Routine, Willpower, and Winning: Secrets to Crushing Your Day

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0:44Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit statestreet.com slash IM for perspectives containing this and other information. Read it carefully. SPY is subject to risks similar to those of stocks. All ETFs are subject to risk, including possible loss of principal. Alps Distributors, Inc. Distributor. The McDonald's Snack Wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap. Spicy snack wrap. You broke the internet for a snack. Snack wrap is back. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

1:19We have a tremendous episode for you today, a very special episode in which over the last two weeks, we hit two milestones in the growth of this community, 10 ,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel and 25 ,000 subscribers on the Instagram channel. Absolutely phenomenal. I appreciate the hell out of you guys. And I want to do something different for this episode. I wanted to take questions that I've gotten over the last two weeks from people that subscribe, people, followers, you guys, the audience. I want to take some questions and answer these. And we got some really good ones here. and I just wanted to work through them because I think it's important.

2:01The questions that people ask, I always respond to almost all the comments that I get, especially the questions. If someone just comments, sometimes I'll say thanks or whatever, but for people who have questions, I try to respond to every single question that comes through either the Instagram channel or YouTube and as well as the questions that come through Apple or Spotify. A lot of times people leave questions about the podcast in ratings and reviews of the show, which is an odd way to ask a question. But I also very much appreciate all the ratings and reviews that we've gotten continue to grow.

2:38And if you haven't left a rating and review of this show on Spotify or Apple, if you like to listen to the podcast, I'd very much appreciate you doing that. That helps those algorithms share this show with more people. It has a tremendous effect. If you've ever wanted to support the show in any way, leaving a rating or review on Apple or Spotify is a tremendous way to do that. And everyone that has, I very much appreciate you. But I wanted to take some questions from the audience because I love the questions. Q &A is my favorite part of keynotes. It's my favorite part of workshops. And whenever I'm on someone else's podcast, a lot of times they'll ask their audience for questions and hit me with those and those kind of off-the-cuff responses.

3:21That's always my favorite part. I love kind of real-time answering people's questions. So I pulled out five questions, which I'm going to work through the rest of the episode here. And hopefully some of these are relevant to you. I think they will be. They seemingly are relevant to everyone. So the first question comes from Sylvie. Is the name S-I-I-L-V-I-I dot Z. Sylvie asks, what's the hardest part about staying this motivated? And the question is, I'm not always motivated. You're never gonna be always motivated. Oftentimes, our work is done, our growth happens in the moments that we're not motivated.

4:04It is very easy to show up to the gym. It's very easy to show up for this podcast. It's very easy to show up to a sales call or for an individual when you're motivated. That's when it's easy. If we rely on the moments that we're motivated, we'll never move forward. We'll stay right where we are because motivation comes and goes. While we can do things in our life to increase the amount of what I'll call motivation, that sense of urgency, that desire to get things done, while we can do things to cultivate more kind of motivation in our lives, you are not going to be motivated every day. I am not motivated every day.

4:45Most days I'm probably not motivated if I'm being completely honest with you. I don't wake up every morning. Like, you know, David Goggins may wake up every day and want to absolutely crush and I'm probably taking him a little out of context, but I do not. However, I have goals. I have people that I'm responsible for. I have bills to pay. I I have my own desire to create. And I know that at the end of the day, whether I start motivated or not, I'm unsatisfied when I put my head on the pillow if I haven't gotten the things done that are important to reaching those goals, to taking care of the people in my lives, to paying my bills.

5:28If I don't get things done associated with those items, then I'm unsatisfied. I find myself with my eyes wide open on the pillow wondering why I didn't get this done or why I made this excuse. And I hate that feeling. Honestly, I think I hate that sense of delinquency more than anything. I just, it makes me feel like less of a person. It makes me feel like I'm undeserving of the things that I have in my life. I'm blessed in so many ways. I had two loving parents. I was born in America. Seemingly good genes. My brain works for the most part. I have so many blessings. And to not get things done because I didn't feel motivated feels like I'm being disrespectful to those blessings, if that makes sense.

