On tools, food, and health advice — and the slow discipline of not being moved by every new thing.

Farmers don’t chase trends. You can’t. If you planted a new variety every time a magazine told you it was the future, you’d have a field full of experiments and nothing to harvest. You pick what works for your soil, your water, your climate. You stay with it long enough to know.

I carried that instinct into retirement. It has served me better here than I expected.

ON TOOLS

The technology world runs on a different clock than a farm. New apps, new workflows, new everything — faster than you can get your boots on. I’ve watched people I respect restart their systems three times in a year chasing the perfect setup.

I gave that up. My tool stack is stable. Not because these are the objectively best tools. Because I know them. I’ve put in the hours. They do what I need without drama.

A good shovel in a broken irrigation setup still leaves you dry. The tool matters less than the system it runs in.

When something genuinely new earns a look — Kagi did, Orion did — I take a careful pass. I ask: does this replace something that’s failing me, or am I just restless? Most of the time, I’m just restless.

ON FOOD

The nutrition world is worse. Every few years the advice flips. Fat is the enemy. Then fat is fine, sugar is the enemy. Then carbs. Then seed oils. Then red meat. Then red meat is back, depending on who you ask.

I stopped tracking the argument. Instead I track what the long-running populations eat — Mediterranean, Okinawan, Sardinian — and I cook closer to that. Olive oil, vegetables, legumes, fish, not much processed anything. It’s not complicated. It just requires not being startled every time a new study drops.

The 28-year cardiovascular data on olive oil didn’t come from a trend cycle. It came from people eating the same way their grandmothers did.

ON HEALTH ADVICE

Same principle, different arena. Supplements come and go. Protocols arrive with confident branding and fade when the next one shows up. I’ve watched the longevity conversation shift more times than I can count.

I pay attention to researchers who’ve been saying the same thing for twenty years. Sleep. Movement. Not smoking. Managing stress through conditions you can actually build — meals with people, walking, work that means something. That list is boring. It’s also the one that holds up.

Tai chi didn’t make it into my mornings because it was trending. It made it in because my joints needed something gentle, my balance needed work, and it turns out moving meditation is a real thing. Took me longer to find that than it should have.

CLOSING

The latest thing has a cost that doesn’t show up in the review: the time spent learning something you’ll abandon, the energy spent second-guessing what’s working, the restlessness that becomes its own problem.

I’m not against new things. I’m against new things that haven’t earned the question yet.

What’s the oldest piece of advice you still actually follow? That’s probably the one worth keeping.