Author Archives: David Truss

Simple treats

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I don’t snack a lot. When I do, it’s usually chocolate or nuts, or better yet chocolate with nuts. Chocolate almonds are my Kryptonite, a weakness I can’t overcome. If we have a bag of chocolate almonds in the cupboard, I get drawn to them and I end up making several trips to ‘visit them’ in a night. “Last handful,” I repeatedly say to myself on my second and third time to the cupboard.

That said, most days I don’t treat myself. I have dinner and that’s the last food I have for the day. No desert, no treats.

However, every now and again I like to treat myself. I like to indulge in a little snack, or buy myself an apple fritter, or dig into a cinnamon bun. I don’t view it as a reward for anything, it’s not a special occasion, it’s just a simple indulgence.

As long as it’s not chocolate almonds, it’s something I don’t overdo. I think because I don’t do it often, it makes a simple treat seem special.

How do you treat yourself?

How can I add value?

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I have a friend that always asks this question. He would come over for a BBQ, and I’m cooking. The first thing he did was ask, “How can I add value?” Then “Can I get you a beer?” Or, “Is there anything you need?”

It was sincere, it was simple: ‘I’m here, and if you need anything, just let me know. ‘

He wasn’t trying to fix anything, he wasn’t trying to draw attention to himself, he was just trying to be helpful. It’s an endearing quality that is appreciated and valued.

Be helpful. You provide value by offering value.

Movie bias

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My wife and I are watching Griselda, a miniseries on Netflix. I don’t usually watch shows like this. However I occasionally watch a series with my wife, and this is one she started a couple weekends ago… and since it’s only 6 episodes, I decided to join her. I don’t tend to like stories that glorify historical villains. To me this is a movie bias that I’m not a fan of.

If you want to create a fictional story like Breaking Bad, that’s fine. But when it’s Capone, Pablo Escobar, or any other real-life criminal, I usually stay away. I am not a fan of glamorizing and even glorifying people who took the lives of others in the quest for money and power. Griselda reminds me why I’m not a big fan of these shows.

If you want to make a fictional villain, that’s fine. But inventing dialogue for real, unpleasant people is a bit much. And there is always the urge to show an appealing perspective that makes the villian likeable before they do awful things.

Another movie bias is that in the movies you are almost always rooting for the rebellion. Dune, Star Wars, Braveheart, Les Misérables, all the way back to Spartacus, the movies are always about the underdog’s rise. This is more understandable, we all love seeing the unlikely hero with little to no chance of success prevail.

But to me glorifying real life villains goes too far. It’s not just that these characters are built up as bigger than life, it also that no matter how they are portrayed, they are always given a stature of someone who accomplished something to be admired.

I’ve openly shared that I think when someone does a heinous act, like a mass shooting, in the media they should only be recognized as ‘an idiot with a gun’. I continued on this topic and said that media coverage of these events is part of the problem. I think movies and series that highlight real-life thugs are the same. They give bad people recognition and fame that they do not deserve.

I’m happy to root for the rebellious underdog any day. I’m a lot less willing to watch shows that highlight the rise and fall of really nasty people whose only causes are greed and power, because the attention we give them are a form of power, and immortalizing their story is ultimately a win for them.

Fit for life

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I listen to a lot of podcasts about healthy living. It’s amazing how some key topics keep coming up again and again. it’s like there comes a point where collective knowledge just compounds and evidence piles up to support some key ideas. Here are a few things that I have been hearing repeatedly, which all suggest ways to live a long and healthy life. (Not in any order of priority.)

1. Eat more protein. We don’t tend to eat enough, and we tend to eat less as we grow older, but protein is important for both muscle and brain health.

2. Do cardiovascular exercise regularly. At least 5 days a week for the rest of your life. Don’t like to run? Then don’t run! Find something you like to do, spend a minimum of 20 minutes doing it. It doesn’t matter if you like intense cardio, or if you prefer low intensity, what matters is staying active and getting your heart rate up. It’s also important for burning calories, especially if you like food a bit too much.

3. At least once a week get your heart rate up to about 80% of your maximum. This can be done in bursts, like sprinting for 2-3 minutes then slowing down for 2-3 minutes and repeating a few times, or just pushing yourself with a consistently faster pace, or maybe walking on an incline on a treadmill. One thing that really matters for healthy longevity is your maximum VO2 (the max amount of oxygen your body can absorb during exercise). This is maintained and improved primarily by pushing your body past this 80% mark.

