2160 FBF: Benjamin Hardy - Slipstream Time Hacking, How to Cheat Time, Live More & Enhance Happiness & Willpower Doesn't Work, Discover the Hidden Keys to Success, Medium.com

Today we have Flashback Friday and a 10th episode show. All of you regular listeners know that every 10th episode we do a topic of general interest. It always seems to relate to finance and success in life and success with our portfolios. But the topics are More General. Every 10th episode show and today we combine a Flashback Friday with a 10th episode. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You you really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome listeners from 165 countries worldwide. This is your host, Jason Hartman. Thank you for joining me today. Episode number 970970. Hey, if you have any suggestions for what we should do for our thousandth episode, yes, episode number 1000,000 is only 30 episodes away. Go to Jason hartman.com ask. You can talk to me there about anything by the way. And by the way, thank you. I really get some really cool, great comments and stuff. And we can't always address these things real quickly just because of all the stuff in the pipeline for the show. But we will try to get to all of your stuff on the air and if not directly, hopefully either way, Jason hartman.com/atask use it. Tell me anything you want. And by the way, you know I always say this ecosystem, yes, we have an ecosystem issue. We spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars every year with virtual strangers and we'd rather be spending that money with you, our listeners, our clients, our fans. So why not use our own ecosystem? If you have a service or a business or you are a solopreneur who can provide services to us of whatever sort you might think we need. Just tell us about it@jason hartman.com ask. Hey, we'd much rather be spending money with you than some outside company that really isn't engaged in our system and isn't listening to our Podcast and buying properties through our network. Of course, we'd rather, you know, keep it all in the family, as they say. Right. So let's do that. Jason hartman.com Ask if you have a product, a service, anything we might need. Hey, let us know. We'd love to spend some money with you, our loyal fans and listeners and clients, of course. So keep that in mind. So I just got back last night from San Jose, California, Silicon Valley. We did a JHU Jason Hartman University live event up there and it was great. I just love our, our clients and, and our seminar attendees. And I'm looking through the evaluations this morning. So first of all, thank you for all the compliments. You know, very sensible content, life changing stuff. Refi till you die. Greg said that. Excellent, excellent. From Vincent. Enjoyed seminar and speakers. Venue could have been nicer. Hey, I thought the venue was okay, but you know, not bad for 99 bucks a night in Silicon Valley. Hey, you know, what do you expect? And we did this event with a partner, so we did not control the actual venue for this event, but I thought it was all right. But you know, we got one negative comment on that great networking opportunity during the property acquisition event providers were great. Very good info on self management versus property management. See you at the next event. That was from David. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of just. We always get such really nice comments on our event. Hardly ever, hardly ever do we get a negative review. But occasionally it'll be due to political stuff. Yes, you know me, I'm ever so slightly opinionated and imagine this, some people don't agree with me. Yes, they will say, ah, I love the seminar but it sucked because, you know, of your politics. Oh, anyway, hey folks, I gotta tell you something. You know, you cannot separate political issues from personal finance. They are interwoven so deeply. So you just have to talk about them. It's important. I mean, look at the new tax reform. I mean, that is so sweeping and so significant for real estate investors and the economy at large. We've got to talk about it. Okay. We've got to talk about political stuff. If you are listening to any investment advice where they are not talking about political issues, you should probably run for the hills because you're not getting the whole picture. Politics are vitally, vitally important to this whole, whole area in which we, we endeavor to help you be better at investing and make a better return for yourself. Yeah, JHU was fantastic. Our next event will be of course the ice Hotel event in Sweden. That's going to be really fun. Several of have reached out to us. We did greenlight that trip. So we are going to the world famous bucket list once in a lifetime ice hotel event in early April. Jason Hartmanicehotel.com Check it out. Jason Hartmanicehotel dot com that is an ad Venture alliance trip. You don't have to be a member to go. Of course the price is a little different for non members. So check that out. Jason hartmanicehotel.com and then I will tell you we have been through thinking about doing an event, a seminar in the Northeastern United States of America. We have not ever, ever in all these years done a seminar there or a conference there. So it's about time we come up and see you folks in the Northeast, right? So we are thinking about and thank you to our clients and Venture alliance members who suggested the City of Brotherly Love. Yes, Philadelphia. So we are thinking about doing an event in Philadelphia and the reason is we thought we would just combine it with our Venture alliance retreat that is tentatively planned for New York City in May. So we've got Venture alliance coming up in the Northeast and we thought hey, why not stay an extra week and I'll just do a Creating wealth event. Creating wealth. Now this is the opposite of JHU Jason Hartman University. Again, very hands on. Roll up your sleeves, pull out your calculator, do the math with us, that kind of stuff. Creating wealth, macro, big picture, demographics, economics, philosophy of investing, risk evaluation, that kind of stuff. And I think we're going to announce something in the Northeastern United States. Maybe Philly Dilly Philadelph.

