My thoughts of Outlive by Peter Attia revolve around two 80/20 ideas.
First, 80% of health outcomes derive from an absence. Don’t smoke. Don’t be overweight. Don’t under sleep. Don’t be sedentary. Avoid environmental contaminants. Avoid sunburns. Regardless of what someone does do, if they don’t do those things their health will mostly be fine.
Then 80% of the remaining 20% is about what people do do. My rough prioritization:
- Exercise, make it easy. Do enjoyable things. Do accessible things. Design it!
- Sleep better. Put the phone away through design choices.
- Continue the birthday cake diet along with tasty vegetarian foods.
- Poop in a box. It’s relatively costless and early prevention of colon cancer seems to matter.
- Avoid sunburns, especially in Florida!
To be accurate rather than precise the thinking looks like this:
0-80% of the effect is from avoiding the really bad things.
81-96% of the effect is from doing the basic good things: get stronger, eat better and less, sleep well.
97-99.9% of the effect is from optimization: finding spring water, taking metformin, and so on.
But, being a loss averse human being I don’t do any of the optimization. The chance it helps in a meaningful way is so small compared to the chance it mucks things up.
The Waiter's Pad 