Skipping Exercise Quotes

Here’s what I need to do to stay centered: sleep eight hours, exercise for forty-five minutes, and have both breakfast and dinner with my family. If I skip one or two of those things for a day or two, it’s OK. But that’s the routine. Also, every so often I need to read a novel (ideally one a week), go away for a romantic weekend with my husband (ideally four times a year), and take a two-week vacation with siblings and parents (once a year). If I can manage to do those things, I can usually stay centered no matter what storms are raging around me.

If you’re not absolutely sure a purchase will bring long-term value in your life, have the discipline to skip it.

Things like taking a few dollars out of a paycheck, putting it into savings, and leaving it there. Or doing a few minutes of exercise every day—and not skipping it. Or reading ten pages of an inspiring, educational, life-changing book every day. Or taking a moment to tell someone how much you appreciate them, and doing that consistently, every day, for months and years. Little things that seem insignificant in the doing, yet when compounded over time yield very big results. You could call these “little virtues” or “success habits.” I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge.

When people who have taken a positive step toward meeting a goal—for example, exercising, studying, or saving money—are asked, “How much progress do you feel you have made on your goal?” they are more likely to then do something that conflicts with that goal, like skip the gym the next day, hang out with friends instead of studying, or buy something expensive.

Many men today feel inexplicably restless, unfulfilled and depressed. They seek all the things society tells them will heal their man spirit: carefully watching their diet, taking supplements, exercising and visiting a shrink. And yet they find no relief. Why? They’re skipping out on perhaps the most crucial element in maintaining their manly vigor: spending time in the great outdoors.

The only bad exercise is the one you skipped.

One day Shizuo Kakutani was teaching a class at Yale. He wrote down a lemma on the blackboard and announced that the proof was obvious. One student timidly raised his hand and said that it wasn't obvious to him. Could Kakutani explain? After several moments' thought, Kakutani realized that he could not himself prove the lemma. He apologized, and said that he would report back at their next class meeting. After class, Kakutani, went straight to his office. He labored for quite a time and found that he could not prove the pesky lemma. He skipped lunch and went to the library to track down the lemma. After much work, he finally found the original paper. The lemma was stated clearly and succinctly. For the proof, the author had written, 'Exercise for the reader.

Better yet, go out for a skip instead of a jog. Skipping is such a powerful way to change your state because it does four things: 1) It’s great exercise; 2) you’ll have less stress on your body than running; 3) you won’t be able to keep a serious look on your face; and 4) you’ll entertain everybody who’s driving by! So you’ll be changing other people’s states, too, by making them laugh.

Once paper and ink were to hand, it was useless to appeal to his better nature, to tell him he was wrecking reputations and ruining people's lives. A kind of sweet venom flowed through his veins, smoother than the finest cognac, quicker to make the head spin. And, just as some people crave opium, he craves the opportunity to exercise his fine art of mockery, vituperation and a buss; laudanum might quieten the senses, but a good editorial puts a catching the throat and a skip in the heartbeat. Writing's like running downhill; can't stop if you want to.

He doesn’t say anything for a while, just studies me in that intense way. His nostrils flare, and again it’s like he’s taking in my scent or something. He continues, “Somehow, I think I know you. From the first moment I saw you, I felt that I knew you.” The words run through me, reminding me of when he let me escape in the mountains. He’s good. Protective. I have nothing to fear from him, but everything to fear from his family. I scoot closer, the draw of him too great. My warming core, the vibrations inside my chest feel so natural, so effortless around him. I know I need to be careful, exercise restraint, but it feels so good. The pulse at his neck skips against his flesh. “Jacinda.” My skin ripples at his hoarse whisper. I stare up at him, waiting. He slides sown to land solidly on my step. He brings his face close to mine, angles his head. His breath is hard. Fast. Fills the space, the inch separating us. I touch his cheek, see my hand shake, and quickly pull it back. He grabs my wrist, places my palm back against his cheek, and closes his eyes like he’s in agony. Or bliss. Or maybe both. Like he’s never been touched before. My heart squeezes. Like I’ve never touched anyone before. “Don’t stay away from me anymore.” I stop myself, just barely, from telling him I won’t. I can’t promise that. Can’t lie. He opens his eyes. States starkly, bleakly. “I need you.

