5-Reps: Work expands, a fruit salad, and what to optimize for with workouts

Here’s what’s new this week.

Obvious Choice Podcast Episodes:

*If you only listen to one, make it this one.

2 Fitness Tips

1.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to fitness. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg.

2.

Optimize for workout proximity. The closer it is to your home, more convenient it is to do, and better it fits into your schedule, the more often you’ll do it.

2 Business Nuggets

1.

“In her book More Work for Mother, the historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows that when housewives first got access to “labor-saving” devices like washing machines and vacuum cleaners, no time was saved at all, because society’s standards of cleanliness simply rose to offset the benefits; now that you could return each of your husband’s shirts to a spotless condition after a single wearing, it began to feel like you should, to show how much you loved him. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955.”

– Oliver Burkeman

2.

Information is knowing that fruits have seeds.

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.

Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad.

You gain knowledge from others, wisdom from experience.

1 Quote to Consider

“They were tired, but it was an honest tiredness, the kind that comes when you know you have put everything you have into a project.” – Gabrielle Zevin