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THE 10

COMMANDMENTS
OFOF
Crushing It!

By
Aubrey Marcus
1.Thou Shalt
Not waste thy commute

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting


time must be the greatest prodigality.
- Benjamin Franklin

Your commute does not need to be the most dreaded and frustrating part of your
day. On the contrary, it can contain some of the most enjoyable and productive
minutes of your morning and your evening. But only if you stop looking at your
commute as an obligation--and see it instead as an opportunity.

THE PRESCRIPTION
Dead, wasted time is hereby banished from your commute. Instead, those minutes
you spend in the car or on public transportation will become precious educational
and inspirational time. You’ll be working on yourself as you work your way through
city streets on the way to work. Every minute to and from the office--even if that’s
just time spent getting dressed and walking down the hall because you work from
home--will be used to level up your character. Your trip home from work will be
equally productive. No second can be wasted. Life is too precious!

The average New Yorker spends nearly seventy minutes commuting to and from work each day.
In Washington, D.C., the average lobbyist, cabinet secretary and government worker spent 32.8
minutes heading into their respective offices. On the West Coast, it takes the average Oakland
resident 29.9 minutes to get to their desks and the average worker in the Inland Empire 29.8
minutes. Since 1980, when the US Census began tracking it, commutes have gotten 20% longer.
Three percent of the population commutes more than 90 minutes each way¹.

And that’s just America: the land of the suburbs, Suburbans and addiction to oil.

In Western Europe, where they supposedly have superior public transportation and are less de-
pendent on cars, the average commute is actually longer than America’s most congested cit-
ies--whether by public transit or by personal automobile². According to a 2005 study, the average
commute in Western Europe was 38 minutes, and in the United Kingdom, which is the most con-
gested commute in Europe, the average was 45 minutes. More recently, data from the traffic app,
Waze, shows the average commute in Western Europe’s biggest cities has not gotten any better:
London is 41.2 minutes, in Paris, it is 37 minutes, and in Rome, it is 37.7 minutes...each way.

God bless those folks. They’ve really committed to gutting out something awful, haven’t they? In
many ways, we are divided as ever as a global citizenry, but if there is one thing that unites us all,
regardless of culture, no matter what part of the planet, it is this shared, awful experience. That
longing, dead-eyed gaze out the window as we commute to work, wishing we were anywhere oth-
er than where we were sitting right then, is like the secret handshake of the obviously miserably.
Most of us aren’t even looking forward to our destination either. It’s just drudgery on top of more
drudgery--dead, wasted time on the way to more dead, wasted time.

The Washington Post once estimated that:

“at an average of 26 minutes each way to work, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, that
works out to something like a total of 1.8 trillion minutes Americans spent commuting in
2014. Or, if you prefer, call it 29.6 billion hours, 1.2 billion days, or a collective 3.4 million
years. With that amount of time, we could have buil nearly 300 Wikipedias³, or built the
Great Pyramid of Giza 26 times⁴.”

In other words, it’s an incredible and unforgivable waste of human potential. It affects us all differ-
ently (though one UK study⁵ found that women suffer roughly four times the psychological stress
from their commute than men), but it is for all of us, what the author Robert Greene calls an “Alive
Time vs. Dead Time” scenario.

Accordingly, to Greene, whose amazing books like The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery have sold
millions of copies worldwide, there are two types of time in life. One is dead time--that’s when
we’re stuck somewhere we don’t want to be. We’re stuck in line, stuck in a job we don’t like, stuck
in jail, stuck behind someone driving too slow. This is the worst kind of time because nothing is
accomplished. The seconds of our life are simply tick, tick, ticking away. Then there is Alive Time.
You know what this time is like: that’s when you’re thriving. It’s when you’re doing what you want to
do when your job is going great when you crank up the speed on the treadmill because you love
this song and feel like you have unlimited energy.

Alive Time. Dead Time. A pretty obvious distinction. But here’s the thing: Any time can be alive
time. Dead Time is a choice. Alive Time is a choice.

Now that you’ve got up, got moving, ate a healthy breakfast and are on your way to work, you
should already have a sense of what I mean. Those few minutes or a few hours in the morning that
are so often wasted and dragged out for most people--you just felt what it’s like to do them right.
You owned them. You made them yours. You made them alive time.

Now I want you to do that with your commute. I don’t think anyone can afford to tolerate 26 min-
utes of dead time each morning. At 50 weeks a year of driving to work, that 6,500 minutes of dead
time. Coming home with an equal commute, that’s another 6,500 minutes of dead time.
Or, done right, that’s 13,000 minutes of thriving--without changing a single thing about your sched-
ule.

