Game Changers

Long before I interviewed him, Stewart Friedman was my professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. He rocked my world by showing me that I was investing my energy in all the wrong places. In addition to being a professor of leadership, Stewart was one of the top one hundred senior executives at Ford Motor Company, responsible for leadership development across the entire company. He also created the Total Leadership Program, which develops top leaders by teaching them how to balance work and life, because he proved that leaders without balance make crappy leaders. Working Mother named Friedman one of America’s twenty-five most influential men to have made things better for working parents, and his widely cited publications and internationally recognized expertise led Thinkers50 to select him as one of the world’s top fifty leadership and management thinkers. There is no doubt that he has changed the game for how tens of thousands of people, including me, work and live every day, both with his teaching and his book Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life.

In our conversation, Stew explained that when he examined the lives of successful people, he found that at very high levels of performance, they all demonstrated the importance of one key concept: being aware and honest about what was most important to them. It’s a simple concept, but it is often a tough one to execute. Stewart says that in the business of everyday life, most of us don’t take the time to ask ourselves what we really stand for. This makes it difficult to make decisions that are in line with our goals with any kind of clarity. Knowing what matters to you brings clarity to your decision making and enables you to then do the really important work of saying no to many (maybe even most) things and focusing your attention and energy exclusively on the things that matter most to you.

To gain clarity about your values, Stew recommends thinking about the year 2039, twenty years from when you may be reading this book. What will a day in your life be like in 2039? Whom will you be with? What will you be doing? What impact will you be having? Write all of that down. Keep in mind that you are creating not a contract or an action plan but a compelling image of an achievable future that serves as a window into your true values. Once you have this information, it will be easy to decide where to invest your energy instead of allowing others to focus your priorities for you or getting distracted with drudgery.

Once you know what matters most to you, Stewart says, the second step is to determine who matters most to you. This is a challenging question for anyone, but Stew suggests that real leaders take the time to ask themselves, “Who matters to me, what do those people want from me, and what do I want from them?” Think about the people in your life who have been influential in shaping your worldview. They should be on the list.

I learned a lot from my time with Stew, and in fact, he made me aware of some uncomfortable truths about where I was spending my energy. One of my core values, I realized, is continual self-improvement, but I had set that aside to focus on my career. So I made a decision to do something every day that makes me better. This small commitment helps me invest my time and energy wisely and focus on ways to continually grow and challenge myself.

In order to get better at this, I sought out someone who lives and breathes self-improvement: Tony Stubblebine. Tony is on a mission to make coaching the fastest path to self-improvement in every field, from business to education to fitness. He is the CEO and founder of Coach.me, a company based on the idea that positive reinforcement and community support work in tandem to help people achieve their goals.

Tony sets a decision budget for himself every day. He allows himself only a certain number of decisions, whether they are big or small, and then he “spends” them throughout the day. For this reason, the actions he takes in the morning will largely determine how efficiently he spends the rest of the day. If he wastes a lot of decisions in the morning, he is left avoiding even the simplest of decisions for the rest of the day in order to stay “on budget.”

He didn’t start out that way, though. He used to check his phone and social media accounts as soon as he woke up each day. Sound familiar? From the moment his alarm went off, his head was filled with all the things he felt he needed to do and people he “had to” respond to. Every subsequent step required him to make a decision. Which email should he respond to first? Should he say yes to that opportunity? Should he “like” someone’s post? Should he check out the link a friend sent him? He found that those decisions were wearing down his budget before he even started on the really important tasks he wanted to get to that day.

Over time, Tony learned that as a CEO, his most important daily habits were his decision-making habits, particularly when it came to which opportunities he was going to say yes or no to. And since he began to deplete his decision budget so early in the day, he felt he wasn’t able to make the most effective decisions for his company.

This realization led him to set healthier decision-making habits for himself. Now he prioritizes starting his day with a clear mind. He meditates as soon as he wakes up and then writes down his to-do list. To prioritize this list, he asks himself which of the tasks have the potential to significantly change the outcome of his mission. After practicing this habit for a while, he began to realize that many of the items on his to-do lists weren’t really critical.

The more clarity he gained about his priorities and which tasks would move the needle in the right direction, the more he found he was able to make quick but informed decisions. Eventually he grew so clear on what was important to him and his company that when opportunities arose it was easy for him to say yes or no without having to negotiate an answer or waste time making a decision. If an opportunity was not going to change the outcome, an automatic no was his habitual response.

