DO THIS Everyday To Stop Procrastination & NEVER BE LAZY Again | Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty 0:00 Efficiency is often seen as discipline, but efficiency means you do a lot of stuff. But effectiveness means you do important stuff. If you're someone that believes you waste a lot of time, or maybe you're just not productive enough, maybe you don't get enough done, maybe you're overthinking, procrastinating, or don't know how to make a plan, this video is for you because I'm going to show you the eight ways that I save more time, make more time, and create more with my time.

Jay Shetty 0:30 Let me ask you a question. How many of you believe that you're good at multitasking? Now, studies show that only 2% of the world's population is actually able to multitask, and researchers say that when people hear that, they always assume that they're in that 2%. Maybe you're sitting there at home thinking the same thing. The truth is most of us are in the 98%, say researchers, and therefore, we have to focus on something called single-tasking or mono-tasking. This is the idea that we focus on one thing at a time. This sounds counterintuitive. A lot of people say, "Well, if I'm doing less things, that's going to take more time." The truth is when you focus on one thing at one time, not only does your productivity and your efficiency go up, your fatigue goes down and your stress goes down as well. Next time you get lost in that battle of trying to do loads of different things at the same time, press

Jay Shetty 1:31 pause, take a step back, take a breath, and just focus on that one activity. This applies to eating, it applies to driving, it applies to texting, it applies to speaking on the phone or a Zoom call. Just do that one thing. A few years ago, I read a study that changed the way I live. You can't be logical and creative at the same time. Your brain and mind is using different faculties and different abilities to do different types of tasks. Imagine you're in meetings all day about numbers and data and analytics, and all of a sudden you're asked to do something creative, maybe write a speech or give a presentation. It can be really, really difficult to switch from one side of your brain to the other side in a matter of seconds. With very little organizing and planning, we're literally going like a pendulum, swinging from one task to another, which is requiring different parts of our brain and the abilities that we have. The way I solve this is that I start every day by first writing down my to-do list. I look at all the activities that I have to do. Now, in the examples I give in this video, I've simplified my task to make it easier, but know [laughs] that I do this with a lot more detail. You want to draw a line down the middle of the page. On one side of it, write logical, and on the other side of it, write creative. You now want to plot and mark where these tasks on your to-do list fit, either in the logical category or in the creative category. The question you're asking yourself is, is this task largely structured, focused? Does it have certain boundaries? Is it quite a logical step-by-step process? Or is this creative? Is it more of a brainstorm? Is it somewhere where you need to feel free and expressive? After you've divided these tasks, you now want to write down the time estimate that that specific task is going to take. What ends up happening is you start to plot your week by saying Monday's going to be creative, Tuesdays are logical, Wednesdays are logical, Thursdays are creative, and Fridays are creative. Or you may also divide your day up into logical mornings and creative afternoons, or creative mornings and logical afternoons. This division, this time blocking, allows you to get really immersed into the activity, really focus, and be more productive and effective. So this might be unpopular opinion, but I live by

Jay Shetty 4:02 this, and it has truly been a game changer in my world. If it's not in the calendar, it won't get done. It's not really a priority, right? You have to make sure that it's in your plan, it's in your day. So I'm gonna show you quickly what my calendar and schedule look like. That is my life this month. As you can see, I- it's color-coded, it's beautifully designed. And as I flick through this, what you realize is that every single day I have everything from workout time to meal times, uh, to scheduled off time all in my calendar. What this allows me to do is it helps me prioritize both personal and professional commitments and helps me see both things in the same place. If you haven't put something in your calendar, even if it's something social, I promise you, you'll either forget it or you won't plan effectively around it. When I know I have a really big podcast or a really big interview, or if I know that I have a big deadline on a day, I don't then surround that day with other difficult and challenging tasks. Sometimes I'll start my day with the most challenging task of the day because I feel that I need to start with a challenge, and sometimes I'll actually put it as the last most challenging task of the day because actually I want to build that momentum. When you have a schedule, you get context around how you feel. That way you manage your mental health and wellbeing a million times better, and you do more with less time.

Jay Shetty 5:33 Tell me how many times you've experienced this: You check everything off your to-do list, but you still feel unfulfilled. You've used your time wisely, you've managed to accomplish every task, but you still end the day, when your head hits the pillow, you still feel like you failed. You still feel like you didn't quite achieve something. I realized that this happened to a lot of top performers, and it was because they weren't asking themselves, "What do I need to do today that will make me feel like today has been a good day?" Day. You don't think that today's a good day because you did everything you wanted to do, you have to feel like it's been a good day. So I do this activity every single day where I ask myself the question, what do I need to do today that will make me feel like today has been a success? For you, it may be reading your children a bedtime story. It may be making sure that you made 10 minutes to meditate. It may be that you had got a workout in

Jay Shetty 6:34 or you had your green juice. It has to be something simple that's easily repeatable on a daily basis, but that you prioritize doing it. Writing down what you did every day gives you ideas for the future as well, and plotting it out in this way makes it really, really simple to remember what you could try on another day. How many of you feel like the months are just passing by? And it's crazy to believe that we're over a quarter of the way through the year. But this is what happens when we don't have really clear goals, targets, and tasks. This approach has really helped me manage my time better. I have big monthly goals, I have four weekly targets, and I have one daily task. The one daily task is the baby step towards the weekly target, and the weekly target added up, all four of them, leads to the big monthly goal. So what you're doing here, in essence, is breaking down something that feels quite unachievable, impossible to do, and quite challenging into small, manageable chunks. Sometimes you can be sitting there thinking, "Wow, I don't know how I'm gonna get that done by the end of this month." If you've ever felt that way, use this model. First, come up with how can you break that big goal down into four separate tasks? Once you have these four weekly targets, now all you need to do is divide each weekly target into a daily task. So basically, you end up working on something daily that you achieve weekly, which

Jay Shetty 8:06 helps you achieve something monthly. Now you've completely deconstructed this impossible, unachievable idea into something very simple and manageable. Now, I know I said to you earlier that you should focus on single-tasking, not multitasking, but here's a way that you can actually get more out of the same time. I learned this from my good friend, Arianna Huffington, who speaks about habit stacking. Now, we all have habits in our life that we do every single day without even thinking about it. We're driving around town, we're cooking every single day, we may be on a walk. These are great times to immerse in those activities, for sure. When you're driving, to be fully present. If you're going on a hike, to be really there within nature. And if you're cooking, to be really present with the scents, the sounds, and, and all of the different colors that may be there. But if you're someone who can do some of those things pretty comfortably, you can also add a stack of a habit. So for example, you may be someone who listens to an audiobook while driving. You may be someone that listens to a podcast while cooking or while you're on a hike or walking the dog. It's okay to habit stack in those scenarios to get more out of the same amount of time. I wrote about this in my book. It's called location has energy, time has memory. When you do something in the same place every day at the same time every day, that space builds an energy, and that time builds a memory. What does that mean? When you've done something in one place, like meditated in the same place for a considerable amount of time, that space takes on a meditative energy and frequency. It becomes easier to do that activity in that place. And similarly, when you do something at the same time every day, that time has a memory. Your body, your mind remember that, and therefore it becomes easier to do. Divide your home, even in corners. I remember when my wife and I lived in a 500-square foot apartment, and literally every corner of that room [laughs] was divided into a meditation corner, a social corner, a work corner, and an eating corner. Even that differentiation allowed you to keep the energy of that space sacred and appropriate for what you want to do. The challenge today is we eat where we're meant to sleep, we sleep where we're meant to work, and we work where we're meant to eat. So we've confused the energy of our environment. That's why we're sitting in bed and can't sleep, because we do so many different activities there. Remove

