What Stress, Burnout, and Hustle Culture Do To Your Body

People are equally, if not more, zealous about this martyrdom culture than people were in previous religious cultures where the prize they have to win is so intensely identified, right? The status, power, wealth, that they're literally willing to themselves, even in a slow mo fashion, to achieve that prize. It's just like people are transfixed in a zombie like fashion. They don't have control over themselves. Hi, friends. Today we're going to talk about martyrdom culture that we masquerade as hero culture. Now I get it. You are ambitious, you are smart, you're talented, you have big dreams for life. You want to be rich and powerful and have high status. Those are all things everybody wants. Also, there is a way to go about doing it that does not require you to martyr your health. A lot of people have this bad idea in their mind that if they compromise their health somehow, it will help them achieve better success. Today we're going to highlight the evidence that shows that is a bad idea. You can, in fact, prioritize your health and achieve better outcomes in your success, happiness, and status. Let's go. You know, I've always wondered, like, what if a branch started growing out of my head? Like, it was like, two nights ago.

I had this dream I would turn and there'd be like a root growing out of my skin middle of nowhere. It was like, oh, that's terrifying.

At some point, do you, like, start creating little seedlings and, like, dropping little.

Brian all over the place, like, plant them in the yard. This true fusion, like, we think about merging with AI it becomes this nightmare.

Situation where you can't get away from these needy seedlings and all.

All night long, there's like, Brian, Brian, shut up. I'm sorry. I'm going to cut you down. You got to be quiet. What's happening?

Oh, my God.

Are we ready?

Yes.

Today we're going to talk about one of the biggest myths of modern life. And that's the idea that you need to martyr your health in order to be successful. This has been so ingrained into the psyche of people who want epic professional success, we're going to get to the bottom of why this silly myth of martyrdom has made itself a mainstay in our culture and why it's wrong and how you can make the corrective actions to get yourself back to peak health and peak performance.

So you, you're coming from the other side too. Like, you were. You're a convert in this new wave of, like, looking after your health. So a lot of people, a, they don't realize that you built Braintree, Venmo, sold it to PayPal for eBay for 800 million and so made a shit ton of money. And people hear that story and they think, wow, Brian, you are only doing what you're doing now because you had access to money and there's no way you could have been that successful. And recently, for the first time, I heard you say that you think that you would have made more money had you been sleeping better, Is that right?

Unquestionably, I would have made more money and been more successful had I made health my top priority.

Can you, like, talk? Because I think a lot of people don't realize a lot of people aren't in the startup world. They're not building businesses. So you're specifically, from what I understand, you sold the company at a point where it hit a certain valuation, but really primarily because you couldn't go on any longer.

So the truth of the matter is that nobody is going to achieve peak success when your health is in a bad spot. And that is true for me. And there's actually two of the call today on the podcast today that have gone through the same experience. Dr. Mallon also went to the same trajectory as me, I think. Is that right, Dr. Mike, with emergency medicine?

To some extent, yeah. I mean, do you mean, like, are we using the B word, burnout?

Like, yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

I mean, basically as well, is it fair to say you and I were both introduced to a culture that sacrificed health for some kind of professional idea of success?

Yeah, I would say a professional ideal, like it, an expectation of how you behave in that profession. And I think both of us were subject to that, maybe even without even realizing it for a while, at least I was.

Personally, that's exactly what I would identify, is that the systems that said, hey, we're going to tell you to behave like this. Like, you know, sleep like this, eat like this, look like this, be like this. Not because the data says it's the best for you or because it produces the best outcomes, do these things because the system designed by, we don't even know who says to do these things. And so I know for me, in, it's very true. In, in entrepreneurship culture, you are expected to sacrifice your health. So there's no amount of travel is too much, there's no amount of sleep is too little. There's, you know, you can sacrifice your. Your exercise routines, you would eat junk food. So long as your revenue is climbing, your employee count is increasing, you know, and, and you're raising more money. And so it just really is a. A spectacular failure of our societal systems that have us do these things that are extremely detrimental to our individual health, our company's health, and everybody around us. And I think it's so silly that we have bought into these notions. So I say, you know, it's relevant here that I did this as an entrepreneur. Mike did this in the. In the medical world. So it's not just like one industry. And, Kate, you're in a. For a fortunate situation where, I mean, you tell me, but you're 29 years old, and so, you know, I guess I'm curious on what your experience has been in terms of the. The systems that you were introduced to in the world and how success was framed to you. But let me jump to Mike first. Like, Mike, would you say your experience was similar to mine in terms of what the system told you to do and what it rewarded you to do?

Yeah, I mean, in the sense that I got exposed to in medicine, a world where physicians are expected to just crush themselves. I mean, it starts immediately from medical school. So, like, you know, I thought undergrad was hard, and, you know, I did chemical engineering undergrad and, like, worked really hard. And then. Then I started medical school and was just blown away by the expectations placed on medical students in terms of, like, how hard they had to study. And then that compounded within residency and then professional life. And it's just like a stepwise function of increasing expectations and a lack of focus on, like, personal health. Like, you never get taught health how to be healthy and also be a professional in medicine at the same time. And it was just expected. Like, there was no, like, there's no conversation. There was no, like, me sitting down in a medical school interview and then being like, hey, are you ready to sacrifice your health and your longevity for this, this profession? Nobody ever asked me that.

