From Words to Watts

Venkatesh Rao writes that after a seven-week break he now measures his life in watts rather than words, a shift he says came to him during long walks and runs. He estimates his energy output from a Whoop strap at 1,700 to 2,400 kcal/day, and his basal metabolic rate from a Dexa scan at about 1,480 kcal/day, leaving a surplus of roughly 10 to 45 watts. He argues that words are high-leverage, low-wattage work, while exercise is high-wattage but low-leverage, and that he now finds the most value in words-based activity and less in measuring "success" through proxy metrics.