This week, we have been talking about the idea that optimizing our lives to the maximum degree might not be such a good idea. This optimization culture quickly teaches us that there's always a better version of everything: a better routine, a better system, a better diet, a better version of you. That sounds awesome at first, but over time, it creates a moving target that you will never reach. There is one more suggestion I want to make on what you should do. I'll do that right after this.

At some point, you need to say, "Enough." It becomes one of the strongest and most important decisions that you can make: enough work, enough progress, enough dieting, enough improvement. The lesson is grounding. Satisfaction does not come from endless optimization. It begins when you decide that you have already done enough and enjoy the rest.

Tim Ferriss, the man who wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, just recently revealed that he thinks we may have gone too far as a society in optimizing everything in our lives. Some people are wearing sensors on both wrists. But something interesting is starting to happen now. After years of adding tools and systems and routines and tracking, many people are starting to do something in the opposite direction. I'll tell you what it is in just a second.

Some people are embracing simplicity. They are deleting apps, reducing commitments, and simplifying their schedules, because simplicity reduces your mental load. Every time you add something, it requires more attention. Every tool you adopt creates another decision. Over time, complexity becomes exhausting. The lesson is practical. Sometimes, simplicity is all you need.

This week, we're talking about optimizing your life and whether it can go too far. For example, you can't optimize your way into one thing, and we'll tell you what it is. Optimizing is great at improving efficiency. It helps you get more done and waste less time with better systems. But it does not create—I'll tell you what it doesn't—right after this.

Meaning. It does not create meaning. There are great things about better systems, but we can't do that without something at the very base of it. We can optimize our schedule, our calendar, and our workflow and make everything run smoothly, but there is still something missing, and that is meaning. It doesn't come from inefficiency or efficiency. It comes from connection, purpose, relationships, and doing something that is more important than just us.

This week, I'm pointing out that the idea of optimizing your life may have gone just a little bit too far. Today, I want to talk about biohacking and how it has already gone too far. For example, biohacking began as a very practical idea: get better sleep, improve your focus, eat better, make small changes that help your day work better. But like many ideas, it can escalate and go too far. I'll tell you what happened right after this.

Optimizing your life may have gone too far with all of you biohackers and supplement takers. Have you started saying that meals are no longer meals, they are inputs? Rest is no longer rest; it's recovery optimization. The lesson is steady. Health is supposed to support our lives, not take them over.

For the last 10-20 years, we've been obsessed with optimizing everything. Optimize your website, optimize your sleep, optimize your diet, your morning routine, and we have to track it, measure it, wear something on our wrist that tells us about it, improve it. Get more apps that do more things and tell us more about what we're doing. No one embodied this more than Tim Ferriss, the man behind The 4-Hour Workweek. He has actually come out and walked it back a little bit, though. I'll tell you what he is now saying right after this.

At some point, optimization crosses a line. Instead of improving your life, it becomes your life. You are no longer living; you are managing several different apps. The lesson is simple but important. Tools are supposed to support you, not consume you and become your entire life.

This week, I've been trying to present a happy message that counters what we see in the world today. It is very scary right now, with our 401Ks going up and down. The stock market is crazy, the price of oil, inflation, we all know the problems that we are facing, but I've tried to share the message that good things are happening as well. For example, AI is going to give you an opportunity to level up. Learn it now, and your salary will go up quite a bit because of that. So many positive things. I want to share another one with you in just a second.

All of the news media make more money when there is bad news. In fact, bad news is the business model. So we have to remember that people who win are the ones who see opportunity out there when other people see fear.

This week, we are looking at the world from a little bit further away. Instead of getting up close and personal in the micro analysis, we're doing a macro, 40,000-foot analysis, trying to show you that the world is actually getting better despite all of the bad things we see. Despite the wars and inflation and the stock market going up and down, good things are happening. I'll give you an example right after this.

One of the big advantages that we have as small business owners, or just as individuals, is that we have more speed. Big companies are slow. They have committees and approvals and layers of management. Whereas we entrepreneurs can progress with one decision, click open, we can move that fast, and that's why we entrepreneurs have an incredible speed advantage in today's world. Use it. Think about it.

I am arguing this week that the world is better than we all think and feel, and that there's never been more opportunity. There are great things happening at the macro level, and I know it's hard to accept because the micro level, the war, the taxes, the inflation, my job being cut, all of that is so scary, but I'll tell you, if at the macro level, good things are happening. And I'll tell you one of those right after this.

So here's the good news: the gatekeepers are gone. You do not need to ask for permission anymore. If you want to do a podcast, write a book, create a movie, or get a job, all of those can be done without asking anyone's permission. So the lesson is very profound. Start today. Success today starts the minute you raise your hand and start doing it yourself. The gatekeepers aren't going to stop you.

This week, I want to talk about some things that will make you happy and feel a little more content. You know, every day right now, it feels like the world is falling apart. We have wars, elections, markets going up and down. Your 401K is like a basketball. You turn on the news, and you only hear bad stuff. There's something that they don't tell you, though, and this week I'm going to focus on that. I'll be right back with my first example.

What they don't tell us is that most of the systems actually work. Our life is more stable than ever before. Supply chains are better, medicine is better, and information is better and instant, but the machine keeps working. Crisis gets attention. Stability does not. If you build your business or your life based on headlines, you will fail and panic. If you build your life and business on a long-term trend, you will win. The opportunity has never been greater.

These are scary times right now. We have elections coming up, and the other guys are already stealing it. We have a war going on that I don't think any of us really want. The market is going up and down like NCAA basketball, and my team is not winning, and it's a scary time. And then they throw AI at us. I want to share another way to look at it right after this.

So let me tell you what's going to happen with AI. Every major technology shift has not eliminated work; it does, though, shift who gets paid the most. The people who learn the tool early now become the new winners. AI is not replacing entrepreneurs. It is replacing entrepreneurs who refuse to adapt. The question is not whether AI will take your job. The question is whether you will be able to use it before your competitor does.