Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Ben Meer - Forbes Creator & Founder of System Sunday (300K+ Subscribers) | He Quit Ernst & Young and Built a 7-Figure Newsletter From Scratch

Transcript

Ben Meer - Forbes Creator & Founder of System Sunday (300K+ Subscribers) | He Quit Ernst & Young and Built a 7-Figure Newsletter From Scratch · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Why are so many people bad at life?
• 0:02
  Modern life can feel like you are running a small company that nobody has taught you how to manage.
• 0:07
  Things start to break when we try to keep everything in our head.
• 0:11
  Being good at life is as easy as writing down your friend's birthday.
• 0:14
  Today's guest is Ben Mir, writer, coach, and creator of System Sunday.
• 0:19
  Known as the Systems Guy, he teaches practical systems for productivity, personal growth, and intentional living.
• 0:26
  In this conversation, Ben shares how simple systems can make modern life less stressful.
• 0:31
  How did you get yourself out of this productivity optimization hell?
• 0:37
  You need to either create your own systems or you're going to be created by the systems of others.
• 0:43
  I think it's setting up some simple systems that shield your time and attention.
• 0:46
  What's the inflection point, the thing that made you leave the nine to five, go all in, bet on yourself?
• 0:52
  I just decided to throw myself into learning how to write and learning how to do this newsletter, and I was getting energy from it.
• 0:59
  We started to get great responses.
• 1:00
  My manager at that time said, maybe you should go into writing, and that ended up being a big blessing.
• 1:08
  MyFitnessPal is a success story partner.
• 1:11
  Now, there's this thing that happens when you start paying attention to what you eat.
• 1:15
  And I think we can all agree that we wanna care about our health and our wellness and our nutrition, but more often than not, we just kind of think we eat clean, we think we eat healthy, but we're not really, really paying attention to every single meal and what makes up every single meal.
• 1:29
  But just by paying attention and starting to log and track what you eat, you start making better choices without really trying.
• 1:37
  And that surprised me because when I first started using the MyFitnessPal app, and I've been using it for a while now, it's a nutrition tracking app.
• 1:43
  And I started logging what I was eating.
• 1:45
  It started showing me my macros, which means how much protein, carbs, and fats I was getting.
• 1:49
  And then I started to understand why some days I felt good, high energy.
• 1:53
  Some days I felt like garbage because those three things, proteins, carbs, fats, that's what your food is made out of.
• 2:00
  And the balance between them affects everything.
• 2:03
  So,
• 2:04
  My fitness pal app truly changed my life when it came to managing my food, which managed and helped everything else.
• 2:11
  Now on the premium version of the app, it breaks down those numbers by meal.
• 2:15
  So I'm not just seeing one calorie number for the day.
• 2:18
  I can see what's happening at breakfast versus lunch versus dinner, where my protein actually lands, whether I'm eating enough earlier in the day or piling everything on at night.
• 2:27
  And all of a sudden,
• 2:28
  When I'm crashing at 3, 4 p.m., well, I can take a look and see, it's not so surprising anymore based on what I ate or what I didn't eat.
• 2:35
  So that's what I mean when I say that MyFitnessPal is a great app for awareness.
• 2:40
  It's not obsessive, it's not stressful, it's not time consuming, it's actually the opposite.
• 2:45
  Guessing is stressful.
• 2:46
  When you have all the information, the food you eat, your nutrition,
• 2:50
  becomes way easier to keep up with.
• 2:53
  Also, a lot of people stress out that logging food is gonna be very time consuming.
• 2:57
  It's not.
• 2:57
  And if it was annoying, I'd stop.
• 2:59
  But what I love about the app is that they've made it super, super simple.
• 3:03
  They've removed all friction in food logging, right?
• 3:05
  They have the largest food database out there.
• 3:08
  So whatever I'm eating is already in it.
• 3:10
  I can voice logs so I can just say what I'm eating.
• 3:13
  They have a barcode scanner that handles all the package stuff.
• 3:15
  They have a tool called MealScan, which lets me point my camera at my plate and it breaks down all the macros and then logs it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever.
• 3:24
  And the app remembers my regular meals.
• 3:26
  And I'm really just in and out of the app in seconds.
• 3:29
  And on top of that, it connects with over 40 fitness apps and wearables.
• 3:32
  So my workouts, my nutrition, they're all in one place.
• 3:35
  See, food is the foundation of everything.
• 3:38
  your energy, your sleep, your weight, your recovery, your performance at work, at home.
• 3:43
  And I really believe that when you start to pay attention to what you eat, every single part of your life improves.
• 3:47
  And to be honest, for me, it's the most useful tool because when I see the information, when I see what I'm eating, and I feel the effects of having good nutrition and good food at the right time, the decisions on what to eat become obvious.
• 4:02
  Not because someone told me to eat better, it's because I have the data.
• 4:05
  And the data makes it super, super easy to stay on track.
• 4:08
  So please do yourself a favor.
• 4:09
  Go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott.
• 4:13
  That's S-C-O-T-T, all uppercase letters, for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium.
• 4:18
  That is podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott, for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium.
• 4:30
  Ben, so you just wrote the book, How to Be Good at Life.
• 4:33
  Why are so many people bad at life?
• 4:35
  Modern life can feel like you are running a small company that nobody has taught you how to manage.
• 4:41
  It's very complex.
• 4:42
  And things start to break when we try to keep everything in our head.
• 4:46
  I think being good at life, and this is going to sound as embarrassingly simple, is as easy as writing down your friend's birthday.
• 4:54
  The day comes, it's their birthday.
• 4:56
  You get a notification on your calendar.
• 4:58
  You wish them a happy birthday.
• 4:59
  And their face lights up because you remember to do so.
• 5:02
  And that's the whole thing.
• 5:04
  in miniature.
• 5:05
  It's trying to systematize things today that make tomorrow a little bit freer and a little bit easier.
• 5:09
  And that can take many different forms.
• 5:11
  It can look like keeping a running gift list on your phone so that when something comes up in conversation, you jot it down and then you're not scrambling at the end of the year during the holidays anymore.
• 5:22
  It can look like automating your personal finances so that on payday, you put a little bit into savings just to create a little bit more financial security for your future self.
• 5:33
  So these kinds of systems will make you more productive.
• 5:37
  They will definitely make you more competent.
• 5:39
  But then something else interesting starts to show up when you stack some of these small wins.
• 5:44
  And at least for me, it's been a quiet confidence that whatever life throws my way, I know that I can build a system to solve it.
• 5:52
  And that's the real gift of systems.
• 5:54
  It's not just being a little bit better at life, but it's feeling good at life.
• 5:58
  And I think that's as simple as writing down your friend's birthday.
• 6:01
  I think that so many people are just in this permanent state of stress and they feel like they can't keep up with anything.
• 6:09
  Everything is getting away from them.
• 6:10
  They haven't been the best partner, the best employee, the best business owner, the best parent.
• 6:17
  Like they're trying their best.
• 6:18
  But it feels like, and I feel this sometimes too, I don't fit all those personas, but I fit some of them.
• 6:24
  I feel like I'm doing okay, but there's always like parts that could be better, but I never have time to pay attention to those parts.
• 6:31
  Like life is always like super, super busy.
• 6:34
  Um...
• 6:35
  So that's it.
• 6:36
  It's like, it's like simple.
• 6:38
  It's, it's prepping.
• 6:39
  It's like prepping and systems make everything easier.
• 6:43
  But to your point, it's as simple as like writing down birthdays, like, like build systems around like the simplest things that people ignore and take for granted.
• 6:54
  And when you build systems around simple things, then like the rest of the life doesn't, your life doesn't feel so stressful.
• 7:00
  That's exactly right.
• 7:01
  And look, life has always been challenging, but I think in different ways.
• 7:06
  So if you look at past generations, I think the challenge was largely physical.
• 7:10
  Think of like agriculture, manual labor.
• 7:12
  Maybe your grandfather really did walk five miles to school there and back.
• 7:16
  But I think the burden these days is largely cognitive.
• 7:20
  Like modern life has made...
• 7:22
  things more convenient, but it's also made things increasingly complex.
• 7:26
  We now have access to nearly infinite information that's coming at us, but we still have the same, you know, finite cognitive capacity.
• 7:34
  And that's where things start to break is when we're keeping everything in our head.
• 7:37
  And I think one of the big problems is that schools...
• 7:41
  teach us the names of Columbus's three wooden ships, but not how to design a week that actually works.
• 7:48
  So if we want to be able to navigate this complexity with more ease, then building some of these simple systems, especially around areas where there's just a little bit of friction in your life, can make a huge difference.
• 7:58
  There's so much self-improvement advice online.
• 8:04
  I almost feel like there's such a, you mentioned we have access to so much information.
• 8:09
  There's so much that I think it's overwhelming.
• 8:12
  And then people read all these books, listen to all these podcasts and then they do nothing.
• 8:17
  Um,
• 8:20
  How do people simplify?
• 8:22
  So, you know, going through one of the core ideas that you've spoken about, you said, like, you cut, let's talk about morning routines is one of the main ideas that you've spoken about on social media.
• 8:36
  Um, morning routines seems to be the thing that everybody talks about.
• 8:39
  It's how you get your day started.
• 8:41
  Um, everyone has like this ridiculous morning routine, waking up at like 3am and doing like five cold plunges and then like running a marathon and then, you know, starting a company, dropping your kids off at school.
• 8:51
  And then that's when your day starts at nine o'clock when the rest of the world actually wakes up.
• 8:55
  Um, you've said that you've cut your morning routine from two hours to 20 minutes.
• 9:02
  And this is like a core thesis in your book, how to be good at life.
• 9:06
  It's, it's simplification.
• 9:08
  So let's just start with this morning routine.
• 9:10
  What, what did you do?
• 9:12
  Why did you have a two hour morning routine to start?
• 9:15
  Was it because you were the victim of informational float, I'm assuming, but why did you have that?
• 9:19
  And like, what did cutting it to 20 minutes achieve?
• 9:21
  Yes.
• 9:22
  So my morning routine looked very different in my 20s.
• 9:26
  I thought that in order to become successful, I first had to prove that I was worthy of success.
• 9:32
  And the way that I, in my head, thought that I would prove that I would be worthy of success, and obviously this was a limiting belief at that time, was to have success.
• 9:40
  this extravagant morning routine.
• 9:43
  We're talking sticking my face in a bowl of ice water.
• 9:46
  I'm riding with my non-dominant hands.
• 9:49
  I am doing dual end back brain training.
• 9:52
  I'm drinking lemon water precisely 98.6 degrees.
• 9:56
  And it sounds absolutely insane saying these things out loud.
