- What's your mind allocation, right? I think about this, you know, like, where's my brain? Is it, am I focused on what's going on in here? And, you know, is there a need to excavate there? Sure, you know, but how much time am I out of my head and bringing things in from the outside world and back and forth?

So do you have some sense of across the year, across the day, how you mind allocate? I don't know if that's the best phrase, but I can't think of any better one. If you can think of a better one, please, please table it. 'Cause I'm happy to use that.

- Yeah, how do I think about mind allocation or attention allocation? I try to, and most frequently think of my mind share across a year and across week, a weekly timeframe. And I find that to be manageable in the sense that on a yearly basis, on New Year's Eve or roughly around New Year's, every year I'll do a past year review, PYR, past year review, where I'll go back and I'll look at my entire last year, a piece of paper in front of me, line down the center, plus negative.

And I will go through every week in my calendar for the previous year. And I will write down the people, places, activities, commitments, et cetera, that produced peak positive emotional experiences. So, right, we're doing an 80/20 analysis here. Like what are the big rocks that really moved the needle in a meaningful way?

And conversely, who are the people, what are the things, what are the places that just made me go, ugh. And we're draining produced peak negative experiences. Why the hell did I commit to this type experiences? And that presents me with a do more of, do less of list. 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.

I'm like, okay, here's my list of do more of. It's not real until it's in the calendar. Let's get these things in the calendar. And then I will start talking to people, booking things, having people help with organizing if that is required, and getting things blocked out. 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.

And those provide the breaks in the action, not just the breaks in the action, but the fun stuff. 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. I have, I do not any longer believe that to be true.

Unless you schedule these things that you claim are important, they're going to get crowded out by bullshit. And maybe not bullshit, but just less important things. The urgent will crush the important. So I get these things on the calendar, and then I back up and I look at optimal weekly mind allocation, right?

Attentional allocation. And there's an incredible cost to cognitive switching if you're just test switching all day. So I will try my best to format a weekly rhythm, a weekly sequence that allows me to focus on certain types of tasks. So Monday is very frequently admin of some type. Just bits and ends, flotsam, jetsam, all the miscellaneous pieces that are part of life.

You got to deal with them. That tends to be Monday. Whenever possible, and especially if I am focused on physical activity, let's just say I'm in a place like Colorado, 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.

Not everybody has that ability, but I will say more of you have that capacity than you might think, because most of what we all do is just not important. Time on social media first thing in the morning is probably the most poisonous activity that I could take part in.

I don't want to point fingers at anyone else, but I think if people ask, you know, what is the amount of time it takes to get in a really good workout? It's going to be about an hour, you know, but a lot can be done in 45 if we're even 30 minutes.

You think about how quickly that time goes by on social media. 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. 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, how have I been looking at Instagram for 45 minutes?

Yeah, lines for restrooms have gotten very long in the last 10 years. Has anyone noticed that? The wait for the restrooms has gotten very long? So, you have time for the important stuff. And just look at some of the extreme overachievers out there. They have the same amount of time that you do.

These companies are very smart. They have very good data scientists. They have very good UI specialists. If anyone out there thinks that they can, like, maybe Jocko can discipline his way through it. I'm sure he can because he is Jocko. But in my case, and in the case of most people, like, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight.

If you think you can use your self-control to keep your use of Instagram to, say, 10 minutes at a clip, good luck. And even if you can, people say, ah, but I do that anyway. 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?

How much time does that consume? I spend a fair amount of time on Instagram and Twitter posting things related to the podcast. But I don't have someone to do that for me. And I actually enjoy doing it, and it challenges me in certain ways. But I completely agree with everything you're saying.

Twitter has its use cases. I find it useful in some respects. It has become much less useful and much less practical in the last year with a lot of the product changes. But it has its place. It's not on my phone. It was on my phone for a very brief period of time.

I find that my ability to be still and calm is eroded if I am too easily able to escape boredom. If you cease to have the ability to be bored for five to ten minutes, I think that makes you very fragile. It makes you very easy to manipulate also.

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

So that's part of the reason they're not on my phone. So that's part of the reason they're not on my phone.