But you're worried I'll get in trouble?" I try not to show how much this pleases me. I've managed to ignore him for days now and here I sit. Lapping up his attention like a neglected puppy. My voice takes on an edge. "Why do you care? I've ignored you for days." His smile fades. He looks serious, mockingly so. "Yeah. You got to stop that." I swallow back a laugh. "I can't." "Why?" There's no humor in his eyes now, no mockery. "You like me. You want to be with me." "I never said-" "You didn't have to." I inhale sharply. "Don't do this." He looks at me so fiercely, so intently. Angry again. "I don't have friends. Do you see my hang with anyone besides my jerk cousins? That's for a reason. I keep people away on purpose," he growls. "But then you came along..." I frown and shake my head. His expression softens then, pulls at some part of me. His gaze travels my face, warming the core of me. "Whoever you are, Jacinda, you're someone I have to let in." He doesn't say anything for a while, just studies me in that intense way. His nostrils flare, and again it's like he's taking in my scent or something. He continues, "Somehow, I think I know you. From the first moment I saw you, I felt that I knew you." The words run through me, reminding me of when he let me escape in the mountains. He's good. Protective. I have nothing to fear from him, but everything to fear from his family. I scoot closer, the draw of him too great. My warming core, the vibrations inside my chest feel so natural, so effortless around him. I know I need to be careful, exercise restraint, but it feels too good. The pulse at his neck skips against his flesh. "Jacinda." My skin ripples at his hoarse whisper. I stare up at him, waiting. He slides down to land solidly on my step. He brings his face close to mine, angles his head. His breath is hard. Fast. Fills the space, the inch separating us. I touch his cheek, see my hand shake, and quickly pull it back. He grabs my wrist, places my palm back against his cheek, and closes his eyes like he's in agony. Or bliss. Or maybe both. Like he's never been touched before. My heart squeezes. Like I've never touched anyone before. "Don't stay away from me anymore." I stop myself, just barely, from telling him I won't. I can't promise that. Can't lie. He opens his eyes. Stares starkly, bleakly. "I need you." He says this like it doesn't make sense to him. Like it's the worst possible thing. A misery he must endure. I smile, understanding. Because it's the same for me. "I know." Then he kisses me.

I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25.

The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends. If you neglect your health or your career, you slip into the second category—stupid—which is a short slide to becoming a burden on society. I blame society for the sad state of adult fitness in the Western world. We’re raised to believe that giving of ourselves is noble and good. If you’re religious, you might have twice as much pressure to be unselfish. All our lives we are told it’s better to give than to receive. We’re programmed for unselfish behavior by society, our parents, and even our genes to some extent. The problem is that our obsession with generosity causes people to think in the short term. We skip exercise to spend an extra hour helping at home. We buy fast food to save time to help a coworker with a problem. At every turn, we cheat our own future to appear generous today. So how can you make the right long-term choices for yourself, thus being a benefit to others in the long run, without looking like a selfish turd in your daily choices? There’s no instant cure, but a step in the right direction involves the power of permission. I’m giving you permission to take care of yourself first, so you can do a better job of being generous in the long run. What? You might be wondering how a cartoonist’s permission to be selfish can help in any way. The surprising answer is that it can, in my opinion. If you’ve read this far, we have a relationship of sorts. It’s an author-reader relationship, but that’s good enough.

All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.

Couldn't I come along with you? I've been trapped inside for days now and I need some sunshine and exercise. If you're really busy today, maybe I could hhelp. It's not as if I'm a greenhorn who'd get in your way." "This isn't a good idea, Freckles, and you know it." The feisty redhead grinned. "I admit I'm somewhat ignorant on the subject, but I've never heard of doing "it" on the back of a horse." A roguish grin dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Sweetheart, you'd be surprised where...Never mind." Though he'd tried to sound gruff, Willow detected a slight wavering in his determination. "I'll promise not to attack your body, if that's what you're worried about." She started laughing. Moving closer, she backed him against the door. Then tilting her head, she hit him full force with her big blue-green sparklers. Her lips parted in a very seductive, very naughty smile. "Please, just a short ride?" She toyed with the edge of his black leather vest, the backs of her fingers sliding up and down his chest. Rider sucked in a gulp of air. "Dammit, woman,what's Mrs. Brigham been teaching you? Stop that!" He batted her hand away, laughing despite himself. He was beaten and he knew it. "Well?" She smiled slyly. He grasped her arms and set her away to a safer distance. "All right, all right. I give up. I'll take you for a ride." When her face lit up,he raised a cautioning finger and hastened to add, "On one condition. You have to keep yours hands to yourself. No touching!" "Yes! I promise!" Willow threw herself into his arms and pulled his face close for a brisk buss on the cheek. Then she sprang free and skipped past him to the door. "I kow, no touching. That was just a thank you. Hurry up, I'm all ready to go." Following in her wake, Rider groaned, "Yeah,so am I-in more ways than one." "What did you say?" she called back. "I said you were a little flirt!" She gave him an innocent smile over her shoulder and sprinted off to saddle Sugar.