This isn’t always easy, which is why it’s a good idea to work with a coach to help you figure out what habits are hindering you. I hired Jeff Spencer, who cut his teeth as the lead performance coach for top Tour de France teams—including the winners—nine years in a row before turning to coaching entrepreneurs. A good coach will help you see where you’re wasting energy in your life without knowing it, predict where you’re going to waste energy next as you scale, and hold you accountable for changing it. Jeff made such an impact on me that I interviewed him on Bulletproof Radio, too!

Tony’s solution of creating a decision budget mirrors the findings of one of my favorite studies of all time. In 2010, researchers in Israel studied how judges make decisions about whether or not convicted criminals are approved for parole.1 After examining more than a thousand parole hearings over the course of ten months, they uncovered a fascinating and very strong connection between the decisions and the time of day they were issued: If a hearing was held early in the day, the judge gave a favorable ruling about 65 percent of the time. But as the day went on, the likelihood of a favorable ruling steadily declined all the way to zero after a noticeable bump back up to 65 percent right after lunch. This trend was consistent across many variables, including the type of crime committed, the criminal’s education, and his or her behavior while in prison.

So what was going on with those judges? It turns out that making all of those decisions about whether or not criminals should be granted parole was using up their decision-making budget, also known as willpower. Willpower seems like an abstract concept. Some of us have a lot of willpower and others don’t, right? Wrong! In reality, willpower is like a muscle. You can exercise it to make it stronger, and it gets fatigued when it’s worked too much. When your willpower muscle is fatigued, you start making bad decisions. And you do it without noticing.

The idea of a “willpower muscle” is partly based on our understanding of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a little C-shaped part of your brain right by your temple. Scientists believe that the ACC is the seat of willpower. Think of your ACC as maintaining an energetic bank account. When you start your day, it’s flush with energy, but every time you make a decision or exert mental effort, you withdraw a little bit of the balance. Choosing what to wear in the morning takes out a little bit. Deciding what to make for breakfast uses a little bit more. Bigger decisions, such as deciding whether or not a criminal will be granted parole or not, empty your account faster. If you overdraw your energetic bank account with trivial decisions, your ACC stops responding well and your willpower runs out. That’s when you give in to bad decisions.

This phenomenon is called decision fatigue: the more decisions you make, the worse your judgment becomes. Corporations have known about decision fatigue for years. That’s why they put brightly packaged candy up front at store registers. As you make decision after decision while shopping, you’re depleting your energetic bank account. By the time you’re ready to check out, you’re more likely to be experiencing decision fatigue—and a craving for a quick hit of sugar to give your brain more energy—so you give in and buy a candy bar.

Judges are not immune to this phenomenon; they use up a lot of willpower throughout the day hearing cases. At the end of the day, when the energy balance in their ACC is running low, it becomes easier to deny parole than to try to negotiate a more complicated decision. This also helps explain why the judges in the study granted more paroles right after lunch than at other times in the afternoon; their ACCs had just received a hit of energy.

One wonders whether the type of lunch they ate was an important variable. It only makes sense that a lunch designed to deliver sustained energy would lead to better decisions. Silicon Valley lore says that many years ago, the once dominant computer company Sun Microsystems banned pasta from the lunch menu used for on-site meetings because its executives noticed that meetings tended to tank after high-carb lunches. The reality is that what you eat does impact your willpower—though it is easier to stop making meaningless decisions than it is to change what you eat (I do both).

The good news is, now that you know about decision fatigue, you can be sure to schedule all of your parole hearings for the morning. Even better, you can free up more willpower to start making better decisions so that you don’t end up being convicted of a crime in the first place! You can do this in two ways: by building up the amount of energy stored in your ACC and by reducing the number of decisions you make throughout the day to preserve your mental energy.

You can build your “willpower muscle” the same way you strengthen any muscle in your body: by doing hard things you don’t want to do. A simple trick I use is to keep a heavy-duty spring-loaded hand-grip trainer on my desk. When I think about it, I squeeze it until it burns and my arm tells me to stop and then keep squeezing. Another technique I use is to hold my breath until my lungs scream at me to breathe and then hold it longer. When you successfully do the things you don’t want to do, everything else seems easier by comparison. Your willpower grows. But consider not pushing your willpower on a day when you have other major decisions to make. On those days, don’t burn out your willpower reserves before a crucial meeting or presentation.

Some game changers find that simply eliminating as many decisions as possible offers them more mental clarity. Every time you avoid making a choice, you save a little bit of willpower that you can then put toward something that will have a greater impact. Many high performers have developed day-to-day routines that are so dialed in that they don’t even think about them. These people simply show up and execute with extreme focus and energy.

