One Year In: The Six Pillars, the 4G Journal, and the Frameworks That Actually Worked

Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show. Today's episode's gonna be a little different because it has officially been a year of the Optimizing Beyond podcast, and I'm so glad you're here. And I'd like to just take a look back and review this last year's journey in the optimization space. Now, I specifically chose this as my main center hub with a tremendous amount of intentionality. And the reason is, is I think optimization can be applied to so many different things. And so while it has a very specific focus of constant improvement, it has a very broad application as well that can be applied from mindset and personal growth exterior to your relationships and organizations and beyond into things that help you be better, like technology and other sorts of helpful products. This is why I love optimization, because it is things that are intended to improve our lives, not just those that you can write a check for. And that's why the catchphrase is daily anything changes everything. I find that more often than not, the more books that I read, the more people that I trust that I listen to, I find the same kind of thread. that the things that are worth it often take regular segmented investment over time. The 2 easiest examples are fitness, nutrition, and longevity, and then also financial growth. So any financial advisor will tell you that the sooner you can get into investing, if you can do it in your 20s, in your 30s, that is a dream. And they will share with you their investment calculators and, and show you what compound growth can do. And that's exactly what optimization is about. But the frustrating part is, It often takes time. And in today's day and age, in the culture of instant gratification, getting results right now isn't as attractive as just give me the pill, give me the short solution. What is a way I can get to A to Z as fast as possible? Now, trust me, if I can find a shortcut, I'll take it too. But oftentimes there just aren't any in so many spaces. But that being said, that's why I do love things like technology and products that I think can help improve my life. But like I've talked about in the Whoop episode, Whoop rates me in the top 0.2% consistency of all their users across 6 years. And it is a piece of technology that I pay for. However, I think the value that I have been able to extract from this tool has still been one that has taken years to build on to get things that are meaningful out of it. So the simplest way I can put it is I love optimization because it acts like a central hub of a wheel. And then every single topic are like spokes to that wheel coming out from that central hub. hub. And I truly think that the spokes on that wheel per se are infinite, that you can really optimize anything. There are things that I have not optimized because they're not areas of interest that I currently have. But like any person, especially guys, I've seen a lot of reels on this recently about like, why do guys fixate on random hobbies out of nowhere? It's like you don't know about it on Monday and all of a sudden you're super deep into it on Friday after hearing about it on Thursday. And a funny one I've been in recently is espresso. So that is a little bit of a rabbit hole. And there are tons of these things, right? So what I love about making my own espresso is it is chasing that optimized shot that you don't always get. And it's funny, I tried getting into golf. I've talked about this before. I realized I maybe didn't have enough patience for that sport. And watching people that have been playing it their whole life, I saw They're chasing that perfect shot, that perfect hole, that perfect game if they're lucky, and just building that skill over time. So again, this applies so broadly. That's why I absolutely love it and why I'm passionate about sharing the things that I've learned and am learning with you. So in light of that, I wanna do a year in review on this episode 53 and kind of look at the, the different spokes that I touched on last year and, and also explore how they landed. Which is also important to go and reflect and see what people like and what they connected with. Now, I will say it is sometimes painful to watch my early episodes as I was figuring out the format and how I wanted to talk about things. But like all things, I think it's important to just start and optimize from there. And when I was reflecting on all this, I noticed about 6 different domains that I discussed throughout this last year. The first one is mindset and emotional regulation. And in a lot of ways, this is That is where it starts. We always say here that the one you can most control is yourself, and you can't control others or your circumstances and what happens to you. And that is so, so true. That doesn't mean it's easy. It just means you're the only one that you can control. And so realizing those, those truths and those limitations are really critical to functioning in an optimal way. Now in this domain, it looks like we did 14 total episodes, which is about 27% of the year discussing all different facets of mindset and emotional regulation. Now I wanna walk through a couple of the biggest takeaways