Articles

Naval Ravikant was back on the Tim Ferriss podcast last week. It was one of the best podcasts I’ve listened to – he totally knocked it out of the park.

The interview is packed with great insights for how to think about life. It’s a must listen.

Naval has a skill of being able to say something, which causes you to pause and go ‘huh?’. I’ve written about this before in Wait, our whole life is just a firefly blinking once in the night? (which I still read a couple of times a month).

I wanted to share part of the podcast where Naval talks about the power of self examination. This really resonated with me. And I’ve since had an insight about it (which I’ll also share below).

Here’s the section:

“Proper meditation – proper examination, should ruin the life that you’re currently living. It should cause you to leave relationships. It should cause you to re-establish boundaries with family members and with colleagues. It should cause you to quit your job. It should cause you to change your eating patterns. It should cause you to spend more time with yourself. It should cause you to change which books you read. It should cause you to change who your friends are. If it doesn’t do that – it’s not real examination. If it doesn’t come attached with instruction of your current life, then you can’t create the new life – in which you will not have the anxiety.”

It’s a very powerful reminder for me on how important it is to spend time working on ourselves.

Working on yourself requires solitude, so you can reflect and think deeply about things. If you don’t have a structure or process that helps facilitate regular self examination – that’s really something to think about. It might be one of the most important things you can do to transform your life.

And that leads me to my insight. I’ve always struggled to give advice on how to build self awareness. I could never quite put my finger on it.

And then I realised that regular self examination is one of the best ways to build self awareness. It forces you to confront things about yourself and your life. Over time, that will train you to become much more self aware, and take action. It’s this flywheel of self examination, self awareness and action that puts you on the path to becoming the best version of yourself.

The more I thought about it, I like to think I have quite a high level of self awareness. And it’s no coincidence that I’ve had a structure of regular self examination for over 15 years now. And it makes sense that this has helped build self awareness over time.

I mentioned last week that I’m shortly going to be launching a 121 coaching program (Get Unstuck) for one or two people. The first part of the program is almost entirely focused on a self examination. This will be transformative in itself. This then becomes the heart of a system taught in the second part, that helps you actually get things (and the right things) done. But, more on all of that soon.

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I was helping someone last week who was struggling with their work life balance. They were frustrated and upset.

Work was overpowering everything else in their life. Ironically, it was an intentional (ish) choice for them to double down on their work. It helped distract them from some other things that were going on in their life.

We talked about their priorities at work – and where the boundaries should be between work and the rest of their life. We also talked about what things had to be prioritised either higher, or as high as work. Things like health, a few relationships, a specific issue in their life, and some time to switch off. We talked about strategies to make that happen.

I know exactly what it’s like for work to overpower everything else in your life. I struggled with this for a long time. I felt like a failure for not being able to get any ONE, single area of my life in good shape. I was unhappy and overwhelmed most of the time

All that happens in this scenario, is you slowly (sometimes quickly) move towards a place where things fall apart. You can only neglect other important things in your life for so long – before something breaks. It’s rarely worth it, and sometimes what breaks, is unrepairable.

At some point you have to do the hard work to figure out what’s important in your life. You have to make a commitment to live those priorities. And then you have to figure out a way of organising your life so you can do that.

I finally figured this out a few years ago, and it changed my life. I moved away from being so goal orientated in my life. I let go of being obsessed with my work.

Don’t get me wrong – work will always be a big part of my life. I will always strive to be as effective and impactful as I can be. But, I know where the line is. And I know what else in my life is either more important, or as important than work.

Your priorities are your actions. If you’re spending a lot of time working, and you’re never exercising – then work is your priority and exercise is not a priority. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve been working on a 121 coaching program for the last year or so that will help people solve this exact problem. In fact, I’ve already taken someone through the program, and it’s been transformative for them.

I’m calling the program ‘Get Unstuck’ and am launching it at the end of October. There will only be one or two places to begin with.

