the morning shakeout | issue 476
Wintering, a life hack you can actually use, the power of obsessive interests, and a lot more.
Good morning! I’m on break for the next couple weeks visiting family and friends while also taking some time to rest, reflect, and reset. Whatever your plans are between now and the end of the year I wish you and yours happiness and peace.
What follows here are a handful of old favorites from years past. Let’s get right to ’em.
Quick Splits
— From the archives (Issue 58, 8 years ago this week): The life hack you (and I) can actually use: “Instead of searching life hacks to make us more efficient and creative, we can avail ourselves of the life hack that’s been around as long as we have: rest,” Arianna Huffington writes in her review of the book, Rest. “But we have to be as deliberate about it as we are about work.” Sound familiar?
— From the archives (Issue 111, 7 years ago this week): Bernd Heinrich is something of a modern-day Thoreau—an award-winning naturalist, acclaimed author, and record-setting ultrarunner—a man who went to the woods many years ago to live deliberately and has never looked back. Now 77, he’s spent the better part of the last several decades studying the natural world around him, writing books, and running countless miles, all free from unnecessary distraction. And while living such a life is impractical—or undesirable—for most of us, there’s much we can all learn from Heinrich’s way of prioritizing the things that matter most to him. “We live in an age that affords little time and space for communing with nature. We’re busy,” Bill Donahue writes in a recent profile of Heinrich for Outside. “Our days are fragmented. But Bernd has dug in his heels against this collective drift. He has recognized where he wants to be in old age and settled in, with purpose.”
— From the archives (Issue 163, 6 years ago this week): The parallels between running and writing are numerous and many of them surface in this interview with author and runner Jaclyn Gilbert for Longreads. I particularly appreciated her take on the illusion of control that both disciplines tend to elicit—and sometimes get the best of us. “During a race, too, I’ve always loved the feeling of control—this sense of pushing my body to reach some desired outcome,” she says. “And then writing pushes a lot of the same buttons; when I’m writing, I get hyper-focused at the sentence level, fixated on the flow of thought and action on every page. But I’ve also found that if I’m too rigid in my aims and not listening to my body, or my subconscious, my running and writing will suffer.”
— From the archives (Issue 215, 5 years ago today): The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius: This essay has nothing to do with running or coaching—directly, anyway—but it’s a thought-provoking read by programmer, writer, and investor Paul Graham on the importance of having what he calls “a disinterested obsession with something that matters” in order to do great work—whatever that means for you. “An obsessive interest will even bring you luck, to the extent anything can,” Graham writes. “Chance, as Pasteur said, favors the prepared mind, and if there's one thing an obsessed mind is, it's prepared.”
— From the archives (Issue 372, 2 years ago this week): Beck covering Neil Young’s classic “Old Man” is everything I hoped it would be and then some. He does a beautiful job paying homage to the original version while putting his own spin on it in subtle but distinct ways. 11/10 recommend.
— A big thank you to my partners at Tracksmith for supporting my work this month (and throughout 2024). The brand recently launched my favorite campaign and apparel collection: No Days Off. Now, I’ll be the first to admit the name is inspiring to some and off-putting to others, but it doesn’t literally mean that you should never take a day off of running—it’s simply a call for consistency and intentionality in your training, focusing on the small regular deposits that eventually add up to a big payout. The No Days Off Collection is carefully designed to help you weather the worst. My favorite piece is the Brighton Base Layer, which serves as a temperature regulating longsleeve on its own or as an essential insulator under your favorite jacket. I wear it most days of the week throughout the winter months. Check it out, along with the rest of the NDO collection. (Every purchase ships with a free 2025 NDO Poster for committing to new goals in the year ahead, while supplies last.)
Workout of the Week: The Inverted Ladder
I love ladder sessions. It’s a great feeling mentally when you start coming back down the ladder and know the longest intervals are behind you. This workout is not that and that’s exactly the point. Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
—Epictetus, allegedly, sharing a pertinent sentiment for the season.
That’s it for Issue 476. If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to a few friends and encourage them to subscribe at this link so that it lands in their inbox next Tuesday.
Thanks for reading,
Mario
Thanks for sharing these, hope you have a great rest and time spent with family heading into the new year.
Rest! The hack that’s not really a hack at all.