DO THIS DAILY To Destroy Procrastination & NEVER BE LAZY AGAIN! | Tom Bilyeu

If you're not going in the right direction in your life and you want an action plan that you can use going to change everything in your life, it goes like this. When you want success that badly, you will find a way. That's what I always tell people. Success is a game of problem solving. The sole purpose of life is to be fulfilled, to work really hard to garner a set of skills that serve not only yourself, but other people. Because you are playing a game of neurochemistry. Take the time to build that desire. Let me tell you why so many people procrastinate and experience laziness. Number one, the most important reason is people just don't want it badly enough. That is the hard truth that not a lot of people want to face, but the reality is when you're struggling to get something done, you have a desire problem. There is a very famous story that I think perfectly encapsulates what you have to harness if you really want to accomplish something difficult. Think of somebody drowning, being held under water, and desperately wanting that next breath of air as the person lets them up and being dunked back under and held back up and dunked back under. Every time that they're under and they're being held under, think about how badly you want that next breath of air. You would claw at their flesh. You would tear at their eyes if you could get a hold of it. You would flip yourself over. You would go deeper into the water to try to push yourself back up. You would do anything, including kill the person that is holding you under water to get your next breath. When you want success that badly, you will find a way. And when it comes to being an entrepreneur, when it comes to being successful, that's what I always tell people. Success is a game of problem solving. But you have to really want to solve that problem. And the only way to really want to solve that problem is to build your desire. So, people have to understand everything in life is a process. Love is a process. You go on dates. I don't believe in love at first sight. Lust, sure. Evolution took care of that for you. But nobody loves at first sight. You don't know the person well enough. You haven't done the reps. You haven't gotten to know them. You haven't spent the time with them. You haven't developed love. That's why we have dating. That's why first it's dates and maybe not a lot of commitment. It's just getting to know them. And then it's like, "Whoa, we're getting a little bit more serious." And then it's an engagement. And then it's the wedding. And then it's the actual life lived together. It is a process. Love even changes colors and textures as you go. So that in the beginning it's a very lustful, all-consuming, drug-like effect. You can actually put somebody in an fMRI machine and scan their brain. And at the beginning, in that passionate love phase, there is no difference on an fMRI between somebody who is in love and thinking of the person that they're in love and somebody who's on cocaine. They are identical scans. But over time that changes into something more mature and I would say more wonderful, more sustainable, more incredible. Now, once you understand that desire, in and of itself, whether it's for another person, whether it's for a goal, is a process of building desire, then you realize that you can go through that process. You can build up that desire. So when you think about that person having their head held under water, you can build that level of intensity in your life to want something so badly. The only way that you're going to do it, the only way that you're going to escape laziness, is by attaching meaning and purpose to that thing that you want. You have to want it for a reason. As Simon Sinek would say, you have to start with why. Why do I want this thing? And you're tapping into the evolutionary drivers that you have embedded in your brain that are going to compel you to get better. That's a huge part of this whole process to serve not only yourself but the group and get to the point where you can translate your potential into usable skill set. So, when you're doing those three things, when you're transferring your potential, making it usable skill set that's allowing you to actually make progress at something that you care about and serving not only yourself but other people, now you're going to get into this positive feedback loop that's like falling in love. You're going to be building that desire because you're getting good at something. Progress is a foundational pillar to human happiness. If you're progressing, okay, this is evolution embedding something in your brain. You have a desire to progress, period, end of story. If you are a human being, you have an embedded deeply embedded desire to get better. You will never feel a sense of progress, you won't feel good about yourself, you will have a profound sense of disease if you're not improving. Why? Because that was nature's way of ensuring that you went out and did the hard things that you would need to do to feed your family, to keep the group intact, to protect yourself from the devastatingly vicious nature of nature. Nature is doing its best to kill you at all times, okay, whether it's from starvation, exposure to the elements, or being attacked by a predator. We were at risk constantly throughout our evolutionary past and all of those directives that nature had to give us and implant deep in our brains to make sure that we went out of the safety of the cave to go get that next meal, to go find a mate, to fight to raise our kids, to make sure that they had kids. All of those things that nature had to embed in our brain still exist in us today and they govern our wants, desires, behavior. So, if we don't take the time to build that up, to fan those flames, to get us hyped about this thing that we want to do for whatever reason, if we don't do that, then the laziness kicks in, which is the flip side of the evolutionary coin. So, side number one, you better get out, you better go do something, you better hunt, you better take these risks, you better protect your family, you better be a tough nut that is going to contribute to the group. Otherwise, you're going to get ostracized, you're going to get left