#1: "I'm back." (Missed you + The Social Dilemma + Wonderfully bad data +) (#45)

Brian Johnson shares his sleep and heart rate data as an example of tracking that doesn't always tell you what you need to know. He discusses The Social Dilemma and Jonathan Haidt's advice on kids and screens, then announces a new series on his top three books across habits, science, fitness, and digital minimalism.
Chapters
Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry in the book studio. 500 of my favorite books. And I'm back. Took two days off of the number ones and I missed you and I missed the context to share some stories. I appreciate your comments. Very brief retirement. We're back. Let's do this. What day is it? Day one. Get a lot to talk about today. I hereby recommit to being my best self. Especially after days where I see data like this. This data was so bad and I had violated a couple of the fundamental rules so strongly, those bright lines that literally it was just wonderfully bad data that I had to come in and just share it with you and also get the eyeballs effect going. Two simple things I'll share and also excited to share the top three series I've been crushing that and the Social Dilemma. The Social Dilemma, a Netflix documentary. We'll actually start there, which is part of what influenced the readiness score yesterday. Check it out. The Social Dilemma. It's incredibly thought provoking, humbling, and ultimately inspiring for us to do the work we need to do to get our tech usage under control individually, then also deal with it on a societal level. Check it out. I wrote the weekly this week for the optimized community. I talk about this and I talk about Jonathan Haidt and he talks about some horrifying stats. If you look at self harm and suicide rates among young girls, teenage girls, it goes like this, right? When social media comes up, it's actually, as he says, horrifying, humbling, horrible, horrifying. We've got to do something about this. Which is why I strongly encourage you to watch it. Encourage your significant others, families, friends, clients, colleagues. We got to understand what's going on in that particular domain. And this is how we're going to change the world. By understanding what little things aren't so little and then going and being the change we want to see and then doing it at scale. So anyway, Jonathan Haidt. Hate Hite. I always forget how to say his name. Actually chatted with Cal Newport about it yesterday. I'm like, how do you say his name? He's like, I forget too. But he gives us three tips to deal with. Pardon the chicken scratch here. To deal with tech usage with your kids at least a half an hour before bedtime. He says, all devices out of the bedroom. I would say at least an hour. Then he says, no social media until high school. Personally, he says, I think the age should be 16. Middle school is hard enough. 2 and then 3. Ask your kids what they think a good time budget would be. He says they often come up with good answers. How much time do you think you should be spending in front of your screen? Then work with them on that front. That's that. So then here's what I've shared before. My sleep was actually not good but wound up being decent scores. The elevated body temperature again, look at this. Resting heart rate 44. Heart rate variability 44. The main contributors to that are what I've talked about so many times and I hereby recommit. We make the commitment, then we fall short, then we recommit to having an eating window. Why do I need to keep on experimenting with this? It makes me laugh. Ate it like six last night. Now what's exciting is I used to do this literally every single night. I used to eat super late right before I go to bed. Was totally clueless about it. So self awareness is always the first thing to keep in mind and then obviously have the I woke up this morning and I had just a mistake. Learners high Ray Dalio style, spiraling up. And I knew I had to share this with you because my mistakes are fantastic and I think such a rich opportunity to share what I am learning because I have so few variables in my life that I know exactly what I did when things don't go the way I want and how to get back in order. Whereas many of you may have a lot of different moving parts and are still optimizing different variables. So it's fun for me to be able to say look, this is what happens to me and by extension in some way, at least to all of us when we eat too late. You're going to raise your heart rate. You're going to have decreased heart rate variability. And my body temperature was up as well. 8 Again, too late and too much. Got some work to do there. It is what it is. I was actually in bed for 10 hours, got eight and a half hours of sleep. Efficiency wasn't great, 84% but they liked that generally speaking. But I thought that was just wonderfully bad data that I just had to share and then I'm so excited to be accountable. You know, just the knowing that I'm going to share this data with you is a fantastic tool for me to stay on top of my game and choose even more wisely. Again, the eyeball effect that we talk about in one of the early number ones. So there's that, then there's the top three books of all time series. So again this is 500 of the thousands of books we have in our library that we're creating right now. And then of course the 600 philosopher's notes. But I'm doing the top three books of all time and then by category, as we discussed in a recent number one, these are going to be available for free on YouTube, on the podcast, Facebook, wherever you mindfully consume your social media. And of course on our site. It's going to be a way for us to introduce people to our work via what we call our flow wheel, where we introduce new prospective optimized members to optimize via, in part, these top threes. So I did my top three favorite books of all time. The Tools, Deep Work, Happy Together, Energy Work and Love. I also did the top three on Habits, Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, the Compound Effect and Ancient Wisdom. That was fun. The Nicomachean Ethics Discourses in the Bhagavad Gita. And then probably the most fun was Modern Science. Got a stack of