Greg McKeown:
Welcome, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown. And I am the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Effortless and Essentialism. And I’m here with you on this journey to learn how we can live at our highest point of contribution.
Have you ever had the sense that you had greater potential than your current life requires or even allows you to produce? Do you ever feel like there’s a lot more inside of you, but you are already so busy, you can’t possibly get to any of it? It’s precisely because of reflecting on those questions that I invited. Rob, Dyrdek onto the show for part two of our interview. For context, I was talking with Benjamin Hardy about the idea and power of 10 X transitions in life and how we can make those transitions without just exhausting ourselves and burning out along the way. I mentioned Rob Dyrdek to him. That seemed interesting. So I said, well, I’m going to go and interview him before we continue our conversation. And that is how we got here. If you haven’t listened to part one of the conversation with Benjamin Hardy, go listen to it. If you haven’t listened to part one of the conversation with Rob Dyrdek, go listen to it. And then, you will see this next portion of our conversation together in context.
This part gets special in my estimation because Rob is willing to share the operating system of his life. I mean, who do you even know who has such a system? He calls it the rhythm of experience. It’s a document that he’s created that helps him to achieve what he calls machine living, where he’s learning from life, not just constantly reacting to it, where he’s shifting to use the language from effortless, from linear effort to residual effort. And that, of course, allows you to shift from linear results where you’re putting in one ounce of effort to get one ounce of reward and shift instead to a situation where you invest one time but get back results maybe 10 times or 20 times over. Everything changes when you shift from a linear mindset to a residual mindset. And I know of nobody better at illustrating a version of what that might look like than Rob Dyrdek. By the end of this episode, you will have a vision of what you have to create in order to create a life of highest contribution. Let’s begin.
Remember also to teach the ideas in this podcast episode to someone else within 24 to 48 hours of listening. Don’t teach it all, just one idea. Just to be able to start a conversation in your life that can become a movement.
Greg McKeown:
Two main things that I want to pull from what you’re talking about there and riff on. Now the first is, and I read this to Ben when I was talking to him because I just loved the way that you said it, right? Perpetually evolving towards. I said, how are you? Great to hear from you. I’m perpetually evolving towards my limitless potential in life and in business. That’s the goal. And what I said to him, and I’m saying it now to you, is like, yeah, first of all, who texts like that? And I love that that’s how you texted. I love that.
That was not that wasn’t like after, at the end of a dinner party, when somebody’s, everyone’s feeling, you know, relaxed and they’re opening up about something that they sort of quietly secretly believe. That’s how you started it. And I love spending time with people that start their text that way because then it gives me permission to be myself. I’ll say it, something like that. So I love that.
The second thing, the thing you led with is that life is an ecosystem that it’s, there’s one of my favorite phrases is dynamic equilibrium, and I never loved the word balance, and maybe I should have loved it more, but it sort of conjured images of like the seesaw, you know, balancing and not too much of anything. And I was like, yeah, I’m not sure I want just a certain, that sense of balance. Dynamic equilibrium, where all the pieces start working together and not working against each other, but reinforcing each other, and that your job is to keep standing aside from the system and going, okay, which part isn’t working yet? Where’s the friction that is frustrating me? Let’s not just handle that right now. I’ve done that way too many times in my life. Like, okay, jump in, deal with it, emergency, you know, firefighting, but actually learn the lesson and add it back into, in this case, a document, an actual, you know, Google doc, where you can just keep evolving and editing and improving it so that your life gets smarter. So your system gets more adaptive, more precise in helping you to keep evolving. I think that’s what a lot of people are dealing with, self-improvement from the perspective of okay, here’s the thing I need to do. The one thing separate from everything else. And, and as they focus on that thing, you know, I’m going to improve my business. Okay, well, now your health goes out the window, because you’re not thinking about that rather than I am trying to build a system and operating system for one’s life. What have you learned over the last, let’s say, six months about that operating system? What have you yourself either changed specific things you’ve changed or just general principles that you now know that you didn’t know six months ago?
Rob Dyrdek:
The biggest one is you cannot evolve if you do not have time to reflect.
