Optimal Agency

We recently joined Jonathan Fletcher of Digital Barbell for a wide-ranging conversation about the Rules and Behaviors of Time, as well as why we started Optimal Agency, how to know what the “most important” element of Agency is, and much more.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 Why “no” can often be the beginning of the conversation, not the end

📍 The value of letting thoughts, ideas, & fears “bubble up”

📍 How the ability to stay focused and set boundaries is a superpower

📍 Why HWT is really about taking ultimate responsibility

📍 What the six Behaviors of Time are

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ABOUT THE SHOW

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show so you don’t miss any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

It’s not that money can’t buy happiness, it’s that we don’t know HOW to use money to buy happiness. That’s the argument the authors of “If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right” argue.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 The 8 principles of using money to buy happiness

📍 What “hedonic adaptation” is and why it’s a useful concept to understand

📍 Why people who have won the lottery aren’t often happy a few years later

📍 How anticipation can make purchases make us even happier

📍 What “regret mitigation is” and how to limit it

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show so you don’t miss any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

The only two foods that our Rules push back against are alcohol and sugar. We talk about why that is in this episode, touching on the similarities between the two substances, the cost of both across our Health, Wealth, and Time, and they’re hard to say no to - but only to a point.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 Why this Rule is particularly personal to Jon

📍 The similarities between both processed sugar and alcohol

📍 The difference between actual moderation and socially acceptable moderation

📍 The physiological damage of both processed sugar and alcohol

📍 The usefulness of an absolute Rule like this one

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show so you don’t miss any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

Do you need a new car, or do you want freedom? Do you need more money, or do you want security? So often, we don’t do the hard work of recognizing the abundance we have, living with gratitude, and examining why we want the things we want - often times to the detriment of our Agency.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 Why you probably don’t want a new sports car because you need a new sports car

📍 What “mimetic desire” is and how it plays a role in what we want

📍 The dangers of being motivated by dissatisfaction

📍 Why we need to define “enough” so that we don’t default to “more”

📍 How to know when it’s time to acknowledge that everything is perfect

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show so you don’t miss any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

We know what it’s like to have a calendar filled with recurring meetings. But even outside the office, our Agency can be limited by time given away to things that don’t line up with our priorities. We’re talking this week about some of the ways to fight back against recurring commitments.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 The questions to ask to begin limiting recurring commitments at work and out

📍 What consensus is and why we think we need more of it than we do

📍 How to earn the right to say “no” to unnecessary meetings

📍 The difference between work and busyness

📍 How this rule is interdependent with some of the other Time rules

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show so you don’t miss any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

We’re talking about the second Rule of Wealth this week, breaking down the primary strategies for how you can begin making more money soon (and some of the ways to avoid trying). We’re also talking about skills, networking, and work diversification.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 How the Rules of Wealth act like a powerful flywheel

📍 Why this Rule doesn’t say: “Work as much as you’re able”

📍 The #1 way to increase how much money you’re currently making

📍 What diversification and portfolio thinking look like in the job market

📍 The difference between competence and excellence

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

Why isn’t this project called “Maximum Agency”? That’s the question this week, and to answer we’re talking about defining “enough”, why aiming for “maximal” gets us into trouble, and much more.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 Why we called this project what we do

📍 The difference between “maximal” and “optimal” agency

📍 Why defining “enough” is a worthwhile exercise

📍 The detriment of aiming for “maximal” across our HWT

📍 Why achieving optimal agency isn’t the finish line, but the starting line

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

Eating unprocessed foods and cooking our own meals is a powerful, simple way to ensure we are getting the nutrients we need, all while avoiding the problems that cheap and convenient foods often create.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 What unprocessed foods are and why we care about them

📍 What the “filter of complication” is

📍 Whether you should follow this rule completely and all the time

📍 Why the rule could be: You can eat anything, as long as you make it

📍 Why we want to aim for convenient and uncomplicated when it comes to nutrition

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

In order to make things better, we’ve got to first be willing to see things as they are. That’s what confronting the dragon is all about - whether we’re talking about our health, wealth, or free time.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 Why it’s always better to know than not know

📍 Why shame is such a dangerous feeling (and how to get beyond it)

📍 The counterintuitive strategy to avoid hitting walls

📍 How to acknowledge reality without accepting it

📍 That emotions are always information, but not always instruction

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

We’re continuing our exploration of the Rules this week, diving into the first rule of Time: defaulting to “no.” We talk about why it’s so easy to default to “yes,” how you can use HWT as a filter for making better decisions, and much more.

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EXPECT TO LEARN:

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📍 How to think about time in debts and credits

📍 The proxy questions you can ask in pursuit of agency

📍 Why it’s important to recognize, first, that we are always making choices

📍 What equivocation in making a decision should tell you

📍 What defaulting to no does for you at work

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ABOUT THE SHOW:

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Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.

===========

✦ Read the Rules: Health | Wealth | Time

✦ Get your HWT Score

✦ Get our weekly email

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