philosopher's notes. When I arranged the books here, I started with science in the middle and there are dozens of science books in there that kind of aesthetically for me formed the basis of all of our work together. Then I put stoicism on top of it, etc. Anyway, modern science Flourish, Rethinking Positive Thinking. Then Happier by Tall Ben Shohar made it into the top three. That was tough to figure out the top three there, but I talk about why. And then Fitness Spartan up wound up being the number one there. It's changed my life the most. Got my Spartan wristband on right now about ready to go hit the trail and work out. And then a couple of others. The Joy of Movement, the Maffetone Method. This is a book very few people have heard of, Maffetone method, but it's huge to train in your aerobic zone. Burn Fat for Fuel. It's fantastic both as a fitness book and also as a optimal weight book. Because you want to use fat for fuel. Most people are over training. They're using anaerobic training results in burning sugar for fuel. It's a fascinating discussion that we have in those notes and in the book. Then Sitting Kills, Moving Heels and again, we've got a ton of other notes there. And then I've already done the sleeping ones, the breathing ones, the prosperity ones. That was fun. Prosperity, abundance, etc. Spiritual economics, the Science of Getting Rich and Wealth Warrior were my top three. Think and Grow Rich was right there. And again, we've got a ton of books on this subject as well. Notes rather on great books and Then today I've got the Soul Force Forge with our coaches. Then when I come back into the studio, either this weekend or early next week, I'm going to do nutrition, Top three and weight loss. Separate related conversations. Because weight loss is primarily driven by nutrition, not by fitness. Most people get that wrong. They over train when what they should be focusing on is their nutrition, getting their metabolic systems optimized, your insulin, et cetera, such that you can let go of that fat, which is always going to be primarily driven by your nutrition. So we'll talk about that, which will be fun. There's my top nutrition books. Food Fix by Mark Hyman. Amazing. David Ludwig's Always Hungry. Robert Lustig's Fat Chance. The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. How did Love 2.0 get in there? I don't know, but if you love yourself, then you eat well. Put that one up there. Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. And then the Happiness Diet is another great one that links processed food to depression. Fascinating stuff, carbage, etc. And then shout out to my buddy who shall remain anonymous. But we're trading some messages and he watches these. And just one of my favorite people on the planet, his personal trainer challenged him to do some burpees. How many burpees can you do in 25? How many? How long will it take you to do 25 burpees? And he was joking about, oh man, humble. Just haven't been doing burpees. Took him three minutes. I got work, let's go. Don't ring the bell, keep it going. So I playfully gave him some tips. Start at one burpee, add one, then add another, then add another. When I got into burpees, I was a bit crazy about it and I did 30 in a day, then 50 and I hurt my shoulder. Then I took a few days off, then I settled down and did one burpee. Then the next day I did another burpee. Then the next day after that I did another burpee. So I'm doing three burpees and compounded those over time to 100. Or aggregated those rather. Anyway, so this morning I had fun seeing how long it would take me to do 25 burpees. 50 seconds. I hereby challenge you. Give me 25 burpees. Tell me how long it takes you to do. That's pretty hard to beat. Joe Disena's son can do 30. He's like not even a teenager yet. I think he can do 30 in 60 seconds. I've done 30 in just over 60 seconds. But I hereby challenge you. Tell me how many seconds it takes you to do 25 burpees. That's all I got. I'm thrilled to be back. I missed you guys. I'll figure out how often, if ever, I interact on YouTube. I think I will. I like that too. But I just got to figure out how I'm going to mitigate that. Other things I want to talk about as we go back briefly to the social dilemma. We have a ton of notes and then classes on how to deal with digital addiction. So Digital Minimalism 101. We actually had Cal Newport come in and do a 101 with us. You can check that out as part of the membership. And again, as always, free trial for two weeks. You can watch that class and unsubscribe if you want to. But you can also get that conquering Digital Addiction 101, which is my class on the subject. And then we've got. I'm going to be doing that soon. Where did I put my notes for that? We've got a ton of notes to help us deal with digital addiction as well. I was going to call it Focusing, my top three favorite books of all time on focusing, but I'm actually going to call it On Conquering Digital Addiction. Digital Minimalism Irresistible by Adam Alter and Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. And then we've got a ton of other notes. The Shallows is a great book. What do we have? Unsubscribed great book by Jocelyn Gly or Glee gli. I think meditation, of course, is good for focusing the distracted mind. This is something we really. The distraction addiction. We want to get really, really good at managing our attention and managing our use of technology. Frankly, this is. That is the most important skill to be able to put our attention where we want, when we want, for how long we want is it. And technology is our number one kryptonite. Again, we got to use it wisely in service to our sole goals, rather than being used by technology platforms who don't have your best interests in mind and who are focused on their bottom line. And again, watch the social dilemma get exposed to what's going on behind the scenes and behind the screens, and then choose to use that technology wisely in service to your flourishing, your eudaimonia via arete, putting your virtues in action, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, Rambling. I'm excited to be back. Have a great day. See you.
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