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My favourite cell
Plus: a mental model for life
Geoff Girvitz
January 16, 2025
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Today on Dad Strength
Tiny Habits for pain-free exercise
A mental model for life
A love letter to nerds
A book, a quote, a dad joke
Tiny Habits for pain-free exercise
I was digging through the crates today and found a project I worked on with behaviour design legend, BJ Fogg. This goes back a while… before generative AI hit, so it’s hand-coded. BJ had already crated a Recipe Maker to help coach people in Tiny Habits, so he invited me to make one for exercise. In both cases, an Anchor (a prompt that is rooted in action) is paired with a new behaviour.
For this experiment, I focused on the setup of each rep during sets of strength training—something that is both incredibly important AND discussed far less often than it deserves to be. This is pretty basic but you only need to find one combo of Anchor and new behaviour to make this useful. You can check it out here.
Speaking of AI, would you like me to send you a set of prompts you can use to generate customized workouts in ChaGPT? Hit reply to request it—or simply join Community Edition ($5/month—cancel at any time) before end-of-day and I’ll send it your way.
Global maxima
On our most recent call, we discussed mental models in our daily lives—and as fathers.
One mental model that you may find useful is the idea of global and local maxima. It’s a reminder of two key things:
“There’s no such thing as a straight line, pal. That kind of stuff may fly for Euclid’s family but in this house, we recognize that making progress has ups and downs!”
In important matters, don’t automatically settle for the first peak. Instead, ask, is this as good as things possibly get—or just as good as they typically get. These two are not the same.
A love letter to nerds
As we collectively set aside any rigour about where information comes from, I’ve been asking myself how my son might navigate a world without news media as we know it.
The practical part of me is simply asking how the next generation can live as critical thinkers and—perhaps more importantly—not have their emotional experiences directly tied to whatever media is placed in front of him.
A reminder came my way today as I leafed (well, clicked) through Stanford Medicine Magazine. Here’s the title:
Stanford Medicine researchers reveal the cell they most appreciate
It’s a reminder that it’s the nerds. It’s always been the nerds. And I say that with great affection and appreciation. This isn’t an ideological article. There is no agenda here. These are snapshots of true curiosity looks like. It’s powered by enthusiasm and tempered by the hard work and resources necessary to explore it. This is what science looks like and there is an art to it. It reminds me of how—up until the first half of the 20th century, scientists typically worked under mentors in a sort of apprenticeship model that included instruction on philosophy and creative problem solving.
Generative AI now makes it easier than ever to start with a conclusion and produce evidence to support it. AKA cherry picking data. You don’t even have to ignore evidence that counters it because you never ask in the first place. 200 year ago, racist ideologues like Louis Agassiz still had to be incredibly educated to dress up ideology with science. The barrier to entry was high. That is no longer the case. So, we are now responsible for higher standards—greater discernment—in the information we consume. It makes you wonder where to start.
When someone is just as excited by the idea of their theories being disproved as they are proved, we’re getting somewhere. This is what a deep desire to understand the world looks like. And there will always be pockets of true explorers who are working in this direction. Finding them may be trickier but they’ll be out there.
This stuff can be tricky. That’s why we talk it out every Tuesday.
To check things out visit dadstrength.com/calls
Image credit: Stanford Medicine
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What I’m reading:
Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
A Quote
“The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.”
― Will Durant
A Dad joke
What did George Michael like with his stir-fry?
Well, I guess it would be rice.
Take care of yourself, man!
Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com