The Real Reason You’re Always Tired (Fix It!)

Brian Johnson just sat down with me to share his three step plan to obtain limitless energy whilst building your dream business. Brian has spent over $4 million decoding the human body, becoming the most researched human in history, all while scaling multimillion dollar businesses. In this episode he breaks down how optimizing your health is the ultimate cheat code for entrepreneurial success.

Sleep is the most powerful performance in enhancing drug in the entire world. So this is an important thing because right now most of society does not think of themselves as a professional sleeper. They sleep when they have time, they sleep when they want to. They sleep when they're done with watching a movie. They sleep when, whenever, like when they're done with their homework. Okay, so the way you're going to do this one, you're going to optimize for your resting heart rate. Do you have a wearable?

Yep. Oh, I would.

Okay. Before you go to bed tonight, so, so lay down in your bed, on your pillow, pull up your phone and then look at your live resting heart rate. Take a few breaths, calm yourself down. Let's just say it's 60 beats per minute. Your goal over the next week or two weeks, a month is to lower your resting heart rate to 55 or 50. Now what you're gonna see is as you lower your heart rate, your sleep quality is going to improve. Oh really? So here's what you're going to do to lower your resting heart rate. Two is eat your final meal at least two hours for bed. So if your bedtime is at 10pm, then your last meal of the day will be at 8pm and if you do that, it gives your body some time to digest.

I've been doing this three hours before.

Oh you have?

I have been doing this serious.

Your bedtime is when?

Well, it depends. So I've just traveled here, the time difference caused me a bit of confusion, but normally around 10, 30, 11.

And so then you have your final meal around 7, 8.

Exactly.

Great. So have you tried earlier?

Can eat at five? Yeah, I, I prefer it. I'm a little bit hungry when I go to bed, but I sleep better. Exactly the earlier I eat.

Exactly. That's exactly right. So you've experienced it. So the earlier you eat and the lighter you eat, the better you'll sleep. And then next to lower your resting heart rate is a wind down routine. So this is at the end of the day, you are cycling through all the stress of the day. So you're thinking on set today you said something that you're embarrassed by or you're mad at someone or someone did something wrong you or like whatever the case may be, you're cycling through all these thoughts and your head hits the pillow and if you haven't processed those, what happens?

Well, you just play on your mind, keep your mind active.

Just rolls, right? Yeah, it rolls.

I actually had that last night. Exact one.

Yeah, you're recycling. Cool. So the goal is to basically take those thoughts and you have to somehow put them to bed themselves. They have to be at rest. So I did this routine where I talk to myself, I give myself various character names. So I identify with Ambitious Brian. He's always the first guy to show up. So my bedtime is 8:30pm so at 7:30pm I say okay, Sleep Brian is now in charge and the first person to show up is Ambitious Brian. And he says, guys, I've got a new idea. It is spectacular. Like it is absolutely phenomenal.

I know Ambitious Brian quite well.

Yeah. And so evening Brian says, Ambitious Brian, we love you, you're doing a great job. We are now in sleep prep mode. So we're going to write down your idea and then tomorrow we're going to think about this new idea. And Ambitious Brian says, are you sure? And then Sleep Brian says yeah, we got it. You sure? So then he goes away and the next person to come up is Anxious Brian. And he says today in that conversation you said something that was probably offensive and very short sighted and now they probably really hate you. And so Steve Brian says, Anxious Brian, thank you for bringing that to our attention. Increasing self awareness is very helpful. But going through this process and that way by writing down all the various Brian's and their needs, whether new ideas or whether concerns or whether case may upset, by the time my head hits the pillow, if I've reconciled, I will be out in two minutes. When you go through your wind down routine, you're trying to calm your body down, including resolving your internal conflicts. You can also do things. This is my favorite, read a book, hold a book in your hand and read it for bed. That is my number one move for calming myself down. So if you remember this, so you now approach this, you are a professional sleeper, you take that very seriously. You now have a measurement or a metric to say if you lower your heart rate, your sleep is going to go up. To do that you're going to eat earlier and lighter. You're going to have a wind down routine to calm yourself down. You're going to have red or amber light. So at 7:30pm I try to turn all Screens off. And then we just have a red light in the house. So screens and blue light are going to make your melatonin not be produced, which makes it harder to go to sleep. So turn screens off, have red and amber light in your house and then be consistent. I'm going to write plus or minus 30 minutes. So I recorded the best sleep score in history. I did eight months of, of perfect sleep using, whoop, 100% per night. Great night. Eight months. So yeah, when I was doing that, I was in bed of 8:30pm around a few minutes every night. I didn't actually look at the data, but I tried to be in bed like plus or minus a minute. It was very, very tight.

