Good morning. A bunch of folks asked me to make one of these a day in the life videos to talk about how I do time management the day, how I structure the routine to maximize productivity. So here we go. The day starts now after about $68 a sleep. Now there's periods of my life where I do sprints where I'll pull all nighters or crazy hours and so on. But regularly I try to get 68 hours of sleep plus the mythical epic 30-meter power nap. I think sleep diet and exercise are essential for productivity. Just under I would say passion and whatever the heck you need to do to be happy and keep every single day low stress. I might give a shout out to a few products, the sponsor of the podcast for no reason except that I love using them and that's why I would reach for them with the sponsor of the podcast. So click their links in the description to support the videos I make. I'm really fortunate to have way more sponsors than I need so I get to choose only the ones I really love.
I'm generally a minimalist guy. I don't like material possessions but this A sleep bed has been nice. It lets you set the temperature throughout the night. So for me what I like is it for it to cool the bed and then warm up as I wake up. It's been helping me get some restful sleep. So I start each day when I get out of bed the first thing is a mantra, a list that I have on a sheet of paper that I go through. So I start by reminding myself of the current set of rules and constraints on the various addictions things that drain on my time. So that includes social media. The current rule is I only check social media when I post which is one, two or three times a day for no more than 10 minutes. So that's it. It's very strict. That's one of the main addictions I think that's important to control.
Some people completely remove themselves from social media. I think that's one of the possible solutions but to me that's a little bit of an easy way out. The hardest thing to do is to really moderate the use of social media because when you use it in a moderation actually can bring you joy. You can really connect you with other people. It kind of makes me feel amazing when I only check it once or twice a day. But you have to be strict. And then the other rules are diet and exercise. So I make sure I exercise every single day no matter what. Even if injured I find a body part, any body part that's not injured and exercise it. And then diet, I just have a strict diet that I follow within the constraints of which I can enjoy myself. So for me that's been keto which is very low carb diet.
So the first part of the mantra is that I remind myself for those rules. It kind of sets the constraints within which the game is to be played. The second part of the mantra is gratitude. I visualize and meditate on the idea that I might die today at any moment today. So I kind of try to accept the notion that today is my last day on this earth. And it's mostly just a breath in and out and a pause and a meditation on the fact that it's freaking amazing that I'm alive. That life is amazing. Third is I list out loud by the way unless I'm with somebody then it's in my head. But I list a set of goals for the next five years. A set of goals that I have and these are ambitious big goals that I would like to achieve in the next five years. Fourth is I list more near term goals for me that's by the end of 2020.
I want to do these kinds of things that just not reach but achievable. So if I really work my ass off and with a bit of luck I can get it done. I mean that really starts to give me am top like let's get to work. Fifth part of the mantra is zooming in even further. I actually focus in on the day. I visualize going through the rest of the day all the things I think I need to get done. This is really quick but I literally visualize myself like in a game of Sims like on fast forward running around getting all the stuff done successfully. I visualize both the struggle of it. I visualize the hardest part of the day that I have on my to do list and getting them done crushing it but really sort of focusing on the timing of it the beat of the day and getting it all done. Just like a game Sims except for the part where when you're cooking you set yourself on fire you run around. I miss Sims. I miss video games in general.
Finally I go through a set of principles that I strive to live up to as a man. Now there's a particular set of phrases that are a little bit cliche but I think fundamental to who I am but they center around compassion, empathy, love and on the other side of it is character, integrity and strength. Both physical and mental.
So today is a little bit different because I'm also making this video. I don't like it. It's uncomfortable. It's a distraction. It takes away from my focus but I'm going to get the job done. I said I'm going to do it. I'll do it. So I'm going to do the mantra now. The next thing hit hard the deepest work of the day for four hours, a four hour session but I'll probably feel behind the desk.
All right, so I did the mantra then I drank about a liter of water went to the bathroom made coffee and I'm ready to hit the day hard with a four hour session of deep work focused on a single thing, no interruptions. If interesting ideas coming to my head to try to trick me into pulling on the threat of that idea I gently set it aside, write it down on Google Doc to address later.
So I bring my mind gently back to the focus of the task because ideas keep coming but you really want to focus on the topic. So the only interruptions that are allowed is water coffee bathroom and I try to minimize those usually try to be just once in that four hour session. I stopped the time I want to take that break but I don't do anything during that break like social media or any of that stuff.
