Transcription
[Music] welcome to this module of the world-class week system curriculum. This module is all about the extraordinary day decode. I'm actually going to deconstruct an extraordinary day for you. We've talked about morning Mastery, and I've given you a wealth of methods that you can apply and practice until you wire them into the point of automaticity.
Now, we're going to talk about what does a world-class day look like after you've got your morning? What does the rest of the day look like? Before we do that, I want to take you up to a macro level to give you some perspective again. And I want to remind you about the world-class week system loop.
So, as you know, there are five elements to the world-class week system loop. What's element number one? Well, we just went through it. It's Morning Mastery. After you've mastered your mornings, what is your focus going to be? To upgrade your creativity, and your productivity, and your prosperity, and your lifestyle, and your impact on your community, and on humanity? Is number two, Daily Victory, which is what this module's all about. It's all about decoding what makes an extraordinary day after you've had a world-class morning.
What's the third element of the world-class week system loop? Well, it's about evening. It's about evening renewal. You've had a strong day. Enjoy your evening. Don't allow yourself to become depleted. Don't buy into the hustle and grind culture, working 24/7, 365. That's not only that, actually sabotages your productivity, and it actually makes your life much less fun. So again, the way to achieve exponential productivity and performance is work in cycles, work in pulses, work in bursts of intense, focused, concentrated, magical, fiery work, and then in your evening, make the time to renew.
What's the fourth element? Well, of course, that's a pre-sleep structure. A pre-sleep structure that allows you and sets you up for deep sleep. And the more you do it, the more you're just going to, as you do that pre-sleep structure, you're just going to feel sleepy, and you're just going to tell your finest self, this is a time to sleep really deeply. And that's what a ritual is. It basically, you don't have to use willpower after a while. Once you get, once it becomes a habit, you don't use willpower.
And if you look at, if we were to get into the neuroanatomy of a habit, so much of it involves the basal ganglia. And the basal ganglia is a part of the brain that stores habits. And so, initially, it's hard. And if you've gone, if you've gone through the 5 AM Club Method course, you know the habit installation protocol and the neuroscience behind habit installation. But for now, let me simply say, within the basal ganglia, this is where habits are stored. And the brain has one interesting feature. It does whatever it can to allow itself to use as little energy as possible because the brain usually consumes a huge amount of energy. So it's going to do whatever it can to protect its energy. And that's why we have habits.
And so, in the basal ganglia, after we've practiced the habit over and over and over, the habit gets stored in the basal ganglia. And then the brain doesn't have to work as hard. The habit just repeats its pattern. And then the brain can go on to do other things. So having a pre-sleep structure or a morning routine, what it does, it's hard at first. It's messy in the middle. It's beautiful at the end. But once you wire it in as a habit, you don't use a lot of energy. It's automatic. You don't even think about it.
And then, of course, the fifth element of the world-class week system loop. What's that all about? It's about wonderful weekends. I can't wait to share how I spend my weekends because weekends should be for fun, I think, in many ways. So wonderful, it's the wonderful weekend protocol. I love the term fruits of your labor. I think you should work hard and play hard. I think that balance is so incredibly important. Aristotle talked, Aristotle talked about the golden mean concept, which is not one extreme, not the other extreme, the golden mean. I think it's very wise. And I think weekends should be for wonder and awe, and savoring beauty, and enjoying the fruits of your labor. Otherwise, what's the point? What's the point of working really hard and not enjoying your family, not enjoying yourself, not doing things that, that fill your heart with joy?
So I wanted to reconnect with the, the world-class week system loop to give you some perspective before we go, go into the extraordinary day decode. Well, let's get into it right now. And the first element of a great day, we've talked about the morning routine. The first element for a great workday is the Daily Five concept. And the Daily Five concept is this: never start a workday without five little goals that you will not leave the office, or you will not leave work without achieving. Because again, small daily, seemingly insignificant improvements, when done consistently over time, lead to stunning results.