This is because I will invest a lot of my time with each person throughout the program. It’s a 121 personalised coaching program that runs over an 8 week period. And there will be as much support as you need between the sessions.

If you struggle to balance a successful career and a life of your own, feel overwhelmed and like you’re failing at EVERYTHING – I guarantee it will be life changing.

If you want to be notified when I’m ready to start working with a couple of people, make sure you’re on my email list. And if you know of someone who might be interested – I would super appreciate it if you would point them in my direction.

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The Social Dilemma documentary is doing the rounds at the moment. It’s about a bunch of tech executives from Silicon Valley, who highlight the consequences of our growing dependence on social media.

It’s eye opening for many, but nothing new to me. I’ve felt for a very long time that the benefits of using social media are vastly outweighed by the negatives. Over the last few years it’s made me drastically change how I use social media.

But, why do I even use it at all if it’s so bad?

Two reasons. 1. To learn and be inspired by smart people, and 2. to discover content (articles, podcasts, videos etc.). Every week I get some new ideas, and stumble across a handful of articles, videos or podcasts.

This makes me very clear on my use case for social media. I know the exact, and only value I want out of it. I don’t want to keep tabs on what friends and family are doing. I don’t want the news. I don’t want suggestions for things I might like. I don’t want someone else (or an algorithm) deciding what I should see, from who I follow. I don’t want to have discussions with people. I don’t want to see other people having discussions (or arguing).

Over time I’ve gravitated towards an effective way of getting exactly the value I want out of social media – with none of what I don’t want.

Here’s how I do it:

I don’t have any social media accounts. I stopped using facebook entirely about ten years ago. I deleted my Instagram account about a year ago. And I deleted my Twitter account about a month ago.

I have curated a list of people to follow on Instagram and Twitter – twelve people on each (that’s just a coincidence, not a target number!). I chose these people really carefully, based on:

• They all fit in with my use case. one way or another. I learn, and get ideas from them. I get inspired by them. They share content (articles, videos, podcasts) that I want to see.
• They post at a frequency that’s easy to keep up with their ideas
• The ratio of posts that are useful to me is very high.

My curated list of people to follow changes from time to time. Someone might retweet or repost something from someone who looks super interesting. When that happens, I check out their profile and recent posts. I then might decide to add them to the list of people I follow. Sometimes a person I follow will drift outside of the criteria I have (their posts are less useful to me, they post too frequently, or the ratio of posts that are useful to me gets too low). And then I remove them.

Every Sunday, I spend about 30 mins going through the last week’s posts and tweets from my curated list of people. I have two google chrome bookmark folders (one for Instagram and one for Twitter), where I save each person’s profile. It takes just one click to open up each profile in a separate tab (this is important because I bypass the feed). And that’s my 30 min social media fix for the week.

On average I tend to get at least a handful of articles to read. I send these to my kindle to read later using the Send to Kindle for Google Chrome extension. I also stumble across one or two videos / podcasts, which I save to listen to later. And in general, I get exposed to some good ideas via the tweets and posts themselves.

It’s worth noting that saving content to consume later is important. It helps me keep the social media session focused and short. I then  consume the useful content when I am in that mode, and have more time later.

So, in summary. No social media accounts. No feed. A careful curated list of people to follow. 30 mins in total usage per week – in one session. Exposure to a bunch of good ideas, articles, videos and podcasts.

The only exception is Linkedin. I do have an account. I use it strictly to post ideas, links to my articles, and respond to anyone who comments. I resist using the feed for the reasons above (although I get caught sometimes and remind myself why I shouldn’t use it!)