of this pillar. And the first one was episode 2 was about The Expectation Effect. I highly recommend that book. It's very unique and different. And that talked about how powerful belief is. And there's so many examples in that book. In fact, it's so dense with examples cuz I think he wants to make the point while it's also a very technical book, so it can be kind of a dry read, but the examples are what's engaging, and that's what stick out to me most in my mind is there's a section that talks about the placebo effect. We all know what that is. And it talked about the nocebo effect, when you expect bad things to happen or to be true. And he gives an example of a man that was diagnosed with some type of cancer and he only had 6 months to live. Well, he did die 6 months later. And when they did the autopsy, he didn't have cancer. And that story is so mind-blowing. And the point of the book, and it Gives way more examples than just that. That one is a very powerful one that sticks out. And the point is your expectation has tremendous power. And if that's even remotely true, you need to be careful how you apply that belief and that expectation. Almost creepy level stuff there. And, uh, and I agree. There's a reason why it's my number 2 all-time downloaded episode because it, that is a powerful concept. That you need to be careful with the things that you think, your perceptions, your expectations. And like I talked about in my episode with Greg, the power of your words. The second one was the assuming positive intent from my friend Jonathan Dawson and catching the second thought from Glenn Lundy. Now, assuming positive intent is pretty simple. That's if someone does something and you don't have a lot of context, our brains are context-filling machines. So what do they say if I assume? It makes what out of me? Right. So, so because of that, the change-up is to apply ways to constantly optimize how you might be assuming something and decide to assume positive intent, that someone didn't necessarily do something on purpose, and it was likely more benign than you are interpreting it. This also helps if you're challenged in taking things personally. More sensitive personality types tend to fall in this trap more than others. But if you really value and trust someone, then you can be vulnerable to this as well with those specific people. With Glenn Lundy's Second Thought, his premise was that you often cannot control your first thought, especially if it's an intrusive thought and it pops in there and you're like, geez, where did that even come from? And so he postulated, stop obsessing about the first thought and feeling guilty for it or trying to stop them. It's likely that you're not going to succeed in that endeavor. However, he argued that you should control the second thought because that's the one that allows you to respond or react, which is typically running with that first thought and not checking it, not asking questions, and not challenging it. And so those 2 premises have helped me optimize my mindset in multiple ways. The 3rd concept in this pillar that we've discussed is the 2 Wolves Parable. That is a Cherokee Proverb about the 2 wolves inside of everyone. One is good and one is evil, and the one that wins is the one you feed. That's the one that gets stronger, the one that gains power. And while I would argue that most people feed both wolves probably pretty frequently, in this day and age, I think it's more important than ever to talk about this because that's the reason why I have the tattoo to represent and remind myself is that in these days of social media, I think we can all agree that negativity spreads faster than positivity. And so as a result of All of those things, these kind of things are more important than ever. And so which wolf are you gonna choose to feed, I think is a very important question to keep in mind. And the second to last one was about how comparison can trap you. You might've heard the quote, comparison is the thief of joy, and that is absolutely true, but comparison can trap people whether they're underperforming or overperforming. So we talked about in episode 41 about how comparison can really hold you back, whether you are performing at a high level or leaving plenty on the table. Kind of widened my view of comparison a little bit more than I originally had. And then the last one we discussed in this pillar about how when you protect yourself, especially your heart too much, it can eventually cost the very thing that things like love can bless you with. And so usually if someone gets hurt, they want to protect themselves, and then that can really kind of limit them in the future. And that's an important thing to remember. Now, moving on, the next extension of this is still kind of involving you, and that is the pillar of productivity and execution. Now, who doesn't love to be more productive? It's funny to watch AI companies squabble and fight over what ways that they can increase their subscriber counts, and a lot of the marketing is packaged into how it can make you more effective, more productive, uh, and save you time and work while you sleep and all this fun stuff. And so There were 8 episodes on this topic, and this was truly the strongest spoke of the optimization