Greg McKeown:
Hmm. Let’s say that again. You cannot evolve if you do not have time to reflect. Yes.
Rob Dyrdek:
You know what I’m saying? Like I, yes, I really started getting up like in, you know, a half I started getting up at four instead of five to just Freethink. I started doing sauna sessions a lot more just to Freethink because like I’m, I’m experiencing so much, but through experience our lessons, you know, not just failure, but all experience, there are lessons, and there’s so much information and so much that you could draw insights from. But if you never take the time to,
Greg McKeown:
To synthesize
Rob Dyrdek:
Think about those, and yeah. And, then, then pull out something that you can now apply. Take action that now creates the evolution because it’s like you can evolve through your heart. And, and that’s why I say, look, that’s why I have rapidly evolved in the last year is because I have really focused on allowing my mind share. I’ve been so much more thoughtful about my mind share, right? Because it’s like, it’s not about doing too much. It’s about thinking too much, right? And you want to be able to perpetually think about problem-solving and creating the future while you’re experiencing the presence, right? Like you want to live and enjoy life, but you always want to have an eye on creating what’s next, and you don’t want to do that by stopping down.
You don’t wanna stop and try to create the future. You have to be doing it on an ongoing basis while you’re experiencing life and enjoying life. Right. And that’s when you’re in a beautiful state, but you must take the time to think about how the whole system is working. The things that are, you are getting that friction on the things that have been happening on a consistent basis, and then apply some sort of action or change to then test that and be, if this is a new tool, a new part of your evolution, right? And there’s so many different ways that it happens, but you, if you don’t give yourself that time, you just, you will never be able to evolve if you don’t reflect, take the action and add it to like a part of your life. Now, you know what I mean?
Greg McKeown:
Well, and back to that simple evidence of all those leaders, different countries, senior leaders, and they don’t have 10 minutes to just try to connect the dots of their lives. It’s not that they don’t have it. It’s that it is not built into the routine and ritual and habit of their life. It is almost non-existent. And instead, it’s just living in your inbox. You last thing at night, email, email, email, and then in the morning, okay, what’s happened in email? And from that moment on, you’re just living reactively and phonetically. And so if you want to focus, you have to create space to escape and focus. And that sounds to me like the main thing you are saying over the last six months. You’re saying I am, I have. And the only way, well, not the only way, but the way that you’ve just identified to do that is before other people are awake before those emails are coming in, or at least no one’s expecting any response to anything that’s where you have carved out the time.
Rob Dyrdek:
But think about it. That’s when you’re already so highly optimized and balanced where you’re trying to find you. You are like, I need more time to Freethink because I read The Science of Getting Rich, that was written in 1910. And there was just a section about the power of evolution and how important it is to be able to stop and think about the things that you must change and evolve into. It just made me realize, like, man, that is something I need to add to my system. But I digress back to here’s the problem. You design a system, live in a system, your identity, who you are; I’m a hard worker. I work all these hours. Then you get married. And then now you have kids, you have responsibilities. Like now, you could never dedicate time to free thinking or even working out because part of your identity is then you take business meetings in the evening. Like, and then you’re out of balance because you’re in business. Like how you construct, how you work and operate like will trap you. You know, I know a world-class trainer who trains the most elite athletes in the world and who is one of the most brilliant, brilliant trainers in the world. He doesn’t have time to work out.
Greg McKeown:
Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Rob Dyrdek:
He doesn’t have time to work out because he gets up like, as kids get up, he has to like his only other way. And like he’s got too many responsibilities and the structure of his household and the business that he runs that it’s he’s, he doesn’t have the time or energy to work out as ironic as it is. You know?
Greg McKeown:
It is ironic. What it makes me think is coming back to this operating system for life, I want to say, okay, if somebody has never created one or they don’t have one right now, maybe they have separate goals lists in different places, and they’ve got, you know, it’s all kind of separate and they’re now listening to you, and they’re saying, okay, I’m going to create this a rhythm of experience document, but they don’t, they, they can’t start with 50 pages and all that evolution. So like, what’s the very beginning? Give us the first, like we open our document, we have 10 minutes to start this document. What should someone do in the first 10 minutes?