Right.

It's just like, oh, being a doctor sounds great. You know, I want to help people. And then next thing you know, it's like, I want to sacrifice my own health to help people. And that was never explicitly said to me. And I don't think I. The same is true as an entrepreneur, I think.

Is it clear? I think I saw this stat, correct me if I'm wrong, in terms of life expectancy for medical professionals that emergency med doctors had the lowest. I think it was like, 59 or something like that.

It's crazy low.

It's very low.

I mean, had I known that, I never would have gone into emergency medicine. You know, it's like, wait, somebody can't sell you on a career when they're like, hey, you know, by the way, you're probably going to die about 15 years younger than the average human.

Cool, right?

No, no, thanks.

Mike, you, you were saying also something else about this being applicable not just to the medical world or entrepreneurship world, but.

Yeah, I don't think this is just unique to medicine or the world of entrepreneurship. I think that this is pretty much every professional career and almost like a societal level expectation that we crush ourselves for the benefit of our. I don't even know what we're benefiting, like theoretically. I think there's some, this theoretical benefit that you have to crush yourself in order to be successful in life or in order to like, you know, do good for mankind or, or humankind. But I, but I don't think, I think it's misguided.

Yeah. You know, I could not agree with you more. I, I think that in our global system that we are pawns for the system and we are disposable for the system's progress. But the insanity this moment is the system is the priority of the species and we are disposable and we compensate for that situation by trying to give ourselves trophies for success, you know, power, wealth, status. But it's a giant cope for the fact that we are martyrs for system bigger than ourselves. And I think the opportunity here is to shift it to say we no longer. And this is like you, when you, when death is inevitable, that's kind of the only thing you can do to cope. Or you can like, you know, identify an afterlife and be like, actually there's a bigger system at play here and we're going to triumph over the system. But in practical terms, this is why I think what we're doing at Don't Die is correct that when existence itself becomes the priority, we are no longer pawns and will be arbitraged in, you know, for the systems winning and. But so it's like such a big concept, but we play in these micro games of the modern to try to earn our own status, power, respect within the circles we run. Kate, what's been your, your, I mean, you're 29 years old. What's been your life experience in terms of the culture that you walk into as a professional? And what pressures do you feel?

Yeah, I mean, being in the startup community in New York, like you definitely feel the pressure to say, hey, I've been working so hard, I've been staying up all night working on this project. And then it's funny. I think in the fashion industry, there's a little bit more of a social pressure to go out, have drinks, connect with people. Smoking is a little bit more prevalent in that community, so a little bit more of, like, this, like, cool person, debaucherous behavior in the fashion community. So I think it's interesting, like, being in both worlds of startup and fashion back in the day. But, yeah, I totally agree. Like, we. If you, like, really step back and look at it soberly, it's. It's not a good situation.

In my conversation with, I primarily speak to founders and when they're going through this process. And I can tell when I enter this conversation and I try to persuade them, hey, like, let's just start with some baseline observations. You do not want to write inefficient code, right? Your goal is to write efficient code. Your goal is to run efficient hardware. You don't want sloppy hardware. You don't want sloppy software. You want efficient systems. You are software and hardware, and you do not want to run sloppy software hardware on yourself. And that's what happens when you don't make health your top priority. Now, like, in those basic terms, like, they get it, but then when they see themselves competing against other people who are willing to monitor themselves, they feel like they're gonna fall behind if they don't do it. So they don't take the same number of international trips if they're not, you know, sleeping three to four hours a night. So not working that many hours a day, even if they're not productive, like, it's the perception that they're falling behind. But I have found it is incredibly hard to get people to feel comfortable they can safely prioritize their health and not fall behind, and they just won't let it go. They're so attached to this ideology. Just, like, it's almost like hanging from the monkey bars. Like, you just can't. Like, you feel like you. If you let go, there's. There's no safety net. You're not gonna be caught. What do you guys think that's about?

Do you think that they believe in the first place that this is bad for them? I mean, yes, the first question, right? Like, do they even believe us?

So I would like to hypothesize that the person sitting on the other side listening to us right now is part of hustle culture and may not realize, A, that they're part of hustle culture and B, that it's impacting their health. So I would love to go through, like, what it means, what happens to the individual when they are porn in the system? Assuming that we believe that for a second. What happens when you don't get enough sleep? What happens when you are burnt out there?

B word.

And then once we. So then once you. Once everyone's agreed upon those terms, Brian, that's when all of that angst kicks up. Because then you come face to face with like, wait, do I need to make a decision between myself and my company? And we can untangle that too.

Okay, cool. All right, let's jump into the evidence. We have a bunch of evidence prepared. Let's go over it and let's see what effect hustle. I mean, I don't know if I even want to call it hustle culture, because hustling is a good thing. So I. Is there a word we can use that it's like, almost destructive?

