🦉How to handle challenges & Tim Ferriss's daily routine
Spend more time implementing wisdom, not collecting it.
I would like to start with a story.
I have had health issues for the past four years, which included debilitating pain and environmental sensitivities. The biggest thing I have learned is the value of Surrender.
Accept where your life is and persistently move towards a solution. Nothing in life is permanent, not even your problems. Trust that you will find the right solution at the right time. Allow your life to unfold, and never quit on yourself, even if others have.
Episode - Moving through challenges
Duration - 52 minutes
How to handle challenges
Stop fighting your challenges. Stop thinking that it shouldn’t be happening to you. Release the resistance. Ask for help from the Universe, God, or your guardian angel (whatever your spiritual disposition is)
Surrender to how your life unfolds instead of being rigid about what you want. Be open to what life brings your way.
Maintain the right outlook and mindset. Accept things the way they are. Nothing is permanent. Challenges won’t last either. Accept where you are and craft a plan towards betterment.
Pay attention to signs from the Universe, i.e., seeing a special bird or coincidences. These can be a source of encouragement or confirmation that you are on the right track.
Manage your negativity bias. Look for what is going right, not what is going wrong.
Every night, tell your partner three things you are grateful for about them. It will be hard to find these initially. But, over time, you will train your brain to look for everything your partner does to show you that they love you. It could be 'small' things like taking the garbage out, making you a coffee, etc.
Episode: #780 Tim Ferriss - The lessons, hacks and books that changed my life
Duration - 3 hours 13 minutes
Choose the right projects by asking this question - How can I succeed even if I fail? Ask which project will help you deepen your skills and relationships and not focus solely on external success metrics such as revenue. This way, success will accumulate over time.
Don't frame outcomes in binary terms - success or failure.Â
State—Story—Strategy: Feeling depressed or negative? First, change your physical state (go for a walk, run, take a cold shower). This change in your physical state will provide a better perspective (story) on your given situation, resulting in a better strategy for handling it.
Tim's morning routine: Drink water, take a cold shower, then take a hot bath, followed by journaling. Tim spends 4 hours a day on high-leverage business activities/tasks. Tim uses a weekly schedule rather than a daily schedule. The weekly framework allows for surprises without throwing off the schedule. The biggest thing is not to feel rushed in the morning. Plan your day the night before.
Your exact routine or sequence doesn’t matter as long as you set aside 3-4 hours for the most impactful tasks (business and personal).
People will always tell you that you are too late. Start your podcast or newsletter anyway. You will be ok if your product is different and provides value.
Be grateful for the boring and the mundane, as those tasks allow you to do the fun things.
When I was poor and miserable, I was full of hope. When I was rich and miserable, I was despondent.
If you only value fame, likes, and followers, you’re living a life dependent on algorithm changes.
Cold exposure was prescribed for melancholy, aka depression, 100-200 years ago.
Block out and schedule 2-3 events with your family and close friends in advance. By booking in advance and looking forward to the events, you will get way more out of these trips.
Have multiple metrics for a successful week. For example, work out three times a week, cook at home, or have a date night with your partner instead of only focusing on how well you did at work—single success metric vs. multiple success metrics.
TMS can be an excellent intervention for treating anxiety and depression when done with medically certified and experienced practitioners. DO NOT DIY this at home - you can seriously injure or alter your brain.
Ketamine as an anti-depressant can be detrimental and can increase susceptibility to depression. It can also be very addictive.
Optimize for the process, the journey, and not the outcome.
Exercises Tim Ferriss recommends - Acro Yoga, overhead squat, gymnastics training (coach Christopher Sommer)
Defend your personal time as much as you do your professional time. Think in systems. Where can you insert automation, batching, and delegation?
Don’t oversell your Heroes. They most likely got good at one thing by sacrificing everything else.
If you only need one full-body workout plan - try this.
Episode: An invitation to innovation - why creativity is found not forced
Podcast duration - 22 minutes
Innovation, at its core, is problem-solving.
As a leader, your job is to create an environment where people collaborate easily to solve key problems and foster innovation.