Rob Dyrdek:
To me, it is you design your day. You design your week, you design your month, and you design your year. Right? In concept, there is a rhythm of the year. That’s constant. You know, when your birthday is, you know, when the holidays are, you know, when the weekends are, you know, when all of these sort of major milestones of the year, the anchor around. Then you know how much you work. Right. You know how long you’re going to work. Like, okay. So now here’s your work through hearing, depending on what type of job you have.
Now you begin to, what are the things that I want, to do that will make me healthier, better? Okay. I want to meditate for 15 minutes. Okay. Do you want to do it on Mondays and Wednesdays? Like you end up designing first your day. What time do you wanna get up? What are the things you want to do?
You know, and, and again, in my case, it was very basic in the beginning. But now it’s like, you know, I get up, write a letter to my wife or send an email to my wife with a love quote of everything that I’m doing. I meditate, I brain train, and I get in the gym. I do everything first thing in the morning as part of my system. But then I have, I pick up my kids. I take my kids, I have my breakfast date with my wife. I have Monday night talk nights. I just slowly began to add in more and more things over time that allowed me to design my time and my existence, if you will, how the rhythm of my life flowed. And I began to get better and better at staying in that rhythm while still being adaptive based off of how I feel. But it really begins with like, how do your days, how do you want your days to go? Your weeks to go? Your month to go? Your quarter to go? Your year to go? It’s like, you know, that the things that you have to do and then, you know, the things that you want to do. So you have to design what you want to do around what you have to do. Otherwise, you’re just going to go from thing to thing to thing and never get to do what you want to do. You know?
Greg McKeown:
I feel I spend too much time currently. I still think I spend too much time reacting. I feel great about life. I think I could make a case for why it’s satisfying to me and so on and why it works. Nevertheless, when I hear this, you know, I have a routines document, and that’s what I think you’re describing is start with that. And then keep like, it’s like routine stacking or something like that, where you say, okay, if you only have one routine every day, what is that routine? And write that down. And if you could only do two routines in a single day, what would the second be? And you keep on doing this. So eventually, what I’ve found is that the more complete the routines document is, the more valuable it becomes because, at first, most of your life is still in your head, you know, in the office of your mind, and the routines document, therefore; you can only look to every so often because when you look on it, you can’t depend on it because it’s not complete yet. But over time, there’s some kind of tipping point as you keep working on it, where the routines document it’s like, well, more is there than is in my head. And there’s value in looking at this frequently and using this as the living operating system of your life. How often do you look at your operating system?
Rob Dyrdek:
You know, now keep in mind that looking at the operating system is not nearly as important as like living it in my world. It’s like being able to see how I’m living it. All of the measurement and the outputs is what I look at on a constant basis, right?
Greg McKeown:
It’s the metrics that you’ve built around it.
Rob Dyrdek:
That’s it. It’s the metrics that become the gamification, become the motivation. It’s like, it’s one thing to build the system, but it’s the quantifiable outcome is where the actual motivation and inspiration keeps you motivated in a sustained level of discipline. And that’s what I think people miss the most, even further, right? It’s like, I can tell you right now with the utmost sadness that I am, I am in a slump and that my numbers for the month of August were the lowest that they have been since January or since December of 2020. And this is based off of my qualitative quality of life number, which is the combination of my zero to 10 number for life work and health. That is my full body composition of muscle percentage of fat, and weight. That is how often did I get up at five? Did I brain train?
Did I meditate? Did I get in the gym? Did I eat clean? Did I not drink? Did I take my supplements, my aura ring, sleep data, and readiness data, right? So I have all this data, you know, today’s the 1st of September where I got my August results, where I look, I went to Orlando for my daughter’s first pageant at four and a half. I caught Covid at Disney World. I was down for the middle of the week. I had to like go to Las Vegas for the closing dinner of this big acquisition. I just had like the craziest where my systems were so disrupted. And I could show you in numbers that it disrupted the quality of my life. When my alcohol consumption went up, my clean diet went down, and my workout days and meditation days slowed down a little bit.
