Avoid Burnout, Learn Faster, Improve Your Memory & Overcome Procrastination w/Thomas Frank EP 1205

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Today's guest is Thomas Frank and he is a video creator and author with.

A focus on helping people become more capable of whatever they aspire to do. And on his YouTube channel with over 2 million subscribers, he creates artistic and.

Educational videos with around productivity habits and.

Learning how to learn. And in this episode we discuss how to better understand why we get burnt.

Out and how to avoid this in our lives.

The techniques Thomas uses to learn new things faster and improve memory, how to actually master your time management when you.

Feel like there's too much on your.

Plate, how to overcome procrastination and develop self discipline and so much more.

I think you're really gonna love this.

One so make sure to share this with a friend that you think would be inspired by this message as well. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Thomas Frank.

Welcome back everyone at School of Greenness. Very excited about my guest Thomas Frank is in the house.

My man.

Strong, buff looking dude.

Are we going to arm wrestle now?

Beat me. Maybe left handed. But are you right handed or left handed?

Right handed.

Okay, maybe left hand. I've got to strong left hand as well. But you're probably beat me. You're eight years younger.

My secret is training. My left hand is stronger too.

You've got an amazing story and an amazing content. Millions of followers over on YouTube. I love the content about productivity, accelerated learning, how to learn faster memory, all these things you talk about. And in a content consuming and creating world that we're in right now especially, I feel like in the last year and a half with the pandemic, more content has been created, consumed than ever. I'm feeling that more people are also having this sense of burnout more than ever. Like everyone just says, like I'm overwhelmed, I'm burnt out.

Yes.

I'm curious, how have you managed this personally with all you have going on? Personal life, fitness, getting up early, productivity, learning, creating new channels. How do you not feel burnt out? And what's your process for teaching that to other people?

That's my secret, Cap. I'm always burned out. No. This is a complex question with multiple answers. So I can't say that there's one simple thing you can do to avoid burnout. But I made a video on burnout in 2019. I heavily burned out then. Really did some soul searching, did some, you know, some, made some changes to my life. There are definitely some.

Why did you get burned out in the first place?

What happened? So it's in my case, doing the same thing for too long.

Yes.

And there's something called the overjustification effect. It's probably been said on the show before, but it's when you allow external rewards to come into your life, it kills intrinsic motivation. You had to do something. So when I was a kid, I made PowerPoint slideshows all the time just for fun. You know, you got a job making PowerPoint slideshows for somebody, now you're not going to do it in your free time. And there's a lot of research around it. It's more nuanced than that. And I think you can balance it. You can be an artist for a living and you can reap the rewards while still enjoying it. But there Is a cost there and a trade off. And when you start making content purely for. Maybe not even purely for it, but you just let your schedule get so overwhelming because there's all these opportunities. It can just sort of crush your spirit to do it.

Yeah.

So biggest thing for me was realizing, okay, I don't need to be making this much content. We'll be fine without it. And I would rather put more time into making each piece better. So 2020 was actually amazing year for me artistically, because we decided to go from four videos to two a week.

A month, one a week to one every other week.

Yes. Because how long would it take you.

To do one video before then?

I mean, I guess it depends. And I think that was part of the burnout is I was like, I have one week and, you know, ideally three days, because I have other things to make this video. So it's just gotta be a listicle video. And we'll throw in some stock footage and we'll make it like we did before. And at the time, I was watching people like Matt D' Avella make these Netflix documentary quality videos for YouTube.

It was only like, one a month.

One a month, right. Because that's all it takes. But I'm watching, I'm like, I want to make stuff like that. So we cut down, took a break as well, so I could sort of just rest. And I think it's a big thing that we miss in our lives is understanding that rest is actually part of productivity. It sort of disengages you and lets you step back and get ideas again. And we started just focusing more on the quality. I was very interested in filmmaking at the time and, like, okay, what lenses should I use? How can I get this kind of shot that I saw in a movie? And my favorite thing we did in 2020 was this stupid video that was gonna be a response video to a video Matt made about checklists. I'm like, this is a response video. I should shoot it in two hours and be done with it. And then I get this idea, and I'm like, what if I recreate a scene from my favorite movie in the world, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and just try to make it shot for shot, like an homage? And this leads to me and my editor, like, standing out in random fields in the middle of the mountains in Colorado and laying in snow fields and doing take after take and then learning how to do all these kind of editing things I'd never done before. But the result of that is my favorite piece of work that I've made, at least in terms of the visual fidelity, the editing, the music. I learned so much in doing that. And I'm like, yeah, okay, I didn't make as much money, but that was fun.

It was cool.

That was amazing, you know, And I'm going to look back on that as one of my favorite things I've made artistically.

Right. I think what you said, rest is part of productivity is so powerful because I think we've been conditioned to stack our days with our schedule full of doing things. And something I try to do in my schedule is have strategic messing around time.

Yes.

Which is like an hour, 30 minutes, two hours, whatever you can, where you were. Like this time. I'm scheduling this so that I'm not stacking with something else, but I'm scheduling time for just brainstorming, play walking, throwing a Frisbee, whatever it is, playing a video game, something to, like, just clear your mind, or just talking to a friend or just having space to do what you want. And that has been so helpful for me. I mean, when I go to the gym, I get my best ideas. Like last night I was working out, I got a new idea for a channel, and I was like, this is amazing. They just keep working out and getting this idea. But if we're not moving our body or giving ourselves space and time away from work, I feel like it's hard to be as productive.

Yes.

Isn't there a video you did? What's it called? Freiman, Not Freyman.

Feynman technique.

Feynman technique. What is a Feynman technique? Does that have anything to do with this?

So it doesn't have anything to do with rest, but we can get into it. So the Feynman technique is.

Feynman technique.

Feynman technique, named after Richard Feynman, the physicist. I don't believe that he ever said, this is my technique and I bestow it upon the world. I think someone else just slapped his name on it. Very simple. If you teach something, it forces you to break down the information, and it forces you to understand it well enough to break it down simply for someone else. So if you want to understand something, well, try to teach it to somebody else. And my video on the Feynman technique acknowledge that you don't always have a ready and willing participant who's going to ask you those questions. So you can go through an exercise of acting as if maybe you're writing a blog post or writing a chapter of a book for somebody. Write out the explanation and try to think to yourself, what would a kid ask me? What's the but why question? And then recently I did a follow up video because I'm studying for a weightlifting certification, cscs. And then there's another one called the pvc. There's two of them. So I have to learn biomechanics. Like, you know, what's this hinge joint here versus this joint here? That kind of thing. And me being a YouTuber for so long, I'm like, what if I just film a video going through what I learned? And then I'm like, what if I just take that video and throw it into my notes and then watch it back and critique it? So that's my new version of the Feynman technique is try to explain it from memory to my camera, throw it up on YouTube unlisted, throw it in my notes, and then watch it back and be like, that was wrong.

Are you doing a, a video where you're actually watching the video and then, and then actually that's the video, your video up on there. And then what's it called?

Myself Critiquing.

Yes.

Video of the video. It's like the Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter is like painting a picture of himself. Painting a picture.

That could be interesting, right?

I mean, it could work. Yeah, I think it would add more labor into the process for sure. But I mean, learning is labor, so.

Right.

Maybe.

I've been, I was telling you beforehand that I've been taking Spanish lessons three days a week for the last little over a year now. I tell you what, man, my brain hurts. My brain hurts learning this skill. And I, and I want to start changing the language around this because I want to start conditioning myself to say this is fun and enjoyable as opposed to this hurts. Because I think the more I say this is challenging and hard, it's going to be hard. How do you, when you're trying to learn something new, how do you not let it overwhelm you and become like, emotionally and mentally painful? When it's this new subject, you have no clue what you're doing or is there no way around that?

I don't know if there's a way around it.

It's painful.

It is painful.

Why is it so painful learning something new?

It's like building a muscle, you know, and so we always used to say, like, your muscles are growing because you're damaging them and then the repair process makes them stronger. From what I've read recently, that's not quite how it works. It's more of like tension on the muscle just tells your body, hey, this muscle needs to grow. But it's still like you need to put tension on the muscle. You need to stress everything to make it grow. My biggest philosophy in life is use it or lose it. Like pretty much everything we have relationships, your brain, your muscle, your body, your bones. If you don't use them, you lose them. Astronauts go into space and if they stay too long, they come back with like debilitating bone mineral density degradation. That's why it's the main reason why they have to do those exercise routines because there's no gravity. And my favorite thing is like the nun study, right? So there's these nuns, they work their whole life into their 80s, 90s, and there's this study they did where they did autopsies on the nuns after they died and found at least in one case, this lady who was sharp as a tack whole life, 80s, working, teaching. And they found tons of Alzheimer's lesions in her brain. Really just wires around it. So it's like, you know, we don't want to purport to say too much around this because I'm not a scientist, but I believe if we use things, we keep them. We're like antifragile beings. If we lose them or if we don't use them, we lose them.

Right, right. What is the skill that you've learned that's been the hardest to learn?

Oh, that's a good question. It's between figure skating and singing.

Figure skating?

Yeah.

Why figure skating?

So I had a friend in Iowa back when I lived in Des Moines. And he's like, dude, I want to learn how to play hockey but I can't skate. So I signed up for this class and it's all like eight year old girls and me. Will you join this with me? Just so it's like not just them and me. And I'm like, okay, sure. And I go into a hockey shop and this is Iowa, so there's not like a ton of skating culture and everything. But I'm like, alright, that's the dude of the counter. I have never skated before. I remember renting skates when I was a kid and my ankles were flopping all over the place. What should I start with? Hockey skates or figure skates? And the dude's like, you should get figure skates because they're not as wobbly, I guess. So I drove up to Minnesota to get my pair of figure skates. Because if you're a dude, buying men's figure skates is not Easy. And I just ended up liking it. And I never wanted to play hockey. Don't really want to get my teeth knocked out. I'm on camera a lot.

