A Daily Checklist to Upgrade Your Life

Aristotle once said: “Virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.”

Will Durant, an American historian and philosopher translated it as the much more commonly used: “We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

A problem when we try to apply this to our health in our daily lives is that we have information overload. It’s really hard to know where to start and how we can possibly incorporate all these disparate elements into our day.

My hope is with this daily checklist, I can simplify and streamline some of that process for you. These are the core elements that I personally like to make sure are part of my day, and furthermore they underlie all the training, movement and mobility work, and nutrition work that I do with my clients.

In no particular order:

8,000-10,000 steps per day

Getting this many steps per day is a great way to ensure you have a good level of Non-Exercise Activity, a significant source of calories burnt and a crucial health marker.

It also helps to power your Lymphatic system which is crucial for fighting infections in the body and helping to balance our levels of inflammation. Think of every step as activating a little pump that keeps your lymphatic system flowing and keeps your body in good working order.

There are tons of other aspects of walking this much that aid your physical and mental health. For the purposes of keeping this article brief, we’ll just say that more activity is better than less, so get what you can when you can.

One hour of outdoor time

Spending time outside does a ton of things for us.

Outdoor time causes increased immune function through higher white blood cell count. Your immune system is triggered by being in natural biodiverse environments and upregulates as a result.

Being outside is predictably associated with better mood, and observational studies also show that time outside yields better memory and better attention span as well.

Similarly, we can see lower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure, lower cortisol levels, and lower heart rate variability for people in natural settings. These are all metrics that would be associated with a less stressed person. 

And these effects actually happen pretty rapidly. If you go outside and sit in sunlight and stare at trees, your body will move in these directions pretty immediately, but an even more potent shift seems to happen after about 20:00 outside.

The good news is, if you’re getting your aforementioned steps in, you’re probably already getting enough time outside!

8-10 minutes of targeted movement and mobility work

You should be able and willing to do some basic maintenance on your body. Don’t overthink this one and don’t be heroic with the amount of time you commit to this. If you don’t do it regularly already, cap your time at 10:00. Prove that you can be consistent first. 

To make this easy, bust out a foam roller before bed to help wind down, or sneak in some quick stretches into your morning routine or immediately post workout. Try to pick something that feels like it has a big effect, and/or something that positively impacts a ROM that is either uncomfortable or feels very limited to you.

.7g of protein per pound of body weight.

Research and clinical evidence shows this is enough protein per day for a relatively active adult to rebuild the physical structures of their body. Put simply, this means a 200 pound individual should aim to consume at least 140g of protein per day.

This is a good minimum, but other factors might mean it would be advantageous for you to get more such as: higher activity level, being sick or immunocompromised. Studies also show that the older we get, the less readily our body will utilize the protein we eat, which means that we would want to be consuming more as we age.

800g of fruits and veggies

The idea here is to consume 800g of fruits and veggies aka produce per day. So for example if an orange weighs 100g, and a potato weighs 200g and so does an avocado, you could get there with something like two potatoes, an avocado, and two oranges. That’s 800 total grams of produce.

This much produce by weight in one day yields a diet that’s high enough in micronutrients (think vitamins, minerals, etc.) to support a well functioning body. Eating is also a zero-sum game. Meaning if you eat this much produce, you have less room for cookies. It can be that simple.

7 or more hours of sleep.

7 hours of sleep is what you could call a good baseline for sleep. It won’t win awards but it’s a good start. 8 hours (or more) of sleep is ideal for growth both physically and mentally. 

Remember though that we can always also focus on sleep quality, which is especially valuable when our phase of life makes it so that we can’t always control sleep quantity. 

All else equal, we want more quality and more quantity.

Spend time with people you care about.

Arguably the reason for staying healthy, right? Spend time cultivating meaningful relationships with people you care about and meeting new people as well. Not only could you argue that this is the point behind this whole extended conversation, but being around people you love actually makes you healthier as well!

Everything from less stress and improved mood to lower blood pressure and inflammation markers can result from having strong relationships with people you love. This is also the thing on this list I’m furthest from being an expert on, and am still very much figuring this part out for myself. 

The one piece of advice I will give is that you need to know yourself and know how you socialize in order to make optimal decisions. What I mean is that if you are introverted, you’re more likely to have deep, meaningful friendships than a more extroverted person. This is a good thing, but introverted people might also be more likely to pass on an opportunity to connect with friends.

Conversely an extroverted person might be more likely to have a large number of friendships, but they might tend to be a little more shallow. This is less than ideal as studies tend to show that a few very meaningful relationships have a significantly more powerful impact on our happiness than a lot of shallow ones.

Conclusion

The more days that you can consistently check these boxes, the better prepared for life you will be. Something I notice in my day to day interactions with my clients and just people in general is that they don’t have a very firm foundation to operate off of. They’re going through life with the equivalent of a car dashboard full of yellow and red lights. Check engine light on, low tire pressure, seatbelt off.

But instead of figuring out what’s wrong with the engine and how it’s fixed, it’s easier to be more concerned with the traffic. 

Put first things first in prioritizing how your body works. If we can check more of these boxes rather than less every day, you’ll be able to show up more in your day to do life for whatever you choose to do.