How did Apple become Apple? How did the great enterprises become the great enterprises? The great, so tech companies, for example, it, it's not one bold act of revolution that made the company great. It was all those daily acts of improvement, optimization, iteration, that seemed insignificant, but when done consistently, created a tsunami of results. So transformation is not done through revolution, it's done through evolution.
And so, when you get to work, or start work, if you work at home, for example, ask yourself, what five little wins, micro wins, tiny triumphs, 1% wins, can I achieve today that will make this a great day? And if you do that consistently for five days, that's what, 5 times 5, 25 micro wins. Every five days, you do that over 10 weeks, that's 250. You do it over, etc., etc., that's 2,500. Keep on doing it, it's 25,000. This is how you arrive at world-class weeks. It's the little wins that you do every single day. So the Daily Five concept is powerful. What are we doing here? It's the extraordinary [Music] day decode. And element number one is what? The Daily Five concept. So simple, so incredibly powerful.
What's the next part of this decode? It's the TBTF regime. I watched this incredible documentary about American artist Andrew Wyeth. You know what I noticed? His secret sauce, part of his winning formula. He left New York City at the height of his fame, or when he became famous. He didn't like it. He didn't like the noise. He didn't like all the press. And he went out to a farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he built his, his studio. And he also purchased a property in Maine. And he divorced himself from the world. And he just did amazing work.
When I look at the great artists, they all have one thing in common: isolation. I'm going to repeat that again because it's so incredibly important. One of the great golden keys to genius is isolation. You can be in the world, and if you're in the world, you're going to be pulled into the noise and distraction. And you're never going to get in a flow state. You're never going to put your brain into transient hypofrontality, where your prefrontal cortex stops worrying, stops criticizing yourself, stops overthinking and ruminating, and get into that lower level brainwave from beta to alpha, down to theta and flow.
And so, what the TBTF concept is all about, it's the Tight Bubble of Total Focus. As soon as you start working, I want you to give yourself at least a number of hours where no one can reach you. Too many people are doing amazing work. They're in flow state. They're, they're just generating these incredible ideas that will bring rich value to the marketplace. Their phone goes off. Their notifications go off. Social media goes off. And it literally breaks them out of the trance. The essence of genius is isolation.
When I look at Andrew Wyeth, when I look at J.D. Salinger, who did that incredible book, Catcher in the Rye, he left the world. And he went to a place, and what he did was he just would work in a bunker. It was a concrete bunker where he would work for hours. The creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming, bought an oceanside place in Jamaica. And he called it Goldeneye. And when he wanted to work, he left the world. He didn't bring his family with him. He didn't bring his technology with him. He went into his writing room where he could see the ocean. And he even told his gardeners, do not walk across my view over the next five hours. Because when you're in flow state, even someone moving, even a gardener, or some distraction, or a phone going off, or a notification bell going off, will pull you out of flow.
So, Tight Bubble of Total Focus regime just means for a number of hours when you work, you really work. You don't come to play. You bring it on. And it makes me also think of a documentary I watched a little while ago about Thomas Edison. And Thomas Edison did the same thing. He would leave his home, and he would journey up this hill. And the place was called Meno Park. And him and his band of merry workers would lock themselves away for hours and days in Meno, his Meno Park work lab, working on major problems and trying to find solutions and their inventions. And he had this routine where he would work, and then he'd take a nap. He'd work for another few hours, he'd take a nap. He'd work for another few hours, he'd take a nap. But the key thing again was isolation. Because when there is distraction, you cannot get into flow. When there is anxiety, and by the way, a distraction creates anxiety. Someone comes to you with an operational question when you're doing your magical work, and your master work creates anxiety. It's all those stresses from normal life, even thinking about invoices and suppliers and all those work things that have to do with operations, will take you out of the artistic state of flow.
