Micro Class: What's Wildly Important?

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on what's wildly important. It's inspired by deep work by Cal Newport. So we're talking about shallow versus deep work. And shallow work, as we've discussed, is basically all the things that just distract you. Email coming in all the time, social media, right? You're on your iPhone and you get the next push notification telling you, ding, this is important. Pay attention to me. And you never do any deep work. Now, if all I tell you is, don't do this, don't do that, and don't do this and don't do that, that's not very inspiring. You're going to look at that and go, what doesn't work? Psychologists say that's the difference between approach versus avoidance. You never want to set avoidance goals. You never want to say to yourself, I need to stop doing that. That's not good for me. What you want to do is you want to create a big yes. A yes that's so big that it crowds out, crowds out all the no's. You are just so unbelievably fired up about this big yes that you don't even remember what you were saying no to. You don't have time for it. It's crowded out. So the question to get to that big yes is what's wildly important to you? What one thing? If you could achieve it over the next six to 12 months, what would it be? What's the challenging yet feasible goal that you could achieve in the next six to 12 months that just fires you up? It's wildly important. If you were able to achieve this over the next six to 12 months, your life would just extraordinarily take a leap forward. Yes, that would be awesome. And that would also be a catalyst to remove all the distractions and easily by approaching something that inspires you rather than trying to avoid the things that don't, this is big. What's wildly important to you? Think about that. Use that as a motivation and incentive to structure your life around it. Again, remember, challenging and feasible. We don't need to be silly about it. Don't set a goal that you're going to burn yourself out on in a week because it's impossible. Do your whoop on it. Mentally contrast it right? Go check out the whoop for all the goodness on there, but get your challenging and feasible goal. Say yes to it. Then structure your days in your life such that you can do the deep work required to make that come to fruition and make it easier to say no to all the distractions. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to celebrating wild success with you. Let's do this. Have another awesome day. See ya. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up? Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do is something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101 meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient Wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.