., a well-trained therapist who specializes in the condition you’re grappling with)

• find ways to explore and process your difficult emotions, whether it be talking with a therapist, a daily journaling habit, just taking a few minutes daily to sit and let yourself fully feel your emotions, or speaking regularly to a trusted friend who is happy to listen

• if you tend to be hard on yourself or engage in a lot of negative self-talk, explore developing self-compassion (treating yourself at least as kindly as you’d treat a friend, and showing yourself compassion like you would to someone you care about)

• getting yourself out of psychologically unhealthy situations to the best of your ability (whether it be an unreasonably demanding work situation, a person in their life who treats you very badly or makes you feel bad all the time, or a people-pleasing mentality of never saying ‘no’ even though you are carrying a huge burden already)

These items in 1, above, are not designed to cure your chronic pain or even to reduce the pain; they aim to set you up for the maximum chance of feeling better, and so are important. Also note that 1 doesn’t involve taking a boatload of supplements or eating a highly unusual diet.

It’s 2 that is the more novel, potentially critical piece:

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Element 2: Reframing and Reprocessing

Completely reframing your perception of the painful and unpleasant bodily sensations. The goal is to:

i) See these sensations as your body attempting to send you a helpful signal (e.g., some people like to start thanking their body for giving them this signal because they know it’s trying to protect them)

ii) Perceive these sensations as a false alarm. The idea is that the symptoms do not actually mean you are in any danger, nor do they indicate a life-threatening disease (since we’re assuming that has already been ruled out). The symptoms also don’t mean that you are destined to feel bad all day, or that the activity you’re doing when the symptoms emerge is going to cause any lasting harm to you.

The attitude to bring here is not one of bracing against the pain, and not one of trying to fix the feeling.

The concept is that these unpleasant bodily signals (which probably began as signals connected to an injury or disease) have somehow become detached from any injury or disease. Unfortunately, the signals persist – whether due to misfiring in your nerves, your brain misinterpreting benign signals as being dangerous, associative learning (X has preceded Y enough that now X causes Y), or some kind of accidental signal reinforcement (e.g., by responding to the signal as if it’s a sign of danger, the signal gets perpetuated).

Here’s my metaphor for this way of seeing things:

Imagine that your pain or unpleasant bodily sensations are like the barking of a very loyal guard dog. You brought this dog into your home to protect you back when you used to be in a very dangerous area, and the dog was very helpful at that time, barking at the very real danger that was frequently around you.

Now you live in a safe area, with nothing important for the dog to bark at. But the dog desperately wants to be helpful, and only knows one way to do so. Due to his extreme overeagerness and an unrelenting focus on potential danger, the dog ends up barking constantly. Whenever it barks, despite the now safe environment, you subconsciously still interpret this as a sign of genuine danger (since that’s always what it used to mean). This constant barking leaves you constantly anxious, on edge, or in a heightened state, and may have downstream consequences on your body (such as impacting your ability to sleep well or digest food), and generally makes you miserable. Due to the well-meaning dog’s misguided attempt to keep you safe, the barking is ruining your life.

The idea, therefore, is to retrain yourself to view the chronic pain and unpleasant bodily sensations as completely safe. You can facilitate this by noticing when you’re having negative thoughts about the pain and gently letting them go, and by practicing observing the sensations neutrally, without judgment. You can even practice accepting the painful feelings exactly as they are (and when your brain jumps in to label the feeling as “awful” or tells you “you can’t handle it” you can acknowledge those thoughts, gently let go of them, and return to observing the feeling non-judgmentally. As many people (including myself) have experienced exploring this way of viewing pain during meditation, shifting our attitude toward pain can immediately reduce the suffering the pain causes us.

Redirecting to something positive after doing so is also something that people report as a useful addition (whether that’s some other part of your body that feels good right now, a humorous re-interpretation of the event, a pleasing visualization, or an activity that’s pleasant that you’d like to do now instead of focusing on the pain, etc.)

Importantly, for many people, their bodily signals really ARE indicating imminent bodily danger (e.g., if you have a broken bone in your foot, you may actually need to stay off it for a while to let it heal) – that’s typically how pain works. So if you’re considering trying these techniques, it’s important to first rule out that you’re in that group.

