Hacker News Reader

Comment by phantom_oracle | Hacker News Reader

Micro-managing your life to this extent is probably why all dystopian books/movies involve some well-meaning technical person who thinks we should be doing XYZ to prolong our lives.

While these things may (anecdotally) prolong your life, does anybody really want to be 102 and having to be nursed for all the basic needs like bathing yourself?

Combine this article with the many(many) others that tell you how to micro-manage all aspects of your life(to be "super productive") and you instantly find that once you start to deviate from your steady-state of micro-management, your worry skyrockets.

View on HN

I never understood perspectives akin to "why would I want to add years to my life when I'll just be old anyways?". I think many people don't realize that if you take care of your body (especially eating well and movement) you not only extend your lifespan but your quality of life as well in the later years.

Anecdotally, my parents exercise regularly and take decent care of themselves compared to their friends (I even got them juicing regularly). You can tell the difference because most of their friends of the same age are dying or living a severely reduced quality of life while my dad still plays hockey regularly and my mom exercises daily. Both have very few health issues (other than a bit of high blood pressure).

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's kind of sad to me that we've become so used to the idea that old age automatically = shitty when I think there is so much that we could be doing that would mean we could live long lives AND still have autonomy and comfort. I definitely agree that if you micromanage things to a level where you are just stressing or orthorexic that's not good, but I don't think that's the only approach if you want to live a long, healthy life.

What age are your parents? I find it hard to believe that you can live past 80 years with a high quality of life, barring having 1 in 100 age-related genetics

they are almost 70. I think the Blue Zones[1] make a pretty strong case for groups of people living with similarly healthy lifestyles all living longer than the average and with better quality of life. I just think it's pretty reasonable to conclude that there will be a difference between the bodies of people who take care of themselves over their lifetime vs. those who don't.

We have people living longer and longer (I think the last person was 122?!) and it doesn't really make sense that you reach an age like 80 and everybody, no matter their choices, all end up similarly unhealthy and in pain with reduced mobility.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone

My great aunt golfed until about 95, danced, read books, went to a cafe every day. She bad a wonderful life and was very happy right until the end.

80 is way too young for the kind of physical and mental degeneration you’re envisioning to happen automatically.

Now most people don’t eat well, aren’t especially mobile, will be quite overweight by 60+ with multiple chronic health conditions, lots of muscle loss, etc. This is obviously common. My point is most of those conditions are lifestyle conditions and are not automatic features of aging.

I lived in BKK for over a year and I checked the AQI like weather. I bought a reliable pm2 reader. Air filtering system for my house and wore a mask religiously outside. The air was so bad that I began to get very ill before i started to employ these 'Micro-managements'

I'm not understanding why you feel this is micro-management. People constantly "micro-manage" their life in far more detailed ways than this - what you eat, what you wear, where you sit, all kinds of trivial decisions made minute-by-minute as you live. Being aware of one more environmental factor and making some decisions based on it hardly feels like a huge additional burden on my life.

Yes, if anything, we should be macro-managing. The environmental air quality that we incur on ourselves is the largest factor we will have to deal with in life, why not start there? Why are we tolerating a society predicated on burning fuel to push two tonnes of steel around for almost any kind of human travel when there are so many cleaner alternatives?

In this specific instance, the solution is very low cost and low effort, so the ROI is probably good.

Also, in general, the later years of your life when you've gained experience and wisdom are quite valuable to the world, it's not a bad idea to maximize those.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com