You Can Find Zen Anywhere


I bet you’ve heard the word ‘mindfulness’ at some point in the last year. I bet when you heard it,
no one bothered to define what it was. I bet the person talking about it was some Silicon Valley
entrepreneur on some podcast complaining about how difficult it was for him to find time to ap-
preciate all the money he was making until he built a rock garden or bought a beach house. And
I bet you turned off that podcast thinking that mindfulness is some special enlightened feeling
that takes place in some Eden-like location for busy, hyper-successful people (translation: not
for you).

That’s bullshit. Mindfulness is in-


credibly simple. It is not some
gushy spiritual concept either. It
doesn’t require you to cross your
legs or hum mantras to yourself (un-
less you want to). All mindfulness is
this: Being aware and conscious in
the present moment. That’s it. Just
being awake and aware of yourself
and sensations of life around you.
It is real focus on here, right now,
in this moment. Not what’s going
on in the world, not what you’re
going to be doing in five minutes,
not what someone said to you five
minutes ago, and not the creeping
stress of your job or difficulties in
your job. Mindfulness is in some ways a kind of nothing: It’s not your bank account, it’s not your
hopes, it’s not your fears, it’s any kind of, coulda, woulda, shoulda. In that same way, mindfulness
is everything: It’s you. All of you. Even if only for a fleeting second.

Do you remember how that feels? I’ll tell you. It feels amazing. The best part: Anyone can prac-
tice mindfulness. And more importantly, they can practice anywhere.

A great time to practice mindfulness is on your commute. The commute to work or school does
not have to be a waste, not does it have to be a frantic time to text and check your Instagram.
Driving or sitting on a train is a great opportunity to choose alive time and to practice mindful-
ness. What good is meditation and self-reflection, after all, if you have to do it in the perfect
place?

Let’s call it Zen and the Art of Getting to Work. Here’s what I want you to do: Turn off drive time
radio and put on meditation music. Take your eyes and fix them in the wide peripheral gaze
taught by Native American Trackers, where you see everything around you without focusing
on anything (by the way, isn’t this what you’re supposed to be doing while you’re driving?). Now
breathe with your belly. Clear your mind of thoughts, and DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR PHONE. That
strange feeling you have now--of a clear mind, of being freshness and lightness? That is mindful-
ness. Nothing more and nothing less.

This is just one way to practice mindfulness. Another way is to go back to our old friend the breath.
Counting seven seconds in, and counting seven seconds out. Removing all other thoughts but
the sensation of the breath building in the body, and releasing in the body. Thoughts will come
up, but let them flow past your consciousness like leaves drifting across a river of your perception.
Pay them no mind. The seven-second breath is taught in Buddhist disciplines as one of the most
calming and centering practices. And showing up to work frantic and stressed is about the least
productive thing you could do.

It takes me approximately 45 minutes in the morning to get to the Onnit office from my home in
Austin.

Finding these pockets of peace are a critical life skill—we have to build them into the ideal day, we
can’t just expect to find them. I think this is partly what Stephen King meant when he said: “Ama-
teurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” Of course, he was mostly
referring to artistic inspiration, that a writer can’t simply sit in their chair and expect the muses to
find them, but why should you be able to sit in the driver’s seat of your Corolla or the orange seat
of the M Train and find peace and serenity?

Like all things, you have to work for it. You have to make the time; you have to make the moment
into the moment you want it to be.

But here’s the upside. If you can do this right on your routine, this is all the meditation you will need
for the day. It won’t matter if you work at some fancy place like Google that offers nap rooms and
meditation nooks. Soon your car will be a trigger for mindfulness, instead of a trigger for road rage.

After MindFULness, Comes MindFILLNESS

Drive to work, drive home from work. Almost everyday is buttressed by these two things. If we can
begin our day with some imposed clarity and lightness, let us close the end of the work day with
a similar exercise.

The morning commute is the province of mindfulness. The evening commute, then, should be the
arena for what I call mindFILLness. After having your brain in output mode for a productive day, it
is ideal to switch gears to receive some new input, to balance out the doing with some learning.
If you are driving, a podcast provides an excellent opportunity. If you are working at home, grab
a book and read. Those who can assimilate knowledge second hand will experience dramatic
growth versus those who depend on firsthand knowledge. Also, every new story provides a poten-
tial point of reference and is excellent for communication with important connections.
I call the iPhone the traveling university. Smart phones aren’t cheap, and neither is a data plan, but
I promise you it’s a lot cheaper than an MBA. As I said, it takes me about 45 minutes to get to the
Onnit office in the mornings. In the evening, when I leave, office my commute is a little bit shorter
because traffic has died down. The first thing I do when I get in the car is put on a podcast.