The sacrifices we make to stay healthy, to look good, the tasty foods we skip, the guilt trips, the exercising - all these things require great discipline, care, and even a paradoxical, self-denying self-love of sorts in order to be properly executed. However it is regretful that so many of us today are not as passionate about our spiritual holiness as we are about our physical health. They are indeed both important - we should worship in every aspect of our lives - and one even, in a sense, entails the other. Although, this disproportion in said priorities is still very much expected: we humans have always taken a liking to trendiness and the temporal side of things, doing what is judged vainly in the eyes of man before that which is judged vitally and eternally in the eyes of God (i.e. "cleaning the outside of one's cup while leaving a filthy inside"). But in a way, it all goes to show that the man who fully hates discipline hates himself fully; for within the spirit is where The Holy One judges true wellness or malady.

Going back to the place where you are from is always fraught, memories scattered like broken glass on every pavement, be careful where you tread. I meditated, feeling a little guilty that I have the space to. A space for peace, to which everyone is entitled. “It’s alright for you in the back of a car that Hitler used to ride in,” I imagined that drunk bloke saying. I’d have to point out that it wasn’t literally Hitler’s car, that would be a spooky heirloom, but it is all right for me. I do have a life where I can make time to meditate, eat well, do yoga, exercise, reflect, relax. That’s what money buys you. Is it possible for everyone to have that life? Is it possible for anyone to be happy when such rudimentary things are exclusive? They tell you that you ought eat five fruit and veg a day, then seven; I read somewhere once that you should eat as much as ten, face in a trough all day long, chowing on kale. The way these conclusions are reached is that scientists look at a huge batch of data and observe the correlation between the consumption of fruit and veg and longevity. They then conclude that you, as an individual, should eat more fruit and veg. The onus is on you; you are responsible for what you eat. Of course, other conclusions could be drawn from this data. The same people that live these long lives and eat all this fruit and veg are also, in the main, wealthy; they have good jobs, regular holidays, exercise, and avoid the incessant stress of poverty. Another, more truthful, more frightening conclusion we could reach then is that we should have a society where the resources enjoyed by the fruit-gobbling elite are shared around and the privileges, including the fruit and veg, enjoyed by everybody. With this conclusion the obligation is not on you as an individual to obediently skip down to Waitrose and buy more celery, it is on you as a member of society to fight for a fairer system where more people have access to resources.

Cochise Jones always liked to play against your expectations of a song, to light the gloomy heart of a ballad with a Latin tempo and a sheen of vibrato, root out the hidden mournfulness, the ache of longing, in an up-tempo pop tune. Cochise’s six-minute outing on the opening track of Redbonin’ was a classic exercise in B-3 revisionism, turning a song inside out. It opened with big Gary King playing a fat, choogling bass line, sounding like the funky intro to some ghetto-themed sitcom of the seventies, and then Cochise Jones came in, the first four drawbars pulled all the way out, giving the Lloyd Webber melody a treatment that was not cheery so much as jittery, playing up the anxiety inherent in the song’s title, there being so many thousand possible ways to Love Him, so little time to choose among them. Cochise’s fingers skipped and darted as if the keys of the organ were the wicks of candles and he was trying to light all of them with a single match. Then, as Idris Muhammad settled into a rolling burlesque-hall bump and grind, and King fell into step beside him, Cochise began his vandalism in earnest, snapping off bright bunches of the melody and scattering it in handfuls, packing it with extra notes in giddy runs. He was ruining the song, rifling it, mocking it with an antic edge of joy. You might have thought, some critics felt, that the meaning or spirit of the original song meant no more to Cochise Jones than a poem means to a shark that is eating the poet. But somewhere around the three-minute mark, Cochise began to build, in ragged layers, out of a few repeated notes on top of a left-hand walking blues, a solo at once dense and rudimentary, hammering at it, the organ taking on a raw, vox humana hoarseness, the tune getting bluer and harder and nastier. Inside the perfectly miked Leslie amplifier, the treble horn whirled, and the drivers fired, and you heard the song as the admission of failure it truly was, a confession of ignorance and helplessness. And then in the last measures of the song, without warning, the patented Creed Taylor strings came in, mannered and restrained but not quite tasteful. A hint of syrup, a throb of the pathetic, in the face of which the drums and bass fell silent, so that in the end it was Cochise Jones and some rented violins, half a dozen mournful studio Jews, and then the strings fell silent, too, and it was just Mr. Jones, fading away, ending the track with the startling revelation that the song was an apology, an expression, such as only the blues could ever tender, of limitless regret.

