The Most Powerful Life Hacks I've Found

Hello and welcome to the Curiosity Chronicle, a weekly podcast where I provide actionable ideas to help you build a high performing, healthy, wealthy life. Today's podcast is brought to you by AG1 by Athletic Greens my all in one daily supplement. Seriously, this stuff replaced an entire cabinet of supplements for me in one Daily Scoop. There's a reason it's been a staple of my morning routine since 2011. To find out why, go to drinkag1.comsahil and and take advantage of a limited time offer. Without further ado, let's dive in to today's piece the Most Powerful Life Hacks I've Found for the last several years, I've kept a running list of my favorite life hacks. Whenever I come across something new, I make sure to put it to the test in my own life before adding it to the list. I'd like to make a tradition of sharing that list annually with all of you in the hope that you take action on them and feel their impact on your life. So without further ado, here are the most powerful life hacks I've found to date. 50 tips, tricks, ideas and techniques for Building a Healthier, Wealthier Life Personal growth hacks focus on 95% compliance with any routine. It's high enough to get the benefits of the structure, but leaves room for the 5% chaos where a lot of incredible memories are made. Everything has a list price what it costs on the surface and a real price what you have to give up to get it. Make sure you're willing to pay the real price for the thing you're after in life. To improve your mental health and build a journaling habit, try my 1:1:1 method every single evening. Write down one win from the day, one point of tension, anxiety or stress, and one point of gratitude. The whole process takes about five minutes and leaves you with a sense of calm before bed. Spend more time in rooms where you don't feel like you belong. Those rooms are all around you, but your fear of being found out holds you back from stepping into them. Remember that feeling of uncertainty, fear and discomfort is usually a sign of growth. Wake up Early Waking up early is as close to a life cheat code as you will find. It requires intense discipline and it creates evidence of your power and control over your world that bleeds into every other area of life. Confidence is built, not born if you struggle with motivation or focus. Add structure. Map out your day hour by hour with the specific focus of each window of time. Plan out exactly what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. Structure frees up your headspace to focus on execution. John D. Rockefeller would take regular breaks from his notoriously demanding schedule to mill about in his garden. It was his personal escape. Find your garden and go there often. Practice stillness. Flex the solitude muscle. Be bored for at least 15 minutes per day. It's an unlock for creativity and mindfulness. Make a rule to never think twice about investments in yourself. Books, quality food, fitness, and personal development all fit into this bucket. These investments pay dividends for a long time. Think about material purchases instead. Wait 24 hours to complete an order to see if you still want it. If you want to get better at anything, do it for 30 minutes per day for 30 straight days. It's easy to over engineer progress. A bit of dedicated effort each day is all you need. 900 minutes of accumulated effort is enough to make dramatic improvements at literally anything in your 20s and 30s. Do a few things that you'll be excited to tell your kids about someday. Go on an adventure train for some challenging event. Get your hands dirty on a crazy project. Whatever. Create stories worth telling. Reread your favorite books annually. You may read thousands of books in your life, but there will only be a few that deeply change. You reread them every single year. The book doesn't change, but you do. Career hacks don't narrowly focus on your salary and lose sight of intangible forms of compensation early in your career. A job that pays a low salary but offers access to incredible networks of people, significant training and knowledge. Acute accumulation may be far more valuable than the high salary job that offers none of those. Stop asking how you can add value. That's just creating work for others. Spend some time figuring it out. Then go do it. Observe your boss. Figure out what they hate doing, learn to do it, and take it off their plate. It's an easy way to add value, put up a win, and build momentum. In the long run, the highest net value creator usually wins. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable. And in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional. Showing up early and staying late is a free way to materially increase your luck. Surface area. In my experience, the most interesting side conversations and opportunities came up before meetings started or after they ended. When you're in the room, you're more likely to get pulled into a follow up call, coffee or discussion. Being in the room pays off handsomely in the long run. Build Storytelling skills World changing CEOs aren't the smartest people in their organizations. They are exceptional at aggregating data and communicating it simply and effectively. Data in, story out. If you can build that storytelling skill, you'll always be valuable. Take the small things seriously because small things become big things. The person who takes small things seriously earns the trust of those around them. That person will eventually be given bigger and bigger opportunities, the types of opportunities that dramatically change one's trajectory spend 15 minutes on Sunday evening preparing for what your first focused tasks are going to be on Monday morning. That 15 minutes will save you two hours and a whole lot of stress. Don't over engineer it. Get one small thing done that makes the next morning look and feel easier. Batch email processing into condensed windows. Depending on your industry, it may be anywhere from one to three windows per day. Parkinson's law says that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Force a time constraint on low value tasks to get them done and efficiently Relationship Hacks Never avoid hard conversations. When you avoid a hard conversation, you're taking on a debt that has to be repaid with interest at a date in the future. Time doesn't heal anything when it comes to relationships. Make the minor repairs along the way and avoid the major repairs in the long run. Use the photo memories feature on your phone to stay in touch with people. Look at it each week and send the photos to the people who pop up in them. It always prompts a quick catch up with people from your life and gives you a low friction way to regularly stay in touch with old friends. Lack of appreciation is where relationships go to die. Vocalize appreciation in the moment. Write it down. Say it out loud. Tell the person what you love about them. Applies to family, friends and romantic partners. Create and maintain a few annual traditions with people you love. Trips with old friends. Gatherings with family. Special weekend getaways. It's