This is not financial advice, this is some guys sharing tips they heard from some other guys and gals and AIs.

Subscribe now

Understand your finances in under one hour

Review your cash flows

This used to be a drag to do, I tried a bunch of apps, most of their integrations were not great and they classified stuff wrong. Now we have AI. Give it a try: Export your account history, feed it into Claude, and ask it the following questions:

• How much goes in? In most cases this is just your salary maybe investment income. In a financial partnership? Then do this analysis for your partnership.

• Where does it go? Don’t focus on every cent. Most people spend most of their money on three things: Housing, transportation, food. What’s your spending on each of those categories? Any surprising outliers?

• Build a habit: Doing this once a year is work, but just checking your cashflows every week takes two minutes. This allows you to find fraud, find recurring subscriptions, and get a feeling for what’s worth it and what isn’t.

A lot of us have subscriptions that renew monthly, or even yearly, and then we forget about them until a random £50 to £100 charge appears on our statement.

I use AI to scan my statements, spot recurring subscriptions, and calculate my current subscription burn rate. It is a simple way to get more awareness of where your money is going.

Cameron

Project your trends

Next, get a feeling for where this will develop towards. Focus on the timeframe that is right for you. Stable job and family? Project years and decades. Starting an AI startup? Plan for the next months. Again, Claude can help you figure it out.

• What are you expecting to get? Will you stay in your job? Until when? Expecting an inheritance? How will your savings develop? Again, focus on the 80/20, make a few crude assumptions and feed them to Claude.

• What are you planning to spend? Planning on getting a house? Care responsibilities? Big life events? What’s your “burn rate”?

• Try a few scenarios: Predictions are hard, life will surprise you. Try a few different scenarios depending on your personal life and the macroeconomic trends around you.

I have this weekly review where I ask myself the question if I have any lingering feelings I am not checking in with. For the last few weeks that was financial anxiety. Now, while writing this article, I analyzed and projected my finances with Claude, took ten minutes, and that anxiety is gone. Not because I suddenly found money, but because I feel less in the dark about how long it’ll last me.

Christoph

Explore your beliefs

You can spend a lot of time crunching the numbers but that won’t help much if your decision making around money is driven by deep-rooted beliefs that work against you. Take a few minutes to start exploring those as part of your financial audit:

• Explore your upbringing: What were the conversations at home about money? Were there any? What was ok and not ok to spend money on? Was there a feeling of scarcity or abundance?

• Explore money scripts: Research has identified four unhealthy ones: Worship (“money solves everything”), Status (“net worth is self worth”), Avoidance (“money is the source of evil”), Vigilance (“question all purchases”). Check them here.

• Start conversations: Money can be taboo but if you frame it right, having a conversation about it can be liberating. Start a conversation with your partner, friend, or parent. Consider a therapist if you scored high on money scripts.

Growing up, there wasn’t a lot of financial stability at home. Both of my parents were self-employed with fluctuating incomes. Somehow I took away from this a deep belief that “it always works out” but I could’ve just as well learned that I really want a stable government job.

Christoph

Give it a go

In the next weeks, we will explore how you can optimize your spending, investing, and other topics. You’ll be able to take most from those posts when you have a clear understanding of your status quo:

• Block one hour in your calendar to feed your finances to Claude. Bet money on actually doing it.

• Journal or grab a friend to reflect on your beliefs around money.

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

Subscribe now

What’s causing you stress

Fake stressors

When I said I’d write an article about stressors at home, lots of suggestions came up. Some didn’t make it past the evidence bar but clearly many people are worried. Let’s start here:

• Microplastics: There is lots of evidence that microplastics can accumulate in human organs: through air (from laundry), through water (from bottled water), from food (wrapped in plastic). However, we feel that the weak evidence for actual health impact doesn’t justify the massive work it would be to avoid all these.

• WiFi radiation: There is no good evidence for health effects from WiFi radiation, including cancer and fertility. The signal is much weaker than holding your phone next to your ear when on a call, and that is also fine.

• Tap water: Most tap water is generally safe to drink. Fluoride is good for your teeth. Check it for your city but keep in mind that the alternatives have issues: Water filters grow bacteria when you don’t replace filters. Bottled water often has worse levels of heavy metals than tap water.

Microplastics is a hard one. There seems to be something there but then evidence on actual effects seems to be inconclusive. And it’s so hard to actually avoid them. For me personally, I decided it’s not worth the effort caring about this for now and revisit next year. Let me know in the comments if you feel differently!

Christoph

Hidden stressors

Unfortunately there are some real risks still out there. These are the top-three toxins still present in many houses.

• Flame retardants: Flame retardants have long been added to furniture and other products and have been shown to have an impact on hormone levels, brain development, and fertility. Fix: Don’t let dust accumulate, get an air filter, use a HEPA vacuum. Replace furniture with “crumbling” yellow foam, look for certificates that apply in your country (TB117-2013 US, EN 1021 EU, UK is tricky)

• Mold: Grows wherever things get damp. It has been shown to cause persistent asthma in children, and can cause respiratory and mental health issues in adults. Act on signs like peeling wallpaper and earthy “basement smells”; check the underside of your roof and the base of your walls. Always fix the water source first.

• Lead: Lead is highly toxic for children’s brain development. Yet it’s still found in old piping and use in paint is unregulated in 50% of countries. To figure out if you are at risk, check your house and infrastructure age and region with an AI, then if you are suspicious, you can often request a test with your local water provider.

Stress from clutter

Turns out it’s not just the hidden stuff that’s causing stress. The stuff you buy has been shown to cause stress as well. Voluntary minimalism has been shown across over 20 studies to increase life satisfaction and lower depression, most likely through lower clutter and less decision fatigue. Minimalism 101:

• The bar: For each item in your house, check if it serves a functional purpose or cause genuine joy. No on either? Get rid of it.

• The box: Letting go is hard. Start by just putting things in a box. If you didn’t miss them after three months, you’ll find it easier to let go.

• The cycle: Instead of throwing things out, bring them to a charity shop or put them on a local marketplace app. There will be plenty of people who still have a use for it.

For every new nonperishable item I bring into the house, I have to get rid of two existing items. That means whenever something new comes in, my overall clutter still goes down. This applies to clothes, furniture, books, and similar items.

To make it more challenging, I sometimes try to remove items of the same type. Of course, you have to be reasonable with it. If you followed this rule forever, you would eventually end up with nothing, so sometimes a one to one ratio makes more sense. But aiming for a two to one ratio whenever possible is a great way to declutter.

Cameron

Things to get started

• A lot of these were specific to the location you live in. Do a quick double-check on flame retardants, mold, and lead in your household. Any obvious risk items?

• Try minimalism for a small space in your house. Take ten minutes and identify two items that might go. How did you feel after?

• Learn how to change

• Bet money on your change

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version

Everything that follows highly depends on your living situation, so take it as inspiration to start thinking with, not a set-in-stone checklist.

Subscribe now

How not to die

Your basic home setup

Don’t skip the boring stuff. Fire, water, and accidents are still pretty frequent and all easy to manage if you take the right precautions.

• Fire: Have working alarms in and outside of each bedroom and floor. Test them monthly, replace them every ten years. You can also get self-testing alarms. Also get CO alarms. Check your fire extinguishers. Have an escape plan.

• Water: Water won’t kill you but can drown you financially. Best way to prevent this is to get an in-line shut-off sensor. These monitor the total water flow in the house and shut off if there is a leak. At minimum, know your shutoff valve.

• Accidents: The most frequent accident at home is falling. Prevent by having non-slip mats and something to hold on to in bathroom, low clutter, nightlights. Second is cuts. Make sure you have a first-aid kit and know how to use it.

Some friends of mine rented out a cabin in the mountains and wanted to smoke there, so they took down all fire alarms. Luckily they overlooked one because when that one got off during the night they barely managed to escape before the whole cabin burnt down. The fireplace had somehow caught fire. Don’t be them. Get fire alarms.

Christoph

Security that works

This section highly depends on where you live. I am lucky to live in Amsterdam where the biggest worry is getting your bike stolen. I also used to live in Chicago and Nairobi where the stories were a bit different. These basics should always hold:

• Build community: When your neighbors know you, they can double-check with you if a moving truck shows up without you having ever told them that you’ll move. Neighborhood chats also work, however might make you more stressed.

• Make it hard: Just be more difficult to break in than the next guy. The basics: Decent locks, a bolted down safe, landscaping that doesn’t allow for hiding. At night, lock doors and windows, turn on exterior lights.

• Digital security: Don’t re-use passwords. Use passkeys if supported, after that a password manager, multi-factor authentication, printed backup codes. Keep your email account extra safe. Have an offline backup of your key files. Don’t trust anybody calling you, AI can now imitate any voice.

Trump’s twitter got hacked twice. How did it happen? The first time, somebody used the publicly available password from a large-scale LinkedIn breach: yourefired - turns out Trump had re-used his password and didn’t rotate it after the breach. The second time somebody just randomly guessed maga2020!, which could’ve been prevented by having set up two-factor authentication. Don’t be like Trump, follow the rules above.

Christoph

Prep for the worst case

The Netherlands recently sent a flyer to every household asking them to prep for emergencies with specific instructions. Prepping isn’t a weird thing weird people do but a reasonable thing you should also do.

• Three-day stock: That’s 9 liters of water per person, non-perishable and high-calorie food. Water purification tablets. Fuel if you have a car. If you have the space for it, stock for two weeks incl. sanitization bags/litter & camp stove.

• Backpack: First aid kit, IDs and insurance docs, cash in small bills, 1 week of prescription medication, battery-powered radio, N95 masks, charged! power banks, pocket knife, map. Consider having a version of this in your car/office.

