Bryan Johnson's Habits For (Almost) Limitless Energy

0:00This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Hey Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear?

0:39Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it, style it, make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crocs store today. Brian Johnson just sat down with me to share his three-step plan to obtain limitless energy whilst building your dream business. Brian has spent over$4 million decoding the human body, becoming the most researched human in history, all while scaling multi-million dollar businesses. In this episode, he breaks down how optimizing your health is the ultimate cheat code for entrepreneurial success.

1:22Sleep is the most powerful performance-enhancing drug in the entire world. So this is an important thing because right now, most of society does not think of themselves as a professional sleeper. They sleep when they have time. They sleep when they want to. They sleep when they're done with watching the movie. They sleep when, whenever. Like when they're done with their homework. The way you're going to do this, one, you're going to optimize for your resting heart rate. Do you have a wearable? Yep. Okay. Before you go to bed tonight, so lay down in your bed, on your pillow, pull up your phone, and then look at your live resting heart rate.

1:57Take a few breaths, calm yourself down. Let's just say it's 60 beats per minute. Your goal over the next week or two weeks or a month is to lower your resting heart rate to 55 or 50. Now, what you're going to see is as you lower your heart rate, your sleep quality is going to improve. How many? So here's what you're going to do to lower your resting heart rate. Two is eat your final meal at least two hours for bed. So if your bedtime is at 10 p.m., then your last meal of the day will be at 8 p.m. And if you do that, it gives your body some time to digest. I've been doing this three hours before.

2:33Oh, you have? I have been doing this three hours before. So your bedtime is when? Well, it depends. I've just traveled here. The time difference causes me a bit of confusion. But normally around 10, 30, 11. And so then you have your final meal around 7, 8? Exactly. Great. So have you tried earlier? If I can eat at 5, I prefer it. I'm a little bit hungry when I go to bed, but I sleep better. Exactly. The earlier I eat the bed. Exactly. That's exactly right. So you've experienced it. So the earlier you eat and the lighter you eat, the better you'll sleep. And then next to lower your resting heart rate is a wind down routine.

3:02So this is at the end of the day, you are cycling through all the stress of the day. So you're thinking on set today, you said something that you were embarrassed by, or you're mad at someone or someone did something wrong with you, or like whatever the case may be. You're cycling through all these thoughts and your head is the pillow. And if you haven't processed those, what happens? Just play on your mind. Keep your mind active. Just rolls, right? Yeah. As you had that last night. Yeah, you were cycling. Cool. So the goal is to basically take those thoughts, and you have to somehow put them to bed themselves.

3:34They have to be at rest. So I do this routine where I talk to myself. I give myself various character names. So I identify with ambitious Brian. He's always the first guy to show up. So my bedtime's at 8.30 p.m. So at 7.30 p.m., I say, okay, sleep, Brian is now in charge. and the first person to show up is ambitious brian right and he says guys i've got a new idea it's it is spectacular like it is absolutely phenomenal i know ambitious brian quite well yeah so either yeah the evening brian says ambitious brian we love you you're doing a great job yeah we are now in sleep prep mode so we're going to write down your idea and tomorrow we're going to think about this new idea and ambitious brian says are you sure And then Sleep Brian says, yeah, we got it.

4:21You sure? So then he goes away. And the next person to come up is Anxious Brian. And he says, today, in that conversation, you said something that was probably offensive and very short-sighted. And now they probably really hate you. And so Sleep Brian says, Anxious Brian, thank you for bringing that to our attention. Increasing self-awareness is very helpful. But going through this process in that way, by writing down all the various Bryans and their needs, whether they're new ideas or whether they're concerns or whether it case me upset, by the time my head is a pillow, if I've reconciled, I will be out in two minutes.

4:53When you go through your wind down routine, you're trying to calm your body down, including resolving your internal conflicts. You can also do things, this is my favorite, read a book. Hold a book in your hand and read it for bed. That is my number one move for calming myself down. So if you remember this, so you now approach this, you are a professional sleeper. You take that very seriously. You now have a measurement or a metric to say, if you lower your heart rate, your sleep is going to go up. If you do that, you're going to eat earlier and lighter. You're going to have a wind down routine to calm yourself down.

5:26You're going to have red or amber light. So at 7.30 PM, I try to turn all screens off. And then we just have a red light in the house. So screens and blue light are going to make your melatonin not be produced, which will make it harder to go to sleep. So turn screens off, have red and amber light in your house. and then be consistent. I'm going to write plus or minus 30 minutes. So I recorded the best sleep score in history. I did eight months of perfect sleep using 100 % per night for eight nights, eight months. So yeah, when I was doing that, I was in bed of 8.30 p.m. around a few minutes every night.

6:05I need to actually look at the data, but I tried to be in bed like plus or minus a minute. It was very, very tight. What time are you getting up? 4.30. 4.30, yeah. So if you look at these, all these things, What you're basically saying is the world is a very hard place. It's hard to be human. And we experience a lot of angst and consternation on a daily basis. The single best thing anybody can do for their mental well-being, their physical well-being, for their emotional resilience, for their performance at school, the performance at work, everything. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.

6:37When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local croc store and step into your new look.