For inspiration and stimulating conversation, I like the Joe Rogan Experience, Tim Ferriss and
Lewis Howes’ School of Greatness Podcast. For health, diet and lifestyle advice, I listen to Ben
Greenfield and Sean Stevenson’s podcasts (we even created one for Onnit called Total Human
Optimization to help improve this niche). I’ll tell you what I’m not listening to the news or talk radio.
I don’t run a hedge fund, and I’m not in politics, so the idea that me, an average person, should be
following breaking news in real time is a false obligation. I reject it--while I think it’s important to be
an informed citizen, I’m not interested in making myself miserable by plugging into the 24/7 news
cycle of endless outrage and conflict. For the same reason, I strongly suggest you resist talk radio
of all political persuasions. The point is to achieve mindFULness--not mind full of bullshit-ness. Far
too much media is designed to provoke and distract, and so when people think they are informing
themselves, they are in fact, falling for a giant con. The term psychologists have for it is narcotizing
dysfunction. In fact, the more you follow the news, in some cases, the less likely you are to be an
active, involved citizen, because you’ve confused consuming information with action on it.

By spending that quiet time in the car listening to quality, independently produces podcasts, I’ve
learned an incredible amount. Not only that but my addiction to these podcasts that not only
helped inspire the idea for what became Onnit, but it was also our advertising strategy. I reached
out to Joe, and he became a partner in the business--and his mentions of our products on his show
generated millions of dollars in sales. Ads we ran on other shows I loved drove even more reve-
nue. I’m not telling this story to brag. My point is that my evening commute--home from a different
job at the time, obviously--led directly to an idea and then to a network of influencers that changed
my entire life. As Jim Rohn once said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will
make you a fortune.” That’s what I mean by mindFULness.

If you’re one of the luckier folks who lives in a city with great transportation, you have even more
options at your fingertips because you can be more than just a passive consumer of information
like podcasts or audiobooks. You can be actively engaged in brain games, language learning
apps, and even online classes. Whenever I travel to New York City, I find myself on the subway
heading to a meeting or an event; it breaks my heart to see a young man or woman watching epi-
sodes of the latest of some HBO series or scrolling through Instagram. Do that when you’re getting
paid, I think. They should be using this time now to learn, to grow. Imagine if you spent that time
playing a brain game like Lumosity to improve your memory. Many people are unhappy with their
jobs and want a different one, many people wish they had more financial independence--how
much closer could they be to having either of those things if they spend the thirty minutes they
spent each morning and evening getting to that unsatisfying job getting the education they need-
ed to make the jump?
Work Out in the Car
In 2006, the Los Angeles Times published an article detailing what they called The 405 Rush-Hour
Workout. It makes sense. The 405 is one of the worst and most traffic-congested freeways in the
country. A few years ago when construction shut down a ten mile stretch for a weekend while
an overpass was prepared, the entire city was notified to expect “Carmageddon.” Airlines even
offered special flights from Burbank to LAX. It was insanity. Considering the cumulative millions
of hours, Angelenos spend trapped on it every year; the world might be a better place if some of
them were getting healthy while doing it.

According to the workout, drivers are suggested to do improve their posture by sitting up and
putting their shoulders straight. After straightening their spin and lining their ears up with their
shoulder, you hold the position for 30 seconds. They also suggest rolling your shoulders up and
back, and pulling them down and back toward your tailbone. Tightening and releasing your ab
muscles is another one.

The point is you don’t just have to sit there and do nothing. You can sit there and do something.
There is more than just the LA Times tips of course. I keep a pair of hand spreaders/hand squeez-
ers in my car. For women, I suggest a series of Kegel exercises.

The basketball player Bill Bradley, as a young boy, would use his walks to and from school as a
chance to practice expanding and improving his peripheral vision. As his biographer, John McPhee
wrote, “as he walked down the main street of Crystal City, for example, he would keep his eyes fo-
cussed straight ahead and try to identify objects in the windows of stores he was passing.” Bradley
believed that better peripheral vision would improve his play on the basketball court and though
his doctor was skeptical of their effectiveness, there was no doubting the test results: by the time
Bradley was in college, he could see 195 degrees horizontally and 70 degrees straight down--or,
as McPhee writes, “fifteen and five degrees more, respectively, than what is officially considered
perfection. The man can also see 70 degrees upward, while the average perfect eye can only see
47 degrees upward. I don’t care what the doctor says--those exercises sounded like the worked
to me.