So the Tight Bubble of Total Focus is powerful. Find your own Meno Park. It could be an extra room in your apartment. It could be a library in your home. For years, I used to work in public libraries. I'd go upstairs to the stacks. No one could find me. I mean, what I'm really saying here is, get lost for at least a few hours every day. It's not only great for your productivity and the production of your masterwork, it's great for your happiness and your spirituality. You're getting to pursue your craft without any anxiety, without any distraction, without being bothered.
Okay, yes, I'm very passionate about the bubble of Total Focus because this is one of the most important things I do in my work routines. I have structured a number of dream rooms in my home. I also use travel to get into the Tight Bubble of Total Focus. I travel a lot. What I do is, I, I do keynotes for Fortune 50 companies around the world. So I'll fly into Barcelona, I'll fly into Stockholm, I'll fly to Dubai, I'll fly to Bogota, I'll fly to Shanghai, wherever it is, I'll fly to Mumbai, wherever it is. I will fly in, but I will always get in a few days before the keynote, before the conference. And I will lock myself away in a hotel room. I love hotel rooms. It is such a great investment. Please don't worry about the cost. Think about the return on investment. Your food can be brought to you by room service. You put a do not disturb on your phone. You put a do not disturb on your door. No one can get to you. And you roll up your sleeves and you work on that masterwork. That will be your Sistine Chapel ceiling. You work on your Taj Mahal. You work on your Mona Lisa. You work on your Guernica. You work on your Moonlight Sonata. You work on your Fifth Symphony.
You know, I think in business, a lot of people, they spend 20% on the product and 80% of their time on the marketing. I want you to flip it. I want you to spend 80% of your time producing utter magic. All you need to do is put out one Catcher in the Rye, and you're done. All you need to do is put out one Harry Potter, and you're good in terms of income, impact. All you need to do is do one Mona Lisa, and you're revered for generations, and you make people happy. All you need to do is one Citizen Kane. All you need to do is one Eiffel Tower or Great Wall of China. So use travel strategically as well to get into that Tight Bubble of Total Focus. I know people, some of my clients do it. They get on an 18-hour plane flight just to do some amazing work when they have a big project that's due. So they can get on an airplane because hotel rooms, airplanes, best places on the planet to work because there's almost no distraction and no one can reach you. That's in terms of a live person or through digital messaging.
Okay, really important. Third part of an extraordinary day after the Tight Bubble of Total Focus regime is the Solitary Confinement Philosophy. The Solitary Confinement Philosophy. It's related to number two, but it's different because what I'm really saying is this: spend more time alone and get good at being alone. And that's why the interior work is so important. So many of us cannot be alone with ourselves. Blaise Pascal said, "Most of man's miseries are derived..." and of course, I mean women too, but I'm just quoting what he wrote. He said, "Most of man's miseries are derived by his inability to sit quietly in a room with himself." So many of us have such latent pain within us that we can't be alone with ourselves. And so, what I'm encouraging you to do is to do the interior work, where you start to be comfortable being alone with yourself for long periods of time. I guess what I'm suggesting to you is you almost become monastic, and you start to spend long periods of time in solitary confinement.
While I've been working on this new book, I have been alone a lot. And that comes from years and years of heartset work, where I'm now comfortable being alone. I'm not escaping myself. I'm not escaping from myself anymore by always having to be out with people, by always having to be consuming whatever it is, you know, entertainment, by always having to be in a restaurant, by always having to be out exercising. Solitary confinement is an incredible way to build an extraordinary day. Being alone is really powerful.
Number five, you want to have an extraordinary day. Run the 60-minute student habit. The 2x, 3x mindset is essentially this: if you want to double your income and your impact, triple your investment in two core areas: your personal mastery and your professional development. So education is inoculation against disruption. If you really want to have an amazing day, even if you want to release more dopamine so you feel more inspired, spend 60 minutes during your day in learning, in your education. Maybe it's an audiobook. Maybe it's reading a book. Maybe it's having a phone call with a coach. Maybe it's having a conversation with a mentor. Maybe it's going through your journal and looking at your deconstructions and your battle charts. What I do, I have a series of different Moleskine journals. One is for my creativity. One is for my goals and targets for the next quarter. One is for my ideas for the next 12 months. One is for my five-year future. And I have all these different Moleskine journals. During your 60-minute student habit hour, you can go and look at those. But 60 minutes every single day in learning is so incredibly powerful.
After that comes one of the most heavyweight of all of the habits and routines for an extraordinary day, and it is habit number six, which is the Five Great Hours commitment. You know, the way that we work comes from a bygone era. The way that we work comes from the factory age, where by working harder on the factory line, we would produce more goods. And if we worked longer, more goods would be produced. We would be more productive. And so longer hours meant more productivity. We don't live in the factory era anymore. We live in what I call the cognitive economy. You are paid to think. You are paid to innovate. You are paid to invent. You are paid to be creative. You're paid to use your artistry and bring value to your customers. You're paid to find elegant solutions to very difficult problems. And so the old way of working is not working very well.
And so I'm, I'm going to encourage you to think more like an entrepreneur than an employee. Even if you're an employee, I want you to think like an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is not about, oh, I need to put in eight hours, 10 hours. An entrepreneur is, it's not about the quantity of work, it's about the quality of work. So this program is going to revolutionize the way that you work because I'm going to encourage you to ask yourself this fundamental question: How can I work less and achieve more? Because it's not about how long you work, it's about how brilliantly you work.
So the Five Great Hours commitment is simply this: on your work days, you only work five hours every day. You say, "When I work." Because most people can put in, to get five hours, they need to put in 25 hours. Most people are fooling around while they're working. They're checking their phone while they're working. They're at the water cooler while they're working. They're surfing and buying shoes and watches and groceries online while they're working. They're stopping to chitchat while they're working. They're staring up at the ceiling while they're working. They're daydreaming. Why put in 10 hours? Why not put in five great hours of sweaty, intense, virtuoso-grade work, and then have the rest of the day off? It's a revolutionary, radical concept. It's the concept I use. I work, if I can get five world-class hours in on a new book or a new course or a new keynote, I'm good. I actually feel spent physically. I feel tired. My energy goes down. Cognitively, I'm depleted because we only, we wake up in the morning with only a certain amount of attention. If, if you look at the concept, for example, of cognitive bandwidth, we wake up with a certain amount of cognitive bandwidth, and then every time we distract ourselves, we give attention residue to that distraction, and we have less cognitive bandwidth. But after five hours, I'm good. And then what will I do? I will sunbathe. I will go for a nature walk. I will go for a mountain bike ride. I will listen to some music. I'm actually giving you a formula to do less work and to do much higher quality work. And I'm actually giving you a formula for a beautiful lifestyle because when you work, you really work. You bring it on. You are like a maestro, like a hero. One of the great keys to exponential productivity is you, you distill your focus and your mastery into a shorter period of time because work expands to fill the time available. If you give yourself, "Oh, I'm going to work for 10 hours each day," the work will expand to fit that time. It's like before you go on a great Caribbean vacation, or a great vacation to Bali or to Europe, what happens? The day before you go on vacation, you are world-class productive. You are the most productive you've probably been all year because you have to pack your bags, and you have to close your loops, and you have to get ready for the trip. So you're monomaniacally focused on the few things that are most important, and all the triviality and all the superficialities melt away. This concept will change your productivity and transform your life. This one alone, the Five Great Hours commitment, because if you only have five hours to work, and you restrain yourself and mature yourself and have a commitment just to work five hours, well, you're going to be so much more focused, just like going on a vacation the next day. You're going to be very intentional and very deliberate, and you're going to have the ability and the capacity to say, "I'm not going to, I don't have time to get involved in superficialities. I can't play Trivial Pursuit today. I only have five hours to get this next chapter of the book done, or I only have five hours to do this marketing presentation, or I only have five hours to work on this new sales presentation, or I only have five hours to work on my quarterly strategic plan that I'm going to share with my team." So again, I hope I'm expressing this clearly. If you only work five hours a day, it's much more intense, but also then you have the rest of the day off.