Because people, it's just work culture. It's just current work culture.

Work is a positive word. We needed something that captures that. It's an illusion. Like you.

Oh, it's like modern culture.

Yeah, but it's modern culture masquerading as hero culture. Right. All right, let's go through the evidence. We'll come back on the medicine. It's gonna happen.

It's coming.

Yeah, it's coming. Okay, Mike, do you wanna start us off with some of the evidence we put together as we evaluated this topic?

Yeah. So as we went through this, I think there's like three or four statements that we can make around the evidence with regard to this type of culture whose word we haven't identified what it is yet. But basically, one, overwork will kill you. Two, working too much destroys your relationships. Three, all nighters and sleep disruption causes heart disease and diabetes. And four, sleep disruption and overwork makes you a bad leader. So let's. Let's break those down. So overwork will kill you. This has been well studied. There was a meta analysis in 2022 that basically came to the conclusion that burnout increases heart attack risk by 78%. Let that seep in for a second. Like, burnout increases heart attack risk by 78%. That's huge. That's more than, like, most of the things that we talk about. And we, when we were talking about like taking supplement, certain supplements, or exercising, or like all of these things have fairly minimal changes to your actual risk. 78% is. Is massive. And then there was another study that showed the amount of work. So working beyond 55 hours per week was led to about 800,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016. And, and that those people who worked greater than 55 hours per week had a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of death from heart attack. So we know without a shadow of a doubt that working too much, whether that's just the sense of the B word, burnout, or if it's just the number of hours you're putting in a week actually has a direct impact on your, your livelihood and how long you're going to live.

So, Mike, in, in that case, let me, let me be the devil's advocate in this, okay? I just, I just heard what you said and I'm thinking, you know what, Mike, I get it. I'm not really interested in living, you know, 80 years of life. I'm okay to trade off my last 10 years of life so that I can be epic in my 20s, make a ton of money, and then I can just reverse the damage I did in my 20s. I can do it in my 30s and 40s. So I'm willing to take this gamble and make this trade off. Can you? What's, what's your argument there?

Well, so first, first off, there's a difference between making it up and then just having like, worse actual livelihood or life quality during the years that you currently have. So the, the counter argument to what you just suggested is that you're actually going to see lower performance the harder you're working. So when you're pushing yourself, you're likely not sleeping as much, right? You're likely not spending as much time with family and friends. You're hurting your social relationships, relationships, you're not sleeping, you're not eating appropriately, not exercising. All those things actually reduce your likelihood of, of, of performing at the highest possible level. And this gets, I think, to what you were talking about, Brian, in terms of like, you feel like you could have been even more successful than you were had you been taking better care of yourself. And the research actually supports that statement. So if we look at, for example, relationships, working too much destroys your relationships. That was the second statement that, that we made. There was a interesting trial that was done in Belgium where employees shifted to a 30 hour work week and they actually found that they had generally higher well being, just a sense of overall well being. And that that was mostly generated by lower work and family conflict. And we've seen this time and time again in research studies where people who work more have more trouble with their fan in their family life, they have more trouble in their, in their relationships, and they don't get as much general happiness from their life because they're just crushing themselves at work basically.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So my initial knee jerk reaction to you would be lacking in awareness of the second and third and fourth order consequences that if I begin this process and I have some level of health deterioration that I am, I'm thinking that it may only affect end of life and, or that I can make it up in my 30s, 40s. But what I'm not accounting for are the other points you laid out in the beginning. To say it's going to begin its ruinous effects on my relationships. It's going to begin my ruinous, it's going to begin lessening, it's going to diminish my abilities as a leader and it's going to have all these other follow on consequences. So my first reaction to you is, is totally inaccurate. That is not the trade off I'm making. It's a much more sophisticated cascade of consequences than I'm anticipating and I haven't fully groked what it really means. That fair?

Yeah, that's really fair. Yeah.

And specifically, like there's a couple other stats here. Sleep restricted CEOs make 29% more risky errors in lab simulation. So like you're going to be a worse immediate leader. So the trade off of short term to long term falls flat when you're a worse CEO, leader builder, er, medicine doctor and that fit workers log two extra productive hours per week. So your productivity of either your team or yourself also increases with better health decisions.

In the immediate term you also make better decisions. Like that one study where they looked at Israeli judges, I find this one super impressive. So this was Israeli judges, judges, judges that are determining whether someone should make parole or not. And they found that in the morning when they're most rested that 65% of people made parole. But right before lunch 0% made parole. Yeah, the timing of day actually. And this has been, this has been shown in CEOs as well where not only are you making worse decisions, but you're actually like more pessimistic and less charismatic when you're tired. So there was a study looking at, at leaders who were sleep deprived and in those sleep deprived leaders, people perceive them as being less charismatic and they made poor decisions and did not lead their team quite as well. Which is like, makes total sense when you think about it, right? I mean how often have you been sleep deprived and then felt like you had less energy? People pick up on that. Even if it's, you know, even if it's subconscious. They pick up on the fact that you're not charismatic, you're not as understanding or you're not as kind. Like that stuff makes total sense.

