17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson argues that managing your energy matters more than managing your time, and that virtue management—wisdom, self-mastery, courage, love—is the real foundation. He walks through practical rituals like digital sunsets and PM bookends to design ideal days.
You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in Less time.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Last night as I was falling asleep, I was reflecting on the wonderful time I spent with a dear friend who came up to Ojai for a hike to chat about his next hero's journey. We talked about some of the key themes of our upcoming Mastery Series Optimized Coach Program. Fun fact. Looks like he'll be doing the program with two of his kids, which makes my soul smile. So one of the things we discussed was creating Masterpiece Days. Of course, we talked about the fact that our day starts the night before PM counts twice, the importance of being creative, being, be full reactive, and all that jazz. We also spent a fair amount of time talking about the fundamentals eat, move, sleep, breathe, be present, prosper and how important it is to optimize our energy so we can show up most fully in our work and our love. But what I found myself thinking about as I was falling asleep was the fact that when most people start to think about architecting their ideal days, they start with time management. Now, optimizing the nuts and bolts of how we manage our time is of course important, but I think there's something more important and essential than managing our time. As Tony Schwartz and Jim Lohr put it in the Power of Full Engagement, we need to manage our energy. When we prioritize energy management, things like our PM bookends with its shutdown complete and and digital sunset rituals become obvious high priorities. So energy management is greater than time management. But there's something far more important than either energy management or time management Virtue management. This is essentially what all the great philosophers and spiritual traditions have taught us since the dawn of time. Live with wisdom in self mastery and courage and love. Why? Well, so we can more consistently close the gap between who we're capable of being and who we're actually being as we joyfully show up as the optimist best version of ourselves in service to our families, communities and world when today little PS here, we'd be honored to welcome you to our 2020 Mastery Series and Optimize Coach programs. You can sign up now. And based on the feedback of the 1,000 plus optimizers who participated in our inaugural class, I know we can help you make 2020 the greatest year of your life and the start of the greatest decade of your life. Let's do this. There's a link in the plus one.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian John. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.
Hey guys, this is Brian with a quick little ps. I'm really excited to let you know.
About an event we're working on.
Plan is to make it the premier self optimizing event of 2020. We're calling it Optimize 2020. You the modern hero. Basic idea. Five days, 101 world class luminaries, 1 million people. You can learn more and get your tickets to the online and offline event at Optimize Me 2020. Again, that's Optimize Me2020. Hope to see you there.
