Running and Reading - the key to life

This has always been one of my favourite Will Smith’s speeches. It’s short and powerful. If you haven’t listened to it, please do. Now.

I will transcribe it here, so it stays written down for posterity.
Here it is - Will Smith’s wisdom:

The key to life is running and reading!

Why running? When you are running, there is a little person that talks to you, and that little person says “Oh, I’m tired, my lungs are going to pop, I’m so hurt, I’m so tired, there’s no way I could possibly continue.”. And YOU want to quit. That person, if you learn how to defeat that person when you are running, you will learn how to not quit when things get hard in your life.

Why reading? The reason that reading is so important - there’ve been millions and billions and gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There’s no new problem you could have - with your parents, with school… with anything. There’s no new problem that someone hasn’t already solved and wrote about it in a book.

OK, as a person working in tech, I know that there are problems that are new and people haven’t written about them. Yet, “reading” helps us solve unsolved problems.

BONUS: Running makes you fit and happier. It makes you more productive in general.
BONUS2: For more motivation about running, I’d recommend listening/reading “Can’t hurt me” by David Goggins.