The Daily Habits That Add Years to Your Life— and Life to Your Years
- Feb 6
- 3 min read
By Dr. Jon Stewart Hao Dy
(1) Daily habits that extend vitality
Get adequate rest and sleep: This means 7-9 hours of restful sleep per night helps restore your cognitive and bodily functions that will optimize your mind and body for the rest of the day. Ensure that when you are in bed, you are in bed only for sleep and not doing anything else. This ensures that your sleep efficiency (time spent in bed over time spent in bed sleeping) is at its highest. Additionally, during the day (especially in the mid-afternoon when melatonin levels rise up again), you can take a short 15-20 minute power nap that will easily restore the energy that you will need to finish the rest of your day.
Prioritize nutrition over empty calories: This means that one needs to obtain the essential macronutrients and micronutrients to maintain optimal health. DASH (Dietary approaches to stop hypertension) and Mediterranean diets are the best examples for these nutrition-rich diets. If this is difficult, then I recommend dividing your plate into 4 equal parts, 2/4 of which are allotted for fruits and vegetables, 1/4 is for fish/whole meat, 1/4 is for carbohydrates. At all costs, do not consume food items and beverages that are excessively high in salt and refined sugars as these contribute nothing to nutrition and only to empty calories.
Make exercise easy and accessible: It doesn't require going to the gym but by simply taking purposeful brisk walks around your home, garden or your neighborhood for 30-60 minutes/day (adding up to 210-420 minutes/week), exercise becomes a habit and easy to get accustomed to. Do not make exercise so difficult that you mind and body are overwhelemed and intimated by the mere thought of it. While the ideal step count has varied over the years, a realistic goal of 7,000-10,000 steps per day is reasonable (I personally do at least 15,000 steps/day that I combine with taking 60-minute walks in the morning and 60-minute walks in the night after all my work is done). The result of this type of consistent movement and exercise is better mood, energy, focus, better cognitive reserve and protection against non-communicable diseases (stroke, heart attack, diabetes).
(2) Balancing high achievement with self-care
Set a definite time and amount of energy for a task: While everyone lives "busy lives", do not be overwhelmed by the situational powers that you can control. You can define the time and allocate your energy accordingly to any task that you need to accomplish for the day. This includes intentionally allotted time and energy for self-care, family and career. Your self-care does not need to be remembered only when you have a time surplus. Instead, one should really allot a part of one's day (and essentially one's life) to self-care. If we take care of ourselves, our body and ourselves will also take care of us.
Say no to hurry: Do not just simply be in a state of reactivity but instead say no to all the hurry that you are exposed to everyday. Take the time to always pause and reflect before responding to an issue at hand. Again, you have the power over your situation and not the other way around. One should always be responsive and never reactive to a situation.
(3) Holistic practice for mental clarity:
Focus one thing at a time: In a digital age where multi-tasking is glorified, focus and attentiveness become scarce by the minute. I apply this everyday to my life and to everything that I have to achieve. Focus on one thing at a time and let nothing else distract you. When you are in that state, you are fully immersed with what you have to do and accomplish far greater things by focusing on one thing at a time rather than multitasking and essentially achieving something that falls short of your expectations.
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