• A plan: Some emergencies come fast, like a power outage, others slow, like a war. Get some friends over, think through a few scenarios, and make a plan what to do in which case, including which events will trigger action.

A simple way I have handled prepping is by focusing on the bare essentials first: food and water. I already had a Huel subscription, so every few months I added one extra bag to my order. Over time, that built up a small surplus in case of an emergency. I also picked up multipacks of large bottled water. There is plenty more you can do, but covering basic food and water is a great 80/20 move that gives you resilience without much complexity.

Cameron

Let’s get started

Perfect is the enemy of good here, just get started with something. Better to have a fire alarm than having spent one week researching the best and given up.

• Block some time in your calendar to prep

• Subscribe to the newsletter to get a reminder to review in a year.

• Already did the basics? Go down this rabbit hole

• Learn how to change

• Bet money on your change

• Discuss this in our community

• Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version.

That could lead to the conclusion that you should just not invest in any worldly pleasures at all. We think that’s a bit too far. Here we assembled all the things in your living space that can make a lasting impact on your wellbeing.

Subscribe now

Your shopping list

Get the basics right

Air, light, and sound are omnipresent, yet often overlooked. Start here for the potentially largest effect.

• Air: Air pollution and CO2 levels can have a large effect on cognitive function. Fix those separately: For air pollution, just get a good HEPA filter. For CO2 levels, get a CO2 monitor, and open your windows when it goes too high.

• Light: Create a setup that you can adapt to the day: Very bright (~1k lux at eye) blue indirect top lighting to mimic “walls of light” similar to the sun, low orange/red “campfire” lighting in the evening. Get CRI 95+ for low strain.

• Sound: Ambient sound adds to your stress levels. But how to lower it? Get heavy rugs, heavy sound-dampening curtains, or acoustic panels, and consider adding soundproofing panels under your table or in other hidden areas.

Indoor air quality is a low-effort, high-impact thing to improve, but as with most things, it starts with noticing the problem. I borrowed a friend’s CO2 monitor and was surprised to see how quickly levels built up indoors. Research suggests that elevated CO2 can meaningfully impair cognitive performance. The easiest fix is also the simplest: once an hour or so, open a window wide for five minutes to let fresh air in.

Create a nature oasis

New research in environmental psychology and neuroarchitecture (yes those are scientific fields) found that your environment can have a large effect on your your stress levels. The best setup? Making your house look like a yoga studio.

• Plants: Viewing natural fractals, the scientific term for houseplants, can reduce physiological stress markers significantly. Gardening the plants gives an additional boost.

• Wood: Direct contact with wood reliably lowers sympathetic nervous system activation. Try to work and eat from a wooden table, swapping out your floor for wood might be a bit more difficult.

• Smell: Stay with me on this one. It turns out there is evidence for small effects of smell on mood and performance but it is highly variable. Best thing to give it a try for yourself. Citrus for performance, lavender for chill.

I’ve always been a fan of houseplants and now I finally know why. Natural fractals!

Christoph

Posture support

Permanent back pain seems like the thing that permanently reduces your wellbeing. I am already feeling my back writing this from my couch and should really embrace this one.

• Your bed: Get a medium-firm hybrid mattress. Those have been shown to double the likelihood to improve back pain.

• Your work: Get a setup that supports your natural spine. We won’t be able to explain it all in two sentences but check this. Advanced: Get a split keyboard and a vertical mouse.

• The other 8h: In general the key to posture seems to be: Variation. Don’t eat, read, work, sleep on your couch. Maybe have a reading chair, a dining table, and if you do end up on your couch, try to get one that is again medium-firm with a shallow seat depth.

Let’s make it actionable

• Go through all of these - what stands out most to you?

• Regularly open your windows, unless you live in a highly polluted city.

• Measure your light levels with a good app.

• Learn how to change.

• Bet money on your change.

Subscribe now

The key insights

To start a new habit, plan ahead

Most people, me included, just resolve to “I’ll do more of x” without thinking much about how. This time, try to sit down for thirty minutes and make a game plan, following these steps

1. Want the change: What does success look like? Why are you doing this?

2. Start fresh: At the beginning of a week, or any other restart moment.

3. Set realistic goals: If you aim too high you won’t believe it’s possible

4. Automate: Some things you don’t even have to do. Does this apply here?

5. Make it easy: How can you already now remove barriers?

6. Make the opposite hard: What will you most likely do instead? Make it hard.

7. Remember: With your calendar, a notification, anything else.

8. Involve others: Learn from others trying to do the same. Do it together.

9. Experiment: Plan a time to check in and see if you want to change things.

This is a quick summary of our in-depth guide on behavior change.

For me the first point is actually the most important one. If I have a strong motivation, the rest is much easier. Starting with motivation first also sometimes leads me to realize that I actually want other things more right now, saving me the effort to guilt myself for not doing things I anyway don’t want to do.

Christoph

Stake your money to test your plan

It’s easy to convince yourself you have a good plan while at the same time deep down knowing that it won’t work. How can you find that deep down knowledge? Bet money on it.

• Test your commitment: How much would you stake for doing the thing? If you’re really sure about it, $50 shouldn’t be a problem. Feels like a lot? Why is that? Why do you think your plan will fail? Can you change that?

• Get extra motivation: Monetary commitment contracts increase your goal achievement by 60 percentage points. That’s unheard of for behavior change interventions. Give it a try.

• You can finally support effective charities: Many people skipped on staking their money because you either had to support random SF startups or charities that aren’t as effective as the gold standard. We fixed this. Don’t worry: if you set the money high enough, it’ll work just as well as donating to your political enemy.

Try it now

Learn more about our app on our commitment page.

One of the most effective study periods of my life was when I made a bet with a friend that I would study for at least two hours a day. If either of us failed to post evidence, including a screenshot from a tracking app showing we had studied that long, we had to pay the other a £100 penalty. You can adjust the amount up or down depending on what would most effectively change your behaviour. And I can tell you this worked: apart from one or two exceptions, I studied for two hours every day during that period, and passed my modules with flying colours!

Cameron

To get better, practice deliberately

I have been cooking for many years, somehow I don’t get better. Same for my ability to remember names. Once we reach a “good enough” plateau, our brain gets lazy. So how can you make sure you get the most “bang for your habit-buck”?

• Have a clear measurable goal: Think “remember 5 names at a party”, not “get better with names”

• Learn from experts: Coaches, youtube videos, people who are best at what they are doing and good at teaching

• Move outside your comfort zone: Focus on action, not knowledge.

• Have clear feedback: This can be from a coach, an AI, a friend, or yourself

• Schedule dedicated time: Practice makes perfect. Use the habit guide.

This is a quick summary of our in-depth guide on growth.

Invest five minutes now

• What’s something you wanted to start or get better at, but it never quite worked?

• Visualize: How will it look like and feel like when I achieved this? Take a minute.

• Feeling hyped? Block time in your calendar to go through this full process.

• Already now stake some money to make sure future you will follow through.

• Want to go deeper? Check our in-depth guide on habit building and skill building.

  Thanks for reading Euzoia! Subscribe for free to receive weekly posts about what makes a good life.

Also think of the time you spend traveling for work. Those “one-off commutes” can be even more disrupting to your health and relationships and in some jobs take more time than the commute itself.

Subscribe now

How to fix it

Rethink your trade-off

In theory, we should be rational people who trade off commute time for higher salary so that in the end happiness is roughly the same. However it seems like that’s not true, and we’re consistently making bad trades, probably because we misjudge the costs of commuting.

• Cost of your time: If you value your time at $50 per hour, and you commute for one hour each day, you spend more than $1k on commute per month assuming you commute ever day.

• Time displacement: Your day only has 24 hours. If you spend 1-2 of those commuting, what else is getting cut? Sleep? Exercise? Seeing your friends? Time with your spouse?

• Alternatives: Are there jobs closer to your home that might pay less but not as much as your commute cost? Can you move closer to your job? Travel less for work? Get paid more for the travel?

I travel to conferences a lot for work (marketing my startup). I’m realizing more and more that if I add up all the travel time around the events it’s probably not worth it. I’ll try doing the counterfactual math for the next one: What could I have done if I just worked all this time?

Christoph

Work remotely

For those with jobs that can be done remotely, often just cutting the commute entirely is easier. There is a perception that people working remotely are unhappier. People are happier working remote, as long as there are clear work-life boundaries and you have a social life outside of work.

• Start small: I forgot the exact details but Tim Ferris had a manual for how to start working remotely in his 4-Hour Workweek book. It started by agreeing to a short remote work trial. In those trials, perform at your best, show that it works.

• Build trust: By continuously showing that you get just as much or even more done from home, slowly build trust with your manager. You might even want to consider using tracking tools. It’s not about all-or-nothing, every day you save commuting you win back some of your time.

• Consider a mini-commute: Commute is not all bad, it helps us shift gears mentally between work and life. If you work from home, consider going for a brief walk around the block or getting a co-working spot close to your house.

Make it better

Ok, so we tried to reduce commute as much as possible, what to do now about the commute that remains?

• Bike: If you are lucky enough that the distance isn’t massive, consider taking your bike - you’ll get your daily exercise in without too much time lost. Win-win. Consider getting an e-bike for longer distances and less sweat.

• Reduce stress: No matter how you are commuting, if you can take a route that’s slightly longer while much less stressful (e.g., less dangerous roads for cyclists, more predictable time for cars) that’s probably worth it.

• Use the time: On your way to work, already think through your goals, structure your day mentally. On the way back, disengage from work by e.g., doing mindfulness exercises, listening to a podcast or calling a friend.