Now it’s still an extreme level probably to the average person, but for me, I, that sort of understanding the direct effect of how all these different parts affect your sleep, which then affects your quality of life scores and developing a system with all of these metrics that now you can look at for all these years. It motivates me to get back on track and have a super strong September because it’s like, man, look at you. This is your lowest month since 2020. You know what I mean, a year and a half run of being this high.
And, and again, it’s the measurement of it all, you know, and, and that’s in all aspects of my system, there are everything from all the KPIs in my company to my personal network, worth to my entire and financial system and how it all works. Like when you begin to look at it all together in all of these KPIs, and you see how strong they are and how much they’ve grown year over year, and then God forbid you go back and look at how you’ve spent all your time and can see how you’re spending much more time with your family. And, and more time on your health. All of these things together are what you’re building your system for. Right. I know how I feel, but these things, these measurements ultimately validate everything that I set out to, as it relates to also achieving my goals that I’ve continually grown into and have evolved as I’ve evolved, you know?
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. I mean, I love the description of it because, again, you know, in Rob Dyrdek fashion, you’ve taken it to an extreme because, you know, where else would you take it? But, it’s sort of phase one is the routines document. And it’s beyond routines. I know that it is routines, but it’s also responsibilities who’s doing what, when, so, so it includes other people, and it’s grown, but phase two, you’re calling it gamification. It’s the metrics of your system. And you’ve taken that to a very precise level. And of course, that gives you a few things, but one of the things it gives you is an early warning system, you know, at the end of August, yes. Okay. It’s still looking backward. It’s still not future data. You can’t have the future data, but it’s right then rather than, well, what happened?
Somebody, maybe they notice it after a few months, they go, my goodness, you know, I’m putting on these clothes, and they’re not fitting like they used to. Suddenly something goes up in your closest relationships that they all seem strained, and it’s all painful. You, like, you wait until somebody literally, I mean, in, in an extreme case, they have a heart attack. You know that these are the wake-up calls. Well, you are, you are saying having this system built as robustly as it’s built with the precision that it has allowed you to be able to adapt very quickly to adjust your own behavior and to update it as it needs to be updated.
Rob Dyrdek:
And keep in mind. What really changed for me is when I automated it and began to look at it like on a monthly basis on all the averages and seeing it in these outputs and seeing my time dashboards and all these things. And it’s why, you know, I’ve even shifted sort of my focus over the last six months is like, no, you know, the number one thing that I need to do is tighten up the core philosophy and then create a software for other people to be able to, to use them, and create their own version of the system that I operate. And you know, in the most simple or complex manner, depending on how they operate and how disciplined they are. But then ultimately, you know, I refer to it as machine living, you know, similar to machine learning. Like, as it’s happening, the software will be giving you the feedback of like, Hey, look like two nights in a row of like resting heart rates down. Like your diet’s been down. Like it’s time to refocus. Like, you know, you’re not, you know, your financial goals have not like reached you, haven’t been saving the money. It’s like, so now it’s helping you, like see the future rather than relying on yourself is what I have discovered as it relates to like my next big business venture that I need to focus on right now as sort of the, as sort of a tool, if you will, that I know could impact a lot of people beyond just sharing my philosophy and having a super complex system that I run that no one could ever think of possibly running themselves. You know?
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. Look the idea of the software. It’s brilliant. It’s just exactly the right thing to do. It reminds me of Steve Jobs when, before we had iCloud, as we have it now, had built a personal office where whatever device he was on, everything was matching so that he didn’t have to have different information on one device and, and then on a different laptop and his desktop and so on. But, eventually, the technology evolved to the point that that was broadly available. And we all have the advantage of that, that everything is linked and interconnected. You are going to take your system and make it available to people broadly. So they don’t have to figure out every piece of the system. They already have a lot of it, you know, automated and ready to go. I mean, it is brilliant.