easy to lose contact with people as you get older. Take lots of photos and log the memories. They will be cherished forever. Remember that nothing is perfect on its own. Everything good in life requires effort. A daily deposit. The grass isn't greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. Invest in personalized stationery and use it regularly. Emails and texts lack personality. A handwritten note will always stand out. Handwritten notes are an old fashioned thing that should definitely make a comeback. If you're trying to make conversation with someone that you are intimidated by. Ask what they're currently working on that they're most excited about. It's a simple question, but it gets them talking and animated. Ask follow ups and listen intently. When someone is going through hell, just saying I'm with you is the most powerful thing you can do. Advice, perspectives or offers to help are minimally impactful. The notion that someone is with you is 10x more powerful. Be the darkest hour friend to those you love. Record a video interview with your parents, ask them questions and have them tell stories about their childhood adventures, hopes, dreams and fears. Our time with them is finite, but we often fail to recognize it until it's too late. These recordings will last forever. If someone regularly brags about their wealth, income or success, just assume the reality is about 50% of what they say. People who are crushing it in life rarely feel the need to tell you they are crushing it. Give a stranger a compliment every single day. Say you like their shirt or shoes. Compliment their haircut, whatever. Don't use it as a conversation starter. Say it and just continue on. Getting a simple compliment from someone can make a person's entire day. If you're about to take an emotion induced action, wait 24 hours. Many relationships have been broken by actions taken in the heat of the moment. Don't fall into that trap. If someone consistently drains your energy, stop spending time with them or at least stop opening up your energy to them. Spend your time with people who create energy who make your eyes light up. Carry a pocket notebook and pen with you everywhere you go. If you're with someone and they say something interesting, take it out and write it down. It's way more polite than taking out your phone. It'll make sure you remember the thing they said and it shows you're actively listening. Wealth Hacks Focus your energy on $10,000 solutions, not $1 problems. You'll never save enough money by brewing coffees at home to make yourself rich, but all it takes is for you to identify one high upside opportunity to get there. The 10 richest people in the world have 12 divorces among them. Money is only one type of wealth. Never make big decisions without considering all of them. For a deeper dive on the different types of wealth, join thousands who have pre ordered my debut book at the five types of wealth.com or anywhere books are sold. Don't quit your day job until you create tangible evidence of your ability to build a life around your side. Hustle. If you quit before you've created that evidence, you may make short term fear based decisions with your new path that aren't sustainable. Don't burn the boats because sometimes you need them to return to safety. Create an automated direct deposit for a small amount of money into an investment account every month. Never look at the account. Don't pay any attention to it. A $100 monthly investment into the S&P 500 for the last 10 years would be worth over $20,000 today. Let it compound. No one will ever sell you a get rich slow plan because it wouldn't sell very well, but it's the only one that consistently works. If someone uses a bunch of fancy words and jargon to try to sell you an investment or financial opportunity, don't buy it. Then run the other direction fast. If an investment or financial opportunity seems too good to be true, assume that it probably is. Treat your credit card like a debit card. Assume the money is leaving your bank account when you swipe it. Pay it off entirely every month. Aim to have six to 12 months of living expenses stored as cash in an emergency fund. This has a dramatic impact on reducing your money stress, which gives you the headspace to focus on higher upside opportunities. Sometimes the cheap option is more expensive. In the long run, you're better off spending a little more on high use items, bed, furniture, etc. To avoid the headaches of issues and replacement later. And finally, health hacks. If you struggle to wake up in the morning, try my 55530 morning routine. When you wake up, do five push ups, five squats, five lunges and a 30 second plank. You can do it while making coffee or right when you get out of bed. It will jumpstart your energy. To start the day, eat the same core set of meals 90% of the time. Pick a few staples that you enjoy and eat them consistently. Prioritize proteins and whole single ingredient minimally processed foods to eat healthier. Do all of your shopping on the outer perimeter of the grocery store. The outer perimeter typically has all of the fresh produce, meats, fish, dairy, etc. The middle aisles have all of the ultra processed stuff that you want to avoid. Go to bed and wake up at the same general time every day, including on weekends. Recent studies have shown that high sleep regularity decreases all cause mortality dramatically versus those with low sleep regularity. If you get hit with an afternoon slump, follow the 80% rule. Only eat to 80% fullness. This was uncovered as one of the longevity principles of the Okinawans of Japan and has a big impact on your afternoon productivity and energy levels. When you wake up, drink a big glass of water with a pinch of sea salt to start the morning. Most people are chronically dehydrated, but this is a simple way to fight back. Go for a 15 minute walk after each meal. A post meal walk has been shown to reduce blood glucose by up to 35%. It has a positive impact on your digestion, mood and more. Place your alarm clock 10ft away from your bed. When it goes off, you'll have to walk over to it to turn it off, which reduces the odds of hitting snooze dramatically. Keep your phone on grayscale mode 90% of the time. Grayscale mode removes the colors to make your phone immediately less appealing and addicting. We all need to fight back against the phone addiction that is destroying our attention and focus. Keep it simple. Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Confucius it's easy to add complexity. It's hard to keep it simple. But remember, simple is beautiful. I hope you found this list of life hacks useful. Choose a few to implement in the weeks ahead and watch how a simple tiny action can create dramatic change. That's all for today's piece. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something and I hope you'll share it with others. If you enjoyed this, you're going to love my debut book, the Five Types of Wealth. You can join thousands who have preordered it@thefivetypesofwealth.com or anywhere Books are sold. Thank you. And as always, until next time, stay curious. Friends.