I try to take roads that are less busy for my commute. Reduces the risk from accidents and I arrive less stressed. Totally worth the few extra minutes it takes

Cameron

Small things to try

• Do the math: How much time do you spend commuting? Include work travel.

• Take one small step towards working more remotely

• Think of one thing you could do to improve your commute

• Try our new habit-building app

• Share this article

The people who are best at achieving their goals and score highest on self control actually design their environment to minimize opportunities for temptation. They don’t have to push through because there is nothing to push against.

How can you implement this in your daily life? How can you minimize temptations so that you don’t need to exert any willpower?

Subscribe now

Top three things to do

Live close to friends

We will get into this in a later post but your social life is the biggest predictor of your happiness and wellbeing, much more than your daily gym routine. Living close to friends means you’ll hang out with them more, easy as that. Some ideas:

• Live with friends: Once you solve the issue who is doing the dishes, living with friends, or family, can give you more happiness for less money. Effortless socializing, meeting new friends of friends, shared chores, so less work.

• Move to friends: If the thought of somebody else’s hair in the shower is something you find hard to accept, then at least try moving close to your friends. If you live within 1 km of a happy friend, you are 40% more likely to be happy. More than 3km and the effect disappears. Walking distance.

• Befriend your neighbors: Moving is a lot of work and reading a random Substack post is probably not what’s going to make you move. So why not go the other way? Befriend your neighbors instead. Talk to people at your local gym, grocery shop, community event.

I used to live alone for something like ten years, because somehow that’s what I felt was the adult thing to do when you’re not living with a partner (I was in a long long-distance relationship). Then one day I realized you could live with friends even as an adult and never looked back. So much better.

Christoph

Remove temptations

Not sure about you but if I have chocolate in the house, I’ll eat it. Less so for alcohol but I know friends who have this habit with alcohol. So: Just don’t have it in the house. Some more ideas

• Buy groceries online: Ideally when you’re not hungry. This way you remove all the temptations you’d see in the supermarket, save some time, and only have healthy food or the allowed temptations in the house.

• Restrict device usage: You could just say “don’t buy a TV” but that doesn’t work anymore. The modern equivalent of this is: Use good apps to block your device usage. Our favorites: Parental control device settings, set by your partner or friend, removing feeds and recommendations from apps with browser plugins.

• Make things hard to access: Chocolate far out of reach, TVs by default unplugged, drugs in a time-locked safe to only open on weekends - I’ve seen some creative things. Get creative!

I have moved my phone to charge in a different location than my bed while I sleep, as per the previous post have blocked all algorithmic apps and social media, and I also use my partner as portion control for any unhealthy foods I indulge in (candy)

Cameron

Lower the barriers

Removing temptations is one part of architecting your choices. Making good habits easier is the flipside of that

• Place things where you’ll use them: Your journal, guitar, meditation cushion, pull-up bar, gym bag. If it’s within easy reach and in your visual field, it’ll be easier to start doing it.

• Create dedicated zones: A clear work space, chill space, and a bedroom where you don’t have devices can help your brain get “into the zone” better without getting distracted.

• Have a boredom-list: A simple visible list of ideas when you feel low-energy or low-willpower to help you when you’re tempted to just default to start swiping. Make sure it’s things you’ll enjoy in the moment, otherwise it’ll be hard to stick with.

Have a story to share? We’d love to hear it. Our next topic will be on “Commute”. Just reach out to christoph@euzoia.org

Try something now

All these ideas can feel overwhelming to implement, but don’t worry. In exactly one year, we will post an updated version of this, so if you don’t get to try something now, try again a year from now!

• Look around your house: What’s most tempting?

• Befriend a neighbor.

• Journal about living in a shared house.

• Write your boredom-list

• Try our new habit-building app

• Share this article

Subscribe now

It’s almost the same as our food, that slowly morphed to ultra processed foods designed to never quite satiate for long and always keep us longing for more. Pretty analogous to food, the same rules of thumb apply to feeding your brain:

Subscribe now

Top three things to try

Mental fasting

When you eat you have breaks in between, some people do fasts, but we rarely take breaks in our mental stimulation. But similar to digesting food, we need to process what comes in. If we just keep stimulating ourselves, we suppress the need to process, and get stressed, anxious, depressed.

• 0-inbox brain: I try to make time every day where I don’t do any mental work to allow thoughts to bubble up. Most of the time that’s when I’m commuting on my bike, sometimes I go for a walk. If I don’t do this, especially when working long, my brain will do the processing work when I lie in bed and then I can’t sleep. When something important comes up, I simply write it in my notes app so my brain doesn’t have to try to remember it.

• Quiet weekends: Processing works on different time-scales. Give yourself some rest at least one of the weekend days to recoup energy for the next week. I’ve had some friends, and for a while been there myself, who went from work hard to play hard on the weekends, and it was never long-term sustainable.

• Retreats: If you want to take the idea of a 0-inbox brain to the next level, go on a silent retreat. You can watch in real-time how your brain first processes the last days, then weeks, and then goes back to older memories that still need some of your attentions.

I used to work as part of a Kenyan company and whenever I would ask my colleagues what they did that weekend, they would say “chilling”, “resting”, or something similar. I was always baffled by this. I felt this need to do something exciting, even more stimulating, so I could report back on Monday about something exciting I did. They just couldn’t be bothered haha.

Christoph

Outsmart addictions

Almost everybody I know spends more time on addictive content than they want to - news, social media, short- and long-form videos, shows, porn. All of these were designed to be addictive, so don’t blame yourself if you somehow can’t build up the willpower to resist them. Instead

• Block apps: Easier said than done but what I’ve seen work is: Using parental control modes on your phone and making your partner your parent. For cross-platform blocking, Freedom is supposed to be a good choice, I haven’t tried it.

• Make it boring: This will depend on your content but some ways I found helpful: I use economist espresso - a news app that only updates once a day. I read wikipedia summaries of shows I don’t want to keep watching.

• Disable notifications: On all apps that aren’t time-critical. Which is probably just all. If your friends or colleagues really need to reach you, they can always pick up the phone and call.

I have personally set up my digital environment to minimise algorithmic social media as much as is possible, realistically it's hard to rely on sheer willpower, as the designers of these apps are paid millions so you spend as much time on them as possible, the following apps may help you this endeavor and I'd also recommend using Firefox on mobile and the same add on's there! These add ons will block social media feeds, YT Shorts, Homepage, recommended, IG Reels and one sec you can configure to set a reminder based on opening certain apps!

News feed eradicator extension, Unhook, for Youtube, IGPlus, For Instagram, One sec app, rethink opening apps

Cameron

Practice discomfort

As the Germans say: Life is no pony farm. And most things we covered aren’t exactly fun. But you can train your mind to be less dependent on dopamine hits and more able to do the work in a similar way we can rebalance our cravings for fast food. These counter-hedonic practices have roots in wisdom traditions and has evidence in modern psychology:

• Urge surfing: Recognize your urges but just as with everything else observe how it comes and goes. This needs some willpower, so maybe don’t rely on this all the time, but if you manage to do this you slowly build agency over your urges.

• Impulse delay: When you want something - be it short-term consumption or larger purchases, add a delay. Tell yourself you can get the thing in 5min, two days, … Often the need will vanish by that time.

• Voluntary hardship: Take cold showers, fasting, monotask on boring work, meditate, have difficult conversations, walk the stairs, finish what you start, to practice your tolerance for discomfort.

We’d love to hear stories from you! Have one for our next topic “Design for lazy”? Reply to this email!

Try something now

• Go for a walk later today, don’t listen to anything.

• Disable all your notifications now. It takes 5min.

• Delay your next impulse, see what happens.

• Want to build a habit? Give our new app a try!

• Share this post with a friend

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Top three things you can do

Cultivate a “beginner’s mind”

The beginner’s mind is a concept from Buddhism and it maps well on recent research in cognitive science about three core factors that make for a resilient mind. As with most factors, they are partly determined by genetics and early environment but remain highly malleable throughout your life:

• Cognitive Flexibility: Allows you to dynamically adapt to changing environments and is correlated with superior performance and less sick days. Practice this by learning new skills regularly. For example by trying something from this newsletter every week.

• Openness to Experience: Reduces your prejudice and increases social skills. Practice this by exposing yourself to new things regularly, for example by travel, different social circles, a movie you wouldn’t watch otherwise, a political gathering you otherwise wouldn’t visit. When you come across ideas you don’t agree with, try to “steel-man” them - try to make the best case for them.

• Intellectual humility: Leads to better decision making and is necessary for continuous learning. Practice this with engaging in self-transcendent experiences where you feel small, e.g., visiting a planetarium, hiking through mountains, exploring a new field of knowledge. Search for "disconfirmation” - evidence against your beliefs and celebrate when you change them. You are not your beliefs.

Good news: one of the most effective ways to influence these traits is something you’re probably doing already: physical exercise and mindfulness exercises.

Shape your input

So how to apply this beginner’s mind? We have a tendency to seek out what we know, it’s comfortable, we don’t have to engage with difficult or annoying views. But that’s where we expand our mind the most. Some ideas:

• Media: Listen to podcasts, read news, or watch shows from the opposite political spectrum. Tell an AI what you’re currently consuming and ask it to suggest “the opposite” that you’d still enjoy.

• Friends: “We don’t discuss politics and religion here” is a bit boring. Try to have open conversations by genuinely trying to understand the other person. Attend social events outside of your comfort zone. Try to picture in your mind the person who is most different from you and try to seek them out. Make some new friends.

