#1: Drucker + Pressfield on creativity (aka showing up & doing the work) (#49)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry with an afternoon edition of our number one installment for today. You know what? I don't have my little thing to sign on, so I'll just sign it virtually here. I recommit. Let's go. End of the day, about ready to wrap up six hours of pre input deep work on Optimiza Handbook for the modern Hero. I'll talk about my creative process on that. I will also share some aura data. Another good night of sleep. Excited about that. And I'm just loving the compass. So I just set it for curiosity and self mastery as we explore, stay open to life, see what's working, what needs work, et cetera. And I'm kind of having fun. You can fix this. You see how it's the optimized blue is fixed on curiosity right now, between self mastery and love. You can kind of fix it in that position or you can let it float. How do we do it one way or the other? There we go. So then it kind of moves, right? So when I'm moving throughout the day, I can kind of set a different intention depending on what energy I want to cultivate or what virtue that I want to cultivate. So when I'm hanging out with the family, often in gratitude, like love right there. If I'm crushing it work wise, maybe I'm in self mastery and zest or wisdom and courage for hope. Anyway, I am just absolutely loving playing with that. Can't wait to get the next version of it. And while we're here, I can show you the wall calendar that I no longer put on the wall. This is how I hammer a day. I know you can't make anything out of that, but that means a lot to me. Boom. 6 hours of deep work. 2.75. Then 2.05 is 4.8. Then 1.2 is 6 deep work pre inputs. I worked on the book and then I oscillated is what that means. Hung out with the kids, wifey, et cetera. Then I worked on the book, crushed it, oscillated, went for another walk. 8. Then I worked on the book, crushed it. Then this was actually teamwork in here doing some biz CEO stuff. And then one 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000. I mark that off 100,000. When I get to 15,000 or 14,500 steps, I'll mark that off. I'm at 13,400. I did 200 burpees today, which was fun. That's one of the ways I was able to maintain the energy and just kind of keep it going every thousand seconds. Actually it's got a new Timex watch. My other one broke. I keep them going on like auto repeats. They kind of break every like 18 months. 40 bucks Amazon. Get your Timex watch. So I set that to 1640,000 seconds. It counts down and then it automatically repeats. I do burpees, I do whatever I'm gonna do. 2 ohm recover. So there's that again. I'll share more on the creative process in a moment. How you feeling? I'm feeling pretty good. 83. Good again. I've got some HRV debt I'm still paying back there. That's fine. Let's see. Resting heart rate 44. Pretty good. Decent. 62 heart rate variability. If my HRV balance was better, that would have been higher. 88. Sleep. Another eight hours of sleep. It's really funny to me how it's like nine hours. Nine hours and 15 minutes is kind of like the sweet spot for me where I feel great. What else is interesting there? REM sleep, an hour and 11 minutes, that's fine. But two hours and 30 minutes of deep sleep. I did not do the ice bath yesterday yet I still had the. Where's my heart rate variability number? Right here. I still had a spike shortly after going to sleep. I'll pay attention to that. That's kind of fun. That's aura. So I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing. We're experimenting. I should say what's working very deliberately is going to bed earlier. So I went to bed at 7:38 last night, which is actually nice and early. Sunset around 7:25 here outside of Austin, Texas. And then I can get up earlier, 4:50 and then I can just crank. I can get some more work done in the morning before the kids get up, which is fantastic. Which leads us to what I worked on this morning, which is a handbook for the modern hero. So basically I'm putting every single thing I've studied into practice here. All the creativity 101 stuff, all the motivation stuff, etc. And then the big distinction I had this morning was I'm not even writing the book yet. I am basically architecting it, I'm scaffolding it. So I've spent the last 20 years working on this and I've spent the last two years working with our coaches on the Mastery series. So I've already got the most thorough notes. You can possibly have for a book. Literally, it's not possible for me to have this thing architected any more precisely than what I've done. I know what a 300 day program looks like that works. 