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One of the rules I read each morning could have saved me three years: don't force it. In 1846 Peter Panum found the old people of the Faroe Islands stayed healthy through a measles outbreak, because their bodies kept a record of the last one. Your rules for living work the same way, but only when you remember them.
Show Notes
One of the rules I read each morning could have saved me three years: don't force it. In 1846 Peter Panum found the old people of the Faroe Islands stayed healthy through a measles outbreak, because their bodies kept a record of the last one. Your rules for living work the same way, but only when you remember them.
Featuring: Peter Panum, George Santayana
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Chapters:
(00:00) Santayana on repeating the past
(00:06) Don't force it, the three-year rule
(00:25) Peter Panum and the Faroe Islands measles outbreak
(00:46) Rules for living as records
(00:56) Focus on what you control
(01:09) Collect your rules and reread them
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What is Dru's Notes?
One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
One of the rules I read each morning could have saved me three years: don't force it.
I learned it from a relationship I should not have been in.
What's forced, eventually, falls apart. Now when something feels unsustainable, I stop pushing.
That relationship made me immune to others like it.
In 1846, a doctor named Peter Panum went to the Faroe Islands during a measles outbreak. Most of the islanders came down with it.
The last outbreak was 65 years before. The old people who had measles back then stayed healthy.
Since part of the immune system keeps a record of the germs it fights off, their bodies knew how to fight measles.
Your rules for living are records too.
But they protect you only when you remember them.
I tend to forget my rules, so I read them each morning and most nights.
Most of what I worry about is out of my control.
Roughly 80% of my anxiety comes from forgetting one rule: focus on what you control.
When I remember the rule, I do my part and stop there.
Collect your rules. Then reread them before you make the same mistake again.
Wisdom is prevention.
What forgotten lessons could you write down and reread?