It is 2024, everybody. It is a new year. And one of the unfortunate requirements of working in the self-help industry is that every fucking year, you got to do a new year, new you piece of content. So that's what we're doing today, Drew and I are going to sit down. We're going to talk about goal setting, the right way to do goal setting, the wrong way to do goal setting. And we're going to discuss some of our catastrophic goal setting failures from our own past, discuss what went wrong, what we did wrong. We'll also discuss some of our goal setting successes, some of the goals that we set and achieved in the past and why we think that we achieved it. Then at the end, we're going to break down our goals for 2024 and how we're going to attack them and how we're going to make sure that we accomplish them. We're actually going to check in with you, audience, probably somewhere in June, and hold ourselves accountable, see if we actually walked the fucking walk.

I'm really excited for this one.

I feel like everybody has a goal-setting disaster. Everybody's had experience where they've set aggressive, ambitious goals and then just hilariously failed them. My biggest one, I had in my 20s, I think as a New Year's resolution for four years running, I had a goal to get a six-pack by summer. This is embarrassing to say as a mature old man. But yes, in my 20s, every year for four years running, I wanted to have a six-pack by summer and failed catastrophically every single time. I think the closest I got was there was one year I decided that the trick to do it, because I got on a bunch of internet forums where the truth is. I discovered that the secret was to eat only frozen chicken and vegetables for every meal.

Even breakfast?

Everything. I would do two eggs for breakfast, and then I would do frozen chicken breasts and vegetables for lunch and dinner. What I didn't account for was the fact that I was still going out and drinking about four nights a week. And about once a week, I would just get absolutely hammered and eat pizza at 3:00 in the morning. That unsurprisingly, that torpedoed my extremely brilliant six-pack diet that I tried to create for myself. And honestly, when I look back, I just realized that I was incredibly naive because I had absolutely no understanding of nutrition or fitness. I was skinny fat, so even if I did lose a bunch of weight, I didn't have any muscle to actually create an ab, much less show one. To me, this is the first and most important lesson that I take from goal setting in general is you have to be realistic. If you're going from a lifetime of slothdom, you can't just expect yourself to be this chiseled fitness model in three months of chicken breasts and going to the gym. It just doesn't happen that way.

Well, mine's similar.

What is your biggest failure?

I've always had struggles around getting consistent exercise. I've never really made it fun. I've always just seen it as something you just got to do and grind through and whatever. But one year in particular sticks out to me where I was like, Okay, I'm going to get this handled, but I'm going to do it all at once. That was my idea. I think we're calling this everything everywhere all at once approach. I went out and I got an expensive membership I buy all these workout clothes and everything like that. Then I commit to, Okay, I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to be to the gym by 6 AM, four to six times a week. I completely changed my diet, took supplements, everything. I just threw it all, the whole kitchen sink, all at it, all at once. And wow, that was a catastrophic failure.

How long did you make it?

I think I made it about two months. I was miserable by the end of that two months, though. The first month was like a slog, and I'm like, Yeah, okay, the first month is going to be bad. And then it started to get better a little bit, too. But it was just everything else in my life was just started to fall apart by the end of that two months. To me, the big lesson I took away from that was trying to change too much at once. You've talked about this before about whenever you want to change in a positive way, there's got to be a little bit of an identity change. For me, I was trying to change so many things about myself, all related to health, sure, but I was trying to change so many things once. It's a lot. It was really weird that something as simple as just trying to be more healthy caused that identity crisis in me.

There's all these knock-on effects that you don't consider. When you're sitting alone in your head, you're like, Oh, yeah, I'm going to I'm going to change my diet, and I'm going to do this and that. You don't realize how that's going to affect every dinner you go to, which is then going to affect number of your social relationships and your friendships. Then that's going to affect your social life in general. Then that's going to affect your general happiness. I mean, it's impossible to predict all the knock-on effects that happen. The other thing, too, is just behavior change requires a lot of energy. It takes energy to force yourself up at 6:00 AM and go to the gym when you're not used to doing that. It takes a lot of effort. You have a limited amount of energy and effort. At a certain point, you just drain yourself. It's like a rite of passage, both of these mistakes. I feel like I see these mistakes all the time. People just want to wake up one day and be a completely new person. They don't realize that you have to be patient. There's a very long transition process between person with bad habits and person with good habits.