lens. And this is one of my favorite things, as things like logging my food every day and being a crazy Whoop user, those kinds of things really prove me out because I'm guilty. I love these things. The biggest thing is the 4G Journal that I do every day by Danel Delgado, which is a gratitude journal that also includes 3 Goals that you're currently working on, a grace section where you're listing someone that you are wanting to give grace to or forgive, which is super important. And the last one is an actionable growth item from something that you learned that day. This has been one of the single most foundational habits that I've done out of anything else. And I've been doing this daily for at least 6 years now. Going on 7. And when someone asks me for advice on things that they can do to improve their mindset, their perceptions, and basically rewire their brain, this is literally my number one go-to. I ask them, do you journal right now? Do you do any sort of gratitudes right now? Most of the time the answer is no, because that's really fluffy stuff. It seems too easy to be relatively significant. And if they say no, the answer is you gotta do this. I've seen it save marriages, and I don't say that lightly. That's crazy. And so, and I've also seen it transform people mentally in ways that are truly unexplainable. And what's funny, when I dive into psychology in multiple different books with multiple different people in the field, I see gratitude mentioned from multiple angles, which just proves my point that gratitude is an incredibly powerful thing for multiple applications. And I think it's the highest ROI thing that I talk about, to be honest. Uh, the second one is, uh, we discussed different frameworks on how to execute and picking the right skill. And that's what I love about Optimizing is not every episode is gonna resonate with you. And that's okay. The whole point is, can you pick one thing, one topic, one pillar, one aspect, uh, that you wanna tackle? So that may not even be an entire episode. Maybe it's the one thing for you is I'm gonna do a gratitude journal. I'm not, I'm not gonna mess with the other 3. I'm just gonna start with gratitude. Hey, daily anything, right? That's fine. I'll take it. Let's do it. The third one is the good, better, best framework. And this is what I believe holds a massive part of the wheel together because the good, better, best framework can really apply to almost any of the spokes in helping you make decisions and decide how to proceed in the things that you're working on. A lot of times you might listen to someone like me tell you ways that you can improve your life or optimize your life. And oftentimes what makes people feel stuck is they don't know how to apply or how to implement, or it just seems like it's too much. And the good, better, best is a great way to help you filter through and decide what to apply and when, because sometimes you need to accept better than good because anything less than that is going to be not applying yourself. Other times, good is just fine because good is just starting and that's all you need to do. So it's a really, really great framework that I enjoy in helping me decide what I'm gonna do. And I didn't do the 4 Gs right away. I started with just 3 gratitudes and started layering on top. I wanted to build a habit first and take it further. Now we move on from the productivity and execution pillar into the physical, the health, and the performance aspect. It's also something I'm very passionate about as I just celebrated another birthday and I'm getting very suspiciously close to the 40s. Snap, it's coming. And, uh, and we did 7 episodes on this topic. And I would say the number one foundational focus on this pillar is the importance of sleep. It is so foundationally critical to every person. And Not everyone is the same. However, there are large principles that apply to most people. And if you're convinced that you only need 3 hours to sleep, just like Napoleon, I would feel fairly confident in challenging you on that. And so I love researching about sleep health, sleep hygiene, how to get better sleep, how to constantly optimize. And it's frustrating. There are times where I, even last night, I could not go to sleep for about 45 minutes to an hour. And it's, it's one That's one of the most frustrating things because my sleep window is still just a little too narrow because I do love my morning routine and the things that I do. And when I shift my sleep over, I may still have to do that to get that last 30 minutes. We'll see. Can I get it on the back end or can I get it on the front end? It's got to be one or the other. And I'll be honest, I'm still trying to wrestle with it. I love that morning routine piece. I think it puts me in a good mental space at the beginning of the day. I'd like to keep it at the beginning versus moving it into the midday afternoon piece or even evening. I think for me, the optimization lever is the most powerful for the things that I do in the morning to stay in the morning. But unfortunately, that also means going to bed when like nobody I know goes to bed. And so there's just, it causes some friction in some areas that, that are difficult. And so just weighing how I want to do that, it's, it's