• 10:00
  And...
• 10:02
  The turning point was when I realized after months of doing this that my life hadn't really changed.
• 10:09
  I hadn't made more money.
• 10:11
  I hadn't built anything.
• 10:13
  I wasn't particularly happier.
• 10:15
  I'd just gotten good at checking all of these boxes.
• 10:19
  It makes me think of...
• 10:22
  something that I love that Chris Williamson said, it's almost like I was doing this productivity rain dance.
• 10:26
  Like I thought that I had to do all of these things to put myself in some flow state that I would become productive when in reality, it's like doing the work that often creates the flow state.
• 10:38
  So now my morning routine looks very different.
• 10:40
  As you mentioned, it's 20 minutes, and it's been simplified down to the essentials.
• 10:46
  So I'll wake up, I'll drink a big glass of water.
• 10:48
  I think of that as an internal shower because I think water is really underrated for clear thinking and decision-making.
• 10:56
  I'll have an espresso just because that's a simple pleasure of mine, and then I'll do a 10-minute guided meditation.
• 11:02
  I happen to like Sam Harris's waking up app.
• 11:05
  And then I just get started on the work that can move my life forward.
• 11:10
  And the reason I think that this is important, what I would tell my younger self is that you don't have to prove that you are worthy of success before that you can become successful.
• 11:20
  There's often a much straighter path to that.
• 11:22
  towards it and it's like picking out a few high roi essentials to take care of yourself maybe you're doing some things for the people that you love and then you can get started on the things that move your life forward whether that's work during the week or even on the weekend doing things that genuinely bring you joy i want to understand because like younger ben you're not that old but like younger ben when he was in like the information consumption period of his life he's
• 11:50
  Why do people think, kind of like you did, why do people think that more process around their morning in particular, like a two-hour morning routine, is going to make them more successful?
• 12:04
  Like, where were you?
• 12:05
  Is it...
• 12:06
  Like they're compensating for something.
• 12:09
  I'm really curious because I think that people have to understand why they follow certain people online, not Ashton, just in general.
• 12:19
  Why do people follow morning routines?
• 12:21
  Why do people follow certain self-development individuals?
• 12:25
  Like, where were you in your career?
• 12:28
  Did you feel like you weren't achieving enough and you thought that that was going to be the hack to get there?
• 12:33
  I think part of it is just what you see online.
• 12:36
  You see people that have these big accounts that are showing that they're doing these very long morning routines.
• 12:41
  And then part of that is thinking that you need to replicate that to achieve that success as well.
• 12:49
  I'm guessing also...
• 12:51
  at least speaking for myself, at that point in my life, I was working a nine-to-five, and I didn't feel like I had a lot of control during the actual workday.
• 12:59
  Other people were determining when I was having meetings the type of projects that I was working on.
• 13:03
  So maybe it was like a silent protest that, like, I'm going to use this time in a way that I decide, even if what you're deciding is not exactly what's best for you.
• 13:13
  So I think there's a couple factors there.
• 13:16
  How do you...
• 13:17
  Because I think that all your work, it's helping somebody escape the systems that don't serve them and helping them focus on the ones that do.
• 13:28
  But when somebody is so heavily influenced by social media, before they even accept your work and understand, like, how do you get somebody to, how do you get bent?
• 13:39
  How did you get yourself out of this?
• 13:44
  I don't know, like this productivity optimization hell that I think a lot of people are in right now that isn't actually serving their career goals and their life goals.
• 13:55
  Like what is the thing you have to say to somebody, right?
• 13:58
  What would you say to your younger self to be like, hey, pay attention to what this is actually doing for you?
• 14:03
  You need to either create your own systems or you're going to be created by the systems of others.
• 14:10
  I love this.
• 14:11
  A lot of people spend what the research is saying is, you know, three hours a day scrolling on social media.
• 14:18
  And we are going up against billion dollar algorithms with teams of PhDs and their sole job is to keep us scrolling.
• 14:26
  It is pretension.
• 14:28
  Yeah.
• 14:29
  And the algorithms, unfortunately, have shifted over the years from propping up content that is useful, that people would save, to now content that's more brain rot.
• 14:40
  Comments seem to be what is driving a lot of reach, and a lot of divisive content will rise to the top, or just the most extreme content will rise to the top.
• 14:50
  And I...
• 14:51
  People are often scrolling in their leisure because they think it will be restorative.
• 14:56
  But I know that that's not how people actually want to be spending their time because often they're getting triggered.
• 15:00
  They're they're regretting doing that.
• 15:03
  So I think it's setting up some simple systems that shield your time and attention.
• 15:08
  One system that folks can set up literally in two minutes that can help you reclaim on average 40 minutes a day is grayscale mode.
• 15:17
  And with grayscale mode, it's a simple setting on your phone.
• 15:21
  And essentially what it does is it takes your phone and it turns it from what is normally like a slot machine.
• 15:26
  You have all these vibrant colors.
• 15:28
  You're getting lots of dopamine hits.
• 15:29
  And it just makes it into this boring rectangle.
• 15:31
  It makes it black and white.
• 15:35
  And that is a simple system that can help you reclaim that 40 minutes a day.
• 15:39
  And if you project that out over the course of the year, that's 30 working days that you can direct towards work or you could just direct that towards more restorative leisure.
• 15:51
  So it's like that on your phone.
• 15:54
  There's obviously stuff that you might want to do.
• 15:57
  If you're trying to get into deep work, trying to keep your phone in a separate room is very helpful.
• 16:02
  I have some desktop website blockers that I have up.
• 16:05
  I like a tool called Freedom so that I'm not, you know, getting on.
• 16:09
  Because sometimes I think unconsciously we'll just type in Twitter or we'll type in X or we'll just go to the news for, you know, at every break, trying to look at every breaking headline.
• 16:19
  And so you want to try to create some shields around your attention or you will be created by these other systems.
• 16:24
  That's so wild.
• 16:24
  So you actually create systems to shield our attention from all these social media platforms that are ironically creating systems that are not serving us.
• 16:36
  It is like a very interesting, it's very interesting.
• 16:38
  Like we are, there is this like productivity porn that we are all sort of victim to and it's not actually serving.
• 16:54
  going back to younger Ben, two hour morning routine, you have all these different things.
• 17:00
  At this point, you did not know what works and what doesn't and what actually helps you and what doesn't.
• 17:06
  But you get that like there has to be a some sort of system.
• 17:09
  How do you decide for let's just pick that two hour routine brought down to 20 minutes.
• 17:15
  How do you decide what serves you and what doesn't?
• 17:18
  The big question I ask is like, where is there friction in your life that you could address and try to make things a little bit easier?
• 17:25
  I think one sort of meta system that I've done since, you know, things started to really transform my life and that a lot of my readership has appreciated to something called System Sunday.
• 17:37
  I think that we spend so much time working in our lives and we don't spend enough time working on our lives.
• 17:48
  Sunday afternoon, I would have these Sunday scaries, this like Sunday anxiety around the upcoming week.
• 17:54
  So what I started to do was just carve out between 30 and 60 minutes on Sunday.
• 17:59
  And there's a couple parts to it.
• 18:00
  It doesn't have to be on Sunday.
• 18:01
  You could do it on Friday.
• 18:02
  It's just a time to work on your life and be a little bit more proactive.
• 18:07
  So the first part of System Sunday is just planning your upcoming week.
• 18:11
  So it is trying to just get clear on your priorities.
• 18:13
  Like if I got just a couple things done this week, what would make this week a win?
• 18:17
  And then scheduling it on your calendar.
• 18:20
  I think that this also lets you just see a high level view of friction that might come up in your week.
• 18:25
  Like if you have four meetings in a row, you're thinking, okay, what am I going to go to the bathroom here?
• 18:30
  And you can try to move things around.
• 18:33
  Or you're double booked.
• 18:34
  And you can, instead of scrambling the day of, you can move some of those meetings around.
• 18:40
  The other part of System Sunday is what I call build mode.
• 18:43
  And this is when you're setting up some of the simple systems that can make your life easier for years.
• 18:50
  And one thing that can be helpful just to keep like a frustration list on your phone.
• 18:55
  So take, for example...
• 18:57
  You know, during your day, you have to go through that dreaded password reset process.
• 19:02
  And all of a sudden, you're like trying to identify fire hydrants and little squares or bicycles.
• 19:06
  And you don't know if it's in this pixel or that pixel.
• 19:09
  And you realize that you can just set up a password manager and...
• 19:14
  That might take 30 minutes, but then you don't have to go through that point of friction again.
• 19:18
  So you jot that down, and I call it an upgrade list.
• 19:22
  And then whenever a point of friction comes up, you're jotting it down.
• 19:24
  And then on Sunday, you just address one of those things once a week.
• 19:28
  If folks do want more of a prescription on what to follow, they could just Google something called Year of Systems.
• 19:34
  I did put together a guided...
• 19:37
  plan for this but i think it's it's this i want it to also just be like a flexible toolkit because everyone's going to have different points of friction in their lives and it's kind of the question okay what is causing the most pain here and what what i want to solve first they just have to figure out so they have to have time they have to sit with themselves figure out all the different things they're stressed about in their life and then like pardon the pun like systematically like go through
• 20:03
  Yes, and people shouldn't feel like they have to change their whole life at once.
• 20:09
  I think that's where a lot of the overwhelm comes from.
• 20:12
  They try to do too much at once.
• 20:14
  It's like set up one simple system, whether it's a password manager, maybe it's...
• 20:20
  Maybe it's a packing checklist, right?
• 20:23
  Like before I used a packing checklist, I once forgot my laptop on a work trip.
• 20:27
  I forgot pants.
• 20:29
  And like ever since using a packing checklist, my legs have been consistently clothed.
• 20:32
  And you just, you notice these points of friction.
• 20:35
  You write it down.
• 20:36
  You build a system for it so that it doesn't happen again.
• 20:40
  And you do this for four weeks.
• 20:41
  All of a sudden, you have four systems that are working for you.
• 20:44
  You do it over a year.
• 20:45
  You have...
• 20:46
  dozens, and it sort of relieved that stress of needing to change your whole life at once.
• 20:51
  When people hear this, they may think, oh, that's so silly.
• 20:56
  I'm not going to forget my pants when I'm packing.
• 21:00
  However...
• 21:02
  I think the benefit of systems is that they help you show up when you're tired, when you're stressed, when things don't go right.
• 21:13
  And it makes it so that, yeah, sure, 99% of the time, things are going to work out fine.
• 21:19
  And maybe you don't need a system.
• 21:21
  But for that 1%, the system saves you.
• 21:25
  And I'll give you like a recent example.
