After about 10 years of experimentation, these are the things I do to stay at my best. This is the 80/20 of the most effective systems I’ve found in each domain of life. It’s a constant work in progress and I’ll regularly update this page. If there’s something I should try, shoot me a DM.

‍Physical & mental health

Exercise

• 1x daily morning walk 20 mins (heart rate optimisation during the walk between — 100-120 BPM (median heart rate)‍
• 4x weight sessions upper/lower body + 1x HIIT session
• Work with personal trainer for accountability+better results‍

Diet

• Slow Carb Diet‍
• Avoid sugars/heavy carb meals
• Avoid alcohol
• Athletic greens 1x daily
• Intermittent supplements incl. Nootropics
• Fasting. 2x/month - 2 days. 4x/year - 4 days

Sleep

• 7.5 hours of sleep per night
• Eight Sleep for sleeping comfort
• Melatonin for getting back in sleep rhythm and/or adjusting to timezones

Mental Health

• See friends regularly; travel if you can (it’s the most concentrated time you’ll spend with friends after University)
• Create a self-esteem scorecard with all the compliments you’ve ever received and hard things you’ve done
• Do cognitive behavioural therapy and identify self-defeating beliefs, then remove them
• Do not spend time with low energy people, complainers, or pessimists
• Remove all news from diet; scroll highly infrequently
• Intermittent psychology/psychiatry when required

Energy & motivation

Energy maintenance:

• Rate each day on a scale from -2 to +2 in a google form. Identify the things that lead to +2 days. Do more of them.
• Listening to uplifting/inspiring music first thing in the morning
• Sleep/exercise/walks/low or no alcohol/minimal social media
• Create a “no list” and actually stick to it using a weekly review
• Hire a virtual assistant
• Automate or decide in advance everything you have to do
• Have a small number of clothes/items that you use regularly to avoid decision fatigue
  

Increase motivation by:

• Finding an ambitious group of friends; moving to a city (SF or New York) with ambitious, high-energy people
• Being around people more successful than you
• Visualise any or all of the below when required: not having what you want; having what you want—a vision that inspires you; people who have doubted you/criticised/or insulted you, and the specific moments they’ve done so; material things; people who have succeeded wildly despite the odds
• Focusing on the gain, not the gap‍
• Being outwardly open and honest about your desires
• Simplifying your choices. When you have no alternative your faculties are concentrated
• Calling your shot publicly or increasing the stakes of failure
• Committing to something where the upside is immense
• Setting ambitious deadlines
• Shutting off all communication with the outside world
• Creating a compelling us vs. them (or me vs. the world) mentality
• Restricting your resources to force creative problem-solving
• Practicing forced willpower activities (e.g., fasting every 4 days)
• Regular reviews and accountability checks
• Working on projects with a high-degree of risk; something that’s uncertain
  

Decrease motivation by:

• Spending time with people who have a low bar
• Spending time with pessimists or complainers
• Spending time in uninspiring, low energy environments (E.g., Corporate office)
• Not doing what you said you’d do
• Thinking that it isn’t possible
• Drinking alcohol
  

Spiritual maintenance

Constantly ask:

1. Whether you’re experiencing thoughts/emotions in 3rd person
2. Whether your actions are aligned with my intentions
3. Whether you have any karmic debt from the past

Romantic relationship

• Weekly date-night, reflect on needs/wants/goals
• Talk about hard things early and often
• Radical openness + transparency
  

Network/relationships

• 1x per month friend dinners
• 1x per month round table dinners on interesting topics
  • Having EA organise dinners; sticking to it consistently
• 1x weekly 10 min personal CRM review and outreach
  • Find where people are suffering and help them
  • Review synergies between folks, offer introductions
  • Review helpful resources
  • Help others’ solve problems
  • Constantly raise others’ aspirations and instil belief
• 1x weekly 10 min review of new people I’d like to invite to dinners (with eigenvector centrality): “I’m doing a dinner in 2 weeks on x topic. Who’s the most interesting person you know who I should invite?”
• 1x monthly newsletter with personal updates to extended network (100+ people)
• 1x every 3 months, do something with 40-50 people
• DM new people regularly without a specific ask
• Record voice notes post meetings and log in Dex using:‍‍
  • ‍Action Items. E.g., Do intro‍
  • Personal Hobbies/Interests. E.g., Likes Baklava‍
  • Professional Challenges. E.g., Trying to grow on LinkedIn‍
  • About/Factual Info. E.g., From Perth‍
  • ‍‍Category. E.g., Legends, Champions
• In-person meetings should have confidence, curiosity, and depth. Energy matters more than anything in a first interaction.‍
• What are you excited about right now?
• What are the biggest open questions you have at the moment?
• What traits they share / don’t share with their parents or siblings
• What usually takes people a long time to figure out about them? What are people surprised about?
• Use emoji’s and CAPITALS regularly over messaging to enhance digital interaction
• Actually being the person who remembers important dates
• Always ask people for interesting people recommendations

