Seven
I asked my AI's to give me 7-by-7 upgrades for sleep, food, movement, work, and life that you can start today.
Well…this newsletter is healthy now and about health *laughing*
A few days ago, I got annoyed with a vague feeling I think a lot of us share:
“I know exactly what to do to improve my life. I just do not do it.”
We all live inside this paradox.
We have podcasts, books, and friends repeating the same advice.
Sleep more. Eat better. Move. Focus.
Yet our actual systems do not match what we know.
So I decided to simplify it, and I asked my AI agents:
“Think as long as you need. What are the most efficient and proven ways to improve the quality of life? Instantly start with sleep, eat, physical activities, and work. Give me 7 of each, and 7 lifehacks easiest to do.”
That was it. No constraints, no magic words.
What came back was a surprisingly good “menu” of behaviors. Not a new philosophy, no motivational speech. Just small levers that are easy to implement and have a significant compounding effect.
In earlier editions like “Homo Laborans” and “Plateau” I wrote about work, identity, and the feeling of being stuck. This time, I wanted something far more practical. Less theory.
You do not need 100 tricks. You need a small number of system changes that quietly run in the background.
Below are 7 levers for sleep, 7 for food, 7 for training, 7 for work, and 7 very easy lifehacks that are actually life-quality changing, not just cute tips.
More knobs you can actually turn this week. Think of them as switches. Flip a few and keep them on.
So here it is: Seven
Now, with me, pick one item from each section and treat it as a 7-day experiment.
Sleep
Your life is basically a function of how you manage your nervous system. Sleep is the main control panel. This is why I wanted to double down on Sleep for the next few months.
Stable wake time plus 7.5-hour sleep window
Choose a fixed wake time and stick to it every day. Count back 7.5 hours for your target bedtime.
Example: wake at 7:00, lights out 23:30.
This anchors your circadian rhythm and gives enough sleep cycles to feel human.
Light and movement in the first 30 minutes after waking
Go outside for 5–10 minutes and move your body a bit. Walk, stretch, or make a quick coffee lap.
Massive effect on alertness and on how sleepy you feel at night.
Stimulant protocol instead of random caffeine
First caffeine at least 60 minutes after waking.
Last caffeine at least 8 to 10 hours before bed.
Less afternoon crash, easier to fall asleep, fewer night awakenings.
Hard cut on screens and work before bed
60 minutes before sleep: no work, no intense messages, no blue light in the face.
Use that hour for shower, reading, light stretching, talking, sex, anything low stress.
Quality of sleep improves more than with any supplement.
Bedroom as a sleep temple
Only 3 things there: sleep, sex, and maybe reading. No laptop, no TV, no deep work.
Cool temperature, as dark as you can manage, quiet or white noise.
Your brain should see that room and instantly associate it with switching off.
Consistent evening “landing strip”
Make a tiny routine you repeat almost every night in the same order. Example:
Close laptop
Write 3 bullet points for tomorrow
Shower
Stretch 5 minutes
Read 10 pages
This conditions your nervous system like a pre-flight checklist, but for landing.
Emergency bad night protocol
After a terrible night, do not sleep in and do not nap more than 20 minutes and not after 16:00.
You will be tired for one day, then sleep deeply the next night and your rhythm recovers.
This prevents one bad night from turning into two bad weeks.
Eating
You do not need a new identity as a “healthy person”. You just need a different default.
Protein target at every main meal
Aim for roughly 1.6 to 2 grams per kilo of bodyweight per day, and at least 25 to 40 grams per meal.
People with stable protein intake have fewer cravings, more steady energy and easier fat loss or maintenance.
Pre-decide your default meals and repeat them
Design 1 breakfast, 2 lunches, and 2 dinners that are healthy and easy.
When busy, you do not decide; you just run the default.
This removes food drama from high-stress days.
Kill ultra-processed food as a daily habit, keep it as a deliberate treat
Rule of thumb: 80 percent of your weekly intake from real food.
Packaged snacks, sugary drinks, and cheap delivery become planned exceptions, not background noise.
Front-load your healthy food early in the day
First meal of the day is high in protein and fiber, not sugar.
You start with stability instead of chasing crashes all day.
Simple eating window
Try to keep food inside a rough 10 to 12-hour window and finish eating 2 to 3 hours before bed.
Example: eat between 9:00 and 19:00.
Most people sleep and digest better with this, and it is not extreme.
Golden rule for carbs: never naked
Bread, pasta, sweets, and rice only together with protein and fiber.
Less spike, less crash. You enjoy carbs without getting destroyed by them.
Upgrade your environment instead of your willpower
At home or in the office, place fruit, nuts, and yogurt at eye level.
Put junk food in a closed box or another room.
You will automatically grab the better option in weak moments.
Physical activity
Your body does not care about aesthetics. It cares about signal: “Do we still need this thing or can we start shutting it down?”
Minimum effective daily walk: 7-8k steps
If you are currently low, increase gradually. Add 2,000 steps per day for a week, then increase the goal. Walking hits mood, creativity, stress, and longevity all at once and dont forget about Movement snacks every hour.
Every 50-60 minutes, stand up and move for 1-3 minutes. Walk, stretch, do squats, shoulder rolls. This prevents “tech-neck”, stiffness, and that dead-brain feeling from sitting too long.
Two heavy strength sessions per week, forever
Full body in each session.
Example:
Squat or leg press
Push (bench or push-ups)
Pull (row or pull-ups)
Hip hinge (deadlift, RDL, kettlebell swings)
Core (plank variations)
Strength is one of the highest ROI investments for longevity and mental health.
