Nausea, dizziness, and extreme fatigue were all experienced by Austin after quitting caffeine. Why would anyone do this? Is it to prove a point? Some test of strength? Or just stupidity? In this episode Austin and Reagan attempt to answer these questions to the satisfaction of their listeners. 

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and Austin discuss how to develop their optimal selves, be productive, and discuss the lessons they're learning from what they're reading. New episodes as time allows.

Human brains are good at thinking of things, but not the best at remembering them. Ever since this whole internet thing, it has been pure brain overload, with no possible way of remembering everything (probably a good thing). But how many times do you see something that you decide is important, then 7 minutes later you have completely forgotten? A second brain is a way to quickly capture anything from a name, phone number, idea, etc, and store it before it goes away. Organized, quick, and labeled in a specific way so you can actually find the stuff you store, and the ability to store all major forms of information. Preferably it would accessible everywhere so you can access it from anywhere. Human brains are a superhighway of information that is flowing all the time. 

It should all be in one place and scale for the rest of your life so it needs to be built well. So it needs to be able to scale, but it needs to be quick capture, easily usable, and long-term storage. Almost an in-between place, where you grab the information, then come back and sort it to the appropriate places. It's important to be intentional with this, in the long run, it will actually end up saving you time, helping to prevent endless searching for the long-lost ideas. This is about capturing snapshots of your life. If you don't capture them, no one will. 

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and I (Austin) discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

In this episode of Mind Castle, Reagan and Austin take a look at an idea that Austin recently did in a YouTube video called "The simple idea that changed my life." This episode flushes the idea about how we approach goals and view ourselves. The main thrust is that when approaching a goal, you look beyond just the outcome, but deeper into who you must become to achieve that goal. You must become a person who is capable of achieving the goal. The idea of this came from a book called "Think Like a Monk" by Jay Shetty. Jay lays this idea out very well with a fantastic story that is given at the beginning of the episode. 

We should be more worried about our current trajectory and the systems in place than simply the outcome. Reagan brings into the discussion a segment from Atomic Habits, where he discusses how goals are good because they give us a target, but systems are what are used to accomplish those goals. He also talks about how our lives are made up of small improvements over long periods of time. One of the main benefits of this idea of becoming a better person is when approaching hardship. Trials, while unpleasant and painful, are an opportunity to grow and be stretched. Austin gives his opinion on how he can be optimistic even in hard times because he knows it is helping him become a stronger person. Later they discuss how to adopt this worldview and how it isn't for everything that is hard. Some things will break you and have nonreversible consequences. that isn't what they are discussing, they are talking about the things that stretch and require movement outside of the comfort zone. 

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and Austin discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

When it comes to learning information, there is a lot of noise. If you don't believe that, just open Twitter. How do you cut through the noise and get what you want to get? What is the maple syrup principle? That's what Reagan and Austin discuss in this episode, how to find that distilled knowledge without wasting your time in all the noise. A large part of this is going directly to the source of the knowledge. 

Figure out how to get information by going directly to the source. Go to the distilled refined places for your information. This allows you to be more efficient with your research, while at the same time learning more information. To make maple syrup, you have to boil 40 gallons of syrup to make one gallon of the good stuff. When it comes to knowledge it would be exhausting if that's the approach needed. Much better to go to the core for the diamond while the rest chip on the lump of coal. 

Experts are amazing at filtering information. A large part of doing this is learning what the core principles of your life are. What drives you? What is most important to you? What are your values? When that is learned it makes filtering information and tasks so much easier. Also discussed in this episode is applying the 80/20 rule to our information diet. You don't put maple sap on your pancakes. The stuff you are ingesting needs to be well worth your brain. We need a rich information diet, not a noisy diet.

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and Austin discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

This episode finishes building on the previous episode, discussing first principles and how to choose what is most important to you. Finding baseline reality is important and living in a dreamland won't help you accomplish your dreams. So, while it's vital to be a cook and build your own recipe, be aware of the fundamental reality of the world. Without that baseline, you will live a very confused and frustrated life. 

