Larry Weidel, a sports medicine doctor who's worked with Olympic teams and Division I athletes, argues that showing up consistently and compounding small actions over time is how you stay younger longer. He cites Jeff Olson's The Slight Edge on the power of tiny improvements.
I tried everything, my sports medicine career, all I wanted to do. And I've been to the Olympics a couple times. I've taken care of multiple Olympic teams. I had 20 years as a Division 1 team physician for the University of North Texas. I've been to more hundreds of high school football games than I could ever relate to you. And just being there to be real, that's how I learned from my father to be successful, he said. You show up and you be consistent and persistent for a long enough period of time until, as my buddy Jeff Olson's book the Slight Edge says, until the compounding effect takes you and carries you to where you want to be. It's not what I did today or that one bad decision or one good decision. It's that compounded effect over time. And so I just try to live my life that way.