behind, and you're going to die. Laziness is about, "Yo, this [ __ ] is hard. Finding calories is tough. You've got to go out and forage, hunt, kill, chase, defend yourself against this thing that you're trying to take down." And once you get those calories, it was a lot of work, and often times you had very little to show for it, especially if we're talking plant matter, which from a caloric standpoint is not very dense. And it's not like it is today, where we have farms everywhere, you had to literally hunt and forage in dangerous spaces in order to get those calories. So, you had to have a competing desire to chill. So, you've got this desire pushing you forward to make sure that you do hard things, to make sure that you're progressing, contributing, getting better. But then, over here, you've got this weird-ass, completely contradictory desire to chill. Because the brain, if nothing else, There are two things that just gobble calories, and that is muscle and brain. And your brain, by far, is the hungriest thing in your body. It's something like 2% of your body weight and takes up 20 to 25% of your caloric intake just to run your brain. So, you can imagine, if you've got muscles gobbling calories even at rest, you've got your brain just mowing through calories to keep you alive, to leverage your intelligence, then you better have a directive embedded in your brain that once you've gone out and done the thing, whether it's hunt, protect, mate, whatever, that you then relax. So, you're always going to have these two competing desires. It is a very weird part of the human experience. So, to overcome that laziness, you've got to have a very compelling reason to go out and hunt, especially when the grocery store is right down the street and for very cheap, you can get plentiful calories. You can swipe left or swipe right and decline or find a potential mate, right? Everything has gotten so easy. You have to have a compelling reason to go out and do these hard things. But, if you don't, then you have this profound sense of disease because again, progress is a foundational pillar of human happiness. So, people procrastinate because nature is telling them to procrastinate. They are lazy because nature is compelling them to be lazy. And if you don't build the desire to overcome those things, if you don't build that up, walk that process, do the things that you need to do to fan the flames of desire, then you won't. You will chill. You will relax. Because that's how nature designed you. So, you have to go down the process of building desire. Now, the process of building desire is very simple and I will walk you through it. It goes like this. You're going to tell yourself your why. I am doing this for this reason. I want this goal for this reason. For me, I want to build this mega media company because I believe that the only way to break the relationship between your zip code and your success is through ideas, that it is a mindset problem, a belief problem, a value system problem. It is not a money problem. You can actually, just by where you live, dramatically increase the likelihood that somebody will remain poor generationally. Okay? That's an idea problem. That's a mindset problem. It's a It's a way to think about the problem problem. It's not an IQ problem. Plenty of smart people. It's an idea problem. Since I believe that and I believe that the best way to get ideas across is through story, I'm building a media company to help people, people like the people that I have known and loved that did not succeed because they had the wrong frame of reference. Now, the idea of frame of reference is beyond the scope of today's video because I have known extraordinary people, smarter than me, that did not end up having success that they could have had if they had that right set of ideas. I have dedicated my life to building this media company. That gives me a pretty compelling why. They're people that I know and love that I can think of when it gets hard and I'm exhausted and I'm [ __ ] tired and I do not want to keep going. I don't think about money. I don't think about adulation. I don't think about recognition. All I think about is those people having a better life or their kids having a better life. And that is what propels me forward. Or I flip to the dark side and I think about the people that want me to fail. Again, this may be outside of the scope of what we're talking about today, but I have these things that I tap into that fan the flames of my wanting. That make me want it badly. And when I can capture that sense of wanting the success the way that a drowning man wants that next breath of air, then I have the willingness to fight, to keep pushing, to do the thing. So, I'm going to tell myself, I'm going to tell other people that I want this thing. I'm going to repeat it. I'm going to be saying it internally. I'm going to be saying it externally, fanning those flames. And most importantly, and you've been watching me do it this whole time, I'm going to embody the emotion that I want to feel. So, when I say it, I don't say it like this. I want to help break the relationship between your zip code and your future success. Instead, I say there are people that I know and love that are smarter than me that haven't achieved half of what they could have achieved because they had the wrong ideas. As I embody that and somewhat act out the emotion that I want to feel, there's a part of my brain that everybody has that goes, "Why are we getting so hyped up about this?" We're getting this hyped up about it for some reason. Oh, that's right. Because people that we know and love have struggled in life because they didn't have these ideas. And as my brain relates that feeling to that story, they begin to get intertwined. And now I can trigger that emotional state simply by remembering the people that I'm trying to help. So, that's a part of the brain that you really want to leverage. So that as you think about this, you can recapture that physiological state. And when you can change state at will simply by remembering the kind of people that you're trying to help or the goal that you're trying to achieve, the reason behind it. Now, when you get tired, when you're procrastinating, when you feel lazy, you can tap into that the desire kicks in and