Quick detour here. That in my personal life with really close interpersonal relationships, it's become so obvious to me now that I'm observing myself to have hard conversations before 5pm if it's 5pm the chance of a hard conversation going wrong is so much higher. So just avoid it now because if we all have this goal of working things out together, then it doesn't make any sense to do things after 5pm that are difficult.

My wife Brittany and I have this. Had this term when I was working ER shifts called night shifted where we would specifically avoid difficult conversations after I was coming off a night shift. Yeah, because a hundred percent because. And I, I recognize this too. But like she picked up on the fact that like I was just so quick to, to cut her down or like say something negative or be pessimistic or like just be like aggro because I didn't get enough sl right. So like we literally named it and like changed behavior around it. Like I remember this one time I was coming off of. This was actually in residency overshare for a minute. So I was coming off of a, an ICU shift. It was one of those like 36 hour shifts. So like not only are you awake like all throughout the night, but you're also working like 36 hours straight. And I was walking the dog, actually, I was running the dog. And like this other dog came and started like running with us. And like I couldn't get it to go away. I was kind of shoo it away. Right? It's just me and my dog running. I don't want this dog bothering us. And it's like running in and out of the street, runs in front of this car and this nice old lady stops and she like says something to me and I don't really hear her, but I infer that she was saying something rude and I just start cussing her out.

Oh my God.

She looked at me like I was the like the worst human in the world and just like drove away. And then like after she left, I was like, maybe she was trying to say something kind. Yeah, I was so reactive and I was just. I was. Night shifted, man. That's like all there was to it. But like, it's just like it tells the story of like this pessimism and this, this lack of like empathy that happens when we're, when we're Sleep deprived. And I think a lot of people don't even realize it.

Yeah, Mike, if you really wanted to burn her, you'd be like, you better hope you're not in the er.

I was like. I was like, f you, you effing.

I mean, it was bad.

It was like, so not me.

But, like, that's what happens in my. In my first. My previous relationship, I. I tried to make this rule that, you know, like, realizing that when 6 or 7pm Brian arrived, like, it was not a good situation for almost anything. I. Like, getting the kids bathed, fed, and put to bed was, like, the only thing I could muster up. And so I tried to introduce this concept, but my partner at the time needed to. To do emotional reconciliation. Like, she felt like it was a necessity of her existence. And so she would break protocol, and I would just plead with her, like, we can't. Like, if we do this, it's just gonna go off the rails. It's gonna make things worse. And she would persist. And so then it was just an absolute nightmare where I tried to set the rules. But then she needed to address this. Like, she had needs as well, but it was just like this train wreck of a situation.

Yeah. So I've been on the other side of that where I'm like, we need to have this conversation now. Like, there's no way. Yeah, right. But that's the crazy thing is that, like, consciousness makes you feel like who you are in the moment is you. And so until you can separate from that, like, you just don't realize it. And so that's why it's so such a. I feel so liberated to be on the other side of that now and be like, okay, absolutely. After 5pm Kate is bad at having emotional stability, period. Any emotional. Like, even with team members. When I'm, like, gonna have a hard conversation, I'm like, be careful when I schedule it because I'm like, I know I need to be my best self. So I empathize with that situation. I think this conversation is like, detangling who we are at different time periods and recognizing, like, when you are sleep. It's like in the situation with Mike, you could totally witness someone losing their temper and be like, have they slept recently? Like, have empathy toward those situations because it's just, like, people don't realize what's good for them.

Yeah. Okay, so back to the evidence. So far, we've covered that you have dramatic increases in cardiovascular risk profile, a 70% increased likelihood of heart attack. You're less charismatic. Your personal relationships become ruinous. Kate, you mentioned on lessened sleep quality, I think.

Oh no.

Yeah. What other evidence do we have that suggests that this martyrdom culture masquerading as hero culture is bad for somebody?

Well, there's also the, the physical fitness evidence. So the more physically fit you are, the less sick you are. So there's pretty close relationship between how, um, whether you exercise, what percentile of fitness you're in, and then how many days you miss of work a year. So not just in terms of like how will you perform, but also are you even at work? So the top 25th percentile of physical fitness miss misses on average about two days per year, whereas the bottom 25 percentile misses about six days per year. So you're actually making an investment in how much you're able to totally work by, by being physically fit. So it goes beyond just sleep gets into fitness and then also into diet. So if we roll into the diet realm, there's decisions around what we eat. And a lot of times this martyrdom culture makes poor decisions around diet out of convenience. And what we've seen is that cognitive performance tracks almost directly with diet in terms of the more convenient food that you eat. And, and by convenient I'm talking about like ultra processed junk food, quick food, fast food, things like that. Basically one, every serving of, of this sort of food, ultra processed food that you eat per day increases your risk of dementia by about 13%. So not only do we see a long term increased risk of dementia, but we also see a change in terms of your actual performance day to day and your actual decisions that you're making. So it's fairly clear that not just in terms of sleep and exercise, but also diet, we're, we're having direct effects on our ability to perform in these sorts of situations.