Extremely easy to overlook them. It’s easy to overlook them because when you look at them, they seem insignificant. They’re not big, sweeping things that take huge effort. They’re not heroic or dramatic. Mostly they’re just little things you do every day and that nobody else even notices. They are things that are so simple to do—yet successful people actually do them, while unsuccessful people only look at them and don’t take action. Things like taking a few dollars out of a paycheck, putting it into savings, and leaving it there. Or doing a few minutes of exercise every day—and not skipping it. Or reading ten pages of an inspiring, educational, life-changing book every day. Or taking a moment to tell someone how much you appreciate them, and doing that consistently, every day, for months and years. Little things that seem insignificant in the doing, yet when compounded over time yield very big results. You could call these “little virtues” or “success habits.” I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge. ==========

Health is a net result of ALL of our thoughts, emotions, social interactions, sleep quantity and quality, hydration levels, and a lot more than just whether the cow you’re eating ate grass or corn.  In the grand scheme of things, all that dietary small stuff that the healthosphere seems obsessed with is minutiae.  Absolute minutiae.  Eating grassfed beef to be healthy is like fighting a forest fire with an eye dropper if you aren’t sleeping well, hate your life, spend most of your time doing mundane and uninspiring work, are financially stressed, never go outdoors, skip meals, and eat an inadequate amount of calories.

I blame society for the sad state of adult fitness in the Western world. We’re raised to believe that giving of ourselves is noble and good. If you’re religious, you might have twice as much pressure to be unselfish. All our lives we are told it’s better to give than to receive. We’re programmed for unselfish behavior by society, our parents, and even our genes to some extent. The problem is that our obsession with generosity causes people to think in the short term. We skip exercise to spend an extra hour helping at home. We buy fast food to save time to help a coworker with a problem. At every turn, we cheat our own future to appear generous today. So how can you make the right long-term choices for yourself, thus being a benefit to others in the long run, without looking like a selfish turd in your daily choices? There’s no instant cure, but a step in the right direction involves the power of permission. I’m giving you permission to take care of yourself first, so you can do a better job of being generous in the long run.

How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This" dear reader, with our heels digging into the good mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown & lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am & I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning, you could scatter his whole mind across a field.

Imagine you’re invited to a celebratory dinner. The chef’s talent is legendary, and the invitation says that this particular dinner is going to be a feast of monumental proportions. Bring your appetite, you’re told—come hungry. How would you do it? You might try to eat less over the course of the day—maybe even skip lunch, or breakfast and lunch. You might go to the gym for a particularly vigorous workout, or go for a longer run or swim than usual, to work up an appetite. You might even decide to walk to the dinner, rather than drive, for the same reason. Now let’s think about this for a moment. The instructions that we’re constantly being given to lose weight—eat less (decrease the calories we take in) and exercise more (increase the calories we expend)—are the very same things we’ll do if our purpose is to make ourselves hungry, to build up an appetite, to eat more.