• 21:28
  I literally just came back from Boston three days ago.
• 21:31
  I haven't forgotten something in a hotel room in...
• 21:36
  I don't know, 10 years.
• 21:38
  I don't have a system for packing in a hotel room, but like I have one, but I don't have it like written down.
• 21:46
  So my system usually is after I pack, I'll like, you know, I'll clean up stuff, mostly because I'm just trying to make their, you know, the people are cleaning their job a little bit easier, I'll try and clean up stuff, but also it's like a little bit for me.
• 21:59
  So the room isn't in chaos and I can make sure that I don't forget anything.
• 22:03
  So I didn't do it this time.
• 22:06
  I was speaking.
• 22:07
  I came off stage, ran back to the hotel room.
• 22:12
  I forgot a few things in the hotel room because I didn't follow my actual system.
• 22:16
  I actually forgot a book that somebody gave me.
• 22:18
  I forgot one of the pieces to my microphone, which is a pain in the ass.
• 22:26
  And thank God I actually know somebody in the city because they're actually going to mail it back to me.
• 22:29
  I forgot some SD cards that were on the side table.
• 22:31
  Like I never make these mistakes ever, ever make these mistakes.
• 22:36
  But I was in a rush.
• 22:37
  I didn't do my thing.
• 22:39
  I usually take like the pillows and the quilt on the bed and I usually like bundle them up and then I make sure that I – for me, I'm a very visual person.
• 22:51
  So I need to like look at the room and it needs to be clean and organized and then I'll see if I've missed anything.
• 22:57
  I didn't do any of that.
• 22:58
  I didn't bundle the pillows and the duvet or whatever.
• 23:01
  I just packed my stuff, did a quick look, but the room was chaotic so I missed a whole bunch of shit.
• 23:07
  Went to the airport and it was like 15 minutes into the Uber on the way to the airport when I was like, I forgot this.
• 23:15
  Like I knew, I knew I forgot this stuff.
• 23:18
  But we didn't plan the flight that well.
• 23:22
  So it was like, I either make the flight or I have to book a new flight and stay another night in Boston.
• 23:28
  I'm not going to make the flight.
• 23:29
  We had like 45 minutes until we were boarding.
• 23:32
  So we had no time and it was like massive traffic.
• 23:34
  So the point is, systems work.
• 23:38
  when you don't.
• 23:40
  And what you're saying hits so hard with me because I have systems in most of my work life.
• 23:46
  I have systems that make this podcast work when I'm tired.
• 23:49
  I have systems that make my content work when I'm tired.
• 23:52
  I don't have systems in my personal life.
• 23:54
  And that's what screwed me over in Boston, which is what is causing a whole bunch of stress and having somebody to go to the hotel after we checked out, get all my shit and then mail it to me back in Miami.
• 24:05
  You are not alone in this.
• 24:06
  This has definitely happened to me.
• 24:08
  This is like the equivalent of like when you don't get your matching pairs back in the dryer, right?
• 24:14
  It's like what happened to the other sock?
• 24:15
  I think a lot of stuff just ends up in hotel rooms.
• 24:17
  I've definitely done this before.
• 24:19
  I think you're right about having some kind of visual cue can be really helpful.
• 24:23
  Maybe it's like putting a shirt on the exit doorknob just as a reminder that you don't forget anything.
• 24:29
  But you're also absolutely right about, and I think this is one of the big problems with
• 24:34
  self-help in general.
• 24:37
  Common sense is not common practice.
• 24:40
  And I love what you said about like knowledge is a little bit useless without action.
• 24:45
  Right.
• 24:46
  And so much of so much of self-help stops at motivation.
• 24:51
  It's like we've all been there.
• 24:52
  We've read a book.
• 24:54
  We've been inspired for a few days.
• 24:56
  And then life gets busy and it all just evaporates, right?
• 24:59
  Like you read a book on personal finance.
• 25:02
  You're sincerely motivated to save more at the end of the month.
• 25:06
  And then your spending kind of just expands to whatever you have, right?
• 25:10
  But compare that with someone that sets up that, you know, automation on business.
• 25:14
  payday they've turned that infrastructure they've turned that uh they've turned that intention that they have into infrastructure and you you nailed it that you know discipline motivation willpower these are some of the least reliable materials in our lives when we're tired when we're stressed when we're sick when we're busy we want to try to be building with more robust materials and i think at the end of the day people don't need more
• 25:39
  inspiration what they really need is the better life infrastructure they need uh better systems and that's exactly why you know this is important i mean this is why if people don't follow you they have to follow you um i found you i discovered your content on instagram and it's amazing but i think this is why your content does so well
• 25:59
  It's because people feel they don't have control of their lives.
• 26:02
  And then a simple system can make so much sense.
• 26:06
  And then all of a sudden their life just, you know what it is too?
• 26:10
  They stop having to think about all this shit.
• 26:14
  It's just like when you don't have systems, you always have to think so hard to make sure that the thing you're trying to do turns out right.
• 26:21
  Like you mentioned with a friend's birthday.
• 26:23
  But if you have systems, you don't have to think about it.
• 26:26
  This is especially personal for me.
• 26:28
  I was recently diagnosed with ADHD.
• 26:32
  And it makes a lot of sense, looking back on things in hindsight, that a lot of the systems that I built were actually workarounds where my brain was less reliable than it could be.
• 26:42
  It's like remembering small obligations, thinking,
• 26:45
  being able to tackle big projects without feeling overwhelmed, not being distracted by my environment.
• 26:51
  And things just started to get better when I stopped trying to keep everything in my head.
• 26:58
  You know, things like calendar reminders, using checklists, changing your environment.
• 27:02
  Systems are helpful for anyone, but I just think they're especially powerful for people with ADHD because essentially what you're doing for both, whether you have ADHD or not, you're externalizing the executive function
• 27:16
  So instead of all that burden being on your brain, you're putting it into either outside technology or outside tools that can help you remember.
• 27:24
  And obviously, it's not a replacement for professional help if you have ADHD.
• 27:29
  But I think it's definitely a supplement.
• 27:32
  And just from my experience, you don't want to try to force your brain to work differently.
• 27:35
  You want to try to build a life that supports the brain that you already have.
• 27:40
  And systems are the best way that I know how to do that.
• 27:42
  What was the point in your life when you realized that you had to build out systems to support everything you wanted to achieve?
• 27:49
  I'll take you a little bit further back to lead you up to that turning point.
• 27:54
  So in 2017, I was $32,000 in credit card debt.
• 27:59
  My first business at the time was failing.
• 28:02
  And I was waitering tables at a restaurant on the weekend just to afford to pay rent.
• 28:07
  And there was a close friend of mine at that time that suggested that I lower my expectations in life, which is still a conversation that motivates me today.
• 28:17
  I decided to pivot and apply to business school.
• 28:20
  And for some reason, Cornell admitted me.
• 28:23
  And what happened there just changed everything.
• 28:25
  I remember sitting in my operations class and the professor said something that really clicked for me.
• 28:31
  He said the biggest difference between thriving companies and struggling startups is systems.
• 28:37
  And as we've been talking about, you can just think of a system as a reliable way to get a result that you want.
• 28:44
  And all of a sudden I realized that my first business didn't have any systems.
• 28:47
  I was winging everything.
• 28:49
  I didn't have customer service systems.
• 28:51
  I didn't have sales systems.
• 28:54
  But then the idea expanded in my mind a little bit because I was struggling on a personal level then too.
• 28:59
  I thought the biggest difference between high-performing companies and struggling ones in systems, couldn't the same thing be true for high-performing individuals and those that are struggling?
• 29:09
  And that idea really set my mind on fire.
• 29:11
  I just started to read everything that I could on systems and success.
• 29:15
  I remember sitting in a coffee shop, just mapping out all the areas of what I imagined to be a well-rounded life and thinking about the systems that I could build that could close the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be.
• 29:29
  And then I started to build those systems one by one through the system Sunday ritual that I was telling you about.
• 29:35
  And,
• 29:37
  My life transformed not immediately, but over a course of a few years where I got in better health.
• 29:44
  I got my finances in order.
• 29:45
  I got engaged.
• 29:47
  I started thriving professionally.
• 29:50
  And that's when, you know, I started to see some of the advice online that stopped at motivation.
• 29:57
  And I knew that there was a better way.
• 29:59
  I would see sort of these pretty quotes like, trust the process.
• 30:04
  And it's one of those things that gives you a quick hit of dopamine.
• 30:06
  But I spent years trusting the process and I didn't have a process, right?
• 30:12
  So that was the wake-up call for me at business school and then transforming my own life through them.
• 30:18
  Life at the Speed of Play is a success story partner.
• 30:21
  Now, this is a book by Mark Pincus, the guy who founded Zynga.
• 30:24
  I've actually had him on the show.
• 30:25
  I met him in person.
• 30:26
  And Reid Hoffman wrote the foreword, calling him one of the best idea people ever.
• 30:30
  in Silicon Valley.
• 30:31
  The book is Life at the Speed of Play, Launch Products People Love.
• 30:35
  About 170 pages.
• 30:36
  It's already a national bestseller.
• 30:38
  It's his framework for figuring out whether an idea is actually worth going after before you put serious time and money into it.
• 30:45
  Not theory, the way he actually does it.
• 30:46
  And he's repeatedly built successful businesses.
• 30:49
  On top of that, you can read it in a weekend.
• 30:50
  It can change your entire life and give you the right direction if you're an entrepreneur.
• 30:54
  So right now, if you go to getmarksbook.com slash success, you get two copies for $32.
• 30:59
  That's $16 each.
• 31:01
  Mark is paying for the second copy himself because he wants you to give it to somebody, a friend who's been sitting on an idea, someone who needs to push, whoever.
• 31:07
  That's getmarksbook.com slash success.
• 31:10
  Mark with a K, buy one, second one's free.
• 31:13
  My Fitness Pal is a success story partner.
• 31:15
  Now, a quick story.
• 31:16
  A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a very heavy recording week.
• 31:18
  So five episodes back to back.
• 31:21
  By Wednesday, I could feel it.
• 31:22
  I felt tired and I pulled up my food log in the My Fitness Pal app and I could see why I felt tired.
• 31:29
  I was heavily under eating.
• 31:32
  I was not keeping up with my meals.
• 31:33
  My macros were all off.
• 31:35
  On weeks like that, staying on top of your fuel and your food and what you eat is the difference between being sharp on episode five and being flat.
• 31:43
  And that's the kind of thing you only catch when you're paying attention.
• 31:46
  And that's why I keep logging
• 31:47
  every single meal I eat in the MyFitnessPal app.
