Search Results for: take the stairs

Most of the important ideas for success are hidden in plain sight. However, they are often dismissed as simple and boring.

Health: take the stairs, and eat more veggies

Personal finance: don’t spend more than you earn, and save some for a rainy day

Relationships: treat others like you’d want to be treated

Losing weight: eat fewer calories than you expend

Learning: ask someone you admire what books changed their life; read those

There will always be someone trying to sell you something complicated. If it’s complicated, and has a price tag that makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s got to work, right?

However, it’s usually the simple ideas, executed well, that are the best place to start.

There is a bit of meme in our building: the lift is always broken. We have one small lift, and for the past 6 months it’s been plagued with issues. I’ve been stuck in it, and so have many neighbours—all of us needing wait for the lift maintenance company to come and let us out.

We live on the 4th floor, so all those flights of stairs over the past 6 months has made me curious about the benefits of stair climbing—a sort of “mathematics of taking the stairs”.

According to a study in Atherosclerosis Journal that collected data from more than 400,000 participants in the UK, “climbing five flights of stairs daily can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by 20%”. The study found that short bursts of stair climbing is more effective for our cardiovascular health than getting our 10,000 steps in.

Even when the lift is working, I’m now often choosing to take the stairs. And at the office, I’m making the same decision multiple times per day.

One flight of stairs won’t make a difference, but doing it everyday will likely lead to benefits over time.

Compounding in action again.

A woodsman was once asked, “What would you do if you had just five minutes to chop down a tree?”

“I would spend the first two and a half minutes sharpening my axe,” he answered.

Many mistakes stem from jumping hastily into solution mode without investing time to deeply understand the problem.

It’s hard to pause, map out the symptoms, understand its root cause, identify potential solutions, and then prioritise those solutions based on cost, speed, and quality.

It’s hard because the above takes time, and it often feels easier to just jump into building the solution.

This is one of the “take the stairs, and eat more veggies” insights—straightforward strategies for success that are often disregarded as being too simple and boring. But investing into these habits pay compounding dividends in the long run.

Have you ever learnt a new word, and then soon after started seeing it everywhere?

I feel that way about the author, David Foster Wallace. I’m surprised I only learnt about him this year, but since then, he’s appeared in blogs, speeches, and in conversations with friends; all referencing the man and his wisdom.

I loved this short story from his book ‘This is Water’.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace goes on to say, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

In other words, the timeless ideas for what make a good life are often hidden in plain sight, and we don’t often talk about them because they sound like banal platitudes. I’ve touched on this subject before in ‘Take the stairs, eat more veggies’.

It’s also tempting—when writing and posting each day—to always be on the hunt for fresh, undiscovered ideas to share. But this story is a reminder that it’s perhaps more important to relearn, reflect, and practise the simple, timeless ideas for living.

I used to worry about repeating concepts and ideas on this blog.

What if readers got bored? What if posts became tedious?

However, daily writing has taught me the importance of the old adage “repetition is the mother of all learning.”

Without careful and deliberate repetition, we’re likely to forget our learnings and miss out on their benefits.

One example of repetition in my posts is on the topic of doing the basics well. See “Great advice, usually ignored”, and “Take the stairs, eat more veggies”.

I have a hunch I will still find these ideas relevant and useful in 10 years time, so why not dedicate the time and effort necessary to perfect them?

I recently came across this great Twitter thread started by Y Combinator Chairman, Sam Altman.

It’s odd how the best advice is often so simple that it’s ignored. Maybe it’s because the advice seems boring, or that it is hard to keep up simple and good habits.

I’ve been reflecting on this phenomenon in the last few months, and have written about it before in take the stairs, and eat more veggies. No doubt it will be something I’ll continue to think and blog about in future.

I hope you enjoy reading through the ideas in Sam’s thread.