For my job, better vision isn’t going to help me that much so it’s not what I try to use my ‘dead time’
fixing. As I said, I want to be more at peace and more informed--so that’s what I use it for.

What Will You Do With Your Deadtime?

Joesph B. Wirthlin, a successful businessman and one of the influential leaders of the Mormon
church has a line I like: “Each minute is a little thing, and yet, with respect to our personal produc-
tivity, to manage the minute is the secret of success.” The world would be a better place if that
was imprinted on the driver’s side visor of every car and run as an advertisement on every public
transportation vehicle. To manage a minute--to make the most of a minute, especially the seem-
ingly ‘lost’ minutes is how one makes for a great life.
My heart broke recently hearing about a group of former Uber and Lyft drivers who commuted
from Houston to Austin on a regular basis to take advantage of our superior local ridesharing
nonprofit. It’s a two to three-hour drive they take--just to come here to drive all day. But I was also
inspired by their hustle and hard work. If I ever happen to get lucky enough to have one of them
as my driver’s, I’d talk to them about exactly what I just talked to you about: How do you take
advantage of those hours of unproductive time on the 71 freeway making your way into Austin? If
you put together a plan to take advantage of every second, what would it look like? How quickly
could you develop the right skills and knowledge to make that dreadful drive just a bad memory?
And in the meantime, how could you make it fly by?

2.Thou Shalt Use belief as a weapon


I have never seen anyone use belief with such devastating effect as featherweight champion,
Conor McGregor. It is so powerful; he shapes the destiny of his fights to match his belief. His accu-
racy in calling both the round and the method even earned him the nickname “Mystic Mac”.

But nothing was ever more impressive than when he fought Chad Mendes. Chad took him down
repeatedly and held him on his back. He landed elbow after elbow to Conor’s head, splitting him
open like a melon.

But there was Conor, talking the whole time. Not for one millisecond did he believe that he was
going to lose. When a scramble took them to his feet, the talking continued.

As his predicted second round knockout seemed almost out of reach, he landed the left hand that
rocked the world. Or at least, The Emerald Isle.

TJ Dillashaw was a +700 underdog against the seemingly indomitable champion, Renan Barao.
But TJ had a secret. He believed he was going to win. He saw himself holding the belt, and he
knew he was destined to be a champion.

So he didn’t fight like an underdog. He fought like a maniacal surgeon. He danced and stung
Barao for four rounds until finally, in the fifth, he ended the champ’s night with a head kick. “Belief
is a powerful thing,” he said, with belt firmly in hand.

If you are trying to “Crush It” you must not only believe you are going to crush it but also, you must
also think you deserve whatever ever it is you want or are going after. But you can’t fake belief.
You have to earn it with hard work.

Both TJ and Conor spend countless hours in the gym mastering their trade. For TJ, it is extra one-
on-one sessions with his master coach, Duane Bang. Conor flies in movement specialists like Ido
Portal. All of these things can give you the confidence required to believe in yourself. And from
there, it is all on the mind.

There isn’t a single ingredient that makes an individual rise above the rest. Each of these attri-
butes, combined with the single-minded focus of bettering the self, is the key to achieving total
human optimization and to crushing it.

Whatever your endeavor, remember three things and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a
better individual, leader, entrepreneur or any endeavor or title you choose: You deserve it, you
have earned it, and it is going to be yours.

3.Thou Shalt
Be a good student

There is a famous clip online of the greatest Welterweight champion of all time, Georges St. Pierre
in the gym with the commentator, Joe Rogan. In the video, Joe is showing Georges his turning side
kick. The champion is watching, enraptured. He is learning every cue.

Despite being one of the greatest fighters in the world, he is humbly and gratefully learning from
a man he has only known as commentator. This is the sign of greatness.

As it turns out, Joe has one of the best turning side kicks in the world, so the champ was able to
add another weapon to his arsenal.

When I met both Stanley Cup champion Jonathan Toews and Super Bowl Champion AJ Hawk, I
noticed something very similar about them. They were incredibly eager to learn. Whatever I want-
ed to talk about, they were happy to listen.