tough. And so it's not popular to be someone that values your sleep. Regulating your caffeine consumption, making sure you don't consume it past, I mean, if I can, 12, 1 o'clock, because I go to bed at 9 or 9:30. And I've talked about this on the episodes I've talked about sleep, but I have seen a massive correlation to my, even especially my hormone markers, like testosterone's a big thing. People talk about TRT and all these things. And I just was uncomfortable doing those things long-term. Especially under 40. And so I was like, what, what levers can I pull lifestyle-wise to improve this instead of taking some sort of external substance? And I ended up doubling my testosterone with just increasing my sleep. That is crazy. I have not heard much of anyone else in that space, and I've watched a ton of content discussing this. And we know the power that sleep has on hormones. However, I've not seen a lot of case studies or examples of people following through with it. So it's been cool to walk through that journey with my primary care doctor who's been like, man, this is, this is awesome. Now I have actionable info that I can share with my other patients that are actually willing to take the step. He's like, and some people, they actually are. He's like, I think so. So it's awesome. I love using my Whoop to do that. And Whoop AI is, is, has gotten to a point now where It has all my data and I answer questions every single day to give it even more information than it already has. And there are certain things that I've learned and correlations that I would not have otherwise seen in using a piece of technology like that. For you, it doesn't have to be Whoop. What's really exciting is with the new version of the Apple Watch that just was announced this month in Techtember, Apple talked about how they were adding Whoop-like features to their Apple Health app soon and the capabilities of the new Apple Watch to assist with that combo. And it was pretty cool to see that there's other avenues that people can use. And with Siri getting so much better with iOS 27, it's going to be pretty awesome to be able to have a conversation with Siri and learn things about you that you may not have seen otherwise, helping you optimize your health and it noticing like, hey, This has been happening. Uh, your sleep quality has, has been down compared to your average this week. Is there anything else that you've done differently? And you're like, man, I don't know. Like, well, oh yeah, I was actually, uh, I was drinking, you know, energy drinks later in the afternoon and I haven't done that before. When, you know, whatever, just things like that. So that's, those kinds of things are exciting. Another piece that I learned not that long ago was the frustrating relationship with catching up on lost sleep. Now I do catch up on my sleep debt on weekends, but it's It's not like a zero-interest loan. Does that make sense? So there's like interest involved in that you're messing your sleep consistency, because if you go to bed and wake up at the same time all week, and then you move the wake-up time, that jacks up your sleep consistency. And that particular score has implications for your health. And so I've seen how it's affected me. And so what I've talked about in that episode is as long as I can keep the sleep The time I go to bed the same. If I catch up on sleep, that's okay, but it's better that I do this instead of this. Does that make sense? Because when you're, I don't know if you're like me, but if you're like, well, I can sleep in tomorrow, what do you tend to do? You stay up later. And then oftentimes I'm not able to actually catch up on the sleep debt because I didn't really get any more sleep, maybe an hour or two, but I, but I just ended up shifting it. Maybe lengthening it a little bit. But then at that point, the sleep consistency goes from what probably would have been in the low 80s to the low 70s, if not less. And that has drastic impacts on those health markers, which is interesting to see. And last 2 things in this pillar were that fun is something that is critically important in your life. And if you get to the point where you're optimizing and your schedule is packed and you're just crushing all these things, there's going to be a time that If you don't schedule something fun or a hobby or some sort of interest that you get joy from, you may find yourself in a place where those things don't happen. And eventually that will affect you. And so I read a Navy SEALs book, Brandon Thornhill, The Elite Leadership Blueprint. And there was a segment in a chapter where he discussed that scheduling at least 15 minutes of fun every single day was something that he thought had a tremendous amount of value. And that has been something that was super impactful for me last year. And I have not done every single day, Brandon, but we're optimizing and pushing towards that. It has certainly helped remove the guilt involved in not doing something productive, if you get what I'm saying. The last thing was Ashley and I reflected on the UTV accident that greatly affected her physical abilities and just A lot of the mental turmoil, let alone physical, that happen when those kinds of things occur. She was limited and could no longer do really