Brian Johnson records a short daily-optimization video combining quantified-self data with a virtues-focused morning practice. He reviews Oura metrics (readiness 85, sleep ~90, elevated heart rate, stable HRV ~66–68), notes an experiment (meal timing, PEMF device offline), shares personal anecdotes (family artwork, hiking, cuddling), and leads a guided ‘virtue compass’ meditation asking for wisdom, self-mastery, courage, love, hope, gratitude, curiosity, and zest. The piece blends biofeedback experimentation with Stoic-inspired virtues and practical journaling.
Chapters
Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry. We've got our 1, 2, 3, constant and never ending optimizing experimentation data. We'll look at with the Aura 85 readiness 90 sleep score, a little bit of movement on the heart rate, resting and hrv. We're going to talk about curiosity though, and how important that is as a virtue. But first we're going to start our day the way we start all days. It's day one today. Technically it's day four of optimized coach class three. So exciting to see everybody taking off. I hereby declare that I recommit to living with virtues. In witness of you, I hereby commit to do my best, operationalize virtue and live with arete. Honoring the fundamentals and striving to be my optimize equals optimist equals best equals eudaimon equals heroic self in energy, work and love, not in an abstract idea, but in a concrete boom, let's do it today, Serve heroically kind of way. We also have artwork from Emerson. He was doing some drawing yesterday and he said, what do you want me to draw? And I said, you know what buddy? I'd like you to draw one of my favorite things. I'd like you to draw us on our trail that we carve together. Hiking, holding hands. That's one of my favorite things in the world. I get tears in my eyes even as I say that. And this is what I get. Podcast listeners, you can't see this, but it's pretty epic. I'm looking a little lean. We're walking, we're holding hands. We got this little tree here that has berries that are edible we discovered yesterday. It also has a bunch of bees that stung Eleanor and Emerson yesterday. We got our trees, we got the beautiful sun. And they said, what else do you want me to draw? I said, okay buddy, how about one of my other favorite things? Me and you laying in bed, sleeping next to each other, holding hands, cuddling. This is what we got. You said the bed was hard to draw on this one, but I thought you did a great job. Love you buddy. So today, aura score, energy, work and love. All about the dynamic balance, right? So readiness 85. I'm happy with that. I'm going hard right now. Sleep. Frankly, I think that's a little generous. Yesterday I think they under reported my sleep. Today they might have over reported it, but we'll go with that. So my heart rate was up last night and it's interesting because I was doing an experiment. I ate at 4:40, which is within my four hour window of going to sleep, I went to bed at like, you know me. What time did I go to bed? I went to bed at 8:32. That's like me. We'll just skip to the sleep for a moment. It says I got an hour and 54 of REM, which is pretty epic. And an hour and 58 of deep. I was up a little bit right here that it counts as me sleeping in light sleep. And I ran the algorithm. I'm up, right? I did a quick needs work, whatever, like four hours of going to bed. I laughed at myself. I'm like, of course you're up dude, you're going hard. When I transition into CEO mode vis a vis hermit philosophers mode, it's more challenging for me to oscillate. So I'm very, very aware of how hard it is to be on and to be off. Especially when you are allowing a lot of inputs in and you're going hard. You know, the idea here is how can we push ourselves as hard as we can on and then recover? Not so we can have great readiness scores and whatever, but so we can crush it and give ourselves to the world. I remember hanging out with Joe decenna. We were joking about aura scores and he said he threw his away because he was consistently in the 60s back in the day. I bought him one as a gift. Bought a few other friends oura rings as well. But you know, he's like, whatever, let's go. I'm hitting it hard. When I was experimenting with time in bed of 10 hours and I had some ridiculous aura score of 97 or 98, I shared it with him. He's like, dude, what are you doing? Get out. Crush it. So fun. Anyway, longer chat. So heart rate was up. So again the nice like really calm, whatever is 40 even flirting with 38, 39 that we've seen, the heart rate variability is stable, right? We've been at 66, 68, 67. Again, I'm really happy with that considering how hard I'm pushing. And it's interesting to notice the heart rate going up. It's confounded as always. It's not just the food, although that is the number one influencer for me. In my experience. I was also working hard and I went a little bit later than normal. For me that's still like 6:30, but you know, it creates a bit of energy going up. So that's the basic sense there. Again, 90 sleep score. I'll take it. But I think that's a bit inflated. That's Our look today, you know, I think we're going to keep it, keep it simple. Curiosity, it's one of our key virtues. We've got wisdom, self mastery, courage and love. Journaling this every single morning, right? We've got hope, we've got gratitude, we've got curiosity and zest. These are the cardinal virtues of ancient stoicism adapted to modern optimizing. And then the top scientific virtues, hope, gratitude, curiosity and zest. But just embracing curiosity. So that's kind of the main thing. I want to get my data is my data. But the way with which we can approach it where we're constantly and never endingly finding ways to run these experiments, get a little bit of data. I didn't mention, but I haven't had my PEMF machine working for the last, you know, five days. So I'm really excited to get that back and then see what that does to our heart rate variability. We'll check in on that soon. For now, make today another awesome day. What experiments can you run? Go have fun. I'm actually going to do this virtue compass. Actually. I'll grab my notes from this morning, the virtue compass. Here's the journaling from this morning. I'm going to lead a. Where did I put it on the back. I'm going to lead a guided meditation Every other Friday I connect with our coaches and I do what we call a soul force forge. Right. So I do one on one coaching with them. But I'm going to kick it off today, I believe with our virtue meditation. So why don't we do that right now? Actually this is how I do two sets of meditation as we've discussed in the morning, 11 minutes and 40 seconds times two. The first one is a breathe less to breathe. Right exercise. And then the second one, I do this compass meditation. And when I got up in the middle of the night after my quick needs work, I did this meditation. So it goes something like this going around our compass here, kind of combining the serenity prayer with the optimized virtue prayer kind of thing. So God, please grant me the wisdom to know the game I'm playing and how to play it well, it's kind of an inhale and then an exhale. God, please grant me the self mastery to play that game well today. And of course the game we're playing, those in the program and the community know is Yudaimon. But speed Yudaimon. So let's high five our inner souls be the best version of ourselves today. That's wisdom. That's the game we're playing we're after virtue. Can we play that today? Please God bless us with the virtue of self mastery. God please grant me the courage to be willing to act in the presence of fear it's the scientific definition of courage willingness to act in the presence of fear. God please grant me the love to be connected, engaged and encouraging today. God please grant me the hope to have a clear target a goal I'm excited about that I believe I can hit and pathways to hit it three elements of hope right? God please grant me gratitude so I can see and appreciate the blessings and gifts in my life. God please grant me the curiosity to be open to life see what's working, see what needs work and have fun optimizing today. And God please grant me the zest, the energy so I can show up as my best self in my work and my love today. There you go. Let's do this big love.