Banks was twenty-six years old, tall and well-built, with an appealing bramble of dark curls. By temperament he was cheerful, confident and adventurous: a true child of the Enlightenment. Yet he had thoughtful eyes and, at moments, a certain brooding intensity: a premonition of a quite different sensibility, the dreaming inwardness of Romanticism. He did not like to give way to it. So he kept good company with his shipmates, and had carefully maintained his physical fitness throughout the first eight months of the voyage. He regarded himself — ‘thank god’ — as in as good mental and physical trim as a man could be. When occasionally depressed, he did vigorous jumping ‘rope exercises’ in his cabin, once nearly breaking his leg while skipping.1

SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO USE THIS WORKBOOK You can choose to engage in the conversations in different ways. For example, you may want to do one conversation per day, one per week, or designate a weekend when you will be able to break from the day-to-day and commit to your introspection and to one another. I don’t recommend cramming. One per week will give you an opportunity to get acquainted with the goals of each conversation and the methods within them, and to check in with yourself and one another without feeling pressured to move on. You may even feel that you need to spend some more time on a particular conversation. The conversations are designed to be done in succession, so I do not recommend jumping around. However, you may want to alter the sequence or skip a conversation if you both do not think it’s relevant to your relationship. The preferred way to do the work is to do it together and share answers with one another. There may be times, however, when you wish to do some exercise by yourself. That is okay, too. As stated already, some exercises are purposely solo projects. You may want to photocopy or scan any pages that you want to do by yourself and place them in a binder for safekeeping. For couples who are comfortable sharing, you may want to fill in the exercises using different colored pencils or alternate who answers first. You will find a rhythm that works for you. This should not be a tense experience. Consider it a journey of discovering yourself (perhaps for the first time) and rediscovering your relationship. I know it can be hard to begin the work of love and loving. But what I know is this: The work is well worth it. Our need for others to come close when we call — to offer us safe haven — is absolute, but not absolutely given.

A good exercise for identifying intervals is to sing them. Sing one note, any note, and then try to sing, let’s say, a perfect fourth above it.

Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woolen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement. Everest was nothing compared to seeing her. I was skinny, long-haired, and wearing some very suspect flowery Nepalese trousers. I short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy. I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything “silly” when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgment, he had said. In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry. We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures. I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up headfirst in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny. Another time, I lost a wheel while roller-skating down a steep busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary. We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes, and drove around in “Dolly,” my old London black cab that I had bought for a song. Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway--broken down--waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again. We were (are!) in love. I put a wooden board and mattress in the backseat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.) Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will forever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard? In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colors of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the backseat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun. Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it. Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.

Reading, writing, listening to music, skipping rope, flying kites, taking long walks along the sea, hiking in the crisp mountain air, all serve a joint purpose: these self-initiated acts free us from the drudgery of life. These forms of physical and mental exercises release the mind to roam uninhibited, such collaborative types of mind and body actions take people away from their physical pains and emotional grievances. A reprieve from the crippling grind of sameness allows personal imagination to soar. Imagination, a form of dreaming, is inherently pleasant and restorative. It is within these moments of personal introspection stolen from the industry of surviving that humankind touches upon the absolute truth of life: that there must be something more to living then merely getting by; the fundamental human condition thirsts for a way to improve upon the vestment that shelters our self-absorbed lives.

There's an exercise I'll do sometimes with a class in which we'll start with a word; I'll give everyone a word, and they'll write based on that word, and as they're writing I'll interrupt often and tell them to write more on the setting they're developing. I'll stop the process again and give intrusive instructions about developing the character in the setting, and on and on. The purpose of this is to allow the development of the fruit that is already in seedling form on the page. There can be an urge and an anxiety to skip ahead, to get to the action, to get to plot, or to go to the familiar. But plot is a process, and its beginnings can come from very subtle and unexpected places. Story movement and form are going to feel false if they do not happen from some kind of progression, even if (and this is important) the writer is not aware of this process in the moment, even if, as with the Nabokov excerpt, the events happen fast. (Aimee Bender, "On the Making of Orchards")

IT TAKES SIX MONTHS TO A YEAR for exercise to become a habit. The external rewards will help get you to that point. After it becomes a habit, it will be more difficult to skip your workout, and the internal rewards may be enough to sustain your motivation.

Content marketing serves a business purpose. It helps your website get found, it attracts prospects to your business, and it gives you a way to develop a trust-based relationship with them. But if you don’t ask your readers to take action, you might as well skip the whole exercise!

When Mum moved out of her house and into the bungalow David had bought, we had a rigorous clear-out. The garage was full of junk belonging to Jacinta, Gavin and me. Books, comics, posters in tubes, fabric, snorkels, wellies, old exercise books filled with rickety graphs and essays covered in angry pen and lumpy Tipp-Ex. Everything got lobbed into a skip. Even things that weren’t in the garage like mismatched wine glasses and ornaments from holidays abroad. Letters were thrown away too. We threw out the letter that would have proven I wasn’t out of my fucking mind.