• Experiences: What are things other people seem to enjoy that you never tried? Going hiking maybe? Watching a sports game? Babysitting children? Playing Dungeons & Dragons? Farming? Try some with the mind of a child. What’s exciting about them?

I personally have taken up a habit here of obsessively assimilating people’s reading lists on Goodreads, because often they will have a completely different subset of interests or areas they are looking into or reading about, and I often find something I really enjoy but would never normally read, the last example being Annapurna, which an excellent!

Cameron

Learn continuously

You can passively consume content and never change. Save yourself the time, watch Netflix instead. If you actually want to expand your mind, follow these heuristics:

• Active consumption: When reading start by scanning table of contents and conclusion, build a map before you dive in. Before you read, have a hypothesis of what they will say and watch out for evidence against your hypothesis. Go deep in that. When listening, try to predict what people will say and put speed at maybe 1.2-1.5x to keep your brain focused.

• Active recall: The best way to learn: Once you consumed content, try to explain to to others. Either your imaginary friend, or your journal, or an actual friend. You’ll notice that you forgot half of it. Go back and revise.

• Spaced repetition: This has been originally developed for vocabulary and flashcards but it applies to any knowledge. The idea is to regularly go back to things you learnt and practice active recall. If you were good at it - come back to it at a longer time. If bad, come back to it soon.

I used to be the guy who read nonfiction books cover to cover and would feel guilty skipping chapters or not finishing a book. I remember my dad telling me “one day you’ll learn that that’s not how you read books” I thought he was wrong hahaha.

These days I scan and skip chapters in books, use the chapter marks in podcasts to skip around. I’ll try giving the active prediction and recall more focus with the next book and podcast.

Christoph

Do something now

• Go through the section on inputs and see what speaks to you the most. Make a plan for that right now.

• Who is the friend you have that is furthest away from your usual circle? Ask them for suggestions on what you’d enjoy reading/doing.

• Ask yourself: What did you change your mind about recently? It’s surprisingly hard to answer.

• Want to learn something new? Check out our guide on change.

• Want to start doing something? Reply to this post, and we will check in on you in a week.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

Subscribe now

The world is a complex mess. So to make sense of it, you learnt over time to filter reality through different lenses to make it easier to navigate. Those lenses, or mental frameworks, can be a huge boost to your life, boosting your agency, resilience or flourishing. However, if maladaptive, for example, because something you learnt in the past isn’t serving you anymore, they can hold you back and cause chronic stress, emotional dysregulation, and a sense of helplessness.

Subscribe now

Top three things to do

You can shape which thoughts you’ll think. Your thoughts are associations to the input you get, and associations are built over time and strengthened by how useful or emotional they are. You can retrain those associations and apply lenses that serve you without any effort, just as associations that come up.

A note of caution: What follows works in average-ish situations. Don’t blame yourself when you can’t find positive aspects of an abusive relationship, or can’t create slack while you’re working two jobs as a single mom, or don’t become the president by applying a growth mindset.

Agency

One of the largest returns on investment in terms of mindset is probably agency. Once you start realising that you can do things and change things, everything else will become easier.

• Practice agency: The best way to get out of a victim mindset where you feel things are just happening to you and you are helpless, is to do things and see the outcome. Every day, do a task that is in the zone of difficult-but-not-impossible. Consistently achieving those will build a mindset of agency. This is called “building mastery” or “active coping”.

• Growth mindset: When applying agency to yourself, you get the growth mindset: A sense that you can change, you can grow. Building this follows exactly the same path: Build a consistent practice of doing small things that change you, grow you. For example, studying a skill, working on overcoming a fear, or helping others grow. Check out our guide on change to get ideas.

• Effortless action: High-agency can lead to a toxic SF-like view that if you just apply enough grit and control, you can achieve anything. Taoist culture has the view that action should be effortless and in harmony with your environment. This heuristic works because if you have to consistently apply too much effor,t that’s probably a sign that it’s not a match to your skills, an unrealistic goal, unnecessary, etc. To practice this, make a habit of asking yourself: “What might this look like if it were easy?”

One of the beautiful things about agency is that it creates runaway effects on your life. Once you realise you can take action and do so on a particular problem, suddenly all of your other problems become easier to deal with and move forward on. You can also stack this by solving your highest leverage problems first, e.g., sleep, diet and exercise and consequently have more energy and willpower to solve everything else. Here is one of my favourite posts by Cate Hall on agency”

Cameron

Outlook

Now that you have belief that you can change, apply it to your thoughts. It is possible to change how you see the world:

• Gratitude: Probably the easiest hack for happiness: Build a habit to look for things to be grateful for, for example, every night before going to sleep. This will train your brain to look for things to be grateful for during the day, improving your outlook on life. FYI: Gratitude mostly works for individualist cultures; in more collectivist cultures, it can create a feeling of indebtedness.

• Positivity: If you’re like us, you probably learnt that outlook on life is somehow genetically determined. Not so! Genetic factors only account for about 30%. So, how to train it? Similar to gratitude, just practice imagining your “best positive self” and focusing on things that went well today or positive aspects of difficult situations.

• Abundance: We often focus on everything that isn’t enough, especially money and time, thereby arriving in a state of scarcity. This has been shown to impact your IQ as much as skipping a night of sleep, because you can’t stop thinking about it. The best way to move to an abundance mindset is to create abundance: Deliberately create slack by cutting time or money spending. You can also practice focusing on how these constraints enable creativity and solutions you otherwise wouldn’t have considered.

I had an on-off relationship with gratitude journaling. Did it when I first heard about it for a while, dropped it, tried to weave it into my weekly reviews, but it never quite felt right. Then I learnt from a friend that he always does gratitude sharing with his partner before bed. I thought that was so wholesome and am now doing the same. Feels great!

Christoph

Epistemics

What is real? What thoughts are real? What do they mean?

• Scout mindset: A drive to see things as they are, not like we want them to be. This is, of course, helpful because things are as they are, and the more we see them like this, the better we can act on that information. Practice it by making predictions and learning from results, thinking in confidence probabilities, not in black-and-white beliefs, seek out people with opposite beliefs and try to see what evidence would change yours or theirs.

• Restructuring: When you apply a scout mindset to your thoughts, you quickly see that a lot of thoughts have very little evidence for them. To practice challenging your thoughts, learn about cognitive distortions or cognitive biases and use CBT-style journaling from our article on awareness.

• Reframing: Even if something objectively bad happened, there is always the question of what subjective meaning we give it, the story that we tell ourselves. Try the following three: 1. Reframing something in a neutral story, not emotionally charged (e.g., I am failing > I am learning). 2. Try to see the positive aspects 3. Look at it from an older you’s perspective.

Your story here. Our next topic will be about “Broaden the Mind”. Have a hack or story you’d like to share? Reply to this email or email us at christoph@euzoia.org.

Do something now

• Pick your favorite framework: How could you apply it even more?

• Pick your least favorite: Why don’t you like it? What’s there?

• Start an evening reflection habit and weave in some of these prompts.

• Want some accountability from us? Reply to this post, and we will check in next week.

• Reply to this email with your thoughts on “Broaden your mind” our next topic

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

Subscribe now

Your state changes your story. Change your state, and you change what your brain thinks is true. Just compare how you’re thinking about the same topic when you can’t sleep at 3 am in the morning, after your morning coffee, during your afternoon slump, and after two beers. “State Influences Story” is regularly preached by Tony Robbins, and it works.

There is also plenty of science to back this up: Learning emotional regulation reduces the likelihood of developing anxiety, depression, or aggression. It seems to be a teachable skill across age groups and is linked to less inflammation, better heart health, less burnout, and better relationships.

Subscribe now

Top things to do

High intensity interventions

Sometimes we are just overwhelmed by emotion, and a peaceful meditation just won’t cut it. Most of these interventions were developed for high-intensity emotions, but they work just as well to get you in a calmer emotional state quickly, no matter where you are.

• Stop: Stop doing anything in the moment. Try to remove yourself from the situation. Breathe. Observe. And then proceed mindfully.

• Work with your body: Cold water (splash on your face or shower), intense exercise like jumping jacks for one minute, progressive muscle relaxation (focus on each muscle, contract, let go, next muscle)

• Grounding: Most useful when you feel floaty or dissociated: Notice 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste

• Breathwork: There is a whole world to explore here but try boxed breathing (4 in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold, repeat) to clear your head, paced breathing (4 in, 8 out, repeat) to calm yourself, physiological sigh (breath in to the max, then one more sharp inhale, slow exhale) to “dump” stress

• Self-soothing: When you feel lonely/sad or just need some peace and pleasure. Focus on all your senses by, e.g. looking at photos, smelling and feeling a cup of tea, hearing lo-fi beats, and so on.

• Distraction: Not forever, but until it’s easier to deal with by e.g., doing activities, listening to podcasts or music, contributing somewhere, and setting a time when you will deal with this.

I was once dealing with an intense dysregulation of my nervous system for weeks, and three independent therapists I worked with on this all said the same thing: Whatever you do, don’t meditate, and just treat yourself like a child. Distract yourself. Sooth yourself. Meet Friends. Go on nature walks. And then as your nervous system slowly gets back to normal, then you can start working on the actual topics.

Christoph

Moderate intensity interventions

Most emotions aren’t an emergency but need attention to cease and will re-surface when just ignored. Try these behaviors for those.

• Naming: Just putting a word to what you are feeling can be as effective as more complex reframing exercises we will be covering in the next post. It works best for in-the-moment negative emotions by putting space between the emotion and the reaction, and less well for more lingering ones because it’ll just draw more attention to them. This ties back to our last post on awareness and acceptance. Practicing non-judgmental acceptance alone can often lead to better emotional regulation.