Rob Dyrdek:
Imagine if you could then now just fill out sort of all of this in a questionnaire, and then it populates an entire rhythm of your year for you around your birthdays, around the holidays, all these important things that, so now it has a baseline of your time design, right? And, and now you, without needing to like force yourself through, like trying to put it in the calendar and all these different things. It’s like, because that, that time design is so essential to creating that harmony and ultimately that sort of equilibrium in your life. Right? And so then, now what I consider the energy component is the qualitative stuff, right? Just asking yourself, you know, how did this hour feel for me and getting the insight and beginning to now, then make the adjustments and adapt this way around how you’re feeling and tracking that. And then being able to see that at scale, to be like, oh, look, I’m feeling much worse lately.
I’m feeling much better. It’s like that sort of connectivity. And then you tie that to your scale out. And these are my goals and the ones and my desires like into that, if the software ends up allowing you to design time, set goals, and gain clarity, and then use qualitative data on how it’s feeling and working to implement new systems and solutions. This now in itself becomes a one-of-a-kind existence management software. That’s ultimately just learning you over time. And then, and then as you put more inputs into it, it’s getting more input to help you stay in that harmonious high-quality existence that we all seek in life.
Greg McKeown:
That’s exactly, exactly right. Today’s world has increased in its complexity so much that if your system has not evolved to meet that level of complexity, then you will live in perpetual stress and strain a hundred percent. Now one can say, Hey, simplify your life. And of course, like I believe in that, and that really is something that people can do, but it’s only part of the answer because there’s unnecessary complexity, and that’s what we want to eliminate completely. Then there’s helpful complexity, which is just humans’ best attempt at solving problems. And, even though it doesn’t always feel this way, we have solved so many problems as compared to a hundred years ago. Warren Buffet said it recently. He said, if you are alive today, you have more opportunity in terms of life expectancy, health expectancy, travel opportunities, education opportunities than Rockefeller had. Yeah. He said that’s in my lifetime.
That’s what’s changed. So that’s the good news. And, and we ought to feel live in gratitude about that kind of environment because I’d rather live now and here than anywhere or anywhere. So, you know, that’s in favor now with all that progress has been necessary increases in complexity, the supercomputers in our pockets, all of this evolution makes it so that the old systems are insufficient to manage the new realities that we are faced with. And so I just love the term machine living because you have to have a system that can deal with that level of necessary complexity in your life. And so it’s all to me about upgrading your system to match the challenge and circumstances that we are in. And I see in my own life when I’m getting it wrong and in other people when I’m coaching them that their system is significantly less sophisticated than the challenges that even their, even the good things and the successes of their own life are the successes of society around them have produced. So that’s going to equal an exhausting, perpetually burnout type of experience. So it won’t be the rhythm of experience. Give me a different phrase. It’s like the chaos of experience or something. Yeah. But it’s, it’s some other, some other term that, that we would need. Yeah. Your reactions to any of that.
Rob Dyrdek:
You know, another big discovery over this last year for me is because now I have this remarkable system I’m in this perpetual state of evolving and flowing and, and achieving goals and setting new goals and all this stuff and doing it in this harmonious way. But what I realize is like, wow, I’m evolving. The world is evolving. My goals are evolving. My life is evolving. Like, so it’s like the system itself is a living system that has to be adaptive as the world as I’m changing. And the world is changing. And, and even my, my goals of shifting down to building new companies and focusing on building this single product that I’ve done now was sort of a product of success where I had accelerated and reached all of my financial goals. And it gave me this completely new sense, right? It changed me as a person when I thought, well, it could never change me.
And it didn’t change me. It changed my ambition to continue to build my portfolio and turned my focus to, like, man, you really gotta create something to share this with people because look what this did for you. Like others, like, like could benefit from this. And this could be an extraordinary piece of your legacy. I think like the success that I had accelerated my desire to push this to the forefront rather than continually run the machine, the way I was running it, where I was building two or three new companies a year, I just stopped it to fully focus on this. After I had achieved such scale in the financial goals because it was no longer necessary. And then it changed me. There was a satisfaction to it and a desire to make an impact over, make more money that happened in me that forced me to adapt and change my planning, my goals and, and what I hope to achieve, you know?