Also, that transition is not necessarily completely fluid and linear. There's going to be setbacks in weeks that you fuck up and you're going to have to restart a couple of times. Take one thing at a time. I think in one of the articles on the website, when I've written about this before, I always encourage I encourage people, if you set multiple goals at the beginning of the year, prioritize one first, and then once you've got that one handled, say by March or April, it feels easy, then move on to the next one. And then once that one feels easy, then move on to the third. Don't try to take on all three at the same time.

Yeah, and I think an important part of that, too, Mark, is what are you optimizing for as well? Not just choosing one thing, but for me, I wanted to exercise more regularly. I should have just for, Hey, how do I just get to the gym? I was doing all these crazy workouts on top of it, and I was trying to find the best workouts. Really, what I should have been optimizing for was, How can I get to the gym on a regular basis and do workouts that are sustainable for me. I've since learned that waking up early and doing that isn't really good for me. What's better for me is in the middle of the day. If I find a way somewhere in the middle of the day for me to get out, that's way more sustainable. I'm much more likely to do it. That's me. And so I think that's another important point is to optimize for the right things early on, especially.

You're alluding to an attitude that a lot of people have towards goal setting, which is that your goal, it's like you need to brute force it. It's like, Oh, I'm going to lose 20 pounds by summer. I'm just going to put myself through an intense suffering and pain for the next six months. And that attitude, it doesn't really work. You have to find a way to do it in a way that accommodates your own emotions. The simplest way to put it, we just had Ali Abdel on the show, is how do you make it fun? How do you make it interesting? How do you create a little game for yourself, a competition for yourself? Maybe you find a friend to do it with you. These are all simple ways to make chasing a goal fun and easier and more enjoyable. I think ultimately, when I look back at all the major changes I've made throughout my life, it is ultimately because I found a way to make it enjoyable. It's rarely because I gritted through it over a six-month period and just fucking tortured myself and managed to survive. That is a very, very low success rate in my experience.

For sure. So far, be realistic and take it one thing at a time. I think those are two big takeaways to start out with.

Part of being realistic I would say it's better to shoot too low than too high. And look, and this goes against all those clichés like, Oh, shoot for the moon and you'll still land on the stars, whatever. Or like, shoot for the stars, you'll land on the moon, whatever the fucking bullshit thing is. You actually I don't want to untershoot with goals because let's say I could set a goal of like, I want to lose 30 pounds, which is a lot of weight, by June. That's a really, really intense goal, and that there's going to be a very low margin for error. It's going to be very difficult. It's going to require a dramatic lifestyle shift. Or I can sit here and be like, I'm going to lose 5 pounds by mid-February. That's actually a much simpler goal. And then what happens is, even if you hit that goal, that smaller goal or that simpler goal, or that simpler goal. First of all, you get to enjoy the satisfaction of hitting it. It gives you a bunch of motivation. And then you can extend it. You're like, All right, I did the first 5 pounds.

Now let's get to 10 pounds. Let's see how soon I can do that. And then you hit 10 pounds, you're like, All right, that was fucking great. Let's go for 20 pounds. Let's try to do 20 pounds by end of April. And you can build momentum for yourself that way. Whereas if you just start with this massive goal, you're going to get five days in and be like, This sucks. This is impossible. All right, Let's talk about successes. What our success stories look like. For me, the biggest success story I had was... Actually, when I was writing Subtle Art, I started writing what would eventually become Subtle Art, Not Giving a Fuck, in the end of 2013. It was a complete shit show. It was a mess. I went through six different book ideas. I was doing these marathon sessions where I would write 30 pages, and 29 of them were useless. I felt very scattered and unfocused. I decided in 2014, my big goal for that year was I need to have a draft of a book finished by the end of this year, whether it kills me or not. What I actually did, I got desperate.