now you've got the juice that you need to push forward. What is up my friend, Tom Bilyeu here and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, or possibly scary or even painful. Now, here is the thing, achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you it pays off. In fact, I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. All right, I've just released a class from Impact Theory University called how to build ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. All right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then my friends, be legendary. Peace out. Take the time. It's a very simple process. Take the time to build that desire. Tell yourself. Tell other people. Repeat it like crazy. And then make sure that you embody the emotion, and then just repeat, repeat, repeat. Right, if you're trying to accomplish something extraordinary in your life, there's one thing that can really become a problem, and that's burnout. Now, I think that most people, if I'm being quite honest, are spending way more time giving in to laziness, and burnout is probably not the thing that they have to watch out for, but they are two sides of a coin. So, you want to be very thoughtful about pushing yourself, not allowing yourself to be lazy, not accepting that or tolerating that in yourself, which most people do, and it has become very fashionable to be anti-work, and I'm telling you right now, if you're anti-work, if you're looking for ways to be lazy, you are going to get your lunch [ __ ] eaten. You are going to get mowed over, because there are people out there who understand one immutable truth, skills have utility. Skills have utility, okay? As Kobe Bryant used to say, "Boos don't block dunks." People can hate you all they want, but if you can outperform them, they can't stop you. They cannot stop you. There were people very talented, highly paid people that scouted the entire globe looking for people that could play basketball better than Kobe Bryant. They were paid millions of dollars every night, and their sole job was to stop Kobe Bryant from scoring. And yet, despite that, he scored 81 points in a single game, because he got better than they were. And if you get better than somebody else, you can outperform them. You can do things they can't do. Skills have utility. Now, if you remember that, and you really put that at the core of your existence, and you push yourself, and push yourself, and push yourself, then you can accomplish extraordinary things. Now, on the journey to doing that, if you know that you are leaving it all out on the field, now you can earn the credibility with yourself to check to make sure that you're not burning out. Burnout is a totally separate beast. Burnout happens when you become pathological about getting better, about pushing yourself, and it no longer is about what it should be about, which is an end mental state because you are playing a game of neurochemistry. Make no mistake about it. The sole purpose of life is to be fulfilled, to work really hard, to garner a set of skills that serve not only yourself but other people. If you are doing that, if you are pouring your guts out every day doing everything that you can to get better at something that matters to you so that you can serve not only yourself but other people, and yes, you should serve yourself as well, but you also need to be committing, contributing to the group. If you're doing that, if you are going all out every day and achieving that level of fulfillment, then life is going to be amazing. If, however, you're not focusing on that, and you're living by a set of rules that, like, for instance, I have rules in my life. Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. That is a rule that I live by. Unless I'm burning out, unless it stopped being fun, unless through all of this, I'm pushing myself too hard, and even though I'm doing all of the things that I just laid out, I'm working my ass off to garner a set of skills that allow me to serve not only myself but other people, but I hate my life, then I know that I'm burning out, and that I need to back off. And let me tell you, the reason that I can have a rule in my life that Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out is because I trust myself to do two things. One, leave it all out on the field. I play to [ __ ] win, and I play to win every day. And number two, if I'm burning out, I do less. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen incredible people not be able to do less. If you don't trust yourself, that's a whole 'nother issue that needs to be dealt with. But if you're leaving it all out on the field and you don't have a release valve, you will burn out and you will stop and you will actually get less done. This is like people that don't prioritize sleep. As hard as I go, you'll notice I say, "If I'm awake." If I'm awake because I prioritize sleep. I get as much sleep as I need. It is rare. I may work up wake up to an alarm 10 times in a year. I mean, it's really a vanishingly small number of times that I will wake up to an alarm. Most of the time, I'm able to just sleep as much as I want and I have built several successful businesses. All without needing to set an alarm. You prioritize sleep, you can get efficient. So, you got to prioritize your mental health. I don't understand people who don't do that. You're living for the wrong thing. You're living for external validation, other people's praise. You're trying to impress your parents. You're trying to make a certain amount of money. You're mistaking something as the punchline of life. The punchline of life is not money, it's not fame, it's not recognition, adulation, it's none of those things. It's just fulfillment. That's it. It is a neurochemical state. You will respect yourself if you're fulfilled. You will have self-worth if you're showing up every day playing to win in a way that serves you and other people. If you follow that fulfillment formula, everything else is going to take care of itself unless you don't know when to quit. One of the rules that you need to have in your life is if you are unable to achieve fulfillment because you're burning out, because you don't recognize that Tuesday that you just need a day off because you've been going too hard. You've