From there it goes deep into the literal way Reagan and Austin choose the books they read in the flood of recommendations that never seem to slow down. The other side of this is true as well; how do you begin reading when you are interested in reading but don't know where to start. A book is a serious investment of time. How do you filter out what's worth your time? Two of the main ways to do this are with the apps listed below, Scribd and Goodreads. Both of these are wonderful for researching books and finding what your friends are reading and enjoying. Austin says how he refuses to read a book until he has searched and read some of the reviews on Goodreads. Another way that Austin began to read outside of the box, was by asking close friends, "If you could recommend any book to me and you knew that I would actually read it, which book would you recommend?" Out of this comes the "reading ratio" which is essential for healthy reading. Austin explains how this is works; basically, for every 2,3,4 (or however many you choose) books you read that are within your normal scope, you read one book that is beyond your normal comfort level of reading. Something outside the norm. This helps prevent the common trap of reading only what you are comfortable with. 

Later they transition into discussing the lists of books they have bought already this year that they plan on reading. 

Austin's YouTube video

Reading a book in one sitting

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and Austin discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

Hustle culture, toxic productivity. What are they, and are they healthy for a meaningful life? Is it the only way to win in life? In this episode, Reagan and Austin dig into the drawbacks to what the "big winners" of hustle culture preach. Like most things that are unhealthy, it began as something good but got taken to an extreme. We are so busy optimizing our calenders or finding the newest productivity app, that we never stop to ask, to what end? What is the goal? Even worse, the temptation is to look at others who aren't working as hard by our standards and assume we are better than them. If you want to work 90 hour work weeks, that's fine. Just don't push that on others or claim it's the only way.  There is one critical flaw with hustle culture. Winners and losers have the same goals. For all the Grant Cardone's and Dayne Johnson's who succeed, there are just as many who failed, left with nothing. But we don't see those examples because they don't have a voice. You only see the ones of those who have made it. Just because you work harder than everyone else, doesn't mean you will be more fulfilled and successful. Too many people have set an arbitrary bar of success, that if you just do such and such you will eventually win. While this may be true to an extent, to assume it's universal is bending the paper a little far.  Productivity is about getting work done in less time so that you can carve out more time for the things that are truly important. Productivity is not about what you do, it's about what you accomplish. Doing more and being busy all the time doesn't mean you are accomplishing more. You may be working harder but not smarter. There are YouTubers with more than 1,000 daily vlogs and still had less than 200 subscribers. Doing more doesn't equal more outcomes. If you cram your life too full you'll miss the big picture. There's a difference between being lazy and being bored. Lazy is lounging on a couch with potato chips watching Netflix. Bored is allowing yourself to get immersed in a menial task that allows your mind to wander and be creative. Take time to be bored.  

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and I (Austin) discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

Why would someone endure such pain and abnormality of behavior by taking a cold shower?? In this episode, we discuss a very specific way Austin chooses to be intentional; cold showers. The way this got started was one day Austin was feeling extra unmotivated and undisciplined and thought; "What's the most disciplined thing I could do right now?" He decided that a cold shower would be the most disciplined thing he could do. So he did. It's a real-life test every day that shows whether or not you're in control of doing hard things. 

Physiology it's grueling, which is the point. You are being attacked by a thousand droplets of icy death. Your body goes into full freakout mode and you basically feel like your going to die for the first few seconds. Of course, you don't, but it's the thought that counts. Your vision may blur a little and you'll probably lose your breath. It physically hurts your body. Of course, there are many health benefits to doing this, but as discussed in this episode, the health benefits aren't the reason. WHAT?! Nope. 