Yep.

Sometime in, maybe even May. Today we have flashback Friday and a 10th episode show. All of you regular listeners know that every 10th episode we do a topic of general interest. It always seems to relate to finance and success in life and success with our portfolios. But the topics are more general every 10th episode show. And today we combine a flashback Friday with a 10th episode. So keep that in mind. Nothing official yet, but we're working on it. We're working on it. Gosh, what else? There's a lot to talk about. But hey, this is a tenth episode show. Tenth episode. Every episode that ends in a zero. And this is number 970. We talk about something of general interest. And today we're going to talk about something of interest to everybody. We got a great interview coming up as we talk about the subject of time Time Hacking with Benjamin Hardy. Time hacking, how to cheat time, Live more, Enhance happiness and willpower. Doesn't work. Discover the hidden keys to Success. So I think you'll really enjoy this interview and without further ado, let's get to it. Let's talk about time. Let's talk about time hacking. On Wednesday we will be back with a regular old episode as we talk about real estate investing, personal financ, economics, maybe a little politics, all this good stuff. I think we're going to have a case study on Wednesday, another client case study. We got so many wonderful clients. We've got a few of these in the can, so to speak, that we have not published yet. And we got to get them out there so you can hear their stories. Also, one more thing, I want to remind you I've mentioned it before that we do have a Venture alliance junior membership now. So like a country club. If you are age 35 or under and you are probably just getting going in your real estate investing career, building your empire and you're interested in the Venture Alliance Mastermind group, check that out because we do have a junior membership now for those age 35 and under. Talk to your investment counselor about it or go to jasonartman.com ask and we can help you with anything there. That's our general portal to just talk with me, talk with us and we'll go from there. Okay, time hacking, here we go. Let's listen in. It's my pleasure to welcome Benjamin Hardy to the show. He is Medium's number one most read writer. He's the best selling author of Slipstream Time Hacking, how to Cheat Time, Live More and Enhance Happiness. Can't wait to cover that topic. And the new book Willpower Doesn't Work. Discover the Hidden Keys to Success. Ben, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing really well, Jason. Thanks for having me on the show, man.

Good to have you on. And you are coming to us from South Carolina today. Boy, Slipstream Time Hacking. Wouldn't everybody love to cheat time? How do we do that? Tell us more.

All right, I'll tell you about the core premise of Slipstream time hacking. When I was doing my undergrad in psychology and I was wanting to be a professor, actually I decided now since changed my mind, I had a professor who I worked really closely with and he said that there were a lot of professors in his department. And it's kind of a common thing with people who have kind of cushy jobs in general, they call it golden handcuffs. And so it's kind of the idea that like a lot of these people, their job is good enough that they don't want to leave. But it's also Kind of like chains them down. And kind of one of the core stories that kind of really prompted my thinking was he talked about how there was a buddy in his department who really wanted to take his wife on a trip to Hawaii. And the professor, who I was friends with, he takes trips all the time. It's like he's traveling all over the place all the time. He's got five kids, and he just makes it a priority to travel. But his buddy, who I'm talking about, who was in his department, said, I couldn't take a trip like that to Hawaii for, like, 10 years. Just because for most people taking a big trip to Hawaii or going overseas, it's something that you kind of have to plan, like, several years in advance for. And it's not something that it's becoming more common for people to travel a lot. But that kind of made me think, like, okay, wow, so this person is going to spend the next 10 years thinking about his trip to Hawaii. So that was kind of one of the initial thoughts I had. And then I wrote this book, by the way, back in 2014, and it was right around the time when Interstellar came out. And I don't know if you've ever watched Interstellar.

Okay, what was the aha, though, in interstellar?

