Blood Work, Brain Power & Controlling Stress

🌱 HEALTHY

You Need To Get Your Blood Work Done (Even When You Feel Fine)

Most people only get blood tests when something's wrong. Doctor's orders after you've been feeling off for weeks, or that annual physical you keep putting off.

But I've learned one blood test tells you almost nothing useful.

It's like taking a single photo and calling it a movie. You get a snapshot, but you miss the story. Are your levels trending up or down? Is that number normal for you, or is it a red flag?

You gain real information when you start tracking over time.

Getting blood work every six months gives you something way more valuable than a one-time result. It gives you your personal baseline and shows you the trends.

Maybe your vitamin D drops every winter. Maybe your cholesterol creeps up when you're stressed. Maybe that weird fatigue correlates with low iron levels you never would have caught otherwise.

This stuff matters more when you're constantly changing time zones, climates, and food sources. Your body's dealing with different stressors than someone sitting in the same office chair every day.

The other benefit? You catch problems before they become expensive problems.

Standard doctor visits usually stick to basic panels. I use Medichecks for more detailed testing, but most areas have private clinics or services that offer comprehensive bloodwork if you want to dig deeper.

Takeaway: Book blood work twice a year, same tests each time. Track the results in a simple spreadsheet. Your future self will thank you when patterns start showing up that single tests would have missed completely.

🪙 WEALTHY

Buy Back Your Brain

You're spending hours each week on tasks a teenager could do.

Data entry. Scheduling posts. Responding to basic emails. Formatting documents. Managing calendars.

None of it requires your actual skill set. None of it moves your income forward. But it eats up mental bandwidth and time you could be using on work that actually pays.

The math is simple. If you make $50 an hour and spend 5 hours a week on tasks you could outsource for $15 an hour, you're losing money by doing it yourself.

More importantly, you're losing focus. Those mindless tasks fragment your attention and leave you drained for the work that actually matters.

Takeaway: List everything you did last week that didn't require your specific expertise. Pick one task and find someone else to do it. Buy back your brain for the work only you can do.

📚 AND WISE

The Right Message at the Right Time

"Stress comes from not taking action over something you can have control over." I found this written on a scrap piece of paper this week, mixed in with a bunch of old notes. I think Jeff Bezos said it originally, but honestly I'm not sure.

What I do know is that I obviously liked it enough to write it down at some point, then completely forgot about it. I was stressed about something specific when I rediscovered it. Had been for weeks.

The kind of stress that sits in your chest and follows you around, even when you're trying to focus on other things.

The quote hit me because I realized the stress wasn't going away because I wasn't doing anything about it. I wasn't taking control of the situation, which meant the stress kept building.

Once I actually dealt with it head on, the stress started fading. Not because the problem disappeared overnight, but because I was finally doing something instead of just letting it fester.

Most stress isn't really about the situation itself. It's about sitting in limbo, knowing something needs to be addressed but avoiding it anyway. The uncertainty and inaction create more anxiety than actually facing the problem would.

Takeaway: Look at what's stressing you out right now. Chances are it's something you could take action on but haven't yet. The stress might be telling you where to focus your energy.