Greg McKeown:
But what you’re saying is just matter, learning of the same, the same acorn of an idea, which is linear versus residual. I, if you B suddenly discover, well, residual is better than linear. So build a system rather than just act. Then it’s like Jessica, Jackley when she goes to Africa, and she’s trying to help entrepreneurs there with a team of people. And at first, she discovers, well, if I give $500 to one person, that’s going to help them. And then she said, well, if it’s a loan, that’s a residual impact because the person repays it. And again, and again, and again, now you’re impacting 10 entrepreneurs, and that’s how kiva.org eventually is born because you say, well, if, if we can help one, then maybe we build a platform that can help many, many people. And they’re at, like, I think one point maybe $7 billion now of loans that have been paid and repaid compared to $500. So like, that’s the scale of difference between linear thinking and residual thinking and residual results. And, and so you are just doing it again. You’re going well. If this system is the way to think, and it’s helped me to run all these businesses, and it’s helped me get my life so optimized, I can now shift to helping other people build their own systems. That’s a natural extension of systems thinking as it applies to residual results.
Rob Dyrdek:
And think about this too. And here’s the thing that I’ve got, I’m the most aware of. It has to be super basic and simple in the beginning. Right? And then you have to get bet, more consistent, and more disciplined to unlock more and more things. Right?
Greg McKeown:
That’s really good.
Rob Dyrdek:
You know what I’m saying? Because ultimately
Greg McKeown:
It’s real, real gamification of it.
Rob Dyrdek:
Yeah. You know, because it’s like, think about, I collected qualitative data about my life since 2014; it was five years before I collected it every day. It’s a lot to ask from somebody. So, it’s within it, within this system that I live, that is, is beautiful and highly optimized. And what it is, you have to grow into this over time, and you can’t, I can’t create something. That’s all of a sudden you trying to like write in all this data of yourself, and it’s like, you can’t even find the time. You’re just trying to find balance. You don’t have the time to figure out all this stuff and rate all these things and do all these things.
Like it’s the idea that this very basic fundamental version that you can answer a questionnaire, and it can pump out an entire-time design for you to begin to adapt. And now you can use just one number. How do you feel about your life from zero to 10? Right. Really, really allow this basic beginning of understanding how much value you can get by just defining a couple of clear goals and putting ’em on a line of your existence. And then answering a questionnaire to build out a rhythm of your time, like, and then use some qualitative data to just give you some insight and make notes like this very basic beginning, that you can start to see your data and stats in, in a general way of how you’re feeling and what your life’s like to be like. This is fun and feels good is the only way that you’re going to want to, like continue to have more that will ultimately lead you to the path of making it a habit, turning it into discipline and intuitiveness, that then you could reap the benefits of it and, and its complexity at scale, you know?
Greg McKeown:
Well, exactly. Because what, what you’re trying to do is avoid the boom and bust approach to self-development, personal development, where somebody gets so excited, even as they’re listening to this, oh, the rhythm of experience you know, yes, I need to build an operating system. And then you just get too far into it for an hour, for two hours, for half a day, for a couple of days. And then it’s like, oh no, you’re back to normal life. You don’t want to replicate that. You want to build a system that maybe almost makes it impossible to do that. You, you say we are going to create restraints on the system so that you have to be consistent at the first things before you can even unlock the next levels and the next levels. So that those constraints actually produce freedom for people, even though it feels like it doesn’t in the early days, all of this thing can be designed and built into it so that it isn’t just well good for Rob Dyrdek, you know, because I can see someone listening to this and going well, you know, good for him that he has got to a point where his life is optimized, and everything’s great. And my life is miles from that.
And I think that I mean, I think that’s true for, I’m sure, lots of, lots of people listening, nevertheless. I mean, we’ve talked about how people can start. So I think that’s, that is relevant. And also, if you can create the software, if you can create the system, you just say, yeah, well, the advantage is I spent years figuring it out. And now, just like all the advantages of AI, if we use the software as a service in the right way, everybody can gain the learning that one person has. I mean, that’s the whole benefit of it. And of course, now that I’m saying out loud, you literally could have machine learning with machine living because every era in people’s process where you see people actually break down, we’ve all heard the idea. Well, it takes 21 days to have a, to have a habit. Yeah. I, I don’t think that that is established scientifically. It’s just sort of, we know that what if it’s a different day that the majority of people it’s actually day three, that’s where people break down and, and so you’d be able to identify that.