What time are you getting up?

4:30.

4:30. Yeah.

So if you look at these, all these things, what you're basically saying is the world is a very hard place, it's hard to be human and we experience a lot of angst and consternation on a daily basis. The single best thing anybody can do for their mental well being, their physical well being, for their emotional resilience, for the performance of school, the performance at work, everything is sleep.

How many hours of sleep as you think is optimal?

7 days.

I listen to this as you know, a 50 year old rich guy and I think I can easily do this. I'm half doing already. Yeah, I'm not consistent. Travel, blah, blah, blah. There's lots of reasons. But I just think of the audience, 50% of the population, just like they're working a second job in the evening. How can we help people get to this stage when they can't even afford to like do any of this?

So for those of you who are working two jobs and have constrained time, what happens if two jobs are being worked? Then the person comes home and let's just say you're feeling stressed, that you've been working all day, you want some alone time. So let's say you pull up your phone, you want to scroll, you turn the TV on, you have something you're watching and then you want to eat some food. And what happens in doing that is doing all of those things makes sleep worse.

And then you're more tired the next day.

Exactly. So this is what I would say to my 21 year old self, right? And I was in that situation. I had no money, so I grew up poor. My mom made my clothes for me. I was dead poor until the age of 34. Nothing. So I know what this is like, you're working every second, every day. I had babies So I was up at night sleeping and not sleeping because the kids were up. So I understand it is a grind to do these things. So what I'm saying is if I could travel in time and I could coach myself, I would say to myself, sleep is non negotiable. You can't push through not getting sleep and working an extra two or three hours a day. Trying to be more successful is not worth it. It is a foolish endeavor.

Does it matter if you go to bed at 8, get up at 4:30, or go to bed at 11 and wake up at 7?

Just choose your routine. Choose your routine and just be consistent.

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Back at zero. So exercise every single day. You can pick the thing you want to do. Basketball, pilates, yoga, running, walking, weight in the scene. Pick your thing. Just be active every single day. You want to spend roughly 150 minutes per week in zone two. That's like when you and I are walking together 130. Yeah, exactly. We can maintain a conversation and we're not like, we can still exercise. And then 90 minutes a week in zone five, that's where you can't speak because you're working out so hard.

So this is walking. Zone two is walking. Proper little jog. Maybe zone five would be running, doing proper exercise, football, you know, moving around.

Now, if these seem excessive to you, that's okay. Just be active every single day. The thing that is good about this is if you're in a habit of doing something every day, if you don't go, if going to the gym is a lot of work, go for a walk and maybe during a phone call, walk during your phone call or doing lunch, go for a walk. But just have a goal of doing that every single day. Just a good habit. And nutrition. Now this is really important because only after you've mastered sleep and exercise is nutrition on point. Because we did a study at my brain interface company Kernel, where we measured my willpower after a bad night's sleep of deep sleep and after a good night's sleep. So deep sleep is the first sleep window that opens up after you go to sleep. You fall asleep, you drop into the deep sleep first, you come back up in your rem. Deep sleep is like when the trash collector comes to the body and picks up the trash. If you miss your deep sleep window, you can't make it back. So this is the idea that if someone's normal bedtime is 10pm and then they go to bed at 1, they say, oh, I'll just sleep until 9. It doesn't work that way. You've missed your deep sleep window. If you miss that deep sleep window, what happens the next day when it arrives and 7pm arrives? You're going to crave junk food, bad food.

And that happens to me?

Yeah. The likelihood that you're going to resist it is very low because your willpower is dramatically lower. So this goes back to the example. Somebody has two jobs. They come home, they want time for themselves, they scroll, they watch something, they eat some snacks. That raises their heart rate, it lessens their sleep quality, it lowers their willpower. So the next day when they come home, they're even more tired, they have even less willpower, so they snack even more. Now you're putting on weight, you don't feel like exercising because you don't feel good. Right. So it has this vicious cycle. This is why being a professional sleeper is so important. It sets the foundation for all things. If you sleep well, you feel well. If you feel well, you exercise. If you exercise, you're going to eat well in nutrition. So you have to get yourself in the positive feedback loop. There's a death spiral that begins with bad sleep.

