#1: Wanna accelerate your Optimizing? Here’s how. (Get curious! + 80/20 gains + marginal gains) (#18)

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You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hey, guys, what's up? This is Brian turning this on. After my meditation this morning, we figured out the sleep situation. Didn't want to wake up my daughter and wife. But they're up now, so here we go. So today's number one. I'm sitting here looking at my aura. Score. Very happy with it. In general, 86. Okay, cool. Excellent. Sleep good. We're back on track. And it says, hey, your overall readiness is good, but your resting heart rate lowered late last night. Oh, interesting. Could it be that you ate too close to bedtime? They didn't used to say that, by the way. They used to say, did you exercise too late? And then they say, eating earlier in the evening will give enough time for your digestive system to do its job. Thank you for that tip. I did not eat too late. In fact, I ate earlier than normal. So then I thought to myself, huh? Why did my resting heart rate lower? A little late. So let's look at it. So resting heart rate, lowered, heart rate variability. 60, average is fine. It's not where I've been lately, but we'll take it. Resting heart rate, all right. It lowered down to 42, but they like to see it a little bit earlier in the day, so it's hanging out a little higher. Still wasn't high. Average was 45, etc. But now I get to work. I literally am sitting here, I'm like, okay, first thing I do in the morning, look at that, already take some supplements, etc. Right? Resting Heart rate, lowered rate. Why? And I'm asking myself. And originally I thought, oh, it's because my friend Pilar Gerasimo, maybe, you know, I was working a little late. She did an interview. We did a Facebook live thing. Pilar is awesome, by the way. The healthy deviant. Great book she ran. Experience Life magazine. Dear friend, super wise, passionate, wonderful human being. We'll be doing a PNTV on her book soon. I'm like, that was 3 to 4:30. I don't think that's what it was. Then I realized, oh, I worked out a little later than I normally do. I kind of split my workout into a couple different workouts yesterday. And you can see that in my little activity thing here. Oops, that was today. I haven't done anything yet. I worked out at like, right before my call at 3, I went and just did a quick like 20 minute little workout, right? But I never do that. Literally. I just don't Work out late. Now that's not that late, but it made me think, oh, interesting. Okay, well, that will raise it, right? And then I thought, okay, what I'll talk to you about today is exercise. Well, a couple more things before I get to that. Curiosity is one of the virtues most highly correlated with flourishing. Right? So the science of happiness is founded on putting your virtues in action. So we of course talk about this a lot in general, and particularly with our optimized mastery series as part of our coach program. Four cardinal virtues. Wisdom, self mastery, courage, love. All cultures talk about those four cardinal virtues. They often say temperance instead of self mastery, but temperance is a weird word. Self mastery is what they're really talking about. And they'll talk about justice, but that's a very weak word for what they're really talking about, which is love. So wisdom, self mastery, courage, love. Now science comes in and says there are some other virtues that we know scientifically are most highly correlated with your well being. Five of them scientifically validated. Hope and gratitude are numbers. Two and three are tied for two, depending on who you listen to. Zest is actually the number one. So hope is you believe your future will be better than your present because you have the agency to make it so. And you're willing to take multiple pathways. Gratitude is you don't take things for granted, you take them as granted. And then zest is their interesting word for energy. You feel a life force, you're energized and you can bring yourself to your work and love. This is actually the number one virtue, which paradoxically is one of the least studied virtues in positive psychology. But this is why exercise is so powerful. We'll talk about it in a moment. But then another virtue is curiosity. So you want to be open to life's experiences and you want to see what's working, have the self awareness and to see what needs work. So that curiosity is huge. And you know you want to have that for 80, 20 gains. There's like big levers you can pull in your life, like getting a good night of sleep, eating better, exercising. That will literally radically change your life. If you just make one shift that then there are what could be called marginal gains. So let's call those 8020 gains and then marginal gains. So I'm now playing at the margins, right? I've done a lot of 8020 gains and now I'm looking for the margins because this is how I'm going to spiral up and really get curious about, well, just how on can I be, just how much can I flourish, et cetera. So wherever you are in the process, you actually should be even more excited in some ways. The 8020 side, if you haven't been doing things right, good news and bad news. Good news is you got so much room for improvement that these little shifts that we're talking about and coming back to can radically transform your life. And then when you stack them on one another, boom, you can do some great things. And then you're going to find marginal gains, little opportunities, and you're going to get even more fired up to get curious about, well, how great can I get? Then your little mistakes become, become data points for you to go to the next level. Anyway, exercise now, I worked out yesterday at 2:30, went to bed yesterday at 8:30. That's six hours before I went to bed. Now I usually wake at workout closer to like 9:30. And then I dug through our mastery series, right? I'm like, what's the curfew? Because I knew in our mastery series we go through the fundamentals, of course, right? Eating, moving, sleeping, etc. So then I busted up out my sleep module and frankly I didn't remember what the curfew was for sleeping well as it relates to movement because I always work out early and I say, look, Exercise is a 12 hour mood boost. Like give yourself that mood boost by working out early. It's literally a magic pill. Scientists say it's like, it's like taking a little bit of Ritalin, a little bit of Prozac. It's been proven to be as effective in reducing depression as zoloft. Astonishing, right? Three moderate to intense movement exercises over whatever, 30 minutes a day. It's extraordinary what exercise can do. Kelly McGonigal talks about hope molecules that are released when you do that. Tall Ben Shahar says when you don't exercise, it's like taking a depressant, literally, you evolve to move, etc. Etc. Etc. Anyway, so the question I had was, what's the curfew? The latest, you want to exercise and science says it's three hours you don't want to work out. And I found it here in my sleep notes. Caffeine, you want to get a good night of sleep. Well, it has a half life. You need to be mindful of it.