• Matching: This also follows our article on awareness and acceptance. If your investigation revealed a need, is there something small you can do to nurture that need? If the emotion is telling you something, what can you do to act on this? The easiest is probably to simply act on “HALT” states (hungry-eat / angry-breathe / lonely-socialise / tired-sleep). For others, it depends on the state. Explore and see what happens.

• Opposite action: But what happens if the action implied by the emotion is unhelpful or not serving your goals? Like hiding in your bedroom because it’s rainy or punching your boss in the face? In that case, do the exact opposite. Go outside, talk to your boss. Here are our common emotions from the last post and the urges/opposites

  • Anger: Urge: Attack, Opposite: Gentle avoidance / Kindness

  • Fear: Urge: Escape, Opposite: Approach / Stay present

  • Sadness: Urge: Isolate, Opposite: Get active / Engage

  • Shame: Urge: Hide, Opposite: Transparency / Eye contact

  • Disgust: Urge: Reject, Opposite: Push through / Compassion

  • Joy: Urge: Celebrate, Opposite: Stillness / Modulate

The ability to name emotions as they emerge— the first step to managing them—is probably the single most important tool I draw on to build healthy relations with other people. Naming defensiveness in my romantic relationship and guilt in family relationships feels especially like comic book-level superpowers.

Joshua

Prepare yourself

Chance favours the prepared mind. All of the above is easy in theory but hard in practice. It’s easy to forget things in the moment. So let’s prepare!

• Self-soothe box: The self-soothing in the first section is much easier when you already have material to soothe yourself with. Prepare a box with different things for each of your senses. This could include pictures of happy memories, nice messages people sent you, your favourite music, or incense sticks.

• A coping card: How does boxed breathing work again? Whom will I call when I feel down? What worked for me last time? Write a few simple notes and have them where you’ll find them, probably on your phone.

• Plan situations: For any situation that you expect to be difficult, make a plan by following these steps: 1. Describe it, objectively 2. Identify emotions. What do you expect to feel? 3. Choose the tools you’ll use 4. Visualise the scene, watch it unfolding 5. Plan out worst-case scenarios and setbacks. How will you recover?

Personally, I have my own prepared set of activities I do when I am feeling emotionally unregulated and stressed. Mine is as follows: Box breathing or meditation for 5-10 minutes, any form of exercise (usually I go to the gym), treating myself to some sparkling water (my favoyrite) and finally taking a long session in the Sauna or bath, 95% of the time after this set of activities I usually feel mentally better, and then can move forward and tackle any challenges from a stronger mental space. As per usual, I’ll caveat and say that different things work for different people; many people will prefer to talk it through with someone else, for example.

Cameron

Do something now

Many of these suggestions read like manuals for intense states that you might not feel often. However, all of these can be applied work just as well in less intense situations. A cup of warm tea under a blanket feels good no matter how intense the emotion. As always, try some things, see what works for you.

• Ask yourself: What will be the emotionally most difficult situation this coming week? How can I prepare for it?

• Try some breathwork exercises. They take one minute, and are always available.

• Prepare your soothing kit. And use it.

• Experiment with music: Different songs can have vastly different effects on your emotions.

• Our next topic will be about cognitive frameworks and reframing. Have a hack or story you’d like to share? Reply to this post or email us at christoph@euzoia.org.

• Want to start doing something? Reply to this post, and we will check in on you in a week.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

Subscribe now

You are your mind. The world you interact with, your feelings, and your thoughts are all part of your conscious experience. And you can change it. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions aren’t just happening to you but are a learnt response to your experiences, recursively influencing each other in a chaotic dance. Somehow, as part of this dance, you stumbled on this article, and what you learn in this article and the following posts will influence how your mind reacts in the future.

Subscribe now

Top three things to do

The first step in taking care of your mind is to become aware of what’s actually happening. And accepting this as is. In the following posts, we will then dive into how you can shape your experience.

Become aware of your thoughts and feelings

Start with a curious and non-judgmental mindset. Thoughts come and go and are not the truth. Your feelings, both positive and negative, will pass. As always, different practices work for different people. Here are a few well-established approaches

• Sit: The simplest of them all. Find a quiet place, sit down, and do nothing. Your brain will produce thoughts. Acknowledge them and let them pass. You can focus your mind back to your breath, your heartbeat, or another point of focus whenever thoughts pop up.

• Name: A variation on the sitting meditation where you name an emotion or a thought whenever something comes up. Giving it a label often makes it smaller and more manageable. Often, when we start out we are missing the emotional vocabulary for this. Give the app How We Feel a try if you are curious to broaden yours.

• Scan: Move your awareness slowly throughout your body, one part at a time. Notice any discomfort and how that often fades as you focus more on it. Over time you will recognize patterns - how for example different emotions lead to different reactions in your body - helping you recognize them easier in the future.

• Pause: Establish a way to take a pause and see what comes up. Maybe you have a note stuck to your doorframe, or an app that pings you every few hours.

• Write: Journal to surface your thinking patterns. A common approach is CBT’s “Thought Record”: 1) What happened? 2) How are you feeling? 3) Automatic thought 4) Evidence for 5) Evidence against 6) Balanced thought 7) Outcome. Others like a “morning pages” approach where you just write a stream of consciousness and see what comes up.

The eventual goal of all of these practices is that you can move from noticing your thoughts in the “practice space” to the real world. Building this muscle will help you pause between stimulus and response, allowing you to take a more active role in how you react to your environment.

I often heard about CBT and respective reflections, but didn’t deliberately take time out of my day to apply it further. That is until a friend recommended the “Unstuck: CBT Therapy Journal” app to me. You can choose what you would like to reflect upon, and it guides you step by step through the process, not blindly, but while explaining what the steps are about too! It’s simple and thought provoking. You can set daily reminders, and it also shows a little streak display within the app to make sure the habit sticks!

Sophie

Accept yourself

Noticing is the first step. Accepting those thoughts and feelings is the second. We live in a world where we are made to believe we can do anything; the world is our oyster. Then, when we can’t get the oyster, we blame ourselves. We try to push ourselves for higher performance and optimisation, and we suffer from things we can’t change.

Try the following practices to learn to accept what is.

• Allow: Acknowledge reality as it is. You cannot change the facts. Accept your current situation, without fighting it. Only then focus on action and what you can change.

• Explore: Acceptance poses that you are here now because of a chain of events in the past. Recognise those as unchangeable, but explore the chain. Be curious, not judgmental.

• Pray: Prayer acknowledges your own limitations and shifts responsibility to a higher power. Not religious? Try the serenity prayer based on stoicism: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”

• Release: Use rituals to release things you can’t change. For example, writing down things and burning them

Your story here. We’d love to hear more from you. Reply to this email or join our community if you want to share a story about emotional regulation, next week’s topic.

Investigate your thoughts and feelings

Often, when you start noticing your thoughts and feelings more, you will notice patterns, things that come back. Notice that, too. Accept it. Only then start investigating it. The following angles can be useful in investigating:

• Body: Where is the thought or feeling in your body? How does it feel? This is a great framework because it is in the present, objective and grounded. And it might remind you of similar sensations in your body in similar situations.

• Mind: What is the script? Can I try visualising the feeling and talk to it? What would it say? Notice that it’s a story, not the truth. Avoid over-analysing or intellectualising - it’s the failure mode for most of us. Journaling can help here again.

• Emotion: What’s the need? If we reduce our emotions to six basic ones, they each represent a core need:

  • Anger: Crossed boundary, blocked goal: Need for justice, safety, autonomy

  • Fear: Something isn’t faced, not safe: Need for safety, predictability

  • Sadness: Something needs to be honored: Need for connection, meaning

  • Shame: Something is threatening belonging: Need for acceptance, worthiness

  • Disgust: Something is toxic, wrong: Need for integrity, boundaries, health

  • Joy: Something needs to be celebrated, is good: Need for growth, contribution

One emotion that comes up a lot for me is background anxiety. One way to explain that is fear that just wasn’t properly dealt with and instead of facing the thing that fear was warning me about, I decided to ignore it and it transformed into background anxiety.

One recent example of this: Listening to our podcast. I feared that it would be bad, never listened to it, and as a result had some background anxiety around it. While writing this article this became clear to me, I listened to the episodes, was relieved that they weren’t terrible, and boom, less anxiety. Notice that even if they would’ve been terrible, anxiety would be gone, because I would then know about it and could act on it.

Christoph

Do something now

• Want to try just one thing? Give RAIN meditation a try, which combines all three of these, plus a bonus one, “Nurture” that’ll be part of next week’s post.

• What’s an emotion you’ve been feeling recently? What is it trying to tell you?

• Schedule some time in your calendar to meditate or journal.

• Curious to go deeper? Consider working with a therapist.

• Want accountability? Reply to this post, and we will check in on you in a week.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

Share

Men live a few years less on average than women, and the reason for that is, to a large part, their risk-taking behaviour: More accidents, more substance abuse, more crime.

At the same time, very few people envy Brian Johnson for his over-optimised life, where he ages at supposedly half the rate of anybody else but has to stick to a very restrictive routine.

This is a practical guide to understanding where risk actually comes from in your life and how to reduce it without becoming joyless.

Subscribe now

All the risks

So what’s an appropriate level of risk to take? That’s only something you can say. What we can help you with is making those risks visible so you can make informed decisions. Note that we focused here mostly on lifestyle risks - we will cover other risks in later posts, for example, risk from your living environment, gambling, and others.

Risks from Activities

To compare risk across activities, we use the micromort. One micromort equals a one-in-a-million chance of death. One hour of living is about one micromort.