I went out and I bought a really crappy $300 laptop, old Dell laptop that didn't even have a WiFi card in it. It didn't even have the capability of WiFi. Then the only thing I installed on that laptop was Microsoft Word. Then that became my writing laptop. I would start scheduling days where I was like, Okay, I'm going to work on my business in the morning, and then in the afternoon, I'm going to go to the cafe down the street with my writing laptop, and I'm going to work on the book for three hours or whatever it was. Initially, it was really torturous because I'd go to the cafe and I'd have this laptop and I'd write 10 words, and then I'd just sit there staring out the window in agony. But eventually, just the complete lack of options and distraction started forcing me to focus and think a lot harder on the book. And ultimately, I probably wrote half the book on that laptop over the course of that year. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made. And this is something that James Clear talks about quite a bit. He says, You don't raise to the level of your goals, you drop to the level of your systems, which is basically a very fancy way of saying, Don't think about the effort and discipline it takes to achieve your goal.

Think about the systems that you can create that will make that goal inevitable. So I created a system, which was the writing laptop, that made writing the book not inevitable, but way, way more likely to happen. I also scheduled writing time. I didn't sit around and just serendipitously to get inspired. It was like, no, okay, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM, I'm writing my book, and I'm writing it on this laptop, and I'm leaving my apartment, and that's what's going to happen until I fucking get this thing done. And it worked. It worked because I built the system. I removed any agency or choice from myself. And in my experience, the way to do this well is to create an environment where it becomes more difficult to not do the thing than it is to do the thing. Yeah.

What I really like about that system you have, too, is it's very, very simple. You're going to work on the business in the morning. You have this one laptop that you take to the cafe in the afternoon and you write. And that's it. That's all there is to the system. So keeping it Very simple, too, I think, is another good way to approach this. James, he talks a lot about that environmental design. I use this, something similar to with food. My system is very simple. I don't buy junk food. I don't keep junk food in the house. I just don't. I love sugar. I love sugar. If I keep sugar in the house, I know I'll devour it, so I just don't have it.

You can't trust yourself, man. There's this rabid animal inside of you. The same way you wouldn't trust your dog to order you lunch, you shouldn't trust that inner animal to order you lunch either.

Just venison steaks all the time, yeah.

Pizza and ice cream, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So one of my biggest failures was around working out and everything like that. Also, one of my bigger successes was around it, too. And I stumbled upon this as well. And when I look back on it, it also was a simple system with a few other features that really helped me out. I trained jiu-jitsu for about two years, and I was very consistent with that, going anywhere from two to four times a week. And even if I did fall off, had a week where I missed or didn't really get any good workouts in or whatever, I found it incredibly easy to get back into it, which I think is very important, too, in a system. It's like a system that allows you to get back into it. Strangely, there was a lot of friction around this because it's expensive. You have to wear this funny outfit that's also expensive. You have to travel to a gym. There's all this friction involved with it. But there was also a lot of features about training jiu-jitsu for me that really worked in my favor as well. For one, it was social. And even though I'm an introvert, I really like the social situation there because you're all just focused on one thing.

There was always something different, too, which for my monkey mind, my animal mind, like you were just talking about, It was really great. There's a lot of variety in it. You're always doing something different. You're learning something different. That was another thing, too. You learned a lot, which is a core value of mine, is learning. They call it the Thinking Man's martial art, which I really liked. And most of all, to your point you made earlier, Mark, it was a lot of fun. I think that's what I struggled with most in the past. I've never made a conscious effort to make it as fun as I possibly can. I've just been like, Okay, it's a slog. I just need to do this because I want to look good and I don't want to die when I'm in my or whatever. And instead, it was a lot of fun. You go in there and you try to beat people up. You get your ass kicked a lot, which was strangely fun, too. Just humbling in a way.

So I think this is a nice time to break down what makes something engaging and fun. Yes. And you mentioned a bunch of them in a row there. I think there's the social aspect, which is really great. I have not seen any research on this, but I be willing to bet that people who pursue goals with other people who are pursuing the same goal probably succeed at a much higher rate than people who pursue goals by themselves. There's a competitive aspect, which that's fun. There's a growth aspect, which is this was a huge unlock for me with fitness, was I used to think that tracking my workouts was just really obnoxious. And then years ago, one of my trainers basically forced me to start tracking my workouts. And it actually made it way more interesting because now every time I went to the gym, I was like, I'm going to beat what I did week. I'm going to do slightly better. I did four sets of 10 reps last week. I'm going to do four sets of 11 reps this week. And it made it way more interesting and engaging for myself. Then also, when you do level up on a week-to-week basis, you get that positive reinforcement, you get that momentum, that feeling of accomplishment.