And so, with all that on the table, what do I do? • I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym

Odyssey Planning 101 Create three alternative versions of the next five years of your life. Each one must include: 1. A visual/graphical timeline. Include personal and noncareer events as well—do you want to be married, train to win the CrossFit Games, or learn how to bend spoons with your mind? 2. A title for each option in the form of a six-word headline describing the essence of this alternative. 3. Questions that this alternative is asking—preferably two or three. A good designer asks questions to test assumptions and reveal new insights. In each potential timeline, you will investigate different possibilities and learn different things about yourself and the world. What kinds of things will you want to test and explore in each alternative version of your life? 4. A dashboard where you can gauge a. Resources (Do you have the objective resources—time, money, skill, contacts—you need to pull off your plan?) b. Likability (Are you hot or cold or warm about your plan?) c. Confidence (Are you feeling full of confidence, or pretty uncertain about pulling this off?) d. Coherence (Does the plan make sense within itself? And is it consistent with you, your Workview, and your Lifeview?) • Possible considerations ° Geography—where will you live? ° What experience/learning will you gain? ° What are the impacts/results of choosing this alternative? ° What will life look like? What particular role, industry, or company do you see yourself in? • Other ideas ° Do keep in mind things other than career and money. Even though those things are important, if not central, to the decisive direction of your next few years, there are other critical elements that you want to pay attention to. ° Any of the considerations listed above can be a springboard for forming your alternative lives for the next five years. If you find yourself stuck, try making a mind map out of any of the design considerations listed above. Don’t overthink this exercise, and don’t skip it.

I take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool.

COUPLES HAVING BARIATRIC SURGERY TOGETHER It happens more and more often: Two people will have bariatric surgery together. It is difficult being the patient. It can also be trying for the significant other. When couples have the surgery together, it can be twice as hard. Each person has the problems of both the patient and the significant other. I have found that people in healthy relationships do well together, but those having problems often see increased relationship difficulties after surgery. If you plan to have the surgery with a partner, try to remain independent as far as exercise and food choices. Working out together is a bonus, but do not get into the habit of skipping workouts because your partner cannot participate. Do not let your partner be in charge of your habits. Good communication is the key to a couple’s success. Before the surgery, discuss the logistics of the changes you must make. After the surgery, talk to each other weekly about your feelings regarding the surgery and the changes you are both experiencing. It is possible to grow much closer as a couple as a result of this experience. There will be a tendency to talk each other into tiny cheats. Typically, this is how it works: “C’mon, let’s just have a little bit. We deserve it.” Having the surgery together represents some increased challenges, but has the potential for increased excitement and support. Keep communication flowing and problems will be minimized.

take 1 gram (1,000 mg) of NMN every morning, along with 1 gram of resveratrol (shaken into my homemade yogurt) and 1 gram of metformin.7 • I take a daily dose of vitamin D, vitamin K2, and 83 mg of aspirin. • I strive to keep my sugar, bread, and pasta intake as low as possible. I gave up desserts at age 40, though I do steal tastes. • I try to skip one meal a day or at least make it really small. My busy schedule almost always means that I miss lunch most days of the week. • Every few months, a phlebotomist comes to my home to draw my blood, which I have analyzed for dozens of biomarkers. When my levels of various markers are not optimal, I moderate them with food or exercise. • I try to take a lot of steps each day and walk upstairs, and I go to the gym most weekends with my son, Ben; we lift weights, jog a bit, and hang out in the sauna before dunking in an ice-cold pool. • I eat a lot of plants and try to avoid eating other mammals, even though they do taste good. If I work out, I will eat meat. • I don’t smoke. I try to avoid microwaved plastic, excessive UV exposure, X-rays, and CT scans. • I try to stay on the cool side during the day and when I sleep at night. • I aim to keep my body weight or BMI in the optimal range for healthspan, which for me is 23 to 25. About fifty times a day I’m asked about supplements.

