A long healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits.

Exercise, from a public health perspective, is an unmitigated failure. The world's longest-lived people live in environments that nudge them into more movement. They don't use power tools, they do their own yard work, they grow a garden.

I think we need to think about our physical activity as a reward, as something enjoyable and something we look forward to doing, not something that we regard as self-flogging.

A long healthy life is no accident. It begins with good genes, but it also depends on good habits.

Walking is the only way proven to stave off cognitive decline - it works.

If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one’s existence, if one does not use the mind to it’s fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. True happiness involves the pursuit of worthy goals. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.

So learning to play a new instrument, learning a new language - those sorts of things will pay dividends for years or decades to come.