So what's the reason then? Hopefully, we can all agree that a large part of bettering ourselves is expanding the level of experiences we allow into our lives. If we shrink away from doing hard things our worlds will slowly close in on us, shrinking our experiences and hindering growth. We all experience something called "The Flinch" when we come upon doing something that makes us uncomfortable. It's the moment right before, where we freeze up or question ourselves. We can either choose to embrace that challenge and push through or shrink away and live a life of avoidance. It's not about the cold showers and it never was. It's about deliberately placing hard things in our lives and embracing "The Flinch." This can be done in many, many ways, cold showers are simply one way of doing it.  

Life is like a river. We all go down it and at some time or another hard experiences will come toward us. We can either choose to jump out on the bank and avoid it, or we can face it head-on and become better people for it. The choice is yours. However, it is much easier to grow when you do it on purpose, instead of being forced.

Jonny Harris - Cold Exposure 

Documentary on Wim Hof (Yes Theory) 

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and I (Austin) discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

In this episode, Reagan and Austin Schrock discuss the importance and absolute need for intentionality in maintaining a healthy mind. We open with an excerpt from the book Discipline Equals Freedom, by JOCKO Willink called, Sugar Coated Lies. How do we stay focused on every moment of our day-to-day lives? 

So much of our lives are pulled by distractions. One thing we covered in this episode is something called "The Tyranny of the Urgent." It says that we spend all our time doing the things that are urgent, but not really important. That text, email, notification, you name it. All the things that scream for our attention yet don't take us closer to our end goal. If we do this we will spend our time reacting to other people's agendas, and not being proactive in our own lives. A part of maintaining intentionality and focus is the ability to function outside of when we have to. Too many people rely on external sources to push them outside their comfort zones. When we step into hard things of our own will, we learn to function outside crisis of mode. Then when a real crisis does come we can be focused and respond correctly.  

The main thing is to be intentional about what brings meaning to your life. It's not about being the next productivity guru or getting tons of stuff done. It's like you have a blank slate, and mark the 3 things in your life that make your life meaningful and those become priority for your time. Being intentional is maintaining focus on what's important to us so we can optimize our lives for happiness. 

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Why you are starving on urgency | The tyranny of the urgent - YouTube 

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and I (Austin) discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.

In this episode, Reagan and Austin discuss the books we have read in 2021. We narrow it down to our favorite books (a hard task) and then discuss why we liked them and some of what we have learned. If you follow this podcast, you know that we try our best to expand our minds and maintain peak performance in our lives. The majority of how we do this is by filtering what we take into our minds, aka, reading well. In this episode, we give a picture of the information we allow in our minds. If you'd like to know more of what we read check out our Good Reads down below.  In the end, we spent a good amount of time talking about some really dark books looking at humanity in the past. While many of us try to read books we think we will enjoy, it is also important to read books that are hard. Books that are heavy and that expand our worldview. For example, it is essential to know how we got here; reading history is one of the best ways of doing this. Reading about history is very interesting, yet it can be hard to get through sometimes. Some really messed up people had their way and it's not all roses and ice cream cones. History affected real people just like you and me. It can be easy when reading books like that to try to extract information or learn lessons; don't do either. Simply look at it for what it was.  

Austin's Favorite Books 1. Goals - Brian Tracy 

2. Elephant in the Brain - Kevin Simler 

3. Think Like a Monk - Jay Shetty 

4. The Art of Thinking Clearly - Rolf Dobelli 

5. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - Donald Miller  

Reagan's Favorite Books 

1. The Productivity Project - Chris Bailey 

2. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan Peterson 

3. Living Forward - Michael Hyatt  

4. Atomic Habits - James Clear 

5. Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez 

6. Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink 

7. Deep Work - Cal Newport 

8. The 4 Hour Workweek - Timothy Ferriss 

9. Unlimited Memory - Kevin Horsley 

10. Simply Christian - N.T. Wright 

11. The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn  

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Mind Castle is where Reagan and I (Austin) discuss how to develop our optimal selves, be productive, and the lessons we're learning from what we're reading. Plus, the occasional story from our many travels. New episodes as we have time to make them.