Life & Personal Growth
Why I Walked Away from Wall Street to Build Something of My Own
From growing up in Shanghai to landing a New York investment banking internship—and choosing to build Protein Kitchen instead.
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Life & Personal Growth
5 Habits That Can Genuinely Improve Your Quality of Life
In this essay
Originally written in English. The Chinese edition is translated and lightly adapted from this original. Based on a working draft prepared for an October 2026 video.
Over the past few years, I’ve spent more than a thousand hours listening to podcasts about health, neuroscience, and personal development.
The more I listen, the more I realize something: improving your life doesn’t have to be complicated.
Most of us already have enough things to worry about. We don’t need another hundred-step morning routine or another impossible list of habits to optimize.
If I had to narrow everything I’ve learned down to five habits that genuinely affect how you feel, how much energy you have, and how you experience your life, these would be my five.
1. Build a consistent morning and evening routine
One idea I keep coming back to from Huberman Lab is how important light and daily rhythms are for sleep and alertness.
Most people focus on how many hours they should sleep. That’s important, of course. But I’ve started paying just as much attention to what I do during the first and last 30 to 60 minutes of my day.
Before bed, I like the idea of having a simple wind-down routine: dim the lights, stop working, put the phone away, take a warm shower, write a little in a journal, or spend some time talking to your partner without screens.
The specifics aren’t magic. The goal is to stop treating the last hour of the day as an extension of work.
In the morning, do almost the opposite. Instead of immediately opening your phone and letting notifications decide how the day begins, drink some water, get outside into natural light, and move a little. A short walk or a few stretches is a good place to start.
Morning light helps synchronize the circadian system, while a regular sleep schedule and a calmer evening environment can support better rest.
I think what matters most is consistency. You don’t need to wake up at five in the morning to be healthy. You need a routine that works for your life and that you can actually follow.
Give your body a clear signal for when the day begins—and when it’s time to slow down.
2. Prioritize protein, fiber, and food quality
Another idea that shaped how I think about nutrition comes from the work of Stanford researchers Justin and Erica Sonnenburg, including research on fermented foods and the gut microbiome.
Healthy eating doesn’t need to start with complicated diets or expensive supplements.
I would start with one thing: include a good protein source in each meal.
Eggs, fish, chicken, beef, tofu, yogurt, milk—there are plenty of ways to do it.
Protein isn’t only for people trying to build muscle. It helps maintain and repair body tissues, supports muscle as we age, and is part of the structure of everything from our skin to our hair.
But I think the conversation around protein sometimes makes people forget another fundamental nutrient: fiber.
Fruit, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains provide fiber and other nutrients that help support digestive health. Foods like plain yogurt, kefir, and fermented vegetables can also be useful additions when you enjoy and tolerate them.
The gut doesn’t exist in isolation. It communicates with the immune system and the brain, and researchers are learning more about how diet and the gut microbiome relate to inflammation and other aspects of health.
Still, the solution isn’t to obsess over one “superfood.”
Eat enough protein, get a variety of plant foods, include fiber, and focus on the overall quality of your diet.
That is far more useful than arguing over whether one ingredient is the secret to perfect health.
3. Move every day—but don’t train hard every day
I really like the approach discussed by exercise physiologist Andy Galpin in his conversations with Andrew Huberman: build both strength and cardiovascular fitness.
When I say move every day, I don’t mean you should lift weights until failure or run yourself into the ground seven days a week.
Walking counts. Dancing counts. Yoga, stretching, cycling, and playing sports all count as movement.
For someone who wants a practical starting point, I like the idea of doing two to three strength-training sessions each week, adding regular cardio, and staying lightly active on the other days.
Strength training helps build and preserve muscle. Cardio supports the heart, lungs, and endurance. They do different things, and both matter.
You don’t need to love the gym, either. Find something you actually enjoy enough to continue doing for years.
The World Health Organization recommends that adults accumulate roughly 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity each week, or an equivalent amount of vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening work on at least two days. That’s a useful guide, not a reason to feel guilty if you’re just getting started.
The goal isn’t to destroy yourself in every workout. It’s to build a body that can carry you through decades of life.
I don’t just want to look fit now. I want to be strong and energetic when I’m fifty or sixty, too.
4. Protect a few hours of truly focused work
Here’s a deliberately provocative idea: work for four hours a day.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Most of us can’t simply stop working after four hours. Classes, jobs, family obligations, and life don’t work that way.
What I actually mean is that we should distinguish between being busy and producing something valuable.
Cal Newport’s work on deep focus has shaped the way I think about this. I first came across his ideas through the Lex Fridman podcast. Newport has discussed how extremely demanding deliberate practice may have practical limits, but the point isn’t that four hours is a scientifically fixed maximum for everyone.
The useful lesson is much simpler: attention is limited, and distracted work is not the same as meaningful work.
Someone can sit at a laptop for twelve hours, respond to messages all day, switch between ten tabs, and still avoid the one task that would actually move their life forward.
That’s why I love the concept of deep work.
Here’s what I’d recommend:
At the beginning of the day, identify the single most important thing you need to accomplish. Block out 60 to 90 minutes. Put your phone somewhere you can’t casually reach it. Close unnecessary tabs. Work on that one thing.
Then take a real break. If you have the energy and the schedule allows, do another session.
You can’t force yourself into a flow state every time. But you can create conditions that make sustained concentration much more likely.
Stop measuring productivity only by how many hours you worked. Start paying attention to what you actually created or completed.
5. Treat relationships as a real priority
I think this might be the most important habit on the list—and the one that’s easiest to overlook when you’re ambitious.
We spend so much time figuring out how to optimize sleep, food, training, careers, and personal productivity that it’s surprisingly easy to neglect the people who make the whole thing worthwhile.
One of the most memorable ideas I’ve encountered comes from Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, including his discussion on The Diary of a CEO.
That long-running study has repeatedly highlighted how strongly the quality of close relationships is associated with happiness and long-term well-being.
Relationships aren’t just something nice to have once we’ve finished our work. They are part of what makes a life good in the first place.
A supportive relationship can help you navigate stress, feel understood, and remember that you’re not doing everything alone. On the other hand, chronically unhealthy relationships can wear you down.
I learned something like this in my own life. For a long time, I was obsessed with reaching the next academic or career milestone. I had almost no social life. Meeting my girlfriend reminded me that there was much more to life than hitting targets.
And I think we have to be intentional about it.
Text the friend you’ve been meaning to contact. Be the person who makes plans instead of waiting for someone else. Set aside time for your partner or family, even when things get busy.
Just remember that a good relationship needs effort from both sides.
If someone matters to you, don’t always wait until you “have time” to show it.
A better life doesn’t need a hundred new habits
After all those hours of podcasts, articles, and trying different things myself, this is what I’ve come back to:
Sleep well. Eat well. Move your body. Protect your attention. And take care of the people you love.
There will always be another supplement, productivity trick, or morning routine to experiment with. Some may be useful. But they’re not where I’d start.
Improving your quality of life is less about adding a hundred things and more about doing a handful of important things consistently.
And to me, that’s a pretty good foundation for a life worth living.
Sources and conversations that informed this essay
Thank you for reading.