But you like figure skates.

But I like it. And I've always liked skateboarding and rollerblading and skiing and just graceful, extreme kind of sports. And figure skating is a lot like that. In fact, I found that figure skating made me an incredibly better skier.

Really?

There's a ton of skill transfer there. So I tried that. But I found that was much more difficult than like, wrestling or football or any sport I'd ever done in the past. It's just so technique based. And in my opinion, you need a coach because you can watch even yourself, and you can watch the pros. And you're just like, I can't really tell the difference between what I'm doing, what they're doing.

How many skills do you feel like you've learned, though?

That's a good question. I like to dabble in a lot of skills. My friends always make fun of me for getting into obsessions and then dropping them and that kind of person. So, I mean, there's been a lot.

Of them two, three months, obsessing, like, okay, on to the next thing.

Yeah. So that will probably mean I will never be the greatest in the world at anything, but I'm kind of okay with that.

Yeah.

Like, I want to learn new things and it's just fun.

Yeah. I'm assuming. I like to learn new things as well, but there are some things I want to master, which is like, Spanish is one of them. But salsa dancing was something that I got into 16 years ago, and I've been doing it consistently for 16 years. It's been a great gift. So I think figure skating, if that's your thing, that could be a great gift as well for a long time. So if someone wants to learn and master a skill in twice the time, what do they need to do to really say, okay, I'm going to learn figure skating. It's not going to take me six months, it's going to take me three months. What do they need to think about in order to learn a skill language? Anything in twice as speed.

All right, so there's a few things we can go through here. First, one I want to talk about is the three types of progress, because a lot of people get tripped up with this. So three types. Gear acquisition, a conceptual learning phase, and then the deliberate practice phase. The thing about these phases is they each offer a different level of perceived jump for the effort invested. So what's gear acquisition?

Gear acquisition.

So buying the things you need. I want to be a YouTuber. I buy a camera, I buy a lens, I buy lights. You feel like you've made this quantum leap, and in a sense you have because you now have the tools you need to do the thing. But they have gotten you no closer to actually doing.

You haven't done anything. You just have it sitting there. And it might sit there for years until you do something.

So there was like this study that is sadly the. I guess sadly it's not the word, but there's a study done a few years ago, victim of the replication crisis. I don't know if you've heard of that, but there was this whole thing that came out a few years ago. It's like all these psychology studies, we've tried to replicate them and we don't get the same results. So maybe half of psychology is bunk. But it had a concept that I found interesting called a social reality, where you come up and say, I am going to run a marathon to your friends. They're like, that's really cool. And you gain this sense of satisfaction just hearing your friends tell you that you cool that you're gonna do it. And then you don't do the thing. I don't know how.

When you feel bad about yourself.

Yeah, I don't think you feel bad about yourself. You've gained a little bit of the satisfaction you would have derived from practicing and actually accomplishing it. So maybe that makes you a little less incentivized to go do the thing. You're just like, ah, I already feel good because my friends now see me as a potential marathon runner.

Interesting. So is it good to talk about the goal then, the skill you want to learn?

That's the question. Right? Because they can't replicate the study. So do we actually know? I'm not sure. My gut feeling is if you have friends who will actually hold your feet to the fire on stuff. Yes. If you have friends who are just sort of like. They'll just be like, yeah, that's going to be great. You know, pat you on the back. I don't know if that's actually a good idea. Because if it demotivates you to actually put the work in right, you know, if you derive the satisfaction just from having them say, that's good. Good for you.

Maybe not the thing that I've seen work, and I don't know if this is proven or scientific or something, but I've seen when people say, I'm gonna start working out and start losing the weight. Right. Let's just give that example. If they say that to someone I see, maybe half the time they do it and half the time they drop after a few weeks. But the people that I see that actually follow through is when they say, I'm gonna do this for whatever, 30, 60, 90 days, I'm gonna post about it every day, and I'm going to commit to myself by posting about it every day on a journey. I think when I've seen that people are more likely to show up for themselves when they know they have to post about something or, you know, if they have a coach, and I know you've got a coach with lifting right now, and it's like, if you know someone is going to be there to watch you, or you have to film it for that person on a daily basis, you're more likely to do it. And if you're spending money for that coach, you're probably more likely to do it.

Yes. Yeah, I absolutely believe that.

So. So gear acquisition is the first type of progress. And what's the second type?

Second type is conceptual learning. So sit down, take a course, read a book, have a teacher, and what.

Else you're trying to learn figure skating. So that would mean, like, go online and watch videos of figure skating tutorials.

Watch a tutorial, or get a coach. And the biggest thing here is you read like Josh Kaufman's book on skill acquisition or Tim Ferriss, you want to break down the skill into the subsets you want to acquire. Now hopefully have somebody who can tell you, here's the sequencing you should probably go through and then try to focus on learning the skills of subsets you want to learn right now. So in the case of figure skating, I do not want to start with triple axel. I don't even want to start with any kind of jump whatsoever, especially any kind of jump with a rotation, because first I need to understand how to rotate. So there's a move called a three turn. This is one of the first things. First thing you learn is literally just how to go. But one of the first techniques you're gonna learn is called a three turn. It literally is just you're on one foot, you go 1, 2, 3, and you sort of create this counter rotation with your shoulders and your torso that makes your hips rotate, and you go from going forwards to going backwards. Super basic technique, half turn. That's like one of the first things you're gonna learn. And then you need to drill that for a long time. Before you go and start trying to figure out the technique for like, a toe loop or something.

Yeah. Because you got to feel comfortable transferring from going forward or going backward and balance yourself and not crack your skull open.

Yep. Okay, so a little bit of conceptual learning, and then the biggest part which. Which yields the lowest perceived feeling of progress for each hour you put in is the deliberate practice. And that is just honing in on, here's the thing I need to learn now. I'm going to go out and specifically learn that. And my video with Charles sort of breaks down the mindset that you want to go into a session deliberate practice with. But the biggest part of it is try to understand what you want to accomplish by the end of the session. You might not get there, but if you have a vision of what you're trying to accomplish, you have direction in the practice session. This is a big problem for musicians because a lot of practice is sitting down and noodling around. If you're like, want to play this section of this periphery song, and I'm currently able to play it at halftime, I'm going to use a metronome, and I'm going to keep increasing the time by 10 beats per minute until I can play it cleanly. That's deliberate practice.

Who coined that term? Is that from the talent code? What was that book?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, for some reason, Patrick Coyle. I'm not sure if that's the name or not. But anyways, deliberate practice, that's where I heard that from. A book. I think it was a talent code. So that's conceptual learning. Is that correct still? Is that still undertaking.

That was deliberate practice.

That's liberal practice. The third one. Gotcha.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, they're kind of. There's a sort of spectrum between those two, because conceptual learning and deliberate practice, you can say, like, I could get the same both at the same time.

Right, right.

But it's, I guess, where you can put the divide is I'm observing someone teaching me, or I'm reading something, and now I'm going and trying it for myself.

Got it. And is that the way. So how do we learn. So this is how we're going to learn something. How do we learn it faster? There's more deliberate practice.

Those are the ways to learn it faster. I mean, so in terms of skill development, that's definitely part of it. And then there are other things, like interleaving, where you spend a little bit of time working on one subset of a skill, and then you Go move to something else deliberately. And that sort of lets your brain be relaxed from the practice on one aspect and get into something else and then it combines them later on.

Right. It's called interweaving.

Interleaving.

Leaving. Yeah.

There's a great book by Barbara Oakley called A Mind for Numbers.

Okay.

And the title makes you think it's about learning math. The book is entirely about learning how to learn.

Learning how to learn. Yeah. What's been the biggest challenge for you then, in learning how to learn faster?

Wanting to do too many things.

I've got 10 hobbies that I'm trying to master right now and skills.

One of my favorite stories, it's probably apocryphal, but there's a story about Warren Buffett's pilot who is talking to Warren Buffet and Sundays, I have 25 different skills I want to learn and what should I do? And he's like, okay, go home and write down all the things you want to learn. All right? Comes back and he's like, here's my list. I've got it. And then he's, alright, now go home and circle the top five you care about. So he goes home, circles the top five that he cares about, comes back, says, I think I understand now. These are the ones I need to focus on the most, and I should only work on these ones in my free time. And then Warren Buffett supposedly says, no, the other 20 are your not to do list, because these are what will currently distract you from putting in the actual time and focus on the things you want to do. And I get a lot of people emailing me like, I've heard that story before, and I don't like it because I want to do these other things. And my response is, your life is long. And the problem that we face right now is not that, oh, I'm gonna spend a year on this, and then what if I don't have another year for that? The problem is it probably takes us like 20, 30 minutes to get into a good rhythm with whatever we're doing. And a lot of us are just like, I'm gonna put five minutes into this and then get distracted and five minutes into that. So the real goal here is, can you cull what you're trying to do, cut certain things out to the point where you're able to put a good 30 minutes of practice into something.

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Yes.

I know personally, that is harder said than or harder done than said.

That's really hard to do. So how many things are you trying to learn right now, like on a consistent monthly basis? How many skills?

That's a good question. I mean, right? My life is like weightlifting, trying to buy a house and work at the moment.

Gotcha.

So I guess it's like, you know, honing my squat form until I can hit my weight goal.

So weightlifting is kind of like the main skill you're trying to master, get to a certain level and then you maintain it, essentially. Right. That's the goal.