6:27So all that being said, to answer Sylvie's question, the hardest part about staying motivated is believing that you need to be motivated in the first place just do the fucking work just do the work whatever it is you need to get done just do it you don't have to be in a good mood you don't have to like it you don't have to feel awesome about it you don't have to you know there doesn't need to be rainbows and sunshine and harp music playing in the background in order to get after it just do the work if you need to make 10 sales calls today make 10 sales calls If you need to put a deck together for a big pitch or an investor meeting, do it.

7:05If you need to have a tough conversation with your partner or your spouse, do it. If you have health and fitness goals, which you should, then just eat right. Don't put the cookie in your face. It's okay to look at the cookie. It's okay to daydream about what that cookie might taste like. Don't put the cookie in your mouth. Have a banana. Have some grapes. Have a salad or whatever it is that hits your nutrition or wellness goals. And if you don't know what those things are, go find someone that'll help you, that'll help you give you a plan in order to know what to eat, what to do. But if you're not, if your goals are to stay fit and healthy, if your goals are to grow your business or grow your position inside of a business, if your goals are to take care of someone, do the work necessary, show up, do it, and understand that all the people that you look at online and may have some sort of envy for the life and the situation and the work that they get done, know that they are not motivated either.

8:00not every moment of every day, certainly most moments. To be candid, it's probably most moments of most days, the people who you envy for the amount of work that they get done, they are unmotivated. The only difference is they have the discipline to do the shit that needs to get done regardless of that motivation. I think it's a wonderful question, Sylvie. Guys, how do you feel about motivation? I just, I hate the term. I use it, but I hate it. I hate you know I've been called a motivational speaker in the past oh you're Ryan your your keynotes are so motivational I'm glad that people take them that way I certainly am but I do not want to be a motivational speaker I want to help people figure out whatever it is whatever that trigger is that gets them through the day but motivating them I don't even know that that's possible.

8:52I think it's a placeholder term that we use to denote energy transfer, which is wonderful. It's part of the job of a keynote speaker. It's part of this job as a podcaster, as a content creator, as a leader, whether that's a leader of a business, leader of a household, right? The leadership that we have over ourselves. It's your job to transfer positive energy. However, believing that you're always going to have a full tank of positive energy every day to get things done is just not reality. So, Sylvie, I appreciate that question. I love that question. Hope that answered your question. And let's get on to question number two.

9:35Okay, next question comes from Tom. Tom asks, how do you balance work, life, and crushing it in the gym? I don't believe in balance. That's first and foremost. I do not believe in balance. Balance should not be a goal. Get rid of the idea of balance altogether. That's step number one. Your life is never going to be balanced.

10:08Balance, again, it denotes this idea of a 50-50 split, of all things being even and equal, and that is never going to be the case. There's a concept that changed my life and changed how I approached life, how I approached my work, how I approached my family. And it's this idea that we have seasons of our lives, seasons of a year, seasons of a week, right? Seasons of a week might not make sense, but the idea is at any given moment, we need to find harmony based on what our needs are in that moment. There may be times when the gym just isn't as much of a priority versus other things. Maybe, you know, you have some stuff going on in your marriage or in your relationship with your partner or your kids and you need to spend more time there.

10:59You just need to be present. And taking an hour or an hour and a half out of your day to drive to the gym, get a workout in, come home, it's just not part of the equation. And in those scenarios, maybe just getting 100 pushups in and doing some air squats or some stretching or yoga in your basement or in your living room for 20, 30 minutes is worthwhile. In many cases, doing that work in front of your family has a tremendous amount of positive benefits. But my point here is sometimes harmony is pumping the brakes a little bit on your career. Pumping the brakes a little bit on that full tilt, grind all day, growth process, and backing into your family.