Regular exercise also dramatically reduces your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A study from 201815 showed that women who were physically fit at middle age were a whopping 90 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease even decades later. The few fit women who participated in the study and did eventually develop Alzheimer’s did so an average of eleven years later than women who did not exercise, at the age of 90 compared to 79. Now listen up, my female readers. As my good friend Maria Shriver and I both know, Alzheimer’s disproportionally affects women, and the cure is prevention, not a long-sought-after but not-yet-discovered drug. Imagine that you read a headline saying that taking a “drug” would prevent 90 percent of all Alzheimer’s disease if the treatment is started early. How much would you pay for it? Well, that drug is a combination of exercise and, as you’ll soon learn, simple choices in food. Another study examined the effects of exercise on patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s and found that it improved memory performance and even reduced atrophy of the hippocampus, the memory centers of the brain.16 We also know that exercise that uses the legs in particular stimulates brain cells, keeping you alert and healthy long into old age.17 Remember “Michelle”? I have no doubt that walking her Pomeranian (in her high heels!) multiple times a day helped her stay sharp well into her ripe old age. Meanwhile, “brain training” apps that claim to help you improve your brain actually do nothing for working memory or IQ.18 So skip the games and go out for a walk instead. Exercise

Each session do as few or as many exercises as you wish but do not work equally hard on every one of them. For example, on Monday do a lot of sets of the bent press, on Tuesday skip the bent press or take it easy and work hard on snatches, etc. Do not be overly pedantic about the order. Just do not do one pet feat at the expense of everything else all the time. Also, do not be afraid to make some workouts relatively easier than others.

She did not understand either that his peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to her, was merely the expression of his inward distress and uneasiness. As a child that has been hurt skips about, putting all his muscles into movement to drown the pain, in the same way Aleksey Aleksandrovich needed mental exercise to drown the thoughts of his wife...And it was as natural for him to talk well and cleverly as it is natural for a child to skip about

It’s experience that has value, not possessions. We desire possessions because we think they’ll make us happier, but extensive research shows that once our basic survival needs are met, increased possessions don’t boost happiness levels. Meditation gives us the option of going straight to happiness and skipping the intermediate step of possessions. Acquiring them takes a lot of work and time, and all that effort can take us out of flow. We can spend a 40-year career amassing the possessions and money that we believe will give us happiness in retirement. Skipping the amassing stage and going straight to bliss gives us the end goal at the beginning. We win the gold medal before the contest even begins. Play doesn’t happen in an imaginary future in which our lives are perfect. Play happens now. We can become billionaires of happy experiences, the bank vaults of our minds overflowing with joy. That’s the only currency that counts. We’ve then acquired the end state without going through the intermediate state of getting stuff. We’ve loaded the dice, so that any and every roll produces bliss. Why not live like that every day? DEEPENING PRACTICES Here are practices you can do this week to integrate the information in this chapter into your life: Releasing the Suffering Self: That’s the theme of this chapter’s companion meditation. Use the link below to listen to this free 15-minute meditation each morning. Play the “Name Your Demon” Game: Give the selfing part of yourself a funny personal name, or ask it what its name is and write down the answer. One woman christened hers “Sticky.” Another, “Yuggo.” This exercise separates you from identification with the demon, and reminds you that you’re in control. Make the Subject-Object Shift: Whenever you find your mind wandering during meditation, simply thank your DMN by name (e.g., “Thanks, Yuggo!”) and then move your attention back to Focus. Mindfulness App: As a way of becoming mindful, enroll in the Harvard wandering mind study by using the link below to download the smartphone app. Time in Nature: Spend time in nature at least three times this week. Write those times in your calendar now, and treat them as seriously as you’d treat a doctor’s appointment. This exercise in self-care is a way of centering your mind and nurturing yourself. Journaling: In your new personal journal, write down the insights you have this week. Notice the way your mind works in meditation, and describe it in your journal. Just a few words are enough, like, “Had a hard time getting to a good place this morning. Lots of mind wandering, but I settled down in 15 minutes.

It made sense that on the day of the Women's March, I skipped it and went to my girl's spot for a very Black brunch in Brooklyn. Watching white women take it to the streets to protest an election outcome that was a result of white women's powerful voting block, felt like an exercise in white lady tears if I ever saw one, and I knew I couldn't be trusted to act right amidst a sea of pink pussy hats and white women struggling to understand what intersectionality means.

