Volume 117
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things” - Rainer Rilke
I’m a big fan of Cal Newport, as frequent Supersetters will know. Not in a “quote him in the newsletter every week” kind of way, but in a “his ideas actually changed how I work” way. His books Slow Productivity and A World Without Email were two of those rare reads that forced me to take a hard look at my calendar, and admit most of it is noise.
This week’s Superset is built around an action plan from a recent Youtube video of his.
Newport laid out a simple, actionable plan to fight what everyone’s now calling “brain rot”, which is really just a polite way of saying we’ve trained ourselves to think worse over time. I break that down into something you can actually use.
I also included a few no-BS principles for your summer cut (because starving yourself and hoping for the best isn’t a strategy), plus the next personal development book I’m diving into, if you want to read along.
Let’s have a week.
Superset of the Week:
Brain - A Cognitive Fitness Plan to Combat Brain Rot
Cal Newport is the modern pioneer when it comes to practical guides on improving focus and getting more done. His perspective often comes as a refreshing take on our increasingly digital world and the difficulties that come with operating in this ecosystem.
In a recent YouTube video, he took five of his most practical tips to combatting “brain rot”, so that we can take the task head on of improving our focus and becoming more productive. Chances are you reading this have noticed yourself that you may struggle to recall a request that was recently made. Or you read a page and have trouble recalling what your eyes just ingested. Our phones aren’t helping, and this five step plan is simple and actionable. I have summarized the primary takeaways below, but encourage you watch the video here too. This summary was longer than my ideal brain section for the week, so we will make it the bulk of this week’s newsletter:
1. Read Every Day
The Idea: Just as physical fitness requires a base layer of activity like walking 10,000 steps, cognitive fitness requires a daily base of reading. Reading rewires the brain for "deep reading processes," which harness multiple brain regions to understand complexity and nuance. This practice trains your "mind’s eye" to stay fixed on an internal target rather than just reacting to external stimuli.
How to Take Action: Start with 15–20 pages a day using materials you are genuinely excited about, such as genre fiction or romance novels, to build the habit. Gradually increase to 30–50 pages and aim to make one out of every three books a "hard" book (sophisticated non-fiction or challenging literature) to increase your intellectual endurance.
2. Don’t Avoid Writing
The Idea: If reading is cardiovascular exercise, writing is the "intense gym workout" that builds demonstrable cognitive strength. Writing is difficult because it requires an "improbable symphony" of brain regions - including those for memory, organization, and narration - to work together.
How to Take Action: Adopt the identity of someone who likes to write by volunteering for writing tasks at work. Use a journal or something adjacent to force yourself to organize internal thoughts into clear text. Use the 10-minute rule: recognize that the first 10 minutes are the most painful as your brain coordinates its regions, but the resistance will fade once you find your rhythm.
3. Go on Thinking Walks
The Idea: Dedicate time to turning your attention inward while moving through the world, free from digital diversion. Thinking walks help you regain comfort with self-reflection and discernment. By focusing on a single professional or personal problem without a phone, you practice operating in an internal world of abstract thoughts.
How to Take Action: Go for a walk several times a week without your phone. If you must bring it, keep it buried in a bag so it is inconvenient to check. At the end of the walk, journal your insights to help clarify and structure the thoughts you were wrestling with.
4. Plug in Your Phone
The Idea: Reject the "constant companion model" of smartphone usage by physically separating yourself from the device while at home. The habit of always having a phone is a business model designed to "frack" your attention for engagement. By keeping your phone plugged in a fixed location, like the kitchen, you eliminate the constant battle against the short-term motivation system that constantly urges you to check for pings.
How to Take Action: Choose a central location to keep your phone plugged in while at home. If you are worried about missing calls, turn the ringer on and tell others that you do not keep the phone on your person. For a more advanced approach, remove any social media or attention-grabbing apps to make the phone itself less desirable.
5. Learn a Hard Skill
The Idea: Engage in a disciplined pursuit that requires intense focus and provides clear feedback on your progress. Mastering a difficult skill, whether it be an instrument, a sport like golf, or a craft like knitting, trains your long-term motivation system. This system can eventually learn to "squash" the short-term system's desire for quick hits of dopamine from things like social media.
How to Take Action: Select a skill that improves through deliberate practice. Commit to a regular, disciplined schedule rather than practicing only when you feel like it. Seek out coaching or peer feedback to provide the clear signals of improvement your long-term motivation system needs to stay engaged.
Body - Don’t Neglect the Weight Room As You Cut for Summer
If fat loss is the goal, lifting weights is not optional.
Most people associate lifting weights with putting on muscle, and cardio with losing weight. And while on the surface this is true, cardio helps you burn calories today, but lifting helps change the machine that burns calories tomorrow.
Muscle is metabolically active tissue, meaning it requires energy to maintain. The more lean muscle you build or preserve, the more calories your body burns at rest. Not dramatically overnight, but enough to matter when compounded over weeks and months.
The bigger win during a calorie deficit is preservation. When you eat less, your body can pull energy from both fat and muscle. Resistance training sends a clear signal to “keep the muscle, burn the fat.” That is how you lose weight while still looking strong, athletic, and healthy instead of just smaller.
There is also the afterburn effect, which simply means your body continues using extra energy after a hard strength session as it repairs muscle and restores balance.
If you’re looking for one, here is the minimum effective dose:
Lift 3 days per week for 35–45 minutes.
Focus on the basics: squat or lunge, hinge, push, pull, and carry. Pick 4–6 movements. Do 3 sets each. Use a weight that feels challenging but controlled.
You do not need to be a bodybuilder, and you certainly don’t have to worry about putting on size if your calories are in line with your goal. You need consistency, progressive overload, and enough effort to make your body adapt.
Summer bodies are not built by starving yourself and doing random cardio until you hate your life. They are built by eating with discipline, walking more, and lifting heavy things on purpose.
Book - “The Meaning of Your Life” by Arthur Brooks
I’m picking up The Meaning of Your Life this week, and if you’ve been in one of those “what am I actually optimizing for?” headspaces lately, this feels like the right one to read together.
The author, Arthur Brooks, isn’t just another voice in the personal development world. He’s a Harvard professor, former president of the American Enterprise Institute, and someone who has spent years studying happiness, purpose, and what actually makes a life feel meaningful, not just successful on paper.
What I appreciate about Brooks is that he doesn’t approach this like a philosopher sitting on a mountain. He writes like someone who understands ambition, career pressure, and the constant pull to achieve more… and is asking a better question inside of it.
Not “how do I win?”
But “what actually matters when I do?”
If you’re building your career, your body, your routines, this is the layer that makes all of it worth it. Otherwise, you risk getting everything you thought you wanted and still feeling like something’s missing.
I’ll share takeaways as I go, but if you want to read alongside me, grab a copy this week.
Feels like one of those books that hits a little deeper if you catch it at the right time.
Breakthrough of the Week - GoodReads
I mention this app about once a quarter in this newsletter, and for good reason. Our phones are full of apps that add little value to our lives, and this one is different.
GoodReads is a social space to track your reading, and follow what your friends are reading as well. From discovering books, to tracking progress on your yearly reading goals, GoodReads is a great free app to help improve your reading routine.