anything, especially early on. And so optimizing health is great when everything's going awesome, but nobody ever anticipates an injury. That injury could happen in the gym. It could happen outside like it did for her doing a recreational activity. You never know. And to be prepared for How do you optimize, pivot, and adapt in a scenario like that is always frustrating and definitely worth talking about because it's not if it's going to happen, it's when in some regard. And then in this next pillar, we're talking about, we're starting to leave the things that we can very directly control to an extent and moving into other things. And that is relationships and particularly marriage. We love talking about those things. We don't have any kids, so we get, I always joke that we get to work on our marriage on average more than your normal couple because we don't have that added dynamic. And so that is a blessing in certain aspects. And so 11 episodes around relationships and marriage. It is my second most discussed topic, and that makes sense. I absolutely love relationships and talking to people about their marriages and helping them optimize those relationships to their best ability. And one of my favorite ways of doing that is personality assessments. Man, I love them. They're fun. They're so engaging. And when used as a tool to understand people, not pigeonhole them, it can be super helpful in understanding, okay, not just how you're perceiving them, but then also how you're interacting with them. And a lot of personality assessments these days have correlations where you can input if you know what you are, And you find out what somebody else is, it can help you understand how you two can interact. And you can even do this in AI. It's something I've done before where it's, I'm interacting with somebody that's a particular personality type. And it's fun to read on the things that you can do differently to speak that person's language or resolve a conflict together, or even basic level, get along better. I said earlier, you can only control yourself. That is also true, most especially true in a marriage. And so you cannot control your spouse. And as a result, it's very important to remember that as often as you can because they're the person closest to you usually. And that also means they have the ability to extract negative emotions most frequently is probably the best way I could say that. And as a result, it's important to remember you can't control them. You can only control you and how you respond. And if you keep that in the forefront of your mind in certain circumstances, we believe that it can be very helpful in your interactions. Easy to say, very difficult to implement, which is why it's a helpful optimization tool. Now, if you're new here, you may not know that this last year we said goodbye to 2 people our age that suffered from cancer, and that sucks. And so grief has colored a good amount of our episodes across the last, I'd say, 6 months. And I love that. It's a real thing. It's something that All of us are gonna deal with. And I think, to be honest, I think this is a little early. I've asked some people that are 10 years ahead of me and I'm like, hey, when you were my age, did, was it this frequent? This is, this feels weird. Is something in the water? But I do think it's important to be honest with how to handle grief, how to optimize through it. And there is no shortcut for grief. And that's why I think it's in a very appropriate discussion for optimization because while it is different for every person, there are things that are similar threads. How the waves come and go, how they're really high early on, and they kind of tame out in frequency spread and the wave heights over time, but how relationships interact, how you can be bonded to somebody else in your grief, and also be frustrated with someone else in how they grieve differently. These kinds of things are all commonality that we've seen and discussed through me and Ashley, and also our brother Eric in the loss of his wife. And so that's just been something Really, really beautiful to discuss and also share while we're going through it, because we know that there are people out there that are going through the same thing and that, that is super, super powerful. And we also talked recently about leading versus chasing. This is a really interesting concept in that I think it's important to find people, as far as the concept of chasing, I think it's important to find people who are ahead of you that are modeling things in a certain way that you would like to pursue. And that is a, in a way of chasing someone out there. But I do think it's also important as if you're someone who's, who's watching or listening to this, you are likely someone who is focusing on ways to make your life better and how to improve it. And just by doing those things, you have something valuable to offer someone else that you can bring along the journey with you rather than keeping it to yourself. And so your journey of self-improvement is unique. It's not like mine. It's different. And that journey and that story can be powerful to someone else, especially someone that I don't know and that knows, trusts, and loves you. And so it's always very important in your