Self-Awareness Is A Super Power - TDBS 24 April 2017

Yo, what is going on everyone? Welcome back to day 83 of the Daniel Bourke Show. Thank you everyone for tuning in on YouTube. Thank you everyone for tuning in on the podcast. I'm happy to be here. It's been a good day. Hope you're all having a good day, whatever you're up to. What have I been doing? So this morning I got up, I went for a small little walk as usual because it's Monday here and I'm just trying to get back into a study routine. Over the weekend, I spent some time with some friends, and I'm finding it really hard lately to switch off. Like, I'll be, I'll be with friends hanging out, like, having a good time, but at the same time, I'll be thinking, oh, I've got to do this, oh, I've got to do that, I've got to study, I've got to build something. And it's, I don't know, it's, it's hard finding a balance. With, with anything. And once you're in it, I feel like I'm in a good mindset at the moment to, to keep working on the skills that I'm working on, to keep putting out content, whether it be through audio or YouTube or whatnot. Um, but yeah, I'm finding it even when I'm supposed to have some downtime, I'll feel guilty that I'm not working. It's a similar feeling to when I was at university and I would have an assignment due and I would do everything but the actual assignment. And I don't know, I'm trying to work out whether it's, it's good or bad to, to be in that sort of position. I'm getting better at dealing with it because I'm realizing, okay, I'm putting a lot of hours in during the day. There has to be some point where I can just switch off and Enjoy being relaxed and then get back into it. I think it's actually good that the fact that when I have downtime, I feel like I want to get back. And it's like when I go to the— get back into working, that is. It's like when I go to the gym and I have a couple of days at the gym. A lot of these stories are going to be related to fitness because that's what I'm about. I found in the past how I work out best is sometimes I'll work out best if I have one day on, one day off, one day on, one day off, or even three days on, one day off. Like, I sort of break it up a bit. And then the same goes for working, like whether it be— and for me right now, working is studying programming, it is making this podcast, it is making YouTube videos. I just uploaded a new YouTube video, so you can check it out at my YouTube channel. There's going to be constant uploads there, at least twice a week. So, whenever you're listening to this, whenever you're watching this, there's going to be uploads, new uploads, fairly often. So, check it out. The one I recently uploaded today, which is Monday the 24th of April— I nearly said August— is one of me working out with one of my friends, Jay. We did a good workout at his gym. There'll be more of those videos to come. I think we're going to do a session every Friday. There'll be at least one video per week on that. But going back to what I was talking about before, in the past I've worked out really well by doing 3 days on, 1 day off, or like similar, similar to a working week, 5 days on, 2 days off. But I feel with working, because I've got my laptop, I've got my phone, I've got my iPad, it's, it's easy to get, to get lost up in that feeling of, oh, I should be doing something productive here. And that's like, I don't get that feeling as much with the gym because I know I work out every single day. It's whether I sort of— is one training session going to be an hour long, or is it just going to be sort of a, uh, 20-minute walk as well as 30 minutes of yoga or something like that. But every time I have a day off, I get more excited to go back and do the thing that I've been doing lately. So, if I have a day off the gym, I'll be excited to go back the next day. And that's the same with working. Like, if I have a couple of hours off or a couple of, I don't know, or a day off or something like that, if I go to the beach with some friends I'm— while I'm there, I'm thinking about it, but I'm trying to put it in the back of my mind. But I'm also at the same time excited to get back to it. And I think that's a good place. I'm in a good place if I've got that sort of characteristic right now. I know it's not ideal to be hanging out with friends on a Saturday night and thinking about work. Should be doing one or the other. So that's why recently I've tried to say no to almost everything that people ask me to do. And that's— I know I'm being selfish, but I feel like if I look on this at the grand scale, 7— like, I gotta go hard at this for 7 years. And what is this? Well, it's, it's building up this YouTube content, it's building up the podcast content, it's working on my own brand and trying to bring value to others. So I've got to go hard at that for at least 7 years, just like with the fitness. And I'm only really starting to see some exponential gains in the fitness after 6 to 7 years of, of working on my craft. And I know it's— the process is going to be the same with the, with the podcast or with the YouTube channel. It's only It's only going to take off after I've put in years and years of work. And that's the same with, with what I, what I spent most of my time doing today, which was programming. I spent— I bought a Treehouse membership, which is treehouse.com. I'll put my referral link in the description if you want 50% off your first month. But essentially, I'm doing this deep learning course with Udacity. And if you haven't