been pushing yourself too much. You're starting to get poor sleep. Uh whatever the triggers are for you. Depression is a big one. Overly anxious, not being able to eat or eating too much depending on how you deal with stress, not being able to enjoy your life, uh not being able to enjoy the smile of a loved one, not being able to enjoy your favorite song, all of the things like that, where you can't shift your state, where you're locked in that negativity, all of those are signs that you're burning out if you've been working hard. Because you can have those same symptoms by being lazy. So, you are going to have to structure your life, build rules, be accountable to yourself to make sure that you're actually living up to your end of the bargain. What's your end of the bargain? You have a goal, and that goal is something that you believe passionately about, you have started with why, you were trying to do something that matters, that serves not only yourself but other people. If you're doing all of that, going all out, and you're not feeling good, you're either pointed in the wrong direction or you're burning out. So, be very thoughtful, but remember, most people fail on the lazy side. They never get to burn out. Be very thoughtful. But if you're really going all out, be very cautious not to fall prey to your own rules. Morning routines are one of the most important things that you can create in your life, and the reason is when you start the day, if you get early momentum going, the rest of the day is often going to follow in that. It's an idea called entropy. Everything moves towards chaos, and the only way to combat that is to put energy into the system. You are not going to wake up and randomly have a good day. You're going to have to structure your day in a way that sets you up to overcome all of the entropy, all of that chaos, all of the thousand things going to come at you in a on a daily basis that are going to knock you off course. And the easiest way to do that is to have a routine that you follow every morning so you don't have to think about it, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you don't have to wonder or think about what you should be doing, it's just right there. It is baked into the routine. So, by doing that, now you can actually accomplish the most important things first. So, the thing to doing your morning routine well is to optimize for what Tim Ferriss refers to as the lead domino. What's the thing that if I did this, it's going to make everything else easier down the road? So, number one, a morning routine actually starts the night before. You want to get plenty of sleep. Why? Because that's going to optimize your your cognition. The next thing you want to do is either meditate or work out. Typically, I will work out first. The reason that I work out is because it optimizes your cognition so that everything else is going to get easier. It also dramatically impacts your energy levels. Talk about two things that are incredible lead dominoes. If I'm getting sleep and optimizing my cognition, if I'm working out and optimizing my cognition, and I'm making sure that I have the energy levels that I need to get things done, now I'm really making sure that everything that I do after that is easier. The next thing that I do is meditate. Why? Because it optimizes your cognition. You want to make sure that you're getting all of your background radiation, the stress, the anxiety, you want to get that as close to zero as you can. That way, you can think clearly, you get into what I call a calm and creative state so that areas of your brain that don't often communicate are able to communicate, get better ideas that way. Again, lead domino, improving your cognition, lowering your stress levels, making sure that you're centered and that you've got that energy to move forward. Then, I'm going to go down my list of important things. I make that list the day before so I know exactly what I should be doing at any one time. And again, it's a lead domino strategy. What the first thing that I'm going to do is going to be the thing that makes everything else on my list easier. I'm going to do everything that I can do on the most important thing. And by the way, they should always be rank ordered. There is no such thing as a tie. There is a number one, a number two, a number three, a number four, so on and so forth. There is not two number ones. There's not two number twos. There is a one, two, three, four, five, so on and so forth. I do everything that I can do on number one. Once that's now where I'm waiting for something else or, you know, I just have to let it bake, whatever, then I'm going to move on to number two. I'm going to do everything I can on number two. Then, I'm going to move on to number three. You set your day up like that and you're not checking your phone and you're not responding to other people because that's letting them control your schedule. And what are the odds that somebody other than you knows better what you should be doing to make your goals come true than you? The answer should be zero because if somebody else knows better than you, we already have a problem. It means that somebody else is paying more attention to your own life than you are. That would be problematic. Get that morning routine down, get that momentum going, do the lead domino strategy, make sure you're optimizing for energy and cognition. Absolutely critical. Well, isn't it my friend? You and I are living in a golden era of self-improvement. We have books, platforms like YouTube, courses, seminars, virtual events, workshops. The list really is endless. The internet has been so good for people like you and me who want to accomplish greater and greater things in life. And now, my friend, it is about to get even better. I've been spending most of this year working on the single most entertaining tool that you're ever going to have around the self-improvement and it is called Project Kaizen. It's a web three based game experience that will be unlike anything else you've ever engaged with in your life. Partly because the technology is new and it's amazing. If you're not familiar with blockchain, NFTs and all of that, Kaizen is going to be the perfect introduction for you as it is an excellent intersection of entertainment