So the aha with interstellar was obviously time relativity. So how the speed of light moves is it's based on the distance traveled. So when we're talking about the distance from the Earth to the sun, we say it's eight light minutes. And so although we're talking about minutes, we're actually talking about a distance. So time is all about distance traveled. So in interstellar, by the way.

Let me just interrupt. I. You know, when I was a kid, I was a real space cadet. I thought it's 93 million miles from the Earth to the Sun. I thought it took about three hours for light to get here at 186,000 miles per second. Not that I know anything about this, but I'm a nerd, but go ahead. I'm.

I'm pretty sure it's eight light minutes. I could be off.

Wow. Okay.

Anyways, so time, from the perspective of light is about distance. It's not about minutes. It's about distance. Got it. And so when we're watching interstellar and the astronauts jump on that water planet and they can only be on there for a short amount of time, because for every. And I totally forget now, but for like, every hour they're on there, I think seven years passes by on Earth. Right. Do you remember that?

Right. Yeah.

And the reason for that is because the planet that they're on is traveling so fast, it's covering such an immense distance, that basically how time relativity works is the faster an object moves through space, the slower time goes. And so the planet that they jumped on was moving so fast relative to Earth that for every hour they were on, it would take Earth seven years to travel the same distance.

Sure. And I remember studying Einstein and so forth, and like the faster the spacecraft moved, and I can't remember, the quicker or the slower you will age. Right. And I'm like, wow, that's so out of my box. It's so hard to comprehend that idea. But. But yeah. So this is the concept, right, of space time. Right. When you talk about light, it's measured by the distance it covers. So.

So let's talk about my friend again. My friend, he's gonna go to Hawaii in 10 years, right?

Yeah.

Look at it as 10 years time. Or you could look at it as 10 years as a distance.

Okay.

It's 10 years away. But what if he could find a way to get to Hawaii in six months? It's actually one of the things that Peter Thiel talks about. Peter Thiel, the billionaire, he says, how can you achieve your 10 year goal in six months?

Right.

So if he figured out how to create the same distance in six months that he created in 10 years, then his time would move a lot faster. If you're thinking about the planets on interstellar.

Right.

So that's how you slow time down. The faster you move to a desired destination, the slower time goes because the longer you can live there. And so, like, the book is a productivity guide. And I go pretty dang deep into time relativity and about how time works. I mean, the really, the core premise is this. It's deciding what you want or where you want to be and figuring out the fastest way to get there. Because most people, this guy, for example, who wants to go to Hawaii, but he's not going to get there in 10 years. He's chained down by his golden handcuffs. He's chained down by things he doesn't really want, but he's spending an enormous amount of his time wishing he was somewhere else. He wants to go to Hawaii really bad. His wife wants him to take her to Hawaii, but it's a very big distance away. And so this whole book is about, first off, what is time? How does it work? How do you get the most out of your time? How do you slow it down? You know, like how do you slow time down so that you can actually enjoy the moments for what they really are? Because there's a quote that says, you know, a person's life shouldn't necessarily be measured by how many minutes he's lived, but by how much he actually lived within those minutes. You know, a person could live one full day and actually live that day versus, you know, a lot of people who were never truly living. I don't know if you ever saw the movie. I think it's called Click with Adam Sandler.

I don't know if I saw that one.

It's a movie about how, like, I think he could click a button and fast forward time to, like, wherever he wanted to go. And so basically what he wanted to do was, like, he decided, you know, he hated his job. And so he's like, I'm just gonna push this button and fast forward until I get a raise, you know? And so he pushes the button fast forwards, and it ends up being 10 years. And he's like, Holy crap, I'm 10 years older. And then he's like, well, I'm gonna click the button until I go on, like, an awesome vacation. Clicks the button. It's like six years later, you know, and then he's like, well, I'm gonna click the button and go till I retire. And it just fast forwards. And I mean, what the whole movie is about is the fact that in his life, he realized that he actually only truly lived for, like, six minutes.

Mm.

And the rest of it was being fast forwarded because he was not doing what he actually wanted to do. And so kind of the core premise of the book is, if you're not doing what you want to do, if you're not getting where you want to go, then time is going to move very fast for you. Like, you and I, we may live a similar amount of years. We're talking, like, age. Like, you may die when you're in your 70s or 80s, and I may die when I'm in my 70s or 80s. But how much actual time did you experience in those 70 or 80 years? And I think that that's where you pull in the idea of interstellar and the fact that one planet's moving a lot faster. One person may be experiencing lifetimes of amount of experience, while another person may only experience six minutes.

Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting. First thing I want to say, since we're talking about the philosophical element a little bit, is that, you know, I've never understood how physicists will say that time does not exist. It's a construct, it's an illusion. But you know, you ask someone who, you know, just got sentenced to 30 years in prison or they're doing a hard time, so to speak, or maybe that's their life that they've created for themselves. Their job is a prison in the cubicle, right? Or, you know, Dilbert, right. They'll say time definitely exists. You know, there's no question it exists. I mean, certainly we get older, certainly the world revolves around it. We've got to be somewhere at a certain time on a certain date. So that's one part of it. And maybe what the physicists mean, and you'll have a comment on this, I'm sure, is, is that, you know, you could talk about it in terms of distance, like when you mentioned light years earlier. So that's one thing. But after that, I want to ask you about the hacking of time and a little more on that. And it has to boil down to if someone was trying to kind of debunk your book in a way, right? Or your philosophy here, wouldn't they just say, well, oh, come on, Ben, this is just a part about achieve your goals faster rather than slower. Be more productive, work harder and do it faster, work faster, be more efficient. I mean, you know, like, what's the difference? There's quite a bit to chew on. Take it where you want.

I love it. I mean, I love it. So this specific book, to be honest with you, this is a self published book. It's obviously it's been downloaded I think, you know, probably around a million times at this point. But so Portfolio is an imprint of Penguin Random House, which is one of the big five publishers. And Portfolio is the publisher of people like Seth Godin, Ryan Holiday, Simon Sinek. You know, about a year ago, almost exactly one of the publishers from Portfolio emailed me and he said he had read Slipstream, Time Hacking and obviously within that imprint they publish a lot of business books. They publish a lot of self improvement, a lot of business, a lot of productivity. What the editor at Portfolio said to me was, I've read a ton of these books on productivity. I've read Four Hour Workweek, I've read them all. We've published a ton of them. He said, but I've never read a book that made it so cosmic. He said, I've never read a book that actually made it relevant to the cosmos. And he said it shook me. I think obviously in the book I hit a lot of philosophy, I hit a lot of science. The second half of the book is pure strategy. And so the reason I think I go into the physics and the science and the psychology of it is because in a lot of ways, your personal worldview determines your approach to life. I've been able to use the worldview that I kind of frame out in slipstream time hacking to, in my opinion, apply it. Like, just as an example, you know, I'm still a graduate student in my PhD program, you know, that I started a couple years ago. But when I decided I wanted to start blogging, it only took me about three to five months to become the number one writer on one of the biggest writing platforms in the world. And for me, it has nothing to do with my skill. It has to do with my approach. It's not necessarily a set of methods. It's an approach and another way of doing it, you know, and I can go into some specific strategies and also the psychology behind those strategies if you want. I know we don't have a lot of time, but like, well, can't we hack it? Yeah, you can. So, like, I don't know if you've ever heard of Dan Sullivan.

Sure, of course. I've had him on the show a few times.

So Dan Sullivan talks about how 10x thinking is a lot easier for your brain to handle than 2x thinking. It's like when you think in terms of 10x. So let's just say you're making $100,000 and you change the goal to a million. Like, for most people, that seems very unrealistic. I don't think that Dan Sullivan thinks it's unrealistic, and I actually don't either, because I've been able to 10x my income 3 years in a row. Like, when I was a graduate student two years ago, I was making $12,000 as a graduate student. The next year is 120,000. The next year it's over a million. And it really is a way of thinking. But how Dan Sullivan really puts it is when you make a 10x goal and then you make that your filter. Like when you literally filter everything through that one goal, you can very quickly discern what activities are currently happening in your life that are not worthwhile. You also can quickly discern the people in your life that are not worthwhile. You just filter everything through that filter. That's obviously just one approach, but I think thinking in terms of 10x is a lot actually easier than thinking in terms of 2x because it forces you to really answer the hard questions about your mindset and about what is actually happening in Your life. Like this podcast, for example. Like, is this podcast something that you really want to do? I would ask yourself that relative to your goals, or is this something that's like, pretty fun, like it's somewhat, somewhat related to your goals? Or is this something that you think might be related to your goals? You know, like, if you have a true 10x filter, it will be very obvious to you. You know, I'm talking specifically to Jason Hartman at this point. If this is a positive use of your time or if it's something you think is a positive use of your time.