I wasn’t ever an athlete of their caliber, and I don’t come with any official credentials. But here we
were discussing all manner of performance and training tips. They understood that to be a master;
they had to be good students first.
Everyone has something to teach you if you are willing to listen. All around you, every single day
lessons fall on deaf ears. The more you listen, the quicker you see through everyone else’s eyes,
the more knowledge you will gain.

The more knowledge you have, the better individual you will be and the better chance you have
at crushing this game known as life.

4.Thou Shalt
Be TOUGH

There are a lot of reasons why Duncan Keith is a legend. In fact, his accolades sound like a Christ-
mas song: Three Stanley Cups, Two Norris Trophies, and a Conn Smythe Trophy. But those aren’t
the numbers that make him a legend to many of his fans. Those numbers are 7 & 7.

In the 2010 playoffs vs. the San Jose Sharks, Duncan Keith took a puck to the mouth and lost sev-
en teeth. Seven minutes later he was back out on the ice to take his shift. After the Blackhawks
had won the game, clinching the series, reporters asked him about the incident.

He famously replied through his bloody and broken face, “It’s just missing teeth. It’s a long way
from the heart.”

That is the first guy I want on my team, and the last guy I want to play against. But Keith isn’t the
only champion with true grit; it is a characteristic found in every champion I have ever known.

Michelle Waterson is another great example. In her title fight for the Invicta Atomweight Cham-
pionship, everything went from bad to worse in a hurry. Pinned down to the canvas, unable to
protect her face, her opponent rained blows down from the full mount position. All she had to do
was stop moving, and the referee would save her from the onslaught. With each blow, the face that
gave her the nickname “Karate Hottie” became more swollen and distorted. But she didn’t stop.

Instead, she gave up her arm which her opponent bent backward like a longbow. Sinews stretched
to the point of snapping; she still refused to tap. She wiggled until she found a millimeter of a
chance to break the hold. The bell was rung, and she went back to her corner.

A few deep breaths and a new round started. She wasted no time and locked out an armbar of her
own. When asked how she made it through the proverbial jaws of death she replied, “Fear does
not crown champions.”

Life will test you. It will test your courage, your resolve, your will, and your strength. It will hit you
where it hurts most. To be a champion, you have to be tough. And it starts with the little things.
Push yourself a little longer in the sauna. Take a cold shower.

Do an extra round on your Tabata set. You never know when you will need to draw on that tough-
ness.

5.Thou Shalt Be relentless


Wakesurfing Champion Ashley Kidd resides in Austin and goes out riding with my partner in crime,
Whitney Miller. When she wants to practice something, she will not stop doing the same trick over
and over until she perfects it. There is no other option.

Not only is this challenging to Ashley, it means that she is not shy about making the boat driver
do endless circles to pick her back up out of the water. This process can go on for hours at a time.

Ashley does not get frustrated; this is simply the buy in for her to be the best in the world. Where
others bow to their frustrations and the pressure to be considerate to the driver, Ashley is com-
pletely relentless.

This same sentiment was echoed by my friend, Jason Ellis, talk show host and former champion
skateboarder. He described the process for one of his most legendary stunts, in which he trans-
ferred mid-air from a skateboard to the back of a motorcycle.

The ramp launched them both 60 feet in the air going roughly 40 miles per hour. If Jason weren’t
careful mounting the bike, he would crash the motorcycle on landing.

For the first half dozen jumps, he wasn’t comfortable with getting on the bike, and so he bailed,
slamming on the far side ramp with his torso. Every time it got worse. A broken rib, a concussion,
a busted ankle. The list of injuries kept growing.

But he kept getting back on that skateboard – until finally, he landed the trick. Then he went to
the hospital.

It doesn’t matter what you are trying to be successful at, if you aren’t relentless you don’t stand a
chance. For the writer, it is sitting down and doing the work. Writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting
until finally, you have your best work to show.

For the entrepreneur, it is going over the plan, premeditating the risks, studying the market until
you are the unequivocal expert in your niche. Whatever the cost, you have to be relentless to be
great.

6.Thou Shalt Not be a slouch


One of the worst habits I have is posture. I’m a slumper. I’m a slouch. And I pay the price. My head
pushes too far forward, putting a strain on my neck and the supporting muscles. My traps are
always too tight because my hands are elevated too high. My joints are less and less flexible the
harder I work. All of this is not good. So I work on it. I stand up more. I fix my posture. I know how
important this is so at my company we made Varidesk and all forms of ergonomic chairs, including
Bosu balls free upon request for Onnit employees. I see more and more utilization every day.

Why Ergonomics?