and learning all backed by the blockchain. We're getting closer and closer to launching this project for you every single day. We are working our faces to the bone to get this thing out there. And my friend, I want you to experience it. So, click the link on your screen and head on over to my Discord channel to stay up-to-date and be one of the first to join me inside of Project Kaizen, which by the way gets its name from the Japanese term of never-ending improvement. All right, back to today's episode. Your diet is one of the most important things that you can do to boost your energy, your focus and your productivity. What you should be eating varies wildly, and I will just tell you right now that while I'm going to give you a very simple thing that you can follow, and it's going to take care of 80% of all of your desires and problems, know that there is massive variability at the individual level, and that you should be testing a lot of different things to find out what is right for you. So, what I'm about to lay out is the sort of generic strategy that I think everybody should try. But, getting into the nitty-gritty is going to require you to do a lot of testing. There is no way around this. I wish that dieting was more simplistic, but based on your lifestyle, based on your heredity, based on your microbiome, all of this stuff is going to dramatic to dramatically vary. So, be very thoughtful. Make sure you run experimentation. Having said that, what are the things that I think are universal? Number one, you want to be eating whole food whenever humanly possible. So, you want to eat food that is recognizable from what it was in nature. So, a piece of meat should look like a piece of meat. It shouldn't be highly processed. Your vegetables should look like vegetables. I mean, you should be brushing dirt off of them. That kind of recognizable from nature. Nuts should be I mean, ideally raw. I'll be really honest, I do sometimes eat uh roasted nuts, but if I'm honest, that's worse than if you're just eating them raw. So, you want things that are as close to um their natural state as humanly possible. The less that they have been messed with, manufactured, altered in any way, the better off you're going to be. I will say that heat is something that I apply to virtually all of my food. There are some really interesting theories about from an evolutionary standpoint that cooking is one of the things that allowed us to grow the big brain because by cooking it, you not only soften the food and make it easier to chew, but you also release some of the nutrients. It's beyond the scope of uh this to get into that, but when I say raw, I don't mean that everything needs to be uncooked. I just mean the less processed the better. Things that I eat every day. I eat a lot of eggs, red meat, I eat some chicken, a bit of pork, but I'm eating a fair amount of meat. So, I get a good portion of my calories from that. Again, individual variability. If you're doing a vegan thing, word, I'm totally about it. Test for the individual response that you get. I find that the more plant forward I go, there's like a breaking point where I start feeling worse. Could be me, could be me doing it poorly. But, as long as you're doing whole food, I think you're on the money. So, eating whole food and making sure that you're avoiding sugar. That is like the big thing. So, I don't think you can eat fruit with impunity. I think you have to be very thoughtful about that. If you're unsure of what fruit is going to impact you and how, I highly recommend getting a continuous glucose monitor. That will allow you to eat fruit if you want and see what kind of glycemic response you have. For instance, I find that I can make certain fruit smoothies, and if I eat it slowly enough, my uh glycemic response will go up to about 120. I prefer to keep it in the 80s, but hey, if it goes up to 120 and it's sort of even and it comes back down, I don't consider that too problematic. But, if I eat it really quickly and it spikes up to say 140, 150, that to me is problematic and I don't want to be that high. So, you can play with things. Also, what you put in the smoothie, etc. If you're going to eat fruit and vegetables, make sure that you separate fruit and vegetables. Keep those two things distinct. I think you will find by wearing a continuous glucose monitor that you're going to have a dramatically different response to most fruit than you will to vegetables. Again, there's a lot of variability here. So, the more that you test on yourself the better. But, that's really the the sort of generic response. If you're a generic setup that I think everybody should try. Whole food whenever humanly possible, avoid sugar. Keeping your blood glucose below 100, I highly recommend it. For me, I try to keep my glucose in this the 80-ish range. That's sort of my default. I also do intermittent fasting. I that that is very effective. Getting into things like autophagy is beyond the scope of what we're talking about right now, but even that I think it's going to be huge. Body composition is greatly affected by intermittent fasting. Again, individual variability, make sure that you experiment with this stuff for yourself. I do, when you average it out, I think I went about 18 months where I was tracking every day. My average over that extended period of time was 17 and 1/2 hours. So, on the weekends it's it's shorter, but on the weekdays sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's 19, 20, 21, 22 hours that I'll go between meals. But again, over a very extended period of time it averages out to 17 and 1/2 hours of not eating. Now, the way that I do that, I have my last meal around 1:15, definitely done chewing by 2:00 p.m., and then I don't eat again until the next day at around 9:00, 9:30, somewhere around in there. Shorter on the weekends, longer during the week, and it it balances out. I'm having everything from uh green leafy vegetables like bok choy, collard greens, kale, broccoli, to carrot, jicama. I do occasionally have some sweet potato. You got to be a little thoughtful about that one. Watch your glycemic load. That definitely spikes me more than green leafy vegetables, but those are the mix that I use. Again, I'm eating whole foods. Virtually all of my calories come