Transcription
[Music]
Well, well, well. If you look at the world-class week system loop model, which is on the screen in front of you, you see now we are at the final of the five elements, which is the wonderful weekend protocol. Doesn't that sound exciting? Having wonderful weekends.
And part of the wonderful weekend is the weekly design system, where on Sunday mornings, you are going to create the coming week, the blueprint for the beautiful week. As I mentioned, it is how I create my weeks, and it's a methodology I teach to those people that I mentor, my highest-level clients. And it will create some exponential gains in your productivity and your performance and the impact that you have.
For now, until we get to the weekly design system, which is the next module, for now, I wanted to walk you through the nine core elements of the wonderful weekend protocol. Doesn't that, that sounds great? The nine core elements of the wonderful weekend protocol. So, this model is called the Wonderful Weekend Protocol. You'll find a neater version of the learning framework on the link, the resource link below this video, but I want to walk you through this for now.
So, there are nine elements. Let's get into the first one, which is number one, Saturday morning. What do you do? You know what I encourage you to do? Not to get up at 4 AM, not to get up at 5 AM. I encourage you to rest. That'll give you some balance. So, it's rest and music. I've hinted at the power of music, but there is spectacular power in music.
Before I did this shoot, I wanted to make sure my inspiration and my energy and my focus was the best I possibly could get it to you, for you. So, I listened to a song by Whiskey Myers called "Virginia," and it just, it just, it made me feel so joyful, and it just got me in the right spirit to serve you. And I use music very strategically. Every morning, I use music. When I go on my mountain bike rides, I use music. In my evenings, you know, when I'm cooking for the family, I'm working on my bucatini all'amatriciana, which is the current dish that I'm working on, which is just bucatini pasta, lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil, and then a little sprig of mint on the top. And then you finish it with a little bit of pecorino cheese. It is phenomenal. Not easy to do, though, because you want to get the cream right. But I listen to music when I cook.
So, Saturday morning, what do you do? You rest, and you can just listen to some music. Very nice way to set yourself up for a wonderful weekend ahead.
The second thing I would suggest to you is a nature walk. My partner and I, every Saturday morning, every Sunday morning, we'll go for an hour, hour and a half, sometimes two hours. Not far from where I live, there's this forest, and thankfully, not a lot of people have discovered it yet. And we go pretty early. By the time I, I get there, it's probably 8 o'clock, and we'll walk through the woods. Often, we're holding our coffee, and we'll talk about the week, and we'll talk about our insights, and we'll laugh. And it's just, it's absolutely fantastic to a Saturday and a Sunday morning nature walk. That's two more workouts, by the way.
So, the second element of the wonderful weekend protocol is your Saturday and Sunday morning nature walk. It's a great way to regenerate yourself as well, isn't it?
I mean, just doing that. Third thing, you're going to be surprised with what I'm going to write next, but it's the news. I don't watch a lot of news, but I think the news is important in moderation, and it has to be high-quality news, not the gossipy news or the sensational news, the tabloid news. I definitely avoid that. To me, it's very toxic. Really affects my energy, really affects my joy, really affects my inspiration, really affects my performance. But I read the Financial Times. I find it's quite high-level, and it'll let me know what's going on in industry. There's some great culture sections. I'll look at the, the app on my phone. I look at the cooking section. I will look at the book section. And it just gives me, on Saturday afternoon, I'll often do it for a few hours. It gives me a sense of what's going on in the world. It'll give me a sense of the global economy. It'll give me a sense of what's going on in business, which allows me to handcraft my content so it's relevant. And it allows me to, as much as possible, be prescient.
Prescient means you can see the future. And so few people go deep on what's coming. But if you want to really be a world-changer and someone who handcrafts a great life, as well as a life of service, you want to spend time understanding what the future looks like. You want to stick your neck out in the future. So then you can be of service to your customers, but also you can plan and prepare.
Here's a key insight: It's better to be a year early than a day late. I'll repeat it again because it's so fundamentally important. It's better to be a year early on something than a day too late. And so many members of the majority, they don't spend time thinking about what's coming. And so they, they get blindsided by a black swan event or a white swan event. A black swan event is one that was unexpected. A white swan event was an event that you should have seen coming, but too many people don't exercise that strategic thinking. So they don't plan and protect, protect their businesses, nor their families. And then they get caught in a situation where an unexpected event happens, and they're caught like a deer in the headlights, and they don't know what to do, and they run into all sorts of troubles.
When I mentor the billionaires and the, the titans of industry, we spend a lot of time thinking about quarterly threats, annual threats, yearly threats. And once they know the threats and vulnerabilities in the key areas of their life, like their business life, their financial life, their family life, their personal life, their reputational life, once they identify, I take them through an entire morning-long process. Once we do the threats and the vulnerabilities, we come up with the pivots and the protections. And then so they have a very clear sense of visual acuity on what the pivots and protections are. And then they put them in place. And then they're years ahead of everyone else. And then there's a calamity or a tragedy, but they're fine. And they navigate it. And actually, these people take difficult times to be even more productive, to be even more refuse to accelerate their business impact because they saw these things coming.
So, the news, strategically used in moderation and high-quality news, can help you be prescient.
Number four, part of this protocol to have a, a wonderful weekend. Number four is, you, you set up weekly excursions or weekly adventures. So, it's a weekly adventure. Did you know the human brain craves novelty? Did you know that you are happiest when you are honoring your nomadic nature? If you wanna, wanna basically degrade your inspiration and your creativity and your productivity, your performance, live a boring life. We're nomadic. We used to go from place to place all the time. That's why travel's so powerful.
So, Saturday afternoon is a great time to do this, or maybe it's Sunday. But definitely schedule a weekly adventure. And it's wonderful to do it with your family. For years, I did it with my family. We'd go to the bookstore. I always said to my kids, you know what? You can buy as many books as you want. Saturday afternoon. And then we often went to an Italian restaurant, and we'd eat pasta, spaghetti pomodoro. And then we would go for nature walks. I love going for nature walks with my kids. And you know, like I say, my, my significant other and I will do weekly adventures, trying out a new restaurant. I don't usually fast on Saturdays and Sundays, but these weekly adventures are phenomenal.
Even going to art galleries. I love art. I find going into an art gallery, especially alone, I'm communing with the artist. I'm spending time associating with the inspiration, the artistry, the virtuosity, and the energy of the artist by being around her art. It's very powerful. Very powerful to use art as a fuel. So, installing a weekly adventure, whether it's going to a restaurant with your family or by yourself, that is awesome. You know, going by yourself for lunch. You say to your family, "Bye, I'm going out for two hours," and you just go and you eat alone. And you can listen to music while you're eating. You can try a new type of food. If usually you eat Italian, try Vietnamese. If usually you eat Chinese food, try Colombian food, the empanadas. If usually you eat, whatever, Canadian food or North American food, or try Swedish food, or try Indian food. But the brain craves novelty. So you want to provoke your creativity and your energy by this weekly adventure to a restaurant or an art gallery.
You know what I love doing? I love going to, to the market. I love going to the market. I chat with the farmers. I look at the food. I take pictures of the food. I just feel it, you know. And I like going there early in the morning. And it's, um, it's just, it's just incredible being around the vegetables and the colors. And it's, it's almost like you're communing with nature. It's incredible. So, obviously, I'm very passionate about my weekly adventures and my week, weekly excursions. Could you just imagine what this would do for the week ahead in terms of your creativity, productivity, overall performance, and your, your sense of joyfulness and your, your happiness? Because you're recreating yourself. That's what the weekends are for. It's about regeneration or recreation.
Re-creation. Isn't it interesting? Most recreation involves no recreation. Playing with your phone, watching mindless TV shows, surfing video channels, watching videos that speak to the worst of human nature. It's like, it's like slowing down for a car crash. Why would you do it? You want your weekends. This is a key part of the wonderful weekend protocol. You want your weekends to be about recreating you, so you enjoy life, you enjoy the fruits of your neighbor, but also you have an amazingly productive, you bring on your fire in the week ahead because you have recreated the five assets of genius.
If you would like me to walk you through the five assets of genius: Number one, it's your mental focus. Mental focus that gets depleted. Your cognitive bandwidth gets depleted. You need to recreate it. So, your mental focus. If you work all weekend, your mental focus will just get eroded, and then you, you'll lose your game over time. The second of your five assets of genius, your physical willpower. Physical willpower. The willpower scientists talk about ego depletion. You wake up in the morning with a full well of willpower, but as you exercise decisions during your day that require willpower, you suffer from ego depletion. It's like a well of water, and your ego, or it's like a muscle. Your, your willpower is like a muscle, and the more you exercise the muscle, like a physical muscle, your willpower gets exhausted. And that's why you have a lot of these states, people, and these heavyweight leaders who at the end of the day, are in the evening, they make one bad decision that costs them their whole career. It's because all day long, and all week long, very important point here, all week long, all day long, they've been making tough decisions as the leader, as the CEO, as the business builder, as the leader of a country. And so rather than using the weekend to recreate and fill up their well of willpower again, because they're suffering from ego depletion, they don't understand this cycling process. And so it's Saturday, or it's Friday night, and they're exhausted, and they've lost touch with their self-regulation power. They have no willpower. They've lost their sense of discipline because it's like a muscle. And they do something silly. They use drugs, or they will drink too much, which causes some kind of a bad move in a public place, and then it's captured on video. Or they'll do something illegal. They will honor a temptation, and they'll lose their entire career. You can spend, I think it was Warren Buffett who spent, you can spend a lifetime building your reputation. You can lose it within one minute of a faulty judgment.
So, your five assets of genius: your mental focus, your physical willpower, three, your personal energy, energy for your individual gifts, and five, your daily time. Daily time. I'll make this into a much neater learning framework for you that you can access by clicking on the resource link below. But I just wanted to walk you through this in real time here. The five assets of genius that you must protect and refuel every weekend: Number one, your focus. Number two, your willpower. Number three, your personal energy. Number four, your individual gifts, you want to protect those gifts, your primal genius. And number five, you want to protect your daily time. How do you do it? You take the weekends to renew. It's the deep recovery cycle I talk about in The 5 AM Club.
Okay, let's get to element number five of creating a wonderful, let's call it a breathtaking weekend. And that's re-reading. A very wise man once said to me, he said, "You, you eat three times a day, you'll be fed. He said, "You read three times a day, you'll be wise." And I think a home full of books is a marvelous, magical home. If you were to see, come inside my home, you'd see books everywhere, bookshelves everywhere. I just feel so much better around books. I just, they make me feel, they have such promise. And I believe reading a book is having a conversation with the author. If it's a great book, you leave the conversation much wiser, much stronger, much more knowledgeable. You're probably an entrepreneur, probably a business builder. You are paid to bring value to the marketplace. The more knowledgeable you can become, the more you can see around corners, the more you can predict the future, the more value you can bring to the marketplace. And the marketplace will always reward the knowledge and the magic and the craft and the virtuosity you bring to it, even in a recession or an outright economic depression.
So, what I'll do on a Saturday afternoon, after giving myself that one period each week to read the news, I'll read. And I have this light-filled reading room. And my family is at home, and they're doing their thing at home. Maybe the kids, one of the kids is out doing something with their friends. And I will just read a book, make my notes. I'll lay down on the sofa, and I'll just read the book. If it's the winter time, I'll put a little blanket on. I have a fireplace going, soft music in the background, and I just read my book. And my dog is laying on top of me. It is just, to me, you might think it's, I don't know, but I love it. And my family's close, and it's just quiet, and I'm just reading the book. It's fantastic.
How do I read books? I read different books at the same time. And what I mean by that is, I'm always buying books. So, if it's a Saturday afternoon and I want to read for three hours, I will read one book. And then after an hour, I'll pick up another book. I'll pick up a business book, and then I might pick up a book from a stoic philosopher, and then I might spend an hour reading a biography. I just trust my moods. It's not really formulaic or anything like that.
Number six, if you want to have a wonderful weekend, I really encourage you to cook your family dinner on Saturday night. Even better, get your whole family to go to the market, buy fresh organic food, and work on a meal together. I adore cooking for my family on a Saturday night. As I mentioned, we play music. They're all sitting around the center island in the kitchen. I'll work on my bucatini all'amatriciana, I'll work on my cacio e pepe pasta, I'll do whatever dish I want to work on. And I'll study it before, and I make sure I have all the ingredients. So I picked that up from the market. And everyone's sitting around, music is playing, and the lighting is perfect because I like great lighting. So I have candles, soft light. And sometimes it's snowing if it's winter time in the, in my hometown. Could be summertime. I love eating al fresco outside with the family. And we cook dinner together. And it's just incredible cooking, making food for the people you love. And if you get it right, seeing your family going like, "Wow, when I have a great pasta," and my, my kids are not eating, not talking, total silence because they're just eating the pasta because it's that good. It's more valuable than almost anything in my life. So I love cooking for my family. And I would say to you, a great part of this weekend protocol for, for wonder is cooking. Cooking great food, clean food. Cooking that's C-O-O-K-I-N-G. I just want to be clear on that. Okay.
The final elements. And by the way, another skill. Element number seven is socializing. So Saturday night, you can go out with your friends, of course. And just, you know, making time to be with your loved ones, visiting your family. It is extraordinary. If you want to get into the neuroscience, oxytocin is released, and it just makes you feel so good. Oxytocin is released through hugs. Oxytocin is released through human connections. And if you're spending too much time on digital or in front of a white screen during the week, you're not going to feel great. You're not going to get the benefit of oxytocin. So socializing, family time, friendship time, clubs, join the 5 AM Club, whatever it is, it's a great time to do that.
Number eight. Element number eight. It's a very important one. Is your Sunday morning planning period. I carve out about an hour early Sunday morning while my family is sleeping to plan my week. And that leads us to the final element of, of a wonderful weekend, which is the weekly design system, which is the next module. But Sunday morning, I spend some time reviewing the week. I, I write in my dream book. I often do dream collages. I journal a lot. But I take some time to really think about the week ahead. I take some time to read again. I'll take some time to look through my past journals. And that leads us to the final element, which is, I'll spend two hours running the weekly design system, which is absolutely mission-critical to building an amazing week ahead. And I can't tell you how powerful the weekly design system is when I do it, which is almost every single Sunday morning. The week ahead is incredibly productive, incredibly focused, incredibly fun, extraordinarily balanced, and very spirited, very spiritual.
So, those are the nine elements of the wonderful weekend protocol. I commend them to you. The neater model is in the resource section. You can click, click below. And let's get into the weekly design system in the next module. You're gonna love it. Thanks for being with me. You're doing a great job.
So, those are the eight elements of the wonderful weekend protocol. The next module is all about the weekly design system, which elegantly takes us to how do you set up yourself for an extraordinary week. I'm going to walk you through my own personal planning process and the one that I teach to my highest-level clients. Fasten your seatbelts. We're about to get into the weekly design process.