Jay Shetty 10:38 that energy from the bedroom, place it where it needs to be, and allow yourself to see how you use your time more effectively in that place. A lot of people think sleep is a waste of time. I don't. Getting good quality sleep is integral to making more out of the time you have when you're awake. I consistently sleep for eight hours a night, and I'm really, really happy about it because I know that it allows me to perform better mentally and physically throughout the day. One of the things I will add, though, is that you want to be sleeping before midnight. The sleep before midnight is extremely powerful and is really critical for the HGH, the human growth hormone, to be activated. So if you're sleeping at 9:00 PM, and you're getting those three hours before midnight, that's extremely powerful. Or even 2:00 if you're sleeping at 10:00 PM. So getting seven to nine hours of sleep per night is critical to being productive with your time when you are awake. Don't fall into that trap or that habit to believe that you should be sleeping less to do more with your time. How many of you find it difficult to start something new? Or maybe you find yourself spending hours waiting around for that perfect idea. Or maybe you're someone who just feels confused about doing anything and everything. If you can relate to any of those statements, this video is for you. I always thought that we wasted time because we were lazy or we were indecisive. And while some of these things may be true for you, there actually is a deeper reason why we feel that way. And today, I'm going to introduce you to three ideas that are going to help you break through them One of my favorite books is called Flow. I was recently rereading it on the Blinkist app. Flow talks about flow state, which is experienced by musicians, rappers, singers, athletes when they're in the zone. When they're performing at such a high level, they even forget space, time, and everything around them, and you get to see art or magic in real life. Now, there are a lot of amazing lessons inside Flow, but one of my favorite ones is this discussion when you're looking at skills versus challenges. How many of you have ever felt that you don't have the best skills in an area and the challenge feels really high? Chances are if you've experienced that, you end up feeling frustrated or stuck and disappointed in yourself, and that's one of the reasons why you start overthinking and procrastinating. You don't have the skills. You have a challenge or a goal that's set really high, and now you feel overwhelmed and overburdened by the height of that target that you just give up and stop working. Sometimes we have the opposite experience, where our skill is really high, but actually, we haven't looked at our challenges. We've been doing the same thing over and over again. We've been repeating the easy win, and in that situation, we sometimes feel bored, lost, or confused. We feel like our life doesn't have meaning, it doesn't have purpose, and there's nothing exciting or thrilling about the work that we do. The author goes on to say that flow is achieved when our skill meets our challenge. So when we really want to experience that flow state, being in the zone, feeling that momentum, feeling that energy, thriving, we have to make sure that our skill and challenges match. Are we feeling frustrated and stuck because our skills are too low and our challenges are too high, or are we feeling bored because our skills are too high and our challenges are low? In either case, we want to focus on either increasing our skills or increasing our challenge. That helps us focus on the area that we actually need to have an impact, and we stop wasting time with all the distractions. So now instead of procrastinating and overthinking, we start focusing on a list of things that can help us improve our skills. You have books, coaching, mentors, communities, courses. All of these are phenomenal ways to start learning. Now, if you're someone who needs to increase your challenge, your challenge can be increased through networking. I remember when I used to speak or get invited to speak at colleges and schools. I loved that experience. I still do it today whenever I can. But at one point, I realized I wanted to stretch my comfort zone. Then I started working with corporate companies because I really wanted to help organizations build new models of thinking. Today, I work with so many Fortune 500 companies and enjoy the experience deeply, but I also wanted to extend my challenge beyond that. I started speaking on stages. I started speaking at my own events. What I've found is that you can extend your challenge by increasing your goals or targets or by changing the scale or the depth. Sometimes we challenge ourselves by trying to affect more people, do more things, and sometimes we challenge ourselves by going deeper in the areas we're already in. And finally, a new way of challenging yourself is a new industry. When you think about someone like Michael Jordan, who went off to play baseball, or you think about Steve Jobs, who went into movies and Pixar and animation, people have challenged themselves across industries when they've truly mastered their field. So the question I want you to answer is this: Instead of procrastinating and overthinking, do you need to work on your skills, or do you need to work on your challenges? And you'll know where to start. Another book that's had a big impact on the way I think is called The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin. Now, I read this book a long, long time ago, but I've been using the Blinkist app again recently to dive back into the key themes of this book, and the blinks have been so useful. What I love about Blinkist is that I hadn't read Flow or The Organized Mind for quite a while. Whilst I do have the real books, I also wanted to get a quick summary and a quick update again. So I went on and found Flow and realized that I could read it in 18 minutes and 10 blinks. They simplify the book into these blinks that make it really, really easy to

Jay Shetty 16:41 digest. One of my favorite concepts from this book that truly changed the way I think is around decision fatigue. Now, I want you to take a moment to just jot down what are the decisions you make every morning before you've got out of bed, before you get into your commute or start your workday. Chances are you spend a lot of time thinking about what to wear, what to eat that morning. You might even think about what to eat for lunch, what to eat for dinner. You might be wondering around what movie you're gonna watch tonight or what episode of which show you're going to watch when you get back. You may even be thinking about what meeting do I have? What person do I have to connect with today? What do I even have to do today? These are very common things for a lot of us. The concept of decision fatigue teaches us that so many of us are making so many insignificant decisions in the morning that by the time we start our workday, we're already exhausted from making decisions. We overthink about the smaller things that should be easy, and now we have no energy for the bigger things that do require our attention and our awareness. I want you to create a table of decisions to make the night before and decisions to make the day of. What that's going to help you do is give you something to focus on the night before so that you can be prepared and well ahead of schedule before the next day and be really clear about what you can only do on that day. Now, the night before, you want to be doing that either at the end of your workday or just after dinner. The reason is because at the end of your workday, you can set yourself up for success the next day. For those of you that want to leave it till after dinner, the reason why I say after is because we make better decisions when we've eaten and when we've nourished. So what we're essentially doing with decision fatigue is that we're stopping ourselves from overthinking about the smaller, irrelevant to some degree, insignificant decisions to the more significant decisions. Now, I'm not saying that eating food is not important. I'm not saying that what you wear every day is not important. I take pride in what I eat and what I wear. But when I've meal prepped- When I've made a plan a week in advance, when I've made it simple for myself, my brain gets capacity and space to make these big decisions. A really great example of this is Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, and others who've been known to wear the same suits or the same clothes again and again on repeat. Now, this is something I personally had first-hand experience of living as a monk. Every day we woke up and we wore robes. We had two sets, one to wear, one to wash.

Jay Shetty 19:13 It simplified that energy in the morning. Now, today, of course, I don't wear robes. I'm not a monk anymore, and I have a wardrobe that I enjoy, but inside of it, I have many different things, but I have them in many different colors. That way I still have somewhat of a uniform that simplifies that, or I make a decision the night before. This third model changed my life the first time I heard about it. It's called the DiSC model. The DiSC model was founded by William Marston, I believe, in 1928. What it does is that it breaks down all of our personalities into four types, dominance, influence, compliance, or steadiness. You can do a full test online, but I'm going to give you two questions to help you figure out which category you fall into. Are you more outgoing or are you more reserved? Now, neither of these is an advantage or disadvantage. Neither of them makes you better or worse. We all just have a natural inclination. An outgoing person is the life of the party. They're dragging everyone onto the dance floor. They're the one directing the conversation. A reserved person may be as confident, but they're more likely to get into a one-to-one discussion. They're more likely to have an intimate conversation on the side. They're observant and listening carefully. The second question is, are you more people-oriented or task-oriented? People-oriented people are thinking about people's experiences. Are people having a good time? Are they engaged? Are they enjoying themselves? Task-oriented people are like, "Jay, you've got five minutes before this video ends, and the camera battery dies, and, uh, we're not so sure if this mic's gonna last," right? Like they're thinking about the task. They're focused on making sure that everything about the task is taken care of. I think about people and tasks, but I think about people first. You are one of four things. You're either outgoing and task, which makes you a D type. You are outgoing and people, which makes you an I type, or you're reserved and task, which makes you a C type, or you're reserved and people, which makes you an S type. So D types are doers. They get stuff done. They make plans. They keep schedules. They have deadlines. They get results fast. The I type, the influential, these people are ideators. They're inspirers. They influence people. They persuade people. They're great negotiators. They're great speakers, and these people are really good at talking. Now, we have the compliance. These people are cautious. They're calculative. They're quality-oriented. They wanna make sure that things work and that things happen on time and that they're as perfect as they can be. They focus on being perfectionists. These are the people that send you emails telling you you have spelling mistakes in your emails. We need them. They make things work. And finally, steadiness. These people are supportive. They're helpful. They care about people. They have a high emotional intelligence and a high sensitivity towards people's feelings. What I love about this model is that it shows us how everyone is needed to build an effective team, to build an effective company, to have an amazing family. Without the D types, we'd never get things done. Without the I types, we'd never be enthusiastic and energetic. Without the C types, things may not work best, and without the S type, people wouldn't feel satisfied and content. It's so important that we understand all four. As Einstein said, "Everyone's a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it's stupid." Many of us overthink and procrastinate because we're operating in a different lane. We're trying to be an I type when we're a D type. We're trying to be a C type when we're an S type. We're trying to be something we're not, and that drains us. Focus on your strengths. Outsource your weaknesses, and develop the skills in between, and watch how your life changes. There's a great conversation between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, the brand of Apple, Steve Wozniak, the tech behind Apple. And in this conversation, Steve Wozniak looked at Steve Jobs and he said, "What do you even do? You're not an engineer. You're not a marketer. What do you even do?" And Steve Jobs, in Steve Jobs fashion, replied, "Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra." Now, although that statement was very bold, what it was talking about was this really subtle point that he understood his role. He understood that he was able to bring it all together and get it to work in harmony to create magic. This understanding and recognition that you have a genius, you have potential, you have a skill that only you have and that you can bring. So don't overthink and procrastinate about who you're not like or how