• 31:50
  It's not because I'm obsessing over numbers.
• 31:52
  It's not because I'm trying to diet, because I'm trying to have an awareness about what I eat in the day.
• 31:58
  And the app makes it so easy to maintain that awareness.
• 32:01
  I can point my camera at a plate with meal scan
• 32:04
  it'll tell me exactly what i'm eating all my macronutrients proteins fats carbs there's an intermittent fasting tracker if i want to intermittent fast it keeps my eating window honest and it all syncs with my watch and all of my fitness apps and it just runs in the background see food is a foundation for energy sleep recovery performance it is the one input that you cannot skip so do yourself a favor track what you're eating
• 32:28
  It'll make you feel better, perform better in everything that you do.
• 32:32
  Go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott, all uppercase for 50% off MyFitnessPal premium.
• 32:39
  That's podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott.
• 32:42
  HubSpot is a success story partner.
• 32:44
  Every entrepreneur, founder, CEO is listening right now needs to pay attention.
• 32:49
  I have a question for you.
• 32:50
  When a buyer asks AI for a solution or a product that your business sells, does your business come up?
• 32:58
  The answer is that most companies have no idea.
• 33:01
  They don't know if their name shows up in any of the AI tools, chat, perplexity, Claude.
• 33:08
  And by the time they find out, they have lost tons of traffic and tons of deals to someone who did show up.
• 33:15
  HubSpot AEO.
• 33:17
  It helps you show up in those moments with the right answers that your customers and your buyers are looking for when they go type in a question.
• 33:25
  It's before the first click.
• 33:26
  It's before they fill out some form on your website.
• 33:29
  That is the moment that HubSpot AEO is built for.
• 33:34
  So if you want your company to show up in AI searches when your customer is looking, check out HubSpot.com.
• 33:40
  They are the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
• 33:44
  The first system you ever created, or one of the first rather, was while you were still in a corporate job.
• 33:52
  I was reading about this.
• 33:54
  It's this whiteboard escape.
• 33:58
  And I think that that's something that I really want to dive into because I don't want people who I know that you are talking about systems for your business, for entrepreneurship, for people's personal lives.
• 34:10
  A lot of the lessons that you teach can be applicable to somebody in a nine to five as well.
• 34:14
  I don't want them to just think they have to have complex systems just because they're, you know, they're not an entrepreneur.
• 34:20
  So this doesn't apply to me.
• 34:22
  Talk to me about the whiteboard escape and how it helped you in your corporate environment.
• 34:28
  Absolutely.
• 34:28
  And I'll just say upfront, I actually don't think that entrepreneurship is for everyone.
• 34:33
  You know, it does call to some people, but I think people can be incredibly happy in a nine to five job.
• 34:40
  I do want to touch on the nine to five escape, the whiteboard, but also maybe I'll just hit on a quick system for people that are in a nine to five and maybe just are thinking about wanting to get promoted.
• 34:52
  I think that there's a lot of people in their nine to five that are doing great work, but it's not visible necessarily to their bosses and they have a tough time communicating up.
• 35:02
  So one thing that helped me in my consulting job was just something that I call Friday Highlights.
• 35:07
  And it was just a short email template that I would send every Friday.
• 35:11
  And it's a great way to build trust with your boss.
• 35:13
  It essentially says, you know, here are some of my wins for this week.
• 35:17
  And you bullet them out.
• 35:19
  Here are some of the people that I networked with.
• 35:21
  And then here are some of the things...
• 35:23
  that I'm going to do next week and some of the, you know, extracurricular activities that I'm going to do.
• 35:27
  And it takes 10 minutes every Friday.
• 35:29
  You tell your boss, you know, feel free not to respond to this.
• 35:33
  This is, you know, helpful, you know, to keep me on track.
• 35:36
  Yeah, for accountability.
• 35:38
  So this Simple Friday highlights...
• 35:41
  During review season, you also just have all your wins documented, so you're not scrambling trying to figure out all the accomplishments that you had.
• 35:50
  And as Jay-Z said, closed mouths don't get fed, and I agree with that.
• 35:55
  Friday Highlights is a good way to promote yourself without feeling like it's overly self-promotional.
• 36:01
  Can I add something super briefly?
• 36:04
  So Sam Parr, who's a founder of The Hustle, who sold it to HubSpot, I just learned this story the other day.
• 36:09
  It's kind of like what you just described.
• 36:11
  While he was building The Hustle, he wanted to attract attention of investors and whatnot.
• 36:16
  So he would cold email investors, even if they had no idea who he was and they wouldn't respond.
• 36:21
  He'd find him and cold email them like company updates.
• 36:24
  Like, hey, we just got to, you know, $20,000 a month in revenue, $50,000 a month in revenue.
• 36:30
  We just signed these new clients.
• 36:32
  Like he would send company updates to this list of investors who didn't know who he was, didn't care, didn't respond.
• 36:39
  And over time, they like...
• 36:41
  followed the story and then became eventually investors in the company because they were just following along, even though they were like forced to follow along.
• 36:48
  Right.
• 36:49
  So I think that like this whole idea of, of these, what did you call them?
• 36:54
  Sorry.
• 36:54
  Friday highlights, just a weekly template that you can say, you're advocating for yourself.
• 37:00
  So like that could be good for promotions.
• 37:01
  That could be good for just exposure for like making sure that the boss knows what you're doing.
• 37:05
  Right.
• 37:06
  This worked recently for a real estate agent.
• 37:09
  She, over the course of a few years, just was sending me updates about houses that she recently sold, and it was top of mind for me when I was going to sell my house in that neighborhood.
• 37:19
  Yep.
• 37:21
  So important to keep taking those shots.
• 37:24
  In terms of the whiteboard escape plan, so this is when I was working in my nine-to-five, but I had this calling towards entrepreneurship.
• 37:33
  And this was at a time that I was working from home.
• 37:39
  It was in 2022, kind of on the back half of the pandemic.
• 37:44
  And I had this whiteboard in my office that had two sides to it.
• 37:48
  And on the side, I had written out sort of my escape plan for entrepreneurship.
• 37:53
  The main goal on there was around newsletter growth.
• 37:56
  And I was breaking that into some milestones and tasks.
• 37:59
  My big goal for that year was to try to launch this newsletter and get 50,000 subscribers.
• 38:05
  And sort of breaking that down, reverse engineering it.
• 38:08
  How many posts might I need to use?
• 38:10
  you know, do a week to achieve that?
• 38:13
  Do I need to, you know, create something that would incentivize people to join the newsletter?
• 38:18
  And I think that having a plan in place, this escape plan, one, it gets you really excited about the future, especially if you're in a job that you're not particularly excited about right now.
• 38:28
  But it also calms some of that anxiety because I think anxiety is often your brain just asking for a plan.
• 38:35
  So having that was extremely motivating.
• 38:37
  And...
• 38:38
  It did, however, feel like a little bit like a jail room inspection at times because on the Zoom calls with my, you know, nine to five company, I'd often have to flip the whiteboard around so they couldn't see the plan.
• 38:51
  I felt like, you know, it was almost like I was in Shawshank and, you know, covering it up, you know, with posters and I'm like digging out of this prison cell here.
• 39:00
  But I think that if you're in a nine to five, you're not particularly happy with it.
• 39:05
  Just spend a little bit of time, I think.
• 39:08
  Many people will use the weekend to escape their lives, but you can just, even if you just carve out half an hour or an hour on the weekend to build the life you want, it can make a huge difference.
• 39:20
  How did you take the stuff that you're writing on?
• 39:22
  So a lot of people, maybe they'll go through some of these steps, but then they don't actually take the action they need to take.
• 39:30
  So they consume a lot of content.
• 39:32
  Maybe they're writing on their whiteboard.
• 39:34
  But how do you get somebody to actually take the stuff that's written on the whiteboard and then do it so their life changes?
• 39:42
  So I used to be the president of procrastination.
• 39:46
  And one thing that helped me a lot was just chunking.
• 39:50
  It's really important to break it down and get really specific about the next concrete step.
• 39:55
  One of the best examples of chunking actually comes from Lego, surprisingly enough.
• 40:02
  So years ago, Lego sets used to just come in one box with like a thousand scattered pieces.
• 40:08
  And the idea was noble, let kids' imaginations run wild, right?
• 40:12
  But unfortunately, a lot of...
• 40:14
  spaceships never made it off the living room floor because the kids were overwhelmed.
• 40:19
  Lego decided to change their approach.
• 40:21
  They rolled out numbered bag sets.
• 40:24
  So essentially the boxes now had bags in them, and each bag corresponded to a different build of the kit.
• 40:31
  And each of those bags had about 100 pieces in them.
• 40:35
  Lego had essentially chunked down that project for kids.
• 40:39
  In the decade that followed rolling out these numbered bag sets,
• 40:45
  But more importantly, kids started finishing the spaceships, the castles, because they had chunked it down and they were doing it one bag at a time.
• 40:55
  And I'm sure parents were also happy because they weren't stepping on as many rogue Lego bricks in the middle of the night.
• 41:01
  But this principle of chunking is wildly effective.
• 41:06
  It can apply to anything.
• 41:08
  If you're starting a new business, if you are trying to learn a new language.
• 41:12
  I used it recently.
• 41:14
  when I was moving and my garage felt very overwhelming.
• 41:17
  I had to clean out the garage.
• 41:20
  Maybe you've experienced this too when you just have a space in your home that you've been delaying, you know, putting off cleaning.
• 41:25
  And the way that I tackled that was just trying to get specific on what the next steps are.
• 41:30
  So it was, I'm going to take all the tools, I'm going to put them on the workbench, I'm going to...
• 41:36
  going to sort them into donate, sell, and trash piles.
• 41:39
  And then once I do that, I can then move on to the next corner of the garage.
• 41:44
  All to say, like, life does not come with numbered bags, but we can build our own.
• 41:49
  And once we do, it just becomes a lot easier to get started.
• 41:52
  Your friend said you should lower your expectations.
• 41:55
  That was like lighting a fire, obviously.
• 41:59
  You did not listen to them.
• 42:02
  Business school, consulting job, started building out systems.
• 42:06
  You're noticing your life getting significantly better.
• 42:09
  What's the inflection point, the thing that made you leave the nine to five, go all in, bet on yourself?
• 42:18
  There was some serendipity.
• 42:19
  So the first project that I got put on at the consulting firm was to write an internal company newsletter.
• 42:27
  Typically, when you're a consultant, you're consulting other companies.
• 42:30
  For this one, I was consulting my firm, and I was put on this project to grow this list.
• 42:36
  And I was going through a really tough breakup at that point in my life.
