Red Meat + Cancer, AI Taking Our Jobs, Sunscreen, Market Crashes And A Trillionaire.
Hi all,
Something new today. Every week I absorb copious amounts of information on health, mindset, and finance through podcasts, newsletters, and research articles. I take notes, and thought some of you might find them interesting.
My “takeaways from the takeaways” are at the bottom. My personal notes about how the info applies to my life/business. Very selfish, I know. But I like getting a peek into what someone else is learning. If you do too, enjoy.
If you find anything interesting or have any questions, shoot me an email - solokasfocus@gmail.com
When someone's habits don't match their ambitions, trust the habits
Do your habits match your ambitions?
Most success comes from 50 small things moving in the same direction, not one big thing.
Source: Shane Parrish
High amounts of unprocessed red meat may increase risk of colorectal cancer
Processed red meat (bacon, sausage, hot dogs, deli meat) has a consistent link to colorectal cancer. The plausible mechanisms are nitrosamine formation, heme iron effects, and carcinogens from processing and high-heat cooking.
Unprocessed red meat shows a similar but weaker and more contested association.
Heme iron may be the driver. A controlled human feeding trial found an 8mg heme iron supplement raised fecal N-nitroso compounds compared with a 60g/day red-meat diet.
On amount: the common guideline (WCRF) caps unprocessed red meat at about 350 to 500g cooked per week, roughly 50 to 70g/day. Below 500g/week the colorectal signal looks small to negligible. The exact cutoff is debated, with some bodies setting 350g/week and some reanalyses finding no clear association under about 567g/week.
Source: Sigma Nutrition - #609: Unprocessed Red Meat & Cancer Risk
Tim Ferriss thinks AI is already killing how-to nonfiction, and it's only the start
His five-book catalog (all former #1 bestsellers) is on track to sell roughly 80% fewer print copies in 2026 than in 2022. The decline tracks the rise of ChatGPT and Claude: down 5% (2023), 13% (2024), 46% (2025), and a 57% run-rate so far in 2026.
Self-help print units fell 26% year over year in Q1 2026. He estimates the biggest names in the category are down 40 to 60%.
His theory: a how-to book is basically a lookup table, and people now prefer a free chatbot that hands them a personalized protocol in seconds. He expects LLMs to become the interface to courses, podcasts, newsletters, and blogs too.
What he thinks survives is experience over information. Comedy, storytelling, fiction, voice, and taste. You don't ask an AI to summarize a stand-up special.
His bet: write for 10,000 people who are changed by the work rather than chase 10 million who forget it in minutes. Find your 1,000 true fans and overdeliver.
Source: Tim Ferriss, "Has AI Already Killed How-To Nonfiction?"
Munger's test for being allowed to hold an opinion
"I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say 'I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.'"
Source: Charlie Munger via Shane Parish
Stutz on why bad habits win in the moment
"The impulses for all of our bad habits travel along the same path – a straight shot to immediate gratification through what I call the lower channel... Lower channel functioning is a disaster. When the pleasure is over, we're left with nothing."
Source: Psychiatrist Phil Stutz via Shane Parish
SPF 50 blocks about 98% of UVB, and the real gap with foreign sunscreens is UVA
Past SPF 50 you hit diminishing returns on UVB. The bigger differentiator is UVA protection, which drives aging and contributes to skin cancer and is not captured by the SPF number at all.
The US regulates sunscreen as an over-the-counter drug, so new filters need drug-level safety trials. The EU, Asia, and Australia treat it as a cosmetic, so they have approved 30+ UV filters versus about 16 in the US.
Source: Chasing Life Podcast
Two reminders from Morgan Housel
Market drops of 20 to 30% happen about every ten years. When they do, don't change anything.
School's real value is less the material itself and more that it is where you learn how to learn.
Source: Morgan Housel
A trillion is almost unimaginably larger than a billion
Elon Musk reportedly became the first trillionaire in history.
For scale: a billion seconds ago was 1994. A trillion seconds ago was the last ice age.
Source: Morning Brew
The U.S. men won a World Cup match by more than one goal for the first time since 2002
I had no idea it’d been that long!