Self-improvement

1. Intermittently reflect on new areas for improvement and note down in a “Capability Gap” document (e.g,. Every month)
2. Outline in document the behaviour ‘state’ you would be demonstrating if you were successful (“What behaviours would I exhibit if I was showing x?”)
3. Formulate questions to add to a daily review to keep top of mind
4. Ask someone to hold you accountable
5. Cycle through new behaviours/habits as the need arises
   

Media & content

• 4x Twitter/LinkedIn/Threads per day
• 3x substack/facebook
• 2x instagram per day
• 2x newsletters per week
• 2x YouTube per month
• Write 2 personal stories/short essays per week

Financial

• 1x monthly review of net worth and expenses (continual game of spending less each month)
• Use Kubera to track net assets
• Make concentrated bets; don’t use a shotgun approach. All investments have a ‘hassle’ tax
• Review your investment decisions in a decision log and note what you’d do differently
• When in doubt and with little time, just invest in the S&P 500
• Disciplined strategy and portfolio allocation according to risk-profile: Equities, Cash, Crypto, Property, Venture, Angel
• Financial adviser (only becomes useful at certain income/wealth levels, and when you have an SMSF)
• Tax accountant (haven't found a great one yet, but they are worth their weight in gold)
• Setup a discretionary family trust with a corporate trustee for all your investments incl. Company shareholdings (Australia only)

Prioritisation/leverage/agency/decision making

• 1x weekly 2-hour Saturday morning thinking time using The Road Less Stupid and Black Belt in Thinking critical thinking processes
• 1x weekly review to re-align towards high-leverage activities
• 1x weekly review of high-agency actions
• 1x monthly meeting with two founder friends to identify the highest leverage actions for life/business
• Decision making
  1. Make inconsequential decisions quickly, make consequential decisions slowly
  2. Follow the Black Belt Method‍
  3. Sleep on it for at least a week

Daily productivity/execution

• 7 days per week from 6.30/7am to 2pm unbroken. Go to bed on time (use a bedtime alarm if you need to). Keep your phone out of your room to force you to get out of bed
• Friday evenings post 6pm off, Saturday from 2pm off
• Messaging completed in 1.5 hour block between 2.30-4.00pm (only part of day where messaging + social media is unlocked)
• Exercise and dinner from 4-5pm
• 5-7.30pm final work block
• 7.30pm to 9.30pm reading block
• Use Cold Turkey blocker for Mac to block all apps and Opal for iPhone to block all messaging
• No social media on phone
• Listen to deep flow music with minimal lyrics (Work Mixes)
• Access to email on phone limited by long passcode
• Use Rize.io to track your time: Raycast for shortcuts: Perplexity for AI tasks; Exa.ai for finding links/articles; Texts to centralise all inboxes; Apple notes for daily task tracking, journalling, etc.; Flowvoice for faster messaging across apps
• Outline 3-5 core priorities for following day in Apple Notes. Lower the activation energy of starting the first task the next day by doing the first 5-minutes of the task. The momentum will carry you through in the morning

Information consumption

What: Barbell strategy

• Read very new things (Twitter, Venture Daily Digest, The Neuron, The Information, Ark Invest, Newcomer, Packy, The Generalist, Ben Thompson etc.)
• Read very old things (Liberal arts, elementary/fundamental ideas, biographies, etc.)
• Skip almost everything in between
• Create a reading list to tack progress and keep you motivated

When

• 6-7.30 am daily, 7.30-9.30pm daily

How

• Ipad mini (with no apps aside from reading-related) using Readwise and auto-sync to Reflect to keep notes
• Read non-consensus thinkers (Josh Wolfe, Balaji, Sam Lessin, Peter Thiel, etc.)
  

Review, rest, and reflection rhythms

• Set a 10-year vision and 3-year, 1-year, and 3-month goals
• Use google forms (accessible on phone) connected to a spreadsheet to keep the friction low and make it easy to review
• Yearly - 5-7 day annual planning & reflection
• Quarterly - 2 day planning & reflection
• Monthly - 1 day planning
• Weekly - 1-2 hours
• Daily - 10-20 mins

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