• 42:40
  And I just decided to throw myself into learning how to write and learning how to do this newsletter, and I was getting energy from it.
• 42:49
  We started to get great responses.
• 42:50
  That company newsletter was growing really well.
• 42:54
  People were saying this is one of the best company newsletters I've ever read.
• 42:58
  And I was like, the bar is not exactly super high for these kinds of things.
• 43:02
  But my manager at that time said, maybe you should go into writing.
• 43:07
  Maybe you should become a writer.
• 43:08
  And I actually took that kind of personally because I just spent $150,000 on an MBA and I wanted to be seen as like this great strategist and consultant.
• 43:18
  But she ended up being right.
• 43:20
  I didn't act on the writing immediately.
• 43:22
  The pandemic was really a time for me to pause and reflect.
• 43:26
  I think as many people were, they were spending their whole day on Zoom meetings.
• 43:32
  I also made a very impulsive COVID purchase during the pandemic and bought a house in Vermont.
• 43:38
  And that ended up being a big blessing because there was horrible Wi-Fi there.
• 43:44
  There was no Netflix.
• 43:45
  You couldn't stream anything.
• 43:48
  And that was a bit of a constraint that was a productive one because I had more open space to think creatively and to start writing.
• 43:58
  And that's when I got the idea for starting my own newsletter.
• 44:02
  I remembered how much I had enjoyed writing at the firm.
• 44:09
  To take it a step further, during the pandemic, like a lot of people, I read Atomic Habits, and I was really inspired by that book.
• 44:18
  I noticed that the most highlighted line in that book was, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.
• 44:25
  And I thought that that was really interesting.
• 44:27
  Here you have one of the best-selling nonfiction books of all time.
• 44:31
  And the most highlighted line in that book is about systems.
• 44:35
  And James, it's a phenomenal book, but he spends a lot of that book talking about habits.
• 44:39
  And I knew that there were more layers to systems than just habits and how they had transformed my own life.
• 44:45
  So I had this...
• 44:46
  sort of hypothesis.
• 44:47
  There was a little bit of this pre-validation that this idea might resonate with other people.
• 44:52
  And that's what was sort of the seed that got me started writing about systems.
• 44:57
  Did your work take off right away when you first started posting?
• 45:02
  I started with a blog because that's kind of what people were doing.
• 45:07
  But then you realize that SEO takes years to kick in.
• 45:11
  And it's like, how am I going to get people here?
• 45:14
  Like any startup, you do things that are not scalable in the early days.
• 45:17
  I think that I texted every single person in my phone to join the newsletter multiple times.
• 45:23
  I think my mom must have created multiple newsletter addresses just to make me feel a little bit better.
• 45:33
  And then I started writing on Twitter, and I had no idea what I was doing in the early days, because it is a little bit of a skill to learn how to package things for social media in a way that's useful and digestible.
• 45:50
  And, you know, my first 50 posts were not good at all.
• 45:55
  And that's just part of the process.
• 45:58
  You know, there are some great quotes out there about like embarrassment is kind of the cost of entry to get better at things.
• 46:06
  So it was just slowly making each post a little bit better, a little bit more useful, a little bit more valuable.
• 46:12
  But within the course of a year, you know, I'd mentioned that I had this goal of 50,000 newsletter subscribers.
• 46:18
  We got up to 80,000.
• 46:20
  So it was a slow start, but then really began to pick up steam.
• 46:23
  What were some of the ideas?
• 46:26
  Actually, actually, I'm going to ask about those in a second.
• 46:29
  First, I want to understand and I want the audience to understand the difference between habits and systems.
• 46:36
  It's a really good question because I think it's an under discussed area.
• 46:42
  First of all, I love habits.
• 46:44
  I think that habits are very useful.
• 46:45
  Let's just get clear on the terms here.
• 46:47
  So a habit is a simple behavior and action that you take that happens automatically, unconsciously.
• 46:53
  You can think of something like brushing your teeth.
• 46:57
  And they're useful because they remove some of the cognitive burden, the cognitive strain of you having to remember to do these things.
• 47:03
  What the research shows is that about 40 or 50% of our lives can become habits.
• 47:09
  And again, that is a blessing.
• 47:12
  But I also think that that's interesting is what that means is that the majority of our lives cannot be habitized.
• 47:18
  Either because there's too many steps to what you are doing or they happen too infrequently.
• 47:24
  Maybe what you're doing is happening on a weekly basis or a monthly basis.
• 47:28
  And some of the most important areas in our lives, our biggest strategic projects, creative projects, even some relationship dynamics, you're not going to be able to habit your way through them.
• 47:39
  And the problem is, is that...
• 47:41
  Because we have been told that everything is a habit, because we've been a little bit oversold on habits, it makes people feel guilty when they're not able to turn everything into one.
• 47:50
  Like you think that you have this habit around when you leave your hotel room, but really maybe it requires like a little bit, a checklist or something, a little bit better of a system to not forget stuff in there.
• 48:04
  So habits are one type of system, but there are other types of systems that are better at solving other problems.
• 48:09
  So a checklist is another type that we've mentioned.
• 48:13
  We've talked about a packing checklist.
• 48:15
  Maybe it's a grocery shopping list so that you don't forget anything.
• 48:18
  So that's one type.
• 48:20
  Another type is a project, like a project plan with milestones and tasks.
• 48:24
  Maybe you are renovating your kitchen or you are, you know, you recently got married.
• 48:29
  You know, a wedding requires a pretty big project plan, right?
• 48:34
  Or you're trying to land your dream job.
• 48:37
  It would be helpful to break those into smaller tasks.
• 48:39
  You're not going to be able to habit your way through that.
• 48:42
  So habits are great.
• 48:42
  We don't want to abandon habits.
• 48:44
  But there are some tools that are better for certain problems that we're facing.
• 48:47
  And the better we can match those tools to the right job, the better we can navigate the complex world that we live in.
• 48:54
  So it's just, it's showing that you can apply frameworks to different parts of your life and habits is, is narrow.
• 49:01
  It fixes one thing, but there's so much more opportunity.
• 49:06
  When you first started writing and probably pull up your Instagram, but we can, unless you know off top of your head, you probably do.
• 49:14
  But, um, what are some of the ideas that, um,
• 49:19
  that resonate the most with people?
• 49:21
  Like what are some of the systems that have truly changed people's lives?
• 49:28
  And it could be, maybe you gauge by the most viral posts or maybe it's the newsletter that got the most feedback on it.
• 49:36
  But what is something that when somebody reads your work, like it's like, you know, they're seeing the world for the first time.
• 49:46
  The stuff that has resonated the most often happens in areas that people do not think can be systematized.
• 49:53
  So one example that comes to mind is this life dinner system that Jade Bonacolta and my fiance and I do.
• 50:01
  And this comes from a venture capitalist, Brad Feld.
• 50:04
  And we adapted this to our own relationship.
• 50:09
  Life dinner is essentially when you spend, you take one night out of the month and it's a structured sort of conversation that you have.
• 50:19
  And some people might hear that and say, that sounds deeply unromantic.
• 50:24
  But because life gets busy,
• 50:26
  You often just talk about logistics and admin, and this is not a replacement for everyday communication, but it is a supplement.
• 50:33
  So the first of, you know, the first of every month, we have this life dinner on our calendar.
• 50:38
  Some days it moves, you know, some months it moves by a few days, but there's three parts to life dinner.
• 50:44
  The first part to life dinner is when we're just sharing how the past month went for us personally.
• 50:52
  And then the second part of Life Dinner is when we're talking about our relationship.
• 50:57
  You know, what worked really well in the relationship?
• 51:00
  That's a good spot to start.
• 51:01
  But what are some sort of improvement opportunities that we could have?
• 51:05
  So just an example, I took a work trip with...
• 51:09
  Jade and there was a very late dinner.
• 51:12
  I was a little bit jet lagged and it was with some people that she really cared about and I just didn't show up in the best way for it.
• 51:19
  And she would give me the feedback of something like those people really, you know, matter to me.
• 51:23
  I like...
• 51:25
  I was hoping that you would show up in a better way in that moment.
• 51:28
  And then I can hear that.
• 51:29
  I can receive that and tell her that, you know, I want to do better next time.
• 51:33
  Maybe I'll take a nap before a big dinner like that.
• 51:36
  I like to say that I'm wild before like 8 p.m., but then after that, I'm just like an old man.
• 51:42
  So I think a nap would have been helpful there.
• 51:44
  And I mentioned we also try to share the positives.
• 51:46
  Like she said, when you, you know, make me tea in the morning, that means a lot to me.
• 51:50
  And then I can do more of the same.
• 51:52
  And then the third part of Life Dinner is just sharing our personal goals for the upcoming month.
• 51:56
  Because sometimes that's lost in the mix, right?
• 51:59
  Sometimes couples are growing independently, but they're not growing together.
• 52:03
  And Life Dinner helps you grow with...
• 52:06
  the person that you love, but also stay connected to their own individual growth, too.
• 52:11
  So that one has resonated with a lot of people.
• 52:14
  And I'm constantly hearing back from people saying, I did my first life dinner and we love it.
• 52:18
  We feel closer.
• 52:19
  We feel more connected.
• 52:21
  Talk to me about root causes, not symptoms.
• 52:26
  So why are the root causes so important to address in your life?
• 52:30
  This is sort of going back to one of the first things we spoke about, which was you have to understand yourself and your deficiencies before you can even apply systems.
• 52:43
  And I'm assuming that's tying into like, what are the root causes?
• 52:47
  So how does somebody identify these root causes?
• 52:51
  And if I'm explaining it incorrectly, tell me, but how does somebody identify the root causes of the problems in their life and not just the symptoms of the problems in their life and explain the difference?
• 53:03
  Love that question.
• 53:05
  Because oftentimes we become experts at solving the wrong problems.
• 53:09
  We're, as you mentioned, solving the symptoms rather than the root causes.
• 53:14
  One good example of this dates back to the Lincoln Memorial in the 90s.
• 53:21
  And this sort of shows the power of getting to root causes.
• 53:25
  So the memorial was deteriorating far faster than expected.
• 53:31
  And the obvious culprit was bird droppings.
• 53:33
  Right.
• 53:34
  There was a lot of bird poop on this monument.
• 53:35
  They were having to scrub it.
• 53:36
  It was making the marble wear down.
• 53:39
  The symptom level solution of that would have been to put some metal spikes on the monuments.
• 53:45
  But there was a biologist, Donald Messermith, who said, we're not putting spikes on this national treasure.
• 53:52
  So one night he goes to the base of the monuments and he looks up and he asks one of the most powerful questions that we can ask when we're trying to get to the root cause of something, which is why?
