Disclaimer: This is not medical advice; it is just my opinion.

About

Philosophy

So, to put it plainly… Tracking your health doesn’t mean shit if you aren’t actively trying to be healthy in the first place. This guide is meant to be a comprehensive guide on how to be healthy. We’ll focus on the major building blocks of a healthy lifestyle, in no particular order:

• Sleeping well
• Eating well
• Staying active (physically)
• Socializing (and forming genuine bonds)
• Being mindful (and managing stress)
• Maintaining yourself (mind and body)
• Controlling your habits (good and bad)
• Forming systems (that last)
• Being proactive (vs. reactive)

Note that this isn’t just about the basics - eating, sleeping, exercising. We’re trying to form a solid foundation from which to build everything else on, from being a good student / holding a stable job to clearing up enough time to try something new, and having the systems in place to do that new thing consistently (so not just a new year’s resolution). I almost called this “A Guide to Life”, but it’s not that broad and would be impossible to cover in one article. With that being said, this entire wiki together will hopefully be a full guide to life one day… :)

Refer to A Comprehensive Health Tracking Guide, which was written before this one, for details on how we’re approaching these guides.

References

Tons of people have made tons of amazing guides on healthy living already! The tips here are pretty much all summarized from other websites for personal reference / convenience. With that being said, I’ll link relevant stuff in each section for attribution and as a more detailed reference.

Timeliness

This guide was created in April 2023, but this type of advice doesn’t really change much. So, this stuff will probably stay relevant for a lifetime :)

Sleeping Well

Good quality sleep is essential for EVERYTHING else in life.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here, so I’d recommend downloading Sleep Cycle and signing up for their 2 week “Sleep School” email program. You don’t need to use their app - though I do think it’s useful - but their sleep school emails are really good!

One very important note: The idea of 90-minute sleep cycles should be essentially ignored. Yes, it might make you feel more alert when you initially wake up. However, your brain doesn’t recover in 90-minute increments: Sleeping for 30 minutes longer than you otherwise would’ve will help you recover more, even if you might feel worse (or better!) at first when waking up. So, unless it’s a power nap or something similar, forget about the 90-minute stuff. Always try to maximize the number of hours slept overall (the recommendation is 7-9, but we should aim for 8-9 or even 8-10).

Eating Well

This section is in a separate article, linked here.

Staying Active

This section is in a separate article, linked here.

Socializing

Friendship

I’m focusing specifically on forming genuine bonds with others - friendship! - since the general act of socializing doesn’t require much of a guide. It’s easier said than done, but you need to get out of your comfort zone, go to events, and talk with people.

For friendships, I discuss this in a separate article, linked here/

Being Mindful

Meditation

You’ve undoubtably heard about the benefits of meditation, so I’ll skip that part. Again, consistency is key! So let’s look for apps/websites that make consistency easy.

The Best

Headspace

Balanced Minds

Maintaining Yourself

Brain Training

Purpose

Ok, so this doesn’t immediately fall into the typical healthy living category. But this is important! This is a method to exercise your brain. Now, according to this article, learning something new every day has more benefits than brain training games. Also, brain training only has a positive effect if you’re making mistakes - this means you’re being challenged, which is what causes growth. But with the right usage, brain training apps do seem to provide a moderate boost to your brain’s abilities, although the evidence is still somewhat mixed. Definitely better than playing general video games on your phone though… ;)

So which apps are fun and effectively train your brain?

The Best

Peak

Cost: $34.99 per year

This one’s good in all aspects. It’s fun and challenges your brain (hard to level up and play the higher ranks). A great choice for general mobile gaming, instead of… well… you know… Genshin. Or either of the Clash games.

The games are a bit unrealistic - pretty much none of them directly apply to real life - but hey, isn’t that the point of gaming? You can always train your brain IRL by going to places or learning new things, but when you want to game… try Peak!

What We Considered

Neuronation

Cost: $57.99 per year

Fun and really challenging! This app is like the midline between fun and relevant to real life. It also trains you at your limit, so it’s a great choice as well.

But. It is quite expensive. Too expensive for its features, I would say.

BrainHQ

Cost: $94.99 per year (or $13.99 per month)

Amazing for targeted skill training. Has the best people skills exercises out there (think listening attentively in a conversation, remembering faces and/or facts about people, etc.). Lets you customize your training (not much guidance though) and trains at your limit.

This app is really costly though. You could get this if there’s something that really stands out as useful, and it certainly is a useful app. But for me personally, it’s out of my price range for a brain training app. :/

Elevate

It takes too long to level up in game difficulty, so you’re never really challenging your brain. Plus the review sessions don’t work, because they’re not gamified at all.

Lumosity

Games are too plain. The challenge level is decent, but it’s quite expensive ($59.99 per year), and I couldn’t see myself (or really anyone) committing to this app for the long term.

Impulse

It’s too plain. Obviously the devs tried to make the games as easy to code as possible. I doubt there is scientific evidence backing this one up. Also the games are too easy and difficulty goes up very slowly.

Habits and Systems

This section is covered by a separate article, linked here.

Last updated: 04 April 2023

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