Additionally, it’s important to distinguish a bodily signal indicating true danger vs. one merely indicating “you need to rest”, which is not inherently dangerous, but is important to heed and not ignore. It’s not that you should learn to ignore bodily signals – many such signals provide us valuable information, and ignoring our bodies is a recipe for potential problems down the road. It’s instead about changing the relationship to our chronic painful bodily signals, such as experiencing them non-judgmentally with peace and acceptance, viewing them as our bodies attempting to give us useful information, and not responding to them as though they are dangerous.

For those interested in trying this approach, here’s the final piece of the puzzle:

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Element 3: Practicing and Expanding

• While adopting the points from 2, above, gently and at a manageable pace, challenge yourself with whatever triggers your immediate (acute) symptoms. That is, test the waters with things that would normally make your symptoms immediately feel worse. Do so while maintaining the perspective that the symptoms are safe, they are there in an attempt to help you, and that they do not indicate any actual harm to you. Aim to view the symptoms neutrally and objectively without judgment and keep trying to accept them as they are, without needing them to be different. Then, once that becomes a bit easier, gently push the limits further toward somewhat more intense potential triggers and toward things you’ve been avoiding out of the fear of their impact on your symptoms. An important note: the idea here is NOT to push yourself more and more in an attempt to build up tolerance, strength, fitness, or resistance to fatigue (as one might try to do in Graded Exercise Therapy) – the idea, instead, is to practice reframing and reprocessing symptoms in progressively more challenging situations, while being careful to avoid overdoing it (which can lead to crashes). Many report that pushing yourself too hard, too fast, can backfire. So go slow, be gentle with yourself, and treat yourself with self-compassion.

Expect some setbacks along the way – progress is not likely to be linear, with lots of random daily variation. Be consistent, working at this daily but at a pace that feels comfortable, and track symptoms at the end of each day (e.g., pain level, fatigue level, stress level), which you can check over time to see whether there is a longer-term trend towards progress.

Part of the long-term goal with this is to end up paying less and less attention to your symptoms – since (in this case) they are not indicative of any actual problem, eventually you can learn to ignore them.

Note: gently pushing your boundary on symptoms doesn’t mean blowing past your limits. For instance, if you know that a 15-minute walk will leave you feeling fine at the time but cause you to crash for the next 2 days, then walking for 15 minutes would not be an example of what I’m describing.

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What’s the point of this whole process? It’s really two-fold:

A) It can simply make it substantially easier to deal with the chronic condition, and mean that you suffer less despite all the pain, and live a happier life even as you have the pain. It may cause the pain itself to feel less bad (through a reframing of the pain), cause you to have less intense negative emotions about the pain (which means reducing the second-order pain and other consequences caused by these negative emotions), and expand the range of activities you engage in that make your life worth living.

This could be a good enough reason to try this approach. And that’s part of why I like this approach. While there’s always a risk of it backfiring, even if it doesn’t cause any huge change, I think it has a pretty good chance of making life more manageable and leading you to suffering less from the pain (i.e., even if the pain is not itself lessened, changing your perception of the pain can mean you suffer less from it).

But, here’s where things get weird and much more speculative:

B ) Some people find that after weeks or a few months of following processes similar to what’s described here, they are completely or nearly completely cured. These reports are still very much anecdotal, and much more rigorous research is needed to be confident in the cause of improvement for such folks (so this should all be taken with a big grain of salt), but it’s quite striking how many people who were sick for years or longer have reported rapid progress with approaches similar to what I’ve described here. Though the exact approaches they use differ, and have a variety of names, and a variety of distinct elements, I’ve included here aspects common to many of them.

Many people will only get benefit A) from this approach, and that alone may make it worth it. So it may be best to think of B) more like a speculative bonus that (based on many anecdotal reports) seems to happen for some people.

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Obviously, there are other major caveats here: people could be wrong about this being the cause of their improvements, and even if this approach does cure some people, it’s unclear what percentage of people would be cured if they were to fully take on such an approach. Additionally, there are lots of people this is not appropriate for, such as people who have a life-threatening medical condition, people who have not yet had a thorough medical workup, people experiencing rapid weight loss or fevers, and so on. The evidence here is not strong, and could turn out to be wrong. Just because modern medicine doesn’t have a good understanding of a disorder doesn’t mean that it’s connected to psychology and behavior. And some people even report having tried this approach and had it backfire, where it left them worse off, so please be careful.

