4 habits that save time

Summary

Our four best productivity habits give us 25 extra hours of performance each week. Habits that save time!

We are two habit nerds that constantly tweak our days to maximize output.

In this episode, we will break our habits down for you. How you can apply them and how you can use them to boost your personal development and your career.

Today's episode has been split up in four topics:

1. How Erik got two extra hours every night
2. How Emil saves tons of time by going against the social norms.
3. A health habit that Erik has constantly evolved over the last decade.
4. The most controversial of our habits, yet the only one we both do.

An episode full of habits that save time.

Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person.

We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective.

We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from.

1. In the first section we dive into the habits of watching TV in the evenings. How Erik changed from spending almost every evening just watching a screen and instead turned this into a more productive use of the time that got invested in his relationship and his health without taking any extra energy. A habit that saves time, about 10 hours each week.
2. The second part is about our view of alcohol and drugs and how Emil decided to go completely sober a few years ago. This has increased his productivity significantly and added many hours to his week thanks to not being hungover. A habit that saves time - about 8 hours every week.
3. In the third part we have a habit that saves time from thinking about food. Almost every day Erik replaces one meal with a large smoothie. This both adds to healthy living as well as to not needing to waste time cooking or thinking about what to eat. A habit that saves time - about 3 hours every week.
   The recipe is:
   100g blueberries
   100g raspberries
   1/2 avocado
   1/2 banana
   25g broccoli
   25g spinach
   5g ginger
   5g turmeric
   One tablespoon olive-oil
   Water
4. Finally we talk about not watching the news. How this saves time both in mindless scrolling and in better sleep and higher energy levels. We discuss whether we fall behind other people or not if it's important to keep up with the news. A habit that saves time - about 4 hours per week.

--

Social media channels:
http://linktr.ee/smilingerik
http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Transcript

[00:00:00] Our four best productivity habits gives us 25 hours of productive extra time each week, and we are two productivity nerds always tweaking our habits to maximize our output.

[00:00:15] And in this episode, we will break these habits down for you to show how you could apply this to your life and how you also can get lots of extra productivity time and boost your personal career or your business life.

[00:00:30] And I am here with beautiful Erik Bergman, who is the founder of Great.com, or a company that give away 100 percent of its profits to help the climate. And Eric made 50 million euros before he turned 30 when he founded his previous business, Catina Media, that went from zero to 300 employees in just five years. And on the side, he's teaching entrepreneurship and personal development to his over 250000 followers on Instagram.

[00:01:00] Thank you. I'm here with my good friend Emil, who is the host of this podcast, as well as our other podcast called Great.com Talks With. And he's among the smartest people I know, which comes with the benefit of being really fun to learn things with and the downside of making me feel pretty stupid sometimes. But it's perfect to have as a creative sparring partner in this podcast and in all other content creation that I do for social media and on the side of great. He also runs a coaching business where he teaches men to live happier and richer lives.

[00:01:38] I do indeed. And if you're new here to this podcast, becoming a great.com, our goal or no goal is to be the podcast in the world that gives you the most value per minute that you listen to us. And to accomplish this, we spend a lot of time planning this episode. So we are sure we're not just talking or telling pointless stories. And most importantly, we don't have any advertisement in this podcast. We kind of get annoyed by advertisement. So if you feel the same, the next time you listen to a podcast on how long boring advertisement think of us and our goal to give you the most value per minute that you listen.

[00:02:21] Just reading the news 12 times a day about nothing, and what I do know is I put when I am in the same state, I don't scroll, I don't do anything. I usually go away from the computer and I lay down and close my eyes and usually have a short power nap or a rest and recover my body instead.

[00:02:39] That's a lot better. Yes, that's a very good thing. That's.

[00:03:06] Today's episode is divided into four topics in the first one, we're going to look at how Eric gets two hours of extra time every night. And in the second topic, we're going to look at how me, Emil, creates a lot of extra productivity by going against social norms. In the third topic, we are going to look at Eric's favorite health tech that has evolved and evolved for almost a decade now. And in the fourth and final topic, we are going to look at a habit that we both do, and that is very controversial.