Do you think we've convinced them?

Probably not. You almost have to live it. You know, it's like one of those things where like, you know, there's some things like people just have to experience before they can really believe em. And I feel like this is like, because it's so ingrained in the culture and you see everybody doing it, I feel like this might be one of those.

Yeah, that was true.

It's also the case that the, for most people, I guess for a while religion was a very motivating force. People would do anything to be compliant with their religious obligations so they could receive the afterlife reward. And people are equally, if not more zealous about this martyrdom culture than people were in previous religious cultures where the prize they have to win is that is. Is so intensely identified, right? The status, power, wealth that they're literally willing to suicide themselves even in a slow mo fashion to achieve that prize. It's just like people are transfixed in a zombie like fashion. They don't have control over themselves. And that's what it seems like to me is like when I'm talking to somebody, I think they can hear these stats of like, you know, like it's all like mumbled like heart attack risk performance, but it's like just background noise. But they hear this triumphant anthem of the victory of the man in the arena, in the arena, you know, framework. It's like it's inside. I do in the same way that guess I, I really have reflected a lot on my own inability to like the dramatic reduction of my self control. With 11 days of international travel and basically feeling almost powerless to actually make my own decisions because my body's just destroyed. I'm now in primitive brain land. I think in many ways the people who are doing this are in some way shape or form in some kind of deficient state of wisdom where they cannot make good decisions on their own behalf. It's a really weird psychological phenomena. They just don't, they don't want to recognize it, they don't want to square with it and, or they see it and they're rationally just saying it's the trade off is worth it to me. I'd rather just play modern culture and pretend like it's not there.

It's kind of like yeah, it's kind of human nature to some extent to be this future focused to like, like this sense of delayed gratification which we even teach to children, right? We teach them delayed gratification and future focus and, and all these things and it's just taking, it's taking them out of presence, right? It's taking them out of being in like you know, the present moment, living in the present moment. And that doesn't need, that doesn't need to be like this woo thing. It can also just be like the idea of like can I be my best self and also still succeed in this future moment? Do I have to like go so far as that I'm sacrificing And I think that's, that's the issue is that it's just being pushed too far. There's nothing wrong with future focusing and delayed gratification. It was just like, you don't have to go crazy about it, right?

So if we're saying that we're constantly feature focused. And in the past, we were some form of religion focused. We've now swapped that out for status, wealth, money as a religion or as a framework. And the argument that we're trying to make in this call is to swap out health as a religion. Like, make that your number one priority in life for this future of thinking that Mike's talking about. And in this transition phase, one, you can still earn status, money, wealth in society and make healthy number one priority. We're arguing that. And then two is in this transition state, it's really painful and very uncomfortable. And if you're feeling internal angst hearing this conversation because you're like, you guys, that just sounds impossible. There is a way it doesn't need to feel so scary. So I think that's the thing that we need to tackle now as a group.

Okay, cool. Yeah. It's also the case that there's a. There's probably a few easy bridges here. For example, like when you look at an Olympic athlete or even professional athletes, very few. If anybody argues that it's good for an athlete to be sleep deprived, to not have good nutrition, to, you know, to travel too much, like, it's just a, an expectation. Like, clearly their bodies are their primary asset, and if they don't take care of their bodies, they're not going to perform in the court and they're going to lose. But somehow the fact that entrepreneurs or professionals generally compete with their minds and their emotions and their judgment, they somehow don't view themselves as subject to the same physical requirements. It's just really a disconnect of cognition that, like, we don't pair the two. That when you want ideal performance, you need to treat, you need to treat your only asset with this kind of rigorous health approach. So, yeah, just, I think in time, I do think we are winning the war. I think that culture is shifting. I think that people increasingly see this martyrdom culture is really bad. It does produce bad outcomes. And that I've seen many of my friends, and particularly investors, they really care and evaluate the founder's health when making an investment, that if the founder is not health forward, they second guess their decisions because they know it just compromise. So I do think we're winning the war. All right, cool. So let's jump to that. So, Kate, you're saying that people are like, okay, guys, look, I buy it, but you've got to give me an easy on ramp. I can't spend five hours a day. So, like, give me the, the argument that this is actually, doable with my, my really intense schedule.

Yeah. And I would put forth first, this is how I transitioned between the two arenas of competition in today's world. Is treating this is like gonna sound fcked up, but I think it works for people like myself who were indoctrinated into this previous mindset. Treat sleep like work. Treat it like it is a hustle in of itself. So when 12pm rolls around, my desire is to stay up and do things because I become very creative during that time period. I love sleep. Spending that time awake. I have to delay gratification in that moment and say, you are working, Kate. You need to go to sleep. Like that is part of. So in fact like people perceive. This is at least how I perceived it, that sleep is a luxury and something that I can. That is slacking off. To be completely honest, that's definitely how I viewed it. Like I'm. I'm relaxing by sleeping. And so if you treat it, if you're the kind of person that works 247 like I do, I treat now sleep as work. So it actually factors into the, you know, I need to have this meeting today, I need to have this call today, while also I need to go to sleep today. And like, even when I don't want to go to sleep, I have to go to sleep because that's my job to actually go to sleep. So like, that's the bridge that I, that I, I've played in this tricking myself.

