By Colby Kultgen
Underrated Laws of Life, Chinese Grandpa Maxxing, and A Question For Bad Days
Read online / Read time: 4 minutes
Hello friends!
We're back with your weekly dose of 1% Better.
If you're new here, this is the newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week.
Let's not waste any time!
A useful question
A useful question to ask yourself:
“What version of me am I asking to handle this problem?”
The rested version? The fed version? The version that moved today?
Or the version that slept 5 hours, skipped lunch, drank too much coffee, and has been staring at a screen since 8am?
Not every day will go perfectly. You'll have short nights and skipped workouts, and that's ok. But if you're consistently running on empty, don't be surprised when every problem feels harder than it should.
Before I judge how I'm feeling or how well I'm functioning, I try to check a few basics:
→ 7 hours of sleep
→ One real meal
→ 20 minutes of movement
→ A big glass of water
Nothing too crazy.
But when you take care of your mind and body first, everything else gets a little easier.
A trend that I can get behind
Speaking of covering your basics.
Lately I’ve added some gentle movement to my mornings, mostly hopping and some arm swings.
I initially started it as a sort of "fascia warm-up." But then I started seeing people online doing similar exercises under a much funnier name:
“Chinese grandpa maxxing.”
Basically, copying the kind of morning movement routines you’ll often see older people doing in parks in China: shoulder circles, light mobility work, that sort of thing.
Whether you call it a fascia warm-up, lymphatic drainage, or Chinese granpa maxxing, all I know is that I feel significantly better on days when I do it.
If you want to try, here’s the exact video I follow.
An underrated law of life
I recently came across this post from Dr. Julie Gurner about Kidlin's Law:
An underrated law? Kidlin's Law.
That if you write down a problem clearly and specifically, you have already solved half of it.
The act of clearly & specifically describing a problem on paper creates a deeper understanding of its components & makes it easier to find solutions.
Personally, I’d never heard of this before, but I found it pretty interesting.
Naturally, it sent me down a rabbit hole looking for other underrated laws of life.
I ended up finding four more that I thought were particularly useful:
Gall's Law: Complex systems that work almost always evolve from simpler systems that worked first. Start with the simplest version of a new habit, project, or routine. Get it working consistently before adding more complexity.
Chesterton's Fence: Never remove something until you understand why it was there in the first place. Before changing an existing rule, habit, or system, take time to understand its original purpose.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. We often assume someone has bad intentions when there's a simpler explanation. Giving people the benefit of the doubt can prevent unnecessary conflict and resentment.
The Law of Reversed Effort (my personal favorite): The harder you consciously try to force certain outcomes, the harder they become to achieve. Trying desperately to fall asleep, relax, or be creative often makes those things more difficult. Sometimes the best approach is to stop forcing an outcome and create the conditions for it to happen naturally.
If you know a good one I missed, hit reply and send it my way.
A webinar you should check out
Uh-oh, shameless plug incoming.
I can honestly say that writing on social media completely changed my life.
And while doing it for myself has been fun, what I enjoy even more is helping others do the same.
That's exactly what we do in Archimedes, the community I run with Ben Meer and Jade Bonacolta.
Our next official cohort starts November 16th.
BUT if you're curious about what we teach, I'd highly recommend attending our free webinar on Friday, October 30th, from 12–1pm ET:
How to Attract Your First 10K Followers On LinkedIn.
We'll walk you through the strategies we'd use to grow a LinkedIn audience from scratch today, based on what's actually working.
If you can't make it live, register anyway and we'll send you the replay. Plus, live attendees will receive $200+ in free bonuses.
Hope to see you there!
A tweet that made me chuckle
A few more things I'm into this week:
📚 Article I'm revisiting: The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking
🎥 Documentary that blew my mind: You Can See Everything
📸 Photo that's hard to believe: Pair of scissors cutting a single hair
💭 Quote I liked:
I heard someone say “I don’t feel like myself lately, I must be growing” what a beautiful perspective for uncomfortable seasons.
👀 P.S. I know I've been gone for a couple weeks, but I just want to thank you if you've stuck around. Hearing from you is a big part of what keeps me excited to write this newsletter every week. So never hesitate to hit reply. It means more than you probably realize.
— Colby