4. Do some sort of strength training 2-3 times a week. Constantly remind yourself body that it is not yet in a period of decline. Remind your body that it is a muscle builder. Do this by pushing at least one muscle group completely to fatigue.

5. Take creatine and vitamin D. I’m not a doctor, and you should seek medical advice for supplements, but these are two supplements I feel safe to recommend because they both have tremendous upside and are extensively researched with no downside unless you are an idiot and take extreme doses. Creatine really helps with muscle soreness and seems to have many other upsides too, including for menopausal women. This is not the ‘bodybuilding guy’s supplement’ people think it is, but one everyone can benefit from. Vitamin D is both a vitamin and a hormone used by your immune system. And unless you live in a tropical climate, 90+ percent of the population is low in vitamin D, or at the very most not at the highest levels recommended by health experts.

6. Reduce sugar intake. Our bodies crave sugar. An interesting thing that I heard recently is that this might be something ingrained in us from our monkey heritage. Fruit goes bad, and so when fruit ripens, it’s important to get a lot of it before the fruit rots. Therefore when our ancient ancestors had access to sugars, our bodies made sure to crave more while the supply lasted. Whether that’s true or not, we currently have convenient and continuous access to too much sugar and our cravings for it are unhealthy. I’ll leave you with a simple public service announcement: processed sugars are food for cancer.

7. Stretching and balance are important. It’s not enough to do the same exercise 5 days a week and not work on your overall flexibility and balance. Falls are more common as you get older, and stiff joints don’t help. Breaking a hip vastly shortens life expectancy. Keep nimble, and do things that challenge both flexibility and balance.

8. Self image is important. If you see yourself as someone who exercises regularly, you don’t have to work to get a workout in. To build a habit of good habits, create identity based habits. I am a person who works out regularly. I stretch as part of my routine. I make healthy eating choices. I enjoy doing things that keep me young.

9. Meditate. Find time for gratitude and awareness. Find time to focus on your breathing.

10. This one hasn’t been in on the health podcasts, but it’s a great place to end: Seek laughter. Find joy. Spend quality time with friends and family. Explore new ideas, and keep learning. If you are not finding ways to appreciate the life you have, you aren’t adding value to the life you are trying to extend.

Doctor’s visit

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I recently went to the doctor to request bloodwork. It had been a few years since my last one. The results were not great. With high cholesterol being a hereditary issue on both sides of my family histories, my results show concerning levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. Levels weren’t great last time, and they are worse now.

I’m going to change my diet, but I’ve also booked an appointment with my doctor and I’m probably going to go on statins… A decision for my doctor to make, not me. The reality is that bad cholesterol is a silent killer because you don’t feel buildup of plaque and fatty deposits in your blood and so a medical emergency can be the first hint of how bad things are. That’s why things like blood tests are so important. That’s one of many reasons why doctor visits are important.

I work hard to stay fit and healthy. Obviously my diet could be and should be a bigger part of that equation. But that’s not enough. Another factor is involving health professionals.

My dad wore a “I haven’t seen a doctor in decades” badge of pride. It was stupid. He was not quite 80 and his body was that of an unhealthy 95 year old. About 5 years ago we went to see my uncle, dad’s younger brother, perform in a band at a local pub. When my uncle introduced dad to a friend of his, the friend asked my uncle if my dad was his dad… I’m not exaggerating about the age comparison I just made.

I’m excited about the diagnosis tools of the future. There will be many ways for us to monitor our health and even be preemptively warned of pending issues. But for now, and increasingly as you age, visit your doctor regularly.

Positive Peer Pressure

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I think part of growing up involves being peer pressured into doing something stupid. It doesn’t have to be big and life-altering. It can be as simple as being pressured by friends to ask someone you like out, but you knew all along you were going to face rejection. Or you were pressured to go first off of a giant toboggan ramp you and your friends built on an icy day. The dumbest things I was peer pressured into are not going to make it into a list of things I plan on sharing, so the above examples are going to have to do.

When you get into adulthood peer pressure doesn’t have as strong a hold on you, and so in most cases you really aren’t going to be pressured into doing something stupid, or something you really don’t want to do. But what about things you do want to do? I think here we have amazing opportunities to use peer pressure to our advantage.