It's really my mind is still focused on the task at hand and hitting it hard when I return to the desk. The desk by the way is a standing desk. They don't sponsor anything but it's the love them. It's autonomous. You should check it out pretty inexpensive. Sometimes I sit, sometimes I stand, not wearing a suit. I sometimes wear a suit, especially I'm going to film.
I wear a suit when I go outside. I just enjoy the way I feel when I wear a suit but at home I'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Right now I'm not wearing any pants just kidding. I'm wearing jeans. But you wouldn't know it if I didn't which is the magic of the internet. If you're putting it check I can do a separate video on my setup.
I optimize the heck out of everything but my first love my home is the Kinesis keyboard is this weird ergonomic keyboard. That's probably way too expensive but I still love it. I'm surrounded by things I love and EMAX editor. I use a lot of modern IDs like today I'm working on TensorFlow Lite on a Samsung Galaxy S20 doing some deep learning on the smartphone.
There's a bunch of tricky undocumented things that I'm trying to accomplish. I'm not looking forward to it because it's going to be just a lot of debugging and trying to figure out obscure things. But that's the hardest part of the day. That's the hardest thing I might to do list. That's what I'm going to focus on. No distractions.
That's what this 4 hour session is about. I'm usually drained but happy at the end of the session. I mean I'm happy throughout but I kind of dread this 4 hour session every day which is why I hit it hard early on without reflecting without thinking. Almost like a machine. I just get the job done.
That's the way I think about it. I feel good afterwards but I don't want to do it. I'll see on the other end of the 4 hours. The 4 hour session is done. I did not get as much done as I wanted but it's nevertheless a big success because I just grinded it out. I only took a single bathroom and water break so it took about 4 hours and 10 minutes.
Next up I'm going to do a little bit of social media now which I need to post a podcast conversation with David Eagerman, Brilliant Neuroscientist. I'm just going to post that, check the comments from the previous day trying to keep the whole experience under 5 minutes and definitely under 10 minutes.
And after that I do every single day. No exception is guitar or piano or music. Usually these days it's been guitar. In the human world I'm currently single but in the music world I'm in an open relationship with this beautiful guitar. Open relationship because I sometimes cheat on her with the acoustic.
But mostly electric, fender strat, the warm bluesy sound of a fender, kind of like the Eric Clapton, Jimmy Hendrix, brings joy to my heart. I look forward to this moment. It's an escape. It just makes me happy. Like a lot of things do but this is kind of a private moment of joy.
And after that is about an hour and a half to two hours of a private set of moments of suffering, aka exercise. So here we go. Social media, guitar, keep the social media under 10 minutes. No exceptions. And the guitar sometimes I let it slip but usually just 20 minutes.
Alright, I got the social media and the guitar done. Actually there was a bunch of moments which just brought a smile to my face. Both the hilarity and the love. I always really appreciate it. When I check social media moderation it really does bring me joy. So thank you for that.
Now it's time to face the demons in my mind going on a long run. All the things I don't want to think about. I usually start out listening to brown noise as I run. It really focuses my mind. Let's me think deeply. And then about two, three miles into the run when I start feeling a little better. I'll switch to listening to an audiobook. I'm currently listening to the rise and fall of the third Reich. Recommended highly great book. Roth but important for our times. If you don't study history you're doomed to repeat it. My current exercise routine is run a minimum of six miles every day. And then when I'm about three or four miles in I decide how far more I want to go.
I usually don't feel like running but once I actually get out there when I say put some of the miles in you start feeling good sometimes. Sometimes not sometimes it's the drag but sometimes you feel really good and then I'll do the A10 maybe even 12 miles. My hope one day is I'll just keep running and do an ultramarathon just on a whim. Now for the usual 67 mile run it should take about an hour and afterwards I do a short but intense session of body weight exercises after the whole crazy push up pull up squat challenge that I did. I now do the David Goggins inspired. Nikoland Dime workout that he talks about so every single minute you do five pull ups and 10 push ups, minute on a minute.