25 sessions, 7 modules. Now I just need to take this and put it into a book. So I had the distinction that basically all I need to do first, I'm like an architect, but not even like an architect. I'm more like a contractor who's just building. Building scaffolding. Right. I'm trying to build the structures for the book such that I can just take it one step at a time. And I was very much thinking of Steven Pressfield if I had his book War of Turning Pro. He uses these iconic images to capture the point of what it looks like to be a professional. He's got a lunch pail and a coffee mug on one of his covers representing, look, just go do the work. And for me it was don't think, just act, Just do what needs to get done. I've already done the heavy thinking and I'll come back and write, but basically just build the scaffolding, organize it, get the flow. So I've got a top sheet that if you've been following along, this is already expanded. Now I've got subsections to it. Handbook for the Modern Hero. Right Forward. Oh, Phil Stutz. He'll brighten. Awesome. Forward. That'll be great. Testimonials. Excited to get some from some of my favorite friends. Then the prelude is. Nice to meet you. Then we've got module 01, 2, 3. And each of the sections within them is coming to life. So basically what I did was I decided to create the. Nice to meet you. To create the basic template for each of the chapters. So good teaching methodology is. Say what you're going to say. Say it, then say what you said. Right? That's how I teach every single top 10. I always say, hey, here's the top 10 we're going to cover. Then I do each of them. Then I say, this is what we've covered. Right? So that's the book. Each of the modules is going to have a little overview of, hey, we've got 10 ideas. This is what we're going to cover in module one, Udeminology. And then I basically created the scaffolding. I already know what the 10 ideas are because I've taught it so many times. Boom. This is actually module zero, not module one. But we got to know the game we're playing. Oh, okay, cool. Know the game and how to play it well, warning the 25 year old challenge. I changed that a little bit. Anyway, you get the idea. So I kind of came up with the template of what each module, slash, chapter, section is going to look like. And then I just hammered it. So hero ology has three different parts to it where we get really good at antifragile, confidence, heroic courage, responsibility, etc. We've got three parts to this module. So I mapped all that out and I just hammered it. So we've got module two that's mapped out. I've got module three, the big three times two, Energy, work and love, Times, identity, virtues and behavior. Then module four is a beast. We teach people how to create masterpiece days. Right. Well there's six parts to this. So you have a big picture. Then you have the PM, you have the AM book and etc. And then I've got my thank you notes which I'm excited about. And then I've got other stuff. Where did that. Oh, here we go, I skipped that. Module 5, losing sheets, module 5, algorithms, etc. So I'm halfway done, more than halfway done. Tomorrow morning, pre input AM1, deep work time block. I'm going to hammer through the fundies. As you know, if you've been following along, we've got the big picture discussion that we have seven fundamentals. Eating, moving. Oops. Eating, moving is buried under there somewhere. Moving, sleeping, breathing. Each of these is going to have its own module with its 10 big ideas. Focusing, celebrating and prospering. And then the final module is module 7 or infinity. Practice your philosophy. So at the end of day tomorrow, I'll have the basic scaffolding ready for the entire book and then I'm going to go back through and actually write the book. So I'll revisit and I'm actually going to write the the first chapter or the introduction rather the same way I did the class. I taught the entire class. Then I came back and filmed the introduction. I'm going to do the same thing for the book and I can't wait. And then when I do this, it's going to be basically be a scribe, just, I know this stuff. I'm not going to think about it. I'm going to let it rip and follow this basic framework. Drop in the wisdom, drop in the wisdom, drop in the wisdom, drop in the wisdom, repeat. And then again, it's just all about creating the soul Force. So I've got the energy focused on what's important now consistently and just taking it one step at A time which leads us back to. I was thinking of Steven Pressfield turning pro. Just showing up and then chipping away. Seeing it come together even today, just little micro wins. Teresa Amabile is all about the progress principle. Make little gains, have wins throughout your day and celebrate them again. Which is why my wall calendar looks like this. I'm celebrating every single one of these little wins, burpees, minutes put into deep work, etc. But Peter Drucker came to mind today. He says, I don't even know what being creative means. You know, I think of productivity and all I do is I plod along. You may think I'm creative, but I just plod along. I just show up and I chip away again and again and again and again and again. And that's what I felt like as I showed up today. That's all I got. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. What can you do to make today awesome? By the time you see this, there will be Almost less than 100 days left in the year. 99. Finish 2020 strong. Start 2021 even stronger. Sending lots of love. Let's do this. See ya. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me. Hi, this is Brian. Hope you enjoyed that. Number One quick note. If you want to go deeper into Optimize, check us out at Optimize. The team has set up a free two week trial where you can get instant access to all 600 plus philosopher's notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, et cetera, and 50 optimal living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course the thousand plus optimize plus ones. And then if you want to go all in, check out Optimize Coach. Optimize Me for the free trial for the core wisdom Optimize Me Coach if you want to go all in and master yourself, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Have a great day. See you tomorrow.