[00:03:42] I'm just really excited about the topics. When you tell them now, it feels like I wish someone else did this episode. So I would get to learn habits like this from someone else. That's why I'm curious.

[00:03:54] I wish I could go back in time and learn these topics when I was in my 20s. And that's interesting because the first topic we are going to look at how Eric actually went back in time 100 years.

[00:04:14] So, Eric, tell me now, what are you going to do with a time machine that you invented?

[00:04:18] Well, I'm going to do with it. Well, I can tell you what you're referring to at least six months ago. And for most part of my adult life, every evening have looked very much the same. Me and my fiancee, we've been spending the last two hours every day watching television and almost always something we have seen before and something that doesn't really add a lot of value to our lives. And I think was in April or May or something this year, I just realized this is just such a waste of time. You know, just like Netflix box saying, like, are you still watching whenever that comes up? I used to feel like this is just a very depressing book to press. I, I heard somewhere that you should never turn on the TV unless, you know, beforehand what you are going to watch. And I felt that that rule really resonated with me because whenever you turn on the TV and you don't even know what you're going to watch it, you end up watching the same crap all over again or something that doesn't really add value. So ask Joanna if she felt how about would never turn on the TV in the evenings. Have you decided what to watch based on some recommendation? And she felt that that was a great idea. So we decided, OK, let's not watch TV in the evenings and. It went so well, I got really surprised and thought that we would be very bored from this, but we were like before, we used to sit both of us side by side and watch your screen. And then we started listening to audiobooks. That's what it started with. And we were looking at each other, having a connection with each other and just went from there to talking about spending so much more time together.

[00:06:17] So Time Machine might be a strong word for not watching TV, but I'm going to I'm going to go with this anyway.

[00:06:24] I'm sure you can patent it now. But still, I'm thinking all your books and like talking it seems not so stimulating. It seems a bit boring.

[00:06:36] Are you bored of them?

[00:06:39] A little bit bored sometimes, but it's usually when I used to watch TV, I'm half bored or all the time pretty much. It never gets more than four out of ten. Exciting because well, I seem to be honest, there isn't that much interesting on TV. And when we have these evenings, sometimes I'm two out of ten excited because it's I don't have anything to do and we don't have anything to talk about. But it's usually opens up after ten minutes or something. Someone comes up with something or we listen to something or we do something else and it gets a lot more. Valuable moments each evening and we also actually go to bed earlier, which means that I get more rest than I wake up more rested, because it's at least for me, it's really hard to turn off the TV like in the evenings. I'm a bit too tired to go to bed. So instead I keep watching TV and I just feel, looking back, how it drains my life from time.

[00:07:43] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:07:45] You're saying you're never watching TV at all now, or do you watch like a specific movie that you have very, very rarely watch TV in the evenings? I rarely watch TV during the days as well. And I, I don't I put my phone in flight mode at eight p.m. and I don't work after eight o'clock in the evening either. So I thought, why not not rewinding, winding, winding down my day at eight, which usually helps me to fall asleep at 10, 30 and I can wake up without an alarm pretty early. So I don't watch TV unless someone have recommended a specific movie or specific show or whatever and highly recommended. And then I watch that, but I don't turn on the TV if I don't know what I'm going to watch.

[00:08:31] Right. So a part of me feels like this is a really great idea and another part of me rationalizing by I shouldn't implement it and those rationalizations goes something like the following. So.

[00:08:44] And with my before I met my girlfriend, Bianca, I was never watching TV, I was having your life. I was just meditating or thinking or looking into a ball in the evening. And I really enjoy those evenings. But now we're kind of watching TV together. So I feel if I go away and I do yoga or meditation or something, it kind of feels like I'm leaving her behind. And in the evenings I don't I often don't have so much energy left to have a meaningful conversation. I'm really tired. I just I don't want to do exactly nothing or something very relaxing like watching on TV. What would you say to my situation?