Yeah, well, I think it is. But the question that I've found to be very helpful in life, in any part of life, whether it be politics or life or success or anything, you know, anything, always ask yourself the question compared to what you know. I take that from my philosophy of. From that old Sherlock Holmes movie about. Or spot about how you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. Right. And interesting, interesting. So I don't know because I don't know what opportunity I'm necessarily giving up by doing this podcast. I know I love doing it because I learn a bunch and I get to talk to people like you all day and I get a lot of business out of it too. But sometimes we don't know the opportunity. Everything has an opportunity cost, right? The same is definitely true with money. You know, our money, when it's sitting around in a bank account or equity in a home that's just dormant, it's sleepy money, it's lazy money. So can take it in any sphere. This question is a good question to ask, but, you know, I'm just wondering, beyond the philosophy, which is great, what do we do on a daily basis to hack time to get from where we are to where we want to be faster? I guess that's the kind of prime question, right?

Totally. I'll give you a couple very, very fast strategies. One would be, this is something that's overplayed out right now. But obviously, having a morning routine, obviously the brain is very powerful first thing in the morning, if you can do your most important tasks before 8am or even before 7am, before life gets busy and takes on. I think that that's kind of where you can set yourself apart. Like for me, myself, it's not very hard for me to write three books a year because I get all my writing done before 7am and then whatever happens with life happens. So your brain is most effective. Life isn't busy. So if you have a morning routine, I would Say you'll make or break your life before 8am like the difference between a person making tens of millions of dollars and always having around a six figure income is what I would say for the most part what they do with their morning. Another very.

I mean look, you know, most people would. And I guess I would consider too, most people would consider me to be very successful. I don't really have any big morning routine. I guess I have a default routine in the morning, you know, where I sort of do this. But it's not like. And you know, I mean I've had the miracle morning guy on my show and you know, I heard all of this stuff but you know, it's not like I get up and you know, do yoga and then write or you know, something like this. I mean, I don't know really morning.

I mean if we're talking about not.

Not so much can hinge on that. Right. You know, I get that the brain works better in the morning. Yeah. But go ahead.

No, I mean I would be interested, you know, like to really ask you like when it comes to success and we're talking relative. Sure. You know, I would certainly agree. Your success. The question is how successful are you relative to how successful you could be?

Well, that's always the great question. Compared to what?

I love that question. I think your question is awesome. And to me your response to that question makes it sound like you're pretty content with the level of success you've acquired. Yeah.

I don't know. But all I'm saying is morning routine thing. And I don't mean to get in a big thing.

No, I'm happy about this. I'm very intrigued.

Is that it just sounds kind of like it's a little trite, you know, like it's been talked about. I, I don't disagree with it. I'm. It'd probably be better if I had one, you know, a more formal morning routine. I, I don't, I'm not saying I'm doing it right. I'm just saying that like what are some of the, like really specific. So I'll let you move on. Let's not get too stuck on that.

But go, I'll get one. But I would actually challenge you pretty hard. I would say you'd be a lot farther along if you had a morning.

You may well be right. Yeah. Okay.

I actually can almost guarantee it, but I'll go different direction. Here's one. So almost all of my research during my PhD in organizational psychology has compared the differences between want to Be entrepreneurs versus actual entrepreneurs. And basically, after interviewing an enormous amount of people on both sides of those coins, what it really comes down to is what I would call just making a financial investment. So what's the difference between a wannabe and an actual entrepreneur? At the end of the day, it's really starting to invest money in your goal or in your dream. This is where I think Dan Sullivan's 10x thinking comes in. But so when you invest money in something, you experience what economists call sunk cost bias. When you become invested in something, you become committed to it, and it becomes hard not to commit to that thing. Well, when you invest in certain relationships, like mentorships, for example, or mastermind groups, that is how you can speed your process.

I agree completely.

I mean, a lot of people, like, wonder how I was able to, like, get such wide exposure so fast while I invested my money in the right relationships. Just as an example, a year and a half ago, I wanted to write a book proposal for the book that's now called Willpower Doesn't Work. And I didn't know how to write a book proposal. And a lot of people, they procrastinate because they simply don't know how to do something. There's a lot of friction to learning new things. I'm talking emotional friction. And so that leads to procrastination. But when you invest money in something, even if it's just like a personal trainer, it's a lot harder to not go if there's someone sitting there waiting for you that you paid 100 bucks to work you through that workout.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, so I paid Ryan Holiday $3,000 to help me write my book proposal.