We list a few examples here, but you probably know best what’s most risky in your life. Just estimate the corresponding values with AI.

Commuting

• Risk: When comparing one hour of commute across means of transport, we get roughly: Car (0.2) is safer than walking (0.3), which is safer than cycling (2), which is safer than taking a motorbike (6) , which is safer than taking a “boda boda” scooter taxi in developing countries (10).

• Safety: Wear safety gear, take defensive driving courses, don’t run red lights, don’t text and drive, and don’t drink and drive.

Adrenaline sports

• Risk: Skiing (0.7 per day), Scuba diving (5 per dive), Skydiving (8 per jump), Paragliding (74 per launch), Ascent to Matterhorn (2840 per ascent)

• Safety: Know your skills and be very conservative with the risks you take within the sport. Safety training. Question if you can get your adrenaline “cheaper”.

Putting it in perspective

• Risk: one day of living (24), covid vaccine (2.9), covid infection at 25 (100), covid infection at 65 (14000), giving birth (120)

• Safety: We can’t put all the numbers here. The best thing is you think about what the highest risk activities are in your life, and do some research with an AI model on risk and safety measures

As I mentioned in the exercise post, I bike around London, which is currently the riskiest activity in my life. That said, I believe it’s net positive overall due to the health and wellbeing benefits of regular exercise.

One way I mitigate the risks of cycling is by using Citymapper’s “Quiet” mode, which routes me away from high-speed traffic and major roads. It’s a good reminder that risk isn’t just about what you do, but also how you do it.

The same idea applies elsewhere. For example, choosing a car with a strong safety rating significantly reduces risk compared to driving an older, less safe vehicle.

Cameron

Risks from Substances

One micromort is roughly 0.5l wine or 1.5 cigarettes. However it’s pretty hard to compare risks from substances because death is only one risk factor, and others, such as psychological impact, damage, dependence, loss of relationships, all add to the burden.

One study compared those in a combined “harm to user” score, and despite lots of flaws, it gives at least some intuition. We summarise here risks and safety measures for the most common substances ranked by the combined “harm to user” score. We also tried to quantify probabilities for some of those risks with AI. Do your own research if you consider taking any of these substances.

Heroin (34 harm score)

• Risks: Fatal respiratory failure and rapid, severe physical addiction.

• Numbers: 25% who try get addicted, 30 micromorts/hit, 3% of users die every year.

• Safety: Carry Naloxone; use fentanyl test strips; never use alone.

Alcohol (26 harm score)

• Risks: Organ damage, high dependence, and accidents.

• Numbers: 15% get addicted, 10x injury risk after 3 drinks, 1/20 death related to alcohol.

• Safety: “Safe” is 2 drinks/week; eat before drinking; never mix with other depressants.

Cocaine (15 harm score)

• Risks: Acute cardiovascular stress, nasal tissue damage, dependence.

• Numbers: 17% addiction rate, 5 hours of life/dose, 24x increase in heart attack/h.

• Safety: No alcohol (toxic cocaethylene), test for purity, chop finely, saline rinse for nose.

Tobacco (13 harm score)

• Risks: High long-term disease risk (cancer/heart) and intense chemical dependence.

• Numbers: 30% addicted, 1 cig = 20min life lost, 50% cause of death for heavy smokers.

• Safety: Use nicotine replacements (patches); avoid combustible (smoked) products.

Ketamine (13 harm score)

• Risks: Permanent bladder scarring and injury due to loss of motor control.

• Numbers: 25% of frequent users report urinary symptoms.

• Safety: Avoid frequent use; never use in water; do not mix with alcohol.

Amphetamines (11 harm score)

• Risks: Cardiovascular strain, sleep deprivation, and stimulant-induced psychosis.

• Numbers: 10% dependence, 5x higher risk of psychosis.

• Safety: Ensure 7+ hours of sleep; monitor heart rate; stay hydrated.

Cannabis (8 harm score)

• Risks: Dependence, cognitive impact, and potential paranoia.

• Numbers: 10% dependence, 4x higher chance of psychotic disorder for daily users.

• Safety: Avoid high-potency THC; use a dry-herb vape; don’t mix with alcohol.

Ecstasy/MDMA (9 harm score)

• Risks: Overheating (hyperthermia) and mid-week serotonin “crashes.”

• Numbers: 0.6% emergency treatment/year, 1 micromort per pill, 13 if with other drugs.

• Safety: Max one pill per three months; test for purity; max 500ml water/hr if dancing.

Psychedelics (5–7 harm score)

• Risks: Psychological distress or triggering latent mental health issues.

• Numbers: No dependence, 25% of lifetime users report at least one bad trip.

• Safety: Safe environment; use a sober “trip sitter”; avoid if predisposed to psychosis.

Next month will be all about mental heath. Did you have an experience that could help others? Share with us by replying to this email or messaging us at christoph@euzoia.org

Subscribe now

Risks from exposure

Just by living our body is exposed to lots of stressors that all affect our health. We covered a lot of them already in our post on nutrition, so only cover the non-nutrition ones here:

Skin

• Risks: 1 in 5 people develop skin cancer. 5+ sunburns in your life doubles your melanoma risk.

• Safety: SPF 30+ and seek shade when your shadow is shorter than you.

Eyes

• Risks: 1 in 3 adults over 65 face vision-limiting disease. 50% of all sight loss is preventable.

• Safety: UV400 sunglasses and look far every 20 minutes for 20 seconds.

Ears

• Risks: 1 in 4 adults have permanent noise damage from concerts and loud environments

• Safety: Wear earplugs in loud venues and keep headphone volume below 60%.

I didn’t wear sunglasses for a long time because I felt I didn’t “need” them - I could see just fine without them. Until I learnt way too late that seeing better isn’t the only advantage - it’s also protecting your eyes.

Similar for the ears: I love parties more than the average person and always felt that earplugs reduced the fun. That is until I found earplugs that filtered each frequency at the same level, thereby reducing the volume without filtering the highs. That was a game changer for me. Cost quite a bit of money but not leaving the house without them now - conferences, gym classes, parties, I feel I’m less stressed and exhausted when using them.

Christoph

Do something now

• Based on all this, ask yourself: What is the highest risk activity in my life? Can I do it safer?

• For the highest risk thing in your life, sit down with an AI and try to estimate the risk for your situation.

• Keep a “risk journal” to briefly reflect if risks were worth the rewards (e.g., if you drink alcohol frequently, just keep track if you actually enjoyed it)

• Get yourself some good earplugs, sunglasses, sunscreen if you don’t have it yet

• Commit to us on the change that’s most important to you

• Block some time in your calendar to apply our guide on behavior change to this

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

• Share this post with a friend

  Share

Sleep, exercise, and nutrition are the most important things to stay healthy. But because they are so important, all the other things you can do with relatively little effort often get overlooked.

This guide is your 80/20 list: simple, low-friction actions that significantly improve your health and wellbeing when layered on top of the basics.

Subscribe now

Top things to do

Oral health

Your mouth is the main gateway to your body. Poor oral hygiene allows bacteria to enter the bloodstream, increases systemic inflammation, and raises the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and more.

• Brush your teeth: Use an electric toothbrush, Morning and evening for 2 minutes. See Joey’s blog for an in-depth review.

• Gum: Cleans your mouth after lunch.

• Gargle: You can reduce your risk of catching the flu by 30% by simply gargling three times a day.

Don’t get infected

Next to gargling, you can reduce your risk of infections by following basic hygiene protocols. Y’all have learnt those during covid, but it’s good to remember

• Get your flu shot: Gives you a 40-60% of risk reduction. Probably the easiest thing you can do from a cost-benefit perspective. No need to build a habit.

• Wash your hands: Gives you another 10% reduction in risks. Try to build the habit to simply always do this upon arriving home.

• Use masks: Especially in spaces with low air circulation like public transport. They work if you wear them correctly.

• Dress warm: Sounds pretty basic, yet somehow some people feel like they need to “be tough.

• Take zinc, not Vitamin C, when you get sick: Zinc has been shown to reduce symptoms by two days, Vit C doesn’t do much - maybe a tiny bit of prevention, but you probably have enough of it already anyway.

I had the flu for five days this year and it was probably the lowest-quality week of my last three years. Would’ve done lots of things to prevent this. I just put a reminder in my calendar to get my flu shot next winter and am stocking up on zinc. Will also build a gargling habit - 30% risk reduction and so easy to stack on brushing your teeth.

Christoph

Go to your doctor

We’re not medical professionals; they are. Make sure you

• Get regular checkups: Most countries have guidelines for which checkups to get when, make sure to follow them.

• Get your vaccinations: Again, just follow the guidelines of your country, plus get the necessary ones when traveling. New vaccines you might not be aware of now exist also for Dengue, Malaria, and a much improved Shingles vaccine - this one might actually be worth paying out of pocket for.

• Be honest with your doctor: Your doctor can only help you when they know how you live, what you consume, and how you feel.

Your story here. Our next topic will be about staying safe - all those tradeoffs between fun and your health. Have a hack or story you’d like to share? Just hit reply on this email or email us at christoph@euzoia.org.

Subscribe now

Take the basic supplements

This is a conservative, broadly useful stack that works for most people.

• Omega 3 (from algae): Supports brain and heart health.

• Creatine: One of the most researched supplements. Benefits strength, energy, and possibly cognition.

• Vitamin D3: Especially important if you get little sun.

• Magnesium: Taken before bed. Supports sleep and muscle function.

• Vitamin B12: Essential if you are mostly or fully vegan.

Use hot-cold exposure

The intuition here is that putting limited stress on your body makes it more immune to the day-to-day stress.