And usually it kicks my ass to do about 15 to 20 minutes of that. That's enough. My hope one day is to get up to like one hour which is really tough. Your muscles just drained exhausted but I find it's a really great intense way to get the exercise in without taking too much away from your day. Hard on the mind, hard on the body but good for the soul. By the way all of this is fasted so it's been about 14-16 hours since I've eaten last. I feel great. No food, water and I've just taken a salt pill in case I do run for a long time. It's important to have electrolytes in the body.
I love exercising fasted and an empty stomach focuses the mind. I can actually perform extremely well. That's one of the things I've learned about myself. Everybody's different but I've actually learned for like martial arts, for combat sports, for intense workouts even. I just personally enjoy working out fasted so I guess based on my diet but also on my psychology I perform best when I'm fat adapted which means I'm a low carb diet. It's probably deep somewhere in my Eastern European genetics that my ancestors will go without food for long periods of time and then have to wrestle a bear to the death intensely.
So it seems like this is the kind of thing I enjoy doing. Not eating and then doing intense focused hard workouts. It makes me feel great. I enjoy it both physically and mentally. Alright, let's get to work. Alright the exercise grind for the day is done. I did seven miles in just over an hour I think. It's slow pace. Really losing myself in the audio book to be honest. And after that I did 20 nickel and dimes. That's 20 minutes. Every minute you do 10 push ups and five pull ups.
It's a great quick way to exhaust the muscle. Also a really good test of mental toughness because at least for me at least at home I really want to start quitting at about the 10 to 15 minute mark. Just the muscles exhausted. You have to pause. It's just unpleasant. It takes me back to the month and a half previously that I was doing the insane challenge. So I love it. It's really quick 20 minutes. Maybe 30 minutes depending on the day and the one hour of the running. It feels pretty good. Not so good about 1936, 1937 Nazi Germany as the audio book is covering but yeah really makes me think about the nature of evil.
It puts everything into. It puts everything else into context somehow. You know studying history sometimes is a really good way to force me to stop and to acknowledge how weak my mind is and how much stronger it needs to be. If I want to have a role in this world of making positive change I think about Nazi Germany and what it means to be a hero in those times. What it means to be a person that can reverse the decline into evil. I think it's much more difficult than people realize. I think it means standing against the masses. It requires a kind of mental toughness, mental fortitude that I don't think I'm ready for and I need to be. Most likely hopefully I will never have to play a role of any importance. But if I do have that opportunity I need to be able to step up.
That's what studying the 30s. A great depression on the United States side and a decline into a state of terror on the European side. It really makes me think. I know this is a day in the life video but that's also my days. I as often as possible try to think deeply about history, about the state of the world today, about my own mind, about the science that I'm fascinated with which is the science of intelligence and the science of engineering intelligence. After the exercise when I jump into the shower which contains the moment of the day that I dread the most which is the first minute that I take a cold shower.
I have a bunch of songs that I know the one minute mark of that I usually put on. It could be as cliché and cheesy as the Rocky song track we're going to fly now. I think it's the first solo, is the one minute mark or a fortune at the sun by CCR or if I really need a boost I'm an old school Metallica fan as well. So master puppets I think when he starts singing is the one minute mark. Here we go. And after that I'm right back into the grind of deep work. Another four hour session of where I continue on a particular task focused for four hour straight. Today I didn't get as much done on a tons of flow of light side so I'm going to probably dive right back in.
我有许多歌曲,我常常在其播放到一分钟的时候开始听。可能像《洛奇》(Rocky)电影的经典曲目《We're Going to Fly Now》,在一分钟时是第一个独奏,或者是CCR乐队的《Fortunate Son》。如果我真的需要振奋精神,我还是老派的Metallica(金属乐队)粉丝。所以《Master of Puppets》中主唱开唱的地方也是在一分钟左右。听完这些歌,我又会投入到深度工作的节奏中,再来一个专注于特定任务的四小时工作。今天我在一些轻松的项目上没有完成太多,所以我可能会重新投入到工作中。
But usually during the shower and a little bit afterwards I'm thinking about like what's the right thing to be focusing on giving what I was able to get done in the first four hour session. Alright next fun time is over. We'll back to the grind of deep work. The second four hour session of the day where I remove the rest of the world and focus on a single task. Today I'm going to continue with a tons of flow of light work on the Galaxy S20 for the probably entire idea of the four hour session.