You mentioned friction. I actually think friction can work both ways. It can be a hurdle early on, but then once you're over that hurdle, it can actually keep you in the activity. It's like, yeah, jiu-jitsu is expensive, but then once you shell out for it, you create a sunk cost fallacy for yourself where you're like, Oh, man, I paid hundreds of dollars to be here. I better fucking do it. It's the people who, on January first, they sign up for $1,000 of personal training because that's the only thing that's going to actually get them to go to the gym. And there's real power to that. Intentionally creating friction for yourself to discourage you from not doing the thing, I think is really useful. And then, like you said, it's intellectually stimulating. That's a big thing for me as well. I enjoy things that challenge me mentally, that offer a lot of variety, nuance, just makes things more fun and interesting. When I was doing this exercise, guys to prepare for this episode, there are a few general observations that I made. So for listeners who don't know, I've not always done New Year's resolutions, but I've always done annual reviews, and I've always done annual projections, basically what What's the theme of this year?

What am I going to focus on this year? Where do I want to be by mid-year, by end of year? And I've written a lot of those years down. I don't have all of them, but I had maybe half a dozen years written down in my personal documents, going all the way back to the late 2000s. It was interesting going back and looking at all of the goals that I had set for myself because one of the commonalities that I noticed is that the ones I failed at were generally just very arbitrary goals designed to impress other people. And the ones that I succeeded at were generally motivated by things that I authentically found important to do for myself. And in hindsight, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think when you are motivated... The six-pack is a perfect example. I had horrible lifestyle habits, absolutely horrible lifestyle habits, and I had zero interest in actually changing those habits for any reason. Other than I thought if I had a six-pack, I'd be really hot and girls would like me. It's really stupid stuff like that that I look back on. I'm like, Well, yeah, no wonder I failed after three weeks.

Because it's That motivation of, Oh, my God, people are going to think I'm so cool, it's empty calories. There's not really a there, there, and it doesn't sustain you. You really need some core personal value underlying the goal that's going to sustain you through the hard parts, that's going to remind you why you're suffering. Nobody wants to suffer and be like, Well, I'm doing this because people think I'm cool. It'll be worth it. It's like, no, that's such a horrible justification. So of course, you give up. So that was just an interesting commonality that I found. I don't know if you found that true to be in your case.

Absolutely, no. I've had a lot of issues around foreign language learning. I've taken classes in school, both in high school and college for Spanish. I lived in Latin America, took classes while I was there, sitting across from a native speaker and everything like that, spent so much time and money on it. And my Spanish is still pretty garbage even after all of that. And looking back, it's because of my motivation around that. I wanted to impress people. I wanted to look smart. I wanted to dazzle people with my language knowledge, which had this really... When that's your motivation and you go out and you try to converse with people, then you get really scared to say anything because you're like, If I fuck up, that's not going to impress them.

Whereas if you're genuinely motivated by connecting with a whole new demographic of people, connecting with a culture, then you don't care if you fuck up. Because you don't care if you fuck up, you actually learn the language. This totally rings true for me, Drew. As you know, I was nomadic for seven years. I lived abroad. I spent four years in South America. I spent about two years in Asia, and I spent about a year in different places in Europe. Again, on a lot of those goals lists back in those years, like 2011, 2013, I had a bunch of language goals. And this ties into the unrealistic as well. I was clueless. I had no fucking idea how hard it is to learn a language. I would set a goal of be fluent in Russian by the end of the year. And it's like, I've literally never spoke in a word of Russian in my life. Some of that, I think, is just dumb young optimism, but some of it's a little bit of delusion. So I do speak three languages. I did eventually because I lived so long in South I did pick up Spanish and Portuguese.

