Things that improved my life in 2022

Some notes on changes I made in 2022 that materially improved my life as we go into 2023.

Get serious about strength and fitness#

There’s already a wealth of information on why strength training is one of the best things you can do for your health (physical and mental). As Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength) says, “strong people are harder to kill and are more useful in general.”

The changes in my physique from proportionally higher muscle mass mean that it’s easier to find clothes that fit well and in general I feel more confident in my appearance. Probably obvious to most folks, but one thing that did surprise me - improvements to my posture mean that multiple people in my life have commented that I seem taller than before.
Strength training is extremely beneficial for your cardiovascular health (I do essentially no traditional cardio like running). Before training regularly, my blood pressure at the start of the pandemic was high enough to be “pre-hypertensive”, and since then it’s come down to the “athletes and children” range (100/65).
Training using RPEs and one-rep maxes builds tremendous mental toughness and grit. Being able to push yourself through discomfort and exhaustion is a requirement for truly hitting an RPE10 attempt with nothing left in the tank, and that grit has a lot of carry over into difficult situations outside of the gym.
Having stronger bones, muscles, and tendons makes me more confident in general in my day-to-day life, but it also means that I’m shrugging off the kinds of minor nagging injuries that are pretty common in your mid 30s and beyond. I stepped in a hole while cutting the grass and completely rolled my ankle, and it didn’t result in an injury at all. Physical strength is highly correlated with vitality and longevity in later life, too.

Resources that were crucial for me on this journey:

A coach! I work with the phenomenal Morgan Voz on nutrition and performance coaching, and having experts guide me through what and how much I should be eating and when and how I should be training has made a huge difference for me. I started out trying to use books and online resources, and there’s simply too many resources out there in my opinion - having a pro cut the signal from the noise has been a huge win.
Meal prepping. Your kitchen activity is equally important as your gym activity in training, and I generally used to be someone who would eat out or order in multiple times a week. I now take a couple hours on Sunday to bulk prep meals (I use the recipes from The Meal Prep Manual, of which many are free but the paid membership is well worth it) and can ensure that throughout the week I have plenty of high protein, nutrient dense options for meals with lots of vegetables that just need to be microwaved. During a bulking phase I’m eating ~3400 calories a day, and it would simply be impossible for me to cook enough every day to hit those goals and still be eating healthy food (plus, I save a ton of money this way).
There are a ton of resources online for learning how to execute lifts correctly (I train as a powerlifter, so for me that’s the squat/bench/deadlift) and it’s kind of overwhelming. The guides that ultimately helped me with my technique the most were Alan Thrall’s deadlift tutorial, Calgary Barbell’s bench press tutorial, and Calgary Barbell’s squat video.
A desk treadmill. I work at a computer all day, and getting 8,000 to 10,000 steps in per day despite that has been a huge bonus for my overall health (by increasing my total daily energy expenditure) but the constant movement has also greatly improved my ability to recover from training, so that I’m generally not sore at all between lifting sessions. I have the Sunny Walkstation which is pretty decent, but if you aren’t stuck in front of a computer for work it’s easy enough to just go on more walks.

Be more deliberate about where I spend my attention#

In 2022 I spent a lot of time thinking about things I want to achieve and where I could get more time to achieve them. What I realized was how much time I was ultimately spending on activities that really weren’t benefitting me at all:

I quit all forms of social media cold turkey in mid-2022 and it’s been a huge improvement for my life overall. An excellent argument for why you might want to do this yourself is made in Max Fisher’s book “The Chaos Machine” (you can hear him talk about it on the Rich Roll podcast here), but for me I realized that Twitter, Reddit, and so on are incentivized to show me things that piss me off or upset me in order to maximize engagement. Not being hooked up to a perpetual drip feed of outrage in the form of a social media feed has done wonders for my general feelings about the world.
In terms of other relationships (like group chats, casual Slack channels, etc) I also did a personal audit of those and realized that many of the slack channels I’m in are largely just open forums for venting and complaining and weren’t really giving me anything either. I made a conscious effort to focus more of my personal time on the more meaningful interactions in my life - I stopped reading through the less useful Slack forums and spent more time in chats with friends where more meaningful discussion happens.

With the time I’m saving on less useful activities, I’m spending more time on:

Reading - I’ve read a ton of fantastic books in 2022 that have changed the way I think about things or greatly entertained me, and reading continues to be a fantastic use of my free time.
I’ve found a lot more time to work on side projects, keeping my skills up to date, and learning about entrepreneurship.
When it comes to more “passive” media, I’m trying to spend less time on sites like Youtube and more time listening to interesting ideas in podcasts.

Stop drinking alcohol#

I don’t think I’ve ever been a particularly heavy drinker, but throughout the pandemic my drinking definitely increased a noticeable amount. Early in 2022 as I was getting more serious about training, I realized that not only was I gaining nothing from the recreational act of drinking, but that there’s more and more science supporting the idea that there is no “safe” amount of alcohol to consume - so I quit drinking cold turkey.

This has done a lot for my overall health (likely contributing to the drop in my blood pressure and better sleep) and I’ve found that I don’t really miss it at all. For the times that I do find myself wanting the taste of a beer, the non-alcoholic market has come a long way and there are plenty of NA brews available that are actually quite good.