Now depending on the day I might eat here if I'm eating twice a day. Today I don't really feel like it. I'm really focused really feeling good. Again that's kind of the benefits of the whole intermittent fasting, keto that sometimes you just don't feel like eating you feel great. So I'm going to eat just one meal today which will be after this four hour session. And I see this as a kind of sprint to the finish because the eight hours in total of deep work is really what I aim to do every single day. The rest of the stuff there'll be another four hour session but it's often more relaxed. More all over the place has a few more distractions a little bit more fun and chaos and just all over the place.
These two four hour sessions of deep work is really what my day is centered around. So everything is about them. This is where that war of art, the battle for focus, for gaining focus and holding on to focus. That's where it's all about. Some days are really rough. The first session today was easy. I found the focus pretty quickly and just stayed with it. Part of it is because it's kind of a new activity. It's a new phone I'm playing with and also doing a different kind of experiment with tons of flow light. So it's new. It really pulls at you and even though it was difficult, there were no serious tumbling blocks. I didn't have to spend a lot of time debugging code and so on.
It's easy. Let's see what the second four hour session is. Sometimes it's a grind but no matter what, the focus is always just to be present to be there. If nothing is working, it's not happening. I still stay in that place and wait for the breakthrough and the breakthrough always comes. Everybody's different. I think of how they discover, focus, inspiration, motivation, but I'm a big believer in the discipline of ritual. So being there and even if you don't feel like it's still being there, even the progress is not being made, still being there for the grind because sometimes just minutes later, there'll be a breakthrough.
That's how I feel about deep work. That's how I feel about running too. Just taking it one step at a time because some minutes are rough and others are full of bliss. That's just the way the journey of hard work, the journey of doing anything difficult. I'll see you on the other end of the four hours. Now the two big battles of the day are done. The two four hour sessions of deep work. Time to break the fast. I break the fast with athletic greens, a sponsor of the podcast, but actually an amazing thing that I love whether they're a sponsor or not. It covers all the bases that I need with the kind of restricted keto diet that I have. It has all the things that a multivitamin has, but a ton of other nutrients as well. I don't know what it looks like to you, but it's actually pretty delicious. I look forward to it. And it just makes me feel good.
In case it's interesting, what I usually eat is some kind of meat and some kind of vegetable. So if I eat once a day, that's going to be about two pounds of meat, a total of 1,800 calories, 2,000 calories for the total meal. If I'm not being very fancy, it's going to be ground beef. Like this is grass-fed organic, 85%. So 50% fat ground beef. In terms of keto, it results in a good macro breakdown. In terms of taste, I just like it. In terms of cooking, it's also easier because it's just the right amount of fat when it's mixed with vegetables. It creates a non-sticky pan situation where I don't have to add any oil. It just mixes nicely in results in flavorful veggies.
So veggies, my favorite go to is probably cauliflower. Not always. When I really want to get crazy and party, I go with carrots. That's my party vegetable. My ground floor, the place I return to often, my home is cauliflower. He broccoli though. Love cauliflower and he broccoli. In this politically divisive world, we have to pick our sides. My side is with cauliflower against broccoli. What else? So if I'm fasting or not, on the keto diet, it's important to get electrolytes. This is weird. This is for long distance running. This is just sodium pills. I think 1 gram, 1000 milligrams of sodium in pill form. Then there's magnesium glassinate. When I first started keto, I think I was getting headaches for the first few days.
It's to the keto flu that people talk about. The salt is what I'm curious for me, it was the magnesium. There's a bunch of ways to get potassium. I take it in pill form. It's really just to be careful to make sure you get enough electrolytes in your diet, especially when I'm fasting. Especially when I'm doing a lot of exercise to balance with the water and everything like that. Finally, I always take fish oil. I did not plan. I'm mentioning another sponsor, but I will. Probably goods. It's all a bunch of different kinds of stuff, including fish oil. It's all good. I love the minimalist design of public stuff. Anyway, so much of nutrition science is barely a science really. I like to just listen to my own body and do one person, one subject, scientific experiments of what makes me feel good.