That's what I want to do. Because I don't want to be one of those giant powerlifters. My dad is one. There is a video circulating somewhere around the Internet in the depths of like, old school Internet, where he's in a competition, literally bench pressing 600 pounds and his femur breaks.

Wow.

On video.

Oh, man, it was fun.

My dad or my coach didn't know that my dad was that guy. And I went to his house to film a video and he's like, hang on a second. I seen that video of your dad. So you're not one of those guys who's just lying about your dad benching 600. Like, your dad actually did bench 600 pounds. And I was having a conversation with my dad a few years ago about that and about just the, the toll that powerlifting takes on your body. And he's like, you know, if you don't want to be competitive, there's a certain weight range you get up to where those weights are legitimately hurting your joints.

Yeah.

Long term. Right. So I want to get to like 500 deadlift, 400 squat. My bench is kind of where I want it. And then go back to like rock climbing and.

Yeah.

You know, versatility.

Flexibility.

Yes, versatility and the ability to do anything athletic, I want to do for as long as possible is my main goal.

That's Cool.

Yeah.

Staying, staying healthy, that's the key. What about when you're trying to learn these skills for yourself? Do you know that, like, okay, with a skill like weightlifting, it's just gonna take me a certain amount of time in order to get to those goals? Is that something you go into it with? Or you say, what if I can do it? What if I can do it faster? What if I can bench and lift? Or you just, like, physically, it won't let me until I reach 612 months of getting to that goal.

I think it's kind of that. So one thing I'll say here, and this is a little bit tangential, but I used to look at people who are stronger than me and be like, oh, man, that guy's way stronger than me. Weightlifting, especially working with my coach and seeing the progress that my consistent effort brings, I now look at somebody and I'm like, that guy's six weeks ahead of me. And that's just a really encouraging mindset. That's cool to look at somebody and not be like, oh, they're better than me and they're gonna be where I am, or I'm never gonna get to that level. It's just they have a little bit of a head start, and if I'm consistent in my work, I'm gonna get there.

Yeah.

But with weightlifting specifically, I think we have this thought that we can accelerate anything. And publishing and the online content industry has definitely disseminated this idea that you can hack anything. You can kind of hack weightlifting, but, like, for. Especially for a beginner and an intermediate lifter, we know the programming progression. We know what it is. And if you're going way too fast, you're either taking exhaustionist testosterone or you are going to hurt yourself some way. And one thing that I constantly get reminded of is, like, my tendons and ligaments will not grow as fast as my muscles. They don't get the blood flow. They just don't grow that way. So even if the musculature is able to be accelerated, I might be injuring myself in another way. So for me, I don't ego lift. I do it because it's satisfying. I do it because I want to stay strong and healthy, but I also do not want to injure myself. Yeah, I want to be able to, like, you know, do monkey bars or something.

Yeah, it's smart, man. What about, like, memory? You know, when you're doing so much in your business and personal life, how do you remember the skill? How do you remember these things that you're learning better. I feel like we've lost the art and the ability to remember things.

I think so to a degree. There's probably stuff you do for Spanish that helps you a lot. The biggest thing is use. And this is not said enough. There's a lot of people who are like, here's how you hack your memory by building a mind palace from Sherlock Holmes. And we're going to use this system where you identify objects in your living room and then you create a numbering system. I've tried all that kind of stuff. It can work. It's a lot of work. And it's a lot of work that doesn't necessarily feel meaningful a lot of the time. I think if you have a project that requires it, like going through organic chemistry or to go to a language learning example. I was learning Japanese in 2013, so there was this.

Are you fluent?

I'm not fluent. I actually remember almost nothing.

Wow.

Really? So that's one point that I'm going to get to here is I went through this program. It was a web app called Wanikani and it's just amazingly created SRS app. So spaced repetition. The whole principle is if you can try to make your brain recall something nearest to the point it would forget it, then it's like lifting a heavyweight. Right. You get the best bang for your buck. That does actually work. So that app uses that. It uses these fun mnemonics. It creates like these crazy stories. And that does help you remember things, but with this use, it goes away. So when I was actually using it, I found that I was able to memorize kanji and the other the kana, more easily and faster. But because I haven't been speaking Japanese for years, I forgot all of them.

So you've got to use it consistently. That's how you remember. Mm.

I think if I were to pick up Wanikani tomorrow and start using it again, it would come back faster. But the biggest component to memory is interest. Your brain has to care about it being interested. Yeah. So the biggest thing I say is like, can you find a way to get your brain more interested in the thing, whether it's exposing yourself to a story that makes what you're learning a lot more interesting. Like, I want to go to Italy now because I played Assassin's Creed 2. I'm a gamer. You know, I literally got to run around 14th century Italy, and I'm like, this is super cool. And now I want to go there and I want to see that stuff in real life. A lot of it still Exists, whereas before I didn't have a huge interest. So the biggest thing is just like going out and discovering things, exposing yourself to new things, and that makes you more interested a lot of the time.

What about you talk about procrastination as well. Why do you think we procrastinate so much? How do we overcome procrastination so we can get more done?

So there's internal and external factors. The biggest thing comes down to the resistance we feel to engaging in a task. And when we have resistance, we're kind of like electricity and we want to go to something else that's less resistant. So when we have a cell phone sitting on our table that has access to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all these little dopamine hits, just like. Well, I could try to write this paragraph here, but that's hard. Let me just check Twitter really quick. So the biggest thing is, how can you tailor your environment so that there is no path of lesser resistance? There is a great story by this guy, David Shankman. And I mean, this is like, from a carbon perspective, a little wasteful. But he bought a $5,000 ticket to Tokyo from New Jersey, business class, wrote half of his book on the plane, gets off the plane, has a coffee, gets back on the plane, goes back to New Jersey, writes the rest of his book.

Wow.

No, there's no WI fi. There's just his computer.

This is before.

This was like 20 before Wi Fi.

Now there's movies and WI fi and Internet all over the place.

That's true. A lot of people used to swear by the plane being like their one sanctuary. And now it's like, oh. So there are also things like, you know, the writers retreats. I've seen one that's like a cabin in the middle of Georgia in the woods. You could just go out there and there's no phone, no service, no nothing, just. Right. You don't have to do anything that drastic, though. Just turn your phone off and maybe if you have the ability, set up an area in your home or at the office. If you have an office like this, it doesn't have access to all that stuff. So I'll like, literally turn my Internet off on my laptop if I need to write sometimes.

And you just focus.

Yeah, because I want to increase the resistance it would take to go to do something else. There's a principle called the 22nd rule. I think Shawn Achor came up with this. And 20 seconds is not a scientific number here, but the principle is, what is the activation energy required to do anything. So if it's something you want to do less, increase the activation energy. I remember when I was a kid, my mom would take the power cord to our PlayStation and we have to ask her for it because my brother and I were getting a little bit too obsessed with video games. So, you know, that's a little bit of like you have to ask her. But also it just makes it harder to go play the PlayStation. And then if you want to do something more, decrease the activation energy. So I want to play guitar more. Guitar is not in the case. It's on the stand somewhere where I walk by every day so I can just pick it up and play.

Yeah. Make it easier for you to play than it being in the closet or something like that. Yeah. What about managing our time? I know you've done a lot of studies with, I think, Elon and Benjamin Franklin about, like, how they manage their time and being more productive. What have you learned from, I guess, these great individuals who have created amazing things on time management.

So learn stuff from them. Learn stuff from my own experimentation. There are some different ways of doing it. So, like, the Ben Franklin method is like time box your whole day. And that works for some people. It hasn't stuck for me, so I've presented it in a few videos. What do you do basically just like actually create a schedule for your whole self?

Yeah, yeah.

And then Cal Newbert has an actual, I think a better version of this where he says, list out your schedule on the left side of a piece of paper and you're trying to make estimations of how long things are going to take. And then as the day goes on, kind of recreate your schedule because it's always going to be different than you thought. So a huge reason for this is something called the segmentation effect, where when we predict how long something will take, if I give you the whole. We think it'll take way less time than if I give you all the different parts. So how long will it take for me to do my Lewis Howes interview? I think three hours. How long will it take for me to get dressed, get showered, drive to la, find the parking spot, get to the office, get the coffee, actually start recording. I think we did that maybe 15 minutes after we planned. It's gonna take a little bit longer. That is also combined with the fact that we basically conflate best case with average case. So when I'm like, how long does it take to get to work? I think, what's the best time I've ever had to get to work. That's how long it just takes in my head. So I actually love this little feature I use. Fantastical. I don't know if you've ever used it.

Fantastical.

Fantastical. I wish they would make a Windows app or a web app. It's only for Mac and iPhone, but they have a thing where you can say, when's my event? And then it will tell you when to leave based on the estimated drive time plus a window. I was surprised it took me less time to get here this morning than it would have in the middle of the afternoon yesterday. But it was like estimated 44 minute drive. And then I can say, all right, add 15 minutes to that. That's when it pings me.

Wow.

So that's nice.

That's cool. Where are you staying? I was like, wait, where you were staying?

I was staying in Malibu.

Okay.

Friend of mine just recently moved out there. So it was just like, hey, I've got a bedroom.

It's a drive out there for sure.

That PCH though.

I know, man.

I've never driven it before and I've always wanted to.

Oh, man, I'm like, this is amazing. Oh, no, it's worth the drive if you're mountains, the ocean. Being in Idaho. I'm in Denver, Iowa and Denver.

Yeah.

It's a different vibe, that's for sure. You got the nice mountains out in Denver though.

We do, yeah. Driving the 70 in the mountains is incredible.

Yeah. And what. So what did Elon do then to master his time management?

And from the article I read, it was the same thing.

Really.

Just time boxing.

Time boxing.