daily growth to find someone else that you can pour into, that you can help, that you can lead. And so while you're chasing improvement And chasing examples of that improvement to help you do that. I think it's also important for you to then find people that you can lead and plant those seeds in their life in a way of giving back, if you wanna look at it that way. If you're a person of faith, a lot of people will use the language of everyone needs a Paul and everyone needs a Timothy. Paul would be someone that they're chasing, and a Timothy is someone that they're investing in and leading to grow. And then this moves on to the second to last pillar of professional growth and We did 8 episodes of topics in this arena, and it was a high performer in the episodes that we did. Now there's endless leadership books out there, and I love reading them. There's so many topics that you can talk about. One of the things we talked about was how a huge leadership failure is abdication of responsibility and leadership altogether, let alone leading people poorly, but just not leading altogether. We also talked about how oftentimes, especially leaders, will try to optimize when they're in the red. Whether that be emotionally, physically, probably both. Let's admit it. We've all been there. And how it is different if you're optimizing in the black. Now that can apply emotionally, financially, spiritually, all the above. And so are you in the red? Are you in the black? Is definitely a different type of optimization. It makes me think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs in that when you're just focused on food and shelter, you don't care about investing for a retirement. It's the same in this concept of when you're in the red, you're probably not focusing on all aspects of optimization. And if you are, it's kind of a moot point. Someone's going to have to drag you aside and be like, what are you doing? Like, you need to, you need to figure this out before you try messing with all this stuff. And it's very, very true. We talk about grabbing the low-hanging fruit, picking the highest ROI things first. That just makes sense. Why would you throw resources, money, focus on something that has impact, But isn't what you should do first if there's other things that you should. It's like if there's steps in order, there's a reason they're in order. So let's not go to step eight when you're at step two. So several episodes around financial stewardship and different ways that you can prioritize and optimize your finances in the same kind of veins that we talk about on these other topics. It's often going to be something that doesn't happen overnight. I remember when I was much younger how foolish I was with money. It's easy to look back at myself. And be judgy and probably even frustrated with the lack of responsibility and thinking of where I would be now if I knew what I knew now. But you can apply that to anything, and that's such flawed thinking. And so one of my favorite guilty pastimes on YouTube is watching financial interviews, like financial YouTubers talk to people on the street asking them about their financial situation. And regardless of how responsible someone is, they always feel like they could be doing just a little bit more to be more responsible. And so I think that's a good illustration that there's always another step you can take financially. And I think that's an encouraging thing that should make you feel good, especially if you have that will to do so. Now, as I said, a lot of these early pillars are you doing the optimization, which is great. The final spoke pillar that we discussed last year was around technology, AI, and products. That can just help us optimize. And this is unique and cool just because there is another added benefit, essentially tools that you can use to your advantage to make you more efficient, to scale, to optimize faster. And that always is very interesting. I like interacting with AI. I, trust me, I have my own reserves about it, but it is interesting and fascinating to interact with. In ways that I've saved a ton of time. A lot of times just with things that are simple, like writing an email, but it can save me sometimes 3 to 5 minutes at a time. And that just feels really, really cool. It's probably gonna end the world, but you know, hey, it's all good. And one of the biggest takeaways in discussing AI is just use it. You don't have to share anything you don't want it to know, but that doesn't mean you can't learn how it works, how to interact with it, and how to Essentially learn how to drive the car because it's not going anywhere, and depending on what kind of job that you have, it could definitely impact your situation. And that's important to know. An interesting quote that I've heard concerning AI in the workforce has been: "You shouldn't be fearing about AI taking your job; you should be fearing someone who works in your field who uses AI taking your job." Now that is not to say that AI hasn't. Taken and displaced some people's jobs. Obviously, that's a reality as well. But there are a lot of fields where someone simply that has the same skillset as you, but has the additional benefit of being able to be more efficient with using AI tools that could displace