Jay Shetty 23:46 you're not like that person that's doing what you want to do. Focus on the skills you do have and start there. Every weekday, I wake up at 6:00 AM. I haven't set an alarm for a long time, but I know that my body will naturally wake me up based on the routine that I've created. I usually sleep for about eight hours a night, and I'm very grateful to have that much time, and I prioritize sleeping at about 10:00 PM every single day. When I'm up, the first thing my mind wants to do is say something like, "I feel so tired. I've got so much to do today." And I, as soon as I wake up, in that moment, rewire and reprogram it to say, "I am happy, I am healthy, and I am healing." That simple internal affirmation and statement rewires how I feel about what I have that day. I'm grateful for the opportunities and the work I have. I'm healing with the challenges I have, and my body is healthy because I'm able to get out of bed. I don't look at my phone in the morning. Trust me, I don't always follow this. I've broken that rule many, many times. I'm not perfect. I've failed at it countless times, but I keep trying to rise back to this rule. Why? Because I feel amazing. The amount of clarity in my mind, the stillness that I experience when my phone isn't the first thing that I see is inconceivable, and I highly recommend that you try it out just for seven days. Don't look at your phone first thing in the morning and see how different you feel for the rest of the day. I promise you, you're gonna feel more energetic, more productive, and more creative than you've ever been before. Now, I've been practicing something for a long time now called mindful brushing. I brush each tooth for around four seconds before I move the toothbrush. This mindful process allows me to start the day at my own time, in my own pace. So often before, I used to rush brushing my teeth. Not only would I be damaging my gums and damaging my teeth, by the way, dentists will tell you about that, I actually was starting my day off in a panic with stress. Slowing down the first activity of the day allows you to start and move at your own pace, in your own time. The next thing I do after a shower is meditate. Meditation has been a part of my daily practice for the last 16 years, where I've meditated for at least two hours a day. Often, this is broken up throughout the days on a busy day. On an amazing day, I get to do two hours first thing in the morning. Sometimes I'll do one hour in the morning, one hour in the evening, or sometimes I'll do 30-minute slots four times a day. This really allows me to find that center, to find that alignment, and find that balance throughout the day. My meditation practice includes these three types of meditation, breathwork, visualization, and mantra. For those of you that have read Think Like a Monk, you know that I break down these practices inside the book so that you can practice them at home as well. Breathwork is a phenomenal way of calming and centering my body. Visualization is a great way to prepare my mind for all the meetings and events and everything I have to do throughout the day. And the mantra is for my soul. It's to help me feel connected to my purpose, make me feel connected to divine energy and the supreme source so that I can be an instrument of that joy, of that happiness, and of that love in the world with everyone I meet. Recently, I've updated my morning meditation using the Oura Ring app, where I take a moment to check my body status. What this does is that it helps me measure my heart rate, my breath rate, and my skin temperature just for a moment, just to take a status check, just to check in with myself and say, "How am I feeling? How am I doing right now?" It even asks me if I'm feeling better or worse after the moment, and that allows me to get that really critical piece of insight into how I feel right now. When you bump into someone, you always ask them, "How are you doing? How are you feeling?" Take a moment to ask yourself that with the Moments feature on the Oura Ring app. After my meditation practice, I literally take two to three minutes to set my intention for the day and my attention for the day. I've found that this activity allows me to create the energy and the mental space I need to try and live by higher values. Now, again, I fail at this all the time. I can go through the day and then realize I haven't been loving, I haven't been kind, I haven't been the nicest person that day. But the thing is, when I write it down in the morning, I promise you, I'm more likely to be what I write on the page. I'm reminded to be what I write on the page. I also take a moment to write three things I'm grateful for. And no matter how hard it is, there are promi- I promise you, there are some days where I'm like, "I've just got complaints. I've got nothing to be grateful for." And even on those days, I will push myself to write down something I'm grateful for, and I'll always find an answer. Starting your day off in this way gets this right, so that now every action can actually be inspired by that intention. Everything that you do externally will be created by how you feel internally, and now you can take that energy out into the world. We are headed to morning tennis, so this is something that I do around four times a week. I realized that I just miss playing sport. When I'd wake up in the morning and I'd head over to the gym or with a trainer, I always found that slightly stressful, the idea of just being there with one person and trying to do a bunch of exercises that were meaningless or purposeless, at least to me. But going to play, it's just incredible. To play tennis every morning, I feel like I'm back at school and I'm starting my day with some great energy, some positivity, a little bit of healthy competition. So for the past three to four months, I've been wearing the Oura Ring, and it's been amazing to have it on, truly, because for the first time, I can actually verify what I'm doing, how powerful and impactful it is on my physical and mental health, and I can actually track, record, and look back and plan. And I realize this because there's so much thought in business and in technology all around how you can't improve what you don't measure, and the truth is, we never measure our sleep. We kind of take a guess. "Oh, I've been getting around six hours or seven hours of sleep this week." It's a guess. It's random. It's made up. You're hoping you kind of got it right. You're like, "Oh, yeah, but last week I, I, I worked out a lot." And you don't know. It's just an assumption. It's just an idea. Whereas now, I can actually look back, I can look at how the week's been, I can understand why I feel tired, I can understand what I need to do this weekend Play has become such an important value to me. There's a beautiful quote that I believe was said by Richard Branson where he said that we don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing. And I realized that play was such an important value for me, it was such an important principle for me, that I had to start my day off with play. A bit of healthy competition, feeling like I'm learning a new skill, feeling like I'm building a new athletic ability allows me to start the day off feeling like a learner and someone who's growing. So usually after a game of tennis I sit down to look at my stats. It's a great way of keeping that measurement, thinking about what's coming ahead for the rest of the day, and I can see that it's automatically detected that I've had a 506 active calorie burn. I've got a activity score of 79. I've got a total burn of 2,357 calories, and I've already done 4,000 steps for the day. So I love starting my day off with that data. It helps me feel like I've started on the right foot, and now I know what I've gotta do to hit my goals. It's also told me that my training volume is optimal, my training frequency is op- optimal as well, and I've gotta still stay active today 'cause I'm still in the red. So that's telling me that I need to move around regularly and avoid long periods of inactivity, which helps me stay healthy and keep my meta- metabolism high. This is a great reminder because throughout the day it will keep reminding me to be active, whether I'm sitting at my desk for too long or whether I'm sitting there writing scripts, it will tell me to get up and move around. And until my activity reaches optimal, I'll know that I still gotta keep moving. As soon as I get back from tennis I have some breakfast. My current breakfast of choice is a chia seed breakfast bowl. It has blueberries and raspberries inside as well, and it's been amazing for my gut health. I find that figuring out the food that's right for your gut is so important and it's so personal and unique. It's taken me a long time to figure out what to have for breakfast that didn't leave me feeling bloated, didn't feel me leaving uncomfortable throughout the rest of the day, and a chia seed breakfast bowl has been the best thing that I've had. As I'm coming to the end of breakfast, that's usually when I look at my stats from the night before. I look at the quality of my sleep, the quality of my REM sleep, my deep sleep. I look at what I need to do today. And what I love about the Oura Ring app is that it guides me and coaches me throughout my day. It will tell me what time I should aim to be asleep. It will tell me what to avoid. It will even tell me to stay active. For me, it's really useful having this guide in my pocket and helping me make my choices throughout the day. And then I sit down for my favorite cup of herbal tea. Usually it's a fresh mint, and for me, having a warm cup of herbal tea allows me to again start grounded. I love the scent. I love the feeling of the warmth inside of my body, and I love the cleansing effect that it has. And so this is where I am. Now, all of these habits have had a huge impact on my life, and that's why I'm sharing them with you. Again, I'm not getting them all right all the time. There are days where things get changed or missed or skipped, but I'm always trying to get back to this ideal.