[00:09:21] I would start with with audiobooks and see how that feels, because most of the time we're not really talking, but we're not hypnotized by a screen who keeps us awake looking into a light. And I think that's the crucial part here. Like a lot of time, we're just listening to an audio book together. She likes to do Sudoku and I'm stretching. That's a common evening. But the difference is that you can turn off an audio book much easier. At least I can turn off an audio book much easier than I can turn off the TV and I can actually look at her. So we have somewhat more of a connection in the evening. And I have a lot more books that I really enjoy listening to. Then I have a TV series that I haven't already watched or seen. So it actually becomes more meaningful and entertaining just to listen to the books and less hypnotizing because at least to me, the TV is hypnotizing. If I'm in a restaurant and there was a football game on, even though I don't like football, I don't care one bit for football. I struggle not to stare at the screen because it's so hypnotizing. So this has been a crucial element about this is to not have a screen. We don't necessarily have deep conversations anyway, but at least we're not. If we're not hanging out with the TV.

[00:10:43] Got it. I can see how this is a huge improvement in your immunity.

[00:10:48] I'm very happy with it. I think it definitely gives me two extra hours of it really feels like I've gotten two extra hours of time because I know I take a long walk. We take long walks every almost every evening. We listen to books together. We go to bed earlier. We get more rest. It really feels like I somehow found two extra hours every day and among the best habits I've ever implemented.

[00:11:14] Beautiful. Something more you want to add on this or would you like to move on?

[00:11:18] I highly recommend people to try it. I agree that it sounds boring, but I highly recommend to try it, at least for a week and see how it feels. Now we can move on. So let's look into you then. What is it that e-mail does that saves him a ton of time by going against the social norms?

[00:11:48] When I was in my 20s, I was feeling quite insecure and anxious in a lot of social situations, and I was also very stressed a lot of the time because I was working as a professional poker player and I had adrenaline coming out of my ears and I kind of compensated. This by drinking alcohol. So when I was going out with my friends, we all had a habit of drinking a lot. And when I was watching a movie on a Tuesday night, I quite often had a whiskey with the movie and I would relax me and. It's not like this habit ruined my productivity or anything, but after a night out, I wouldn't be able to do anything useful for the whole sun. And if I had a whisk in the evening, I would be, you know, 20 percent less sharp in the next week, weekday. And as I got older, I had more and more frustrated that I lost productivity. And I also got way worse at dealing with alcohol. So I have stopped drinking completely.

[00:12:48] So when did you stop completely? Three and a half years ago, was it something specific that happened to take such an extreme decision?

[00:12:59] Yeah, I was I was actually talking with a spiritual teacher. I had one on one call with one of my role models. His name is Matkal. And yeah, we were talking about sobriety and how that is a really direct path to develop spiritually. And I trust that in him very much. And I tried it out. And then I guess kind of a similar thing happened with your TV example that I, after a while started saying, wow, I get so much benefit out of this.

[00:13:30] So was it hard to stop? Yeah. So I didn't want to stop, really.

[00:13:37] So when he brought it up, I had a lot of resistance. It felt like fire burning in my body from even the idea of stopping completely.

[00:13:45] You wanted him to be wrong?

[00:13:47] No, but it was more like I really. Trusted has I really looked up to him so he has influence, kind of overpowered my resistance.

[00:14:02] So would you do you wish that you would have stopped earlier?

[00:14:05] No, because I think both well, drinking was helping me with my social anxiety.

[00:14:15] So it's a quick fix, right? So I would drink and then I would act in a different way than I would do normally. And I would start asking myself the questions, why can't I act like that always? Why am I feeling the way I do? What's the difference here? So it kind of helped me in the beginning, but I think over time it becomes just a crutch.

[00:14:34] Ok, so you're thirty two now and you stopped three years ago. You were twenty eight, twenty nine, something like that when you stopped. And you don't wish that you would have stopped earlier. Would you still advise the 22 year old to stop drinking?

[00:14:49] Actually if I could go back in time, I would like to never started in the first place. I remember when I was in the seventh grade in school, I was in really good physical shape. I came third, I think, in six kilometre race with the whole school in my first year of high school. And this was people from 7th to ninth grade.

[00:15:09] So they were much older than you.