It's funny because I am occasionally, very rarely in those social situations where I get to show off my language skills to the people around me. Most things that these goals are motivated by, whether it's a six-pack or making a bunch of money, buying a car, learning a language, the stuff that you are motivated to impress people by, when it actually happens, it is so unsatisfied. Yes. People will look at me and they're like, Oh, wow, you speak Portuguese? I'm like, Yeah. And they're like, Damn, that's cool. And then three seconds later, it's over. That's it. That's as far as it goes. People have already forgotten about it 10 seconds after it happens from just a cost-benefit analysis. Because what I know now is it takes years, hundreds and hundreds of hours, if not thousands of hours of practice to actually get decent at a language, get relatively fluent, not even fluent, but just conversationally fluent. It is so much fucking work, so much energy, so much time. The idea that you're doing that for all these little crumbs of social validation that come and go after three seconds, and nobody actually cares. It's just such a poor exchange of time and energy.

There's so many better ways to be validated by people. The hard thing about this, too, is that I think it's very hard to be aware of why you're motivated to do something. I think our default is to assume that all of our intentions and motivations are pure and authentic and real. We tend to hide from ourselves the validation that we're seeking and the, let's just call them impure motivations that we might have. Or let's just say, insecurely driven motivations that we might have. And this, Drew, actually leads perfectly into the first podcast sponsor ever. Let's give him a round of applause. First people who are brave enough to give me some fucking money to talk about them. It's Betterhelp. So if you need help knowing what your motivations are, Betterhelp, aka fucking therapy, can help you figure that out. But seriously, Betterhelp is the biggest therapy platform in the world. You can access it entirely through your phone. You can do video sessions, audio sessions, you can even do text sessions. You can switch therapists at any time. It's incredibly convenient. I don't know about you, Drew. Therapy has been one of the best things I've ever done in my life.

I was a total fucking nut job in my late teens, early 20s, and I had a great therapist for a few years who I give a lot of credit for unfucking myself.

Highly, highly recommend it, yes. And Betterhelp lets you You choose a lot of different therapists, too, so you can find the right match for you, which I think is very important.

Go to betterhelp. Com/idgaf. I don't give a fuck. Idgaf, that's the promo code. You'll get 10% off your first month. And what better month? Start therapy, Drew.

I highly recommend it.

So betterhelp. Com/idgaf. But seriously, therapy can be an effective tool for getting at the root of a lot of this stuff. If you are very driven by insecurity, by seeking validation from others, if you have, I don't know, intense body image issues, it can be hard to gain full awareness around that. So this is one thing I started doing about 10 years ago. I didn't just write down goals. I would really try to get at what was the value or the motivation behind the goal. Obviously, back when I tried to get a six-pack in three months every year, I was very bad at that. But I think that was something that I got much better at as I got older as I got into my 30s. It's just really understanding like, Okay, why do I want to do this thing? Why is it important to me? And checking in with myself and making sure that I'm being motivated by the right thing.

Yeah, that actually leads into something I wanted to ask you about for a while now, and I get the opportunity here to do that. What's your take about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? Do you think some people would benefit from using one more than the other? I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I wanted to get your take on the whole thing.

I think it depends on the goal, most likely. But I do think both are important. So for listeners who aren't familiar, extrinsic motivation is generally being motivated by external rewards or forces. It's like, if I do this amount of work this week, I'm going to get a $1,000 bonus on my paycheck. It's an external reward, so it's extrinsic motivation. You're being motivated by something external to yourself. Intrinsic motivation is generally being motivated purely for the the activity itself or the value that it innately has for you as a human being. If I believe very, very passionately in feeding the homeless, and if I set a goal of going out and working with a bunch of charities, I'm not being externally rewarded. When it comes to goals, I just think extrinsic motivation tends to be short term. It's very, very hard to keep up extrinsic motivation over months and months and months. If you're just trying to lose weight to impress your friends at the beach, you're going to give up after a week. You need a steady supply of external reward to keep going. That can keep you going over the long term is intrinsic motivation, is when you decide, I'm not going to lose weight to impress people at the beach.

