Health and Cognition
Aspiring Generalist is an Understandary project.
Health and Cognition
When our bodies are healthier, our brains work better.
The data on this is substantial and fairly uncontroversial, and existing work covers everything from exercise- to diet- to sleep- and psychology-related health.
In essence, the better we take care of ourselves, the more cognitive capacity and potency we have at our disposal. And yet, these focuses are often positioned as being oppositional or in contrast to each other: you're healthy and fit or you're studious and academically fixated—and never the twain shall meet.
Some of this perceived dichotomy, I suspect, stems from our cultural obsession with the flavor of archetyping we see throughout global culture.
Think about boy bands or teams of superheroes and you'll have a sense of what I mean: this one's the confident leader, this is the sensitive one, this one's got the smarts while this one's got the brawn.
It's remarkable how many of our cultural artifacts orbit around the truism that we're one thing or another, but never both: astrology, Myers-Briggs-style tests, Harry Potter Houses; this concept is everywhere.
Entire sitcom and prime time drama episodes revolve around the football player who wants to perform in their school's production of Shakespeare, or the nerd who starts working out and taking better physical care of themselves.
This is presented as a weird crossover—a norm-violation ripe for conflict—and as a consequence we may perceive this to be the case in real life, as well.
Thankfully, this truism is nonsense. We're multifaceted entities capable of being all sorts of things at once.
We're placed in boxes by companies keen to sell us things, and we're encouraged to join superficial tribes that categorize us based on what kind of music we listen to or logos we've got on our jeans.
But these divisions aren't destiny, and we're more than capable of being all the things we want to be if we ignore these synthetic subdivisions of humanity and recognize them as convenient labels for those who want us to shrug off our latent complexity in favor of identity groups they define and market and own.
So even if you don't currently think of yourself as someone who's fit and healthy, there's nothing stopping you from becoming that version of yourself, whatever those words might mean within the context of your biological specifics.
Similarly, even if you think of yourself as a go go go, always-on workaholic, there's nothing stopping you from rebalancing your lifestyle so you're able to get more sleep, feel less anxious and self-conscious, and tweak your sense and practice of productivity so you're more effective and efficient rather than burning yourself at both ends for professional points.
In general, anything we can do to improve our physical fitness, diet, psychological well-being, and sleep hygiene will be reflected in our capacity to think and create and do.
Generalism is not just about being exploratory and open to new skills and perspectives, it's also about becoming rounder, more stable individuals with the capacity to pursue all the things we find interesting, and the energy to generate endless quantities of curiosity and passion.
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