Mappy November!
New on MappyEverAfter: Death Valley video and Get Your Best Sleep article
Experiment: Mark tried my “ideal daily schedule” for 14 days
Travel: Annual Death Valley Dark Sky Festival in February
Health: The Second Brain with Michael Gershon
Money: Best ever welcome bonus on a Chase business card - $900
Read: Colum McCann - Letters to a Young Writer
Mental Hack: Making decisions: “Am I the kind of person who…?”
Just because: Passionate conductor Benjamin Zander won’t rest until you fall in love with classical music
Note: I will always tell you if I’m getting any referral bonuses and how much they are. There is one in this letter, a refer-a-friend bonus for the first 5 of you that apply for a Chase business card. I get $200, you get $900 if you meet the minimum spending. Once you get the card, you can also send out your own referral links and earn the $200 bonuses yourself. It’s a public offer, you don’t have to use my link to apply but if you do, thank you.
New on Mappy Ever After
Can you trick your brain into sleeping more efficiently? The current sleep science (and my personal experiment) says you can. Have a read about it here: Get Your Best Sleep
And a video from our Death Valley stargazing trip
Experiment: Mark followed my strict “ideal daily schedule” for 14 days
It’s easy to look at other people and think we know exactly how they should fix their lives. When Mark got fed up with the constant onslaught of my well-meaning “advice”, he agreed to stick to a 14-day schedule based on my ideas of what his life should look like. I gathered my best info on sleep, food, and exercise and planned every minute of his day. I followed the same schedule (since, you know, it is the best program ever).
We started at 6:30 am with a quick ayurvedic massage (dry brush scrub) while listening to books by John Sarno about health, disease, and the mind-body connection, exercised for 30 minutes (mobility, DNS, balance, dance, or strength), meditated for 20 minutes, wrote a diary, and at 8 am we ate a breakfast of beans, greens, eggs, tea with chia seeds, protein drink, fruit, and supplements. After that, we met up every hour (between our other tasks) to do 5 minutes of exercise - the idea was to never be stagnant for longer than 60 minutes at a time.
9 to 11 was writing time, 11 to 1 pm was time for tackling our to-do lists, paleo lunch with loads of vegetables and protein at 1 pm, after which we spent 2 hours outside getting at least 10000 steps and playing with a football, frisbee, or a weighted (8lbs) ball.
At 4 pm we had another 3 hours scheduled for writing, an hour of studying French, a snack of nuts, jello made of collagen, blueberries, tart cherry juice, and kiwi (to promote sleep and joint regeneration), another walk outside, 20 minutes of meditation, reading a book and sleep. 8 pm to 9 am was a no-screens time. And no napping ever. Sleep was 6 hours a night on week one and 7 hours on week 2 as per the Sleep Solution program I write about in the Get Your Best Sleep article.
Thursday was hiking day and Sunday was grocery shopping, movie, and rest day. The morning and evening routines stayed the same every day.
Each day we ate a mix of slow-carb and paleo, totaling over 100g of protein (based on Dr. Peter Attia’s advice), over 25g of fiber (for microflora and longevity), something fermented (usually sauerkraut), and 2 liters of water or tea. No caffeine.
Results:
Despite the large quantity of food, Mark lost 6 lbs (I lost 3), we felt a bit sore from all the exercise, but enjoyed the daily massage and hours of walking and playing together outside. What suffered the most was our writing - we were both too tired to produce anything coherent. I was exhausted from the constant planning (and preparing) of meals and exercises to keep them balanced and interesting, and Mark from my attempts to fix his sleep using a slight sleep deprivation, since the first couple of weeks are the hardest.
My favorite part - after years of PMS headaches, I didn’t have any this month and I still wake up before 6:30 am without an alarm. And, (to Mark’s horror), we learned a line dance :)
Travel: Death Valley Dark Sky Festival in February 2023
We went to Death Valley, a certified Dark Sky Park, for a public star-gazing party. The parking lot opposite the Furnace Creek Ranch was filled with telescopes pointed at assorted objects in the star-filled sky, amateur and professional astronomers were eager to explain what you were looking at and the head of the Las Vegas Atstronomical Society gave a great lecture.
The word “party” was a bit of an overstatement for the quiet get-together in the dark and you can certainly watch the stars on your own wherever and whenever the sky is clear and the moon is below the horizon, but there’s something magical about a bunch of star-curious earthlings coming together to marvel at the night sky in one of the darkest places on terra firma.