I'm going to lose weight because I'm unhealthy and I feel bad. Physically, I feel bad, and I don't want to physically feel bad anymore, and I want to have more energy, and I want to be the best version of myself. That's when you start feeling intrinsically motivated, and that's when you actually start doing shit when nobody's looking. That's when it matters. I don't mind external rewards. It's fine to enjoy external rewards. I've often had business goals that were very externally driven. I want to sell this many books or I want to make this much money. That's fine, but there has to be some intrinsic motivation underlying it. You can't just be writing a book just because it's going to sell you a bunch of books. You need to actually believe that the book is important and it serves a very important function and has value in the world. Otherwise, you're going to lose motivation on those inevitable days where things are not going right or obstacles pop up.

Yeah, I like the way you talked about this with Ali Abdel. You just mentioned that extrinsic rewards, the way I see it is they're discrete, usually, right? You get them in these small packages, usually. And so you're right, if you're killing your sofa months at a time, and even if you do achieve that reward, that's, I think, when the so what comes in. Like, oh, this is it? That comes in at that point, too. Ali had a really good way of putting it, though, and it's very simple, but it's find a way to make it fun. Find a way to make it intrinsically rewarding to you. Find a way to make the process intrinsically rewarding. Even if you're going after that extrinsic external reward, find a way to make the process intrinsically rewarding. It clicked for me because I think so often we're told, Oh, yeah, go find that thing that is intrinsically rewarding. To you. Go find it. And it's like, Well, okay, I try a bunch of things, and it's intrinsically rewarding for a while, but that goes away. The switch that I had, especially when Ali said it that way, was, No, make it intrinsically rewarding for you.

Create the intrinsic reward for yourself. You can make anything intrinsically rewarding when you think about it that way. That was a real big... That clicked for me.

It's so funny. I think you just perfectly described why I think his approach is genius. And I I never could put words around it. I just know that I've known him for a while, and I've hung out with him a few times. I've watched a bunch of his videos, and I read his book. As somebody who's read a lot of productivity stuff over the years, it just felt so revolutionary. Other than just like, he's acknowledging the emotional aspect of it, which is important, I could never really put my finger on what he was doing that was so different and so powerful. I think you just summed it up perfectly, and you're totally right. The classic advice, and I've given this advice a million times, we've put it on our website a million times, it is, go find the thing you're intrinsically motivated by and then build a life around that. What Ali is saying is that he's like, No, you can find intrinsic motivation in anything. You can take the most boring medical textbook and create word games and songs around the vocabulary you need to study for your next test. You're going to ace the test if you do that.

You're going to have fun. You're not going to hate your life. You're not going to burn out and drop out of med school. I think it's understated how profound that is. Again, as you pointed out, the simplicity of it is pretty remarkable as well. Yeah. Let's talk about our 2024 goals. We're each going to set a couple of goals here, and then we're going to keep ourselves accountable. Actually, we're going to ask the audience, the listeners, to also set some goals and email to us. We're actually going to follow up with people later on in the year to basically get some data on how many people are sticking to their goals, how many people achieve their goals, how many people gave up. I think it'll be really interesting to do a follow-up. Yeah, I'm really excited for that. Maybe way through the year. To give a little bit of context, my big 2023 goal, I had one big goal for 2023, which was be the healthiest I've ever been in my life. I measured that on three dimensions. One was body composition, one was strength, and then one was fitness. I definitely hit two out of three, the body composition and the strength.

Fitness, I ran a lot in college. I'm not quite as good of a runner as I was when I was 20, but I'm pretty close. So I still consider that a success, even though I didn't quite get there. Going into 2024, right now, I've already started on a major goal, and I'm consumed by it at the moment, which is I started doing research a few months ago on marathons here in the LA area. It turns out there's a marathon here that is on my 40th birthday. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, Fuck. Yeah, perfect. I have to do it. You only turn 40 once. What better way to celebrate than torturing your sofa 26.2 miles. So I'm currently training for a marathon. That marathon is going to happen in March. I'm leaving the door open to potentially do other marathons in the year. But right now, my primary and whole focus is on that marathon in March.

I like that. What's your schedule like for that then? What are the steps you're taking to get there?

Four runs a week and then two light workouts. Honestly, the hardest part is the recovery. I thought the running was going to be the hardest part, but actually, most marathon training, you run really slow. It's not like you're on the side of the road puking or anything. The hardest part is just recovery. My legs are always sore. My knees have gotten sore a few times. Some little shin splints, blisters on my feet, stuff like that. But it's going well. Seeing a lot of progress, and I'm actually enjoying it. It's not in a weird, masochistic way. It's fun.

