Ben Greenfield argues that while personal daily routines and habits are important for long-term success, people must remain flexible to accommodate others. He urges listeners to occasionally sacrifice rigid routines (e.g., fasting, strict bedtimes, workout schedules) to participate in shared experiences, emphasizing that relationships and love often require setting personal priorities aside. The talk recommends empathy (golden rule) and balancing self-optimization with being present for others.
Chapters
Hello. So I've said this before, but how you live your day is how you live your life. And thus some semblance of daily self examination, planning, scheduling, organizing and calendaring is totally key to ensuring your days continually kind of stack into a pile of accomplishments that eventually produce a long string of daily wins. But here's what's important. You're not just living out your own day and your own life unless you just so happen to exist on an isolated desert island. You're surrounded by hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of other people who are all living out their day while following their proven habits and rituals and routines and schedule and calendar and drive and commute and calling and opportunity and career and hobbies. And hence your best friend, your spouse, your child, your parent, your teammate, your employer, your co worker. They may not all empathize with or understand in the least your 6:00am morning routine, or your 9:00am breakfast habit, or your intermittent fasting protocol, or your 11:00am Pomodoro activity break, or your lunchtime walk, or your afternoon siesta, or your pre dinner prayer, or your strict 10pm bedtime or anything else you do during the average day or night for self optimization. All because they have, as a totally separate human from you, created their own habits that can often be quite different than yours. So why am I telling you all this? Well, try to avoid the tendency to be so narcissistic, self serving or tied your daily routine, especially with a high amount of rigidity that impedes creativity and flow, and instead make every attempt to understand that every human being walking this planet is living a different day and often a significantly different life than you are. Consider sacrificing your fast every once in a while. Take your kids to waffles. Ditch that I don't ever do coffee rule to randomly meet up with a friend at a coffee shop. Shift your weight training workout to instead meet up with some friends for tennis or pickleball, or stay up past your bedtime to go gaze at the stars with your lover. Because they want to do that and they might not have as great an importance placed upon a strict bedtime as you. And most importantly, begin each day with the mindset of living out the golden rule and putting yourself in other people's shoes. Because sure, you can live your day and stick with the habits you know will lead to success and impact. But understand please that to be a fully functioning, interdependent connected human being on a planet with a whole lot of other humans, you may often find yourself living other people's days also. And you gotta learn to do that gracefully, often by setting your own priorities aside, your own interests and schedule aside to make other people feel special and loved and noticed and seen and felt and heard. So just remember this as you go through your daily routine. It's not the same for everybody. Other people might not understand your routine and schedule, so be willing to be flexible. And remember that the greatest deal of happiness and meaning in life is derived from love and relationships. And that often means sacrificing some of your stuff for other people's stuff. So try that out. Your routine is not other people's routine. And remember that. Alright, thanks for watching.