Jay Shetty 33:53 In this video, I'm going to guide you through the six productivity habits for working from home or if you're back in the office. Either you're someone who finds it hard to get motivated and productive and be effective throughout the day, you get distracted or stuck or lost, or maybe you're someone who's ticking off everything from your to-do list but are feeling drained, fatigued, and dissatisfied at the end of the day. If either of those are you, this is the video to watch. The first piece of advice I'm going to give you is really simple. Plan for a commute. Now, for those of you that are working from home, you may be wondering, "This doesn't apply to me, Jay." Well, actually, it does. What I find is that if you create a 10 to 15-minute commute in your day, and instead of diving straight into work, waking up out of your bed, walking to your kitchen table, you actually take a walk around the block. You're basically tricking your mind to feel like you're going somewhere. One of the reasons why we're all feeling so encaged and so enclosed is because we don't feel like we're changing environment. We don't feel like we're moving from place to place like we were before. So if that's your case, I want to make sure that you find 10 minutes at the beginning and the end of the day to go to work and come back from work, and use that as time to actually dive into a podcast, an audiobook, or a Blink on Blinkist, whatever works for you, to give yourself some time to prepare for work. Now, this second tip I've recommended to a lot of corporations, and they've found it life-changing and so useful. I want you to start creating a five-minute gap between each and every meeting in your schedule, so if a meeting finishes at 10:00 AM, the next one starts at 10:05. I don't want you to schedule any meetings back to back from this point onwards. You may think five minutes is not a lot of time But that five-minute gap can be life-changing. Here's how. When you take out time between each meeting, you get that really important time to decompress and prepare for the next meeting. You're now not shifting your energy from one thing to another thing to another thing straight away, and feeling like you're just stressed in between, not even getting time to comprehend what the next meeting is about. I've got five habits for you that you can do across five minutes that are going to keep you feeling productive, effective, and focused on your wellbeing throughout the day. The first one is water. It is so important that we take a moment to rehydrate between meetings. It's so important to stay hydrated because we need to be drinking around two to three liters a day, and when we're doing that, it boosts our brain function, it allows us to feel clearer. It's fantastic for making us feel energized throughout the day. The second thing you're going to do in your five-minute gap is walk around. This could be in your bedroom, in your kitchen, wherever you get a moment. It's really, really important to get moving. So many of us are feeling so stagnant and stuck at the moment because we're sitting at our desks all day long. We no longer have a lunch to get up to or a meeting on the other side of our offices to meet someone. We're in the same place. This is causing a lot of issues with our posture, the way our body feels, the way our muscles are. It's not natural for us to be locked in to a sitting position throughout the whole day. The third is to watch. By watch, I mean watch a view, a window. Look out of a window. Look into the sky. Take a step out for a moment and get some fresh air. It's so important that we look out into the distance. We've got so used to just staring at screens and devices and books and schedules that are right up in our face that we're not giving our eyes the opportunity to look out into the distance. Now, this fourth one's a little more interesting, and you may need a little bit more time for it, but it's the idea of wonder. Allow your mind to wonder. Allow it to think of a new idea, to be creative, to think about something unrelated. This is where creativity comes from. This is where that feeling comes from that you're innovating, that you're allowing your mind to connect dots that otherwise you might seem as disconnected. And the fifth and final thing that you can do in those five minutes is to wind down, and one of the best ways to wind down is through your breath. Allow yourself a few moments to breathe in for the same amount of time as you breathe out. A very simple way to do this is breathe in for a count of one to four and breathe out for a count of one to four. How many of you ever felt that your mind is ahead of your body? Your mind is racing around, but your body feels sluggish and tired. If you want to bring your body and mind back into sync, back into alignment, you want to breathe in and breathe out for the same amount of time. Doing this breathing practice allows you to walk in with a clear mind, with a relaxed body, and reduces your anxiety throughout the day. Now, some of you may be using your car to commute if you're back in the office or you have a job that relies on you being inside your vehicle. Now, if that's the case, I have loved the fact that Blinkist allows you to listen to the Blinks. So you may have heard me speak about before how Blinkist summarizes books into Blinks. Well, instead of just reading the chapters and the sections and the highlights, you can also listen to them. This has become one of my favorite new habits because in around 10 to 15 minutes, I can understand the essence and a book in summary. One of the books that I'm rereading right now that I'm absolutely in love with is called Measure What Matters. It's huge because it talks about how if we're not measuring something, we can't improve it. If we're not focusing on something, we don't know how it can become better. So for me, being able to listen into these Blinks and learn at the same time while I'm on the go, while I'm on the move, is such a refreshing way to stay on top of my growth and my focus. I really find that using my car time wisely is a game changer. This next one is all about shifting from what we call small talk to big talk or deep talk. I first learned about this through Dan Ariely and his Irrational Labs where at an event they encouraged us to ask more vulnerable, deep, and bigger questions. How many of you are tired of small talk? How many of you start every meeting in the same way, "Hey, how's it going?" "Yeah, it was good. Yeah, you know, same old weekend. Yeah, you know, it's, it's been a lot. All right, let's get to work." We literally have the same conversation on repeat almost seven times a day in every meeting. And guess what? Neither you nor the other person enjoys that conversation. Now, this point also applies whether you're working on Zoom or whether you're meeting in person again with people. We're so used to asking someone, "How are you?" And it's kind of a throwaway question. People usually come back and give us one of these five answers: good, bad, okay, fine, or hmm. We don't learn anything about the other person. We don't get an opportunity to deepen our relationship, and it's almost like we didn't even care when we asked the question. But what if we ask someone, "Hey, what's a challenge that you've been working through lately? How can I help you through it?" Or, "What's something that you're trying to overcome that you may need an insight on?" This type of question gives the person an opportunity to really share what's happening. That vulnerability allows you to build a deeper bond and deeper connection, and now you're actually engaging with someone in a refreshing way. Now, if you're like me and you're still spending a ton of your time on Zoom, I mean, I'm recording podcasts and interviews with some of my favorite authors. We recently had Oprah on the podcast about her new book, What Happened to You? And when I'm speaking to people on Zoom, I've found that it's even more difficult to build rapport or a connection, especially if you've never met them before in person. One of the ways I've been able to cross this bridge is by being curious but not creepy. Now, what I mean by that is about asking someone about something that's in their background. I think by now everyone knows their Zoom shot and their Zoom location. They have a few things in the background, maybe a piece of art and maybe a picture of their family, and this is such a beautiful conversation starter, especially if you're trying to build a new relationship. Recently I was on a call with a client, and I asked him about a really interesting thing that he had hung on his wall behind him. It was a paintbrush. I was so fascinated that I had to be curious, not creepy, and ask him why he had it there. He said, "My first ever job when I was around 14 years old is I used to paint fences, and after painting fences, I got to paint rooms, and after painting rooms, I got to start painting homes." And now he's an executive and a director of a large company, and he said that he hangs this paintbrush on his wall to remind him of where he started. Give the person you're speaking to an opportunity to tell you a story. I promise you it'll be memorable and meaningful, and if not, hopefully it makes one of you laugh. And this final point is something that we probably already know and do, but I've seen it work wonders for me. Turn off your notifications and turn on chill, relaxing work music. I've done this for such a long time where I have a playlist that I listen to that allows me to just get into the zone. What I find music does, especially instrumental music, that's what I focus on, I try to stay away from popular music that I may listen to in the car or while I'm in the gym, what that does is it gives the mind enough distraction, enough rhythm, enough pattern, enough momentum so that you can actually focus your mind on the activity at hand. Now, some of you may prefer silence or working to chatter, and that's fine too. You can even put that type of music on. But for me, instrumental beats and rhythms are a fantastic way of getting into the zone. Turning off your notifications is just

Jay Shetty 44:30 a no-brainer if you're really trying to do some deep work. Time is one of those things. You know, how we use time, spend time, create time, what we make time for. Like, time is one of those things that, of course, is, and the way we use it, an essential, essential, essential part of all of our lives, and I think when we're talking about simplicity or clarity, I think one of the biggest things we lack simplicity and clarity on is time. Uh, and, and for me, I've definitely noticed how ov- over life, especially when your book came out, I've, I've tried to remove people from having to live their life based on a timeline- Hmm ... or an expectation. And, and I realized that because my life went in a completely different direction whereby I became a monk at 22 and didn't have my first job until 26, uh, and today lead one of the most meaningful, fulfilling lives in the world, thanks to, uh, all my experiences. And so it's just, it's fascinating. There were times in my life where I felt like I was behind people that I should be in line with. I see. Yeah. There are times in my life where I felt I was ahead of people. There are times when I felt like I was trying to figure it out. And I think a lot of people usually feel like they're behind, ahead, or equal to, and that's kind of how we make sense of stuff. And that's why when this book came out, which I know was, like, maybe, what, a year ago, a year and a half ago, maybe a couple years ago now, it's, to me that was... I was fascinated that you were able to pinpoint, yeah, and go so deeply into time, which I always thought was so much more fluid. Mm-hmm. And so I guess the first question I wanna ask you, and, and, and please take this wherever you like, like, don't feel, uh, constricted at all because I like what we're kind of co-creating right now. What fascinates you about time the most that you are so deeply drawn to actually write a whole book about timing? Yeah. Uh, so, so that is actually, um, th- I, I'm gonna put the answer to that in more of the mundane category. Um, the reason for, the impetus for it was just frustration, um, more than anything else. It wasn't any kind of deep conceptual fascination. So, so here we are. Um, you know, I'm talking to you from, this is m- this is my office here in Washington, DC. It's the, uh, refurbished one-car garage behind my house. I live there, like, right there. Um, and so, you know, I'd, I would come to my office and, and do stuff, do work. Um, and at a certain point I realized, like, I would have a, I'd have a to-do list, uh, and maybe I would have appointments on the calendar, but I wasn't intentional at all about when I was doing stuff. Well, I would write when I felt like writing. Uh, I would make phone calls when I felt like making phone calls. I would do interviews when I felt like doing interv- I, you know, um, and I wasn't intentional about it. A- a- and I said, "That's, that's cra- that's, that's crazy." Like, like, like, I, I end up... I, I, I'm actually a fairly kind of ration- I like to think I am, at least, a fairly rational, evidence-based guy, and, and I'm making these decisions about when to do things. I'm not even making decisions. I'm just kind of stumbling my way into it. Um, and so I said, "Well, there's gotta be some guidance out there on, on, like, when we should do things." And I found to my surprise that there wasn't. Um, and that got me really curious. I said, "Well, I, I wonder if there's anybody who's ever researched this." So I started looking around for research, and it, it turned out there was a huge amount of research on this question, but it was splattered all over the place. Uh, it was in literally two dozen different domains. So it wasn't like you say, "Oh, there's a sociologist who studies timing." Well, there might be. There is, there are, but there are also biologists who do that. There are economists who've studied that. There are microbiologists who have done studies. Epidemiologists. There's a whole field called chronobiology. And so what you had was you had-

Speaker 48:13 Uh, literally tw- two dozen different fields asking very similar, in some cases identical, questions. And what I said is like, "Hmm, maybe I..." You know, it was painful, but if I go wide enough and deep enough into this research, I can begin to piece together the evidence-based ways to make better, smarter decisions about when to do things, when to do things any given day. But also to your other point, Jay, um, uh, when we think about our lives, our, our, our lives are episodic. Episodes have beginnings, episodes have middles, and episodes have ends. It's the whole idea of the journey metaphor you introduced earlier, is like journeys have beginnings, they have middles, and they have ends. Uh, and it turns out that there is some fascinating research on how our cognitive abilities change over the course of a day, and then more episodically, how beginnings affect us, how midpoints affect us, how endings affect us. There's research on how groups coordinate in time. There's research on how the way we think about time affects our behavior. There's research, again, all roads lead back to linguistics. There's research based on the way that languages configure their verb tenses. It can predict people's savings behavior, as crazy as that sounds. Um, and so, um, so it ends up being something that is, going back to another one of your, another one of your words, it ends up being essential. It ends up being fundamental, uh, because, uh, we are temporal creatures. That is, we have... We talk about, colloquially about biological clocks, um, about, about a biological clock. But, but essentially what we have, we know from, from biology is that, especially chronobiology, is that we ha- essentially have bi- clocks in, in every cell in our body. I mean, we are walking timepieces. And again, depending on your notion of time, sort of philosophically, existentially, we are in some ways moving through time.

Jay Shetty 49:57 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 49:57 At, at, at the very least, our conversation began in the past. Um, that, right? It, it's gonna end in the future, right? The people who are gonna listen to the recorded version of this are listening to something that happened in the past. But they ha- but those people haven't done anything yet, 'cause that's in the future. A- a- and so we're sort of swimming in this essential element of our lives. And so what I was just trying to do is just m- m- make it understandable.