So you're using all these things we've talked about so far. I'm guessing you're tracking, you have a system for this. Do you have a coach or accountability in any way?

I have a general health coach who is aware that I'm doing this, and he's keeping tabs on me. But no, I created the plan myself. There's a ton of marathon training plans online. But the way I systematize this is I created a plan for myself, and I scheduled out my entire calendar from now until the marathon. So every single day, I know What day I'm running, how long I'm running? How fast? How far? Even to the point on my trips, on my travel, I've already looked up the hotel I'm staying in. Do they have a gym with a treadmill? Are there roads nearby? Where Where can I get my run in? What day am I going to do it on? So everything's planned in advance. There's literally no excuse to miss a run other than I'm just being lazy.

Okay.

And I've paid for the marathon. I've signed up. I've booked the hotel. So I'm going, I'm going to run it. And it's like, if I bitch out and skip a run today, which it's raining today, I would love to skip a run today. I just know I'm going to pay for it on race day. So I'm not really gaining anything, so I might as well just go do it.

How are you making it fun? You said it's been fun, but to me, training for a marathon doesn't sound fun. So how are you making it fun?

The tracking for me is fun. Seeing the progress has been super fun. Every week, it's baked into the training that you go a little bit further every week. Last week, my big run was nine miles. This week, it's going to be 11 miles. I've never run 11 miles in my life. That's crazy. But if I can actually go do it, there's a high that you get from that. Like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I just did that. That's amazing. Okay, martial marathon. That's been fun. What about you?

Well, I need some fucking sleep And I thought, I've been a terrible sleeper in my house.

You need to work more, Drew.

No, so I have this asshole boss, right? And he's keeping me up at night. No. I've I've been a terrible sleeper all my life. It's all sleep hygiene. It's all around my sleep habits. Sleep requires a lot of other good habits, too. It's also one of those compounding habits you've talked about before, where it has these ripple effects in the rest of your life. That's another reason I'm choosing it. But with sleep, you got to get a lot of things right. Good nutrition, which I've got that figured out. Little to no alcohol. I don't drink anymore. Haven't for a few years now. That's going great. Exercise, I'm not very consistent, so I could be more at that. Everything else, though, I'm terrible at it. I could mainline coffee into my eyeballs and probably wouldn't affect me at this point. I don't have a regular bedtime and wake time. I keep my phone in my room. I don't really use my phone in my room, but I do keep it in the room. Screen time is probably off the charts. Again, I have this asshole boss who I have to be on the computer for all the time.

Get the work. Get the work. So it's not only all day I'm on, but then the way I wind down at night, usually, It's usually late, too. By the time I'm shutting down, it's like I turn a screen on and put on some stupid TV or something like that, which obviously having the screen light in your face right before bedtime is not good.

So what are you going to change? What are you going to change? Let's break this down. What are the steps here? What are the habits?

This is one of those things where I'm not going to do the everything everywhere all at once approach again. I noticed that that's not going to work. And so all of those things I just listed off, I think I want to tackle them one at a time. And I wanted to get your input on this. I don't know what the time frame should be. What do you think? Should I try to replace these like one every month or one every two weeks? Or what do you think a good timeline is for something like that?

I would just do one at a time and then one when Whenever one starts to feel automatic, like it's not demanding much mental load, it just happens, then I would move on to the next one. So my wife really struggled with sleep her entire adult life, and I've watched her go through this struggle. She's actually The last two years, I'd say she's sleeping really well, but it takes a lot. It has been a journey for her, and she had to build a lot of systems for herself. The big things that she does, I think the easiest thing is that there's just a lot of night time rules. We have a rule. If we watch a show, we're not allowed to start an episode of a show after 9:00 PM. Anything we're going to watch, it needs to be started before 9:00 PM. No exceptions. You can buy these things that go into your electrical outlets that you can program to turn things on and off at certain times of day. She bought a bunch of those. Our lights in our living room go out at 10:00 PM. It's basically like she to our house to be like, Fuck, you go to bed.