from whole food. During the week, in fact, I'd say 95% of my calories come from whole foods. It's very rare that I deviate from that. But doing that allows me to have tremendous focus, a lot of energy, get the most out of my workouts, maintain my body composition, keep my fat low, keep my glycemic spikes low, so I'm not getting, you know, blood sugar spikes, which helps me maintain my energy through the day. And also, just from a longevity standpoint, I think that's a great idea. I will say, go look at David Sinclair. He's got some pretty compelling information around the fact that meat may not be great for longevity. So, while it makes me feel awesome, it's something called mTOR. So, be thoughtful as you get into the complex weeds of this stuff. Nutrition is a very big, complex topic. Again, the only things that I consider universals are whole food and reducing sugar. Universals. Close to a universal would be intermittent fasting, though some people can have differing responses to that. So, be thoughtful as you experiment with this stuff. But, if you do that, like I said, 80 plus percent of your problems are going to go away. That's a nice, low inflammation diet, and keeping your inflammation low is incredibly important. The way that I found to stay focused, be productive, and not get distracted is one, by auditing my time, so that I know one, what I'm supposed to be working on, and then two, that at the end of any task, I'm going to reflect back on how long it took me, how much time did I spend on task, and also, I have rules. Like, if I'm working on something, I don't take out my phone. I don't look at it, no matter what. I have no alerts on my computer, no alerts on my phone. If somebody's calling, I would never know. If somebody's text me, I would never know. I don't have anything that pops up on my computer. You want to eliminate distractions. I don't even work facing a window. I will go into a room, and I will intentionally face myself away from a window. There was one period of my life, and the only reason I stopped doing this is cuz I think it's really important to get daylight in your eyes, but I was putting myself in a dark room, and literally with a stand-up desk was the only thing between me and a wall. So, even though I was in a nice, uh expansive, beautiful room, I was putting myself facing the wall, so that there was nothing for me to even look at. That I want to be working on the thing that I'm trying to accomplish. And the other thing is that's hugely important, is to make sure that you care about what you're working on. The number of people that don't give a [ __ ] about what they're doing with their life is terrifying, and when you don't care about what you're working on, there's no meaning or purpose behind the thing that you're you're to do, then of course, it's going to be harder to stay on track. Of course, you're going to be looking for that dopamine hit from your phone, from that email, because working on the thing that you're working on doesn't give you the dopamine hit. Making sure that you're pursuing things that you care about, that's a huge part of it. So, caring about what you do, making sure that you're optimizing your environment to minimize distractions, and then having rules about things like not checking your phone, not letting yourself wander off. Like, for instance, I won't even let myself go get a drink of water until I've accomplished a certain thing that I'm trying to do. And I will find myself taking like that first step to go get a drink of water. You're on autopilot, you need some drip of dopamine when you're working on something that's boring or difficult, but then the rule kicks in and I remind myself, "Ah, yes. I'm going to finish this thing." And then I make sure that I reward myself for doing that hard work. So, when you're doing hard work in service of something that you really believe in, that you're really emotionally connected to your why, now all of the sudden, with some rules put in place, it becomes easy to stay there and get your stuff done. And then, on top of that, I know when to give a break, to go get a drink of water or something like that, to get up, to walk around. All of that stuff is incredibly important to make sure that you're able to stay on task. A big thing, maybe the biggest of all, is personal standards. You got to have standards. I see people accept the lamest [ __ ] from themselves, and they let themselves get away with not being productive, wasting an entire day before they call themselves out. Or worse, staying at a job that they don't care about, doing something that doesn't mean anything to them, just to collect a paycheck. And I get how people would be unable to stick with something, but let me promise you, your life will pass you by in an instant. Not only is tomorrow not guaranteed, tonight isn't guaranteed. So, if you're not working at something that you really care about, that means something to you, your life is going to pass you by. Make sure you're focused on things you care about, you're eliminating distractions, and you're rewarding yourself when you crush it. Then, just make sure you audit your time. You should be ready to rock. If you've fallen into a rut and you want to get out of it, the first thing that you have to do is be honest with yourself that you're in a rut. So often, I see people not wanting to admit that things are not going the way that they want them to go. Whether it's because they're trying to keep up with the Joneses or they have low self-esteem and they're really struggling and so they're trying to tell themselves a story that isn't true because they're building their self-esteem around being right, being good, being talented, whatever. All of those fragile things. And so they're not willing to stop, take a good hard look at whether or not they're making the kind of progress that they want to make. Now, my advice is to switch what you build your self-esteem around so that you're building your self-esteem around not being right or smart or good, that you're building your self-esteem around the very willingness to look at whether or not you're making progress, recognize that you're not making progress, and make a change, and get moving again. But that's the key to really be honest with yourself, to audit that time, to