Mike, how does that frame land for you? If, if Kate says that frame, you know, treat sleep like work, does that increase, does that improve your anxiety or alone? Well, yeah, just like, does that, does that resonate with you?

Not really. Not really. Like for, for me, just for me it doesn't. I mean, I think that like that's, it's great that it works for Kate, but for me personally it doesn't as much because yeah, I, I get a bit, I have to be careful with sleep. Like, I get a bit anxious about sleep if I'm not getting the sleep that I need. And that leads to more lack of sleep, more insomnia. And that's just my, my own personal like anxiety stuff that I gotta work through. But like calling it work to me gives it a. Another level of like requirement. You know what I mean? So, so for me, what actually, for me, what actually like seems to work better is like the, this more like compassionate approach where I kind of. For me, I like depersonalize it because there's like, there's so much like self judgment built up in my own personal expectations, around my own career and success. And all those things that I end up treating myself without any compassion. And what I truly need in order to take care of myself for sleep or for exercise or diet is just more self compassion. And the way for me to do that is to imagine rather than making a decision for myself, I'm making like a decision for my child or for a cared one or for someone that I can easily find that compassion for. Like, even like when I was a physician working in the er, how would I want my doctor to take care of themselves? Right. As opposed to like, should I go to bed right now? It's like, well, would my patients tomorrow want their doctor to go to bed right now? Like that sort of like depersonalizes it for me and allows me to find the empathy and the compassion that I can't find otherwise. Just when I'm thinking about what I should be doing.

I'd love that. So if I've got this brutal, you need work 24 7, turn that into sleep mentality. And Mike has the empathy route where he's looking after himself as a parent would. How do you do it, Brian? What's your mental model?

Yeah, I think, well, first of all, I think that there is a group of, of people who do really feel this. They feel the pain and discomfort of the modern culture and they want an exit path, but they feel trapped with the expectations of others. And so I think that's probably the biggest segment. And so I was at a conference, Kate, the conference we were at this past week and there were two founders there from Australia. And I said, you guys. And they were talking about that they basically were doing one international trip, I think every 30 days or so because I guess Australia is in the middle of nowhere. No offense, Kate.

It's true.

So they, they, you know, going to Asia and the States, it was just a lot in the Middle East. And so I was going through the, the devastating health effects of international travel and telling them what I had been going through from Europe. And one of the founders turned to me, said, I'm going to tell my board that Brian Johnson said I can only make one international trip each month. And I said, that's right. Tell them that, that your investors do not want you to travel more than one time per month because if you do, it's going to lessen your performance, it's going to increase anxiety, depression, it's going to hurt your relationships, going to mess up your, all of your biological systems. You will build a better company if you can create a limited budget of international travel. Now if you need to make break and do something like two trips over a 90 day period of time, okay. But just realize there's definitely a budget. It is not an infinite amount of time you have doing this. And he, I think he really felt emboldened in that conversation that if he had cover, like if his investors wanted him to have that kind of limitation, you know, they didn't want him to travel internationally. I think he would feel much more empowered. So to me it's, it's most people want social permission to do the things they know they want to do. And right now like even the like ever, I feel like everyone is, is enslaved by modern society to various degrees. I was thinking about this this morning, that the peak existence right now is actually agency. It's the ability to be free of entrapment of various things. And the, the forces of the world are so good at entrapping us with addictive algorithms, addictive foods, addictive social feeds, addictive, you know, porn like that. The world is so good at getting us into these, these locked in dopamine addiction cycles. It's entrapment. And once you then are missing out on sleep and you lose more of your willpower, then entrapment becomes stronger and stronger to like this strangulation. And people intuitively feel it and they're mad when they're told that they can't, they, that they should just stop it. It's like they can't, they don't, they have no more willpower left and the addictions are too strong. And so I understand like, and so I think it's just giving them permission of like, hey person, like the people doing this to you need to stop. Like they're fucking you up. This is bad for you, it's bad for society. But it just, that's kind of like the wedge. Because if you put it back on the person and be like, hey person, you must have the willpower to do it. It's a really hard equation. If you have cover from others who are like, you know what, we support you in doing this, it makes it so much easier.