**Important** This exercise is done on only one side. You must first decide which side of the body has the tightest iliacus and is rotated forward. Use the “QUIZ” to determine your tightest side. You only do this exercise on the tightest side. Do not switch to the other side to balance yourself. We are actually creating balance by only doing this exercise on the side that is out of balance. If you don’t know what side is tightest, then skip this exercise. On the Back Realign the pelvis on your back Lie down on your back and bring both knees up towards your chest so both feet are off the ground. Place your hand behind the knee of the side that is tightest (determined with the “QUIZ”). Squeeze your hand with your calf by bending your knee. At the same time, push against your hand, without moving, as if you’re pushing your foot down towards the ground. Your hand will be resisting the pressure of your leg pressing against you. You don’t need to press your hardest; a mild to moderate amount of pressure is just fine. The other leg is just up off the ground and not doing anything. It’s important to keep it up off the ground so that it doesn’t accidentally push into the ground or cheat in some way. There is no motion with this exercise, just pushing. Push against your hand so that your foot is trying to touch the ground but not moving. Hold the push for two seconds, or one deep breath, and then relax. Repeat this push ten times. After those ten repetitions, your pelvis should be in better alignment. In Standing

Let’s Get Started The knees are usually everyone’s weak link, so start by seeing how far you can squat. Ideally you can get your fanny almost all the way to the floor with no pain, like our young lady here (actually, she’s 95). If you can squat this deeply and come back up with no pain, you can probably skip the rest of this section. Just remember to frequently run your joint under full range of motion, while employing some mild weight or resistance.

Analysis shows that most long-term successful “losers” have a few things in common. They get moderate exercise, they don’t skip breakfast, they don’t go on crash diets, and, importantly, they focus on low-fat diets (Shick, Wing, et al. 1998). Yes, many low-carb diets show better initial weight loss, but what we should be focusing on is the long term. After all, do you want to be lean for six months, or for the rest of your life?

• Possible considerations ° Geography—where will you live? ° What experience/learning will you gain? ° What are the impacts/results of choosing this alternative? ° What will life look like? What particular role, industry, or company do you see yourself in? • Other ideas ° Do keep in mind things other than career and money. Even though those things are important, if not central, to the decisive direction of your next few years, there are other critical elements that you want to pay attention to. ° Any of the considerations listed above can be a springboard for forming your alternative lives for the next five years. If you find yourself stuck, try making a mind map out of any of the design considerations listed above. Don’t overthink this exercise, and don’t skip it.

Keep in mind that every day you skip, every day you do not engage in some exercise that causes you to breathe more deeply, you are instructing your lungs to become less efficient. The body does not coast; it declines without positive stimulus.

Try to answer the following questions: 1. How often do you continue to eat after the feeling of comfortable satiation has already come? 2. Do you often overeat before you go on a new diet (realizing that you can’t afford to eat all this for a long time on a diet)? 3. Do you have time to cope with emotions or overcome boredom? 4. Do you relate to those who steadily dislike physical activity? 5. Do you exercise only when you are on a diet? 6. Do you often happen to skip a meal or eat only when you literally fall from hunger, and as a result, you overeat? 7. Do you feel guilty if you overeat or eat “unhealthy food,” which ultimately leads to even more overeating (all the same, everything has already disappeared)?

Some other categories you may choose to look at could include work, travel, church life, community involvement, meal planning, business partnerships, Sabbath practices, workshops attended (or skipped), movement and exercise, and prayer and reading habits. Again, my main advice is to choose one category and one specific time frame, and to always write it down. Scan the areas of your life, choose one to reflect on, and then ask yourself, Was this life-giving or life-draining? Overall, when you think of it, does your body lift when you imagine that time or does it sink? Another way to ask the question, especially if you’re looking at some of your spiritual disciplines, is this one: Did this activity draw me closer to God or push me further from him? Remember, there are no wrong answers. What is life-giving for me may be life-draining for you. Not only that, what is life-giving for you today may feel draining this time next year.

I apply this to the trade-offs among health, wealth, and time. You can trade time and health to accumulate more wealth. Why health? You may be stressed, lose sleep, have a poor diet, or skip exercise. If you are like me and want better health, you can invest time and money on medical care, diagnostic and preventive measures, and exercise and fitness. For decades I have spent six to eight hours a week running, hiking, walking, playing tennis, and working out in a gym. I think of each hour spent on fitness as one day less that I’ll spend in a hospital. Or you can trade money for time by working less and buying goods and services that save time. Hire household help, a personal assistant, and pay other people to do things you don’t want to do. Thousand-dollar-an-hour New York professionals who pay $50 an hour for a car and driver so they can work while they commute understand clearly the monetary value of their time.