OPTIMIZE with Brian Johnson | More Wisdom in Less Time

The other day we received a beautiful note from an Optimizer (thank you, Jessica!) letting us know how much she appreciated our work. Like many of the other amazing notes we’ve been blessed to receive, I printed it out and put it on the top of my desk to remind me of how lucky I am to be able to do what I do AND to personalize my mission to help change the world ONE person at a time, together, starting with you and me.

In our last +1, we talked about Byron Katie’s investment strategy and putting your focus on the most important stock market out there: Your own consciousness. Today, I want to go back to some wisdom we briefly touched on from Yuval’s new book.

James Clear has a super-popular website (jamesclear.com). Millions of people visit it every month and hundreds of thousands subscribe to his email newsletter. After reading this book, I can see why. He’s a great writer and distills the essence of habit formation into, well, its fundamental components—the “atomic” structure if you will—while showing us how those TINY little incremental improvements add up to MIGHTY results.

In our last +1, we met one of my heroes, Mrs. Kristie Kuehnast. I smile with joy (and in awe) every time I imagine her fifth-grade students coming back into the classroom after their mile run to sit down and watch a new +1 or PNTV.

A couple of +1s ago, we talked about the fact that we can TEACH willpower. We also talked about the fact that, unfortunately, very few school administrators and/or teachers are actually thinking about the importance of this.

When I first saw the title for this book I thought to myself, “Really, Steve? THIS is what you think I need to hear? That nobody wants to read my sh*t? I thought we were working on our Resistance and winning the War of Art!" Then I bought the book and embraced the tough love with a growth mindset.

In our last +1, we talked about the fact that willpower outpredicts IQ by a factor of TWO for academic performance. Today I want to revisit the fact that the best willpower exemplars among us play OFFENSE with their willpower NOT defense. In other words, they don’t use their precious willpower reserves to constantly battle temptation to do the right thing. That’s playing defense.

In our last +1, we talked about the awesome CEO-dads (and Harvard interns!) who are committed to mastering their Love as much as their Work. (Inspiring!!!)

Weight. It matters. A lot. Although I’m obviously not a weight-loss guy, as I prepped for Energy 101 I realized that we needed to talk about Optimizing our weight. Enter, this class—which could more accurately be called Optimal METABOLISM 101.

At the end of my recent talk I keep on talking about, one of the CEOs came up and asked me how to apply the wisdom I shared to his parenting. He had a 5-year-old like me. Then another guy who was also waiting to chat stepped up and said, “Yah. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. I have a 10-year-old and a 9-year-old as well.”