[00:15:11] Yes, I was running six kilometers in twenty one minutes when I was in seventh grade, which is super quick. And then in eighth grade I started drinking and I ran the same race in twenty five minutes and in ninth grade I ran it in twenty eight minutes.

[00:15:26] And that was just because I started drinking when not just but mostly I would say OK, so you would give anyone the advice to, to stop drinking that regardless of age, even yourself.

[00:15:38] But I think my, I think my answer felt vague and it's that I don't spend time wishing that things were different. That's a good and that's why I had a resistance against it. But if if I could go back, I would not like to stop drinking.

[00:15:52] So it's it's kind of a quick fix for social anxiety and whatever, instead of taking the longer journey of personal development or learning social skills and building confidence.

[00:16:05] Yeah, I mean, the trick to be confident is to be more OK with feeling uncomfortable. Yeah. So alcohol is really stopping that process.

[00:16:13] How come you have chosen the extreme route of not drinking at all?

[00:16:17] Let's say I have a habit of sometimes drinking a whiskey when I watch a movie. If I don't watch the same movie and I don't drink that whiskey, I have a thought in my head that is saying this moment could be a little bit better.

[00:16:29] So for me, it creates a subtle energy of dissatisfaction and also if I do drink, then I have that voice in my head that is saying, but we could have a whiskey now, but now that I'm going to feel tired tomorrow, how much should I drink? Blah, blah, blah. And it's so much thought around it and it's so much waiting to feel a different way. Like when I go to party now, my good emotions comes from talking with people and pushing my comfort zone a little bit and joking.

[00:16:58] It doesn't come from a substance like that perspective, like it takes decisions away that makes it easier. Personally, I've never really had a positive association to alcohol. I used to drink to fall asleep when I was working the most and I wanted to stop that and I never do that anymore. But I still drink a little bit at social occasions and whatnot, but I've never had a very positive association to it. So one of the reasons why I almost never drunk, but I don't have that experience of this moment would be a little bit better if I can't relate to that one when it comes to drinking.

[00:17:41] Right.

[00:17:42] So when I stopped, I didn't drink much, I had a couple of drinks when I went out with my friends, sometimes a glass of wine with dinner, but let's say I'm out with my friends and everyone is having a drink, then I'm thinking, but I want to do stuff tomorrow. And if I drink, then I'm going to be tired. But I want to be part of this group and all of those thoughts are just not there and see that.

[00:18:05] And then it's easier to just say I don't drink than to say no to every suggestion about a drink.

[00:18:11] Yeah, let me say I'm sober. What do people say when you say that you're sober? People get inspired.

[00:18:16] You do. When I stopped, yeah. When I stopped, I was convinced that people would call me boring and yeah, I think I'm lame. I was preparing myself to having to deal with that, but it just never happened. It literally never happened that someone treated me as boring. And I was stopped on a party at a party a week ago and I was out sober. And I think five people asked, so why are you sober? And I shared my perspectives. And I said, wow, that's really inspiring. And I don't think anyone is going to stop, but maybe plants a seed or some kind of inspiration happens.

[00:18:55] I like that. So you would recommend to anyone to try this habit then?

[00:19:00] Yeah. So instead of just going cold turkey like I do, try to hold Turko out. Cold turkey is the English expression. I didn't know you just complete the stuff from out of nowhere.

[00:19:11] I never heard. OK, and you're not watching friends cold turkey us. Apparently not.

[00:19:19] Ok, well so before I stopped I started going.

[00:19:24] Even when I was drinking, I was going out on my own sober just to practice dealing with the social anxiety. So you don't have to quit right away, but have some nights every now and then when you're sober. So you know that I'm OK. I'm not dependent on the substance to feel OK in this environment, and that might make it easier to quit down the line.

[00:19:45] I like that perspective. So let's say you're worried that your friends think that you're boring.

[00:19:51] At least take an evening to go out and let the purpose be to practice being out sober rather than have fun. And it's OK to take it as a practice round.

[00:20:02] Yeah, practice. Having fun, sober.

[00:20:05] Yeah, but but you don't you're taking away the social pressure them. That's what I'm referring to. Like you can practice how fun sober which and it's hard to go out alone regardless even if you're.