Experiment with tracking your decisions for a few days, and then start automating the ones that are a waste of energy. Meal and wardrobe decisions are two common ones that high performers tend to automate. Why do you think Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck and New Balance sneakers every day, Mark Zuckerberg has ten identical T-shirts in his closet, or most corporate CEOs cycle through three or four suits every week (and I’m usually wearing one of several Bulletproof T-shirts and ugly but massively comfortable toe shoes when you see me online)? When you reach for some version of the same outfit every day, you never have to worry about what to wear. This may seem like a minor decision, but it saves a lot of mental energy that you can then use for something more meaningful.

Admittedly, this is usually easier for men than women, but either gender can opt for a “capsule” wardrobe if you’re not ready to go full Steve Jobs. To do this, pick three or four tops, bottoms, jackets, and shoes, all in neutral colors such as gray and navy. Plan so that everything in your closet matches, to the point where you can get dressed in the dark and still look good. Then get rid of all your other clothes so that you have only twenty or so items in your closet. You can find capsule wardrobe guides online for inspiration. Some popular clothing brands now even tag “capsule” pieces in their catalogues. There’s nothing wrong with saving a few special pieces for social events and formal occasions. The point is to avoid having to make daily decisions about what to wear when no one will notice whether your outfit is awesome or not.

You can also create a sort of “capsule diet” by cycling through the same few meals. To do this successfully, find five or six different tasty recipes you can cook that your whole family likes. Then you can buy groceries and cook on autopilot without having to make lots of decisions about what to buy and cook each week. When you get tired of one of the meals, swap it out for a new one. One of my most impactful willpower hacks has actually been none other than Bulletproof Coffee. I don’t ever have to think about what I’m having for breakfast, and I save the time I would have otherwise spent preparing a meal. You can do the same thing with whatever breakfast gives you the most energy with the fewest decisions and the least amount of work.

When you use these techniques to cut down on decision making, you free up a tremendous amount of mental energy that you can use however you like. I recommend devoting it to your most meaningful life work. Not sure what that is yet? Here’s a hint: you decide.

Action Items

 Take a deep breath. Now hold it until you’re sure you have to breathe. Hold it for eight more seconds. (Don’t do this if you’re driving or have health problems.)

 Take note—mentally or on paper—every time you make a decision for a week. As you notice yourself making a decision, ask yourself two questions:Did this decision matter?Was there a way to avoid making this decision by ignoring it, automating it, or asking someone else who loves making that kind of decision to make it instead?

 Start now. Name two decisions you make every day that add absolutely no value to your life. Write them down here so you don’t have to decide to do it later.Useless daily decision 1:________________________________________________________Useless daily decision 2:________________________________________________________

 Now stop making them.

 Take a look at your breakfast. Can you automate that decision? What’s your new “no-thought” default breakfast going to be? Try it for a week.

 Go through your closet and put the most compatible stuff in the front so you can spend a few days making fewer decisions about getting dressed. If you like how you feel, go for a capsule wardrobe!

 Consider working with an experienced performance coach. There are dozens of quality coach training programs. Look for a trainer certified by the International Association of Systemic Teaching (IASC). (I’ve trained more than a thousand coaches in the Bulletproof-inspired IASC-certified Human Potential Coach program who would be pleased to help you, too!)

Recommended Listening

 Stew Friedman, “Be Real, Be Whole, Be Innovative,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 83

 Stew Friedman, “Success, Leadership & Less Work,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 196

 Jeff Spencer, “Success Intoxication & the Champions Blueprint,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 213

 Tony Stubblebine, “Getting Out of Your Robot Mindset,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 296

Recommended Reading

 Stewart D. Friedman, Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life

Law 2: Never Discover Who You Are

To change the world, tap into your strengths, but do not passively discover who you are. Actively decide and create who you are. If you abdicate this duty by allowing others to tell you who to be, you will struggle greatly in life and likely fail to achieve greatness. So discover your passion and follow it, but do it as the person you create. The difference is a life of mediocrity and creeping misery compared to a life of freedom and passion.

Brendon Burchard is the founder of the High Performance Academy, the host of The Charged Life podcast, and the author of the number one New York Times bestsellers The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power, The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive, and The Millionaire Messenger: Make a Difference and a Fortune Sharing Your Advice. Brendon has the number one–rated personal development show on YouTube and is one of the one hundred most followed public figures on Facebook. His educational work has helped millions of people around the globe achieve the results they are looking for in the areas of business, marketing, and personal development, and his programs, such as Experts Academy and World’s Greatest Speaker Training, have helped thousands of people—including me. So of course I had to interview him!