Sitting for more than three hours a day can cut two years off a person’s life expectancy, even if he
or she exercises regularly, a new study finds⁶. In fact, New reseach⁷ published in the Journal of
Physical Activity and Health reports that prolonged sitting puts people over 60 at a risk for disabil-
ities. Elderly adults in this age group spend on average two-thirds of their days sedentary, which
equates to about nine hours a day. The link between age and disability held even when research-
ers controlled for obesity, socioeconomic status, physical activity, and other health factors.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries reviewed 250 workplace ergonomics
case studies⁸ and they not only found regular increases in productivity, they saw a dramatic reduc-
tion in strain related injuries and absenteeism. So I guess Onnit is making a good investment. If
you work at a company, send them this research and see if they will get you what you are looking
for! If you own the company, what you invest in your employees will always yield a vgreat return.

Ergonomics 101 - Put simply, the body is not meant to be in a sedentary position for very long.
The key to good ergonomics is to vary your position regularly from sitting to standing and to make
sure that your muscles aren’t in a cramped position. If your shoulders are tense because you are
holding your hands too high when you type, you will have tight shoulders. Tight shoulders can
lead to a tight neck, and a tight neck can lead to headaches. Not to mention what is happening in
the other direction as the muscles in your back compensate.

When you are sitting, even if you like to slouch, spend some time with classic good posture.
Engage your core to push straighten your back, rotate your pelvis forward (like you were trying
to move your taint to the front of the seat) and push your chin back to straighten your neck. This
may be uncomfortable at first, so treat it like resistance training. Just do a little bit every day, until
it becomes easier and easier. If you have the flexibility, bring your feet up to a squat in the chair,
or cross your legs. Or you can choose something like a Bosu ball instead of a traditional chair.
A Bosu ball will keep small balance muscles engaged and force a better posture. But this is ad-
vance ergonomics, best to work up to that.

When standing, once again rotate the pelvis forward, pull the chin back, and ideally take off your
shoes and spread your toes, so all of those little piggies make contact with the ground. A lot of
foot problems come from shoes forcing your feet to be too narrow, unlike how we were biome-
chanically engineered.

Lastly is movement, just doing some light resisted stretching (think how you make that big ‘good
morning’ type of yawn) a few squats, some light spinal twists or some calf raises will suffice. Be-
low is an infographic with more information from my good friend Ben Greenfield explaining the
Hazards of Sitting⁹.

> CLICK TO ENLARGE


7.Thou Shalt Unplug

No matter what we are doing, where we are, our phones are close at hand. Most of us check
them between 50 - 75 times¹⁰ per day. There are even terms coined like ‘low battery anxiety,’
and nomophobia (no mobile phone phobia). The ‘spell of the glass’ as comedian Joe Rogan
describes it, likens our phones to an enchanted object like in the fantasy tales of yore. But if
you look at it from a scientific perspective, the phones are Pez dispensers of our favorite and
most addictive self-made drugs. Dopamine, or the ‘reward chemical’ is released not only when
we receive communication from a friend or social validation, but also simply from the act of
self-disclosure. A recent study¹¹ showed that self-disclosure (talking about yourself or posting
about yourself on social media) releases dopamine powerful enough to override financial in-
centivisation.

As for cortisol, the ‘stress’ hormone, for those of us in a high-stress work environment, the cor-
relation between checking your email and having a stressful event occur is well cemented. So
even if there isn’t a stressful email waiting, the act of checking can increase stress. And if there
is a stressful email, then by spiking your cortisol and other stress hormones you are going to
have a difficult time unwinding.

But I am a realist, and asking too much is akin to asking nothing at all. So go for it. Revel in that
last spell of the glass. Soak in that last hit of dopamine as you refresh your Facebook feed, post
your last insta story, and soak in the last drip of cortisol as you check your email-- because you
are now about to unplug. Go ahead, turn your phone on airplane mode, DND, or simply shut it
off. This is important, and if you can’t do it, you may have a problem. A recent study¹² showed a
correlation between self-described addictive phone and Internet use and anxiety + depression
scores. You can do it, use the mental override, or just think how exciting it will be to check in
with all your social friends and work puzzles in the morning. Either way, it’s gotta be done.
8.Thou Shalt
Set your objective before bed

This is comprised of two parts and should fit on a single page. Part 1 is to restate your mission,
and then part two is to put forth three objectives.

• Set Your Mission


In the course I teach called Go For Your Win, the very first chapter is about mission. Without help-
ing people find their mission, the rest of my course would be somewhat useless. Your mission is
the overarching objective. It is the ‘why’ in the question of existence. Your mission is the Guide-
Star, without which you will not be able to chart a course.