heard of deep learning, it's a subset of machine learning, but that's a whole other topic we'll talk about. It's essentially machines learning how to do things without you explicitly telling them to do it. So it's how Amazon sort of gathers all your data and recommends different items that you might be interested in buying based off what you've purchased in the past. They haven't necessarily told the machine how to recommend an item. It's gone through a whole bunch of data and recognized it for you. So, I'm learning deep learning, which is a subset of that. And the course is really hard. At the start of the year, I didn't know much programming at all. And now I feel like I'm probably, on a scale of 1 to 100, probably about a 6 now. If I was a 0 at the start, I'm probably about a 4. A 6. So, I know I've got a long way to go. And so, I signed up for this Treehouse membership to get some fundamental knowledge with, with the programming language Python. And it has done wonders for my confidence in terms of learning. I've just— everything— so, the topics that I'm learning right now are probably, I don't know, maybe a 20 on the scale. And I'm slowly creeping towards that. And it's a good feeling once you get that sort of foundation knowledge and things start to click together. I was doing some exercises today on the Treehouse website and I remembered some things in the course from before and everything just started to click. And so, I did that for about 6 to 8 hours today and then I went and worked out with my little brother. We had a really good chess session. It's International Chess Day. Monday is International Chess Day. I got a really good pump. Then I come home and have some dinner and read a couple of chapters in this book on deep learning by one of the lecturers of the course. And I feel like everything's coming together. And right now it's about 9:42 at night and I'm pretty tired. Like, my brain— I was reading before I couldn't really process words because I've read a whole bunch of stuff today. I've done 6 to 8 hours of programming, but I feel good. I feel good. I feel like it's mission accomplished. I need to switch off and go to bed in a second. I'll go upload this podcast, but I don't know, I think it's really hard to achieve that sort of balance where your mind is sort of And that's where I think meditation has helped me a lot, is focused on one thing rather than being sort of torn between two worlds in terms of, "Oh, I should be doing work," or, "Oh, I should be hanging out with friends," or whatever it is. Just focusing on one thing, being in the present moment. Like that is to me almost the pinnacle of self-awareness. Well, it is the pinnacle of self-awareness. Effectively a superpower. If you can be focused on one single thing at a time, you can achieve greatness. Like, that's— if you can devote— like, you've seen what people are capable of in the past. I've seen what people are capable of. I've seen what myself is capable of. I've seen what other people can do. People are amazing. Individuals are amazing. But if you combine a whole bunch of incredible individuals, you create the human race. We're all— human beings are amazing as a whole. But if you look on an individual level, on a micro level— on a macro level, we all know human beings are amazing, right? Some would argue differently based on environmental status, animal welfare, a whole bunch of other things. But let's just say on a macro level, humans are good. But if you look on a micro level, you have an individual who is able to directly focus all their energy into one thing, that's what furthers the species. Just that one person unlocking that next level, and then all of a sudden a number of people are able to achieve that as well. Because, you know, the real monkey see, monkey do. As soon as you see someone else being able to do something, you feel like, 'Oh, I want to achieve that,' or you— some sort of jealousy arises and you're like, 'Oh, he's got a bigger banana than me, I want to get a bigger banana than him, or I want to get as big a banana as him. And that's— I'm using the monkeys as a terminology here, as an analogy, sorry. But that's back to— that's, that's the pinnacle of self-awareness. That's, that's— I feel like if we were to, if we could unlock that, like if if we could summon that sort of energy and that, that single-tasking ability whenever we wanted. And I believe it's doable, but it's very hard, um, just because of the sheer amount of distractions. I feel like I've gotten better over— better at it over the past couple of years, but certainly nowhere near where I could be or where I've seen other people. Because you see those people that all of a sudden they'll and just get in the zone. I think I've talked about this before, it's all about flow. I think it was day 23 of the podcast. I still haven't read the book that I was supposed to read from that 23 one, but it's on my list. I'm reading a fair few books at the moment, so I'm trying to condense all the information. And once, once sort of, I plan on doing more book reviews and things like that in the future, so I'll be able to give you guys that information and make videos about it, make podcasts about it. But right now, this podcast is more of just a story of what I've been up to, what my philosophies are in terms of, I don't know, how I should live my life. Still trying to work that out, but it's a constant journey, right? But all I know is I'm having a good time doing this, doing this YouTube series, doing this