If this method does work, though, why does it work? It seems like one or more of the following explanations may be at play (which may vary depending on the individual):

• Pain signals and negative bodily sensations can occur in the absence of injury or disease (for instance, due to misfiring in the nerve, the brain misinterpreting signals, or other causes). A proof of concept where we know this happens is Phantom Pain Syndrome, where a person who has had a limb amputated may experience intense chronic pain that feels to them to be coming from that (now absent) limb, which, of course, it can’t actually be coming from.

• It may be that pain signals or unpleasant bodily sensations can become reinforced by our reactions to them (though this is not well understood). If so, the way we react may inadvertently cause pain signals to persist even past the point of the injury or disease that originally caused them to start. Perhaps somehow our attention to the signals, or our viewing them as dangerous, convinces our brain that the signals are worth sending.

• Or, a subtly but importantly different mechanism may be at play: our negative reactions to pain signals or unpleasant bodily sensations may leave us in a highly elevated state (e.g., anxiety or cortisol), and this elevated state may generate new pain signals or exacerbate existing signals (e.g., increase tightness in the stomach or an inflamed feeling in joints) or new unpleasant bodily sensations (e.g., trouble with digestion, difficulty breathing) which then generate more negative reactions, in a self-perpetuating cycle

• Or, a related possibility, is that your brain has somehow learned associations that are now triggering reactions. Perhaps your brain learned that when X happens, then the proper response is Y, and your brain is now triggering Y in response to X, despite that reaction being useless now and generating negative side effects for you.

• In some cases, behaviors we engage in to avoid pain may actually increase or perpetuate it – e.g., avoiding using a joint because it hurts may actually cause it to be stiff and painful from lack of use, which may cause us to continue to avoid its use.

Pain can be completely real, disabling, and have a biological origin, even in the absence of damaged or diseased tissue.

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One important thing you may wonder: Is there actually evidence that psychological and behavioral approaches can improve the lives of people with these conditions? Well, while this field is, overall, woefully under-researched, there’s quite a bit of evidence that psychological and behavioral strategies can help (even though the nature of these strategies differs, and may only be partially overlapping with what I’m describing in this post). Here is a quick recap of some of that evidence:

(1) IBS: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of psychological treatments for Irritable Bowel Syndrome looked at 15 studies. It found greater improvement in the psychological treatment groups compared to the control group on symptom severity, quality of life, and abdominal pain, but no difference in diarrhea or constipation. Another meta-analysis on psychological therapies for IBS looked at 41 randomized controlled trials and found that CBT and gut-directed hypnotherapy outperformed education and routine care.

(2) Functional Dyspepsia: A meta-analysis of psychotherapy treatments for people with Functional Dyspepsia. It looked at 5 studies and found that those receiving psychotherapy improved in gastrointestinal symptoms.

(3) ME/CFS: A 2011 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome looked at 16 studies on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and concluded overall that those receiving CBT had greater symptom improvement than control groups. As a commenter pointed out, those studies used an earlier definition of ME/CFS that didn’t require post-exertional fatigue. A later 2020 Systematic review of randomized controlled trials looked at 12 studies on CBT, and found that 4 showed it to be effective, 2 ‘Partially significant’, and 6 found no effect.

(4) Chronic pain: a Cochrane meta-analysis looked at 75 studies on psychological treatments for chronic pain conditions, including fibromyalgia and chronic low back pain. A number of types of psychological treatment were included, such as CBT, behavioral therapy, and ACT. They conclude: “On average, compared to people who receive no treatment for their pain, people treated with CBT probably experience slightly less pain and distress by the end of the treatment and six to 12 months later (moderate-quality evidence). They may also experience slightly less disability on average (low-quality evidence).”

So the evidence overall quite strongly indicates that psychological and behavioral strategies can help people with these conditions (though, unfortunately, there is little research that has been done directly testing the specific strategies I’m describing here, and there is a lot of heterogeneity in results, especially with ME/CFS).

The most direct evidence of a technique very similar to what I’m describing (that I’m aware of) comes from just one randomized controlled trial on a method known as “Pain Reprocessing Therapy” (PRT) for chronic back pain. It showed promising results (though more studies are very much needed). PRT has many common elements with what I’ve described in this post.