Jay Shetty 50:22 Yeah. And I, and I think you did a phenomenal job. And so I wanna dive into different parts of it. I guess my first question's like, there's, actually, there's a few things. So the first one is, I think the most common relationship, and of course I'm making a huge assumption here, but I think maybe we'll agree, maybe your research will say something else. But I'd say my assumption is that the most common relationship, and I believe everyone has a relationship with money, we have a relationship with time, we have a relationship with-

Speaker 50:51 Sure

Jay Shetty 50:51 ... uh, anything, knowledge, wisdom, et cetera. And so our relationship with time for most people is I always feel like I don't have enough, right? That is a very clear relationship that we all have with time, where it's like, "I don't have enough time. Uh, I can't make enough time. I can't find time." Like we say all these words which are all about making, finding, creating, having. What does that do? What does that mindset toward time, how does that actually affect our behavior?

Speaker 51:18 Our, our relationship with time, we can think of it as an ally, we can think of it as an enemy in some ways. That's over- that's oversimplifying in that case. But I think if what, what we're trying to... A- and one way to make time your ally rather than your enemy is to recognize the effect, often invisible, that it has on your life. Um, so if you look... So, so I'll give, I'll give you an example. Uh, uh, what we know from... Let's just take the unit of a day. What we know very clearly from a whole array of research is that our brain power does not remain constant over the course of a day. Our brain power changes over the course of a day. Uh, so doing something at 9:00 AM is not the same as doing something at 3:00 PM, period, full stop. Now, there's some complexity underneath that-

Jay Shetty 52:02 Mm

Speaker 52:02 ... but the main idea is that our brain power doesn't remain constant over the course of a day. And the best time to do something depends on what it is you're actually doing. So once you understand those kinds of hidden invisible rules, you can begin to make time your ally rather than your enemy, and end up mitigating some of those feelings that you never, that one never has enough time. Um, so, so I think that's, I think that's part of what it is. People who feel like they don't have enough time... This, this is not something I write about, but I'll, I'll opine about it anyway. In many cases, people who don't feel like they have enough time, sometimes, not always, sometimes it's not a ti- it's not a, a, a sufficiency of time issue, it's a sufficiency of priority issue, what they, they actually don't have any clarity about their purpose or their priorities. And so they're moving in all kinds... And that's not always the case, but I think that's, that, that's partly the case. The other thing that we know is that when time becomes extremely salient in our lives, we underperform. Uh, and I'll give you, uh, in certain circumstances, or, or we're unhappy in certain circumstances. So I, I, I, a great example of that is in professional services, but p- particularly in the practice of law, is the billable hour. Um, what we know... So if you are a, a, a lawyer practicing in a, in a law firm, not working for the government or doing that, or, or a nonprofit or something, uh, you bill yourself out by the hour. And so what you do is that you have, you know, a way to... Well, I'm, I'm going analog here, but you, you have on your computer or, you know, scribbled down, uh, an account of what you're doing, literally in some cases in six-minute increments. Uh, and what we know from research there is that that makes people, that is incredibly thwarting to people's sense of autonomy. Um, and so, um, so there are all kinds of things in our relationship with time that if we reconfigure it, we can feel a little bit better, do a little bit more and better.

Jay Shetty 53:52 Yeah, that's, that, that's, that's spot on. I think that makes, uh, that, that answer and all the parts will make a lot of sense. I think the, the part that I get really interested by when we start talking about time in the way you just did now, where you talk about priorities, you're talking about, uh, the, you know, the, the ally versus the enemy and, uh, and I, I, I, I love that. Is productivity even the goal of time? Because I feel like today, one of the biggest challenges that I get asked at least, and, and maybe your children experience this, or maybe what I see outside in the world of social media is a lot of people today spend a lot of time overthinking and procrastinating, and that's seen as a negative thing, and people are often, like-

Speaker 54:34 Yeah

Jay Shetty 54:34 ... scared of overthinking, scared of procrastinating, or they judge themselves and then they start getting into this kind of like, you know, a vicious circle and cycle of feeling like, "Oh, like I'm, I'm wasting a lot of time here." Tell me about what you've found, or even your thoughts on, on productivity as a goal of time versus the, the effective use, if possible, of procrastination and overthinking.

Speaker 54:57 Uh, procrastination and productivity. Okay, let's talk about what productivity is. I'm gonna be literal with you. Productivity is the amount of units you produce over a given amount of time.

Jay Shetty 55:07 Yeah.

Speaker 55:08 So it is inherently time-based, because time is in the denominator of productivity, okay? So, so again, I'm not sure that productivity is necessarily the best measure. I say that as a writer, okay? So I could be like, like I could be a produc- Like suppose I wrote more words per hour today versus yesterday. I would literally be more productive. But am I w- Am I better writer? I, I don't know. It's prob- It doesn't matter. Like, what are the words, right?

Jay Shetty 55:38 Yeah.

Speaker 55:38 Um, and so, and so in some ways productivity is, the notion of productivity in that very literal sense is an artifact of our being an economy where we are producing identical mass produced goods. And so efficiency was the, was the highest value because everything was the same. And so what you wanted to do was, in a given denominator, make the numerator larger, okay? That's how you increase... That, that's a way to increase productivity. Or keep the numerator the same and shrink the amount of time in the denominator. So, um, so that's what, that's what, that's what productivity is. I think a way to, um, you know, a looser way to measure things is, is quality and, and imp- quality, contribution, impact, those sorts of things.

Jay Shetty 56:26 Sure.

Speaker 56:26 Uh, and certainly for certain kinds of professions, like, like being a writer, writing more words is no measure of my contribution to the world.

Jay Shetty 56:33 Yeah. So if, if anyone's listening or watching right now and is like, "Dan, I'm, I just feel like I procrastinate a lot, I overthink a lot-

Speaker 56:40 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:41 ... and, and I waste time," what would be your response to them?

Speaker 56:44 Okay. So let's... Okay. So, so that's the product- so that's the productivity thing. Now let's go, let's talk about, let's ta- let's talk about procrastination, 'cause we know a lot about procrastination, okay? It, okay, two, two big ideas here. One, procrastination is not always bad, okay? Sometimes you're procrastinating for a reason, because you haven't worked it out, because you're still incubating an idea, okay? So it's not inherently bad. It's not like all procrastination is bad. The second big idea here is that procrastination is basically, in general, the downside, the darn, the down- negative procrastination is just an emotion regulation problem, right? It has nothing to do with time. It means that you are unwilling to confront something, and therefore are not com- Something is so disturbing to you that you would rather actually sabotage yourself than confront it. That in some ways you're making a quasi-rational decision that the pain of confronting, "Man, can I really write this?" is greater than actually not writing it in the first place. Um, and so pr- so we know this from a lot of research. Procrastination is an emotion regulation issue. And so what you have to think about is, what is the emotion that you're avoiding? And is there a small step, is there a way in some ways to trick yourself into either confronting it directly or to do something to just get yourself going, and that in, that, that the action ends up confronting the, the emotion. But a lot of times, but again, I just, in certain circumstances it's hard to say. The fact that you're not ready to start is a signal that, it might be a very, very positive signal. It could mean that, "Hey, it's, I'm still incubating this."

Jay Shetty 58:19 Yeah. That's a, that's a great answer. I, I, I love that perception because I think, I think as soon as you start labeling and going, "Oh, my procrastination's bad, and this is not-"

Speaker 58:27 Yeah

Jay Shetty 58:27 "... a good place to be in," you're right. You're just, every, all of that is just avoiding the actual emotion, which is a signal or a sign or an alert that's kind of trying to get your attention. And, and, and you just keep putting it away. And I think what that leads to, and this is something which I found fascinating in the book, it's like starting things. Like, I feel like, you know, knowing when to start a business or knowing when to start a project is like the hardest thing in the world, and, you know, I'm sure you get asked this a million times. But like tell us about the research behind starting something and, and what you found was most critical there.

Speaker 59:02 Again, there's ne- there's never, there's very rarely prospectively a perfect time to start something. All right? But there are ways to give ourselves a little bit of a different psycholo- a, a, a, a little bit of a psychological edge. Uh, and this is the work of Katie Milkman, Jason Riis, and Hangchen Dai. Um, they did it at Penn, uh, University of Pennsylvania. And uh, they had this idea of, of, um, what they call the fresh, it's called the fresh start effect. And a way to understand the fresh start effect is like this: that certain dates, certain days, certain dates, a- a- are what s- social psychologists call temporal landmarks. Temporal landmarks. That is, they are, they stand out in time the way a physical landmark stands out in space. So again, back to the journey metaphor. You're navigating your way, you're trying to find your way. "Oh, there's a landmark. I know where I am. Oh, there's that building. I have a sense of where I am." Temporal landmarks are navigational tools in some ways. But certain temporal landmarks have a peculiar psychological effect. What they do is essentially they, they operate as kind of a restart. What they say is that on certain days that are f- fresh start days, you essentially relegate your previous bad self to the past and open up a fresh ledger on your new self. All right? And so there's certain days that actually are more, you're more likely to start something and you're more likely to succeed while starting it. So what does this mean? Let's, let's be concrete here. You wanna start something, you're probably better off doing it on a Monday rather than on a Thursday. You're probably better doing it on the day after your birthday rather than three days before your birthday. You're probably better doing it on, on the, uh, like, uh, the, the first day of summer rather than three days before the first day of summer. Uh, a- let's say you're, uh, if you- if one is, uh, religiously observant, you know, uh, you know, the day after, uh, or the day of a religious holiday rather than four days before that religious holiday. Uh, and so you can in some ways use... y- have that sense of where you are temporally and pick the right date to start something.

Jay Shetty 1:01:02 Yeah. I, I can so relate to that, and my, my problem is I'll try start something on a Monday, I'll fail on Tuesday, and then I wait till the next Monday [laughs] to start it.