[00:20:16] Yeah yeah. I mean when I was twenty four I couldn't imagine that it would even be fun to go out sober.

[00:20:24] Yeah. How much time do you think this saves you added productivity?

[00:20:30] Well, yes, take us Saturday out, for example, then I lose my whole Sunday of productivity and I usually like to do some stuff on a Sunday. So maybe that's five hours of time where I could be doing something productive. And then I would spend money, of course, on a taxi and on drinks and maybe, I don't know, maybe I spend one hundred dollars. And for you listening, ask yourself how much time does it take for you to make a hundred dollars? So then you add that into the equation. And you know, Texaco's I take the car to the party, take the car home. I'm everyone's hero. People are tired.

[00:21:04] I love that everyone's here. Make you drive me home. Yeah, sure. Let's stop by McDonald's. Yeah. It's the best time ever to make someone a favor. I can be very, very grateful. Is there anything else you'd like to add here?

[00:21:22] Yeah. How come you're not doing this? Because I know you drink sometimes.

[00:21:25] I think a big part is just what we touch about. I've never had that very positive association to alcohol. And so it hasn't it's never been a problem for me not to drink. And I'm almost never drunk.

[00:21:38] So I kind of do this, but I'm not doing it in the cold turkey saying no all the time thing.

[00:21:44] But for example, when I go out dancing, which I do frequently, I, I don't drink, but I don't identify as a sober person. But I often drink water because I prefer it.

[00:21:58] Yeah. And I think this is a personality type thing. Some people work really well with having very strict rules. And someone people like you work, you don't like rules, you want to be flexible. I work really well with rules. And I used it for a lot of things like fried food and pornography and sugar.

[00:22:15] Mostly you do them every day. That's the rule. Exactly. A day without the rest of it. That's how you start your day. The pile of sugar. Yeah, some porn and some fries with that. It's a good day for everyone. Beautiful.

[00:22:31] Yeah, but it just makes it easier to not having the decisions in my head. I want to save my decisions for important decisions.

[00:22:37] So to clarify, you don't do porn, you don't eat fried food and you don't eat sugar. Well, at least very limited.

[00:22:44] Yeah. And it save some energy to not having to. Yeah.

[00:22:48] Hold back from those things that BRIDGES'S well into the next part of this. My favorite jells habit and this is the thing that I've developed constantly evolved over. It's almost a decade now. So, you know, this feeling when you open up the fridge and you look into it and you don't really know what you're looking for. And after a while you closed the fridge and you go away and then you come back and open it again.

[00:23:25] And definitely not like a piece of lint, 90 percent chocolate. Yeah.

[00:23:29] Always take some chocolate. Yeah. So I think that just helped me a lot.

[00:23:35] Go to the fridge, not rebuilding or looking for. I'm hungry but I'm too lazy to kind of fix some things. I took maybe a piece of chocolate or some small snack and not really getting anywhere.

[00:23:45] And this just frustrated me.

[00:23:48] I've never been a big fan of food. I've never been a cultural person interested in food. If I could take a pill and just not needing to think about food, I probably would have lost at least a lot of days. And for me, probably seven years ago, I started eating a lot of smoothies and that became my kind of food solution. At least I got one meal out of the day. And this hasn't developed from pretty crappy food smoothie, which tasted very good, but it wasn't very healthy to today's super smoothie, which is probably the healthiest thing I can come up with.

[00:24:31] What did you put in the first one? Snakes. Rats?

[00:24:34] No, I mean, I took some gummy bears and Nutella and then a half a bottle of whiskey and I put it in the blender. The first version was it was yogurt, which I really I grew up thinking that yogurt was a healthy thing. But yogurt usually has more sugar than Coke if it's like crazy amounts of sugar. And there was yogurt, some high sweet yogurt like strawberry banana has some in it's like which was probably sugar in it as well and an orange in it, which is also just pretty much sugar. So that was like the first should have gone for the gummy bears. Might have been better with the gummy bears, but it's been, it's been developing a lot over the years and in various ways. And now it's based on it's half a banana, half an avocado, like 100 grams of blueberries, 100 grams of raspberries, give or take, some spinach, some broccoli and some ginger, some turmeric, water and olive oil. That's like the foundation of things. And it's a big you drink this every day, at least six days a week, almost every day. And I'm mixing in a lot of, like, healthy powders and stuff like Lorella spirulina. But that's like that's next level. I don't want to confuse people too much because then the recipe gets too long and yet you do.