Of course, if you’re suffering from one of these chronic conditions, you may simply want to try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy if it seems promising to you or (if it’s a gut disorder) gut-directed hypnotherapy as there’s reasonable evidence (as described above) that they improve many people’s quality of life who suffer from chronic conditions, even if they don’t provide a cure for most people.

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The best source I know of to learn about these many anecdotal accounts of people improving from these conditions is the YouTube channel of Raelan Agle. She had ME/CFS for 10 years and eventually recovered, and on her channel, she interviews people who have recovered from ME/CFS and Long Covid. These three videos in particular were very influential for what I wrote in this post:

• What Raelan says she learned from conducting 75 interviews with people who recovered from Long COVID or ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

• Raelan’s recovery themes from 200 Interviews:

• What Raelan says about why recovery experts disagree and what they agree on.

There are also interesting books related to this topic, such as “The Way Out” by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv (which teaches a specific method known as “Somatic Tracking” that’s very related to, but not identical to, what I discussed in this post).

This piece was first written on October 30, 2025 and first appeared on my website on November 10, 2025.

When you pay attention to one thing, there is an opportunity cost – you could be paying attention to something else, like one of your loved ones, a meaningful project, your source of income, or a hobby you love.

When you get sucked into a dumb argument online or read an upsetting news story (that will never lead you to take any kind of positive action), you’re consuming moments of attention that could be better used.

What is less obvious than that, though, is that we can create more moments of attention – because often we’re not doing anything in particular, or we’re just partially paying attention, or we’re letting our minds wander without attention in a pointless or stressful way (rather than in an interesting, relaxing, fun or helpful way).

We can create more moments of attention within our familiar activities to make them even better – like being more present with a loved one or new acquaintance, noticing more fully the delicious flavor of our food, or being more focused during our work (to get closer to peak performance).

Attention is what our life experiences are made of; it’s worth paying attention to what we pay attention to.

Or, as Sam Harris puts it: “How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.”

This piece was first written on July 9, 2024, and first appeared on my website on September 9, 2024.

Principles act as shortcuts to help you make choices that you’ll be satisfied with, and they serve as beacons to guide you toward a better version of yourself. They also serve as an encapsulation of important lessons you’ve learned throughout your life.

We recently released an interactive module to help you determine your principles. It also makes it easy to save or print off a beautiful depiction of your principles to help you keep them top of mind. You can use the module yourself here.

A big shout-out goes to Adam Binks who created this module!

Here are the principles I attempt to live by as of Jan 3, 2023:

1. Seek the truth on important topics, even when it’s difficult. Listen carefully to all plausible sides. Aim to avoid all self-deception.

2. Aim to have opinions on most topics that are important to you, but view your beliefs probabilistically. Be quick to update your view as you get new evidence.

3. Always strive to become a better version of yourself. Take constructive feedback with grace and use it to improve.

4. Try to understand your intrinsic values and avoid confusing them with instrumental values. Aim to be highly effective at generating what you intrinsically value.

5. While capable, devote a substantial percent of your time and effort to improving the world.

6. Try to always be kind.

7. Try never to tell lies. White lies are okay only when they’re what the recipient would prefer.

8. Don’t let anyone of low moral character be a recurring or substantial part of your life.

9. Try to be grateful for all that you have. Take pleasure in simple things.

10. Take care of your physical and mental health.

11. Always have a self-experiment running to find new ways to better yourself and your life.

12. Aim not to avoid anything valuable just because it makes you feel awkward, anxious, or afraid.

13. Remember that you will usually fail many times at any difficult thing before you succeed. Try, fail, learn from your mistakes, and try again.

This post was first written on December 31, 2022, was edited slightly on January 3, 2023, and first appeared on this site on July 26, 2023.

I created columns to indicate when I reached major life milestones, experienced major losses, began important relationships, finished books that had a big impact on me, etc. I update it a few times per year and try to include the best and worst things that have ever happened to me (i.e., successes, turning points, amazing experiences, trips, career shifts, and important realizations.)

I value this life events timeline for a few reasons:

1. A timeline tells your story. It’s neat to read through it, momentarily reliving your triumphs and important moments, but also, it gives you an objective perspective on what’s happened to you and how you got where you are today. It’s a linear, sequential view of your history, which feels very different from the episodic bits and pieces that come to mind when you mentally recall your past.