• Sauna: If you trust Brian Johnson it’s probably good for you. Except for your semen - use ice down there if you are a male while sauanering.

• Brief cold showers: Have been shown to reduce sick rates at work by 30% and is less risky than doing cold plunges.

There is strong evidence that sauna use is one of the most promising interventions for long-term health and longevity. Regular sauna bathing is associated with significant reductions in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular risk, with additional benefits linked to dementia, depression, and overall mental well-being.

The strongest evidence points to dry sauna use at very high temperatures, around 93 °C, ideally 4 to 7 times per week for sessions of roughly 20 minutes.

While cheaper home saunas, such as those available on Amazon, may not reach these temperatures or deliver the same level of benefit, they are still likely to provide meaningful health gains. I personally use a steam-based sauna at home and have found it to be a valuable addition to my routine.

Cameron

Do something now

Ok, this was a long bucket list. The good news: Most things on here don’t take much time. The bad news: You can’t possibly do all of this at once. So why don’t you

• Schedule some of these in your calendar, like checking your vaccinations.

• Order some masks, zinc, and the basic supplements.

• Put a visual cue next to your toothbrush to remind you to gargle.

• Give cold-finish showers a try.

• Put a reminder in your calendar to get your flu shot.

• Ask your doctor if you should get vaccinated for shingles.

• Block some time in your calendar to apply our guide on behaviuor change to this.

• Commit to us that you will do the idea you selected from these.

• Check out our youtube and podcast on the topic.

Subscribe now

Exercise, sleep, and nutrition form the “holy trinity” of habits. They’re all hard, they influence each other, and they can together have a massive impact on your wellbeing. As for the other one, exercise

• Helps you live long and healthy: If you exercise regularly, you reduce your risk of death from any cause by at least 30%. It holds as you age, and is dose-dependent, so even a little exercise will give you a little boost. It affects your heart, your brain, your metabolism, and protects your bones.

• Helps you feel good and energised: Exercise boosts your serotonin and dopamine, and builds your self-efficacy and confidence. This has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety symptoms on similar levels as drugs or therapy.

Subscribe now

Top three things to do

All of these serve a different function, so an ideal training setup focuses on all of them. We’ll talk later about how to easily integrate them into your daily routine.

Cardio

Cardio trains you in two different ways

• “Zone 2” endurance training: This builds the basis of most longevity training by improving your metabolic flexibility and ability to recover from stressors. You’re doing it right if you can still talk during your exercise; you’re doing it wrong if you can still sing. The aim here is 2-4 hours per week, but due to its moderate intensity, it can often be integrated in your commute (cycling, fast walking). Others like rowing, rucking, or running.

• “VO2 Max” training / HIIT: This trains your maximal capability. Training usually goes in “bursts” - 4min high intensity, 3min recovery, rinse and repeat four times. One session per week is good for maintenance, two to build your capacity. If you’re older, double-check if your heart and knees are up for the challenge.

I discovered team sports as my version of “effortless” cardio. It does not feel like exercise in the same way a treadmill does, because you are focused on the game, the people, and the next decision. Right now, I rotate between football, volleyball, frisbee, and spikeball.

The underrated bonus is community. You show up, see the same faces, and build friendships passively. Plus, there is a mental layer, tactics, positioning, and reading the play, that keeps your brain engaged. And you can choose your intensity. Some people want a relaxed run club or casual pick-up games. Others want structured training and competitive leagues. There is a version for almost anyone.

The bigger point is simple: find a form of movement you actually enjoy. When you like the activity, consistency stops being a battle. And any time you can shape your environment to make it easier, you are stacking the odds in your favour. For me, rowing at the gym works. The treadmill and stationary bike do not. That is fine. The best cardio is the one you will do.

One more lever that feels almost unfair is turning movement into part of your day rather than a separate event. If exercise becomes your commute or your default transport, it turns into passive fitness. Getting a bike in London has massively increased my baseline activity without needing extra motivation. Even small swaps count: walking to the shops, cycling to meet friends, or jogging to a nearby meetup if it is practical. When movement is baked in, you win twice: you get fitter, and you reclaim time.

Cameron

Strength training

Gym bros have a bad rep. Focusing on strength training is actually one of the best things you can do for your health and well-being. The key idea is that by regularly going to the limits of what your muscles can do, you progressively increase your strength.

The traditional focus is to go at least three times a week, but even with less time, you can see benefits, and there are a lot of home workouts that don’t need a lot of equipment.

If you never did this before, then explaining how to do it in this blog post won’t be enough, so best to get a coach, a good friend, or an app to walk you through everything to avoid injury.

For most of my life, I had a mental block to going to the gym. I did basketball, fencing, yoga, tennis, some bodyweight stuff, all kinds of “fun” sports, but never went to the gym. It felt intimidating. It didn’t fit my nerdy self-image. I didn’t want to look like a gym bro.

Then one day I listened to one more podcast on how good strength training is for your health and I did a 360 - I got a personal trainer (one from a gym that had before-and-after pictures in the window) and went all-in for three months.

I should’ve done this so much earlier. Turns out I love going to the gym (can listen to podcasts, it’s not overwhelming once you know what to do, fun to see yourself grow, and feedback from friends on my looks). And looking like a gym bro takes so much work that you don’t need to worry about it.

Don’t be like me. Don’t avoid being a gym bro. Give it a try!

Christoph

Stability and Mobility

This is your yoga, pilates, stretching, and similar exercises. You can be strong and have high endurance, but if your full-body coordination is weak, then you still have a higher risk of injuring yourself. Both during the more intense exercise, but also simply from falling, and that’s unfortunately a very high cause of injury, the older you get. A simple test is to just stand on one leg and see how long you can stand. Aim for 30sec+. Bonus points for doing this with closed eyes.

Similar to cardio, try a variety of exercises here, for example, there are maybe different types of yoga and ways you could try yoga or other stretch adjacent activities:

• Yoga with a friend at the park

• Try a sample of yoga courses at a studio (Kundalini, Hot Yoga, etc.)

• Try a 30-day yoga course on YouTube

• Try a 5-minute stretching routine in the shower

• Dance-based mobility course/YouTube video

• Acro-based classes

• Foam roller + Stretching

• Yin yoga

And many more, the point for each of these categories is worth trying until you find one or more you like

Your story here. Our next topic will focus on not getting sick. Have a hack or story you’d like to share? Just reply to this email, message us on substack or send your thoughts to christoph@euzoia.org.

Do something now

Ok, so… 3x zone 2, 1x VO2 max, 3x gym, 1x mobility - how does anybody do this? Two answers to this: a) Many people do - by aiming for 1 session per day with a rest day and zone 2 while commuting. b) You already get lots of good results with putting in less effort:

• Ever heard of VILPA? Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity is a bit of a mouthful, but it has shown that by simply doing a few brief exercises throughout your day, just 5 minutes max in total, you get significant health benefits. Think planks, pushups, squats, sprinting up stairs, etc. Next time you need a break at work, try this instead of getting a snack. Also fun as a team.

• Integrate it into your life: Can you change your commute? Friends you can play squash with? Sunday living room yoga with your partner? Where are good slots to fit it in? Make a plan now and put some slots in your calendar.

• Experiment. This applies to all behaviours you want to change but for exercise, the great thing is that there are so many different ways to do it. Alone, in a team, at home, at the gym, in a class, in the morning, at lunch, in the evening … If you’ve never done much, give yourself a month to just try a bunch of different things and see what you enjoy

• Block some time in your calendar to go through our guide on behavior change and apply it to your exercise intentions

• Commit to us that you will do the idea you selected from these

• Check out our youtube and spotify podcast on the topic.

Subscribe now

When we think of food, the first thing that comes to mind is how it affects our weight. But that’s just a very small part of the story.

The food we eat has a big effect both short-term on how you feel and perform and long-term on your health and longevity.

• It makes you feel better: Diet affects anything from your “afternoon slump” to actual depression. Eating healthy actually makes you feel better in the short run.

• It makes you less sick: An unhealthy diet causes a state of constant inflammation in your body, making you more susceptible to illness and fatigue. Diet can fix that.

• It makes you live longer: The wrong diet doubles your risk of premature death. Mostly due to heart diseases and diabetes. The right diet can prevent both.

Top three things to do

Nutrition science is famously full of contradicting evidence; it’s hard to study. However, on a high level, experts can probably agree on these three things:

1. Eat mostly plant-based

Evidence from the Mediterranean diet, blue zones, and other studies all point in the same direction: A mostly plant-based diet is the best go-to diet for most people.

Eat: Whole grains, nuts and seeds, legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas), fruits and vegetables, bonus points for fermented foods (kimchi, kefir, sauerkraut, …)

Avoid: Ultra-processed foods, processed meats, added sugars and sodas

These diets also recommend some fatty fish to get enough Omega-3. However, those fish often have high levels of Mercury so it’s also possible to just take Omega-3 supplements from algae (the same algae that fish get their Omega-3 from). More on supplements in a later post.

But will I get enough protein? Yes. Grains, legumes and vegetables have plenty of protein, and together they cover all amino acids. Most people eat too much protein already. If you go to the gym 5x/week on a caloric deficit, you should supplement with protein shakes.

Just for fun, I got myself a continuous glucose monitor once to see how I react to different foods. I was genuinely surprised how strong my reaction to oat meal, oat milk, white bread, or anything with simple carbs was. I don’t have diabetes but those values looked like I was heading there.