[00:26:07] But what I really like about his strategy is that you take away all the bad food choices. Yeah. Yeah. Become super easy because I get really fall from one of these and it clean.

[00:26:22] It doesn't give an option of having pizza for lunch because I'm having this for lunch. I don't need to think about the sugar, the fried food or the Porton. I'm not going to have that for lunch because I'm eating this most days. Yeah.

[00:26:35] I did a similar thing in my early twenties, I stopped eating breakfast and started mixing butter with coffee instead and had a kind of a breakfast which made me fall into lunch. I had a similar effect, just a all that yogurt and stuff in the morning.

[00:26:49] Most people isn't isn't a bad thing. Why would you mix it with coffee?

[00:26:54] We actually need about quite a bit of saturated fats. All of our hormones are made from it. Our brain is made a lot of saturated fat. We have an episode about good healthy fats so that if we would have prepared saying this, I could recommend it right now.

[00:27:10] So go look for food hack's. I'm guessing it's like episode 40, something like that. Food Acts one and two. I think the episodes are called. Yeah, they're pretty cool. They're about healthy fats. I interview. I remember that, but yeah, that's a sidetrack. So back to my smoothie because I really love my smoothie and I want to talk about my smoothie at another level. So thinking about how this has evolved during the years, ridiculously proud of this. So I'm going to talk about it for a while now is OK. I'm actually pretty annoyed that I didn't realize this earlier. There was how much I could prepare beforehand. Like now I usually do 20 bags of everything that is in this movie except for the water and the olive oil. And I put them in the fridge. So I do 20 bags at the same time, which means that to just do a smoothie, it's pick up the bag from the freezer, put it in the blender, pour in the water, pour in the oil press, start. It's a one minute exercise that saves me so much time. It saves me the decisions. It saves me thinking about what to buy in the store because I pretty much just buy things for smoothies. The other food you have to take care of.

[00:28:21] And it keeps me healthy. As you said, I don't do any of the really bad food choices and every day.

[00:28:30] And you're not going to get tired after lunch.

[00:28:32] No, it's it's good. And I usually say it's a really big smoothie. It's over one liter. And like today, I still have some of it in the fridge because I didn't finish it. I never take it. So I'm super full. I drink half of it, two thirds of it, and then I leave it until I'm feeling a bit hungry again and I go and finish it. So it saves me the kind of snack which previously would probably have been a Snickers or Mars bar. And now it's the other part of the smoothie.

[00:29:00] So what would you say to someone listening to.

[00:29:03] Definitely try this movie. I know you don't do this movie. Why don't you do this movies?

[00:29:09] I wouldn't take the pill. I really do like food. And also, my girlfriend, Bianca, is cooking for me. I take care of the dishes and I like hot food, so but I kind of do it in the morning. And if I wasn't good, Bianca, I would be eating like kind of similar things every day that is just focused on being healthy for lunch. So I would have a similar philosophy, but a little bit different. Yeah. So my advice take away choices.

[00:29:35] My advice to anyone is at least try it, see what you think about it. If you if you're anything like me and you want to maximize your life, it saves a lot of time and headache. It saves at minimum 30 minutes a day for me and different kinds of decisions and stuff. And I'll put the recipe in the description of this episode for anyone to to go and see it later and to try it.

[00:30:00] Now, let's move on to a habit that we feel deeply convinced it's a good habit, but that most people that we speak to think they are pretty stupid. So what is this habit that we're deeply convinced it's a good idea, but that most people think it's stupid?

[00:30:26] Well, this is actually the only habit that both of us almost super strictly follows and agrees on. And it is to never watch the news or read the news in any form.