So it's just estimating your schedule. And I don't want to harp too much on timeboxing because a lot of people try it and just doesn't stick. So what I think is more effective is just having a habit of planning your day out. I would often do it on a whiteboard. I do it in a little sticky note area of notion. Now that I have. And it's just knowing, okay, what's on my schedule? What are the gaps of time I have between those scheduled items and what can I realistically get done? If I have an hour, I know I'm not writing an article because it's gonna take me way too long to get into the flow of writing. I need two hours, three hours, and then planning out what you want to accomplish during the day that isn't a scheduled thing. And then trying to keep that limited. You know, I still struggle with this. I'll be like, I can get six or seven things done today.

You can really get, like, one good thing done or like maybe two, three max, right?

Yep. My friend Tiago recently tweeted, when I was 25, I would drink coffee and feel like I could do everything. At 30, I would drink coffee and I feel like I could do anything. Now I drink it and I feel like I could do something.

Maybe I could do something today. Yeah. What about the habits of the most highly organized people? What do they do differently than most people don't do?

Well, we're talking about organization. Are we talking about morning routines?

I think about the most productive people. What are the habits of the most productive people?

Well, I guess we need to know what the specific habit we're talking about is. So if you said most organized people.

Right.

They have a system. And I think about my favorite example is Library of Congress. 39 million books, 865 miles of shelves. Imagine if there was no organizational system for that. You would take. I did the math on this and it was like 17 months of. I estimated like you could look at two books a second. It's like 17 months to see every single one of those if you never took a bathroom break. And with the Library of Congress classification system, you can find a book in second. It's just treat. I know how to get to it. So people who are organized have a system for the inputs that come into their lives. They know where they should go, and they realize that this might take a little bit longer in the moment, but it makes you easily able to find whatever you need, and that makes you a lot more effective.

What systems should we be implementing in our life to be more organized and optimized?

So just a few. And I don't want to overwhelm people. But where are you putting your tasks? Where do you capture ideas? And how do you organize your living space? Can you easily find the things that you need to find? And does your space feel so cluttered that you can't focus?

How important is living space to becoming more productive and organized in your career and in your life?

It depends. It's more important for people who are less obsessed.

It's more important for people who are less obsessed.

So, yeah, like, if you're absolutely obsessed about something, it doesn't matter if your workspace is messy. I've seen people, personally, I've been like, absolutely obsessed with, zoned in on things. You don't care. But we go through periods of fluctuation in our lives where we are more or less obsessed with something that we should still be putting effort into to build. And when we're in that more chill period of our lives, I think the organizational systems matter more basically. Is the brain hyper excessed about something? Are we super intense about it? Okay, cool. A lot of this productivity stuff goes out the window. You're just going to make it work. I honestly believe that. And that's why a lot of people are like, all these productivity steps are stupid. That's because they're obsessed.

They're like, I'm just getting it done.

They don't need it and they're not watching productivity content.

Right.

If you're watching my videos, it's probably because you're not that obsessed right now. And so if you're not that obsessed right now, there are things you can do to make yourself more effective or sort of push your brain over that hump of resistance.

Why don't people just become obsessed?

That's the question, right?

Why are people not obsessed with the thing they're doing?

I mean, that's a good question. I wish I knew. I wish I could make myself obsessed about things. I remember being 15 years old and not caring about anything in the world except for the Final Fantasy game I was playing. I remember being 19 and not caring about anything in the world except for. I want to make this tweak to my homepage on my blog. I'm going to learn PHP until I can do it. I care about nothing else. And then there are just times in your life where you don't have that. And it's like this elusive thing. So I don't know. The biggest things that help me are if I'm feeling overwhelmed, try to take a break. Every time I try to take a break, it's like at the beginning trying to convince myself, take the break, take the vacation or just take a day off. No, I have to get things done. And then at the end of the break I'm like, hang on a second. I'm getting ideas that I would never have considered or they wouldn't have come to me.

Because you took a break?

Because I took a break, yes. So rest is probably a piece of that cycle of work. And rest is probably very pertinent to our discussion of how do we get obsessed with things. It's probably, we need some time to rest.

And I feel like it kind of goes in with self discipline a little bit as well. Like if you're obsessed, you're disciplined. I feel like if you're not obsessed, you're kind of like, what's the point of this and you're kind of lazier. How do we get to a place of more self discipline? Or is that not the right thing we should be thinking about?

I think we should, yeah. And my favorite thing here is accountability. So how can we get accountability? I made a video recently called the five Levels of Self Discipline. And the model here is different types of accountability that can augment your own self discipline. So as a baseline, I do believe we can become more disciplined individuals internally through practice. If you start, this is a terrible example for me because I hate it. But if you start meditating, you can maybe do three minutes today, next week you can go for five minutes. That's an increase of self discipline and an increase in your ability to hold your focus on one object. But can you add accountability or maybe a better word for this is duty into the mix and augment your own internal self discipline? I want to go research this more, but I read once that like prisoners who were given dogs became much better caretakers of themselves too. There's some accountability and duty there.

I've been in a prison and done a talk in prisons and I went to a prison here in Lancaster near la, where there was a program where they were training dogs, rehabilitating and training dogs. And then they would go out into the outside of the prison for special care individuals who needed dogs. And they were so self disciplined. They were great, they were loving, they were caretaking. These dogs got to sleep in the cell with them and so they can train them overnight. So I watched this, I witnessed this one time and it was, it was cool to see that they were taking care of themselves as they were taking care of the animal as well, which is cool to see.

So I mean, that's really cool to see and I'm glad to get a little bit of confirmation on that. I want to do more research on it, but it kind of goes back to something I've often thought, which is that duty is one of the most important things we have for our will to live, our will to do things, our motivation. And I almost worry that like modern society sort of gets rid of the duty bound obligations we have to each other in our immediate relationships. And because it's no longer like now I have to do something for my village, I just gotta work for this company. And it's just much more abstracted. When I feel that I have a duty to somebody else, I don't have any trouble getting myself to do it. When I'm just like, I want to work out for me, then it's Only if I'm obsessed. If I'm like, I really care about it because I just love this thing, I'll do it. But if it's like, I should do this because I should do this for me, there's no motivation there. So I think self discipline is. Yes. So five levels. Duty yourself, duty to self, which is augmented by external commitment devices. So this could be as simple as a habit tracker. I check it off every day, and I see it in a physical manifestation that I've done it. Level two, accountability partners. This one is where people get tripped up. I have seen a lot of people be like, well, it's each other's accountability partners. And if you don't write your thing, oh, you gotta pay me 50 bucks. And if I don't write my thing, I'll pay you 50 bucks. I did this once. We both didn't write our thing, and.

We both just said, we'll just keep the money.

Pretend that we swapped. So I did one that was much more successful, where I told my best friend, hey, I'm gonna read. What was it, 25 minutes of nonfiction every day. And here's a spreadsheet where I will be logging my pages. I'll pay you 100 bucks if I don't do even one day. And so he kept me to it. Now I had two friends who were.

Like, did you miss a day?

I did not miss a day. There were days where I was like, it was 11:55 in the basement, like, two roommates. The one is just like, yep, I'll hold you accountable. And I don't want your filthy money if you fail, so don't fail. And the other one was just like, why can't I be the person who gets the spreadsheet? And I'm gonna try to sabotage you. I want the hundred bucks. So I think it matters. Like, number one, what's the system you have in place? And number two is that person, the type of person who wants the best.

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Will they actually hold your feet to the fire? Will they not try to sabotage you? Do they want you to succeed and do what you want?

Gotcha. So wait, did you go with the guy who didn't want to take your money?

Yes, that's my friend Martin. He now works with me. Got you my coo.

So is it better to have that or someone who's like, I want you to do it, but if you don't, you still gotta pay me?

I mean, well, I mean, he would have taken my money.

Okay.

He just didn't. My other friend was like, oh, I'm gonna sabotage. Get your money. So if you have those kind of people around you, you want people who want the best for you, right?

Of course. So he's got to check in on you. Hey, you haven't logged in today.

And he would text me, he's like, where's my pages?

That's cool.

I'm gonna take your hundred bucks.

So accountability is.

So that's level two accountability problems crucial for self. I think so. I think if we have accountability, things are much better. Three is the professionalized version of this. Coaches, teachers, people you hire, and they have the advantage of often, you know, hopefully, if they're qualified, often having knowledge of the skill itself so they can provide guidance and sequencing and help you to steer clear from the wrong directions, give you feedback. So, yeah, I don't want my best friend to be my lifting coach because he is not certified for biomechanical and all that kind of stuff. My coach can be like, yeah, your squat form is going to lead to an injury if you don't fix this, this, and this. So he also is my accountability burner, but he's also my professional coach.

Right. Okay.

And then 4 and 5. Accountability to a team.

Accountability to a team.

So, you know, you've got accountability to your staff and vice versa. They know that if they don't do something, it's not just that you're going to say, I'm disappointed in you. It's that I have now lost something because you didn't do what you said you'd do. That's more important or that's more powerful. And then 5 is leadership. So that's just kind of like 4.5. But when you're the leader, you're at the top. And that, I don't think is an accountability hack, because that's a lot of responsibility to take on. So you sort of need to earn that. But I think it's part of the model because it is the highest level of accountability.

And if you don't show up and be accountable to yourself and to the team or to the community, you're going to not be in that position anymore.

Yes.

Right. So it's like, you've got to continue to be disciplined in order to stay in that position if you want to, and set the example of discipline.

And you realize that if you're a leader and you fail the people who are looking to follow you, you hurt them. And if you're on a team, you hurt them. You can probably hurt somebody as well. But if you're a leader, you have the most potential to hurt people if you don't follow through.

Absolutely.