A perfect example is that I never would have done 2,000 pushups in February without my buddy Dave challenging me. And we held each other accountable, checking in with progress and reminders. Another great example is a spotter in the gym. Done well, spotting isn’t just about safety, it’s also about encouragement and motivation. I know that I push myself much harder when I’ve got a workout buddy telling me to push one more rep out when I want to just give up and end the set.

We can really use positive peer pressure to our advantage. Want to build a powerful habit? Do it with a friend or have your friends hold you accountable. Want to try something for the first time? A friend or life partner’s encouragement is invaluable. Increase the pressure when things don’t go as well, or there is a slip, and praise the behavior when things are going well.

As a kid, peer pressure is usually something to avoid. But as an adult it’s something to seek out… as long as the outcome is positive.

Finding the muse

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Sometimes I just need to start writing. I can get stuck trying to think about what to write about and I’m either staring at a blank page, or I’m wondering off on social media. In both cases I’m still stuck feeling like I have nothing to say. Because in reality the blank screen doesn’t really help, and distractions are just…distracting.

Finding the muse is an elusive task, it hides in the shadows of any task you put your mind to. The muse is not something you seek, it is instead something you do. If I want to write, I don’t go looking for topics to write about, I simply start writing. I don’t find it anywhere, it is not an object, it is a verb, an action.

How much time is wasted searching for the right thing to write about, rather than just writing? I would rather delete a full paragraph of writing that I started as inspiration for an actual topic, than sit distracted, believing that the blank page will inspire me, or a TikTok, Tweet, or Instagram reel.

We don’t find the muse when we go looking, instead we create the muse when we start creating.

[This post brought to you after an hour of wasting my time doing exactly what I said you shouldn’t do.]

2,000 pushups in February

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It started as a challenge from a friend. I didn’t get started until February 3rd. So I did some math, and realized that 80 pushups a day for 25 days would get me to 2,000.

Here are my daily sets, tracked for the month, including two rest days, since there were still 27 days left to go:

2,000 pushups sounds like a lot. 80 a day isn’t necessarily fun. 80 in one set, that really wasn’t fun. But 80 in a day is totally achievable. How many things seem insurmountable, but really aren’t if we just break them down into smaller, attainable chunks?

AI, Content and Context

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I found this quote very interesting. On his podcast, Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett is talking to Daniel Priestley and Steven mentions that Open AI’s Sam Altman believes we are not far away from a 1 person company making a billion dollars, using AI rather than other employees. Daniel pushes back and says while that might happen, a more likely and more repeatable scenario would be a 5 person team. Then he says this:

“AI is very good at content but not context. And having 5 people who share a context and create a context, together… then the content can happen using AI. AI without that context, it doesn’t know what to do, so it doesn’t have any purpose.”

Daniel Priestley

Like I shared before, “The true power and potential of AI isn’t what AI can do on its own, it’s what humans and AI can do together.”

This idea of context versus content seems to be the ingredients that make this marriage so ideal. This is noticeable when generating AI images, as I’ve done for quite some time, creating images to go with this blog. For example, I’ll describe something like a guy on a treadmill and maybe one of the four images created would have the guy backwards on the treadmill – content correct, but not context. As well, AI is really unaware of its’ own biases that humans can more easily see. These context errors are common.

But just as AI will be better teaming with humans, humans are also better when they team with other humans, rather than being solo. We miss context too, we struggle to see our own biases, unless we have people around us to both share and create the context.

The best innovations of the future are going to come from small teams of people providing rich contexts for AI. And while AI will get better at both context and content, it’s going to be a while before AI can do both of these really well. It’s what AI and humans can do together that will be really exciting to see.

Appreciation for what we have

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It’s easy to complain. To be frustrated. To want things to go faster, to want more, to want better.

It’s much harder to appreciate what we have.

Appreciation doesn’t require settling. It doesn’t mean we don’t strive, it doesn’t mean we don’t have desires. It means we acknowledge that what we have now is good. Not ‘good enough’… good.

What do we have to be thankful for? How can we show our appreciation to others? How can we share our gratitude for what we have?

If all that matters is what’s next: the next plateau, promotion, or praise for a job well done… then we aren’t being present.

What are we lucky to have, grateful to experience, fortunate enough to share? What can we appreciate about our experience right now? Because if we can’t figure that out right now, we probably aren’t going to figure it out when we reach our next target or goal. We will just be looking forward to the next step instead.

Meanwhile there is opportunity to enjoy the journey, the moments along the way… and not just the next destination on a long path of next destinations.

Is it really harder to show appreciation, or do we just not spend enough time practicing?