One real conditioning session per week
10 to 20 minutes of intervals. Example:
30 seconds fast, 90 seconds easy, repeat 6 to 10 times on bike, run, rower or even stairs.
A significant impact on VO2 max, which closely correlates with health and resilience.
Movement triggers inside your workday
Attach micro movement to existing habits. Example:
Every meeting that is audio only = walking meeting.
Every time you hit send on a big email = 10 squats or push ups.
Over a week, you accumulate a lot of work without “going to the gym”.
Choose one physical skill you want to be good at
Tennis, boxing, jiu jitsu, climbing, basketball, dance.
Pure gym gets boring. A skill makes training fun and social.
Mechanical back and neck care protocol
Daily 5 to 10 minutes for spine and shoulders.
Example: cat cow, thoracic twists, wall slides, hanging from a bar, hip flexor stretch.
This prevents pain that quietly ruins quality of life.
Plan training like essential meetings, not like “if I have time”
Put two strength sessions and one conditioning session into the calendar at fixed times.
You treat them as seriously as investor calls. They pay you for decades.
Work
This is where most of you live. If you read “The Great Restructuration” or “Main Character”, you know I think work is not going to get simpler. So your systems must.
Daily “three wins” rule
Each morning, define the 3 outcomes that would make today a win.
Not 30 tasks, just 3 results.
This gives a clear narrative to your day and reduces the feeling of endless unfinished work.
Deep work blocks as protected assets
Schedule 1 to 2 blocks of 60 to 120 minutes where you do only one cognitively hard thing.
Phone in another room. Notifications off. One app or document open.
This is where the real leverage work happens.
Context switching tax awareness
Decide rules like:
No email or Slack in the first 90 minutes of the day.
Only check communication 3 to 4 slots per day, not every 5 minutes.
You keep your brain in fewer modes, which feels calmer and is far more productive.
Energy-based scheduling instead of time-based
Put the hardest thinking work into your natural peak zone, often late morning.
Push calls, admin, and routine tasks into low-energy slots.
You stop wasting high-quality brain time on low-quality tasks.
Quarterly stop doing list
Every quarter list things that drain you and give little return.
Either delegate, automate or kill one or two of them.
Removing the wrong work improves life quality as much as adding the right work.
Hard stop at the end of the day with a shutdown ritual
Last 10 to 15 minutes:
Write what you finished
Capture open loops into a list
Decide on the three wins for tomorrow
Then, physically close the laptop and leave the workspace.
This trains your brain that work is off, so evenings are real recovery.
Information diet that you control
Decide what you consume for learning and news, and from where.
No endless feed grazing. Use subscriptions, newsletters, and long-form content.
Less noise, more signal, and more mental space for your own thinking.
Seven easiest “instants”
These are low-effort, high-return moves that stack across sleep, food, movement, and work.
Move your phone charger out of the bedroom.
Suddenly, it is 10 times harder to scroll till 2:00 and 10 times easier to get up when the alarm rings.
Buy and use a decent sleep mask and earplugs.
Cheap, simple, but for many people this is the difference between trash sleep and deep sleep, especially when traveling or with light and noise.
Default walking rule for short distances.
Any journey under 15 minutes on foot is done on foot if physically possible.
No thinking, just a rule. Over a month, this is hundreds of minutes of movement and stress relief.
Water before coffee rule.
The first liquid of the morning is a big glass of water, followed by coffee.
Mild dehydration ruins how awake you feel. This is easy free energy.
Pre-schedule one fun thing every week
Tennis game, dinner, movie, long walk with a friend, anything.
Your week always has at least one point that feels like life, not just work.
Inbox and notification clean up once a month
Unsubscribe and mute ruthlessly.
You reduce daily micro stress without losing anything important.
Weekly 30-minute “life admin” block
Once a week, same time, sit down and clear small annoyances: bills, emails, bookings, random forms. Life feels less chaotic when all the tiny unresolved things have a home.
How to actually use “Seven”
If you treat this as content, nothing will change.
Treat it as a menu.
This week, pick:
1 thing for sleep
1 thing for food
1 thing for movement
1 thing for work
1 simple lifehack
Five small commitments. Run them for seven days. No optimization, no self-hate, no “I should be doing more”.
Then next week you either:
Keep what worked and add one more, or
Swap what did not work for something that fits your life better.
In a few months, your “default life” will be different, and you will not fully remember when the change happened.
The trick is not to find a perfect system. The trick is to make starting so easy that your future self does not have to think.
Post-credit scene
Some extra inputs if you want to go deeper on this theme.
TV shows and movies:
Not everything has to be a “productivity show”. Sometimes the best recovery is a good story.
Physical Asia and entire Physical Netflix Series - Hits motivation on the new lvl
Plubris - I will recommend this in few next newsletters bc its just amazing and fresh
The Bear for chaos, craft, and what pressure does to humans.
Drive to Survive if you want to see systems, preparation, and marginal gains in a very loud package.
Books:
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Slightly scary, very motivating to fix sleep.
Atomic Habits by James Clear. Still the best basic playbook on how to make small changes stick.
Outlive by Peter Attia. A long-term view on health and longevity that pairs nicely with these daily levers.
Podcasts and episodes:
Huberman Lab episodes on sleep, light, and caffeine. Dense, practical, science-backed.
Peter Attia’s conversations with athletes and founders about performance over decades, not weeks.
Any long-form conversation with Andrew Huberman and Rick Rubin together. A good mix of science and craft.
If you try a “Seven” week, reply and tell me what you picked and what changed. That feedback loop is how I decide what to write next.
Thanks for reading
Vlad