And it works. You're literally just sitting there doing whatever, and all of a sudden, all the lights in the room go out, and you're like, Oh, okay, yeah, let's go to bed. Once we're in the bedroom, she doesn't bring her into the bedroom. I'm a psycho. I can sleep anywhere under any circumstance. I'm very blessed in that way. So I don't care. I'll bring my phone in and watch TikTok or whatever until I pass out. But she doesn't bring her phone in. There's no screens. She has a Kindle, but the Kindle has no UV light. Room super cold, blackout shades. Blackout shades are key, man. I honestly can't sleep without it. If I go stay in a hotel and it's really light in the hotel room, it kills me now. So blackout shades, eye mask, cold room, and gets in the bed and reads for 30, 45 minutes.

What I like about that, though, too, you explained, for one, you have systems in place, like we've already talked about, and they're simple systems, but also the simple rules. That's another thing that I've come across in my life that works very, very well for me. You just have these simple rules around things that you either do or don't do. No phones after nine o'clock or whatever it was. The lights go at 10, that thing. I did this around diet, too. I have a rule, I don't eat dessert. That's it. Another rule of mine is I can eat as much as I want. I just can't eat whatever I want, that thing. It's very, very simple. And I really like that using that. So I think what I want to do is create these simple rules around some of these things. I think the first one really needs to be the screen time at night. I think that's for my experimentation anyway, that seems to be the one that's really fucking me up the most right now. I want to start with that one. I think. Probably work to a more regular bedtime after that and then try to address the caffeine.

That's going to be the tough one. I'm addicted, man. I gave up alcohol cold turkey. I smoked a pack a day when I was in my early 20s. I gave that up pretty much cold turkey. I've been able to do that. Caffeine? Can't do it.

I can't do it. Caffeine is my advice, too. But again, I have a rule, no caffeine after 4:00 PM.

I don't drink it after noon. And I still- Really? Yeah, but I have, I'm embarrassed to say it, but probably five or six cups a day, at least.

Jeez. So you're not afternoon, but you are mainlining that shit into your veins all morning.

If I can get that to 2-3, maybe by whatever, middle of this year or whatever.

I think that's a good- No wonder you don't want to record these episodes after lunch. My God, you're fucking- Crash.

I am useless in afternoon. I shouldn't be telling you this. I am useless in the afternoon most days.

Well, what I have found with caffeine, and this is after years of addiction and experimentation, quitting for me also is extremely hard. When I don't drink caffeine, I don't get those energy swings that you get on caffeine. But I would say my average energy level is slightly lower. I have found that I really have to keep myself, again, another rule, keep myself under a certain quantity per day. If If I go, which is the equivalent of, I guess, probably two and a half cups of coffee. If I go above that, the swings start getting much larger. And then the worst thing you can do is try to compensate for those swings by drinking more. It's a vicious cycle. Because then you're fucked. Then you're not falling asleep at night. You're waking up groggy, you're getting horrible headaches. If you miss a cup, it's no bueno.

Well, hopefully I can get some fucking sleep this year. That would be nice.

Yeah. So what we're going to do, if you're listening to this and you have some goals for 2024, go to markmanson. Net/newyear. That's one word, newyear. And send them in to us. I think what we want to do is we're going to follow up with you maybe in three or six months, and there's no right or wrong. We just want you to be honest, set your goals, and we'll probably collect some data from the audience around what goals people setting, which ones are they adhering to, which ones are people best at adhering to, which ones are they struggling the most with. I think we'll get a lot of interesting data and anecdotes to follow up with later on in the year. And then, of course, we'll check in with Drew and I and see how we've each done with our goals later on in the year.

The nerd in me is really excited for this.

This will be motivating because the next time you're sitting on your phone at midnight wondering why you're You're not falling asleep, you'll think about the thousands of people who are going to know that you failed horribly.

And I am extransically motivated in a lot of ways. Yes.

And as we have established, we only care about what other people think. That's right. So yes, we have an extra bit of motivation. That's it for this episode. Enjoy the new year, everybody. Send in your New Year's goals. We'll talk to you again soon.

You can draw me to the'll talk to you again soon.