[00:30:40] So. It seems like you would miss out on a lot of valuable information, why are you not doing it so personally?

[00:30:49] I believe that almost no news actually goes as valuable information. It's easy to think that. It's important to know what goes on in the world. But personally, I mean, it really isn't unless I'm going to take action of changing anything, it doesn't really matter to me what happens in the rest of the world. It doesn't influence my day or my life in any way that there is a murder somewhere or a fire somewhere or anything else.

[00:31:19] But what about because I understand that people get defensive about this because I and I understand there's a need to be informed about stuff that but that you're updated about what's going on in the world, that you let's say there's an important world event. Wouldn't you want to know about it? Why?

[00:31:44] Well, it's hard for me to answer this because I don't feel this way, but when I asked that exact question to my friend Martin that is watching the news every day and I said, well, I'm working on a closed door right under our customers coming in and they are talking about current events, I want to be updated so I can converse with them.

[00:32:04] Ok, I can buy into that argument.

[00:32:07] I would rather be good at switching topics and the embedded social skills than doing it.

[00:32:14] But I can see that if you're in a clothing and if you want to be good at that, go back for episode and listen to a three part series about the most important social skill where you will learn everything about getting good at.

[00:32:26] Think about episodes that I can see that there are extreme situations where it would be beneficial, like when Korona happens, you might want to know about that, but the world is going to tell you anything that is actually important.

[00:32:40] The world is going to tell you about if you work in a clothing store. Sure.

[00:32:44] You might seem a little bit stupid if you don't know what's going on, but you could also say, oh, I didn't hear about that. Could you tell me about it? And you kind of go around this.

[00:32:54] But personally, I believe that people want to read the news because it's an easy way of thinking that you're doing something productive. You can visit when your brain is tired, you can visit some news websites and you just distract yourself instead of doing something productive. And if you tell yourself that this is important, if you tell yourself that you're learning things, you kind of feel that you're using your time in a productive way. But you really are. You're just feeding yourself with depressive stuff, pictures of horrible events.

[00:33:31] And personally, I don't believe that it would do any good for my life, at least. And I take the risk of being stupid in some situations.

[00:33:43] Yeah. The thing is that most events is stuff that is so far away from you that it might as well have been three thousand years ago.

[00:33:51] Yeah, you cannot do anything about it. But if you spend the same time reading a book or listening to the become a great podcast, you would learn stuff that is useful for you.

[00:34:01] Yeah, it was. I still hear most people when I say I don't read the news, it's like, how do you stay updated? And they get like defensive. I said, why would I want to stay updated? Yes, it's a hard thing to grasp, but how much time would you say that you save from from not reading the news?

[00:34:22] I would like to look at it as.

[00:34:28] More than I say productivity and I say slow state, I'm horrible at multitasking, I am really, really I'm very good at focusing, I would say, but I'm very bad at multitasking. I'm so sensitive that if I'm focusing on something, it takes me 10 minutes to get into the task and then everything else melts away. But if I start thinking about current events like Korona or Trump or anything that is upsetting, I will just lose my flow state. And that's my most valuable time, see if I start today by reading the news.

[00:35:04] So right now, my routine is something like this. This morning I had a YouTube video I was scripting. So before I went to bed the night after, I said, I want to write this specific thing tomorrow. Let's dream about it. I wake up, I try to remember my dream this night. I was bitten by a scorpion, so it didn't really work out. But sometimes I get really good ideas.

[00:35:25] Just to clarify, you get bitten by a scorpion in the dream. Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:31] I'm here talking right now that we need dream adventure in this country where those dangerous animals. But anyway, yes, I get up, I meditate and with the inspiration from my newly refreshed brain, I go and sit down and I write. If I open a new site at that point, I'm going to be thinking about things that are so unrelated and also very negative. They're going to hijack my valuable attention at that point.

[00:35:56] I think that's a very good description of things. I feel similarly, but about sleep. So if if I watch news before I go to bed, it's the same thing. I have so many things to think about that doesn't do any good for me. It doesn't add any value is usually really horrible things.