Speaker 1:01:11 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:01:12 And then-

Speaker 1:01:12 Well, uh, okay, so, so that's a, that's a, that's a mixed bag.

Jay Shetty 1:01:15 Yeah.

Speaker 1:01:15 That's a mixed bag. It depends on, it depends on, on how deep the failure was on, uh-

Jay Shetty 1:01:20 Sure

Speaker 1:01:21 ... it depends on how deep the failure was on Tuesday. Now, there's another strategy for all of this-

Jay Shetty 1:01:25 Yeah, please

Speaker 1:01:25 ... is, w- which, w- w- which on all of this, I mean, it's, it's reasonably well known, and in some ways, it, it, it's int- it's interesting, Jay, 'cause I think it's analogous to our conversation about simplicity and the opposite of simplicity, or simplicity and complexity, uh, in that I do think that in many cases we have been, um, seduced into the idea of moonshots and big, hairy, audacious goals.

Jay Shetty 1:01:50 Mm.

Speaker 1:01:50 I think that they're important, but I think that they're oversold in a way, and what's undersold... Just think about it, just think about it as a pricing issue, okay? So the, so, so the big, hairy, audacious goals moonshots, I think they're overvalued, and I think what's undervalued is small wins.

Jay Shetty 1:02:07 Mm.

Speaker 1:02:07 Uh, and once again, there's a lot of, there's a lot of evidence of that starting from Karl Weick, uh, 30 years ago. Small wins are enormously important, 'cause what small wins do is that they... Small wins can overcome that procrastination problem. Small wins can then lead to other small wins, and other small wins that cascade into something, into something bigger. So a strategy for overcoming procrastination, a strategy for many things, is to go f- is to go for small wins. Let me give you an example of that. So, so, uh, one strategy that I, um, that I've heard of, I, I mean, I just, I call it this, it's not, not originally from me, I just sort of in, you know, out there. I call it J5F. Not J-Y, but J, letter J, and, uh, that's just... That, and that stands for just five more, okay? And so-

Jay Shetty 1:02:53 Just five more

Speaker 1:02:53 ... if you don't feel like doing something, you say, "Okay, you know what I'm gonna do? Uh, man, okay, so I'm, so I'm doing some research right now, okay? I have these papers. Some of them are incredibly boring, okay? You know what? I can't stand it. I d- I wanna quit. You know what? I'll just read five more pages. Just five more pages, I'll read that," okay?

Jay Shetty 1:03:09 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:09 "Oh, my God, I got a boatload of email here. Ugh, I can't deal with it. I just wanna go inside and have a drink. You know what? I'm gonna just do five, five more. Five more emails and I'll do that." Um, uh, "You know what? I'm tired of writing. Okay, just five more sentences. That's it." And that, you know, that can get us going, give you a small win.

Jay Shetty 1:03:30 Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:30 And what happens a lot of times is that just 5 more becomes just 10 more, just 20 more, something like, uh, something like that.

Jay Shetty 1:03:36 I really like that one. That's, that's an awesome strategy. I think that's a great-

Speaker 1:03:39 Yeah, it's very simple. I use it all the time. I, I'm not joking around. I used it today. I used it today-

Jay Shetty 1:03:43 Yeah

Speaker 1:03:43 ... when I looked at my email file and I was like, "Oh, God, I, I can't bear the i-..." It's, like, okay, I'm just gonna... I've already answered enough email t- I'm like, "Okay, just five more," and you know what I did? I just, I did that and I got it done, and I probably ended up answering eight or something like that.

Jay Shetty 1:04:01 [laughs]

Speaker 1:04:01 Another one, a very well-known technique, I use it, it, I have no shame in using it, you're probably familiar with it, your listeners are probably familiar with it, is the, is the Pomodoro Technique, um, which is, which is b- you know, Pomodoro is Italian for tomato, uh, and so, um, you know, you set a, a timer. I, I, I have one on my computer, uh, that I use on, on very dark days. Uh-

Jay Shetty 1:04:23 [laughs]

Speaker 1:04:24 ... set a timer for whatever. Uh, I do it for 25 minutes, and like, I, I just can't bear this, okay? I, I can't research this anymore. I can't read this anymore. I, I'm sick of writing. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. This 25, 25 minute, I'm not gonna do anything else. I'm just gonna do it for that 25 minutes, and, and that can, um-

Jay Shetty 1:04:41 Yeah

Speaker 1:04:41 ... and, and that can... And I, and I think, let me, let me extract from this, as always, a large theoretical lesson, and it's this, all right? That [laughs] a lot of times in our understanding of what makes human beings tick, we think that belief precedes action, that you have to convince yourself and then that is the impetus to act. And in many cases, more cases than we realize, the arrow runs in the other direction.

Jay Shetty 1:05:08 Mm.

Speaker 1:05:09 That getting yourself to act can actually trigger the belief.

Jay Shetty 1:05:13 Yes.

Speaker 1:05:13 And that's a very, very important, that's a very, very important lesson.

Jay Shetty 1:05:16 That, that's so true, and that's really... It's, it's kind of like when we're like, "I can't make my mind up," right? Like, even that saying is exactly in that belief where you're just spending so much time trying to make your mind up and decide something. And, and the, what I love about what you just said is, is around that whole, the small wins element of just... I always feel like when you can get into a good rhythm and pattern of keeping promises to yourself and keeping-

Speaker 1:05:40 Mm

Jay Shetty 1:05:40 ... small commitments to yourself, you start to trust yourself, and when you start to trust yourself, you can then trust yourself with bigger tasks. The problem is, like you said, is that we go for these moonshot goals, and naturally we fail at them-

Speaker 1:05:54 Right

Jay Shetty 1:05:54 ... and therefore we don't trust ourselves. And, and I feel like self-trust is, like, the big issue when it comes with time, is that you're like, "Well, do I even trust myself with this much time? Do I even trust myself to complete that?" Uh, and you're right about the small wins, whether it's making your bed or just five more or, you know, all of these principles that you're laying out, like, that just builds trust with yourself.

Speaker 1:06:16 I'll give you something else, uh, that, that builds trust with yourself that's, that's related to this concept, which is, uh, again, is research-based. It's built on, uh... I'm gonna talk ab- I, I, I've written about this. I, I wrote about it in that book- Um, I've talked about it before, is, um, the work of Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School, and she found that the single biggest day-to-day motivator on the job is making progress and meaningful work. Okay? So the days we're making progress are the days we're motivated, we come back the next day feeling motivated. Uh, but one of the challenges is that, is that we never have a good- we often don't have a good sense of how much progress we're making. Um, and so one of the, so one of the things that I've done for, this is now for, like, eight or nine years now, is, um, at the end of every day I have a prog- what, you know, call it a progress ritual. And all I do is I just basically say, what I g- what, what'd you get done today? And I just list what I got done today, and I keep a record of that. Uh, and I have to say, I almost never look at the list, but it's the act of doing... I mean, seriously, I almost never look at the list, but it's the act of doing it. So I s- so I just take a moment. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a ritual. All right? And, you know, I don't have to tell you, former monk, the importance of rituals in, in, in human understanding, right? So it's a, it's a ritual, it's a punctuation mark at the end of the day. What'd you get done today, Dan? Okay, this is what I got done. Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-ba. Okay.

Jay Shetty 1:07:36 What, what... I, I love that. How do you do that for other people? So if you're leading teams, if you've got a small team, a big team, a company, how do you kinda help people realize the progress they're making?

Speaker 1:07:47 Great point.

Jay Shetty 1:07:47 Is that what... Yeah, there's something that you can do it for yourself, but yeah, how do you do it for others?

Speaker 1:07:51 Uh, I mean, you could do, you could do a ver- you could do a version of what I'm talking about for your, for your team. I mean, what I would wanna do is, is I would wanna get, I would wanna build that habit in others.

Jay Shetty 1:08:01 Yeah.

Speaker 1:08:01 Rather than have them rely on me for that, I would wanna build that habit in others. So what you could do is you could have, you could ask your team to send you that at the beginning, not as a way to monitor them, but as a way to, um-

Jay Shetty 1:08:14 Build the habit

Speaker 1:08:14 ... as a way to, uh, just as a way to build that habit, and then eventually have them continue the habit without sending it to you.

Jay Shetty 1:08:19 Hmm.

Speaker 1:08:20 Um...

Jay Shetty 1:08:20 Yeah. Absolutely. I'm gonna try. I'm actually gonna try that out. I'm, I'm 100% gonna try that out.

Speaker 1:08:25 What'd you get done today? Just write down the things you get done. I mean, I mean, y- it's, it's a very simple concept. We always, we often have a to-do list at the beginning of the day. Like, have a done list at the end of the day.

Jay Shetty 1:08:35 And it's almost like gamifying your mind, right? Because you know that if you got three things done yesterday, you might wanna get four done today, and so you'll push a bit further.

Speaker 1:08:43 Right. I think a lot of times, also, when we're scrambling around, we d- we don't have a sense of what we, what we've accomplished.

Jay Shetty 1:08:49 Oh.

Speaker 1:08:49 And so sometimes it can be, and sometimes it can be, um, uh, it can be affirming. So I, I know that many days where I feel like I haven't gotten anything done during the course of a day, I stop and I do my little progress ritual. Again, we're talking, like, Jay, 30 seconds, 60 seconds.

Jay Shetty 1:09:04 Yeah. For sure.

Speaker 1:09:05 Um, not anything elaborate. Um, I'm like, "Oh. Oh, okay, I actually got more done than today." And then on the days where I didn't get much done, you're like, "Oh, come on, man, you gotta, you gotta do a little bit better than this. Come back tomorrow."

