I am trying to live longer

A journey of giving up the control of my life to algorithms.

Context

I wanted to write about longevity for a while and since recently I got myself a whoop it seems like now is the perfect time to talk about all things that I have been doing over the last 2 years in my journey of exploring longevity.

Hobbies

Back in 2024, I discovered hobbies.

Yes lol. I did. I tried cooking, running, working out, reading, making content and probably 15 other things. That's when this tarat.hobbies instagram was born.

You can say that I had a lot of free time on my hands and I wanted to fill some of it with things that I find interesting. So initially I did whatever came to my mind but after a few months, some of them disappeared naturally.

I didn't actually intentionally ever sit down and decided that I want to pursue running or reading or working out or anything... I let things happen naturally at first.

Then I assessed how those hobbies impacted my life. Some of them had more positive impact than others, and I leaned into those a bit more.

The strategy was simple. I'd give every hobby a month of daily practise and at the end of the month... I will decided how it made me feel physically and mentally.

I ran everyday for 30 days. I sketched everyday for 30 days. I read everyday for 30 days. I made content everday for 30 days. etc etc. you get the point :)

After practising those hobbies consistently for months, a couple of them turned into habits

Habits

What's the difference between a hobby and a habit ?

Well for me, it's that a habit is something that I will mindfully try to do more often that not.

For example... Playing Piano is a hobby. So I do it when I feel like. But running is a habit... and I try to do it more often than not.

When I finally settled on a few habits. I practised habits for months. 6 months atleast.

Then I took a step back. Tried to look at the bigger picture. The superset of everything.

• I liked working out because it made me feel better about how I look.

• I liked running because it was cool and not a lot of people I know did it at the moment and so I was the cool guy.

• I liked cooking because that made me mindful of what I am eating and in turn that helped me run better and lift better.

• I liked reading because not only it made me look cooler but also helped me learn new things about life

etc.

When I assessed these habits of mine... I realised the benefits of doing them were far more than skipping any of those things. But I was still skipping them sometimes.

So that's when I turned my habits into Systems

Systems

What are systems?

In the most simple terms, systems are functions in my life that take objective situations as input and give a plan of action as output.

Objective here is the key. Systems don't care about how I feel subjectively.

Sytems don't care about following things for example:

• If I am feeling bored
• If I had an arguement with my girlfriend
• If it's a little cold today
• If my friends are going on a very fun late night outing

etc.

Systems don't care about feelings. They care about objectives

• Am I physically hurt?
• Is there an emergency?

(i cannot think of more examples and that's the whole point of this exercise)

As soon as the function outputs an action -> I do it.

For example, I workout in the morning. 5 days a week. No excuses.

I was on a trip yesterday? So I feel I can miss a workout today? NO

I have a lot of work to do today... so I feel I can miss a workout today? NO

get it?

Systems bring out the best of your habits

And they are not easy to implement... and I won't even recommend having more than 3 or 4 of them at once.

Here's mine btw...

• I will workout everyday in the morning
• I will not drink any coffee after 9:00AM
• I will not eat anything after 3:00PM
• I will go to bed by 10:30PM

What's next?

So you figured out some systems for your life. Where do you go from here?

I'd say stick with them... as long as you can. And if you really must take it a step further... Turn those systems into an Algorithms

Algorithms

This is the part that I am exploring at the moment.

In those 2 years of experimenting with hobbies, habits and systems... One thing was super clear to me.

I am no better than anybody else... when I listen to my feelings... I might not want to go for a run, I might not want to workout that day, I might want to eat something sweet or I might just want to spend extra 20mins to complete that movie tonight.

But I don't listen to myself anymore

I listen to an algorithm. It tells me what to do. And I do it.

And when you give so much power to an algorithm.. you'd hope it's a good one. And I am betting on whoop for now.

It tracks my sleep, recovery and how much strain I am putting on my body everyday. And by tracking these things... It augments those systems and habits that I built for myself.

I already workout everyday irrespective of how I am feeling... so where does whoop come in?

Yes it's true that my systems are in place and working well for me... But there a lot of room for improvement in them.

Like when I am in the gym everyday, I don't put in the same effort always. Sometimes when I don't feel like working out... I put less effort. I still go to the gym irrespective of how I feel... but I am putting less effort that day.

And for most of you this is already too much but for me... I love hyper optimizations and after practising systems for so long I have no blockers in following those systems anymore. I have now accepted them sooo deeply that those feelings affect me way less now. And so that also meant I was stuck now in this for a while.

And I wanted to get out. Algorithms are the way out for me.

I want numbers. Real numbers of how well I slept based on scientifically proven things like my RHR, my HRV etc etc... So that this algorithm can tell me that you are ready to go all out today even if you feel like you're not.

On the other hand... It would help me avoid burnouts. Cause my systems have a big flaw. They do not care about my feelings.

But feelings are important

(if you can filter them from noise)

On a everyday basis... A lot of what you're feeling is just noise. It's you're brain tricking you into doing the easy thing. And that is holding you back. So step 1 was learning to cut off feelings from your actions.

Then step 2 is to figure out what's important. To cut down the noise and re-learn how to listen to your feelings (through an algorithm).

Conclusion

There's a too many variables and too many things happening at one time because our human body is a work of art!! And I am not super good with handling so much data and so far my whoop has been doing an amazing job at helping me understand those things. Trends. Trends of how things are changing when I change my systems.

And I think this is super valuable and worthy of my time.

So I am gonna continue thinking about Algorithms for now and I hope at the end I find more answers to how to live longer.

(why do i wanna live longer? well that's a completely new topic and we can't cover all in one blog right?)