Growing up, I wanted to be many things: a basketball player, a fighter pilot (like my dad), a Formula 1 racer, a politician, and other things. Nowadays, I try to compartmentalise my goals into 3 buckets: life, professional, and health goals. In the past few years, I have focused a lot on health goals and have written about them. Recently, I came down to a health goal that says everything that I want to strive for in one sentence for the rest of my life:
I want to be a 90-year-old jogger.
It probably sounds somewhat crazy. Jogging is not even my most frequent form of exercise, but at 90 years old, I want to be able to jog for 30 minutes and keep a 6-minute pace per km. To do this, I need to establish a certain mindset and lifestyle to increase my healthspan. People talk about lifespan, but we should talk about healthspan. Lifespan refers to the number of years you are going to be alive. Healthspan refers to the number of years you are able to do most things that you like independently. The concept of lifespan versus healthspan is one of the main learnings I got by reading the book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, which I recommend. You can also watch a 4-minute video where he describes healthspan vs lifespan.
We spend too little time and money investing in our health compared to everything else we spend our time on or buy. That is applicable at all levels, on an individual, community, and state level. I am not a doctor, but I can guarantee that spending more time learning about your health and investing time (and money if possible) to increase your healthspan will pay off dividends for many more years to come.
