Physical

There is a story in the Washington Post last week that is hard to ignore.

A new study found that rapamycin, the longevity drug thousands of Americans are taking to extend their lifespan, may actually blunt some of the health benefits of exercise. Researchers anticipated the drug would enhance the effects of working out while initiating health improvements of its own. It didn’t.

Worth pausing on. Rapamycin runs about $200 a month. People are buying it because they want more years, more healthspan, more of all the things exercise also delivers. And the study suggests they may be paying real money to undermine the one thing that already works. For free.

A few weeks ago I asked the question we keep coming back to. Optimized for what, exactly?

The wellness industry has built an entire economy on the premise that there is always a better protocol, a better stack, a better pill. The marketing is sophisticated. The science around it usually isn’t, or arrives later, or gets quietly ignored when it doesn’t sell. And underneath all of it sits the same boring truth that has been there since we figured out how a body works. Move it. Feed it. Sleep. Connect.

The one tool we are sure works is the thing that costs nothing. Just the commitment to move in some way.

We will keep coming back to this question across all four pillars. Because it isn’t just a wellness problem. It is the same pattern showing up everywhere. Optimize. Buy. Stack. Track. And almost never stop to ask the simpler question. What is this actually for?

Mental

In 2009, Sophie Leroy, a researcher at the University of Washington, ran a series of experiments that gave a name to something we have all felt but may not have a specific word for. She called it “attention residue.”

The premise was simple. When you stop one task and switch to another, part of your attention stays behind. Not metaphorically. Measurably. Her studies showed that people who switched tasks under time pressure performed worse on the next task because a piece of their cognition was still working on the last one. The body had moved. The mind hadn’t fully come with it.

The research has only gotten more relevant since. The American Psychological Association tracks workplace stress every year, and the through-line in the latest reports is unambiguous. People are exhausted, and increasingly the exhaustion isn’t coming from any single hard thing. It’s coming from the constant churn of small ones. The Slack ping. The email notification. The text. The tab. The meeting that ran into the next meeting that ran into the next.

Each switch leaves residue. The residue accumulates and by 2 p.m. you feel cooked and you can’t quite explain why because nothing was actually that hard. Nothing was. The switching was.

I have been thinking about this in the context of presence, which is a word I keep coming back to. I think about it a lot and we talk about presence like it is a virtue. A nice thing to bring to the dinner table. A spiritual goal. The research is suggesting it might also be a performance advantage.

The person who can give one task their full attention for 60 minutes is operating in a different category from the person who gives twelve tasks fragmented attention for the same hour. Same time. Different output. Different fatigue. Different version of yourself walking out the door at the end of the day.

You can’t optimize your way out of fragmentation. You can only protect against it. Block the time. Close the tabs. Put the phone in another room. Do the one thing. It is not just better for the work. It is better for you.

Financial

Northwestern Mutual released its 2025 Planning & Progress Study. The number I anchored to…57%. This is how many partnered Americans say financial uncertainty has impacted their relationship. In 2023, that number was 44%. In two years it has jumped 13 points. Money is now the number one source of conflict in American marriages, and the data is moving in the wrong direction.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Two Sigma situation. Two co-founders, billions under management, and the thing that started unraveling the firm wasn’t a market crash. It was a notebook in a desk drawer.

The Northwestern Mutual data is the everyday version of that same story. Most couples are not running hedge funds. But they are running households, and the same pattern is showing up. The wealth is being managed. The relationship around the wealth isn’t.

What I have seen in the work I do, more times than I can count, is that money fights are almost never about money. They are about the anxiety the money creates, and the avoidance that anxiety triggers, and the silence that grows in the place where a conversation should have been. One person opens the statement. The other doesn’t want to look. One person worries out loud. The other shuts down. And underneath whatever the fight looks like on the surface, both people are usually scared about the same thing and don’t know how to say it to each other.

The portfolio has a plan. The marriage doesn’t.

But the positive of all of this…it’s fixable.  Not with a better calculator. With a regular communication.  A monthly half hour where you sit down together and look at the numbers, the goals, what is working, what isn’t, what you are scared of, what you actually want. No agenda beyond honesty. No outcome required.

Most couples will spend more time choosing a couch than they will ever spend talking about the financial life they are building together. The data is showing what that costs. And it is getting more expensive.

Spiritual

I am stuck on this topic. Thinking about it more and more. Loneliness.

And not shocking I found another study. This one was a bit different showing that having a sense of meaning in life was as strong a predictor of whether someone felt lonely as their actual physical health, and a stronger predictor than how many friends they had. Read that again. The number of people in your life mattered less than whether you had answered the question of what your life is for.

You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone. We have all felt it. The crowded room. The full calendar. The text thread that never goes quiet. And underneath it, a quiet hum that something isn’t connecting.

For a while I assumed loneliness was always a connection problem. Add more people. More dinners. More community. The research is suggesting something deeper. The connection problem is sometimes a meaning problem in disguise. If you don’t know what you are here for, no amount of company will fully fill that space. The people are there. The why isn’t.

This is the spiritual pillar at its most practical. We have spent the last several issues circling the same idea from different angles. Purpose protects cognition. Mattering protects the years you spent building everything else. Meaning predicts loneliness more than friend count. The pattern is consistent. Whatever you want to call it, the deepest part of being human is also the most protective thing for being human.

And it can’t be borrowed. Nobody can hand you a why. It comes from showing up to the questions. Coming back to them. Sitting with them long enough that an answer finds you.

If you feel lonely in a life that, on paper, shouldn’t be lonely, that is information. Not a verdict. The fix may not be more people. It may be a quieter conversation with yourself about what you actually want this whole thing to mean.

And In The End

From all of us at The 9:03 Collective: thanks for reading. Keep showing up. Stay curious. And never forget that the clock is running, so make it count.

If you’ve been enjoying Four Pillar Friday, the best way to support is simple: share it with a friend, forward it to someone who might need it, or subscribe if you haven’t already. The more people we reach, the more conversations we can spark about living with intention.

Until next week—keep building your moments.

The Journey Team & The 9:03