I then changed my breakfast and lunch to be more in line with these recommendations (breakfast is a bowl of nuts & seeds, some soy yogurt, some berries; lunch is a salad of veggies, beans, sauerkraut, smoked tofu and seed oils) and all of a sudden I felt full for the day, had less cravings, and didn’t have afternoon dips anymore.

Christoph

2. Watch your weight

How much you weigh is mostly determined by how much you eat, and less by how much you exercise. Yes, cardio burns some calories, but the much larger effect comes from not eating those calories in the first place. Most “before-and-after” pics in gyms come from a rigorous diet that the person followed along with the exercise. We all have abs, but for most people, you can’t see them because they’re hidden beneath the fat.

In order to watch your weight, you need to be able to monitor it. You don’t need a fancy DEXA scan, you just need a scale, a mirror, and your phone:

• Scale: Try to weigh yourself every week around the same time (ideally in the morning before eating) and use this to guide how much you eat.

• Mirror: Less precise for week-by-week monitoring, but you can eyeball your body fat percentage pretty well by comparing your picture to reference men and women. Take progress pictures to celebrate your wins.

• Phone: Calorie counting is the best way to get a feel for what you eat. Luckily, AI apps made this much easier than it used to be. Try doing this for a few weeks to get a better feel for the caloric value of the foods you eat.

Eating less than you are used to will lead to cravings. The most zen way to deal with them is to just pause, allow the cravings and feel them - like everything else they will pass. The less zen way is to drink water or eat more filling foods like protein shakes.

Your story here. We’d love to feature more stories from people in the community, share yours on our community for the next topic - exercise!

You

3. Make it easy for yourself

The first two points by themselves might feel overwhelming and impossible to pack into your already busy life. Luckily, there are ways to get a lot of health-bang for little willpower-buck.

Focus on repetitive, easy meals: Most people have a very repetitive breakfast and lunch and then a fancy dinner with more variation. Focus on the repetitive breakfast and lunch. Make those two healthy - you have the most control over them. Front-load the healthy stuff, the protein, and then if you see friends for dinner, it’s less important.

Never drinks sugary drinks. This is probably the easiest one to implement. Water is better than Coke Zero, but Coke Zero is much better than Coke. Just make sure you don’t have sugar in your drinks.

Don’t have unhealthy food around you. Don’t plan on having willpower - you won’t. Just make it easy to stay healthy when you don’t have willpower by just not having anything unhealthy in the house. If you really need to snack, snack on a (no sugar added) protein shake.

For me, the biggest breakthrough came from making healthy eating as easy as possible, and unhealthy eating as hard as possible. The key was changing my food environment and what I had available at home.

Every day, I have a Huel (nutritionally complete protein shake) for breakfast. For lunch, I eat a Planty (vegan frozen meal) that is also designed to be healthy and nutritionally complete. I keep both available at all times, so if I feel hungry or want a quick meal, these are the default options rather than junk food. For dinners, I bulk cook and portion meals into glass containers. This creates a simple system that covers around 80 percent of complete nutrition while saving time and mental effort.

On the flip side, one of the most effective ways to avoid unhealthy food is simply not to buy it or keep it around. Do your grocery shopping online, avoid shopping when you are hungry, and remove temptation at the source. If it is not in your house, you do not need willpower to avoid it.

Finally, part of eating healthier is identity. Seeing yourself as someone who eats well makes a real difference. Being in environments that promote healthy eating also helps. If you read books like How Not to Die or Ultra Processed People, you will almost inevitably start making better food choices.

Cameron

Do something now

Change is easiest when you focus on small things. So why don’t you try one of these

• Throw all of your unhealthy food in the garbage right now

• Plan a healthy breakfast or lunch that you would enjoy, and try it tomorrow

• Try an online grocery service to avoid temptation when buying in the store

• Get a calorie-counting app

• Set a reminder to get on your scale every week

• Check out our new guide on behaviour change and try to apply the principles

Next up: Exercise

We’re doing all the heavy hitters directly in January. New year, new me. We promise, it’ll get easier after that!

As always, join our community to share thoughts on this post or your experience with exercise, and subscribe to our podcast for brief ten-minute episodes each week.

Subscribe now

Sleep is the basis. Without sleep, you won’t exercise, you will eat junk food, you won’t be able to focus at work, and so on. We’ve all been there.

Why is that? Sleep is not merely “resting.” It is an active biological state where your body performs essential repair and maintenance.

• It repairs your body and brain: During deep sleep, your brain actively waste products that build up during the day, and your body repairs damage, builds muscle, and reduces inflammation.

• It fuels willpower and performance: Sleep deprivation creates a “willpower deficit.” Whether you are aiming for dietary adherence or complex work, adequate sleep is necessary fuel.

• It maintains emotional stability: A tired brain struggles with regulation. Good sleep keeps your mood steady.

Top three things to do

The most effective interventions are often simple and cost nothing but require discipline.

1. Go to bed at a consistent time so you don’t need an alarm.

Your body relies on a rigid internal clock (the circadian rhythm). The single best way to set this clock is to go to bed at exactly the same time every day, including weekends. This anchors your hormones and greatly improves sleep onset at night.

You will know that you get enough sleep if you wake up consistently before your alarm and feel rested. If you don’t, move sleep time earlier.

Think of adjusting your sleep schedule like treating jet lag. You might need a few tries before your body gets used to the new bedtime.

I used to think I was a night owl... procrastinated going to bed every night because I was worried I couldn’t fall asleep, partied on weekends and 9-to-5ing during the week, always at the mercy of my alarm.

Three months ago I moved in with my partner: she goes to bed at nine or ten, also on weekends. I gave it a try. Complete game changer. Now I wake up every morning without an alarm, rested, happy. And if I still party I go to bed even earlier the next day.

Not saying that everybody should do this but that there is lots of value in experimenting.

— Christoph

2. Minimise stimulation

In order to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep with few interruptions, you need to reduce all kinds of stimulations. Here are the most common ones:

• Darkness: Get an eye mask and blackout blinds.

• Silence: Get earplugs (try silicone), a quiet flat, flatmates that have similar schedules.

• Coolness: Turn off your heating at night in Winter, use A/C or a fan in summer.

• Stress: Avoid your phone, social media (also helps with darkness), the news, etc, before bed.

• Diet: Avoid caffeine and alcohol, and food late at night. Try herbal tea instead.

I always identified with having issues sleeping; I’d often wake up multiple times a night and have no idea why. I tried all the usual advice, earlier bedtime, no phone in bed, herbal tea (btw, these are all good ideas to try!), but nothing really moved the needle. I’d still jolt awake in the middle of the night, wired and frustrated, then drag myself through the next day on caffeine and willpower.

Eventually, I started paying closer attention and realised something simple: it wasn’t my mind waking me up, it was my environment. A neighbour’s door slamming, construction (often very loud in London), cars outside, my partner turning over in bed, a bit of light sneaking through the curtains, tiny things, but just enough to pull me out of sleep, over and over again.

So I decided to treat my bedroom like a sensory deprivation tank. I got blackout blinds. I started wearing an eye mask. And the biggest game-changer of all, silicone earplugs that mould to your ear shape. I stopped waking up to every random noise. My sleep went from broken 5–6 hour chunks to solid 7–9 hour stretches. I woke up feeling rested, instead of groggy.

I’d always thought fixing my sleep would be complicated. In the end, the most powerful change was incredibly simple. Cutting out as much noise and light as possible. For you, it might be something different, but just as simple.

— Cam

3. If you can’t sleep, leave the bed immediately.

This is the core principle of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), the clinical gold standard for treating chronic sleep issues. If you have been awake for 15–20 minutes, you risk associating the bed with frustration. Break that link: go to another room, keep the lights dim, and return to bed only when genuinely sleepy.

For chronic insomnia, supplements are rarely sufficient. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is the first-line recommendation, offering better long-term outcomes than many pharmacological approaches.

We’d love to put a quote of somebody here who struggled with chronic sleep issues. If that’s you, join our community, share your story, and we’ll feature you here!

Join the community

Try one thing this week

Do not attempt to change everything at once. Focus on implementing one high-value habit immediately. You probably know best what resonated, but here are some ideas:

• Set a strict wake-up time for the next 7 days.

• Acquire a sleep mask or earplugs.

• Implement the 15-minute rule if you wake up tonight.

• Reach out to a specialist if you have tried all of the above already

• Check out this longer list of sleep interventions

Next up: Nutrition

This was a test-post for Euzoia. We will continue the series in January with a post on our next principle - “Eat balanced”.

Have stories to share on that topic? We’d love to hear them! Join our community and help us work out the best actionable advice for eating a balanced diet.

Join the community

There are two answers to this, both equally valid:
A) It’s a deep mystery, a dance, a journey that in itself is the goal.
B) It’s a subject of science, and by now we know a lot about it.

Euzoia.org is a project dedicated to B) without forgetting about A).
Euzoia is distilling the science of what makes a good life down to basic principles.
Euzoia is then taking those principles and helps embedding those in day to day life.
And one of those principles will probably related to A): To be curious, to wonder.

This substack will share these principles. One each week. And then repeat them, every year. Because we know these principles anyway already. But we need reminders to engage with them, to see how they fit in our lives, to take small actions each time.

This is our plan for the year

Body

• Sleep Enough

• Eat a balanced diet

• Exercise regularly

• Stay healthy

• Stay safe

Mind

• Awareness & Acceptance

• Emotional Regulation

• Mental Frameworks

• Expand your mind

• Mental Hygiene

Home

• Design for Lazy

• Fix your commute

• Home upgrades that beat the hedonic treadmill

• How to not die at home

• Fact or Fake? Hidden stressors at home

Money

Friends

Love

Work

Play

Spirituality

Meaning