You eat one meal a day, I eat three. So three meals a day. But nutrition wise, is there any, any quick guides on that for people?

Yeah. So actually I'll Just give you. We have a plate that we've designed of the foods that are best for longevity.

Okay, we'll just chuck up on the screen now.

That is, we basically went through all the scientific evidence. We said which foods have the best evidence for health and longevity. Okay. And so that's the selection.

And you eat breakfast, then you must eat again, and then lunch, and then nothing.

Yep. And so I eat. I personally eat 2,250 calories a day. My 130 grams of protein. Some people I know eat like 250 grams of protein a day. There's like this idea that you need a lot, but most people consume too much protein. And then two is measurement. So over the past couple years, I've become the most measured person in human history. There's more data on my body than any human that's ever existed. Measurement is an absolute superpower. And so people are oftentimes trying to assess, how am I doing? Is this therapy working? Is this food good for me? The best thing you can do is measurement to measure. You want to do a basic blood panel.

I just did this one. I did a blood test because I was taking vitamins. I did a blood test. I was taking the wrong vitamins. Basically.

Yeah.

You think you know what you need and then your blood tells you what you actually need.

Exactly. So listen to the body. So at Blueprint, you can go to our Blueprint website. We have blood panels that are low cost and they give you more markers. They give you 117 markers. You just can't get it from your doctor. If you go to your doctor, it's a hassle. You have to persuade them. They can't really do it. There's a limited set. So get a panel blueprint, that's 117 markers. And that will give you a great baseline of expensive to do this.

How much is it?

I think it's 350, I think. Yeah. To be clear on this, like, with my incentives, I arguably have the best biomarkers of anybody in the entire world, which is a pretty amazing thing when.

You think about it, considering how much technology is meant to be out there.

And so I've shared this and I share everything I do with everybody. And so I share it for free. So anybody can do what I do.

This is one of the reasons I really love what you're doing because you've based it on scientific information on your own body and understanding the body.

Yes. These things are based upon population level evidence. So a lot of people say, oh, but Brian, that's You and your body. My body's different. This stuff is based upon population level evidence, so it's as applicable to me as it is to someone else. Three is a realization that we have a culture of Dai. So if you think about the things we do on a daily basis, what is in our society, we celebrate Dai. You know, it's like when your birthday comes around and you're celebrating life, what.

Do you do about when are you going to die?

Well, you have a sugar filled.

Oh, I see.

Sugar filled cake.

My birthday's coming up. My birthday is next week. So I'm thinking, God, you're right. We eat crap.

So just realize that basically our 2025 culture is trying to kill you.

Yeah.

So when you patched it up as fun. Exactly.

Big lie.

It's a gigantic lie. All of our cultural norms, like, you do a good job, you celebrate some big win at work, you go out and get drunk and like lessen your life. Birthdays, you fill yourself full of sugar. So just if you start looking around, you're going to realize like, it feels funny. You walk down the street and everywhere you go, it's like fast food, you know, people starting sugar.

I think people resigned to it. I'm going to die, I might as well enjoy myself until I die.

And that goes back to our priority previous conversation. This is why, like, it's very hard to understand these ideas. When you realize we are the first generation who won't die, it changes your outlook on everything. Like now you see a fast food joint that's for like primitive people who didn't realize that we are the first generation won't die. So we are a new species. And that's why it's a really big.

Disruption how we think a lot of people listening to this would be eating in and out and five guys on these. It's very hard to change habits, isn't it? I think that's what it is. If you're already in that habit and a lot of 21 year olds are in that habit already, you know, like you say college and stuff, you know, let's do this.

So none is better than some. So my challenge to each one of you, don't eat fast food ever. No cheat days, no one off. Don't eat it. Because when you say every once in a while, it never is once in a while. Cheat days become cheat weeks, cheat weeks become cheat months, cheat months become cheat years. And so embrace this idea that we are evolving into a new species. We are the first generation who will not die. We're giving birth to superintelligence. This is the most spectacular moment in this part of the galaxy. It's an extraordinary opportunity. Don't waste it by eating junk food, by drinking, by smoking. Go to bed on time, take care of your health. Like, this is an epic opportunity to be human. The most epic in our history. Right now. Think of everybody in your life. Is there anybody in your life or your viewer's life that is encouraging you to not die? Like, wholesale. Wholesale. Don't die. Like, don't do anything.