Getting time on Brendon’s calendar to meet him in Portland was surprisingly easy because he manages his time like a boss. Of course, it helps that we’re friends, but he genuinely has more free time than anyone else I’ve met at his level of achievement because he has consciously built his life that way. The man truly practices what he preaches at every level.

Brendon believes that humankind’s main motivation is to seek personal freedom, which he defines as the ability to fully express who we are and pursue the things that are meaningful and important to us. But we have two enemies that get in our way every single time. One of them is self-oppression, our tendency to put ourselves down. The other is social oppression, the people who judge us and fail to be supportive of who we are or what we want. Brendon suggests that we can overcome these two barriers by developing what he terms a “competence-confidence loop.” The more you understand something, the more confidence you will have to pursue it further, despite what anyone else may say. And of course, the more you pursue a subject and learn about it, the closer you’ll get to true mastery.

This strategy is similar to Stewart Friedman’s advice in the sense that both require knowing what matters most to you. But Brendon believes that we should be intentional about our aspirations rather than focusing on what may feel the most practically achievable. He recommends recording three words on your phone that describe your highest, best self. These are the words you would most want someone to use when describing you, and they should apply to both personal and professional settings. Some of the words I’ve heard from game changers are: engaged, grateful, energized, warm, loving, devoted, and impactful. Choose three that resonate with you, then set an alarm to go off three times a day and remind you of this aspirational sense of self.

When you act without intention, you will experience self-doubt. But when you are reminded of who you want to be throughout the day, you are more likely to act in accordance with your highest goals. This process serves as an endless feedback loop that leads you to find more confidence in yourself and thus to become more competent. You can actively generate the emotions that you most want to feel by doing things that are in line with your vision of the person you want to be. Brendon believes that the most important skills to master are setting intentions and taking the necessary steps to become that person. In other words, instead of discovering who you are, you become powerful when you decide who you are.

No conversation about acting with intention would be complete without input from Robert Greene, the author of the New York Times bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law (coauthored with 50 Cent), and Mastery. In addition to having a strong fan base within the business world and a deep following in Washington, DC, Greene’s books are hailed by everyone from war historians to the biggest names in the music industry (including Jay-Z and 50 Cent) because he has relentlessly studied the world’s best to see what makes them tick.

I sought out Robert because long before I interviewed him, he transformed my career. Twenty years ago, I helped to start part of the company that held Google’s very first servers, eventually attending board meetings with people who were twice my age and about a hundred times more experienced. (Of course, I was the most junior person in the room, so I wasn’t allowed to speak at those board meetings, but I got to witness what went on in them.) As a rational engineering kind of guy, I simply did not understand the powerful executives around me. Their choices and the way they conducted themselves often made no sense to me. They looked irrational, if not downright crazy.

Then I picked up a book that changed that dynamic. It was called The 48 Laws of Power. This incredibly well-researched book included stories from throughout history examining how people in power had gotten there and stayed there and elegantly distilled lessons from those stories into actionable “laws.” A week after I read it, I sat in the next executive staff meeting and realized: These people are not crazy. They’re powerful! The rules they are following are entirely rational, but they’re not engineering rules. They’re power rules.

That taught me how to function at a new level in Silicon Valley, how to work in a venture capital firm, how to raise money, how to work with powerful people, and how to do what I now do at Bulletproof every day. If I hadn’t known those rules that enabled me to start thinking like a chess player, I wouldn’t be where I am now. The 48 Laws of Power not only changed the course of my career, but it also inspired the structure of this book.

When I sat down with Robert and asked him about his views on becoming the person you want to be, he said that most of us have always known who we wanted to be—we’ve just forgotten. When you were a kid, it was probably pretty obvious. He refers to the subjects you were inclined to pursue, even when you were as young as three years old, as your primal inclinations. These are your basic strengths, and they should not be taken lightly, because you are a completely unique person. No one else has ever had or ever will have your exact set of molecules or your DNA. And your unique brain learns at a much faster rate when you are learning about something that excites you. When you want to learn, you do. Robert says that if you’re forced to learn something that you’re not interested in, you will absorb only one-tenth of the information that you would if you were deeply engaged in the subject.

Yet when most people choose a career, they heed the well-meaning advice of their parents and friends or chase money instead of pursuing the things they truly care about. You can get pretty far this way, but you’ll never develop true mastery in something you don’t love because you won’t be learning at your optimum rate. Robert says that if everyone discovered the one thing they really loved and spent all of his or her time and energy on it, mastery would develop organically. I can attest to the fact that it does.