Sure.

That did two things for me. One, I invested in a key relationship, someone who I wanted to be like. Number two, I gave him $3,000. And number three, he taught me how to do something I didn't want to do, which made the friction go away. And so I wrote the book proposal, which ended up getting me a quarter million dollar book deal in three months. And I guarantee if I had not invested those dollars, I would probably still have not written that book proposal, therefore not written that book, therefore not be on this podcast. And so it's like I would say, investing dollars into important relationships and even masterminds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So what you're talking about, there is leverage, right? You leverage the relationship. Ryan knows all kinds of people and he's been on the show. I've, you know, I follow his work. You're leveraging, you're getting his Relationships by buying them and by paying actual money for it. You put yourself at stake and you get leverage over yourself. So you get two types of leverage out of that. You get to leverage Ryan's knowledge and relationships, and you get to leverage yourself, because if you put money into it, you will show up with a much more intent you. You know, that plans to get some results. That's why when we talk to our real estate investor clients, in my real estate company, there are so many people that just want to figure everything out before they start. And I'm like, look, you've got to actually do this. That's how you. If you want to learn the thing, you need to do the thing. And it's funny because in the stock market world and Wall street is the modern version of organized crime, but they do have some great tools. You can go on any stock brokerage website, and you can do model portfolios and work out a strategy without putting any money in and see how your stocks would have performed or whatever. Right. But until you put your own money behind it, you just won't show up in a way that matters. It's just a funny thing about human nature. So leverage, that would be part of. Part of what you're saying, right?

100%. Really? You know, according to people who are maybe a little bit more philosophical, maybe a little bit more overly optimistic, people like Dan Sullivan, you know, they would say that, you know, if you invest in something like the stock market, you can probably get a, you know, 10 to 20 return. You know, if you're doing really well, if you invest in key relationships or invest in yourself, you can go 10x, you know, so that's what Dan Sullivan does. For example, we're both in the same mastermind group, genius network with Joe Polish. And one of the core philosophies of that group is 10x thinking. It's like if you pay $25,000 to be a part of that group, you're gonna show up.

It's a qualifier, first of all, to get in the group. And second of all, it's a. You show up in a. In a different way.

Yeah, well, there's actually a rule. If you don't take that $25,000 and get an additional $250,000 worth of value, then you can't rejoin the group because then it wasn't a 10x investment and it didn't work for you. And so Dan talks about all the time, you know, like, when you make a big investment like that, your psychology changes, and it really resonates with my core belief. And it's, I think, very founded in the research on psychology that most people in Western society in America, they believe that their personality is a fixed characteristic. It's their personality that leads to their behavior. But what the research in social psychology actually shows that it's actually your behavior that shapes your personality. And so when you make a big investment in yourself, let's just say to hire a personal trainer or whether it's to invest in something that you really care about, when you make that behavior, you literally change your psychology. You can change your identity in that way. And so, yeah, you're right. It's huge leverage on yourself, but it's how you change yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, good. So this sounds like we are really dipping into the willpower concept as well. So I'd like you to just chat about your new book for a moment as well.

The stuff on time hacking really was more philosophical. The stuff on willpower is purely strategic. So basically, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith said, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And obviously, we now live in a global environment. The world has changed so much in the last 15, 20 years. Most of the people have not been able to adapt to the changes in the environment. That's why there's, like, huge mass increase in addiction, whether that be to, like, technology, but drugs, alcohol, stimulants, like caffeine, sugar. I mean, it's an addiction culture.

Yeah.

And most people who actually study addiction would say, you absolutely cannot overcome an addiction through willpower. So going back to Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, he said, if we do not create and control our environment, it creates and controls us. And so what willpower doesn't work is all about is. It's all about creating conditions that make your success inevitable. It's about creating environments. And obviously, the fastest one is to remove stuff from your environment that shouldn't be in there in the first place. If you're trying to eat healthy, obviously remove all the stuff. So one thing that Joe Polish always says is, if you're trying to live a 7, 8, or 9 life, you can't see spend your time with 2, 3, and 4 people. You know what I mean?

Absolutely.