My Takeaways:
“Most success comes from 50 small things moving in the same direction, not one big thing.” The epitome of my coaching philosophy. Health is not 75 hard or a marathon, it’s the confluence of 20-30 daily habits that are small by themselves but massive in combination. And they all compound over time.
Meat - I’m not going to give myself permission to eat high amounts of unprocessed red meat just because it’s nutrient dense, fast, and easy. For my meal prep, I’ll stick with ground turkey or chicken 80% of the time. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not going to avoid red meat. I’m just not going to eat 6oz/day 5 days a week for 40 years.
AI - “If more information was the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs.” - Derek Sivers. My coaching is a human service business. It is NOT information that you can get from ChatGPT for free in 30 seconds. It’s: (behavior change, support, accountability, personality, experience and a HUMAN) + (the science based protocols). You take away the first half of the equation, the business is dead.
“I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.” - This is why I rarely talk about politics. It’s not that I don’t think the issues are important, they are. It’s that I almost never take the time to fully understand the nuance of the issues.”
“Lower channel functioning is a disaster. When the pleasure is over, we're left with nothing.” - How I felt towards the end of my two week vacation. The pleasure is still nice, but empty and fleeting. Vacation is ice cream, everyday life is ground turkey, rice, avocado, and veggies.
“Market drops of 20 to 30% happen about every ten years. When they do, don't change anything.” - Keep investing and check back in 25 years. Don’t get spooked by the headlines.
Personal sunscreen protocol (with the help of Claude):
The one rule that moves cancer risk: never let yourself burn. With fair skin, your melanoma risk lives in burn events and intense exposures, not daily incidental sun. Get this right and the rest is fine-tuning.
Daily SPF: A morning broad-spectrum SPF 30 to 50 on face, neck, ears, and backs of hands is worth it mainly for AGING, which is cumulative. It is not a meaningful cancer lever for short walks. Treat it as a skin-quality habit.
Ingredients (what matters most): Prioritize UVA protection. Use zinc oxide or a Korean or European sunscreen with Tinosorb or Mexoryl. Look for the UVA-in-a-circle symbol (EU) or PA++++ rating (Asia).
Application: Two finger-lengths for face and neck, 15 minutes before going out. Reapply every 2 hours only if you stay outside or sweat.
Vitamin D: Don't skip sunscreen to chase it. Diet or a supplement covers you.
By exposure:
Under 15 minutes: skip it for cancer reasons. Keep a morning layer only for the aging benefit.
Long drives or a desk by a window: UVA gets through glass (UVB does not), so a morning layer earns its place (for aging)
Best,
John
P.S. In case you missed it, shared my thoughts on AI in coaching on Instagram this past week:
What most coaches miss about using AI to write their content/check ins - it utterly devalues your service and professionalism as a coach.
Honestly, it’s not just that it’s lower quality work. You’re genuinely lying to your clients, and that matters.
Coaching combines a few key ingredients:
✅ Expertise
✅ Experience
✅ Human connection
That’s actually how you get your clients real results. Not with AI.
If you outsource your coaching business to Chat GPT, you’re not just doing your clients a disservice - you’re quietly sucking the soul out of your business.
——————————————-
(^ I wrote that myself with all the common AI tells I could think of lol)
I’m at a point where I’m disgusted with AI slop. Don’t get me wrong:
- I’ve used AI to help write content in the past
- I’m not anti AI by any means
- When used correctly, it can save you a ton of time
But it’s a slippery slope. One day you’re using AI to be a little more efficient, and the next thing you know, your content, programs, and client communication is all, well, NOT you.
When people are paying for you, this is a massive problem.
Not only that, you’re taking the challenge, growth, and fun out of your work.
Heard a quote the other day from Derek Thompson - over reliance on AI makes for “sharp sentences, but duller minds.”
You do things faster and easier with AI. But in exchange your clients get a worse and less human service, and you stifle your growth as a coach/business owner. That’s not worth the trade off.
For those reasons, everything in my business is 100% human written (even if that human tends to use too many run on sentences and unnecessary silly analogies).