podcast. It's day 83. We've made it so far, but it is, it is hard right now to sort of find that balance and relaxation. I just, just, I feel like I know I gotta hold myself back because I know I could just work myself into, into an unhealthy state. Like, there are times where I've had to physically just close the lid of my laptop so I could go to sleep. And you know, I'm a big advocate for getting at least, well, adequate sleep. For me, it's 8 hours plus some nights because I'm working hard in the gym, I'm always sore, I've got some sort of muscle repair going on, I'm studying a lot. Studying, actually studying is like the majority of my day-to-day at the moment. And you just need that— body needs that time to repair. And I know that I, I could easily put myself into an unhealthy state and just be ineffective if I didn't like close the laptop, didn't turn off my phone before going to bed, or just, yeah, started eating wrong. It's— there's a hard balance, but I know I've got to just— and this is like me giving myself another pep talk. Like, that's mostly what this podcast is about, mostly what these this video series is about. It just, it gives me time to reflect on what I've been up to. And if somehow, if anyone watches this or anyone listens to this, you can get some sort of value out of me just talking about my life, well then, then I've, I've done my task. But I'm getting a lot of value out of this myself right now, and I highly recommend it to anyone. If you feel like you're in a place where you're finding it hard to make decisions on what you should do or what you should be up to, or you feel like your mind's scattered, first of all, I recommend some sort of meditation practice. So, download Headspace. Second of all, actually do both of these. This is a daily challenge. So, try out a meditation session on Headspace. And then, second of all, try out writing down what your thoughts are. Or, if not, talk to a camera or talk to a microphone. Wow, we've been going for almost 15 minutes and I haven't— I don't have my iPad here today. It's not scripted. It's not prepared. This is just me talking. I just sat down and pressed record and this is just me talking. That's one of the rules of effective speaking. Just speak to what you know and get excited about what you're speaking. And I'm sorry, I haven't been as excited as I could have been today, but I'm pretty tired. That's not an excuse. That's not an excuse. Truth be told, I shouldn't be making excuses. I should be excited to bring this stuff to you guys, of course, which I am, but I've lost my track. No, I haven't. No, I haven't. Yeah, daily challenge, meditation, or, and, sorry, not or, and Write down some of your thoughts. Talk to a camera. Talk on a microphone. It's still awkward for me. I've done it 80-something-plus times on the microphone and about a dozen times on the camera now. And you get slowly used to it. I'm still not 100% like used to my own voice, but it's a process, right? It's all about the journey. I was watching a show, the watching snippets of a show walking back and forth from the kitchen. The Voice, which is like American Idol, Australian Idol, whatever, and these guys get up and just perform on stage. And it's— I noticed one thing, how when they're walking up on stage, how quiet it was before everyone started to listen to what they had to do. Some of these performances brought me to tears just because I, I get emotional when I see someone else putting their heart and soul into something. It's just, it's hard, hard not to for me when I see someone giving it their all like that. That's an emotional trigger for me. And that show was inspirational. It made me feel like, okay, how can I mimic that effort in my own life? And that's what I'm trying to do. That's what I should be trying to do with these, these YouTube videos and these podcasts and whatnot. Is just put all my energy into it. And am I doing that right now? I don't know. If I had to fully reflect on it, probably not. But I can slowly improve. But yeah, I think it's time to wrap it up. We got 17 and a half minutes almost. I'm gonna go eat a bit more food before going to bed. Today's a refeed day for me. So, that means I eat a few more calories than normal because I haven't eaten as many calories as I would normally eat over the last few days. And so, trying to build a little bit of muscle. But you can follow me on Instagram @mrdbourke if you want to find more about— most of the stuff I post on there is fitness or family related. As well as, I'm looking to do more videos on programming and whatnot. So, I'll work on that probably this week. And my little brother has come to me and said that he wants me to help him lose weight. So, I'm thinking about making that a video series with his permission, of course. Because I want to help him out. And I think the, the tips and tricks I give him and the guidance I give him can maybe help bring value to others. So we'll see what that holds, but I'm excited for him nonetheless. I know I told him straight up it's a lot of hard work, but if he wants to put it in, I'm proud of him. I love you, Sam, if you watch this or listen to this. So whatever you guys are up to today, I love you all. Hope you're having an awesome day. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. You all mean the world to me. I love you all. Make sure you call someone, tell them you love them. Or if not, just say you love them in person. Face to face is best. Tomorrow's day 84, and you know the drill. Catch you later.