• 54:01
  Why?
• 54:02
  And he said, well, why is there so much bird poop on these monuments?
• 54:08
  Well, there's a lot of birds there.
• 54:09
  And then he said, well, why are there so many birds there?
• 54:12
  Well, there was a lot of spiders there.
• 54:14
  The spiders were there.
• 54:16
  Birds were there to eat the spiders.
• 54:17
  And then he said, well, why are there so many spiders there?
• 54:20
  Well, the spiders were there to eat the midges, which are like insects.
• 54:23
  And then he said, well, why are there so many midges there?
• 54:28
  The midges were there, they were going to the floodlights that were above the monuments.
• 54:33
  And what Messermyth realized of that is if they just delayed turning on those lights an hour after the peak midge activity, it would significantly improve the situation.
• 54:43
  There would be less midges there, which meant that there would be less spiders there, which meant that there would be less birds there, which meant less bird poop.
• 54:50
  And it would solve the issue without, you know, a single ugly metal spike.
• 54:55
  And this is systems thinking in action.
• 54:58
  It is trying to dig a little bit deeper.
• 55:01
  And there's some really cool examples of this in sports.
• 55:04
  One of them is Novak Djokovic, the great tennis player.
• 55:08
  He struggled early on in his career in sort of his longest, toughest matches.
• 55:17
  And, you know, the obvious symptom level solution would have just been like conditioning.
• 55:22
  But he realized that he had a hidden gluten intolerance.
• 55:26
  And once he solved that, he went on to win something like 10 plus grand slams after the age of 30.
• 55:31
  It made a huge difference.
• 55:33
  Recently in my personal life, I was dealing with some energy issues.
• 55:37
  I got my blood work done and I noticed that I had a B12 deficiency.
• 55:41
  And, you know, once I addressed that with supplements, my energy has never been better.
• 55:46
  And so if you, the way that you sort of get to the root cause of a problem is what Messermith did at the monuments.
• 55:55
  You're trying to drill down with the whys.
• 55:57
  This dates back to Toyota's five whys method.
• 56:00
  If you keep asking why, you will get to that root cause.
• 56:05
  And while everyone else is sort of scrubbing off the bird poop, you're going to find the lights.
• 56:09
  So do that in your own life with things you're not happy with.
• 56:13
  Yes.
• 56:13
  So take, for example, you struggle with sleep.
• 56:18
  You might, you know, maybe a symptom level solution of that could be to just like buy a comfier mattress.
• 56:24
  Right.
• 56:25
  And like I would assume that's even probably a healthier solution than just like overdosing melatonin or something that a lot of people would do.
• 56:32
  Right.
• 56:33
  And that might be another way to treat a symptom.
• 56:35
  Right.
• 56:37
  Maybe a layer deeper of that is because you have caffeine past 5 p.m., which I've certainly been guilty of.
• 56:44
  And it's like maybe just switching to decaf can make a big difference.
• 56:48
  And obviously there's a few factors that influence sleep and you might have a few root causes that are leading to it.
• 56:53
  But that's kind of the drill down that you'd want to do.
• 56:55
  And then you build a system around it.
• 56:56
  So, you know, because you know the root cause.
• 57:00
  Sleep is a big deal for me.
• 57:01
  So I can drink caffeine very late.
• 57:04
  But I can only drink caffeine late and sleep if I don't have anything important on in the morning.
• 57:08
  Why?
• 57:09
  Why are those things connected, right?
• 57:10
  So when I have something important on in the morning, say I have a podcast, say at like, you know, 9 o'clock.
• 57:14
  I have to get up a little bit early, prep.
• 57:15
  I don't want to be tired.
• 57:16
  I want to be alert.
• 57:17
  So I can't just like wake up at 8.55 and do a podcast.
• 57:20
  I've got to be awake.
• 57:21
  Or I have a flight in the morning.
• 57:23
  So the thought of the thing in the morning compounded with caffeine gives me anxiety.
• 57:29
  So it's not the caffeine alone and it's not the thing in the morning alone.
• 57:32
  It's like that particular synergy of those two things.
• 57:35
  It gives me anxiety.
• 57:36
  So when I try and go to sleep at night, if I follow my regular routine of unhealthily drinking caffeine a little bit later, um,
• 57:44
  I'll have anxiety and it'll be compounded.
• 57:46
  And then I'll start just staring at the clock and I'll be like, oh no, now I have seven hours of sleep.
• 57:50
  Now I have six and a half, six hours, five and a half.
• 57:53
  And I just can't sleep because I'm so in my head about it.
• 57:56
  So now I have to, now knowing what's happening in the morning, now I have to build a proper schedule and I have to build a proper diet because I know that if I don't,
• 58:05
  then I'm going to be in this horrible spiral trying to get to bed and worrying that I don't have enough time to sleep and that I'm not going to make the flight in the morning or have a good show.
• 58:14
  I'm not going to show up on the podcast.
• 58:15
  So now I have to structure my diet, my caffeine intake, my meals, all of that a little bit differently.
• 58:21
  But now I have systems around it too.
• 58:23
  But I think that it's just interesting that
• 58:26
  Like the obvious surface level symptom could be cake three melatonin dummies, which also doesn't work, by the way.
• 58:34
  It's a horrible cover-up.
• 58:36
  But that's really smart.
• 58:37
  So anything that you're not happy with in your life, like this five why, which is a great framework, but that five why, or maybe something to get to it at three, but the point is you do these whys.
• 58:49
  And then that's where you build a system around it.
• 58:52
  I love it.
• 58:53
  That's exactly right.
• 58:54
  And that was a really good example that you gave around your sleep.
• 58:58
  And I think, obviously, we want to try to, I think, as you were alluding to, build changes that are more lifestyle, you know, that you're doing, you know, every day that can sustain you.
• 59:07
  But even just having like a protocol for the day before you are traveling could be helpful to flag that on your calendar so that you're reminded not to have the caffeine too late.
• 59:18
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• 59:20
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• 59:23
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• 59:25
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• 59:33
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• 1:03:02
  Say somebody says a goal is important to them or something is important to them and they keep not.
• 1:03:07
  getting it.
• 1:03:08
  The goal is to go to the gym or the goal is to, I don't know, apply for a new job or the goal is to go on a date once a week because you're single, like whatever that goal is, but you keep missing it.
• 1:03:23
  What should they do?
• 1:03:24
  Two parts to this answer.
• 1:03:26
  The first part is
• 1:03:29
  It goes back to a really profound conversation that I had with a mentor, Todd Herman, who's been a coach to Olympic athletes and an executive coach.
• 1:03:37
  And I was telling him about my ambitions for my book project.
• 1:03:41
  And he asked me, well, what are you willing to sacrifice to make that happen?
• 1:03:46
  And that question hit me really hard because I think we often want what others have without being willing to sacrifice and do the things that they did to achieve it.
• 1:03:56
  So when I took account for myself, it was things like passing up on some compelling business opportunities in that season, not traveling because I needed to focus on the manuscript, you know, canceling Netflix because I had better streaming at that time.
• 1:04:12
  This taking inventory, taking account of what will the goal cost, I think is really important.
• 1:04:20
  Because sometimes we have goals that like linger on our head, we should do this thing, but maybe...
• 1:04:25
  It's worth letting that goal go.
• 1:04:27
  Because you might take that mental inventory of what it might cost.
• 1:04:32
  And you might say, I'm not willing to pay that.
• 1:04:35
  Right?
• 1:04:36
  And that's really important to realize now.
• 1:04:39
  That's a perfectly acceptable response.
• 1:04:41
  You'll save yourself a lot of pain and hardship.
• 1:04:43
  Right?
• 1:04:44
  you know, down the line.
• 1:04:45
  But if you do accept the cost, you sort of like pre-decide what the costs are, then it makes it a lot easier to navigate because when you're on this quest, you're inevitably going to hit obstacles, right?
• 1:04:56
  And because when you're...
• 1:04:59
  sort of desire and your, you know, it is helpful to have willpower sometimes.
• 1:05:03
  When it's rooted in that, you know, bigger goal, it's going to help you move through those obstacles with a lot more ease.
• 1:05:09
  So, like, just first get clear on the trade-offs and decide for real if it's, like, something that you actually want.
• 1:05:15
  I love this idea that you have around, like, the prestige tax.
• 1:05:19
  I think that sometimes we think that we should do things because our parents say that we should do them or society says that we should do them, but we don't actually want to do the things.
• 1:05:27
  Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  right?
• 1:05:29
  So first make sure that it is something that you are intrinsically motivated by, that you're excited to do.
• 1:05:35
  And then when it is something this is very related to the Lego chunking idea, but it
• 1:05:43
  You do want to start small.
• 1:05:47
  I think starting small is really important.
• 1:05:50
  We often will do the opposite, where it's like, on Monday, I'm going to start a new health regimen.
• 1:05:55
  I'm going to start a new diet.
• 1:05:57
  I'm going to start a new workout.
• 1:05:58
  I'm going to take on two new projects at work, all at the same time.
• 1:06:04
  And...
• 1:06:05
  That's not the best approach.
• 1:06:06
  There's a systems design principle called Gall's Law.
• 1:06:09
  And what Gall's Law says is that every complex, high-capacity system that works, once started as a simple system that works.
• 1:06:17
  You don't go from nothing to this high-performing, complex system.
• 1:06:21
  You start simple, and then you scale it up to complex.
• 1:06:25
  So...
• 1:06:27
  You know, I recently ran a half marathon for the first time.
• 1:06:31
  And you don't just go from nothing to running the 13.1 miles.
• 1:06:36
  Like you want to start small.
• 1:06:38
  Maybe you lay out your workout clothes the night before.
• 1:06:41
  Maybe you start walking for 20 minutes, you know, the next day.
• 1:06:46
  If walking is not part of your current sort of lifestyle, maybe you're trying to get 10,000 steps.
• 1:06:50
  And then you work up to a mile.
• 1:06:53
  And then you like start to build your capacity over time.
• 1:06:57
  And starting small can feel a little bit boring at first.
• 1:07:04
  I totally get that.
• 1:07:06
  But if you start small and then incrementally improve the capacity over time, then the results become anything but boring.
• 1:07:13
  When you were writing this book, and even before we press record, you're talking about like,
• 1:07:19
  prioritizing the book writing, meaning like you're passing on some speaking opportunities.
• 1:07:23
  So like you do have to understand what you actually want in life.
• 1:07:26
  Prestige tax is a very important idea because I think that more often than not, for a lot of people who don't pause and reflect and think about it, a lot of the stuff they take on, they don't know.
• 1:07:37
  They don't like they're not doing it for themselves.