Even the ones that love yourself still give you this shit.

Exactly.

Junk in your life. And. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. They love you and they don't do anything.

Is there any human on planet Earth?

You. As I'm saying, you are.

It's such a weird situation.

It is, it is. It's crazy.

No one's, no one's talking about this crazy. Everyone else is just like, they're trying to show you their love by helping you die.

I want, as a successful business person that you are, I want to build a financial model around making this happen. Because I think why, I like what.

You just said there.

Okay, so they can have chicken, just don't have the fries. And downstairs, in fact, they're saving money.

Yes.

Right. So what else can, what else can people do to financially be able to live this way? So my short term hack is start a side hustle, a business that buys back time. So if you're selling something online, like TikTok shop now is actually amazing. I can leave my TikTok shop running all day and then in the morning I can wake up and I've sold a load of stuff. I've got money coming in. I can afford to, like, eat well and spend the day. Is there anything that jumps into your mind when you go back to your younger self?

Yeah.

You know, you were like a lot of young people. You wanted to make money and, you know, you built a company up. You sold it for 800 million, you know, and you built, you built this incredible brand. What would young people do today? They're going to copy that right now, by the way.

Yes.

That's the blueprint they have.

The principle I've always worked with is I didn't want to trade my time for money.

Yep, that's what I should teach you at school. You can't get time back.

Exactly. So in college I thought, okay, I can get a job in college. I can make $11.50 to do a given job if I work, you know, 10 hours a week. I get that, you know, that much money. I thought, I don't think I want to trade my time for money. I want to invest in something where I can determine the value of what I do. And so I basically made the gamble. Like entrepreneurship is the gamble that if you work for nothing for some duration of time, that there's a big payout over time. From when I started Braintree to when I sold it. I forget the actual math, but it was something like I made the equivalent of like $15,000 per hour around the clock.

From the time you started it.

Yeah, exactly. Now. And now if you realize, like, if you're an entrepreneur and you're doing that, you realize that, that 60 minutes you just spent, you just got paid $10,000 for that 60. 60 minutes. That's mind blowing. But you can't do that. You just have to realize that you're trading time to build on this bigger outcome.

Well, that's. It's basically equity in something.

Yes.

Isn't it? It's that simple. Because, I mean, I think a lot of people are selling an hour and which you can't get back. Whereas what we're talking about, one of my basic principles for what I try to share with people is like, buy time, don't sell time.

Yes.

Which I think very related to what you're talking about. We can buy time by eating better.

Yes, right.

We can. We can get back time, the most valuable thing, by having more time, if we look after our sleep and our nutrition. My argument is that as well, like, can you build something where eventually, like your son, for example, who's clearly very smart. If I was him, I would drop out of university and I'd build something, maybe an AI advisory service, I don't know, something that can last five, 10 years, maybe that has some value as an equity item. And yes, for the first few years, he probably won't earn a lot of money from it, but he doesn't have wife to worry because he can live in with you. So if someone's listening and they can live with their parents and build something up that isn't selling time. I think that's still a good bit of advice for today, despite our kind of slightly scary future.

It is. Equity is good also, if you build something via software, you build a software application and then you build it once, but you can sell it a million times. That's the appeal of software now. You have to update it, upkeep it, and improve it. But you're still. You're building something once and you're selling it some n number of times. And so versus if you are washing windows or walking dogs, you're constrained to only doing that thing. Right. You can only make money by walking the dog. You can't walk 300 dogs at the same time.

Such a good point.

So you're always trying to scale the value of your time.

Well one way to do it now in the modern world I think social media is totally underrated. A lot of people a bit like we're talking about with nutrition and sleep. Also social media's given this very bad rap as a negative thing. I actually think it's a liberator. So if you're dog walking and you go live on TikTok and you video it, you might then put the video up. That video can make money while you're not walking the dog.

Exactly.

So the walking the dog was just a byproduct of how you make money.

Exactly.