I’ll leave you with a list of the people I keep up with on Instagram and Twitter. They’re all great in their own way:

Twitter:

Mr Money Moustache – rich guy, retired early and living the life he wants

Tim Urban (Wait but Why) – writes and says really interesting stuff

Seth Godin – entrepreneur, best selling author, and marketer

Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York) – writes short, interesting and heartfelt stories about people

Chris Kresser – author, paleo / healthy lifestyle advocate

Brad Stulberg – simple, great self improvement tips

James Clear – best selling author of Atomic Habits

AVC (Fred Wilson) – popular venture capitalist, and all round smart guy

Jason Fried – founder & CEO at Basecamp

Sam Altman – entrepreneur, investor, former president of Y Combinator, CEO of OpenAI

Paul Graham – programmer, writer (one my favourites), investor, and founder of Y Combinator

Chamath Palihapitiya – investor, Chairman of VirginGalactic, Owner @Warriors

Instagram

Jesse Itzler – billionaire entrepreneur, awesome Dad, and living life to the max

Ben Bergeron – Crossfit coach and business owner

David Goggins – ex navy seal and possibly a superhuman

Mat Fraser – fittest man on earth

Amelia Boone – obstacle racing world champion and ultrarunner

Laird Hamilton – big wave surfer

Crossfit Training – training tips from Crossfit

Sevan Matossian – on the CrossFit Media team, and kick ass Dad

Adrian Bozman – Crossfit training guy

Will Smith – small time actor 😉

Jaden Smith – small time actor’s son!

Luka Hocevar – interesting fitness dude and business owner

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Getting things, and getting the right things done. That’s what it all comes down to.

Thinking about the future is super useful. But, at some point you have to organise yourself on a daily basis, and actually get things done.

I have a very specific process for planning my days, and getting things done. It hasn’t changed much over the last few years, and had settled down – or at least I thought it had.

Over the last few months, I’ve made a few changes. They’ve helped take my daily planning and execution to the next level. I wanted to share them.

Here are the four things I’ve changed recently:

1. When I plan my days

I planned my days in the morning for as long as I can remember. It’s been the foundation of my morning routine.

But, what I’ve realised recently is that morning routines need to be more flexible (more on that in another post). Increasingly, I found myself not managing to get my daily plan done in the morning. And this led me to becoming unfocused for the day.

So, I started experimenting with doing it the night before. I’ll sit down at about 9PM, briefly reflect on the day, and then do my plan for the next day. It’s been a bit of a game changer. I’m much more consistent in my daily planning, which was the main problem I was trying to solve. But, there are other benefits. I now go to bed knowing what tomorrow looks like – which is a great feeling. I’ve drifted towards taking a few moments to reflect how the day went. My mornings also no longer have a planning component to them. It’s made them simpler, and more enjoyable.

2. Tracking daily habits better

I have a handful of habits that I pretty much want to do every day. Right now they are:

• eat paleo
• Intermittent fasting (8 hour eating window, 16 hour fasting window)
• consume approx 2K calories
• drink 3 litres of water
• reach out to at least one person (friend, colleague, or a new person)

I’ve always found it difficult to incorporate these into a daily plan. They are more behaviours and habits I want to do every day – than they are action items.

I started to jot these habits in short hand at the top right of my daily plan. It helps make a clearer distinction between them and the other action items. That helped me keep them front of mind throughout the day – which is helping me be much more consistent with them. It ‘s also encouraged me to reflect on how well I stuck to these behaviours, as part of my daily planning.

3. Keeping it on paper

I always start my daily planning in my moleskine notebook. And from there, I would use todoist to organise the time blocks and action items for the day. But, I was finding I lost sight of them throughout the day because they were tucked away in my phone. This started to cause me to drift away from my plan throughout the day.

So, I started experimenting with ripping out the daily plan page from my notepad, and keeping it in front of me. When I’m at my desk, it’s right in front of me, When I’m on the move, it’s folded up in my pocket. This has helped keep the plan in front of me throughout the day. I’m now more aware of my plan, and stick to it more often.

4. Combining work and life

I’ve always kept the capture and time blocking part of my daily planning for work and the rest of my life separate. I had a different process for both the capture and time blocking for each.

