This blog post is just my quick notes and takeaways on three books I finished listening to or reading in the last month or two. There is no other reason for these thee books to be bundled into single post other than my convinience and trying to make this relatively short.

Four thousand weeks

The book’s title itself is a reminder: we have roughly 4,000 weeks to live, a limited and precious resource. Some quick notes:

• We have only 4k weeks to live.
• Many people try to structure their lives around optimizing time and increasing efficiency, but this often leads to stress and dissatisfaction. Rather than overcommitting to work, obligations, or superficial tasks, we should focus on meaningful experiences and relationships.
• Focus on the present: Moments! Moments!
• Since time is limited, aiming for perfection is a waste of energy.

Deep Work

I’m glad I did an exercise of writing about deep work on my blog before finishing the book as it game me an opportunity to compare my thoughts before and after. I always used read/listen to books from beginning till the end; this time around I skipped first half, which explained why deep work is important and intentionally went to second part on how to achieve deep work; this is kind of stepping over myself but also because I’m convinced that deep work is key to performance. I’ve been intentionally applying what I learned from the book – this is often hard, as I need to push myself to wake early, but those 3 hours I get early in the morning are really-really super productive.

Some key learnings, recommendations from the book, not mandatorily applicable to everyone, and not in any particular order:

• Deep Work is a skill and we can improve it
• Quit social media or evaluate if it benefits you.
• Embrace boredom – this one is really funny, basically the author argues that once we have time for rest we should not fill it with distractions like scrolling on phone or watching TV, we should give our brain time to relax properly and not have habits to entertain ourselves.
• Brain focused work capacity is limited, thus we need to work on most important things early and without distractions.
• Have big blocks of focused work in the morning and for the rest of day plan each day in 30min intervals, this is not to prescribe what to work on, but to create micro deadlines.

PEAK: The new science of Athletic Performance

This is a book on athletic performance targeting sport coaches I picked from a library. I consider myself a recreational athlete (running, rock climbing, kickboxing, gym) and wanted to learn a bit of theory behing athletic performance. Some the the points below are just things I noted for myself and might be personal takeaways:

• Sleep is fundamental to both physical and mental well-being. Sleep well and enough.
• Gut Health: A diverse gut microbiome supports overall health. Strive to each veriety of foods.
• Blood Sugar and Mood: High blood sugar correlates with mood fluctuations, so stable blood sugar levels are ideal. Watch sugar consumption.
• Creatine is a safe, extensively studied supplement shown to benefit both power and endurance performance. Ok and benefitial to consume creatine.
• Optimization Choices: We can only optimize on one of the three—health, body composition, or performance. A balanced approach might be best for recreational athletes.
• Saunas: Limited impact on performance improvement. Fine to like sauna, but not really a perfomance booster.
• Recovery should be periodized to support long-term training. Rest well and enough before next trainign which should be harder (longer & intense).
• Athletic Health: Athletes fall ill more often than expected due to physical stress, though elite athletes may experience this slightly less. Listen to the body.
• Heart Rate Variability (HRV): Healthier individuals generally show slightly higher HRV. My HRV currently measures between 40-50, on the lower end for my age, likely impacted by stress. Active individuals of my age often see HRV closer to 70. Watch how this changes over time.
• Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE): A risk associated with repetitive micro-concussions, particularly in contact sports like MMA. Take extra precautions to avoid head injuries in kickboxing.
• Mental Resilience: Elite athletes frequently employ self-talk such as “You will move up” and “You are #1” to boost performance. Experiment with positive self-talk. Maybe read book “Unf*ck youself”.