OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

Continuing our good times with Confucius, here’s one of the gems from his Analects that has tattooed itself on my brain since I read it a decade ago.

While we’re enjoying our time with Confucius, how about we ask him what his #1 tip is for Optimizing? Let me Google Hangout Confucius in… One second… OK… Got him.

In our last +1, we spent time trying to keep up with Confucius and his Optimizing intensity. Today we’re going to focus on the time horizon on which we need to sustain that level of intensity if we want to actualize.

Continuing our old-school theme, let’s move back a couple hundred years before Aristotle, and, according to Google maps, let’s go east about 4,355 miles from Greece to China and spend some time with the great Chinese philosopher Confucius.

I got up this morning even earlier than I usually do—fired up to start hammering some +1s to hit a fun milestone.  So… I go through my morning ritual for the x thousandth time—meditation, movement. Done. Supplements in? Check. I’m ready to rock. Then… Oops. Tech issues. Mission Thwarted.

I can’t resist. One more +1 on Aristotle. So… The Olympic Games started in Olympia (not too far outside of Athens) in 776 BC. A few centuries later, Aristotle told us that you can’t just SHOW UP at the Olympics and look like a great athlete, you have to actually COMPETE.

Today we have the final installment in our What Would Aristotle Do? +1 series. We’ve gotta talk about habits. You know that E P I C Aristotle quote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”?

A couple +1s ago I promised to chat about Aristotle’s thoughts on magnanimity. It’s one of the “Other Moral Virtues” he talks about after he covers the Big 2: Courage and Self-Control. Magnanimity might just be my favorite word. Do you know what it literally means? Magna = “great” + animus = “soul.” A great soul? Yep. Sign me up. How do I become THAT?

In our last +1, we talked about Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean. With diligent, patient, and persistent practice, virtuous activity of the soul can be found right between the vice of excess and the vice of deficiency.

Continuing our “What does Aristotle have to say about Optimizing?” theme, let’s chat a little more about HOW Aristotle tells us we can achieve a eudaimonic sense of happiness via “virtuous activity of the soul.” In short, Aristotle tells us that virtuous activity will always be at the “mean”—right there between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency.