End the Year With A "Past Year Review" | Tim Ferriss & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - What's your mind allocation, right?

00:00:04.380 | I think about this, you know, like, where's my brain?

00:00:06.360 | Is it, am I focused on what's going on in here?

00:00:08.720 | And, you know, is there a need to excavate there?

00:00:11.660 | Sure, you know, but how much time am I out of my head

00:00:14.080 | and bringing things in from the outside world

00:00:16.120 | and back and forth?

00:00:17.300 | So do you have some sense of across the year,

00:00:21.140 | across the day, how you mind allocate?

00:00:24.520 | I don't know if that's the best phrase,

00:00:26.680 | but I can't think of any better one.

00:00:28.300 | If you can think of a better one, please, please table it.

00:00:31.360 | 'Cause I'm happy to use that.

00:00:32.920 | - Yeah, how do I think about mind allocation

00:00:35.240 | or attention allocation?

00:00:37.500 | I try to, and most frequently think of my mind share

00:00:44.240 | across a year and across week, a weekly timeframe.

00:00:54.980 | And I find that to be manageable in the sense that on a yearly basis,

00:01:03.800 | on New Year's Eve or roughly around New Year's,

00:01:10.220 | every year I'll do a past year review, PYR, past year review,

00:01:14.760 | where I'll go back and I'll look at my entire last year,

00:01:17.460 | a piece of paper in front of me, line down the center, plus negative.

00:01:22.880 | And I will go through every week in my calendar for the previous year.

00:01:27.500 | And I will write down the people, places, activities, commitments, et cetera,

00:01:35.880 | that produced peak positive emotional experiences.

00:01:40.720 | So, right, we're doing an 80/20 analysis here.

00:01:43.120 | Like what are the big rocks that really moved the needle in a meaningful way?

00:01:46.120 | And conversely, who are the people, what are the things, what are the places that just made me go, ugh.

00:01:54.500 | And we're draining produced peak negative experiences.

00:01:57.680 | Why the hell did I commit to this type experiences?

00:02:00.180 | And that presents me with a do more of, do less of list.

00:02:05.680 | And then I look forward to the next year, and I did this, I suppose, just a handful of months ago around New Year's with the positive.

00:02:13.060 | I'm like, okay, here's my list of do more of.

00:02:16.660 | It's not real until it's in the calendar.

00:02:18.360 | Let's get these things in the calendar.

00:02:20.240 | And then I will start talking to people, booking things, having people help with organizing if that is required, and getting things blocked out.

00:02:29.000 | So I have already this year, and we're in the reasonable beginning stages of the year, I have things blocked out until November of this year.

00:02:38.800 | And those provide the breaks in the action, not just the breaks in the action, but the fun stuff.

00:02:45.980 | Because, by the way, guys, I thought for a long time, like, yeah, you take care of A, B, and C, and the good stuff just takes care of itself.

00:02:52.080 | I have, I do not any longer believe that to be true.

00:02:55.860 | Unless you schedule these things that you claim are important, they're going to get crowded out by bullshit.

00:03:01.200 | And maybe not bullshit, but just less important things.

00:03:05.380 | The urgent will crush the important.

00:03:08.380 | So I get these things on the calendar, and then I back up and I look at optimal weekly mind allocation, right?

00:03:18.560 | Attentional allocation.

00:03:19.620 | And there's an incredible cost to cognitive switching if you're just test switching all day.

00:03:27.520 | So I will try my best to format a weekly rhythm, a weekly sequence that allows me to focus on certain types of tasks.

00:03:39.600 | So Monday is very frequently admin of some type.

00:03:44.540 | Just bits and ends, flotsam, jetsam, all the miscellaneous pieces that are part of life.

00:03:50.860 | You got to deal with them.

00:03:52.040 | That tends to be Monday.

00:03:53.180 | Whenever possible, and especially if I am focused on physical activity, let's just say I'm in a place like Colorado,

00:04:01.180 | I will try to schedule most of that for after lunch to ensure that I get in a lot of exercise and movement in the first portion of the day.

00:04:12.260 | Not everybody has that ability, but I will say more of you have that capacity than you might think,

00:04:17.720 | because most of what we all do is just not important.

00:04:21.780 | Time on social media first thing in the morning is probably the most poisonous activity that I could take part in.

00:04:29.700 | I don't want to point fingers at anyone else, but I think if people ask, you know,

00:04:34.420 | what is the amount of time it takes to get in a really good workout?

00:04:38.440 | It's going to be about an hour, you know, but a lot can be done in 45 if we're even 30 minutes.

00:04:43.940 | You think about how quickly that time goes by on social media.

00:04:47.380 | Like, I'm sure I'm not the only one that was part of the reason I deleted a lot of these apps from my phone.

00:04:53.140 | It's like I would be, I'd go into the bathroom to take a quick bit of business, and then 45 minutes later, I'm like,

00:05:00.920 | how have I been looking at Instagram for 45 minutes?

00:05:03.580 | Yeah, lines for restrooms have gotten very long in the last 10 years.

00:05:07.940 | Has anyone noticed that?

00:05:09.020 | The wait for the restrooms has gotten very long?

00:05:11.240 | So, you have time for the important stuff.

00:05:13.620 | And just look at some of the extreme overachievers out there.

00:05:17.120 | They have the same amount of time that you do.

00:05:18.660 | These companies are very smart.

00:05:20.360 | They have very good data scientists.

00:05:21.680 | They have very good UI specialists.

00:05:23.540 | If anyone out there thinks that they can, like, maybe Jocko can discipline his way through it.

00:05:30.040 | I'm sure he can because he is Jocko.

00:05:32.680 | But in my case, and in the case of most people, like, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight.

00:05:36.560 | If you think you can use your self-control to keep your use of Instagram to, say, 10 minutes at a clip, good luck.

00:05:44.840 | And even if you can, people say, ah, but I do that anyway.

00:05:48.500 | I'm like, all right, how much time do you spend sending memes and links from Instagram or fill-in-the-blank platform to your friends and group chat?

00:05:56.100 | How much time does that consume?

00:05:57.900 | I spend a fair amount of time on Instagram and Twitter posting things related to the podcast.

00:06:01.660 | But I don't have someone to do that for me.

00:06:04.380 | And I actually enjoy doing it, and it challenges me in certain ways.

00:06:07.820 | But I completely agree with everything you're saying.

00:06:09.780 | Twitter has its use cases.

00:06:11.180 | I find it useful in some respects.

00:06:13.340 | It has become much less useful and much less practical in the last year with a lot of the product changes.

00:06:19.500 | But it has its place.

00:06:21.840 | It's not on my phone.

00:06:22.960 | It was on my phone for a very brief period of time.

00:06:25.560 | I find that my ability to be still and calm is eroded if I am too easily able to escape boredom.

00:06:41.160 | If you cease to have the ability to be bored for five to ten minutes, I think that makes you very fragile.

00:06:47.820 | It makes you very easy to manipulate also.

00:06:50.320 | And there are a lot of forces at play online that want to manipulate or shape your behavior in different ways.

00:06:56.540 | So I feel like it is imperative for me to cultivate the ability to just sit still and not consume the five minutes in line waiting to get into a restaurant by hopping on Twitter or Instagram.

00:07:12.600 | So that's part of the reason they're not on my phone.

00:07:14.860 | So that's part of the reason they're not on my phone.

End the Year With A "Past Year Review" | Tim Ferriss & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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