So if someone's like, okay, fine, I'll figure out my mental model. I know we always say the same thing. It's sleep, diet, exercise, practically. I'll talk through a couple of ways that I do this in my life. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, how do I actually start to implement this One is blocking out a morning routine to get things done. So saying I'm not going to do XYZ before this time period. So I think, Brian, everything on your calendar is scheduled like after 10am for example. Same thing for me. And then on the tail end as well. Same thing for sleep. So when a social event comes up that you've planned in your mind, that time allocation is already taken up by default. And then if you are going to work around it, you have to plan otherwise as opposed to the other way around where it's like sleep will happen whenever your calendar allows for it. So say those two things. And then for travel, being really, really sober about the fact it has and treating it with that level of commitment. So I know for Ryan and I, when we were planning this Europe trip, I was thinking about it like two months in advance being, okay, gotta get ready, gotta get ready. Like I need to be mentally in the right space for this. Planning our calendars accordingly. Like previously I would travel red eyes when I was going back and forth between New York and LA a lot because I was like, that's the best time to get my travel out of the way. So I have the day to do things. Now I look back and then I'm like, that is wild that I thought that I was saving time by traveling overnight. And so same thing for travel, like booking the plane trip that aligns with your sleep and morning routine schedule as much as possible. So those are the couple of things that have really worked for me.

I feel like Brian does a really good job of this having non negotiables. Right. Like, like it is non negotiable that I am going to do my whatever 40 step morning routine that takes three and a half hours or whatever, whatever crazy thing it has right now. Sorry, what's the five and a half? Yeah, like and my, my like wind down routine that takes, you know, another hour and a half or whatever it is. But like, no, I mean, but in all joking aside, like those non negotiables are extremely important because one thing we're really good at doing to ourselves is talking ourselves out of things. Things. Right. So the minute you give yourself any leeway to convince yourself that there's an alternative that is acceptable, you're gonna take it every single time. And that's especially true in type A people who are like the same people that are very successful in life because they, they're very good at arguing and convincing you of something. And that means they're good at convincing themselves of something too.

Yeah. And I think that a lot of people, when they listen to this they're going to say, I don't have the luxury of a morning routine, right? Like, I'm on calls with Asia, you know, at this time of night. I'm on calls with Middle east this time of night. And I've got blank. Like, they've got very seriously. I've got kids who wake up in the morning. I've got, like, parents I'm taking care of. Like, people have really serious life limitations. And so I get that. And so I guess the question is, like, how. How do you try to create a culture of health given that people's lives are practically very complex and there's no one size fits all? And so we've, I guess, like, if we review the things we've talked about. This is why I like resting heart rate before bed so much. Because no matter who you are, that is the one thing you can build life systems around. So like Mike was saying, I try to never let myself make decisions because I know if I make a decision in that moment, like, if it's just like a on the spot, whatever Brian feels like decision, I will most likely make the wrong decision. And so you. I want, like, morning Brian, high in willpower, who wants good things to myself to be making system decisions, not 7pm who's worn down, out of willpower, wants to soothe himself with whatever. And so the resting heart rate. You can go back and listen to a previous episode we did on this, on the ways you can focus on reducing your heart rate. But very simple things. Like, a lot of people report that rumination is their number one problem. So, like yesterday a guy came over to the house. I was giving a bunch of people a tour of the clinic. And he said, I've done everything to optimize my health. Like I do red light. I eat my last meal today, four hours before bed. I, you know, blank, blank. And he said, I just can't sleep. And so I was like, okay, this is a puzzle. So I probed it around a little bit, and it's his rumination that he is type A. He is incredibly ambitious. Every night before he goes to bed, he's like, now, how do I change the world in this way? One or the other? And so I was like, okay, so that rumination is going to cost you five to 25 beats per minute. And first of all, you have to reconcile that is not the moment to try to solve the world's problems. You need to separate this. We walked through the whole routine of what rumination is, how you talk through it, how you minimize it and he's going to report back to me. But I think what we should probably do is we should probably bring a few guests on here like that so people can hear this dialogue of what they're going through, because in their mind they're doing everything right. And this one or two things just slips by and undercuts everything else. And the bad sleep leaves to poor willpower, which has a cascade. So I'm, I'm guessing that we can say whatever we want, but we probably just need a few real life examples.

Good point. Yep. Agreed.

Mike, by the way, how's your TV series the Pit going?

I've taken a break. Taking an extended break. It was, I did another one after we had the last podcast and it crushed me, like, and I just. Yeah, I took a. I'm taking a break right now. Maybe you'll get back to it like on Saturday morning or something.

On Saturday I had a minute and I was, I was gonna watch the show or something and I searched the pit and I couldn't. What platform is it on?

It's on max.

Okay. All right. So I was gonna try to simulate a Mike Mallon experience and watching the pit.

What happened? Did you do it?

No. So I'll do it this coming weekend. I'll watch an episode.

So like that's, that's something I need a guardrail around. It's like I, my guardrail needs to be. I do not watch the pit after 6pm or something like that. Like that's, you know, like you just create these guardrails of things that are just non negotiable. And I think, you know, what's interesting is I think that, that that's like the main thing for me, like when it comes to like stepping into this world of prioritizing health, it's just identifying like, you know, just like the top three five things that you feel are most important to you and then create those guardrails. There's non negotiables around it and just start there like that. To me, like, maybe it's, I don't eat. Eat junk food. Maybe it's, I'm in bed by 10:00pm Maybe it's, you know, I'm up an hour before the kids so I can meditate and journal like, like whatever it is for you that it feels most important to you. And it's probably different for everybody. Like just starting there seems like a really like easy place to get going, you know?