• 1:07:39
  They're doing it because that's the way social media says you should do it.
• 1:07:42
  They're doing it because that's what their parents, they think their parents should be proud of.
• 1:07:46
  They're doing it because that's what they're.
• 1:07:48
  Their guidance counselor said they should do the job they take, the place they live, the person they marry.
• 1:07:56
  And I think it's really hard to, over the course of your life, you'll sustain it for a while, but over time you'll break down and you'll have a lot of resentment.
• 1:08:07
  But that being said, when you do have something that is that important to you,
• 1:08:15
  It's not, it's still not easy.
• 1:08:19
  Even if it is the thing that you want, like for your book.
• 1:08:21
  I'm just reading here about, you know, you had a 75,000 word book target.
• 1:08:29
  That's not, you have to give up on things that...
• 1:08:32
  you probably would have wanted to do to make sure that you hit.
• 1:08:36
  I think you're trying to hit about 500 words a day to hit that 75,000 total book target.
• 1:08:44
  And you had to compromise to a degree parts of your life.
• 1:08:48
  So it's not like systems, this is a very important thing to just drive home.
• 1:08:53
  Systems don't make it so that the thing, it's still hard work is what I'm trying to say.
• 1:08:59
  Even if it's what you want, it's what you've decided you want to pursue.
• 1:09:05
  You can build all the systems you want.
• 1:09:06
  It is still hard work.
• 1:09:08
  And I'm saying that just because I don't want somebody to think just because they have a system, it's not like they don't have to work hard.
• 1:09:14
  I don't think that's a good message.
• 1:09:16
  I think it's a system that enables it to be done, but it's still important to understand that there's work and effort and time required behind these things.
• 1:09:25
  I could not agree more.
• 1:09:26
  I think a helpful analogy here for a system is sort of like building a well.
• 1:09:32
  everyone else is, you know, running to the river with buckets to get water, right?
• 1:09:38
  They see you starting to build a well.
• 1:09:41
  And they're like, what is that person doing, right?
• 1:09:43
  They're getting water maybe a little bit sooner because they're, you know, going to the river.
• 1:09:48
  But when you're building this well, you are front-loading some of the effort, right?
• 1:09:52
  And that can take time.
• 1:09:54
  You know, that certainly can take energy and effort.
• 1:09:57
  But then what happens is that once you have this well set up, it does, because you have front loaded the effort, then you have like clean access to water on hand while everyone else is still going back and forth to the river.
• 1:10:11
  So when you are building systems, and even if it's something simple like that 30 minutes or that 60 minutes on Sunday to set up a...
• 1:10:18
  a password manager, right?
• 1:10:19
  Or to automate your finances, that might feel like homework, but it will ultimately make your life easier.
• 1:10:26
  The other point that I just want to touch on is there are systems come in different sizes.
• 1:10:30
  So you have some of these small systems that we've talked about that will just remove everyday friction in your lives.
• 1:10:37
  But then you have these big systems like a project, like writing a book.
• 1:10:41
  And...
• 1:10:43
  I'm very much a believer in sort of like there are seasons to your, to your life.
• 1:10:47
  So this was, and you don't want to take on too many things in these different seasons of your life.
• 1:10:52
  This was a season of my life where I was, you know, writing a book and I was, uh,
• 1:10:58
  probably disproportionately leaning into my career.
• 1:11:01
  But after this book is over, I'm excited for other seasons.
• 1:11:05
  Like my fiance, Jane, and I have been engaged, you know, for a couple of years now.
• 1:11:10
  Like I'm so excited to get married to her.
• 1:11:12
  And we've both been working on our books and it has been very hard to plan a wedding.
• 1:11:16
  So yeah.
• 1:11:18
  There are sacrifices that you make, that you need to make for some of these bigger goals.
• 1:11:22
  I do like that.
• 1:11:24
  Seasons are very important, thinking in seasons, because it'll be hard work, but the hard work at one point, that work will end and you can move on to the next thing.
• 1:11:36
  Talk to me about this drive method.
• 1:11:39
  So from what I understand,
• 1:11:44
  This is about defining a goal like writing a book.
• 1:11:47
  And then you're working backwards into steps.
• 1:11:49
  You're testing, you're adjusting the plan as you go.
• 1:11:52
  Kind of like what I just mentioned, you're writing 75,000 words.
• 1:11:56
  You want to write 500 words a day.
• 1:11:58
  That was your system for this book.
• 1:12:03
  Expand a little bit on the DRIVE method.
• 1:12:05
  But more importantly, after people understand this method, where do they get stuck with it?
• 1:12:11
  So DRIVE came about, I became fascinated with high performance and success, studying famous entrepreneurs, athletes, high-performing teams.
• 1:12:19
  And you notice that they all set goals and they build systems to achieve those goals.
• 1:12:24
  And the systems that they built all shared the same underlying structure.
• 1:12:29
  I just formalized it and called it DRIVE.
• 1:12:32
  And DRIVE is an acronym where each of the first letters of DRIVE corresponds to the five steps to build any effective system.
• 1:12:40
  And I think the best way to explain this is just through a short personal example.
• 1:12:45
  As I mentioned, I ran a half marathon this year.
• 1:12:49
  Sorry, but what is the acronym?
• 1:12:50
  What is it?
• 1:12:50
  Drive.
• 1:12:50
  No, no.
• 1:12:51
  What is each word?
• 1:12:52
  Yes.
• 1:12:52
  It is define, reverse engineer, implement, validate, and evolve.
• 1:12:58
  Cool.
• 1:12:59
  And then I'll just walk through the steps.
• 1:13:02
  So I decided to run this half marathon.
• 1:13:04
  I always thought that running was like legalized torture.
• 1:13:07
  Right.
• 1:13:08
  I don't disagree.
• 1:13:09
  But I wanted to challenge that limiting belief that I was not a runner.
• 1:13:12
  I think the last time that I ran was through Atlantic Airport, and that was powered by panic.
• 1:13:17
  Definitely not fitness.
• 1:13:19
  That's a big, big airport, right?
• 1:13:21
  So D for define.
• 1:13:23
  I set this goal of running half marathon 13.1 miles.
• 1:13:27
  I had a specific race day, but you want to get clear.
• 1:13:29
  We talked about root causes, right?
• 1:13:31
  Like what could cause you to not hit that goal?
• 1:13:34
  Maybe you get hurt because you're overtraining or maybe, you know, work comes up and it blocks it out.
• 1:13:43
  R is your reverse engineer.
• 1:13:44
  You're working backwards.
• 1:13:46
  So race day, I had a race day.
• 1:13:48
  I'm working backwards.
• 1:13:49
  Well, how many miles do I need to run per week so I can build up the capacity to 13.1 miles?
• 1:13:56
  I is when you're then like taking that and, you know, putting it into a plan and...
• 1:14:02
  For me, at least scheduling it on my calendar was really helpful to protect the time when I would be training.
• 1:14:07
  But also like the very specific, like this is the amount of mileage that you need to run to have a chance at doing this half marathon.
• 1:14:15
  There are two more, you know, steps here.
• 1:14:17
  There's V for validate.
• 1:14:20
  I think that this is a big area where a lot of people get tripped up because they're not tracking sort of their progress at all.
• 1:14:27
  And we don't want to...
• 1:14:29
  It can be tempting to like over track things, but I think like tracking a few metrics can be helpful.
• 1:14:34
  So I would use just like a GPS wristwatch, right, to just check my pace for the running and to, you know, see how my recovery was.
• 1:14:45
  That helped make sure that I was progressing along.
• 1:14:47
  And then E is evolved.
• 1:14:49
  This is when you're maybe adding some components to the system.
• 1:14:54
  to strengthen it.
• 1:14:54
  So at the end of long runs, I would get really tired.
• 1:14:56
  My nutrition was not really dialed in yet.
• 1:14:59
  So then I added energy gels and it helped sustain my performance for longer.
• 1:15:03
  And all to say, like when I first started, as I mentioned, I was not a strong runner.
• 1:15:07
  I remember there was a time that like a power walking grandma with ankle weights blew past me.
• 1:15:13
  I was pretty slow.
• 1:15:15
  But that's the point with systems.
• 1:15:16
  You don't have to necessarily be good when you start.
• 1:15:19
  Yeah.
• 1:15:19
  It's you just want to like have a plan in place to get a little bit incrementally better over time and eventually ran the half marathon in time that I was proud of on a hilly course in Asheville.
• 1:15:29
  And the cool thing about drive is that you can apply it to any area of your life.
• 1:15:36
  For example, maybe you have a friend that all of a sudden moves across the country and you want to stay in touch better.
• 1:15:40
  Or you have a parent that all of a sudden needs to get taken care of.
• 1:15:44
  I think life often comes with problems, but not playbooks.
• 1:15:47
  And drive is how you build the playbook.
• 1:15:50
  I want to make sure I address the second part of your question.
• 1:15:51
  It's like, where do people get stuck?
• 1:15:53
  I think a lot of it is around that defined stage.
• 1:15:56
  Like, they're not even picking the right goal in the first place.
• 1:15:58
  It goes back to what we were talking about in my mooring routine.
• 1:16:01
  It's like...
• 1:16:02
  Why am I doing these things in the first place?
• 1:16:05
  It's the prestige tax or it's just the, you know, thinking that you need to prove that you're worthy of success tax before you can just do the things that will actually move the needle.
• 1:16:14
  And then I think that other one, I mean, there are failure modes at each of these things.
• 1:16:20
  steps, right?
• 1:16:20
  I think the define one is the big one for reverse engineer.
• 1:16:24
  It's when you're not chunking things down small enough and you're trying to do too much at once.
• 1:16:29
  For implement, it's often not protecting the time on your calendar.
• 1:16:33
  For validate, I think having some kind of tracking in place is useful.
• 1:16:36
  And then E for evolve to like double down on what's working.
• 1:16:40
  If you're not getting that feedback and then incorporating it, the system's not going to get better over time.
• 1:16:46
  What has been, because it's very easy, it's not easy, but it's easier to teach sometimes and to like live this stuff ourselves.
• 1:16:54
  What has been your biggest hurdle, your personal biggest hurdle lately with a system that has fallen apart?
• 1:17:01
  So I'm definitely not a guru and I'm not perfect by any means.
• 1:17:04
  Like just the other night I left a load of laundry in the washer overnight and like didn't transfer it to the dryer and I'm waking up with soggy clothes.
• 1:17:11
  So what I will say is that like systems have prevented a lot of the preventable chaos in my life.
• 1:17:17
  I think that the thing that I struggle with the most right now is...
• 1:17:21
  the cost of my ambition, the mindset to build the life that we want is often different than the mindset to actually enjoy the life that we have built.