That's how I discovered the keto diet. I just look at the science to make sure it's not unhealthy. For the rest of it, I just see what my energy levels are like, how I feel throughout the day, in terms of metal performance, in terms of physical performance, all that kind of stuff. Same with the nutrients. It's pretty minimalist. I do take stuff. If I miss days where I don't take electrolytes or fish oil, it doesn't really matter. But I feel good. But I find it's nice to make sure you're getting all the nutrients, at least regularly. And like I said, athletic greens help make sure I cover all bases. But all the weird stuff that I should be getting, and I'm not even aware of.
So this might be the first and only video I'll ever make in the kitchen. I kind of feel like this is one of those chef's shows where I should be yelling at somebody about their mediocre performance in the kitchen. So I throw the veggies into boiling water, then drain the water, then throw in the meat, and then I guess broil it or whatever the heck the term is. The entire thing takes about 20 minutes, but I only really participate in the last five minutes when it's broiling and I mix it. And sorry if broiling is not the right term. I don't know what I'm doing. Okay. Anyway, it's super easy. I enjoy it as delicious. I throw some salt-based spices in there.
And the final result kind of tastes amazing. Makes me happy. After I make the meal, I'll probably overlay the video of what the final result looks like. I'll often eat it behind the desk, sort of thinking deeply about something. Oftentimes about the thing I'm going to do in the next four-hour session. Just kind of relaxing, enjoying the food, but all of this is just thinking. Of course, if there is somebody else here with me, I'll be enjoying the meal with them. There's nothing more beautiful than connecting with other human beings over some delicious food.
Okay, here we go. Alright, I'm done eating. Feeling pretty good. Don't feel like being out video, but by the way, wearing a 2001 Space Odyssey shirt, this is where I might be wearing a suit if I'm doing filming, if I just feel like it. So the next four-hour session is more relaxed kind of work. It's still really focused, but there's a bunch of tasks. This is where I might do the email check. Now my rule with email, I check email most three times a day.
And the first two times is just to check for emergencies or respond to an email that takes less than 30 seconds to respond to. And it's kind of important. The third session, which is during this four-hour period, is when I actually spend, try to spend no more than an hour, but I go through the emails. I read them. These days, I'm so freaking lucky to be getting just a lot of kind thoughtful messages. So I just take them in, brings me joy, brings me smiles in my face. It's one of the favorite things of the day for me.
And I also, if there's like some of the stuff I have to deal with, I respond to those emails. That's actually at the end of the four-hour session. Now I would also be doing video editing and you kind of filming, I'm doing, and you kind of website design stuff. And also the continuation of the deep work. So today, I didn't finish the TensorFlow Lite thing, but I'm close, so I'm going to probably spend one hour on doing some more TensorFlow that I'm going to do two hours for video editing a podcast.
I need to be working on, I usually try to put in an hour to a day of podcast related stuff. I need to outsource it. I really do. But for now, I'm doing it. And then the last hour will be the checking the email and so on. And after those four hours, I do two plus hours of reading, one hour paper, one hour plus of literature. But we'll get to that. First, this four hours, I'm back to it. Tens of flow for an hour, two hours of podcast editing, and then one hour of email.
Again, very few distractions, very few breaks. On days like today, when I'm feeling really good, really energetic, this third four-hour session, I try to make as good as the first two in terms of the deep focus that I achieve. Also, this time is for when I don't feel great, I can just lay down and watch some Netflix, watch some documentaries on YouTube, hang out with friends. If I had a girlfriend, this would be girlfriend. Netflix and chill. For now, I'm doing just the Netflix part of that.
Anyway, today's deep work, but starting now on any particular day, this is where the possibilities of chaos are wide open. So I can just do whatever the hell I want. I got some Jack Daniels, I got some Stoleys, Mirna Vodka, I got some peanut butter flavored whiskey, so I don't drink very often, pretty rarely actually. But the possibilities always there. The night is always full of possibilities. I'm a big fan of a random adventure and just being lost in it. This is the time for that to happen.
But today, as far as I know, it's TensorFlow, Adobe Premiere, some email, then some papers and some dusty eski. Let's go. Alright, I got the four-hour session done, took just a few minutes longer. I got all the email done. I got podcast editing and actually just got that done in just over an hour, so I had some time to do podcast prep, where I'm doing some research for a couple of upcoming conversations.