Which is a lot of pressure.

They're relying on you, your skills, the money you Might bring in to be paying them whatever it is.

So I'm sure that keeps you awake at night. Keeps me awake at night. My team relies on me more than anybody else on the team.

Where do you struggle with the most when it comes to self discipline?

Oh, it's a good question. Probably.

What part of your life do you struggle with the most?

It's probably sticking to things that don't have a tight deadline.

So it's like a made up deadline. Like I want to do this by now, but yeah, made a deadline doesn't need this. My team doesn't need this. It's like, I mean, I want this.

That's what it is.

It's like me been wanting to write the my book for the last year and a half, but it's. But I wanted to self publish it this time. And I'm like, well, there's no publisher forcing me, which is those deadlines are so crucial. I feel like.

And I feel like there are things that used to really motivate me that don't anymore. So I used to use this website called Beeminder where you could literally bet money that you would do things. And I still think it's pretty useful. You can hook it up to any API, so it's like you can hook it up to runkeeper to make sure you ran enough or whatever. And there's like a graph. Just make sure you go up enough. And when I was building my business like five, six years ago, that was incredibly effective. I set a book goal, I set a blogging goal. And like without fail, for three years it was like blog post every week, YouTube video every week, podcast every week. I set a goal to write 500 words a day for my book. And I got my book done in two months.

Wow.

But now I've tried it again and again and again. It doesn't seem to work as much anymore. So I feel like I'm at.

What was the site? What was the site called?

It's called Beeminder. Like with a bee with a stinger. I also used Habitica, which is a habit tracker that is video game based. So you get a character and you get experience points and gear and stuff. And that was also super motive for me.

But now it's not.

At this point it's become like I need to hire a coach or somebody to actually yell at me.

Yes, I hear you, man. I mean it's like when you're. Well, you weren't really starting out, but you were kind of in the, I guess the earlier part of Your journey right at that phase. And I think when you're at that phase, it's easier to get motivated because you haven't created something yet. So you're like, let me get this out there. Let me start building it. It's like, if I want to have a bigger channel, I got to do this every week or every month and be consistent. Now that you've reached these kind of goals at a bigger stage, it's like, well, is getting another million followers really going to, like, you know, impact something? Or creating more content could impact this? It's like, you've already done these things that were hard to do.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like, I've already written a number of books. It's like, okay, I need a deeper level of discipline, of service to a community. Like, well, how can I serve now? I'm doing a disservice by not putting this out there. I'm hurting people by not doing this. If I have a knowledge base or something, I can share with people. So it's like making that my discipline.

And that's hard to do. There's a little voice in my head that's like, you shouldn't care if you don't care about the next million followers, because this is important information. You should put it out there. But if it doesn't make the brain actually take it seriously, then it's not a good argument. There's got to be something else that's.

Put in there, something meaningful for you, too. Right. It's like, okay, what am I going to gain from this? Yep. Otherwise, it's just like, okay, I'm creating the. Create. It's got to be some reward, right?

I think so, yeah.

Well, it's internal. External, right?

Yes. Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head there. It's either some kind of internal reward or an external reward. Some kind of thing.

Yeah. So you struggle with what specifically?

With the fake deadlines.

What's the debt? What's the deadlines? You're wanting to.

Yeah, like, with my YouTube channel, it's like, the debt. The actual deadline is like, the end of the month.

To launch the channel.

To. No. For like. For like a YouTube video. Like, oh, sponsors. Like, we need this video to go.

Live last day of the month.

So it's like, okay. And often it's not like I'm goofing around until the last day of the month, but it's like, I could probably make this video in a week, and I kind of want to do this other thing over here or it'll be like, okay, I've got two full weeks. I'm gonna make the ultimate guide to focus. This is gonna be the greatest YouTube video ever.

And then you wait till the last.

Minute, or I don't. Or I'm just working on it and I'm like, okay, well, n plus one rule. Why don't I go find one more study just to make this that much more thorough and that I get to, you know, four days before publishing and I realized I've written a 30 minute video that's like 15 minutes of me just blabbing statistics and no one cares about it.

What's the N1 rule?

Well, I think I just made that up right now. It's sort of like just that, well, I could go get one more study result and it would be that much more thorough. And I guess like this, this sort of is more generally known in like hobby communities. Like the N1 rule in Mountain biking is, well, the number of bikes you should own is n +1, where n is the number of bikes you own right now. There's always another bike to buy. I have a downhill bike, but I don't have an enduro bike or I don't have a fat bike, so I better buy that one too.

Like this bike.

Yeah. There's always something to get or same with camera lenses. And plus one rule is like notorious in the camera community.

Really. So getting more lenses as opposed to what? Actually just doing the shooting or just.

Being okay with having your current collection.

My two main lenses and I'll just use this. Right? Interesting.

Yeah.

So it's kind of like an author. It's like always looking for more research and more data to add to the, you know, to the book.

Right? Yeah. And I think the extra bit with the N1 rule with authors is we know that the really hard work is crafting the story and cutting things down and making it polished. Going out and finding research is by comparison, much easier.

Much so much easier.

I can go and take notes on research all day, but like figuring out how to make a compelling story around that, that's difficult, man.

You talk about, you do videos on the morning routine and the importance of them. You've also shot videos on how you used to do it and now you do things differently now. How important is the morning routine been for you and staying disciplined and setting good habits and actually accomplishing your goals? How important has it been for you?

I think it is important. I think the specific habits are important to your current goals at the time. So if I'm Like, I really want to learn Japanese. I do believe that me getting up and learning Japanese in the morning was actually the most important thing for me to do. Because again, going back to the accountability angle here, I have a limited amount of energy during the day. If I have something I need to do that requires me to pull on my own self discipline, I should put that first so I can then use external self discipline and accountability to power through the rest of the day.

It's interesting you say that because the first eight months I was learning Spanish, I was doing it at the end of the day around like 5, 6 o', clock, and I was literally falling asleep on the screen because it's so, like, was so hard in my brain.

Yeah.

Like, memorizing these simple, you know, not simple for me was challenging. I was like, I've already used a lot of my energy for the day to, like, focus. And now I'm asking myself to be so focused on something that's extremely hard and I should be like, falling asleep. I said I need to do this first thing in the morning. So Now I do 8am it's still hard.

Is it working better?

It's working way better. Nice. It's working better because now I'm waking myself up in the process. But it's way better because I have energy through the rest of the day.

Yes.

Which is easier for me as opposed to, like, I don't have any energy to focus on this at the end of the day. So that's interesting that you were doing it in the morning as well.

I'm trying to move my workouts in.

The morning too, because then it's done and you feel like I accomplished this and I don't have to wait at 6 o'.

Clock.

And I had this meeting and this thing came up and this article took longer. Yep. I want to keep going. And then it's 9 o' clock and you work out, it's a lot harder.

Plus, the big thing for me is so I do not have any trouble getting my workouts done for the most part because I have my coach. What I have trouble is getting the workout done in a reasonable amount of time because I lift a lot of big weights, man. So I could take five minutes, rest, fully recovered, man, get on my phone, like, and in the morning, I feel like I need to get to work. So I've noticed going in in the morning, like, my coach will tell me this. He's like, dude, when I go to work out, like, my warmup sets, I do them immediately. There's no rest between warmups. And I do three minute rest between my sets. And I'm like, I think I rest about three minutes. And I time it. This workout had five exercises, three of which are little accessories in a loop. And yet it took me two hours. How is that possible? Okay, I was on my phone way more than three minutes between sets. So in the morning, there's that pressure. And I'm like, cool, I will wait three minutes and no more between squat sets. I don't care if I fail a rep. And then he tells me that. He's like, yeah, well, I don't care if you fail a rep, because if you're waiting like a day between sets, like, you're not really getting the right tension you need.

Right.

So why not just leave your phone at home?

I should do that.

I mean, or turn the WI fi off.

I absolutely should do that.

Cell service. Yeah.

The one thing I don't like about weightlifting is even three minutes between sets is like, just, okay, what am I doing right? Sitting around waiting.

Should breathe, meditate, focus on the reps. I'm real hard at this next one.

Yeah, definitely get, like, the mind muscle connection in the set. But then in the rest periods, I'm like, I need something to do.

Yeah, I hear you, man.

For me, I have to fill my sets too.

So turn the Wi Fi off.

You know, I could absolutely turn the WiFi off airplane mode or just get.

A camera, you know, But I think.

You know, the morning actually solves it.

Yes.

Like, even if I do check Twitter between sets, like, I know, okay, I really want to be working in, like, the next hour, so let's just get it done.

So what else in the morning routine have you seen as crucial for people?

This is simple, but water, sunlight, movement. Yeah, People feel so groggy when they wake up. And these three things help more than anything else to make you feel awake and hopefully not hit the snooze button. So I have an iPad downstairs with an alarm that goes off three minutes after my main one. This sucks. Every single morning.

Gotta get up.

Because I hear my regular alarm. I'm like, okay, I really want to hit snooze. And I'll start negotiating like, well, I could have snooze for two minutes. That's enough. And I realize, okay, no, that's not enough. I better just get up. And then my cat wants food too. So I get up. But then it's like, I'm groggy. If I at least look out the window, drink a glass of water, and get just a little bit of walking. That's great. I feel much better. And then I try to go for a walk, like 10 minutes, 20 minutes. It's not that fun right now because I live in the suburbs, which is why I'm trying to move back into Denver downtown. Because I will go for a walk every single day and be stoked about it down there.

Right? Yeah, it's hard in the suburbs just looking at it.

You just realize there's nothing else to look like. There's just other houses, there's nowhere to go.

People walking their dogs maybe or something.