Jay Shetty 1:09:16 Yeah, yeah. You're coaching yourself. You're coaching yourself.

Speaker 1:09:18 Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You're, you... I, I, in many ways you are. What you're doing is you're just giving yourself, you know... You're coaching... If you think about it like a, like a, like a sport. It's like, like, uh, like in, in, in, in, uh, in track and field or in swimming or something like that, your coach is there with a stopwatch saying, "Here was your time today. Okay." Uh, or, you know, "Here's how much you lifted today." Um, you have a sense of, you know, are you making progress or you're not making progress.

Jay Shetty 1:09:41 Yeah. One, I, I love that. One thing I want my audience, everyone who's listening right now or watching, I want you to be aware of is that literally Dan in this book breaks down everything from, like, productivity. I've, I've done some of the tests with you guys before, and I've shared the book when we talked about, um, you know, all, all of the different productivity times for different types of people based on what time you sleep and what time you wake up.

Speaker 1:10:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:10:01 We've done the, the naps, breaks. I'm not gonna ask Dan all those questions because they're in the book, and that's why I recommend the book. I, I wanna ask Dan stuff that isn't in the book or is extending the book, and, and pa- I think one of the biggest questions I do get asked that, that I do wanna talk about is relationships, because I think dating and getting married and knowing when to either pop the question or when you should expect the question, like, these are, like, these are, like, some of the biggest challenges in, in the world for, on a personal individual level for people. And so tell, tell me about some of the work that you've found when it came to not just, like, when's the best time to get married, but it's almost like, when did people, when did, or what did you find when people said they knew or they felt they'd found the right person?

Speaker 1:10:46 Yeah. That one is, that one is more inscrutable, I have to say. Um, uh, I wrote about that only very, very tentatively-

Jay Shetty 1:10:54 Yeah

Speaker 1:10:54 ... because I wasn't sure about the, the research on that. I mean, it, you know, what, what it says is that, um, in general, in America, marriages are more likely to last if people get married after age 25 and before age, I think, 34, somewhere around there.

Jay Shetty 1:11:13 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1:11:13 Uh, but again, that doesn't mean if you get married at age 35 you're gonna get a divorce.

Jay Shetty 1:11:17 [laughs]

Speaker 1:11:17 You get married at 28, you're... I mean, it's just like, there's a slight, there's a slight effect there. Uh, there are some interesting effects on, um, uh, especially in America today, uh, people with more formal education are more likely to get married and stay married. Uh, people with less formal education are less likely to get married and less likely to stay married if they are. Uh, and there's also seems to be an effect, whatever your level of education, on getting married after you complete your education rather than before. But again, I don't think you take those large population insights to make a decision about whether you're gonna spend the rest of your life with someone you love. I can recommend a book that is, um-

Jay Shetty 1:11:52 Oh, yeah

Speaker 1:11:52 ... uh, well, one of the leading scholars of, of, of marriage, um, s- but really the social psychology of marriage is, is at Northwestern. His name is Eli Finkel. Uh, he wrote a very good book called The All-or-Nothing Marriage-

Jay Shetty 1:12:03 All right

Speaker 1:12:03 ... about how marriage has, about how marriage has changed. Uh, s- so a, a lot of what we know about healthy marriages and also how marriage has changed in America over the last, uh, 200 years. It's a, it's a really, really... I, I, it's a very, very interesting book.

Jay Shetty 1:12:17 All-or-Nothing Marriage?

Speaker 1:12:19 Yeah, The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli, Eli Finkel, which, uh, and, and, you know, there's a lot of really good research, uh, in there. And then, you know, there are some relationship advice in there too. Um, you know, among the most important things are, um, uh-

Speaker 1:12:32 You know, what do you attribute to someone's inherent personality and what do you attribute to circumstance? So if your spous- so if your spouse snaps at you, say, uh, do you say, "Oh my God, my spouse is the biggest jerk there ever was," or do you say, "Oh, my spouse is having a bad day"?

Jay Shetty 1:12:45 Yeah.

Speaker 1:12:45 And people who make the attribution that it's circumstantial, not surprisingly, end up better off than people who say, you know, attribute the behavior to per- someone's inner jerkiness.

Jay Shetty 1:12:55 Right. Yeah. No, it, it would be fascinating also to look at things like amount of time couples spend together, but amount of time couples spend arguing, on, on useful arguments maybe too.

Speaker 1:13:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:13:05 So, yeah.

Speaker 1:13:06 There's other, there's other, there's other research out there. I- there's a guy, I- I'm spacing out on this. There's a guy named Gottman, I think his name is.

Jay Shetty 1:13:11 Yeah, John Gottman. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1:13:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:13:13 Yeah, he's done-

Speaker 1:13:13 He's done some research on, on, on marriage and, you know, one of the, not s- this is not surprising, one of the biggest, um, things that you see is I, I, if I'm not m- if I'm characterizing it right, is not arguing per se, but how people argue.

Jay Shetty 1:13:27 Yes.

Speaker 1:13:28 Um, and, um, and so some of it has to do with the attribution. The other thing, one of the biggest signals I think in Gottman's research is, uh, when people express contempt for their partner. Not surprisingly, that's a marker of things gone awry.

Jay Shetty 1:13:42 Adam, I want to shift from, like, your mind and your ideas and the way you think to how you live. Can you take us through a day in the life of Adam? Like, w- how does it start? How does it end? What does it look like? What's been your routine more recently? What are some things that you've changed over time that have actually created momentum and acceleration?

Speaker 1:14:03 So it's funny because my schedule is completely different than I'm sure yours and, and most in general. And I think this, again, becoming comfortable with who you are, this was, this was a process and I didn't have the ability early on in the journey. I do have much more of an ability of it now. But I go to sleep at, um, nearly 4:00 A.M. every day, and I woke- wake up closer to 11:00 A.M. So I think a lot of times when I think of entrepreneurs and, and people in, in my position, they think you're up at 5:00 or 6:00 A.M. You're, you're beating the sun. But I'm the exact opposite, and I've found that, um, my greatest point of inspiration and joy is, is typically during the nighttime when there's less activity because I can focus on where we want to go, what we want to do, and also on myself. And back to n- inherently knowing who I was, and m- my brother as well, we've known since we were 15 or 16 that the, the night schedule worked better for us, but we didn't have an ability to implement it 'cause we were in high school, we were in college, and then when we're starting the business, you have to be on other people's more traditional, uh, I guess like calendar or schedule. And so as we got to higher levels, we were able to continually shift it, and obviously we have people on our team that supplement the early mornings and whatnot, and we work the late nights. But I really embraced what my natural predisposition was for my schedule, is that, and I knew that I would be better if I could operate on this schedule. And just like morning people love to be up in the morning, I love to just push it as far as I can late into the night. And I think there's nothing wrong with it, and a lot of times, uh, it doesn't get glorified because it's, it's a difficult schedule. It doesn't work for everybody. It's, it's not essentially normal. But for me, it's been the absolute best thing. And being able to build my schedule the way that I want, I believe is the ultimate luxury. 'Cause again, I've ... If you can control your time, and, and not necessarily what happens throughout your time, but con- control how you allocate your time, most people would rather have 10 minutes of you at 100% than three hours of you at 20%. You can't e- even though you spend more time, you can't give them all of you. And so one of the things that I identified as I was building my schedule this way and really leaning into it is I can give people 100% of my effort when I'm on a schedule that aligns with when I want to go to sleep and when I want to wake up, and also when I want to work out. If I can, if I can anchor those specific things, I can give everybody much more of myself in a shorter period of time. And again, like I've, I've heard you speak about it before, and you said it beautifully, and it's true. Like s- most of the people in your life, Jay, they would prefer for you to have be with them for 10 minutes, give them 100% of Jay. It's an amazing experience. Than for you to be sitting in the room on your phone dozing off and not giving them the energy that not only they deserve, but that you deserve to give them. And so I think that that's something that I identified through how I built my schedule now. I mean, I work out every single day, and I think that's, for me, it's a really important thing 'cause discipline has been something that has been pivotal to our journey too. And I believe that with discipline, if you anchor yourself through specific things, it gives you more freedom. It's ... Discipline is something that, that opens you up and gives you more opportunities for s- to be spontaneous, more freedom. It's because you have clear pillars, clear anchors. It's like if you're playing a video game and you get to the checkpoint, you can be more brave in your action because you know you can always go back to the checkpoint. So, like, that's the way I live my, my day-to-day life. I try to have specific windows where I'll do calls, but then I leave everything else essentially open because I love, I love the chaos in a positive way, and I love the spontaneity in a positive way. And I think that, um, if for me at least, this is the way I found my schedule, if it's too back to back to back to back and scheduled out, uh, there's no, there's no real opportunity for the spontaneous excitement, which I think that we all need to have in one way or another. And I don't think that it's the same for everybody, but I think that you have to leave yourself the ability to discover something or to discover a relationship you didn't think was gonna happen, or a partnership you didn't think was gonna happen, or a friendship, or things of that nature. And I think that being able to anchor myself knowing I'm doing this, these few things at these few times- ... leaving this window open, um, so that I can try things. And, and again, like the, the greatest opportunities I've ever had have come from taking a chance on something and then anchoring it in the way that I, I live my life through my schedule. And so, uh, again, it's, it's something that I've had to work towards. It, it wasn't like that on day one. It's as you get further in the jour- journey, you hone it in more, you have more opportunity to try things, and you have more control, I think. Like again, one of the key things for me in terms of success is control over schedule and control over time. You don't get to c- you don't know how much time you have, but if you can control how you allocate that time, that's truthfully the greatest luxury, and that's something that I think is pivotal to success. And I think, again, when we're thinking about our team in, in s- specifically in the headquarters, everybody has different schedules because everybody works differently. And I've seen how positive it's been for Ryan and I, and so we try to translate that to the team as well.