11:42Sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes you need to have... Hear that? That's me in Tokyo learning to make sushi from a master. How did I get here? I invested wisely. Now the only thing I worry about is using too much wasabi. Get where you're going with SPY, the world's most traded ETF. Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit statestreet.com slash IM for prospectus containing this and other information. Read it carefully. SPY is subject to risks similar to those of stocks.

12:10All ETFs are subject to risk, including possible loss of principal. Alps Distributors, Inc. Distributor. The McDonald's Snack Wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch Snack Wrap. Spicy Snack Wrap. You broke the internet for a snack. Smack Wrap is back. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Just in. Thousands of winter arrivals at your Nordstrom Rack Store. Save up to 70 % on coats, slippers, and cashmere from Kate Spade, New York. Vince, Ugg, Levi's, and more. Check out these boots. They've got the best gifts. My holiday shopping hack? Join the Nordiclub. Get an extra 5 % off every rack purchase with your Nordstrom credit card.

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13:28Conversation with your loved ones and say, look, like I got to get after it for a couple of weeks. We have a huge presentation coming up and I'm just going to need to put some extra hours in, which means, you know, when you guys sit down at the end of the night to maybe watch a show and calm down or whatever you're doing, I'm going to head back to my office because I got to grind for a couple extra hours or I need to, you know, honey, I need to get out of bed at 5 a.m. for a week because I got to get this stuff done, right? Or my physical shape has spiraled out and I need to build time in. And is it okay if I'm not home for the first hour with the kids because I got to get to the gym and if I don't get my fitness, if I don't get my fitness back on track, I'm going to fall apart.

14:14I'm not going to have the energy I need to be present here with you. I'm not going to be happy. I'm not going to be content, right? Find harmony. Don't find balance because harmony, the concept of harmony, a lot gives us permission to, to be flexible in what we're focusing on at any given period of time and any given period of our life to reprioritize, right? We can, there are going to be times in your life where work is the most important thing. Even if you have a family. There's gonna be times in your life where your family and the time you spend and be present with them is more important than anything that's going on at work.

14:52There's gonna be times when you have to get your physical fitness in shape. You may get a health diagnosis that says you need to completely rearrange your health and wellness program and that may take away from your focus at work or your focus on family. But finding that harmony and being content in the harmony of that moment is the key. The last six months, I have not been quote unquote crushing it at the gym. I've been going to the gym, but I haven't been crushing it. Now I've been kind of back on the grind the last few weeks, which has felt awesome. You know, I'm, I'm at my best when I'm doing four strength training workouts a week at a minimum, you know, coupled in with maybe some ruck walks.

15:31I like to, I have a 40 pound ruck vest, which is a vest that you wear, which has weighted plates in it. Mine is not a ruck sack where you carry everything on your back. Mine is a ruck vest. So I have 20 pounds in the front, 20 pounds in the back. And I'll throw a podcast on and go for an hour long walk, take the dog with me. You may have seen some of the videos I do on Instagram where a thought will hit me and I'll share that while I'm walking or whatever. But I'm at my best energy wise when I'm getting those workouts in. But if I'm making time for those workouts, then other aspects of my life, like maybe reading, I love to read, but it is very hard to get a half hour, 45 minutes worth of reading in.

16:13And, you know, if I'm really going to do a strength training workout, I like it to be 45 minutes to an hour long with 10 minutes on either side for, you know, kind of driving to and driving home from the gym. right? There are many times in my life when balancing work, my kids, you know, my love life, and getting that workout in. I can't do all those things and prioritize all those things all the time and get the necessary sleep and, you know, and also be thoughtful and reaching out to friends. I mean, it's just, there's so many pulls on our attention that we have to prioritize and harmonize our life and then be content and happy in that harmony and know that if something is out of harmony, that we just need to take a moment and reprioritize.