Yeah, dude, this is a big thing. And I realize everyone has their own opinion on this, but purposeful movement is something that we don't get a lot of if we live out in the suburbs. It's like you have to convince yourself to move your body, otherwise you stay inside. Especially if we work at home, it's like I have my house, I walk from the bedroom to my home office and I do my work. And if I want to work out, I have to convince myself to do it for the sake of working out. It's just so much better when you're like, okay, I'm gonna go for a walk because I need to go to the store, but I'm gonna get like a mile of walking in. It's just so much. I don't know. I love it and I want to live my life that way.

Yeah, I love it, man. I want to talk about habits again. If someone is trying to, I guess, build a new habit, what do you think are a few important things they can do to make that habit stick? Okay, stay with them.

There's definitely a few things we can do. I love that Level one of accountability in the beginning. Can you get an external system? And this not only adds a little bit of augmentation to your self discipline, but it also allows you to create a record of that habit. So in the beginning, the habit isn't a habit. It's a self discipline driven behavior that is new to your life. And you may have some novelty driving it in the beginning, but eventually, great book by Seth Godin, you get this dip. The dip probably talked about the dip. One of my all time recommendations for people to read. Especially if you're starting a business, you hit that part where the novelty has worn off. Now it's hard and you just need to slog through. And it's not a habit yet. So if you have something that is sort of giving you a bit of accountability and if you have something that is Helping you track it so you see a record of your streak that's incredibly powerful. 20 second rule is also very good as well. How can you decrease the activation energy to make it easy to do?

So what does that mean? I'm going to do this for 20 seconds.

So no 20 second rule again is. It's not. I didn't explain the 20 seconds part of the 22nd rule. So in the book, it's the happiness advantage. He talks about how if you want to do something more often, make it take less than 20 seconds to start doing it. If you want to do it less often, make it take more than 20 seconds. So take the power cord out of your Xbox and throw it in the drawer or put the guitar on the stand. So if it's a new habit, what can you do to make it easier for yourself to get into it? If it's like working out, can I build a home gym? Like my gym is out in my garage now. It's super easy to go out into. I skip workouts less. I'm moving to a house where I won't be able to have that. But I've got a friend who's like, I will meet you at this gym every day. So there's the accountability part. So, you know, make it easier to do or make it more, I guess make somebody have you accountable.

Yeah. What would you say are some weird habits that you've seen successful people do differently that I guess normal people don't do that's attributed to their success? It's like, oh, I don't get up early and walk and drink water, but I do this other thing. Have you heard any of these things or have you tried something?

Well, go on the. I'll go on the early things. So many people think you have to get up early and I don't know what it is, but if you're just like, here's my epic morning routine, or here's why I wake up at 4 in the morning. People latch onto that stuff. And I don't know, there must just be something in the basal ganglia. It's like, if I have the same morning as a successful person, then I will be just as successful as they are in my real life. And that's not true necessarily. But also, there are plenty of people who are super successful going to bed at like 2am and waking up at noon. So the biggest thing is realize everyone has a different chronotype, which is your propensity to go to sleep and wake up at different times. How does the sun and Sunset affect your circadian rhythms. It's different for everyone. Some people just sleep later and go to bed later. My fiance is a great example. She will stay up until like 2am without me telling her to go to bed. But then she's like writing a book at 2am and me like, nope, it's got to be in the morning for me, really. So figure out when do you have the most energy? And then ask yourself, am I getting enough sleep? That's so much more important than waking.

Up at 5:00am yeah. And structure your life around that. When you have the most energy. And are you getting enough sleep? Because sleep is important in my opinion.

Yeah. I'm not sure. I have like an interesting weird habit off the top of my head.

Yeah.

Yeah. If someone's struggling with being a perfectionist, like, they're not launching their thing, they're not doing the thing they want to do because it's got to be perfect beforehand, I guess. Or they're just not able to finish a project. What would you say to that about perfectionism?

So I do have a video on perfectionism if people want more on this. But my favorite thing for overcoming perfectionism is what I call the 1% rule. This is why I am a YouTuber with a successful channel instead of a dead channel with like three videos. So put yourself on a schedule. Could be once a week, could be once a month. Depends on the scope of what you're trying to do. But try to put yourself on a schedule and with each piece of work that you create, try to identify one area where you want to get 1% better.

Give me an example.

So I want to make a video and I think my audio sucks. This video I'm going to figure out how do I position my microphone and add some sound treatment to my space to make the sound better. Or there's one where I actually made a tweet thread documenting this process. This guy on YouTube, Mondo Bytes, has this amazing cinema like, quality of his A roll. It just looks so good. And I'm like, I'm gonna recreate that. I want to figure out how to make my A roll way better. Right now I look like a dude sitting in a bedroom with light, like the overhead light on. Okay, so Mondo Bytes is his name. Mondo Bytes is his channel. I believe his name is Armando. I forget his last name. I don't want to butcher the pronunciation. So he's got like, you know, the color light behind me and I've got a key light here and I've got this like, cool grid thing on the fill light and a hair light and.

Oh.

So I got to add a hair light. And I'm not thinking about a million other things. It's just I want to have the best a roll possible for this video, and I get it on schedule in the next video. I've now ingrained the techniques I learned from that one. And I can either have it automated like that a roll I could just leave set up always, or it's just going to become much easier to do in the future. So the biggest thing you realize is if you're on the schedule and you're improving a little bit every time, 365 videos down the road, you're like, I've made 365 improvements and I've been able to use maybe not all of them, but a lot of them in every video since. And you realize that there was stuff you would have never even known to do in the beginning.

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Store near you that you are now able to do. So, like, the biggest realization of a perfectionist is you cannot make perfect work because you haven't done enough work yet to understand what perfect would even mean to you in five years.

Right. And what's perfect now is not going to look perfect in five years.

Exactly. Martin Scorsese probably has a vision of what perfect is, is in his head, and he can't make it.

You can't make it, you know? Yeah. And I look back at my previous books and I'm like, people are still buying them and loving them. But I'm like, when I say it that way, now would I do it this way? This was a little off. You know, it's like you look at it differently with more time and space.

Yeah. But something that, I mean, you probably realize this as well, that should make you feel better about your work is like, you look back on it and you're like, okay, there's a better way I could have done that, but I was still proud of it when I put it out.

Absolutely.

And people are benefiting from it.

Absolutely. And that's the key. Why do you think we judge ourselves so frequently or so worried about the opinions of other people that that holds us back so much? Why do you think that?

I'm not sure why, but I mean, I definitely feel it.

You feel it personally too?

Yeah, I feel like less than other people. Like, I don't look back on my old work and cringe. I have people who are like, I never watch a video after I make it. Or I'll go back and watch my old videos and I think they're terrible. I don't. I'll go back and see a video from five years ago. And I'm like, that was a pretty good video. Like, there was definitely some stuff I could have done better, but. And I'll remember little things I'd done again, going back to the intrinsic, motivated, artistic stuff. Like, yeah, I remember that little stupid Spider man joke I threw in there. That's a lot of fun. So I don't cringe about my stuff. And I realize, like, I'm trying to teach people who are just a few steps behind me. And that was me a few steps behind where I am now. Like, I was proud of the work.

Yeah. And how do you manage your day to day right now? Do you have a big team? Is it a small team? Are you still doing a lot of the work yourself? What are you doing to accelerate your growth?

Small team right now. So I got my editor, Tony, and my CEO Martin, who are the main guys. I just hired a personal assistant, actually. Very, very good decision. I've learned that every time I've delegated, it's been like this painful process, like pulling a tooth. But then I end up making more money and having a better life. And the only trade off is I now have a team to worry about. And that does, you know, make me think more seriously about planning out war chest. Like, when I was by myself, I could just drop everything and work at McDonald's if I had to, if everything went to help.

But now you're like, okay, we got to have money in six months, in a year, I can pay for people. Which goes back to level five of your self discipline, which is leadership. So it's forcing you to level up your personal leadership skills.

Absolutely.

And start strategizing, thinking the future as opposed to, well, if I wake up tomorrow and nobody's Coming in. I can get by on a couch or something.

I remember your story about sleeping on your sister's couch.

Yeah, you're a half man. And here's the thing. She gave me great accountability because after a year and a half of living for free, rent free, eating her food, just kind of like feeling like a bum. I was still obsessively learning and trying to master skills during that time, but I wasn't forced to make money. I wasn't forced to yet because I had a free place to stay. I wanted it, but I wasn't forced to. She gave me a great gift where she said, okay, Louis, you've been here a year and a half. It's time you either move out or start paying rent. And so I said, okay, I'm moving out and I'm moving with my brother. I went to, like, the next thing, hey, bro, can I stay here for a few months? Months for free? Yeah. And he said, my wife wants you to pay. So maybe they coordinated and say, you gotta pay somehow.

Right?

So he only charged me 250 bucks a month for a room, which I was like, okay, I gotta start strategizing the future. I gotta start planning, taking action, taking risks, putting myself out there in an uncomfortable way. And that was a great accountability for me. It was like, okay, I've gotta pay something. I gotta learn how to make some money. And it forced me to move forward. So, yeah, it was powerful.

I actually want to ask you.

Go ahead.

So I'm in a period of my life now where I'm buying this new house, and there is definitely this idea in the entrepreneurship community that you should spend lavishly to force yourself to make more money.

Interesting.

And then there's the other side, where it's just like, no, you should live Spartan and save as much as possible. And you should need, like, there's definitely like, I'm gonna pay more for this house. And I don't think that's my motivation. My motivation is I really don't want to be in the suburbs. But there's a part of me that's like, maybe this is also good for my motivation. And maybe I should go get a big office too.

