In his book Money: Master The Game, Tony Robbins wrote, “complexity is the enemy of execution.”
To ground this in experience a bit more, think back to the last time you swung by the supermarket on the way to a party, hoping to quickly grab some snacks to give to everyone.
You’re in a bit of a hurry, and you haven’t prepared a shopping list, but this shouldn’t be a big deal, should it?
Except it is. You get to the snack aisle and it’s floor to ceiling options. You see all the classic if somewhat basic choices, whatever you personally like, and then what seems like countless other things you’ve never even heard of before. All with shiny, colorful labels.
Stopping to take it all in, you quickly freeze.
Which one is the right choice?
You start to wonder about all kinds of things. What do they like? I can’t bring that! What about this one? Am I going to look like an idiot if I just go basic? The longer you hesitate, the further you are from a decision.
You’re in your head, wasting time, and for nothing. This was supposed to be a quick in and out, and, while it’s not an inconsequential decision, it shouldn’t be difficult. But it feels difficult because you’ve got too many options.
This is called “information overload,” and it’s a real thing.
Just a quick Google search returns concerning statistics:
27% of people surveyed reported using 11 or more sources of information daily.
35% of people feel information overload is negatively impacting their job performance, and
76% say it contributes to workplace stress. All in al
80% of workers worldwide report feeling information overload.
According to research published in Frontiers of Psychology in June of 2023, “the amount of information that is created every two days is roughly equivalent to the amount of information that was created between the beginning of human civilization and the year 2003.” Most of this information is consumed through the screens of computers and smartphones.
In general, information overload is associated with significant decline in performance, poor decisions, and disruptive interruptions that undermine quality of focus and attention span. Decision fatigue, ego depletion, burnout… It’s all related. From the plethora of chips to the avalanche of slack messages, the surplus of options and information is dragging you down.
Wise people simplify their lives
While there’s a longer conversation to be had about self trust, drawing boundaries, and learning to either automate or delegate specific decisions, today’s letter aims at something simpler:
What’s the good enough version of the recurring, mundane decisions I have to make?
What’s the set it and forget it version that I could probably continue with, without further examination, for the rest of my life, and be totally fine?
Today I’m going to survey a number of topics that impact your life on a recurring basis, and provide you with the general guidelines that keep you on the right track. You can vet them all, or you can apply them and see for yourself.
The point of today’s letter is to get you through the checkout aisle with those snacks, back on the road and headed to the party.
Because, that’s the point, isn’t it? To go on with your life? If looking for the perfect chip really is what’s occupying all your time, it’s probably time to talk to a professional.
But if you keep switching up your weight lifting routine, your diet, your morning and evening routines, your supplements, and so on, it’s quite possible that you’re
1. Not progressing in these areas
2. Confusing the hell out of your body and mind
3. Depleting your mental resources
4. Not putting adequate energy toward more important things.
That last one is the big one.
Unless this is what you do for a living, I submit to you that you don’t need to be using the best possible toothpaste, the best possible incline dumbbell technique, or using the best pink noise machine on the market to sleep for the exactly right duration that delivers you into each new day ready to break another Tour de France record.
You just need the good enough version because there is something you are on this earth to do, and it’s time to get after it. It’s time to buy the damn chips and head to the party.
So, without further ado, here is your cheat sheet for all things necessary but mundane. Lock these in, and free your mind to answer bigger questions. Open your note taking app and follow along, copying the bold faced terms, and inputting your own info as needed, and then starring or pinning the doc so you can access it easily until this is all ingrained.
Here’s what I’m going to cover today. Here are the snacks we’re deciding on in advance:
Water
Food
Sleep
Exercise
Morning Routine
Evening Routine
Water.
Drink .5 liquid ounces of water per pound of bodyweight. I weigh 180lbs give or take. That’s 90 oz water, or .7 gallons. I have a .5 gallon water bottle, so I have to drink roughly one and a half full bottles daily.
Right now, go calculate the amount of liquid in ounces that your water bottle holds, or the glass you’d prefer to use, and divide half your bodyweight by that number. That’s how many times you have to fill up and drink all the water it can hold.
You do this in the first ten hours after waking. So, divide 600 (the number of minutes in ten hours) by the number of bottles of water YOU have to drink. That tells you how far apart in time to space each one. Use a timer on your phone. After a week this will be totally ingrained.
To review:
Your weight in pounds ÷ 2 = liquid ounces of water daily.
Daily water requirement ÷ volume of water bottle/glass = how many full glasses you need to drink.
600 ÷ the number of glasses = how often, in minutes, you need to drink a full glass.
You can do this.
Food.