If you want to go to bed.

If you go to bed at 10pm and you have caffeine at 4pm, half of the caffeine is still in your body. Good luck going to sleep. So the curfew, you want to move that back as far as you as you can really. 2pm noon. Figure it out. Experiment and then exercise. The basic curfew is at least three hours before you go to bed. If you don't, you're going to raise your core body temperature and you're going to get a note like this. Work out late. Your resting heart rate dropped late, right? So pay attention to that, get curious. And while we're here, you want to eat at least two hours before you go to bed. That's a curfew. And again, we recommend four hours before to get that glymph on. I still think that's crazy, but it works. Which is why they asked me, did you eat weight? No, I didn't. And then working, you want to shut down your work. If you're hopping up your mind with intense work and email and all this stuff again, good luck being able to flip the switch and get a good night of sleep. And of course, screens at least an hour before you intend to go to bed. Turn off the blue light, go for two hours if you're feeling like a pro. That's our number one today. I'm fired up about these. That's all I got. That. And let's go make today an awesome day. Have fun spiraling up, getting curious while also remembering to embrace the wisdom. Know the game that you're playing and how to play it well. Have the self mastery to actually play the game well today. Have the courage to be willing to act in the presence of fear. Have the love, the connection, the presence, the engagement, cardinal virtues. And have the hope. Know your future can be better than your present because you have the agency, the ability to make it so and the willingness to take multiple pathways. Have gratitude, God. What I like to say is thank you for blessing me with the gift of everything in my life. Be curious, see what's working, what needs some work and get to work on it. And then have the energy optimized to give yourself to your work and your love. Quick note. In my meditation, I do my breathing training for the first 11 minutes and 40 seconds. Then I meditate on this. I literally go through the compass just the way I did, only I do it as a prayer. So I say, God, please grant me the wisdom to know the game that I'm playing and to play it well today. This is literally my second set of 11 minutes of meditation. God, please grant me the self mastery to actually play that game well today. God, please grant me the courage to be willing to act in the presence of fear. God, please grant me the love to be connected, present engaged with my family in the world today. God, please grant me the hope to know my future is going to be better than my present because I'm going to do whatever it takes to make it so. God, please grant me the gratitude to appreciate all the blessings and gifts in my life. God, please grant me the curiosity to stay open to see what's working and to see what needs work. God, please grant me the energy to show up powerfully in my work and love today. Amen. Let's do this. Make today another awesome day. See you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

Hi, this is Brian.

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