And so, like, obviously, you want to remove all the stuff that's friction, all the negative energy that's slowing you down. You know, that's Newton's third law of motion. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of other really cool strategies that I think, you know, not a lot of people Think about. So, like, number one is who you are in your routine environment is different from who you are outside of your routine environment. Like, one of the things that Bill Gates did all the time is what he called think weeks. He would take a week where he would literally go somewhere, he would be unreachable, he would be outside the demands of his job, and he would just spend time reading and thinking. And he said that almost all of his best ideas happened during those think weeks. Tim Ferriss talks about taking mini retirements. You know, there's a really popular podcast all about sabbaticals, about an artist who he works for six years and then he takes a one year sabbatical. And during that sabbatical, he gets almost all of his best ideas for his art for the next six years. And so Tony Robbins says that the power of a decision is based on the emotional experience that creates that decision. And so kind of pulling all these ideas together, one of the things that I think could be really powerful and helpful for people, and there's a lot of kind of research to back it up, is you need to regularly get out of your routine environment. And for most people, they're pretty plugged into their routine. But if you can do it once a week where you just get out of your environment, whether that means just driving 30 minutes away or taking a little trip, and then you want to spend time obviously making big decisions outside that routine environment, that's kind of one big thing to set trajectory. And everything I would say about making decisions or getting clarity, I really tie it to meditation and journal writing. I think that those two practices are very helpful. But there's obviously a lot of other cool things. There's a concept called forcing functions where you can literally, you just create an environment where you don't make mistakes. So like, a forcing function is something that is used a lot in design thinking. So, like, think about your microwave. You know, you can really only open your microwave one way. They made it so that you can't make a stupid problem. You know, certain computer programs, they develop them in such a way that you can't do certain things. There's constraints embedded so that you don't make stupid decisions. And so one of the core ideas is to create an environment where your default is actually to do what you want to do.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that's part of the mastermind principle. It's part of controlling the environment, because what's in the environment has a huge impact on us. Jim Rohn, of course, I'm sure You know, his work, you know, he talked about how your income will be the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. Absolutely important. That's how you can. With the concept of the mastermind that Napoleon Hill promulgated, you can buy that and again gain leverage of those relationships, that knowledge and over yourself by having to actually pay for it and pay a substantial sum of money. You show up as a different you. There's just no question about that. So I couldn't agree more. So instead of beating oneself up over, oh, I don't have enough willpower, I'm too lazy, I procrastinate too much, it ought to be change the environment so that it's easier for us to succeed. Right. Is that kind of what you're saying?

I mean, what you actually said right before that was so profound that I don't think most people got it. You said that once you put yourself in a different environment, you become a new you. Like most people in the Western, you know, like in America and in the Western world don't understand that they have what psychologists would call a fixed mindset where they believe that who they are in one situation is pretty much the same person as they are in any other situation situation. But what you just said is who you are in one situation is actually different from who you are in a different situation. That is actually what is true. So kind of going back to what you're saying, yeah, you can't really beat yourself up. I mean, for example, I. My wife and I have been foster parents for three years. It would do our kids, you know, it wouldn't do them very. A lot of positivity if they were beating themselves up, not making a lot of progress, being back in their parents house where they were totally neglected and stuff like that. Like within that context, there wasn't a lot of possibility. And obviously as kids you don't have a lot of control. But if you're struggling to get stuff done, if you're struggling to make traction on your goals, I mean, a lot of it may be you, but a lot of it's just the environment you're in and the people you're surrounded by. And a lot of it's so unconscious, you don't even know what's going on.

Okay, so let's give a couple tips on that because there is a danger here. The danger is that people listening might say, okay, well now that's my new excuse. I didn't have a good environment. Hey, listen, I certainly didn't have a good environment. I grew up relatively poor. I mean, I didn't starve, but I certainly didn't have money. But I changed that as an adult because I didn't like it. And I had a few, like, sort of reasonably decent manners, but not any great ones. So I got my manners virtually. I got them, you know, from Dennis Whaley, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar, you know, on cassette tape. You know, the great thing about the world today is we can all find those people. Maybe we don't know them. We probably don't know them, but we can just have virtual mentors and change our environment in that way and, you know, just control what we can control. That's all we can do. But let's not use that as a crutch, as an excuse to say this is the reason it didn't work out for me. Right.