you just pragmatically from someone who's more efficient. So that's important to think through. So if you're willing to invest your time to learn a new tool, I don't think it matters which one that you choose. And now that Siri is getting much stronger in iOS 27, I think that Siri has some interesting privacy protections compared to the others where it doesn't track, collect, or do interesting things with your data that people ask questions about. And everyone has varying degrees of comfort or discomfort with that. So I've heard people say that they know that TikTok watches them and gathers data about them and they don't care. They still use it anyway. So if you take that approach, Use whatever AI you want. If you're more guarded, obviously use your discernment. It's important. And I think AI can be useful in asking it questions, in reflecting. That's something that, a reflection is something that conceptually can be a challenge for me to see or unlock certain things. So there's times where I'm like, hey, ask me 5 questions about this to help me unpack something. Things like a, you know, a business training or personal development training. And it can be just helpful pulling a thread out if I'm just legitimately blanking on getting any further with it. And I do also enjoy having conversations on how I can optimize certain aspects of my life, and I've used AI to do that. Now it's built into a lot of tools that I use, my nutrition tracking app, as well as the Whoop app. I've had a lot of conversations with Whoop about my nutrition, about my markers, about my weightlifting, all sorts of things. And I think it's been impactful. And changed the way I've done things and increased my yield on top of that. So I've really enjoyed that. If that's not something— again, no disclaimers here, take it or leave it. But if you're open-minded, my encouragement is for you to explore it, to see if there's ways that you can apply it and get better with it. Not for the fear of like, you'll be left behind, but I think it's going to be something that continues to be useful. And why shouldn't you Figure out a way that you can have it be useful in your life. I think that's important. And then I just love tech, you know, so I love talking about tech. I love watching Techtember unfold and all the different ways these tech companies are doing things. I have a Sleep8 mattress topper that makes it to where I never sweat in bed ever since I got it many years ago. And so game changer for me. Otherwise, I'd have to have the AC set at an obscene number, fans blowing air all over the place. And now AC's not crazy cold. Fan's not going a million miles an hour and I'm still nice and cool. Awesome. For me, huge game changer. I absolutely love it and recommend it to anyone willing to listen. And tools are the very things that help us be more productive and help us optimize. And I think that's why I love finding ways that tools can help us accomplish those in conjunction with our willpower, discipline, and our follow-through. So with all that said, I just want to say thank you for joining me on this journey of continual optimization, reflecting back on this last year in all the ways we talked about the hub of optimization and how Daily Anything can really change anything and how it can apply to such a broad spectrum of things. And then how to decide to apply things with the Good, Better, Best framework and realizing how can we make the rubber meet the road and whatever we're looking to do and fit it into our busy lives. This is what I love doing. This is why I'm here sharing these things, because they are really truly things that I think can change your life in so many different aspects. Regardless of where you're at, there's going to be something that you can always change and grow, even if it's just adjusting your perception and adjusting it from being a perfectionist. Hi, I'm Josh. I'm a recovering perfectionist. And realizing that incremental growth is way, way better. In fact, there were 2 quotes in one of the latest episodes in season 4 of Ted Lasso. where they quoted Voltaire, who had the quote that was, sometimes perfect is the opposite of good. That was so, so good. And what we talk about here, and that if that's something that you wrestle with, the pursuit of perfection, I encourage you to pursue excellence instead. That implies that it's not always gonna be great, and that's okay because perfect can be the enemy of good if you allow it to be. And in that same episode, I believe, Ted's wife said, continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection. Very, very similar quote, the same idea. So if you heard something in this episode that you said, ooh, that's the one thing, that's the one thing that I want to continue doing, I challenge you to start that journey, whether it's gratitude, whether it's applying the Good, Better, Best framework, or just buying another cool gadget, seeing how it can improve your life. I'm in, I'm here for it. So here's to another great year. Thanks for being here. And thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast, because growth happens when you take action. So subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into practice, because as we know, daily anything changes everything.