17:04And I hope that answers your question, Tom. I think, you know, balance, it's a word. I understand the meaning and why we use it, but I do think words matter. And if you replace balance with harmony and really dig into that concept, I think you'll get a lot of value out of that. And I think you'll be able to reprioritize things in a way that fit the life that you want to live while still taking care of the things you need to take care of. So, all right. Guys, if you're enjoying this Q &A, let me know. Head over to YouTube and just leave a comment on YouTube or hit me up on Instagram. I'm Ryan underscore Hanley on Instagram.

17:45and just let me know if you enjoy these Q &A sessions. I would love to do these more often, especially when we hit milestones. It just seems like a cool time to kind of pull back for a sec and really dig into you guys. But no, anytime you ask a question, I'm always gonna answer that question 99 out of 100 times. I really prioritize the questions that I get on any of the social channels and try to answer them as best I can and as in detail. And a lot of times I try to do it with video responses if the platform makes that available because I just think the, I think video and hearing someone talk and answer back is oftentimes a lot better and more valuable than just a typed response in the comments.

18:27But leave your comments or leave your questions and I will always get those answered. All right, let's move on to question number three as we cruise along here in this Q &A session. This one comes from Joa. how do you balance, there's that word again, that grind with avoiding burnout or is that just part of it? So we're not going to address the balance part again. Let's talk about burnout. I wanted to, I picked this question because I wanted to talk about burnout. Burnout is absolutely positively real. Now I do think burnout is the result of believing that balance is possible. I think that's part of it.

19:07If we believe balance is possible, we get burnout because we're trying to, you know, we're trying to burn every wick, right? We're trying to be everything to everyone. We're trying to have a great morning routine, have a great night routine, be a great partner, be a great, you know, be great to our loved ones, be present with our kids, also kill it at work, also kill it at gym, also eat healthy. It's so much and understand that we start every day, We start every single day with a given amount of willpower. Think of it like a video game, for those of you who play video games or have ever played in the past.

19:42You start the game, this being every single day, with a given amount of energy. And every decision that we have to make pulls from that energy meter a certain amount. Small decisions, small activities will pull a small amount. large decisions, tough decisions, decisions that really force us to use our brain and dig in, right? Those are going to pull more. So routine helps burnout. Routine helps burnout because the routines that we have in our lives, these could also be considered habits. James Clear's book, Atomic Habits is wonderful for this. I think 50 million people or something crazy, some crazy number like that have read his book at this point.

20:25So if you have, then you know what I'm talking about, but if you haven't read it, I highly recommend James Clear's book, Atomic Habits. But in that book, he talks a lot about willpower. There's another great book, Willpower Is Not Enough, another great book to check out. And both of them hit on this concept of willpower being a resource that we lose throughout the day. And that habits and routines allow us to make decisions once and execute on that decision day after day after day. So if you decide you're gonna go to bed at 9.30 every day and get up at five, and the first thing you're gonna do every day when you get up is read for 30 minutes, then the decision to read no longer pulls from your energy meter.

21:14If you decide every day you're gonna get up and work on a side hustle, or you're gonna work on a book, or you're gonna get ahead on your email, whatever that is. Building a routine and time blocking that routine into your calendar reduces your need to decide whether or not you should do a thing. The reason we wanna build these habits and routines in is not just for the benefit of doing that thing every day that hopefully is positive, but so that we have more energy in the moments throughout the day that require us to pull from our reserve of willpower. Willpower should be like your savings account, right?

21:58Hopefully, month to month, you are operating out of your checking account and that your checking account, money comes in, we save some, and then we work out of our checking account. And each month, our savings account is growing a little bit and a little bit, investments, whatever. I'm not an investment advisor, so please don't bang me with, well, you should be investing in stocks or whatever. That's not the point. The point is, assuming you only have a checking account and a savings account are the only two things that you have available to you, right? We wanna be operating out of our checking account most of the day, right?

22:28That's auto pulls on our mortgage, on our cell phone bill, on our utility bill, et cetera. Those things take zero decision-making process. They're bills we know that are coming due every single month. And for the purposes of our analogy, habits and routines are pulling from the checking account automatically every day. I'm going to read first thing in the morning, then I'm going to hit some emails. By that time, the kids will be up. I'm going to make them breakfast, spend some time with them, get them on the bus, get to work. I didn't have to make any decisions in that process. I know that that's what I do every single day.