The totality of our being can be expressed as a force. Every force has a fundamental desire,
which is to be applied to maximum effect. A bowling ball’s desire is to knock down all of the pins.
The sun desires to raise up seeds from the soil and put warmth on skin. As humans, we desire
to apply our force to the maximum effect possible. Your mission is what you want that force to
accomplish.

While the meaning of life might be complicated, your objective in life should not be complicated.
What are you, in this lifetime, on this planet, in this body, here to do? What does your highest self-
want more than anything else?
I’ve been fortunate enough to witness several hundred people have that incredible AHA moment
when they finally figure out their mission. Its as if for the first time they understand what their pur-
pose is, and they can put it into a single sentence. From there, it is simply a matter of how and
when, but the what and the why are taken care of. What a relief! How and when is simply a puzzle.
When and why are the reason to try?

Without knowing your mission, it is going to be hard to keep up the inspiration and motivation to
own the day. Why own the day? For yourself? Or for the mission. We fatigue much quicker when
our focus is on the self alone.

• The Law of Three


I’m the founder CEO of a top health and fitness brand. I’m the host of a top Health podcast. I have
a robust social life. I founded a clothing brand. I own a motorcycle manufacturer. I teach an online
course. I write books. And I only ever do three of them well. This violates one of my other core
principles, which is do it well, or not at all.

This is why fellow CEO Josh Bezoni abides by the law of three. He only allows himself to focus on
three things at the same time. I detest all forms of numerology, but three really is the magic num-
ber when it comes to our ability to focus. And this applies from the micro level to the macro level.

So I started a practice of putting my top three objectives down for the following day. But first I
restate my mission at the top of the page. The three objectives could include minor tasks. For ex-
ample, one objective could be “finish errands for party”. That might include a stop for liquor, cups,
food, a pinata, whatever. Still counts as one objective.

9.Thou Shalt Get some sleep


The trend is clear. We are sleeping less than we ever have, and more of us are reporting sleep
issues than ever. It is an epidemic with over 60% of people in the US reporting sleep difficulties¹³.
The problem is that this is affecting their dreams. Not the sleeping kind of dreams, the waking
kind. The aspirational kind. Quality sleep helps combat obesity, improves the immune system, is
vital for optimal mental function, and improves all markers of physical performance. But instead
of recognizing this concept, the idea of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” has become the ethos of hard
chargers. You can’t outsmart sleep, and if you believe you’ll sleep when you are dead, then Death
is going to put on roller skates and hustle your way¹⁴.
On the other side of the coin, we’ve all heard that we need to get 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Fuck that. Way too much pressure. Sleep should be relaxing and stressing about sleep puts pres-
sure and unrealistic expectation on something that should be the opposite. And for someone like
myself who is not a good natural sleeper, taking the pressure off helps. Additionally, anthropolog-
ical research indicates that 7-8 hours a night wasn’t always the norm for a lot of people anyways.
Sleeping multiple times a day (Polyphasic sleep) is much more common than you might think.

Currently, in cultures like Spain and Egypt, the Siesta or Tahasil respectively, forms a type of
polyphasic sleep in which people sleep about 5-6 hours per night and up to 90 minutes (one sleep
cycle) in the afternoon. In his book The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness¹⁵
author Jeff Warren discusses some other cultures like the Kung of Botswana and the Efe of Zaire
who has a more fluid sleep pattern, basically sleeping any damn time they feel like it. In other trib-
al communities, our ancestors would sleep after dusk for 3 hours, wake for a few hours, perhaps
smoke some tobacco or drink some tea, maybe have sex, and sleep again for a few hours before
dawn. So why is it in our culture that we put so much emphasis on monophasic sleep?

I blame “the man.” With the advent of the industrial revolution, it became advantageous to get peo-
ple to work early, and keep them there as long as possible. We internally adopted this work ethic,
and now view sleeping in a day, or sleeping late in the morning as a sign of laziness, or sloth (one
of the cutest deadly sins). If we get tired in the day instead of sleeping, we drink more coffee, or
worse; we take an Adderall.