And I think I worry about building software products now because I think AI is going to replace that quite quickly. All the SaaS businesses are going to get wiped out.

Exactly.

I think personal brand is quite a big opportunity for people. You can have small following and build, you know, quite a nice income stream from it.

Yeah.

Again you post a video. I got a video up, I put up a year ago. It's a business video. How to do business. 10 million views in the last 30 days. It's made US$35,000. We made it a year ago.

Yeah.

Anything else you think? I mean tech businesses still of course are very big. Any other. If you were trying to make money 21 years old now, what would you.

Yeah, so I would equate this money thing with health. I mean right now the grand prize in society is money and I'm saying right now the grand prize is shifting to become life extension because the more time you have, the more things you can do that you enjoy money, you can make money compounds over time. People have always assumed if death has always been inevitable, when that's inevitable, people then say like okay, in my short period of time I want to maximize wealth creation because if I do that status power of wealth and cars and homes and whatever the case may be and I'm saying that you can do those things. Certainly very cool. Also I'm trying to be a voice of wisdom that the world is moving so fast you'll need to be adaptable to how things change. Like you have ideas now what you're going to do. Maybe you start doing that today, in three months like we said. Maybe that's no longer possible because AI is now doing it. So now you have to redo your entire plan. So as you like try your different iterations of what to do and deal with this changing world. The best thing to do is have your sleep in place, exercise in place, nutrition in place. You'll have the emotional resilience because there's nobody in the world right now, nobody that can give somebody advice on what to do. If I were to try to suggest I do like do this or that, nobody knows. And so the wisdom is realizing that nobody knows. Don't listen to them. Really. We're an unknown landscape and that's true for everybody.

What I really like about this as well, it's like, what can you control? Well, you can control your own body, you can control your own well being. That should never change. In fact, hopefully technology can only help you do that better. Especially with the pioneering work you're doing, being able to measure your biomarkers and understand yourself. I think, I think the, I want to help your mission like it is exploding, but I want to, I want to amplify it. And what I'm, what I'm seeing at the base level is that people don't necessarily want to live longer.

Yes.

So it's a problem they don't think they need solving because they're like, well if I live to 70, that'll be all right. And you know, a lot of people in their 80s like I'm in pain, do I want to keep on living? But of course that they're at better, they probably won't be as much pain. I think the thing is, the reason that this 21 year old's not going to do it is because I don't think we've taught them how to buy time. I think buying time is just as important as extending the amount of time you've got. So maybe there's something we can think of there together because again, I'll give you a copy of my book and you can see where I'm going with this. People can't buy time right now. They're selling time. And if they're selling time, they value their life less. Yes, because they're in slavery. Basically the modern day slaves. A lot of people, they have to do the job. The rent's so high because the property companies own everything they can't afford the rent they can't afford to buy. Then they're basically having to pay food they can't afford and we're talking junk food most of the time. Electricity bills are too High people are literally doing two jobs just to survive. And again, I've been there, you've been there. So I just go back to that younger us and I think what can we do to help people get out of fight or flight so they can think about the stuff that you're talking about?

Yes, that's true. People are in this loop and what I'm trying to point out is that there's probably no one in their lives, no one who's telling them that the best thing they can do for themselves is to make their health their number one priority. Don't do die. It is bad for you. It's going to make you a lesser human. You're going to have less willpower, you'll be more cloudy in the mind. There's just nothing virtuous about it. And so that's one take home message is like let me be on your shoulder encouraging you to don't do those things and adopt your positive habits. That really is the yield. You can go survey the world of everyone's advice on what business to build and everybody's got good ideas. There's nothing I'm going to say that's unique. What I am unique at is I'm going to tell you I'm going to be your best advocate that making your health your top priority is the highest yield investment you can make with your time.

I feel quite emotional about this. I think. I really hope people listen and I will join you in this battle and share this story because I think at least people have control over their own body. It's a great start to having control over your own life.

And in many ways it's very hard to wrestle control in your daily life. You've got a job, you've got a manager, you've got a boss, all these things happen to you. But you can control your own body and so it really does help people wrestle control.

Thank you for sharing this knowledge today. It's an important message and I hope you guys got value. There's links down below. You can go check out the blueprint that Brian Johnson and his team have built. Listen to this carefully. Learn. We're off to have 130 grams worth of chicken protein now. We'll see you later.