Yeah, I mean, I think for people listening, I guess I would try to summarize this Conversation. I would say this. Don't give up your power.

Mm, so true.

You want. You want to concentrate your power. You want to be as powerful as you can as a human. And the best way to be powerful is to claim your agency. And anything that steps on your power or agency is bad for you. And so that includes, if culture is telling you to do martyrdom, it's going to ruin your power. It's going to enslave you in a system that's not your making of, not your choice. And it's going to make you a lesser human being. It's going to destroy your willpower. It's going to increase your cardiovascular risk. It's going to make you a less charismatic leader. It's going to ruin your insulin sensitivity. It's going to. You're going to become fat. Like, it's just bad. And then just go down the list. Do not let the world take your power. And that, to me, is a very clean statement. Like, people understand that people want power, status, and wealth. So don't lose power. And so that may resonate, you know, and then also I'd say second thing is, be these things, because when you be these things, when you are these things, other people will see this and they will respond correspondingly. And when they do, you have more societal permission to do it. If everybody went to bed on time, nobody would think about it. But it's the fact that there are some outliers who are like, they're so loud of, like, it's amazing. And the only way to success, to, you know, sleep three hours per night, that they create this cultural illusion that that's what it takes. And so the more the zeitgeist can shift to this, the better, the more cover someone's going to have. And three is, once you experience this, I think you will feel for yourself. You will become a better leader. You will become a better entrepreneur, a better professional, better parent, child, friend, coworker. Like, you'll become better at everything you do. You will not have to sacrifice your success by doing this. And you just have to just. Just cross over that threshold. You will realize that and experience it. Then you can speak to it with confidence. Okay, I guess. As we wrap, Kate, just a quick roundup. You were sick last week, Micah, and I missed you. Glad you're back. How are you feeling?

I'm feeling much better. Still a little congested, but, yeah, definitely. Whenever you're sick, it's always a good reminder to be like, take care of your health. Because when you're sick, you realize how bad it is. So I'm glad I'm back.

And then Kate is going to Croatia, and so we are concerned about more international travel. Kate, can you tell us about that?

Yeah.

What do I do about this? I'm going to Croatia for my cousin's wedding. It's a big deal. I rarely get to celebrate with my Bosnian family, so it's a big, big deal. I'm kind of. I'm dreading, I'm just gonna. I'm not gonna get sick. I'm gonna avoid that with all costs.

Because you're gonna listen to the podcast that Brian and I have recorded last week.

Yeah.

What do I do? So wish me luck.

Well, the good news, Kate, is you are very well prepared. You now know all the. You have all the evidence on what you can do to make the best of the circumstances.

It's true.

Yeah. Mike, how are you doing in life?

I'm pretty great. Um, I'm not traveling a lot right now, which is amazing for my sleep, and I'm not watching the pit, which is also amazing for my sleep. So, yeah, things are, things are good.

So you're. You're in a nice, steady routine. You're feeling good?

Yeah. This will inevitably not last for very long, but I'm gonna try to enjoy it while it's here.

Yeah, those, those durations where you're at home in a routine consistency are the best, isn't it?

Yeah.

Brian, any observations lately about your health that you wanna slip in? Like, I'm just seeing a red light. Therapy before bed. You do that experiment.

A few quick ticks. You can see on my face that my face is pretty destroyed. On Friday, I did a 1927 nanometer laser. This is lutronic, so this is a non ablative laser. So we're trying to basically rebuild collagen, elastin, lessen wrinkles. And so this is like we shaved off maybe 30% of my face with this. I had numbing cream on, but it's still pretty spicy. And then I did. I started doing red light therapy before bed. This is the math. The approximation we have is the lights are 4 Joules centimeter squared per minute. So I increase my time to eight minutes. I'm getting 32 joules per centimeter squared of red and near exposure before bed. My first night of experiment, it increased my sleep duration by an hour. So a huge boost. We'll see over time what happens. And then I would say that I'm still recovering from travel. Like it. I'm still trying to get my sleep architecture on point. I'm still trying to get all my bodies back online. I think people, when I talk about this, people are like, oh, you're such a snowflake. And they like, they. I think when you feel like shit, you don't feel more shitty. You don't feel the shitty as much. When you feel exceptional and you go, too bad, man. It stings so really, like, I'm just in this. I'm in a recoil phase of just how bad and devastating international travel is for health. And there's. We have a few clinics in China opening up and our China team is wanting us to be out in China this fall. And, man, I. I don't know how to do it, but I'm trying to figure out, like, what we do on the international front. We were also going to do a Middle east trip, so, yeah, trying to figure that out.

All right, you guys. Love hanging out with you.

Good to see you guys.

Okay, guys. Okay, be well. Bye. This is the Brian Johnson Podcast. Special thanks to my co hosts Kate Tolo and Dr. Mike Mallon. For more science breakdowns and protocols, subscribe to my YouTube channel, follow the podcast on your favorite platform or follow me on Instagram or X rianjohnson.