make sure that you really are making progress, and to not be angry, upset, or diminish your sense of self because you're in a rut, but instead be proud of yourself for really being willing to assess, where am I at? What am I trying to accomplish? Am I actually making progress? And that willingness to stare nakedly at your inadequacies, to really be honest about whether you're making progress, to be honest about whether you're improving enough at something, to be honest about whether you're working hard enough at something. All of those things are incredibly important, but you'll never be honest with yourself if, in recognizing that you're underperforming, if you just beat yourself up. You want to recognize you're underperforming and be proud of yourself for recognizing that you're underperforming and being willing to do something about it. If you build your self-esteem around that, now you have that self-reinforcing engine that you're going to need to get moving again. But first, it starts with acknowledging the problem. Being pristine on prepping for bed, I think is incredibly important. Getting good quality sleep is critical. So, there are several things that I do. Number one, I wear myself out during the day. I'm going all in on the things I'm trying to accomplish. So, man, at the end of the day, I feel like I've earned my sleep. And that idea of earning your sleep, the idea of earning your days off, of earning a vacation, is something that is incredibly rewarding. Remember, we're only pursuing things that we care about, that means something to us. We have the strong why, the strong attachment to not only us, but the people that we're trying to help. But then going all out for it. So, that by the end of the day, I've worked out. I've eaten right. I've been disciplined. I've worked my ass off. I stayed focused. I pushed myself. I've avoided distractions. I've left everything out on the field trying to move myself forward, going down my important things list, taking things one at a time, really pushing the ball forward, not just chasing dopamine, but actually trying to do something. So, by the time I get to the bed, I am worn out. The next thing I do is starting about 3 hours before bed. So, for me, because I go to bed at 9:00, like it's a religion, I'm putting blue blocking glasses on at 6:00 p.m. You want to make sure that you're not even around very bright light. So, I start dimming the lights towards the evening time. Not exposing blue light into my eyes really helps with circadian rhythm. In the morning, I try to get outside and actually get direct sunlight into my eyes. That does not mean staring at the sun. Just means looking up at the sky, being outside, letting all of that natural light get on your skin, get in your eyes. It's going to be a huge part of setting that circadian rhythm. For about I stop checking my text messages usually about 2 hours before I go to bed. Reason is that the most stressful things in my life come in via text message. So, I know better. So, I try to stop that 2 hours before, definitely an hour before, because it's going to take me time to sort of recalibrate my mind. One thing I'm always telling people is the reason that I'm able to work as much as I work, to endure as much stress as I endure, is I'm very good at compartmentalizing. When I have something stressful, I take it and sort of coat it in the things that I'm going to do to deal with that because action cures all. So, earlier in the day, if I get something really stressful, if I can get the ball rolling, then all is well. I get things going. I know that that problem's going to be solved. My brain goes, "Ah, we're in action mode. All is well. I can deal with this." As we get later in the night, I'm not going to be able to do the things that I need to do to get it moving, which means that my brain is going to worry on it all night. So, I've got to do something to compartmentalize that, to figure out what my strategy is going to be, and then I put that thing away. Now, it takes some time, so I'd rather not encounter that an hour before I go to bed, right? So, like I said, about 2 hours before I go to bed, I'm going to stop looking at my text messages. So, I'm going to keep working. I'm going to execute on the things that I'm working on, but I'm going to try to compartmentalize that so that I'm not introducing new things that I have to come up with a new strategy for. The next thing is about an hour before bed, I now only work on things that I find fun. So, that that's moving my brain to like, "Oh, this isn't stressful. This is actually enjoyable. This is fun." So, I do a lot of my research for episodes that I'm going to be filming at night because I love it. That's one of the most fun things about my job is getting to learn something new. So, I can do research right up until the moment that I go to bed. So, that's something that I'll save for that time. If I don't have an episode coming up and I want to keep working, then again, I'm going to focus on something that I find enjoyable, which for me often means that I'm working on storytelling or something along those lines because it's really, really pleasurable. And then, about a half an hour before I go to bed, uh I'll be listening to something, but I just start my night routine. I'm going to be brushing my teeth in sort of a meditative fashion, really relaxing. I'm not listening to anything that's going to be stressful, doing things that are chill. If I've had a really stressful day, I might even sit down and meditate for the last 15 or 20 minutes before I go to bed. And then, when I'm actually going to bed, I go into storytelling mode. So, the great news is for me, that actually works for work as well, but I'm putting in headphones. Uh I might start listening to an actual book if I don't have a story that I'm trying to work on. I start listening to a book, a fiction book, puts my brain in a different space, and if I've worked right up until the moment I go to bed, at that point I will still put a fiction book on right as I'm going to sleep, and I have learned an incredible technique that allows me to deal with stress. I'm not necessarily suggesting that people push themselves this far. If you find yourself at night having a hard time falling asleep, this works unbelievably