Mind Your Decisions

What’s More Important than Your Career? The Answer is Right Under Your Nose

Image source: Jason D’ Great via flickr

People do a lot of things for their career, perhaps because they are told it’s their most important asset. At Stanford, I once met someone who was simultaneously studying for finals, preparing for a business trip to Japan, and drafting a book.

But some things didn’t look so good. Caffeine substituted for sleep; laptop typing substituted for exercise; and cheap noodles substituted for nutrition. He was caring for the outward signs of success while neglecting the inner demands for health.

It made me realize that health, and not career, is the most important financial asset. We all had our bodies long before we started working, and if we take proper care, we’ll have them long after we retire.

If we start managing our health like we do our career, the possibilities are endless. Here are three ways you can manage your most important asset:

1. Get preventative checkups

If you’re in good health, partner with your doctor to get the correct preventative screening.

Staying in good health is one of the most powerful ways to preserve your earning potential. According to David Liu, M.D., there is a strong connection between health and wealth:

A RAND study found that during a ten year period for individuals between the age 25 to 54, those in very good health who then described their health as excellent a decade later doubled their net worth. Those, however, that identified themselves as being in poor health saw their net worth shrink by half.

This study perhaps illustrates that it’s much easier to stay in good health than to come out of poor health. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

2. Consider disability insurance

Even the best of us undergoes health surprises. According to studies, a disabling injury occurs every two seconds, and three out of ten will become disabled before retirement.

Months without income can be a stress even for the most financially prepared. Long-term disability insurance can cover a large percentage of your income in the event you can’t work.

How might you go about getting such insurance?

There is a succinct explanation at Blunt Money:

The easiest way to get it is through your employer, if they offer it, since there is usually no underwriting process with that. The down side to that is that it if you leave your employer, you’ll lose your coverage. But that’s where I’d start, since it’s the easiest to get. You can also apply for disability insurance through companies like Metlife, John Hancock, and Guardian.

Often, the employer coverage can cost as little as a few dollars per paycheck. This is a good risk-minimizing strategy.

3. Learn about nutrition

We are what we eat. Nutrition can shape us and affect our health in dramatic ways. But it’s not easy to know what’s right.

One day eggs are good for us, the next day they are bad, and then finally they tell us the whites are okay but the yolks are bad. Did you get all of that?

Another example: my friend grew up on margarine because his parents, both doctors, wanted to avoid the bad saturated fats in butter. Imagine his reaction a few years ago when trans fats, the kind found in margarine, were deemed deadlier than saturated fats. They are considered so bad that trans fats are now banned in New York City.

It can seem discouraging to learn about nutrition from the news, and that’s why it’s necessary to read a comprehensive framework.

I’m not an expert in this arena, but I’d like to share a book that has been eye-opening to me called The China Study. The authors are T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, and his son, Thomas M. Campbell II, a writer and now student at the University of Buffalo Medical School.

The book gives a consistent explanation of how nutrition affects health, and how industry and scientific reductionism create confusion in the public. I found the book to be exceptionally well-written.

Here a passage from the introduction, which is excerpted on their website:

I propose to do nothing less than redefine what we think of as good nutrition. The provocative results of my four decades of biomedical research, including the findings from a twenty-seven year laboratory program (funded by the most reputable funding agencies) prove that eating right can save your life.

I will not ask you to believe conclusions based on my personal observations, as some popular authors do. There are over 750 references in this book, and the vast majority of them are primary sources of information, including hundreds of scientific publications from other researchers that point the way to less cancer, less heart disease, fewer strokes, less obesity, less diabetes, less autoimmune disease, less osteoporosis, less Alzheimer’s, less kidney stones and less blindness.

Based on all of the research, Campbell advocates a whole-foods plant based diet (no dairy, no meat). The arguments and evidence he presents have done quite a bit to make me change my diet, though I felt there were some gaps in the book, like differentiating the health difference between a strict vegan and a flexitarian (someone that prefers vegetables but might eat meat rarely for social or practical reasons).

Nonetheless, I found the book to be amazing. Even more interesting, the book has left me hungry for more information about nutrition. I’ve already improved the quality of my life, and that something I wish everyone to experience.

Now, it’s your turn to help others for areas I missed. Some questions for you:

How do you manage your health?

What is your favorite book or source of nutrition information?

How can we manage stress and a busy work life style?

This article is included in the Carnival of Careers #2 at bripblap