Communication is key if you want to create a culture of innovation. Do these three things right.
1. Create an environment where people feel comfortable experimenting and failing together.
2. Ensure that All the skill sets and knowledge base are fully leveraged.
3. Create a community with shared purpose and values. This will motivate the team to do all the hard things needed for successful innovation (problem-solving).
Vision is where we are going. The purpose is WHY we are going there.
Enable people so they can explore their personal best, their personal genius as Pixar refers to it.
Seek out people with different opinions.
Linda Hill's favorite communicator and his best-selling book.
There are three keys to effective communication:
Create curiosity by being provocative,
Know your audience and
Aim to engage the audience's head and heart.
What's the origin of the phrase 'Keep your nose to the grindstone'?
There are two rival explanations as to the origin of this phrase. One is that it comes from the supposed habit of millers who checked that the stones used for grinding cereal weren’t overheating by putting their nose to the stone to smell any burning. The other is that it comes from the practice of knife grinders when sharpening blades to bend over the stone or even to lie flat on their fronts, with their faces near the grindstone when holding the blades against the stone.
Duration -- 2 hours 56 minutes
Metabolism is the cornerstone of good health. It is the process of turning energy from food into cellular (your body's) energy.
9 out of 10 all-cause mortality diseases are caused by metabolic dysfunction.
To optimize your metabolism, focus on the big 3 -
Mitochondria (cellular energy),
Inflammation, and
Oxidative stress
 Walking for 20 minutes before and after your meals or 2-3 minutes every 30 minutes can decrease all-cause mortality by 60-70%. If you work at a desk, get an under-the-desk treadmill to make walking easier.
To get healthier, do resistance training 3 times a week (hitting all major body parts) and get your heart rate up for 30-60 minutes in total per week. This will help create more mitochondria and stabilize glucose.
Basic Lab tests you should do and their optimal range: Fasting glucose (less than 100), fasting triglycerides (less than 150), HDL cholesterol (above 40 for men or 50 for women), Hemoglobin A1C (less than 5.7%), Total Cholesterol/HGL Ratio (less than 3.5:1), Waist circumference (less than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men) and blood pressure less than 120/80. Consider services like This for blood work.
Food, sleep, emotional health, toxins, and light are key focus areas that optimize your health.
Compress your eating window between 6 and 8 hours. This reduces glucose and insulin spikes and regulates metabolism. The average American eats over a 15-hour window and has 11 eating events.
Eat most of your allocated carbs in the first half of the day. Eating carbs later in the day can be detrimental to your metabolism.
Adding fat and fiber to your meals can slow down the insulin spike.
Dr. Casey recommends continuously measuring your glucose spikes to determine which foods are good or bad for you. Try This glucose monitor.
A healthy mindset is critical to being healthy. Manage your fear and desire to control things. Get outside and spend time in nature. Disconnect.
Episode: Dr. Barry Kudrowitz on how play and humor fuel innovation
Podcast duration - 47 minutes
Everyone can be creative by encouraging play (make it enjoyable). Make the act of doing something the reward, not its outcome.
To make something playful, make sure it’s challenging enough. If it's too challenging, it can be off-putting and create resistance. If it's not easy, it will not be stimulating enough.
Apples to Apples: Creative board games directly train your brain to generate different ideas or make different connections. This skill is transferable from your living room to a corporate board room.
To be funnier, learn how to uncover non-obvious connections. For example, who decided how apart men's bathroom stalls should be? When did we decide on that distance as a socially acceptable distance for men to pee next to each other?
Episode: #736 A strategic deep dive on TikTok, the boiling moat of Taiwan & China's next-gen Statecraft - Matt Pottinger
Podcast duration - 1 hour 45 minutes
Want to learn a foreign language? Start with sounds much like a child does. Record yourself saying sentences flawlessly first. Then, start to deconstruct those sentences, grammar, vocabulary, etc. Comic books with translations in your target language can also help you learn conversational dialog much faster than traditional methods.
Chinese Communist Party intends to weaponize TikTok for ideological persuasion and destruction of ideas such as democracy. It promotes anti-American or antisemitic content.