The next event is going to be much bigger, an annual Death Valley Dark Sky Festival on the 10th and 11th of February 2023. It’ll be a collaboration between Death Valley National Park, Death Valley Natural History Association, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SETI Institute, and California Institute of Technology.
If we’re still in the US, we’ll definitely go.
Health: The Second Brain
I came across this amazing interview (on Peter Attia’s website) with Michael Gershon, the 84-year-old “father of neurogastroenterology” and a Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University. Even if you’ve never been interested in your gut, you’ll be astonished by the wisdom, uniqueness, and complexity of your own belly by the end of this talk.
They get into the anatomy, the way your gut communicates with your brain, how it responds to different meals, how it reacts to antidepressants, how it regulates appetite, the relationship between gut and autism, production of serotonin, leaky gut and its causes, the gut microbiome, fecal transplants, nutrition, prebiotics, probiotics, and antibiotics.
Trust me, it’s far more fascinating than I’ve described it, just give it a listen.
Money: $900 - The Best ever welcome bonus on Chase business credit cards
If you’re an American citizen or resident, have a big purchase coming up (or regularly charge $2000/month on credit cards), and have a business, or side hustle even if it’s selling your own stuff on E-bay or freelancing (in which case you can sign up as “sole proprietor” with just your soc. sec. number), here’s the best welcome bonus Chase bank has ever offered. You can pick from Ink Unlimited (1.5% cash back on all purchases no annual fee), Ink Cash (5% cash back on Office stores, internet, cable, and phone service purchases and 2% cash back at restaurants and gas stations, no annual fee), and Ink Preferred (which has a $95 annual fee and even higher minimum spending requirement so I’d go for one of the first two).
You get a $900 bonus for spending $6000 on your new card within 90 days of signing up. You can redeem them as a statement credit, or, if you own any of the Chase premium cards (Sapphire, Sapphire Preferred, Ink Preferred), you can get even more value from this offer - transfer your points and use them for travel.
$900 equals 90,000 Ultimate Rewards points (some of the most valuable points out there) and these are just a few ideas to show what you can get with them:
$900 statement credit
3 flights between LA and Paris
25 nights at category 1 Hyatt Place Hotel in Cabo during the low season
3 nights at the all-inclusive Andaz resort in Costa Rica
stay 2 nights in the poshest category 8 Park Hyatt in Sydney as we did
find thousands of other redemption options by looking up “Travel hacking with Ultimate Rewards points”
I get a $200 refer-a-friend bonus for the first 5 of you that apply by clicking on the link or the picture above or by clicking here. Once you have the card, you can generate your own referral links, send them to your friends and family and earn the referral bonus yourself. Win-win-win.
It’s a public offer, you don’t have to use my link to apply but if you do, thank you.
I got the Ink Business Unlimited card (with a referral link from Mark) and plan to meet the $6000 minimum spending by charging everyday expenses on it and prepaying utility, phone, and insurance bills.
Read: Colum McCann - Letters to a Young Writer
Even if you’re an old fart with no intention to write, you’ll like this book filled with beautiful sentences, humility, and inspiration. You’ll smile and nod a lot.
“In the end, the only things worth doing are the things that might possibly break your heart.”
― Colum McCann, Letters to a Young Writer
Mental Hack: Making decisions
In an ideal world, before you make a decision, you’d be able to experience all the options to see which one you like the best. But you can’t try to get married or have a child for a week to see if it suits you.
You also can’t make a pro and con list about things you don’t have enough information about. Would I like to live in a bustling Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or in the tiny village of Solčava, Slovenia? I have no idea which would make me happier, I haven’t been to either.
In those cases, one of the options may better align with who you are. To find out, use the question “Am I the kind of person who…?”
“Am I the kind of person who lives in a big town and vacations in a tiny village, or am I the kind of person who likes living in a tiny village and vacations in Rio?”
“Am I the kind of person who is single/married, childless/with kids, a lawyer/a baker, always traveling/stays put, is honest/cheats on taxes?”
You can use it for things big and small, and remember that very few decisions are irreversible.
Just because: What a passionate life looks like, through the lens of classical music
Benjamin Zander is the most child-like 83-year-old I have ever seen. He’s beautiful and full of life, passion, and curiosity. He’s also the conductor and musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Spend 20 minutes with him, and you will laugh, cry, and thank me.
So there you have it. Hope you had a lovely penultimate month of the year. Did you know that (according to Wikipedia) November gets its name from the Latin word novum meaning “nine”? It used to be the ninth month of the year before January and February were added to the calendar around 713 BC, making November the 11th month.
Be Mappy,
Mags