Rob Dyrdek:
But forget that, forget that, forget that. I bet. I bet some people break down on day three, and some people day break down at day 30. Some people take 90, everybody’s different and, and it can learn and understand you of like, here’s where you usually break. Right? Like, that’s the beauty of like,
Greg McKeown:
Here’s where you usually break. Yeah.
Rob Dyrdek:
Yeah. Like, right? So it’s like, I’m the system itself too, is like, this is what I do, but like, it’s gotta be to where it’s designed around how you want to live and the things you wanna track and the things that would motivate you. It has to have that same sort of flexibility because all of us are completely different. You know, I don’t like, everyone’s not going to like want to brain train every day like I brain train, you know what I mean? Like everybody’s not going to like want to get so detailed into their health. You know what I mean? I don’t think anyone’s going to like be checking their sleep data. And they’re based off of what they ate the night before, based off of what their blood work said, to see if they can begin to optimize and realize like, oh, I can’t eat broccoli at night or else I’m going to get worse of sleep. I don’t think they’re, they’re going to necessarily ever get to that level. You know what I mean? But that is
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. But, the advantage is that they could.
They could and what you are, what you are doing. And whenever I talk to you, this is what it does for me. Is it just, it just extends what seems possible. It just makes me go, oh my goodness. You know, you, you, you can, you can take these principles, you can apply them a level one, but you can still be applying them at level 20 and 30. This, you can go a long, long way. And, and I think this is why I get so excited about residual results and systems, it’s because these are the things that are actually limitless. This is how you, by building better systems, you make things that used to take a lot of your energy, time, and decision making lead to leading to decision fatigue. And, you can make those effortless so that you can keep moving to the next level. You don’t have to be trapped where you are. I always feel like I’m sort of seeing the future, looking at the future, looking at what’s possible when I talk with you. I, I, I would be remiss if I can’t just get you to tell us what you mean when you say that you are doing brain training and what’s your brain training process.
Rob Dyrdek:
Yeah. It’s just the app, you know, Lumosity app, you know what I mean? So it’s just, it’s nothing more than brain games that I, that I do every single day. And, again, it’s super fascinating, right? Like, so it’s not like I’m necessarily seeking now that I do it every single day. It created a new sort of data point for me. And so I do all of these different things, but I can tell when I go through my morning routine, when I do brain training, I can tell how sharp I will be throughout the day based off of how well I do the games in the morning. And it, it is a, and I’m, I know that there’s a world I’m going to be able to, to tie that somehow to my aura ring data at some point or some other form of data. Right. Like, I know I’m going to be able to triangulate those at some point because
Greg McKeown:
Like a multi-multivariate analysis of your own life, which thing affects which thing. Yeah.
Rob Dyrdek:
Right. Because it’s like, it’s the most fascinating thing is like, I’ll get, I’ll have a, a nine sleep score. And my readiness score will be like 8.7, but my brain training will still be off.
Greg McKeown:
Mm.
Rob Dyrdek:
Right. And it, and so it’s like, but I know today I had lower scores, but boy, I was sharp, sharp, sharp. So I’m, and it’s a fascinating thing because then I go, I go through the day feeling sharp. Right. I went and, you know, shot two podcasts before we jumped on from my podcast. And like, just, just zing, zing, zing, zing. Right? I, you know, get to, like, by the time I get to you, I’m filled with energy ready to like rock and roll and, and I’m fired up again at the hour and a half mark, you know, it’s the, and I can’t quite decipher what it is. And I look at the compound effect of doing, when you do it at that scale, what, it’s, what it’s just doing to allow your brain to operate in a different functionality in a very basic and simple way. But it gives me a qualitative level of insight that I know I can rely on heading into the rest of the day. You know what I mean?