2. It pushes you to identify what the milestones in your life ACTUALLY were. While some will be obvious (e.g. graduating from school), others are subtler (e.g. a book you read that changed your perspective, having an important realization, or meeting a certain friend).

3. The longer I live, the easier it is to forget when important things happened, and in what sequence. I enjoy having my timeline as a reference. I predict that I’ll appreciate this aspect more and more as I get older. For instance, it’s neat to be able to see, at a glance, how long I’ve known different friends and how long I worked on various projects.

Imagine creating and maintaining a timeline to then look back at it decades from now and see your entire life’s history in front of you! If you have children or plan to, imagine using it to provide an overview of your life one day!

Here’s the template I use for my life timeline (on google spreadsheets). Feel free to make a copy and use it yourself if you like:

http://bit.ly/2fyP8r1

Helpful tips:

• The left-most column automatically calculates how many years ago an event occurred, so you can immediately see how long ago something was. 
• If you want to add more time (e.g., at the bottom), I recommend pasting the cells for an entire year at a time. If you paste one month at a time, the formula in the left-most column will get messed up.
• If you have trouble remembering when certain events occurred, searching your email and calendar can help narrow down dates.

• The new thing seems likely to be beneficial or enjoyable OR is different enough from things you’ve done in the past that you don’t think you can accurately predict how you’ll react to it

• Trying the new thing doesn’t require a substantial investment of time or resources AND is extremely unlikely to cause you long term or significant amounts of harm (or cause other people harm at all)

Personally, I almost always accept the chance to try new things when they meet these criteria. There obviously isn’t much point in pushing yourself to do new things that you don’t consider valuable (e.g., punching yourself in the head), unless of course, your model for what is valuable for you is not very accurate (e.g., maybe you think there would be no value in doing an improv class, but actually it would teach you useful skills and help you overcome fears).

The benefits of trying new things:

• Sometimes you’ll discover new things you really like, which you can then choose to do many times in your life (e.g., by trying mixed martial arts I learned that I really like it, and it became a hobby as well as a method of staying fit)
• Building a more accurate model of yourself, which you can use to predict your responses to other things in the future (e.g., by going to a tea tasting, I discovered a lot about my tea preferences, including the fact that I typically prefer mid-priced teas over both expensive and cheap teas)
• Gaining a better understanding of what the thing is and why others might enjoy it (even if you don’t end up liking it yourself), hence deepening your ability to relate to others (e.g., spending a day going bird watching, which is definitely never going to turn into a hobby, but which gave me a greater understanding of people who take joy in cataloging activities and of the richness in those sorts of activities)
• Deepening your knowledge of how things work or of the variety that exists in the world (e.g., taking a tour of a traditional home in Bali taught me about some interesting differences in living arrangements and burial practices across cultures that I hadn’t previously known about)
• If the thing makes you irrationally afraid, challenging that fear and teaching yourself to push through (unfounded) fear more generally. There often is value in challenging yourself to do things you are afraid of that you know are not actually dangerous because, in addition to the benefits of the new thing itself, it helps ensure that you don’t let fear prevent you from getting the most out of life (e.g., taking opportunities to speak in front of a group when I had very little time for preparation and knew I would have to do substantial portions off the cuff)
• Causing a positive change in yourself (e.g., trying meditation made me more aware of the way in which my mind is not usually fully focused on just one thing and what an alternative might look like)
• Potentially deepening relationships with others, either by doing the new thing with people you already know (creating a memorable shared experience) or meeting people during the new activity

Possible drawbacks of trying new things are:

• They take time, and sometimes other resources like money as well.
• They are sometimes unpleasant while you are doing them (though this is mitigated when they are the sort of thing you can stop in the middle if you want)
• They can (in rare cases) be traumatic or cause long term harm.

Overall, I suggest using the rule of thumb: “if it is new to me, relatively easy to try, and not likely to be harmful but may yield benefits, I should try it.” I think that following that heuristic will usually leave your life richer, more enjoyable, and more full of growth than the alternative.

You can, of course, proactively seek out new experiences, rather than waiting around for opportunities to arise (e.g., committing 2% of your free time to new things).