Today we are just focusing on how to hit your macros. You need a certain amount of fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Go straight to a macronutrient calculator, input the requested info, and set it to autopilot. Use this one: https://www.calculator.net/macro-calculator.html
In general, animal protein is vastly superior to vegetarian protein. Are there weird anomalous exceptions? Yes. The exceptions that prove the rule, as they say.
If you eat beef, chicken, and fish to hit your protein requirements, rice and some fresh fruits to reach your carb intake, and some good grass fed butter to fill in whatever fat content the meats didn’t supply, you have hit your macros with very clean, very easily digestible food.
Use butter, not seed oils.
Obviously if you need to do something else for whatever reason, go do something else. But use the macro calculator, calculate what to eat by reading nutritional labels on foods, and be done with it.
Extra pointers: eat two or three solid meals a day, with the noontime meal being the heartiest. Evening carbs are okay.
You should be totally done consuming all calories at least three hours before bedtime. This is not a minor point.
Sleep.
Sleep is huge, and your life will never be the same once you get this right.
8 hours. Period the end. That’s your target. Will you always hit it? No. Should you make it a much bigger priority than it probably is now? Yes.
Shift that 8 hour block around as needed, but don’t shrink it. Make this the one inflexible thing so that you have to say no, or rework, finagle, whatever it takes, to make your life work without sacrificing sleep on any chronic basis. It will kill you.
We’re going to discuss evening routines later in this post, which are largely geared around ensuring sleep quality. But your bedtime has to guarantee eight hours of sleep.
Exercise.
Fitness regimens are meant to support your life, not take over your life. That being said, I love working on my physical fitness, and I love what it does for me outside of the gym.
One day per week, go in there and perform this workout:
Seated pectoral fly
Incline bench press/dumbbell press
Close-grip, palms up lat pulldown
Deadlift
That same day the next week, go in and do
Leg press
Leg extension
Hamstring curls
Calf raises (standing or seated)
The same day next week, go in again and do
Lat raises (machines or dumbbells)
Rear delt (machines or dumbbells)
Barbell or dumbbell curls
Tricep pulldown (with a bar, not a rope)
Seated tricep press down or tricep dips
The same day next week, go in and repeat the “leg day” workout.
For each exercise, do ONE SET TO FAILURE, meaningful until the point where you cannot perform another complete rep. Ideally, the amount of weight you use will take you to failure within 6-10 reps. This is referred to as high intensity training or HIT. It works.
Each time you come back in to repeat a given workout, you should be able to lift more weight. Increase the weight for each exercise by the minimum increment possible. You want to stick with this long term, and overexertion makes that almost impossible. Go easy, and be consistent.
Muscle growth is stimulated in the gym, but takes place while resting. If you lift until failure, but doing no more than one set, once per week, you will have given your muscles the signal to grow, and the opportunity to do so.
Walk for twenty minutes after each meal. Finish your food and start walking. Set a timer for ten minutes. When you hear it ding, turn back.
Optional: run 1-2 miles every morning, but only once your body adapts to the weightlifting routine outlined above.
Morning Routine.
This is less important than your bedtime routine. If you slept properly, you should just wake up and get to work. Here’s the routine that will never fail.
Wake up.
Drink electrolytes in a tall glass of warm-hot water (I like LMNT. Order it today).
Go “number 2.”
Brush and floss.
Take a shower, end with 2 minutes of COLD water.
Drink another glass of hot water.
90 minutes after waking, have caffeine. Do not exceed 400mg, and do not consume any more caffeine during the afternoon. Be one and done with caffeine. Personally, I’m working to reduce my daily caffeine intake little by little.
Okay, you’re now set up for the day.
Get to work!
Evening Routine.
Use a stopwatch to time this whole thing. Don’t rush, but record how long it takes, and factor that into your bedtime. Sleep is life.
Take magnesium supplements with raw honey and MCT oil.
Five minutes of stretching:
Lunges: 30 seconds each side
Quad stretches: 30 seconds each side
Downward facing dog: 30 seconds
Repeat the sequence once.
Lukewarm shower
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Floss
Neti pot (get it on Amazon)
Apply a nasal strip.
Get into bed.
At home I use:
blackout curtains,
a weighted blanket,
and a pink noise machine (the sunrise Alarm from Hatch Sleep: I highly recommend).
In conclusion,
If you do all these things, and you are otherwise healthy, it won’t be long until you are feeling and looking your best. You can do this on a consistent basis without any major changes.
Save this article, create quickly accessible notes that you can reference, and ingrain these habits. Then, take your conscious attention and put it toward higher things.
That’s all for today.
Thanks for your time, talk to you soon.
Jas
Make Beautiful Choices 
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