Over the last few months, I’ve started to combine them a bit. I still start by capturing only life things. But, when I time block out the day, I combine both high level work stuff (meetings, focus blocks etc.) and life stuff. This helps me think about the day holistically, and forces me to think about the balance. I still have some separate process for capture and smaller item planning at work. But, now most of my thinking about the day is combined.

COVID-19 / lockdown pushed me to think this way. Before lockdown came in, I had a big separation between work and life – mostly in the form of leaving the house and going to the office. When this disappeared, I really struggled. But, over time, I found myself thinking more holistically about the day, and this changed how I planned it.

The above four things aren’t massive in themselves. But combined, they add up to a pretty decent step forward in my daily planning, and how I get things done.

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Try this. Take a breath, and say to yourself – ‘Be where your feet are‘

You’ll find your awareness goes straight to your feet. You should then feel a connection with the ground. And from there, a self awareness and connection with your body.

This will snap you straight into the present moment. A feeling of calm should come over you.

If you were worrying about something, it will probably fall into perspective (most of us spend an enormous amount of mental energy worrying about things we don’t need to, or that will never happen). What’s really important will become a bit clearer.

It should help you spring into the rest of the day with a calmer, clearer, more present mind. At the very least, you’ll shift some worry in that moment, and become more present.

I stumbled across this phrase recently (thanks to this great podcast between Luka Hocevar and Nate Green). I immediately said it to myself and I went through the motions above. I know it feels a bit woo, woo – but it was super effective.

Now I’m on the search for a poster for my home!

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Sometimes the things that are best for you, aren’t the most enjoyable. That’s exactly how I’m feeling about my weekly and daily planning at the moment.

I spend a couple of hours on a Sunday, planning the week ahead. And then I spend about 15 – 20 mins each evening, planning the following day. It’s a lot of time, and isn’t easy. I don’t tend to look forward to it – or particularly enjoy doing it. So, why would I spend 4-5 hours a week doing something that I don’t enjoy?

Well, the value is indisputable. When I do it, I am intentional and focused. I spend more time on important things, and get far more done (easily 2 or 3 x more). And there’s no doubt about it, I am way happier. Even when you factor in the difficulty and enjoyment of doing it – it’s a gigantic net positive.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel like this about my planning? Surely if it’s so good for me, I would feel like I want to do it? I came to the conclusion that it’s because it’s actually some very intense problem solving.

There are a lot of decisions to make. Firstly, where will I spend my time? (and therefore not spend my time) Even when I’ve decided this, I have to decide what specific actions to do. And again, if I choose to do something, it’s at the expense of something else. Everything feels like a constant trade off.

Once I’ve made those decisions, I start to piece the week together. This involves a lot of moving things around to fit. I have to juggle my existing commitments with the extra things I want to do. Some things need to be done on set dates, and others have dependencies.

And then about half way in, I will realise it’s not possible to fit everything in. I then have to go back and strip some things out – which is even more decisions. It’s like working on a difficult jigsaw puzzle.

Daily planning is a similar effort. Luckily, some of those decisions are already made for me from the weekly planning. But, it still involves having to work out some priorities, decide how I will use my early mornings, time boxing the day, and figuring out the balance between work and everything else.

And lastly, I’m constantly wrestling with my expectations, and the temptation to drift into goal setting. Even though I know these get me into trouble, they still creep in. I’ve built up a good level of self awareness for when these things creep in, but it’s still something I have to notice and not get sucked into.

As you can see, planning weeks and days is difficult, problem solving work. Planning a week will often leave me feeling exhausted afterwards. But this level of discipline actually gives me freedom. It’s a huge relief to know everything is well thought out, and that I’m in control. The right things are in front of me, I just have to get on with it.

P.S. Here’s a guide to how I plan my week – How to plan a killer week.

P.P.S Here’s a guide to how I plan my work week – How to be focused and effective at work

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