well. I don't have a trick that works better than this. This This is the closest thing to magic that you're going to get. I put my AirPods in, I put on a fiction book, a book that doesn't have murder or anything like that cuz I don't want to hear screaming and yelling. I made that mistake, so I've run that test, it does not work well. I will put a book on, it's usually sci-fi, a great narrator, and I turn the volume down so I can just barely make out what they're saying. Just a little bit of pressure to my ear in order to clearly hear what they're saying. And then, I apply that pressure, and I leave the book running. I don't put a timer, I let it go, and then I fall asleep, and then the pressure comes off my ear, and now I can no longer make out what they're saying. So, as I'm drifting off to sleep, I lose the words that are being said, but my brain has gone out of problem-solving mode into story mode, narrative mode. I'm able to relax and fall asleep all by listening to that story. I forget about the things that are stressing me in the day. Then, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I will swap out my headphones so that the battery doesn't die, cuz that little beeping noise telling you that you have low battery will wake me up. Again, learned that the hard way. Uh and then, again, it's just as I'm trying to fall back asleep, I put a little pressure on my ear, so I can hear it, and then uh the story takes me back into dreamland, and I sleep. I went through a phase where I was really struggling to sleep. Man, I tried everything, and finally figuring that system out works like a charm. I use 1.4x. Everybody knows I like to listen to things at 3x, but I can't do that if I'm trying to fall asleep. I found the perfect rate where my brain doesn't have to struggle to listen, but the words are coming in fast enough that don't irritate me. Put it in, pressure, good story, good narrator, boom, I'm off to sleep. If you do all of those sleep hygiene things, you ought to sleep like a baby. Oh, and keep the room cool. Get a chili pad if you don't have AC. They're not the cheapest thing in the world, but they are worth every penny. Making sure that your room is cool or that you are cool on a chili pad makes a huge difference. So, make sure that you do that, and then get your room as dark as possible when you're sleeping. Personally, I know this is going to freak some people out. I sleep with the blankets up over my head to ensure complete darkness. Uh so, my wife and I don't share blankets, which is another thing that I recommend, which everybody thinks that I'm crazy. I forget now uh that that's even a thing, cuz I told my wife from the jump uh we're never going to share blankets. Hope you're okay with that. Forever, we have slept with separate blankets. That way, I can wrap myself up in mine. I never have to worry about her stealing them or me stealing them from her, and all of those things allow me to sleep like a baby night after night, even in the middle of stress. Won't say that it never happens where I'm so stressed that I don't wake up. It's pretty rare because of all the things that I do for sleep hygiene. If you're not going in the right direction in your life, and you want an action plan that you can use, you can just try it for the next 7 days. It's going to change everything in your life. It goes like this. Follow the morning routine plan that I laid out before. Plenty of sleep, perfect sleep, getting up, working out, meditating, intermittent fasting, important things, absolutely critical, getting your diet right. The number of people that are in pain, that don't realize that they have brain fog, that don't realize that there's just a general sense of suck in their life because of their diet. Once you clean that up, get that right, get your inflammation down, get your stress and anxiety down, which is also majorly impacted by your diet, getting your sleep right, your energy levels are going to feel awesome because your diet's there, because your sleep is there. Meditation changing the game. So, you're going to do all of the things that I talked about in that morning routine. And then, the next thing that I will add to that, human connection. Find a loving relationship and put time into it. Find a loving relationship and put time into it. Even though I have a rule, Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. But, you will note, I'm involved in storytelling, so I'm around things like anime and manga, and I'm talking about stories. I'm interviewing incredible people. So, my job, even though it's hard, even though it's a lot of hours, it's doing things that I love and care about in service of people that I'm trying to help. And I'm doing it with my wife, my best friend, the person that I care most about in the world. Everything that you're striving for, everything that you're trying to do and accomplish, if you don't have people that you love and care about and that you're spending time with, it's all for naught. We are a social creature. So, optimize your sleep, optimize your diet, optimize your exercise, and all of that is going to take care of your cognition and your energy levels, and your general feeling of well-being, which comes largely from your diet, exercise, and sleep, and love. And if you're doing all of that in a package, and the thing that you're working towards really matters to you and to the world, it's about as good as it gets. That to me is truly a life well lived. So, if you do that for the next 7 days, I promise you, you'll do it for the next ever, because it is so awesome. All right, guys? I wish you nothing but the best. Trust me, an amazing life is yours to be had if you can break out of the procrastination routine, if you can make sure that you're taking action in service of things that really matter to you and you're progressing all the time and you're surrounded by people you love. Right everybody, speaking of things you will love, if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. What gets really interesting, and this is something most scientists don't even know about yet, is level three, the deep layer of aging. There's actually a DNA clock that tells our bodies how old we are. We I could take your blood and read it and I could tell you roughly when you're going to die.