I think it's. Yeah. I'll tell you my. My personal experience. I went from living for free to then paying 250amonth. And then after I think it was six months there, I was like, okay, I need to get out of this place, you know, and my sister in law was pregnant, and I was just like, you know, they had their own family And I was like, I got to being a grown man, right? I'm like 25 at this point, 26. And I was like, I got to get my own space. So I found the cheapest apartment I could find in Columbus, Ohio. I didn't have a car at the time. And I was like, I need to be able to walk. And it was downtown, so $495 a month. And I remember thinking, how am I going to pay $500 a month? I didn't have the money, right? And I signed up. I was like, maybe I've got three months to be able to pay for this, but I don't know what I'm going to do after that. By right when I signed, like, the lease for the year, my brain just started thinking differently. And I remember a year and a half, two years later, I moved to New York City and I was paying $2,700 for one month of an Airbnb. I was thinking, this is like six months of rent in Ohio. What am I doing? This is insane, right? This is insanity. And within the first week, it was only maybe in the first couple of days, I remember walking out, just feeling abundant and saying, I'm in this environment, in the city, there's people around, people have opportunities, money. I just need to go meet them and go create something. Then I started paying $3,700 a month in New York City the next month, for the next year and a half. And my income exponentially grew. Then I moved to la and I started paying more than that for a place for six years and thinking, this is like, crazy. I can't believe I'm spending this much money. My income grew. Then I moved a couple years ago to way more thinking to myself, this is nuts. I don't even own this. I'm just paying rent. You're just thinking, okay, every year I'm spending how much money that's just going out the door. And I got an office space and I'm paying more money. Opportunities grew. I started to think differently. So for me, I have been a fan of, like, if I feel stuck, it's not like I want to splurge and just spend a lot of money, because I don't do that in my normal life. I'm not out here, like, buying watches and cars. I don't do that. I'm pretty frugal with the rest of my money, but I know the environment, my living space. When I level up, I start to think. And actively in my business as well. Yeah, that's been my Experience. But again, my friends know, like, I don't wear watches and jewelry and, you know, I don't buy cars. I don't. I don't do anything I don't like. I, you know, I get a lot of travel for free. It's like, you know, I'm not really spending a lot. I'm investing in my business. So if I was. If you were spending a lot everywhere else, I'd say, you know, don't do that.

Right.

But if you're not, I would say invest in a great environment that's going to make you think, oh, what do I need to do to leverage more, to hire more people, to really grow this thing? Unless you're just happy with where you're at, and that's cool, too.

I'm not.

What if you're not happy?

That makes me feel a lot better.

Because if you're not, like. But you're. You're. You've got a great base and you're making great money and you've got this following.

Yes.

But you're not, like, pushed to really go bigger yet, like, faster. Right. It's like, so for me, that's what's worked for me. Every time I do that, I'm like, this is really uncomfortable. Am I really about to invest in this? Yep. And then I have this incredible view in this space, and I'm like, okay, let me go. It's worth the investment.

Okay. That makes me feel a lot better for me, you know, I'll put this out there for the people listening. I definitely do not like where I live, and neither does my fiance. You know, it feels, like, ungrateful to say because it's a nice house, but just the environment is not conducive to creativity. And I've been driving to where my new house is and just walking around, feel inspired. I feel something different here. And I offered on the house, and I have a giant spreadsheet, right? So, like, I'm not like, okay, I can't afford this house. Let me just offer on it and make it work. Like, I can afford it. It's just a definite more than double.

You're going to double your revenue from the moment you move in there the next 12 months, you're going to double your revenue minimum.

Okay.

In my opinion.

I mean, I believe it too, because I. Double your revenue, have ideas that weren't coming to me before. I. But I made this offer, and then I'm like, I can do this and this, and I think I need to make these 58 videos I mean, that's not even an exaggeration. I literally listed 58 videos on the plane here that I need to make, and I kind of see it clearly. And before, I didn't.

Because you didn't have a reason to.

Yeah.

Except for maybe an intrinsic reason. But you. You don't have that as much anymore because you had that seven, eight years ago, Right. When you were trying to make something of yourself. But now you're like, well, I made something, so what do I need to. To grow bigger? For me, I focus on service. I focus on, like, how can I impact more people? Like, if I were to die, I kind of go morbid. If I were to die tomorrow, would I be happy with the level of service I've created in the world? I'm eight years older than you. I wasn't thinking that eight years ago. I just started thinking that around 30. Okay. It was more like, how can I make enough money to, like, survive and grow and just, like, have, you know, financial freedom.

Right.

And accomplish some things? But then once you have it, it's like, okay, do I just want more money? What's the point of that? Yeah, for me, it's been, how do I serve more people? How do I use my skills, my talents to then create information, content, and package them in a way to help more people. And so that's what's kind of an intrinsic value. It's like, I'm getting up because my mission is to help 100 million people weekly, and we're not there yet. We're not even close. So if I died tomorrow, would I be happy? Yes, I'd be happy. But what I've known I could have given more in this space as well. So I think about it from that point of view, and the financial commitment helps me think creatively around finances, because finances are going to help me bring in a team which is going to help reach that mission.

Gotcha.

Because I can't do it on my own.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's the way I think.

But it's reassuring because you read, like, Art of War is like the back against the wall principle, and people fight like cornered animals. And, you know, people will take that and they'll say, you should go do X, Y, and Z because of this. And it's. It's hard to know, like, is that foolhardy or not? Because I can see the positives, and I can see the potential disastrous consequences going too far in that direction.

If you've got, you know, Runway for the next six to 12 months, then I Think you're fine, Obviously. I mean, you're a smart guy. You know how to create something from nothing. If you lost everything right now, I bet you can make a million dollars in a year. If you lost your channel, if you lost all your social media, if you lost your whole following, you could, if your life depended on it. Could you make a million dollars in a year?

Yes.

Can you make 2 million? Maybe.

That's a good question.

If your life depended on it.

If my life depended on it, then yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so then what's going back now?

Yeah, I guess, maybe not my life on the line.

So we need something. We need something. We need something bigger inside of us.

So I put like a thing on my neck like in those movies, right?

No, but I think it's just like what's going to make it meaningful to you when I create and why are you doing this? Yes, I go back to like, why am I? We were talking beforehand about, you know, almost 1200 episodes in. It's like we're doing three episodes a week, four YouTube videos a week.

Why?

Yeah, because there's a deeper mission to serve 100 million people, to help them improve their life. That's why, that's why we do it. I could stop right now and our content, your content would still reach a lot of people for years. Yeah, but I'm just want to be fully satisfied. I'd be happy with my life, but I don't think I'd be satisfied with my calling. And so I'm just led by that. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And I feel like you have this too, because everything like this, everything is free. Everything I do, I want to make it free.

Yeah, you want to help people.

I constantly come up with ideas and I'm like, alright, well this is the idea that's going to be the business driver finally. And then the next week I'm like.

Guys, let's just give it away for free.

What if we made it free? I outlined this whole crazy thing I was going to sell for notion templates and then I was like, okay, but what if I made it free? And then the thing I'm already selling, what if I make a whole tutorial on how to build it for free? So it's like, yeah, how do I monetize it? How do I. What's the actual economic engine here?

Right?

Because you know, you could say YouTube AdSense, but to grow that, it's like you have to grow views.

You gotta get a lot of views.

And that's, that is, I mean you could do it, but it's tough.

Yeah.

And it's not necessarily what I always want to do.

Yeah. So you have a portion that hey, this is free. And you make money from Adsense, so it's still monetizing. And then you sell other things.

Yep.

So it's like, hey, if you can't afford this, we have all this amazing free content. That's what I say too.

Yeah, that's true.

Thousands of videos. You know, if you want my coaching, I pretty much give it away for free. If you want my coaching in a more small group format, then you invest in it. You know, just like you said, it's like, if you're ready for the next level, then invest in that.

Yeah.

So I think it's wise what you're doing, man. You're a smart guy. I think you know what you're capable of creating and you've built it over the last 10 years. So I think it's a smart move to move in there. And I would think personally, if you get this house and then you find a creative office space within a five minute walk, you're gonna explode even more.

Think so?

I think so. And it's like, okay, you try it for a year or two and if it doesn't work, I just know it's.

Compelling advice because I literally toured one.

I think if you, if you, if you put a. Yeah, even just, if you could get a one year lease or you know, even take over a sublease for a year and a half or two years, you don't have to do a five year thing or a three year thing, you know, stuff.

Start there.

You're gonna realize like, oh, this is amazing to have like separation. You're gonna be married in June. He said, I think it's like maybe your wife wants to have some like downtime at home where you can just go to work and then come back and have some space for your cats and, you know, your life. I don't know, man.

But I think we're gonna, we're not gonna get the separation because she also wants some office space so we might share it.

Well, at least the separation from home.

And that I think will be very nice to have.

And when I did that, things started to shift. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like just the relationship with myself became better because I could kind of relax when I got home. Yeah, I feel like when my studio was in my home, I was always working. You're always going to be thinking anyways, it's not going to shut down in your brain. You're always going to come up with a video idea, but I feel like you can just go home and be like, okay, I don't have a camera here to record something.

Yes.

So I'll write it down on my notes and this. But then I'll put it inside and I'll do it tomorrow.

And you're the second person I recently asked about this. So I asked our CEO at Standard when he had moved from his apartment office to a real office, I said, what did that do to your productivity? And he's like, insane.

Yeah. In the next week, I'm sure you'll hear it from one more person.

Probably will.

Okay. The third time you hear it, it's like, all right, I should probably try that.

I'm going to start believing in the secret.

Exactly. No. Yeah. I'm going to text you in a couple weeks and see if you found any spaces. But I think you just keep looking at them. Look at the spaces. Creative spaces. Think of a dream of what you would want it to be.