The seventh element is, if we're decoding an extraordinary day, well, it's the 2WW ritual. What am I talking about? I'm talking about the Second Win Workout. One of the absolute needle movers of a human life is exercise. We know from exercise, especially morning exercise, you'll release dopamine, the inspirational neurotransmitter. You'll release norepinephrine, which will give you more focus. You'll release serotonin, which will make you feel better. You'll reduce cortisol, the fear hormone. You'll increase your metabolic rate, which will burn fat and give you more energy. You will increase your heartiness and your ability to deal with stress. You'll increase your immune system. You will reduce inflammation. It just goes on and on. You'll extend your longevity.
Well, if you believe that exercise makes you so much more productive and much more focused and much happier, if you believe exercise is a great way to beat stress, if you're going through difficulty, or you want to just be more resilient and agile in this world of incredible volatility, then why would you exercise only one time a day? The Second Win Workout is, you install and you actually schedule it. And you're going to learn how to do it once we get to the weekly design system. This is where you learn to build that blueprint for a beautiful week. But if you believe exercise always makes you feel better, what I found is I always feel better after a workout than I did before the workout. There's almost never a reason not to do a workout unless your body just needs the recovery. You almost always feel better after a workout, even if you don't feel like doing the workout. Having said that, if you believe that exercise is revolutionary, why would you only do one workout every day?
So the Second Win Workout is, after you've done your Five Great Hours of work, you reward yourself with a Second Win Workout to give you a second wind, like a runner gets a second wind. You'll get a second burst of energy by doing a second workout. And generally, it's not as intense as the morning workout. It could be a nature walk. The Japanese have a culture called forest bathing. They understand that when you go out into the woods or commune with nature, your mind releases all of these endorphins, and you breathe fresh air, and the sunlight increases vitamin D, and you're moving again. You get another hour of exercising. You can listen to an audiobook, or you can simply reflect. But the Second Win Workout sets you up for a beautiful evening of deep renewal.
Final few ideas I'll offer to you. I mentioned it, but you want to live a great day. I would say, remove the energy vampires and the dream stealers from your life. So decrease energy vampires. And here's a powerful question: Who brings me joy? The people that bring you joy, keep them in your life. And who are the people that every time you connect with them, they deplete your joy? What is that costing you in terms of your creativity? What is that costing you in terms of your positivity? What are those people, those critics, those naysayers, those people who are never supportive of you, the discouragers in your life, those people who are your dream stealers? They could be family members. They often are. Could be friends. At least spend less time with them. Maybe it's selective association. Rather than talking to them every day, maybe it's once a month. But release the energy vampires if you want to upgrade your productivity and performance significantly.
I'd also say, at least a period of fresh air in nature every day. Fresh air, nature, sunlight. So powerful. What else would I say? Hydration. Lots of water does amazing things. Upgrades mitochondrial function, gives you more energy, promotes better health, cleanses out the toxins. So H2O, which is water.
And the final thing I'd say for a great day is this: is not only about being successful. Make the time to be soulful. Life is not only about doing and being productive. Life is also about enjoying the journey, counting your blessings, savoring beauty, being present to the tiny graces as you go through life.
As we end this module, I want to read a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson because it really speaks to what I believe is one of the best definitions of success I've ever read. It's right out of my Moleskine here. And I just want to be raw and real with you. But I think, yes, the world-class week system will dramatically increase your creativity. And yes, it will significantly heighten your productivity. And of course, that will lead to significant gains in your prosperity. And of course, that will magnify your income and your impact. But also, I really want this program to increase your soulfulness, and to increase your enjoyment of life, and to increase your sense of awe, and your sense of wonder. Because a lot of people, it's all about productivity, but they miss the magic of life.
And I just want to read this quote again. Ralph Waldo Emerson, he wrote: "What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."