And of course, the TensorFlow thing, still been wrapped up, but put it in the hour, that's on the play for tomorrow to start again. Programming is a grind. What are you going to do? But I feel really good. I really feel good about the day. I don't know if this is a good day in the light video, but it's a good day in my life. Maybe not exactly in the sense that it all went perfectly, but in the sense that I put in a very large number of hours of deep focus.
I resisted the urge to become distracted. I resisted all of the usual urges. I mean, that's a daily fight, and I want it today. But it's not over. So next, I'm going to do one hour of paper reading. I have a whole system of papers I read. There is every single day I read at least one paper. Today I'm skimming to machine learning type neuroscience papers that somebody suggested to me based on the math botanic conversation.
And then I'm also doing a deeper read. Still, this is the second session of it for the GPT-3 paper. They get to make a couple videos on GPT-3 and just making sure I get all the details right. There's a bunch of open questions that are not yet understood about GPT-3, I think. And one of the things I do when I read papers is think outside of what the word is just saying. There's obviously all kinds of different papers. The ones I'm reading today, both in neuroscience side and GPT-3, are very easy to understand. And it's more like a canvas on which you can project your idea. So you're taking in the approach, the different architecture, the results, you know, understanding of different plots, the intuitions, like the different perspectives and the results.
But all of that is like very literary. Like a single pass of that paper is almost enough, at least so far. But what the whole purpose of the process is for me reading a paper like that is to think deeply beyond the paper. To think what are the deep questions to ask and that's what I do with paper reading. Again, I have a whole system that's maybe for another video if anyone gives a damn. That hour is usually pretty painful, so I usually keep it to an hour. Like I literally sometimes am counting down to when I reach an hour. Because it's kind of hard to work. It really requires focus.
After that is a little bit more fun reading. It's nonfiction or fiction, depending right now I'm working through the major novels of Dostoevsky. Because I'm going to be talking to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Translators. I don't know when exactly, but in a few months maybe in a month they'll be going to Paris to talk to them. So rereading Dostoevsky, I finished the idiot, I'm not working through crime and punishment. Reading it in English, but I'm also going to try to get to listening to it in Russian. Like taking it into both languages and trying to understand the music of the different languages and how they interact, how they connect, what is the gap, what are the things that are lost in translation, that kind of thing.
Sometimes I do it at the desk, sometimes I do it on the bed, going back and forth when I have a lot of energy. Like I do now, I've got a little bit of coffee in me. I'll just chill on the bed and read the papers and the books. When I'm starting to get a little bit tired, I'll jump over to the desk and back and forth. So that's it. I think I'll wrap up the day in the life video here. Because I'll do the one hour paper reading and then the one hour Dostoevsky and after that, jump at the bed and drift into sleep while continuing to read. Dostoevsky, but actually after the hour of literature reading, I always take a pause and do the part of the mantra that I do in the morning that's gratitude.
Again, it's being thankful that I'm alive, that I survived another day looking forward to the next day and just be grateful for all of the moments that are full of joy in the day. I mean, just even filming this silly thing, it's like fun. There's a piece of technology that somehow is capturing this, that other people might watch and then there's like a microphone. I mean, just the entirety of the technology, everything is magical. Everything is magical. Reminding myself of that doesn't take much effort by just taking a break, taking a pause. Just breathing and just saying, damn, it's good to be alive. Because I won't always be alive. The right end is too quickly. So it's an opportunity and moment to appreciate the entirety of it.
I hope this video is interesting or useful to somebody. I value a few things in this world. One of them is hard work and I try to live by that every day. And the other, as I often always, maybe too much talk about, is love and compassion towards other people. So with those two things, it's one hell of a good life. So I hope that comes through through the way I live my day, the silly video. And if you enjoy it, subscribe, support the kind folks that for some crazy reason want to sponsor the podcast that I make. The podcast just brings me a lot of joy, especially the people I get to meet.
The people I get to talk to on the podcast, but also the community of people who listen to podcasts. I'm a huge fan of podcasts myself. So this is just a big gift to be a part of that. And the sponsors support that whole effort. And they create awesome stuff. So I get to enjoy and share my love for the awesome stuff they create. And as a byproduct of that, they enable me to have enough food and shelter to continue doing these podcasts, which is fundamentally a side gig for me to the main dream, the main effort. But I'm still quietly putting in the hours on again. Thanks for watching. And in your own life, make sure you work hard and put a little bit of love out there in the world. Thank you.