The Anti-Optimization Movement Is Growing

0:00of yours that I keep coming back to this year. The stress of being perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections. >> Mhm. >> Stress of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections. Think there's a bubbling, but pretty rapidly growing anti-optimization cult at the moment. And I think that people are feeling overwhelmed with advice. I think they're uncertain about the future. There's lots of chaos going on. Is AI going to take my job? Is the Iran war going to bleed over here?

0:27What's going to happen? Is Trump going to run for a third term? Is there going to be a civil war? It's It's too much. There's too much information. I'm overwhelmed with screens. I haven't got good sleep. I'm taking too many supplements. And they just want someone to simplify life. You can simplify life by trying to wrangle it down into an aggressive routine. But what that looks like from the outside a lot of the time is sort of fragility. And this is your America was built on the backs of men who ate bacon for breakfast and smoked cigarettes. If you miss your morning routine today, you'll be fine. Um the line between this is important to me to improve my mental health in order to create the structure that I need to make progress and this is a glorified rain dance that I'm doing because I'm superstitious about how things work. I even saw this with Jocko. The The first ever episode I did with Jocko, he was in a bit of a terse mood.

1:17As a terse man, that was like terse squared. And um And someone brought it up to him afterward uh couple of months later on Twitter and he said, "I hadn't I hadn't trained that morning. I was in a bit of a grump." He hadn't been to the gym. And I I reflected about that a lot. I brought it up to him. I spent a few days with him over Christmas. And uh I was like, "Remember when that Yeah." So I was like, "Interesting because training is obviously the structure that you have built a lot of things on and it makes you feel good and it facilitates your performance.

1:50But if the removal of the training doesn't allow you to do the thing, there is a kind of fragility that's baked into the system that like you want to be able to perform regardless of whether you've got to train or not and the training builds on top. Does that make sense? >> A thousand percent. If the if the [clears throat] routine that you do is additive, great, then you have baseline performance without it. If the routine creates dependence to do baseline performance, then it becomes a crutch and then you become fragile. And so yeah, I'm I would say on the on the spectrum of routine versus [ __ ] maxing, I'm on the [ __ ] maxing side [laughter] of like just work. Um grab, you know, grab your grab your stim grab your stimmies

2:33>> Yeah. >> and and and and get to it. And I think it's because my I think one of my big fears um in life was is is becoming soft, is allowing like nothing feels like success. Is letting the laurels soften me to the game, which is like the reason that I still do like Q&As with, you know, smaller business owners that are, you know, doing you know, a few million dollars a year or whatever, is that's going to come off weird, but um is I have to stay connected to the earth. I have to stay like grounded here, otherwise I will lose the edge that is where all the details are won.

3:09And so um I'm a I'm a as a flag for self, if you cannot function without your routine, your routine owns you, you do not own it. Full stop. If it's just additive, great, and that means that if you don't have it, you should still be able to win. Because one of my big beliefs is whenever someone has an excuse for losing that's like, well, it wasn't a perfect day for me, it's like there's this um scene in I think it's Invictus. It's the uh Matt Damon movie.

3:40He's like a rug ball rugby player or whatever with Morgan Freeman. >> South South African rugby guy. >> And there's this scene where Morgan Freeman is Nelson Mandela and he's talking to Matt Damon and uh I think Matt Damon says something to the degree of, you know, uh we're we're not playing at 100% and I think Morgan Freeman says, no one ever is. And it's it was it was like I don't even think it's a quoted part of the movie, but I remember seeing that and being like, [ __ ] Like, no one's ever at 100%. It's like saying I can I can win the I can win with if I have perfect weather, perfect conditions, perfect whatever. And so I think that's why having trying to get all the failures out so you can try to create or recreate the randomness that imperfect conditions can and still win.

4:22And I think that's why I'm such an advocate of of uh of just win. Like, like it doesn't like it just does cuz the thing is is after the game is played, no one remembers whether the ref gave you a bad call or the weather was bad or whether your starting lineup had two injuries on it. No one remembers. And so if they're not going to remember it in 20 years, then it shouldn't be a reason that we're going to try and lose today. >> Mhm. There's uh Floyd Mayweather quotes where he says, uh it you felt like you were on your A game today and he says, I ain't got to use my A game, my B game, my C game. I can use my Z game. I don't even have to hit.

4:58>> If you like this video and you're business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I just sold every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into completely free scaling roadmap that I've used to go from zero to one, zero to 10, and zero to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out. Again, absolutely free and since you're business owner, I appreciate you and uh enjoy.