But guess what? You own your day. You own your sleep. Which is why I prefer to take a wider
scope and follow some advice from Nick Littlehale’s book “Sleep.” Your goal then is not to count
how many hours you get in a night, but rather how many cycles you get in a week. The goal is
to get 30-35 sleep cycles a week. It is a strategy he has used for some of Great Britain’s top ath-
letes and performers, including the legendary Football club Manchester United and the UK cycling
team. If it was good enough for David Beckham, it’s good enough for me.
10.Thou Shalt Fuel your brain
There are two great ways to fuel your brain. Optimized Caffeine and Nootropics. Optimized Caf-
feine is a caffeine source plus healthy fats, and Nootropics are nutrients that enhance mental
function. Neurotransmitters drive a lot of brain function, and nutrient science can now deliver
targeted nutrients directly impacting brain acuity and function.

It is a marvelous time to be alive, where no corner of the globe, no exotic plant is out of reach.

The Origins of Optimized Caffeine


Tibet is cold. The conditions are harsh. The work is long.
The people need fuel throughout the day. So what did
they do? They put Yak Butter in their tea! This combina-
tion of good fat plus caffeine worked perfectly. I call it
optimized caffeine. It was the proliferation of this concept
that spawned the butter coffee craze. While the world
was busy putting skim milk in their coffee, nutrition expert
Robb Wolf went the other direction. He started recommend-
ing butter and MCT. And not only does the science show that
he on to something, now it has grown into an industry of it’s own.
The key components are caffeine source + good fat. You can mix and
match. And if you want to kick it up a notch, you blend in some superfoods, and you have the
perfect mid morning or midafternoon snack.

Why Adding Fat to Your Caffeine is a Good Thing


It’s not a new concept. We used to put cream in our coffee and tea. Then it became half and
half. Then it became skim milk and a bunch of sugar, or worse two pumps of hazelnut - artificially
flavored high fructose corn syrup. Unfortunately, this progression which we thought was doing
our body a favor was actually doing the opposite. Substituting an important macronutrient in the
fat-rich cream, for a harmful anti-nutrient combo of lactose and sugar. By now you should be fairly
convinced that adding the right kind of saturated fat to your diet is beneficial, and that sugar is
the devil. But why fat with caffeine? Fat is one of the slowest foods to digest in the human system.
When you mix caffeine with fat, the body can only effectively metabolize the caffeine as fast as
it can metabolize fat. To break down fats the stomach has to wait for a secretion of bile from the
gallbladder. There is a natural rate limiting factor on this mechanism of action, which forces a
slower drip of caffeine into the system.
MCT OIL
MCT oil stands for medium-chain triglycerides, a form of saturated fatty acid.
They are found naturally in coconut, butter, full-fat yogurt, whole milk, and
palm oil. Coconut oil is the highest natural source of MCT, with roughly 62-
65% of the fatty acids from MCT¹⁶.
Ideally, you want to source MCT oil purely from coconut. Palm oil, the lead-
ing constituent in most MCT oils, is typically harvested from native palm for-
ests, contributing to the destruction of some of the last remaining habitats
for orangutans. These fats serve multiple health benefits, such as improved
cognitive functuion¹⁷, weight management¹⁸, and up to 5% more energy¹⁹ for
you to own the day. 5% may not seem like much, but when you understand
that the tipping point between doing something and not doing something
might only be a little bit of energy, this 5% could be the difference between
stagnation and positive momentum. TRY MCT OIL HERE.

Nootropics
Nootropics can be loosely defined as any supplement, food or drug that improves some aspect of
mental performance. Every single human being can benefit from an improvement in mental perfor-
mance, which is one of the reasons why this category is so hot. It doesn’t matter if you want help
multitasking, writing, studying, performing, or simply recalling those names, places, and movies
that come up in conversation, having our hard drive at it’s capacity is a huge benefit. There are
many ways you can go about creating a nootropic. Many consider caffeine to be the world’s fa-
vorite nootropic. As mentioned above, caffeine does indeed elevate a few key neurotransmitters,
including dopamine and serotonin, but the primary mechanism of action is adrenal. In this way,
caffeine is in the stimulant class of nootropics.

The most popular pharmaceutical nootropic, Adderall is also in the stim-


ulant class, being one single molecule different than the street drug
methamphetamine. Tobacco is another interesting nootropic, and while
considered a stimulant, the active ingredient (nicotine) activates a differ-
ent pathway to greater alertness. Supplementing with nootropics is also
a popular option today. Alpha BRAIN may help you remember names
and places, focus on complex tasks, and improve your mental speed in
response to stimuli. Whether it is a work project, a social gathering, or an
athletic performance, taking Alpha BRAIN is like another gear for your
brain.† TRY ALPHA BRAIN HERE.

Crushing It! Power Pack


Crush It with this power pack full of essentials.
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