23:00I didn't have to pull from my willpower reserve, right? Now, when you need it, say you have to buy, like, I have a big purchase coming up in so much as I have to buy a generator, right? I know I have this generator I have to purchase. I've been not avoiding it but putting it off mostly because procrastination I just need to do it I live in the north storms hit and I live in an older part of town so we do lose power and I want to get a generator right so now the decision to purchase a generator that comes out of your savings account that's a big decision do I purchase a generator do I not purchase a generator for purposes of our day to day that may be do I want to make have this tough conversation or I need to make a tough conversation, have a tough conversation with a team member or employee or a peer or my partner.

23:50And that tough conversation is going to pull on our willpower because every part of our body and our mind is going to tell us don't do that hard thing. Don't have that hard conversation. And our willpower is what we're going to draw on to say, no, I have to do this thing. But if we have used up our willpower on little micro decisions all day because we don't have a routine, we don't have habits, then when it comes time for that tough conversation, our brain starts screaming, don't do this, don't do this, and we don't have any willpower to draw on to push past that hesitancy. Steven Pressfield calls this the resistance, that constant and opposite force to our positive energy, right?

24:32That draw, that don't do this. It's going to having that tough conversation with your partner. She's going to hate you. She's not going to respect you anymore, whatever it is, right? He's not going to respect you. He's going to hate you, right? All these negative things start coming out of, coming out of thin air, fighting against us getting that thing done. And it is our willpower that allows us to push through it. And if we, if we've used up our willpower throughout the day, then we, then we burn out. We don't make those hard decisions. We become exhausted. We get to the end of the day, we start self-medicating with alcohol or pot or whatever we use, binge watching TV, playing video games to one in the morning because we've used up our willpower.

25:14So habits, routines allow us to build in the positive activities that we don't need to make a decision on because we just do them regardless. Time blocking helps us make sure we have that time and we're saving our willpower for the big tough decisions. And in doing so, what you'll find is you never burn out because you've gotten the things done that would otherwise apply pressure to you to burn you out. Joe, I hope that answers your question. Burnout is absolutely real. I've experienced it many times and it is always because I am off my routine and my habits. When I fall out of good routines, good habits, I start making bad decisions or I start struggling with tough, necessary decisions and you get that feeling of burnout, that sense of overwhelm.

26:05And we all want to avoid that as much as possible. So, okay. Great question, Joa. All right, on to our fourth question. And guys, I appreciate you so much. 10 ,000 followers on YouTube, 25 ,000 followers on Instagram for a channel like mine growing, trying to add value to your lives. It's just amazing. And if you're not subscribed or not connected, please do hit me with questions, share with your friends. That's how the show grows. That's how the show grows. All right. Our fourth question comes from Jack Francis, Jack S. What advice do you have for someone who struggles with morning productivity?

26:51When I was thinking about this question, the first thing that came to my mind is we're not all morning people. Most of us are. There are far fewer night owls, statistically. There have been tons of studies done on this. There are far fewer night owls than we want to admit. A lot of our night owl nature is us trying to deal with a sense of not getting things done during the day. And by not having good routines, good habits, we push into the evenings and then we call ourselves night owls. It's often not the case. Many more of us are productive in the morning, but you may be a night owl. So first, try to figure that out.

27:44Where do you have the most energy? And I would assume for most of you listening to this, it is in the morning, especially after a good night's sleep. If you're struggling with morning productivity and you are a morning person, then the first place I'd look is the night before. What are you doing at night? Are you going to bed at a reasonable time? Are you getting seven hours plus of sleep a night? There are very, very few people Again, this is another kind of common myth There are very few people that can productively operate On less than 7 hours of sleep on a consistent basis Now, many of us do that, right?