17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson explains how he batch-writes and films the Heroic +1 series, then uses an "I vote" sticker to argue that daily choices and purchases are votes for the kind of world you want to live in.
Hey hero. If you're enjoying these daily plus ones, make sure you head to heroic us to check out all of the other goodness we have to help you activate your best every day. And now, today's plus one. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. One of my fun creative challenges these days is fully integrating my identities as both a philosopher and a CEO. And it's a super dynamic process and I love going all in on one facet of my identity and then the other. When I'm all in on philosopher mode, I like to go all in and read a ton. Creating philosopher's notes to get ahead. I'm currently nearly four months ahead as I type this out and batching these plus ones. I've created over 1300 plus ones at this stage and I almost always write and edit a batch of 30 of them and then film those 30 plus ones in two 90 minute sessions in the studio over the span of about three and a half hours. I have my systems pretty dialed in now. When I start the next batch of plus ones, I clean the upper right corner of my whiteboard and then I write a bunch of plus ones. Six rows of five plus 1s to be precise. Like this. Plus 1, plus 1, plus 1, plus 1, and then six rows of those five ones. Then when I write a first draft of a plus 1, I make a single line through it. When I've edited that plus one, it gets another line to make an X, which means I'm ready to film it. When I'm done filming, I erase it all and say, that's like me. And by the way, our team tracks all of this in a super powerful and equally simple online system that Cal Newport talks about as a case study in his book A World Without Email. Shout out to our director of operations, Patrick and his team, including Calman, Brian, Rosie, Issa, John, who's here in the studio with me now, and Tanya. Seriously, thank you guys. None of this happens without you. Target swipe. Appreciate someone. But all that isn't quite the point of today's plus one. This is on election day this year. I put the I voted sticker on the very upper right hand corner of my whiteboard, which is currently right above my block of plus ones. Only I put a big exclamation point over the D in voted. So my sticker now says I vote. Why? Because we don't just vote on election day every couple years. We, we vote all day, every day. Every single choice we make and product we buy and thing we do is a vote. For either a more virtuous or a more vicious world. Let's vote wisely today. We hope you enjoyed today's Heroic one. For more ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools to help you flourish in energy, work and love, head to Heroic US where you can get started on your heroic journey for free.