• 1:17:34
  So let me unpack that a little bit more.
• 1:17:36
  When you are younger, you're often going through periods of intensity, right?
• 1:17:41
  Like you're working long hours during the week.
• 1:17:43
  You're often working on the weekend.
• 1:17:44
  Yeah.
• 1:17:45
  You're networking, you're trying to build new skills.
• 1:17:48
  And I do think that that is important early in your career to differentiate yourself, to separate yourself.
• 1:17:54
  Like...
• 1:17:55
  We live in a capitalist society and like becoming financially secure is important.
• 1:18:00
  It determines like the quality of your health care, the quality of your life experiences in many ways.
• 1:18:07
  But what happens is that when we keep setting bigger and bigger goals for ourself, we move the goalposts on ourselves.
• 1:18:13
  So I think one thing that I struggle with, especially now...
• 1:18:17
  is around financially, like what is enough for me to be happy so I don't keep moving the goalposts on myself because we need to determine what is enough so that we can enjoy some of the fruits of our labor.
• 1:18:34
  I struggle with this too, a lot.
• 1:18:36
  I think a lot of people do.
• 1:18:37
  I think a lot of people, you know, I mentioned seasons before.
• 1:18:40
  It's because a lot of people listen to this, myself included.
• 1:18:43
  Um...
• 1:18:45
  the hard work season never ends forever because we keep moving the goalposts.
• 1:18:51
  How do you, so sorry, continue, but how do you, how do you enjoy, but also be ambitious at the same time?
• 1:18:58
  It's really hard.
• 1:18:59
  And I'm open to advice from, from other people that are listening because in my head, I'm telling myself I've been in this season of intensity around this book launch around my career for the past few years.
• 1:19:14
  this next season where maybe there's more travel or there's more adventure or there's more time you know spent in with deeper relationships where i don't have all these other areas sort of in in maintenance and life can feel more textured and multi-dimensional it's one thing to like tell yourself that right that you are going to make that transition and then to actually make that transition when you're in you're in
• 1:19:36
  There are all these environmental influences that are pulling you to keep striving and to keep doing more.
• 1:19:42
  So I honestly, I don't have the answer for that yet.
• 1:19:46
  But do you create even in periods of intense work?
• 1:19:50
  And again, this is something that will hit with a lot of people, especially this audience.
• 1:19:55
  Do you create systems to create space?
• 1:19:59
  One of the lines that I love from you most is to schedule your fun.
• 1:20:03
  I think that that is so important for ambitious high achievers.
• 1:20:09
  One thing that...
• 1:20:11
  I'll just share another story from Jade and I, both in very busy seasons of our lives.
• 1:20:17
  She's writing her book.
• 1:20:18
  We run a business together and we would find ourselves saying like we should spend more time together.
• 1:20:23
  But work would inevitably get busy and, you know, life would crowd it out.
• 1:20:29
  So one thing that's really helped us is putting this weekly ritual called Saturdays.
• 1:20:35
  And this is exactly what it sounds like.
• 1:20:36
  It is a date on Saturdays.
• 1:20:38
  It is two to three hours in the afternoon.
• 1:20:41
  And we just like take turns planning something fun.
• 1:20:44
  It could be a pottery class.
• 1:20:45
  It could be salsa dancing lessons.
• 1:20:48
  Yeah.
• 1:20:49
  And some of the best ones are free too.
• 1:20:51
  You know, it could be a hike or like a festival in the park.
• 1:20:55
  And the Saturdays ritual, I think that our intentions of we should spend more time together is really only as good as like the systems and the structure that hold them.
• 1:21:03
  We have to schedule our fun to create space for it.
• 1:21:07
  And the Saturday rituals is one way that we have done that.
• 1:21:10
  After the 100 Saturdays plus that we have done, it has created that quality time for each other.
• 1:21:18
  And then I think you can expand...
• 1:21:21
  The scope of that, right, where it's, you know, getting more fun trips on the calendar, I think, to look forward to with friends and with family.
• 1:21:29
  And that's something that I'm working on right now is, like, sort of get out of this busy season.
• 1:21:36
  But, yeah, it's a good place to start.
• 1:21:38
  For somebody who's listening to this, who is hyper-ambitious, as many of you guys are, if you're trying to get ahead without burning out,
• 1:21:50
  but they know they're going to this season of build mode, starting a company, hypergressing their career, writing a book, whatever.
• 1:21:57
  What's one system they can adopt right now that will allow them to be successful without burning out?
• 1:22:04
  Is it scheduling your fun?
• 1:22:06
  Is it, what is the thing that you think would help that young, super ambitious version of you out the most after knowing all these systems and implementing them in your lives and the lives of millions?
• 1:22:20
  I think it does start with System Sunday.
• 1:22:22
  It's like taking that half an hour or hour on the weekend to plan your upcoming week.
• 1:22:28
  That is like the most important start.
• 1:22:29
  So that you can just be more proactive about your life and sort of take that higher level view on it.
• 1:22:35
  So that you're not just working in your life, you are working on it.
• 1:22:41
  I think people really underestimate what, you know, two to three hours a day working on your most important projects can do for you.
• 1:22:50
  It doesn't always have to be...
• 1:22:52
  there's sort of this glorified of like working eight to 10 hours a day.
• 1:22:56
  But if you are like truly locked in for just like a few hours every day, you can really move the needle on the important things in your life.
• 1:23:05
  Like show me someone that spends three hours on their most important projects every work day.
• 1:23:10
  And like a few years, I'll show you what other people call an overnight celebrity.
• 1:23:15
  But it's like you have to insist on Sunday.
• 1:23:17
  That is when you are like blocking out those three hours for your most important
• 1:23:22
  thing if you can do that consistently um that will sort of in a very efficient way uh help you make progress towards your most meaningful goals okay so we've gone through a lot here uh a lot of different ideas um if you're going to summarize and you just wanted to leave the audience with one core thing they can take away and start tomorrow what would it be
• 1:23:47
  If life feels harder than it should in a particular area, maybe it's your personal finances, maybe it's your physical health, try to just get curious about the underlying structure.
• 1:23:57
  There's a quote that I love that every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets.
• 1:24:03
  It can be really tempting when things are not going well to...
• 1:24:07
  Blame yourself and just be like, what is wrong with me?
• 1:24:10
  I've certainly asked that question before many times.
• 1:24:13
  But the better question is, what is the system that is leading to this result?
• 1:24:18
  So say, for example, like you're just exhausted all the time.
• 1:24:21
  The character trait interpretation of that might be like, I'm just an awful sleeper.
• 1:24:26
  The systems interpretation of that might be, okay, I get in bed and I notice that I keep my phone on my nightstand.
• 1:24:33
  I end up scrolling for an extra 45 minutes than I want to.
• 1:24:36
  It's cutting into my sleep.
• 1:24:38
  And the beautiful thing about that is that once you see that, you can change it.
• 1:24:42
  You can redesign it.
• 1:24:43
  And what you thought was a character trait just turns out to be a design opportunity.
• 1:24:48
  You could charge it in a separate room.
• 1:24:50
  I personally like using a tool called Brick.
• 1:24:53
  And with Brick, it disables some of the distracting apps on my phone so that I can just essentially use it as an alarm.
• 1:25:00
  Still, I just won't be able to access social media on it.
• 1:25:04
  Or, I mean, of course, you could buy a $10 old-fashioned alarm clock, too.
• 1:25:08
  And that's, you know, this is the real shift.
• 1:25:10
  It's like instead of being so hard on yourself, instead of beating yourself up, it's just getting curious about the underlying structure.
• 1:25:17
  And once you do that and once you see the system, you can redesign it.
• 1:25:20
  And that's where the lasting transformation happens.
• 1:25:23
  I love it, Ben.
• 1:25:25
  Where can people get the book?
• 1:25:26
  So this episode will be live when the book's available.
• 1:25:30
  So I'm assuming Amazon, wherever they buy books, drop your website, your socials and anywhere else you want to send people.
• 1:25:39
  Well, this has been a lot of fun.
• 1:25:40
  Folks can pick up the book anywhere fine books are sold.
• 1:25:45
  And I also read the audiobook, which was a labor of love, but I'm really excited how it came out.
• 1:25:50
  So folks have some extra Audible credits laying around.
• 1:25:53
  We'd love for you to spend more time with me there.
• 1:25:56
  I'm on social media.
• 1:25:57
  The handle is at Ben Muir, primarily on Instagram and LinkedIn.
• 1:26:02
  And my website is benmuir.com.
• 1:26:05
  Last two things I want to get from you.
• 1:26:09
  At the beginning and a little bit throughout, we were dropping some apps and stuff.
• 1:26:13
  So what are the most important apps?
• 1:26:18
  And they're not going to be apps for every single system in every part of your life.
• 1:26:21
  But what are the ones that have been most impactful to you?
• 1:26:23
  So the first two aren't really tools, but they're free and they're on your phone.
• 1:26:28
  I think the most productive app on your phone might just be airplane mode, right?
• 1:26:33
  Or do not disturb mode to block out some of the distractions.
• 1:26:38
  We talked about grayscale mode earlier, which is in your settings on iPhone.
• 1:26:42
  It's just under color filters for...
• 1:26:44
  Android, you can just type in Grayscale.
• 1:26:47
  And then a couple of the more like paid products that I find helpful is the Freedom, that desktop website blocker.
• 1:26:55
  If you have iOS, Opal is really nice as a...
• 1:26:59
  It will help set limits and block you out of certain apps during your day.
• 1:27:04
  And then Brick, I mentioned earlier, I like to use that before I go to sleep.
• 1:27:09
  You just like scan your phone on this Brick device and it disables some of the distracting apps, but you can still use your phone as an alarm.
• 1:27:16
  So just a short list that I found helpful.
• 1:27:18
  The last thing I like to ask is...
• 1:27:21
  If you were going to go back in time and you're going to tell 20-year-old Ben the most important life advice, it could be about systems, it could be about life in general, that you'd want him to know, what would it be and why?
• 1:27:38
  Leave the audience with that.
• 1:27:39
  It makes me think of advice that my dad passed along to me, which is, action cures fear.
• 1:27:48
  Maybe he said that to me, you know, in sports because I was nervous perhaps to, you know, before a game or he saw that I wanted to talk to a girl and he was trying to, you know, encourage me to take the risk.
• 1:28:00
  I think often in life we think that we need to be in a good mood, you know, to get started on something.
• 1:28:07
  But it's actually the mood that follows your action.
• 1:28:10
  So just get started and realize that things will feel easier and will feel better after you.
• 1:28:17
  After you begin.