Greg McKeown:
I love this about the brain, about your brain training. I think one of my favorite things in this conversation has been the idea. I actually suspect quite literally about broccoli affecting sleep and that level of precision, because you remember this idea of the green M&Ms. You know, that some of these world-famous bands in their contracts when they arrive, the first thing they look for when they walk into the green room, is, is there a bowl of green M&Ms. And the idea is if there isn’t that they know that the, the rest of the contract has not been read and executed on. So they don’t care about green M&Ms. For the sake of it. They’re not being high maintenance for the sake of it. It’s a way of testing whether everything else has been applied. And that’s what I hear when I hear this broccoli. It’s like, it’s not really about the broccoli. It’s just that it is an evidence of how complete the rest of the system is.
Rob Dyrdek:
No, no, that I would, I would equate that more to the brain training one, right? Where it’s like, I could just feel it right. But imagine this I’ve gotten a full blood work panel since 2012. And I can see in my blood work panel how I have gotten healthier and healthier and healthier for the last 10 years, the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life at 48 years old and through like, what is an accepted traditional medicine measurement, including evolving my blood-brain barrier and my gut health to like youthful status based off of the discipline of my supplements and my diet and the way that I take care of myself. But I would sleep as I’m optimizing and eating my diet. So clean. I would have a rough, I would cough in the middle of the night, and it’d be like, well, why would I be coughing out of nowhere in the middle of the night?
And then I go back through all of the things that I, but that I get an allergic reaction to in my blood work. And boy, oh boy. It’s like, man, one of those is broccoli. And so then I go four nights without coughing. Then I have broccoli as part of my last meal. And then that night, I’m coughing. And then now I know like it was the broccoli eliminate broccoli. You know what I’m saying? So it is a, it’s a hybrid of both, but when you hear all that again, think about it. We’re getting so detailed. And so beyond yet,
Greg McKeown:
Beyond, beyond,
Rob Dyrdek:
You know, but I am so many more layers deep than I could actually even share with you inside the framework of our discussions. As it relates to the depth of how optimized and the quality of my existence through all of these systems because there are hundreds and hundreds of them that go deep into my health that go deep into my finances and my business, and all of these things into my life. My relationship, like all of it is, has so many more layers than we could ever, ever discuss. That is what happens when you are perpetually evolving to your limitless potential because it is 100% limitless.
Greg McKeown:
Mm. I just love it. I love every time we get to talk. I love every minute of the conversation. I want to say one warning to everybody listening, which is, you know, don’t let this inherently overwhelming conversation be overwhelming to you. You’re not going to be doing Rob Dyrdek tomorrow morning. That isn’t the goal of, of the purpose of this. You, your lives are completely different. Distinct. Your personality is different. Everyone listening to this it’s unique, you know, take a deep breath. Everyone has got their unique mission to discover. What I want you to take away from this is how can you shift, you know, one thing where you’re used to think like linear, just, I’ve gotta make this thing happen. And instead say, how can instead, I turn it into something that’s residual and the routines document, I think, think is a great place to begin.
You could start with a 10-minute microburst; you open up a, you know, a document, and you just start saying, okay, what do I want my routines to be every day? And even if you started with one routine, the priority routine that you need to have down every day to improve the harmonious high-quality life that you would like to achieve. And, and then if, once you have that, you add another at another, and you build out slowly, but surely it’s using slow growth, a system that works for you rather than one that works against you. Rob Dyrdek. Thank you so much for making time. Thank you for being on a podcast today.
Rob Dyrdek:
It was great. Always a pleasure.
Greg McKeown:
If you have found value in this episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts. The first three people to write a review of this episode will receive free access to the Essentialism Academy, which is a whole series of courses, videos, and tools to help you explore what’s essential, eliminate what’s not and make execution as effortless as possible. For the details, go to essentialism.com/podcast promo. And while you are thinking about making your life more effortless, remember to subscribe to this podcast so that you can receive the next episode without even thinking about it. New episodes come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can start creating the operating system of your life in a very small way. I’ve been doing it since I first heard about this from Rob a few months ago. Now I have a far more robust, sophisticated system for being able to make sure that my life is in harmony but is still high quality. That’s a marvelous value proposition. That’s a rhythm of experience.