Yeah.

And if you find it, get it. Don't force it. But if you find it, explore it. See what makes sense. What do you think's holding you back from 10xing? Your productivity, your results, your impact right now?

I mean, well, so I was gonna say fear. Cause I thought you were saying, what's holding you back from getting that office space? And maybe that's part of it, is.

Just, what are you afraid of?

You know, I know I can afford this right now, but what if something bad happens? Or what if I overextend? And, you know, it's fear.

What?

I often think it's fear of something that I don't quite understand. I just need to sit down and understand better. When I talked about the burnout before, the reason we went down from four to two per month when we were on that super cinematic kick was I was afraid, afraid, afraid, afraid. Burned out, Looked at my spreadsheet, realized, if I change this number to two videos per month, we are still in the green. Oh, okay. Now the fear is so much less. I can actually do it. So I think it's just sitting down. Understanding here are the realities and the factors of the situation that I have not actually gotten to know yet.

Right, right. And so what's the fear that holds you back in this point?

I think it's just that leap.

Right.

It's like, this is so much more money per month. That's a huge leap. It seems irresponsible.

Irresponsible to who?

Right. That's like something that as an entrepreneur. Exactly.

Parents out there that would say this to their kids, maybe.

Yep. I think that's what it is. It's like, who weren't throwing us, you know, having people say, be frugal. You know, my mom's just like, you're paying an awful lot of money for that place. And it lodges in my brain.

I'm all for being extremely frugal with your money and not blowing it on material things that are meaningless to you in order to impress other people. For me, I buy the same like $40 shirts. You wear T shirts all the time. You're not like this extravagant spender on things. You probably get healthy food, you have coaches to help you improve your life and you invest in people and your team to help you grow. Yes, some travel here and there, but it's like you travel with a backpack. You're staying at a friend's place. You're not like getting these lavish five star hotels and renting Bugattis every weekend.

Right.

It's not what you're doing.

Yep.

You're trying to optimize your life in intrinsic ways. Yes. And so I feel like if you're creating an investment in an environment and people that will support you in helping more people, that's always going to be a great investment. If you're investing in things to look cool, that may not satisfy you in the long term and it may be not as wise. If you're doing it because you enjoy that, then cool. But if you're doing it to impress or something and to feel good about yourself, then maybe that's not the wisest way to spend money. Yeah, that's my opinion. You've got the money. What are you using it for? Just sitting around to wait until you die? I mean, it's like investing it to help you grow. So do you pay your coach?

My coach?

Your fitness coach.

I actually don't pay him.

Okay.

So I pay him in promotion.

There you go. There's payment there. There's time and energy.

When he came up to me, just like, I want to coach you for free for a while and see how you like it. And it hasn't changed, though I did pay him to coach my fiance.

Well, there you go. There you go. I don't know, man. Try it out and you can say, oh, this isn't working for me. And you can always pull back and, you know, have a small operation from your home and just live that way the rest of your life.

And I guess like, what do I have to lose I think they offered me a six month lease and it's like three grand a month. So, okay, I lose 18 grand. I can make that. I can make. I know I can make that. I can work extra hard for a month and make that.

Exactly.

So that's what I have to lose then. It's worth trying it out.

You could always come back and say, I didn't like this for six months. I'd rather work from home. Cool.

Yep.

But I think you'll be amazed of what you expand into when you step into that, personally.

So I just want to think forward and I think, like, what would I regret not having done, like 10 years from now or when I'm 80 years old? That's one of those things I would regret not having tried.

There you go. So when you move in.

It probably could be next week.

That'd be amazing, man.

And that would actually help my house move too.

Really?

Because my house is a TV studio, basically. My agent's in there and he's like, this house is really cool, man, but I don't know if people are gonna be able to come down here and picture themselves living in this basement when you have like a ton of cameras and lighting and everything.

You moved all that stuff into the office.

It might actually help my house you sell more.

Interesting.

Yeah, it might.

Which would get you back into closer downtown, which would help you transition. It makes. Yeah, that's interesting.

So maybe this is the push I needed. Maybe this is like, I'm gonna call the dude, be like, all right, let's try it. Six months, I'll do it.

Yeah. I mean, did you love the space?

I did as long as I can. You have no noise going on here. They had a track, so I need to see if I can, like, mitigate against that.

Yeah, you could probably turn it down or something.

But yeah, there's a couple other guys I looked at. There's another one that they were. They offered me like this basement space that's totally perfect for filming. But it's in like a basement. Yeah.

It's not as inspiring.

It's not inspiring, but it's like. It would be kind of a perfect filming room if I just picture this. Just in a basement.

Yeah, Keep taking, keep taking. Keep look around, you know, tell them to show you some more places. But I think, yeah, in the next month or two, if you did it, I think it'd be powerful, man.

Explore it.

See what your heart says. I love this, man. I'm excited for this. You've got some amazing content over on YouTube. Thomas Frank over there. Thomasjfrank.com. you're all over social media, obviously. TomFrankly on Twitter. Is that right? Yes, Tom, frankly, on Instagram as well. So how can we be of the best support to you in this moment besides subscribing, checking out your content? What can we do to support you?

I mean, man, you just supported me a huge amount right here, both with, like, this push that you gave me.

Yeah.

I'm seriously gonna take that.

That's cool.

And. And, yeah, the plugs already, so thank you.

Awesome.

Yeah, of course. Do you know Ali Abdaal? Do you know him?

Yeah, we're good friends.

Yeah, he. He came on a month ago, a month and a half ago, and I asked him the same thing. What's holding you back? Or what's your challenge? And he's like, well, I'm still doing this. Like, you know, I think it was like two or four hours a week of being a medical of a doctor. Right. He's like, I'm still holding on to this, although I make all my money over here. And I go, why are you holding onto this thing? He's like, well, the fear of. Like, it should be I should stick with this. The backup plan. I go, yeah, dude, if you lose all your business, do you think you'd recreate it? Make a million dollars in a year? He goes, yeah. And I go, then why don't you just go all in on it?

Yep.

Go on in your investment of what's working. Not holding on to something that was an old identity.

Yes.

That got you started. Won't get you to the next level.

So.

And then I go, think about it. And the next week, he texts me. He goes, I'm quitting. I'm quitting, like, the doctor thing. So really, he quit his practice or whatever for the hospital or whatever. And now he's all in full time, and he's, like, hiring people and building it even more.

Oh, that's awesome.

So I'm assuming it's gonna exponentially grow.

I think so. I've been talking to some of his team.

Yeah.

Because I'm gonna do a guest workshop for his YouTube course. There you go.

That's cool.

He seems like he's. I mean, he went and got an office recently. Exactly. I wonder if you're the guy who pushes people to go get an office. He just put out a video. It's like, big, huge life update. Everything's changing. And he got an office, and he's hiring all these people. So there you go.

There you go.

Yeah, it is to grow.

I want to see it, man. This is a question I ask everyone at the end of our interview is called the three Truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away from now. You get to live as long as you want to live and accomplish all your goals. But it's the last day. For whatever reason, you got to take all of your content with you. So all your YouTube videos, your courses, everything that's got to go somewhere else. We don't have access to it. Okay. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things that you know to be true from your experiences that you would share with us as your final piece of content. What would those three truths be?

Oh, man, all my content's going away. I got to leave people with details of, like, IRAs.

Three lessons, three things that you think could be power.

Okay, seriously, use it or lose it. And this applies to your body. This applies to your brain. This applies to skills. This applies to relationships. 1% rule. Don't let perfectionism stop you. Put yourself on a schedule of creating the work or doing the thing and then try to get 1% better each time. You build over time and then the other thing. A lot of people in my area of personal development, they always say, like, you're the product of the five people you spend the most time with. And I think there's some truth to that. But don't forget the people who need you to be one of those five people. A lot of people, especially when I was younger, I'd have people in my circles and people emailing me like, my friends aren't very productive. Should I stop being friends with them? No, because you're the positive influence for them and they care about you and you're going to help them be the best version of themselves. So, you know, you need to go get exposure to people who inspire you and who will push you. Like, literally this 10 minute diatribe we had about the office space is probably going to push me and help me make a million more dollars. But I'm not going to stop being friends with my friends who like to chill because they need me and I'm friends with them.

I like that. Those are good. I kind of like that approach to that five people closest to you. That's cool, man. Yeah, there's always friends that just want to hang and play video games or play some sports that maybe aren't on your path that could use you to keep inspiring them along the way.

Yeah, and the best version of their path is probably one where you're encouraging them, even if they're not going to be a millionaire entrepreneur or something.

Yeah, that's cool. I like that. Thomas, before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, Thomas, for being a stand for. You're 30 years old, right? Yes, 30 years old. I feel like a lot of 30 year olds aren't as committed to you, to personal growth, to a skill acquisition, to just showing up, to trying to be better every single day. So I really acknowledge you for doing that in your personal life, but also creating content, showing people how you're doing it and teaching what you're learning along the way for people a few steps behind, like you said.

Yeah.

So I think it's inspiring, man. And I'm really grateful to connect with you and I want to see. I'm going to come to Denver one day, hopefully when you have this massive creative space separate from your back garage and hopefully we can create some content out there one day when you. If you do that. So. And if you don't, then it's all good too. But congrats, man. Keep it going.

Thank you. And let's do it.

Yeah. Be fun. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

What is my definition of greatness? Well, that's a very tough question. I didn't prepare anything. You know, being able to do the things you want to do, making an impact for the people who are in your life, keeping those personal relationships going and yeah, I mean, defining a mission and at least accomplishing it or getting close to it.

Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and.

Inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full.

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And now it's time to go out.

There and do something great.

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