What is Power

Power is your body, your energy, and your vitality: health, sleep, diet, exercise, recovery. It is the pillar that asks one question before any of the others can be answered: do I have the energy to live my life to the fullest? Health is wealth, and it has to be prioritized, because it is often the first thing to go.

How we define Power

As the saying goes, "A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one." At optml, we aim to live the best, most vital healthspan available to us, with "healthspan" defined as the number of years you live free from chronic disease, severe pain, and functional decline.

So we break power down into: health, sleep, diet, exercise, and recovery.

Health

The first part of health is preventative care.

In a research on bowel cancer, around 90 percent of those diagnosed at stage 1 survive at least five years, versus around 10 percent of those diagnosed at stage 4. Same disease, same decade, same health service; the only difference is when it was found. And the World Health Organization estimates that 46 percent of adults with hypertension do not know they have it — a condition with no symptoms until a stroke. A check-up is not a formality. It is the only way to learn the things your body will not tell you until it is (too) late.

If you can, get your family medical history so you can prevent (as early as possible) or delay, heart, brain, or lung conditions that run in the family. Then, we recommend getting bloodwork done regularly to develop a baseline and monitor it closely.

Preventative care also includes regular dentist visits, massages if you need them, and meditation for mental health.

Sleep

Anecdotally, we know that sleep is important — too many nights of not-enough-sleep and we start to feel groggy and short-tempered. And studies show the same thing: short-term sleep deprivation causes our attention to lapse, and be slower and less accurate.

But it also shows up in how long you live. Habitually short sleepers have a 12 percent higher risk of death. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults sleep seven or more hours a night on a regular basis.

So we recommend treating your sleep time like a meeting: a recurring event that starts at the same time every night and ends at the same time every morning (including weekends). We also recommend charging your phone somewhere other than your bedside table, and ideally not looking at it an hour before bed.

Diet

Diet can be a touchy topic, but our energy comes directly from the fuel we put into our bodies. So, while different foods work differently for everyone, we recommend eating mostly real food, and as little ultra-processed food as you can manage ("ultra-processed" defined as products made mostly from industrial ingredients and additives, rather than foods you could recognize in a kitchen).

In pooled analyses covering almost ten million people, researchers found ultra-processed food consistently linked to worse outcomes across 32 measures of health, with the strongest evidence for death from any cause, death from heart disease, and common mental disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Try cooking one more meal at home this week than last week. Build your plate around things that were recently alive: vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, eggs, fish, meat, and whole grains. Try a paleo or whole-foods diet just to see how you feel.

Exercise

Movement is the best-evidenced part of Power, and even a little goes a long way. Researchers found that the most sedentary quarter of a group of middle-aged and older adults who wore activity monitors were more than 2.5x likelier to die, compared to the most active quarter. 2.5 times!

Furthermore, muscle-strengthening activity went with 10 to 17 percent lower risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, with most of the benefit reached at 30 to 60 minutes a week.

It's good for the mind as well. High physical activity went with 17 percent lower odds of developing depression.

The World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines put the target at:

• 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 to 150 vigorous,
• plus muscle-strengthening on two or more days.

If you are starting from nothing, schedule in a 20 min walk before your first meeting (or after your last), three days a week. Then, after a month, add in 30 min short strength sessions on the other days.

Recovery

Recovery is the part of Power most people skip, because it looks like doing nothing. But recovery is when your body repairs and prepares you for the next thing.

We refer to recovery as both physical (rest days between hard sessions, a massage when your body asks for one), and mental (ten minutes of meditation to still your mind, detaching from the business of work). Rest sustains ambition.

We recommend planning gaps rather than hoping to find them. Schedule in an hour-long dinner where you're not allowed to talk or think about work. Recovery can also be done with Play.

What to watch out for

Without Power, we cannot truly live to our greatest potential, and yet, because it doesn't have deadlines, Power loses negotiations with every pillar that does. Work will chase you, friends will call, but the body might never speak up.

To prevent that, we have to put it on the calendar, not just in a to-do list.

The other way Power fails is by being planned too big. The New Year's Resolution, with five gym sessions a week, a new diet, a new bedtime, all at once, lasts eleven days (at best). A study in 2015 found that at least four sessions a week for six weeks was the minimum associated with the gym becoming a habit, and consistency and simplicity predicted whether the habit developed. So we take it one week at a time, making it consistent and simple.

How we prioritize Power

Here is how Power gets planned in optml, following one example the whole way through.

The rating. On a Sunday in June, Dana, a manager with two kids and a full calendar, rates her Optml Six. Power is rated a 4: she's tired by 3pm, hasn't done anything that counts as exercise since spring, and hasn't had a physical in 5 years.

The vision and the year-long goal. On Power's card in optml she writes the vision, three to five years out and in her own words: "I move most days, sleep seven hours most nights, and have the energy at 6pm that I have at 10am." Under it, the goal for the year, written so she could check it next September: "Three workouts a week, seven hours of sleep most nights, and every screening due for my age done."

The quarter. For every pillar, optml supports multiple quarterly goals, so the year's goal breaks down into this quarter's: "By September 30, physical and bloodwork done; walked twenty minutes three mornings a week for twelve weeks; lights-out at 10:30pm on weeknights." From now on the card shows whether the quarter is on pace.

The first Sunday Check-In. In Weekly Capture she empties her head: call the clinic, find walking shoes, walk Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, lights-out 10:30pm, ask Mom about the family history. Each of these items falls under Power. She stars two must-dos, the clinic call and the first walk, then drags everything into the week beside her existing calendar events, in Power's color: a fifteen-minute block Tuesday at 12:15 to call the clinic, the walk at 7:10 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as a recurring action, lights-out as a recurring 10:30pm block.

Following the day. On Monday, the Today tab shows the walk first and she ticks it off. On Wednesday, a 7am call lands on top of the walk; she drags the block to Thursday rather than deleting it. Tuesday's call gets the physical booked for June 24, and the appointment goes on the calendar in Power's color, with a block the evening before to remember to fast for the bloodwork.

The next Sunday. The Weekly Overview shows Power: two hours planned, one hour twenty completed. Two walks happened, one moved, lights-out held four nights out of seven. She rates Power again: a 5. The walks stay, lights-out moves five minutes earlier, and a Saturday hike with a friend goes in, which counts for Power and People at once.

The end of the quarter. In the quarterly reflection she scores the goal. The physical is done, and two numbers came back above average, so she has follow-ups scheduled. She hit all three walks for ten of the twelve weeks, and lights-out most weeknights. Call it 80 percent. Next quarter's goal builds on it: the walks stay, and two short strength sessions join them. The year goal is on track, and Power is a 6.

The year. In the annual review, she asks whether Power still deserves the most effort or whether it is now maintenance while another pillar takes the lead. That is the whole loop: rate, name, plan the quarter, plan the week, follow the day, look back on Sunday, adjust. Nothing heroic. One pillar, one goal, hours with a time.

Power is the first of The Optml Six. Its neighbors are Play and People, which comes next. The annual review is where you decide how much weight it carries this year.