Jay Shetty 1:19:34 I love hearing about how different your schedule is to mine because it still represents the same thing to both of us. So-

Speaker 1:19:42 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:19:42 ... you still have discipline, you still have focus, you're still prioritized around when you can be creative. It's based on self-awareness and what's good for you and right for you. So the values that we're choosing our schedule on is the same. Like, there's a very similar value set, and it just looks different, and that's actually the beauty of life. Like that, and I think that's where we go wrong, where we go, you know, in a few years people are gonna be saying, "Oh yeah, I need to do what Adam's doing. I need to sleep at 4:00 AM and, you know, wake up." And it's like, well, that's not really gonna work. Or people can be looking and going, "Oh yeah, I need to wake up like, uh, you know, like I need to go to sleep at when Jay does and wake" And it's like, well, that's not really what we're saying. What we're saying is, if you're self-aware and you create discipline and rhythm in your life and space for spontaneity, then you've got to figure out what works for you and where it works for you. And so I love hearing how different our schedules are because it just proves that there are multiple ways that it can look, even though there's a depth of why they're created that way. And in addition to that, what I really appreciated you were talking about is I think we think of discipline as ease of either back to back, and we think of laziness or spontaneity as completely free. And what you've actually said is what discipline is, is that you've created a discipline where you can be, what I've been thinking about a lot lately, is you can be effective and efficient. And efficiency is often seen as discipline, but efficiency means you do a lot of stuff. But effectiveness means you do important stuff. And, and I think that's what I'm seeing is missing in so many of our lives, is that we're trying to be efficient. We do the laundry, do the dishes, we spoke to the team, we check this off, check this off, check this off. But then you're like, "Well, I haven't had any creative inspiration today. I haven't been effective." And so I, I'm really glad that you actually explained discipline to be the meeting of efficiency and effectiveness together.

Speaker 1:21:42 I mean, I think you said it in a, in an efficient and effective way, uh, the way that you just like illustrated what I was trying to, to get across, but it's, but it's true. Like, I think a lot of times people think of discipline as something that lacks freedom, but discipline is the thread and the, and the opportunity that gives you freedom. And so I think, and again, you, as you become more efficient, you can become more effective, but it's hard to be effective if you're not efficient. And so I think, again, you, you said it in an amazing way, and you took a complex thing and you digested it, but it's, it's been really paramount and, and I think it's something that is c- is the way that my life has, has gone and, and again, like I think that we have the same theories, you and I, in terms of what we want to accomplish from our day-to-day lives. We do it at a different time. Like, I'm working out at midnight, you're doing things early in the morning, but it's we're looking to get the same type of result. And I think, again, when you were talking about being self-aware, that is the absolute most important thing. If you tried, if I tried to work your schedule, it wouldn't do the same thing for me. If you tried to do mine, it wouldn't work. But I think the fact that we've both been transparent, honest with ourselves, and self-aware of what makes us show up as best as we possibly can, and then that makes us better for other people. And so I think for us, like that's, that's been an incredible way to phrase it.

Jay Shetty 1:23:06 Yeah. And I, and I respect and appreciate that in you so much because I think there is a noise. I mean, I get different noise, so my noise is, "Hey Jay, why don't you hang out late? Like, why don't you come to this? Or why don't you..." Right? And then your noise is, "Well, if you're an entrepreneur who's disciplined, shouldn't you be waking up earlier?" And you know-

Speaker 1:23:23 Exactly

Jay Shetty 1:23:23 ... and, and it's just really interesting how like no matter what you do, there's gonna be someone who disagrees with it. And, and that's why it has- And that's why I respect what you just shared. So I'm so happy to hear that you have this. I had no idea that that was your schedule. Now I know when to spend time with you. And-

Speaker 1:23:38 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 1:23:39 ... and, uh, uh, you know, and, and I really like that because I really hope that everyone who's listening, you're feeling more confidence that you're not doing it wrong if you're doing what's right for you. But notice that Adam and I are still basing it on values of discipline, of focus, of creativity. It's not that Adam's not just saying, "I do whatever I want whenever I want," and there's noth- there's no structure. He still even has a sleep pa- He- You still have a sleep routine, it sounds like, when you're like-

Speaker 1:24:07 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:24:07 ... 4:00 AM to 11:00 AM, right? There's still a routine, and so that's what I find is really healthy. Adam, this has been so powerful because what I love about the way you talk about entrepreneurship is that it's strategic and intentional, but then there's the spontaneity and creativity, and I'm so excited to see what you continue to build. It's, you know, you're 12 years in, and I cannot wait to see you just continue to crush it. I mean, you're already crushing it, but, but for the business to continue to grow and grow and grow. I wanted to ask you- Before we come to the final five, around creativity and innovation, and you spoke about spontaneity there, meeting someone random, like bumping into an idea. I, I love that so much. What has been your secret to creativity and innovation? Where have you continued to find that, that discipline and that connection?

Speaker 1:25:04 So I think one of our, I guess one of our, I don't know if secrets is the right word, but again, back to my brother, like the fact that there's two of us and that we're able to go through life together and we've had similar experiences. I mean, my brother, like to, to be fully transparent is, is more creative than I am. And like, when we're thinking of color stories and whatnot, Ryan's always building these beautiful color stories. Cody, who's our design director, is amazing. Jake and ... He's our content director and he's incredible. Sam, who ha- heads up social, she's, she's amazing as well, and just the whole team. I could s- I could go on and on. But one of the things that I discovered, and this actually came from my mom, so, uh, I ... And you wouldn't know it based on what my life has become, but until I was like 25 years old, I'm 34 now, so no, maybe even older. This is like 2013. Until, but let's use 25 as the number. Until I'm 25 years old, I hardly have ever left the country. I left the country one time, twice actually. I went to Mexico one time, and I went to London one time, and it's like each one was for two days. And then when I'm like 25, my mom [lip smack] basically says like, "You guys need to do more and see more things. You need to discover more things." 'Cause we were so laser focused on what we're gonna do. So a lot of the things that I've reflected on today with you, Jay, is things I've learned more specifically over the last six or seven years in terms of like the spontaneity, the freedom, and I've always had the discipline, but it was almost at a level that was too high. And so my mom, uh, had said, "You need to ... We ..." They were going to Hong Kong and she was, and it was for this wedding. She's like, "You need, you need to come. Like it's an old family friend, you have to come to this wedding." And I, I had no intention of, of traveling overseas. Long story short, I end up, Ryan and I end up going. It's the most incredible trip, um, just like going outside of the country, seeing something completely different, changing our perspective. And when we're there, we get inspired by this bridge, and this bridge that never s- I'd never seen pictures of it, anything. We get inspired by this bridge. We end up creating a shoe based on this. We end up going to another, another country vis- years later, inspired by that. And so I think that travel allowed us to change our point of view, change our perspective, when you're thinking of creativity. A lot of times there's things in your day-to-day life that when you're thinking about repetition, you don't pay attention to it because it comes at almost a second nature. It's reoccurring. But when you go to a new place, everything is new. You have to pay attention to your surroundings because it's uncomfortable. Not necessarily in a negative way, but in a positive way. You get all of the stimulation through your senses. You're seeing things, you're meeting people. And so when I, when my mom pushed me out of my comfort zone then, it completely changed the way that I was viewing the world, and it made it so that I was much more open to receiving what the world had than just pushing what I wanted to do or, or what the intention was. And so I think like that made it so, um, it's kind of like, uh, you re- I don't know if you remember on the old cellphone signals, when you would make a, a call going out, it would be like an arrow pu- pushing like this, but when someone's sending you a message, it's going both ways. And so that's kind of what that calibration did to how we discover creativity. And now, like, uh, one of the thing, the greatest things that inspires me is movement, whether it's movement in cars, movement on foot, movement in the air. And so I think like movement in general, changing your surroundings, not necessarily going to another country or another state, but even going anywhere just discovering, I think, the opportunity for, for movement. That's really where like the creativity came for us. And then again, I think that if you can take an idea, lean into it and see like, and speak to why this makes you feel different, you'll find inspiration in it. And I think that for us, like we have, we have an incredible team that finds inspiration in different places, and then we're able to talk about it. And the greatest thing you can do is be a great communicator because if you can articulate what your vision is, and whether that's through verbal, whether it's through art, whether it's through anything, people will understand and people will feel it. Not everybody will, but some people will. And I think like that's one of the things that's gone really, really far for us is that we've been able to take these, uh, inspirational things like our streamline shoe, which is my favorite one, is inspired by Japanese souffle pancakes from when Ryan and I were in Tokyo, and like Ryan's obsessed with them. And but we took that and we, and we made it into a shoe. And so it's like you never know where the inspiration is gonna come from, but if you allow yourself to rec- receive it, you can get it. And I think like that's something that a lot of people don't think of. They think they have to put it out there and push it, but a lot of times just receiving what's around you will give you a lot of inspiration into what you should do.

Jay Shetty 1:30:06 I am so glad I asked you that question. I was about to not ask you that question, but I'm so happy. And even though you're giving, of course, which is wonderful to hear, the credit to your team and your brother for being the cr- you know, creative ones, but the fact that you've been able to observe that and see that that's where it's come from, and the example from your mother too, I, I love that, Adam. Thank you so much for watching that video. If you enjoyed it, here's another one I think you'll love.

Cameo 1:30:30 You'll get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagined. And that's because the path that's paved up and down is far different to the path we paved