[00:36:14] And personally, I believe that there are so many bad things going on in the world that you could never focus on all of them. And I'd much rather focus on a few of them, a lot like malaria, and actually do something about malaria and help people prevent it than trying to do something about all the thousand different catastrophes around the world that we're problem solvers.

[00:36:37] Right. I watched a really good Netflix series. Speaking of not watching series, it's called The Bridge. It's a detective murder series. And I usually don't watch that kind of stuff. But I was captivated for ten episodes. And every evening when I watched that series, I had dreams about this murder case. And I wake up and my brain is trying to solve the murder. It's trying to figure out who is the killer. And that is such a waste of my energy. I want to solve problems like how to become a better communicator, how do I create valuable content? How do I benefit? Great outcome, but I don't want to solve imaginary murder that is solved.

[00:37:15] By the way, you'll get to see it in the last episode. Yeah, you're right.

[00:37:22] But the same thing happened if I watch the news before I go to bed, right. Then my brain, something that's been communicated that's urgent, very important. We need to solve this and then my brain starts trying to solve it, but I can't solve that problem.

[00:37:33] Ok, so to sum this up, you're saving time because you're not reading the news. But more importantly, you save energy and focus because you're not getting a lot of input from weird events that you have no influence over whatsoever. And it will improve your sleep and general well-being because you're not going to be be thinking so much about negative events. And the possible downside is that you might look a little bit uneducated in some situations, especially if you work in a clothing store. But that's the only downside, really.

[00:38:12] I think there are less downsides than you might think, so when you started this, was it scared to stop watching the news and stop being updated?

[00:38:20] No, not at all. Why did you do it? I read in Tim Ferris's book, Four Hour Workweek. I think this was like in 2012 13 some time that he's like, I don't read the news. I'm like, if he's not reading news, why should I read the news? And I just stopped.

[00:38:34] And I think the hardest part was to not just go and waste time scrolling on news sites when I was feeling unproductive in front of the computer because this was kind of pre Facebook feed time when Facebook really got addictive or Instagram. And what I did when I did was having an energy was going to a news site, just reading the news 12 times a day about nothing.

[00:39:01] And what I do now is I put when I am in the same state, I don't scroll, I don't do anything. I usually go away from the computer and I lay down and close my eyes and usually have a short power nap or a rest and recover my body instead.

[00:39:15] That's a lot better. Yes, that's a very good habit. I think that's just something else to add on this before we wrap it up.

[00:39:23] Please try this. You listening? It's I promise you that this is among the best things that you can apply in your life. I'm so happy that I'm not watching the news. That's definitely among the best things that I've done.

[00:39:37] I agree. So what is the last piece of advice you can give to our beloved listeners on this? Jolly good.

[00:39:44] Jolly good. It's a good expression. Out. No. If you're going to work every day or going to school or whatever you're doing and you have like half an hour back and forth, don't just waste that time scrolling Instagram or listening to something meaningless.

[00:40:03] Use that time to change your life listening to either a book that teaches you things or to a podcast and maybe a specific podcast called Becoming Great Outcome, which is amazing and brilliant and super awesome. And if you haven't heard all of our episodes, this is now episode seventy five or something. So I have a long back catalog with value.

[00:40:24] So whenever you're stepping into your car or you see the bus coming or the train or whatever it is that you see, think about our podcast and think about our goal of giving you the most value per minute and pick up your phone and find one of the episodes you haven't heard and start changing your life. And if someone wants to help us out and they feel they get value from us, what can someone do to bring to help us grow?

[00:40:53] Right.

[00:40:53] Something that would be super duper cool if you did was that if you went into your podcast app and press subscribe, and that would really help us because we are still a small podcast, but we get into podcasts, top lists if we have a lot of subscribers in comparison to our viewers. So even though we are tiny, we can still get in there and have a lot more people discover our work and our conversations with your help. And we can already see this happening. There are been a lot of your listeners subscribing to us and we see us climbing the different topics.

[00:41:25] And that gives us a lot of inspiration to put more effort into these episodes and give even more of our time and energy to you because we want to change your life.

[00:41:37] Yeah, we want to help you. See you next week. Yeah.