It doesn’t matter what the truth is; it only matters who controls the platform because they control the narrative.
TikTok is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is not run/controlled by Singapore.
China is playing a very long game to gain global control, including control of resources in South America and Africa.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Vandenberg asserted that "politics stops at the water's edge." Despite our differences, we must never lose our national unity and pride. We must maintain a nationally unified front, or this divisive partisanship will become an opportunity for our adversaries or potentially the cause of our downfall as a nation.
What is the significance of Taiwan, and why does it matter? - Geography: It’s geographically positioned to support China's vision of Beijing controlling Asia and Asians. Taiwan provides a safe passage for China to set up air bases, enforce a blockade on Japan, and plan invasions to neighboring nations (most of them are US allies). Democracy: Taiwan is a thriving democracy with two female presidents already. Ideologically, China sees Taiwan as a challenge to Chinese policies and doesn't like that the Chinese public can look to Taiwan as an alternative way of life. Economy: Taiwan produces 92% of the world's semiconductors. Any blockade or trade embargo can demolish Taiwan's technological infrastructure and economy.
Taiwan has a favorable geography that can be used defensively when combined with advanced military firepower and technology. This is a deterrent for China. However, Taiwanial depth’ and should train its civilian population in military skills, logistics, and emergency medical capabilities, needs more ‘soc much like Israel or Estonia.
3 things the US needs to do to slow China’s plan for global takeover: 1) Impose massive costs on the Chinese economy 2) Pay attention to China’s plan to create allies or partnerships in South America (China is supporting Guyana’s dictator) whilst strengthening US’s democracy and national unity 3) Much like China, have the long term, patient vision, and plan.
Corporate America focuses on promoting the best of the best. Marine Corps does the opposite. They find the weakest person on the team and push them to grow. This way, your worst player will still be very good, improving the overall baseline.
Leadership lesson from the Marine Corps: Moral courage is more important than physical courage. Moral courage is doing the right thing when no one is looking.
Episode: The power of persistence with Ryan Kugler
Podcast duration - 36 minutes
Ideas alone are nothing without execution.
Watch Steve Jobs's metaphor on how teamwork creates refined products.
Episode: Does money buy happiness? A conversation with Deca-millionaires
Podcast duration - 50 minutes
Wealth is not a replacement for purpose.
Intentionally create a number (income/profits per month) that provides freedom to live stress-free (you are not worried about covering basic needs). Avoid lusting for higher numbers. Your happiness won’t materially increase with a higher number.
Surround yourself with people who can balance ambition with peace and joy.
Create and define your identity and purpose, and then publish it. Tell your family and friends what your purpose is or what you value. This will keep you socially accountable.
The study showing that an increase in income over 75k per year does not increase happiness is flawed because it didn’t factor in location, inflation, and cash in savings or investments.
Happiness comes from living in line with your core values. So, if you value freedom, then optimize it. More money will bring freedom, but it is on you to decide how much. After a certain point, more money will not bring more freedom. Ali Abdaal's North Star value is to have enough money so he can have enough money to live, learn, and teach freely. Any decision that takes him away from that reduces his happiness. What is your core North Star value?
Wealthy people don’t spend as much money as you think.
Decisions made from obligation lead to unhappiness.
Prioritize spending money on experiences over things. Make more money to make more memories.
Kids pay attention to your actions, not words.
Top tip - Pick a target and work backward. Want your income to be 250k/year? Pick which industries and positions pay that salary or what business can be scaled to that number. Then, gain the necessary skills and lifestyle discipline to create a balanced life.
I hope this was helpful.
What is one thing you will implement this week? Share in the comments.
Also, please share this with a friend who might get value out of this.
PS: I am excited to get my blood work done next month and see where my metabolic health is. Listening to that episode of Huberman really helped me understand the value of optimizing our metabolism. Plus, I am a carb-ingesting machine and now intend on going low-carb later in the day. Wish me luck!
Thanks for reading.
Much Love,
PM
Disclaimers: I have no affiliation with any of the sources linked above. The information mentioned should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment purposes, and it is not financial advice.