Here are some activities you could consider trying, if new to you:

Experiential

• spending a day listening to many different types of music that you wouldn’t normally listen to
• asking your friends for their favorite movies and then watching the ones that you wouldn’t normally choose to watch
• beginning a daily practice of writing in a journal
• miracle berries
• eye gazing
• going to Burning Man
• traveling alone in a foreign city
• going a week or longer without electronic devices
• going blindfolded for a day while still trying to do your daily activities at home
• wearing earplugs for a day while still trying to do your daily activities at home
• fostering a pet
• trying a totally new diet (e.g., going vegan for a week)
• jotting down your dreams each day when you wake
• making a list of 3 things you’re grateful for every night before bed
• making a list of 3 things that went well today and what caused each to go well each night before bed
• thinking of one thing you’re excited about each morning as soon as you wake up
• going to a therapist
• fantasizing about something you’d never normally fantasize about or trying to come up with a new fantasy that you find highly appealing
• volunteering for a day to work with people in need
• having a week where you spend at most only a tiny (fixed in advance) amount of money each day
• trying a new cuisine
• cutting out caffeine for two weeks
• cutting out all unhealthy foods for two weeks (by whatever your metric for “unhealthy” is)
• not watching any TV for two weeks
• exercising every day for two weeks
• spending a whole day trying to be as aware as you can of each of the thoughts you have
• spending a whole day trying to be fully optimistic about everything that happens
• spending a day where you only allow yourself to do fun things
• cuddling non-sexually with a consenting close friend
• buying a few healthy snacks that you’d not normally try and see if you like any of them
• observe carefully in a mirror how exactly your face changes when you make expressions of fear, anger, surprise, happiness, sadness, and contempt
• walking a route home that you have never taken
• consciously designing an adventure for yourself and some friends and then going on it together
• imagine a future life for yourself that you’ve never seriously considered
• house sitting for a month in a place you’d never considered living permanently
• running or sprinting a few times per week
• going to a convention or conference about something you really like
• spending two full days without communicating with another human being

Skills

• toastmasters (for public speaking practice)
• tying martial arts
• meditating daily for a month
• massage lessons or practice
• cooking class
• improvisation class or acting
• creating art of a form you wouldn’t normally attempt
• giving a lecture on a topic that interests you
• trying a team sport you’ve never played
• try high-intensity interval training daily for a week
• trying a form of exercise you’d never done before
• language classes (e.g., sign language)
• circus arts
• explore a nearby neighborhood that you’ve never explored
• go to a familiar neighborhood and try to notice ten things you’ve never noticed before

Social

• organizing a retreat for your close friends
• throwing a themed party or social experiment of your own invention
• trying speed dating
• doing activities you used to love as a kid but haven’t done in many ears
• chatting with total strangers in an online chat room
• going to a nude beach
• trying new sexual activities you’ve never tried before
• going to a Meetup
• starting a new Meetup
• going to a few events where you know you won’t know anyone and challenging yourself to have a certain number of conversations
• doing the “20 questions to fall in love” with your romantic partner or with someone you don’t know well
• imagining what sort of person you’d most like to be and then act as though you have that personality for a day
• purposely doing five kind things for five different people in one day
• going to a store and trying on clothes that you wouldn’t normally try on
• calling someone who you haven’t talked to in many years
• becoming a “big brother” or “big sister” or mentor for a young adult or child
• starting ten conversations with strangers in one day (who seem open to conversation, without forcing them to talk to you)

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.

Note: I highly recommend that you don’t just read this list of steps, but instead, that you actually do them! Reading these steps will not give you any benefit, but doing them might!

Step 1 – Think for a moment about the person who is the best influence on you, or the person in your life you don’t see that much that you most admire the traits or actions of.

Step 2 – Visualize something great this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs you admire.

Step 3 – Ask yourself: are you sure you don’t want to make an effort to spend more time with this person than you do now? Consider sending them a message now to make plans to see them.

Step 4 – Think for a moment about the person who is the worst influence on you, or the person in your life that you see regularly whose actions or personality you least respect.

Step 5 – Visualize something distasteful this person did or said, or think of a trait of theirs that you don’t respect.

Step 6 – Ask yourself: are you sure you want to spend as much time with this person as you have been spending?

It’s as accurate as it is cliché: your choice of who to spend time with shapes what sort of person you become and what you value.