The week goes on, and here comes another great one.
From the mile-high broadcast tower and media center, you’re tracking the orbit of The 200 Project, and this is The Daily Minute.
In a recent article, our friends at Time Magazine gave us a reliable review of the fundamentals for a long and happy life. In this week’s edition of The Daily Minute, we’ll use those basics as our starting point.
Monday: Personality type leads off.
What do extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness and agreeability have in common? They’re all target personality traits in a fascinating study that explores their role in longevity. A group of 100-plus-year-olds … well, let’s not spoil it. But we can say this: On the road to a healthful old age, we can be our own best friends by the way we see the world and how we adapt to it. This study is fascinating to read; high marks to the researchers.
Tuesday: Diet tells the future!
Today, explore the Food Spectrum, that range of food choices that reaches from the Standard American Diet on the unhealthy end and whole-foods, plant-based eating on the other, healthy end. We choose every snack and every meal from this Food Spectrum. How could we not? – everything is on it. When we look at our food choices this way, it pops out at us just how much control we have over our long-term health outcomes. This idea casts a brand-new light on what we talk about when we talk about food choices.
Wednesday: Social connectedness of the warm kind.
When we check our phones, what are we really doing? Are we looking for something inside that shiny little black rectangle? Do we really expect to find real friends in there? HotBlack Coffee Café in Toronto figured that this was impossible and so decided to do something about our obsession with our phones: they banned internet within their four walls. Their exceptional goal is to get their patrons to interact in a person-to-person way. What a concept! These guys rate very high on our approval list.
Thursday: Education, and more is better.
And speaking of the topic of our life choices: How do we make them? What do we base them on? If good choices lead to better long-term health outcomes, how do we prepare ourselves to make those good choices? The answer, reasonably enough, is through education, which has revealed itself to be one very reliable barometer in predicting the odds for living a long and healthy life. What’s the old public relations tagline? “If you’re in school, stay there”? Now it really seems like that public service announcement had far broader implications than just reading, writing, and ’rithmetic. Read more here.
Friday: Don’t just sit there
There’s an old wisdom that says that sitting on your laurels is about the worst thing for them. Well it looks like sitting for long stretches is bad for everything about our health – from the likelihood of illness to mortality. So, let’s get up and get moving! Set an alarm on your phone as a reminder, and when the alarm goes off, get up and walk around or stretch. Of course, first, make sure your doctor says “okay,” then enjoy the health benefits of giving your laurels a few minutes off. Learn more here.
Make this week your best ever. From high atop the mile-high broadcast tower and media center, this has been The Daily Minute.