Well, no, I grew up in a very rough environment. I mean, think about it. If you're getting a virtual mentor, what you're doing is you're changing your environment. I mean, think about it. Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn is not inside you. He's outside of you. But you allowed him to come into your world or all of these mentors. So, yeah, you have to make small tweaks. But the core idea here, and it's kind of like time, and it's hard to actually understand it unless you actually can understand it. You know all that stuff about Einstein I was talking about? Most people, that's probably over their head unless they actually really think about it. It's the same with this idea. Like, you and your environment are two parts of the same whole. You're not separate and distinct things. What you can do in one environment and who you are is different. And so, yeah, I think you have to take responsibility for your environment. A lot of people say, is it choice or is it environment? You know, do I have the free will to just do whatever I want, or does my environment totally shape who I am? I would say it's not choice or environment. It's actually the choice of environment. You have to make that choice because your environment will shape you. This is not intended to give people permission to be victims of their circumstances.

Good.

What it's intended to do is to say, your circumstances are absolutely shaping you right now. And it's going to be that way unless you change those circumstances. So one thing that Winston Churchill said, he said, we build our houses, and then our houses build us. So you create an environment, and then that environment creates you. You know, and so one of the things that Gabor Mate said is, you know, you can't blame, let's just say, a person for the traumas and the experience that they go through in their childhood, but you have to give them responsibility for continuing to create that trauma.

Right.

You know, if you grew up in a bad situation, that's not your fault. But if you're still in that bad situation, it is your fault because you're still continuing to create the problem that, you know wasn't your fault, but you're creating it right now.

Sure, sure. After about age 7 and after, you know, there's certainly this varies by degree over the years, we really do become the author of our own lives. You know, we've got to take responsibility for that. I mean, one person will say, my parents were alcoholics or they were abusive or this or that, and that's why I'm abusive or alcoholic. Right. For example. And then another person will say, my parents were abusive and alcoholic and that's why I don't drink. And I'm the most, you know, the kindest, most loving person. Right. You know, it's. You can have the same environment. There have been all sorts of studies on twins and you know, growing up together, growing up separately. And it's just choice. Life is volitional. You know, Voltaire said, we can't choose the cards life deals us, but we must choose how to play the cards in order to win the game. So that's always our responsibility. That's a great point, Ben. Give out your website, tell people where they can find your great, great work and then also share any closing thoughts and wrap it all up for us.

Yeah, my website's benjaminhardy.com so the book Willpower Doesn't Work comes out on March 6th. If you go to willpowerdoesn't work.com you can go there and you can find all sorts of free bonuses for pre ordering the book. Obviously I've got online courses about journal writing. I've got online courses about all the strategies I've used to go from basically zero to over 300,000 email subscribers in two years. Really just implementing the strategies that I'm talking about here in these books. You can get those courses for free by pre ordering the book. And I sell those courses for over $1,000 of those courses. But yeah, just a closing thought, and it kind of really dovetails with what you were just describing with choice. So most people, particularly in the western world, believe that it's the personality that shapes the choices. You know, who a person is. Determines what they pursue in life. You know, it's like, you know, you pursue your passion, for example, which thankfully, Cal Newport totally debunked in his book so Good They Can't Ignore youe.

Yeah, I had Cal on the show. He's great.

It's awesome. Yeah. So I would say this. It's not your personality that shapes your choices. It's your choices that shape your personality. You know, it's kind of like it's not confident that leads to success. It's actually successful behavior that creates confidence. And so, yeah, you can begin, obviously, acting well. But at the same time, it's going to be very difficult. It's going to require a lot of willpower to act well for a long period of time in a negative goal, conflicting environment. And ultimately what the research shows is that your willpower will exhaust. And so a much better and faster approach going kind of to the mastermind ideas that we've already talked about in this. What psychologists say is that almost all of our behavior is outsourced to our environment, meaning you kind of act automatically, instinctively, based on the situation you're in. And so if you put yourself in the right environments, then willpower, motivation being positive, it's outsourced, it's automated. You don't even have to think about it. When I go to a genius network meeting, for example, I don't have to try to be motivated. It's taken care of by the environment. So I would just say, you know, create and control your environment. Don't let it create and control you.

Excellent points, Ben. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been a very stimulating conversation, and I'm sure the listeners found it valuable as well. Just keep up the good work. Thank you.

You're awesome, Jason. Have a good day, man.

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