7:18Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. Sleep. How many hours of sleep do you think is optimal? Seven to eight. I listen to this as, you know, a 50-year-old rich guy, and I think I can easily do this. I'm half doing it already. I'm not consistent. Travel, blah, blah, blah. There's lots of reasons. But I just think of the audience, 50 % of the population, just like, they're working a second job in the evening. How can we help people get to this stage when they can't even afford to, like, do any of this?

7:59So for those of you who are working two jobs and have constrained time, what happens if two jobs are being worked? Then the person comes home, and let's just say you're feeling stressed that you've been working all day. You want some alone time. So let's say you pull up your phone. You want to scroll. You turn the TV on. You have something you're watching. And then you want to eat some food. And what happens to doing that is doing all of those things makes sleep worse. And then you're more tired the next day. Exactly. So this is what I would say to my 21-year-old self, right? And I was in that situation.

8:32I had no money. So I grew up poor. My mom made my clothes for me. I was dead poor until the age of 34. Nothing. So I know what this is like. You're working every second, every day. I had babies. So I was like up at night sleeping and not sleeping until the kids were up. So I understand it is a grind to do these things. So what I'm saying is if I could travel in time and I could coach myself, I would say to myself, sleep is non-negotiable. You can't push through not getting sleep. And working an extra two or three hours a day trying to be more successful is not worth it. It is a foolish endeavor.

9:10Does it matter if you go to bed at 8, get up at 4.30, or go to bed at 11 and wake up at 7? Just choose your routine and just be consistent. Every great business move I've ever made has one thing in common, the right people behind it. And when I need help finding these people to work on my projects, I go to Fiverr. It's a global platform full of top-tier freelancers who specialize in exactly what you need. web developers, AI pros, designers, marketing experts, they're all here. And this isn't guesswork. Fiverr lets you check detailed portfolios, read real reviews and choose professionals with proven track records.

9:47It's quick, focused and efficient, so you can be sure you're securing the best talent for your projects. I use Fiverr across multiple projects, from building sites to launching campaigns to automating workflows. It helps me move fast and build better. No matter your budget, no matter where you're based, you'll find serious talent ready to help you scale. So if you're ready to take the next step with your business or idea, go to fiverr.co forward slash Simon Scribb and use the code Simon for 10 % off your first project. The talent is out there. Fiverr makes it easy to find. Okay, so you're a professional sleeper.

10:19Anyone listening now, you're a professional sleeper. So let's say people are doing this. What else do you think people should do? Back at zero, exercise every single day. You can pick the thing you want to do. basketball, Pilates, yoga, running, walking, weightlifting, pick your thing. Just be active every single day. You want to spend roughly 150 minutes per week in zone two. That's like when you and I are walking together. 130. We can maintain a conversation and we can still exercise and then 90 minutes a week in zone five. That's where you can't speak because you're working out so hard. So this is walking zone two is walking uh proper little jog maybe zone five would be running doing proper exercise football you know moving around now if these seem excessive to you that's okay just be active every single day the thing that is good about this is if you're in a habit of doing something every day if you don't go if going to the gym is a lot of work go for a walk and maybe during a phone call walk during your phone call we're doing lunch go for a walk but just have a goal of doing that every single day, which is a good habit.

11:28And nutrition. Now, this is really important because only after you've mastered sleep and exercise is nutrition on point. Because we did a study at my brain interface company, Kernel, where we measured my willpower after a bad night's sleep of deep sleep and after a good night's sleep. So deep sleep is the first sleep window that opens up after you go to sleep. You fall asleep, you drop into the deep sleep first, you come back up into REM. Deep sleep is like when the trash collector comes to the body and picks up the trash. If you miss your deep sleep window, you can't make it back. So this is the idea that if someone's normal bedtime is 10 p.m.

12:05and then they go to bed at one, they say, oh, I'll just sleep until nine. It doesn't work that way. You've missed your deep sleep window. If you miss that deep sleep window, what happens the next day when it arrives and 7 p.m. arrives, you're going to crave junk food, bad food. And that happens to me. Yeah. And the likelihood that you're going to resist it is very low because your willpower is dramatically lower. So this goes back to the example. Somebody has two jobs. They come home, they want time to themselves. They scroll, they watch something, they eat some snacks. That raises their heart rate.

12:37It lessens their sleep quality. It lowers their willpower. So the next day when they come home, they're even more tired. They have even less willpower. So they snack even more. Now you're putting on weight. You don't it's like exercising because you don't feel good, right? So it has this vicious cycle. This is why being a professional sleeper is so important. It sets the foundation for all things. If you sleep well, you feel well. If you feel well, you exercise. If you exercise, you're going to eat well in nutrition. So you have to get yourself in the positive feedback loop. There's a death spiral that begins with bad sleep.

13:08You eat one meal a day, don't you? I eat three. So you eat three meals a day. But nutrition-wise, is there any quick guides on that for people listening? Yeah, so actually, I'll just give you, we have a plate that we've designed of the foods that are best for longevity. Okay, and we'll just chuck it up on the screen now. Yeah, yeah, so put the screen. So that is, we basically went through all the scientific evidence. We said which foods have the best evidence for health and longevity. Okay. And so that's the selection. And you eat breakfast, then you must eat again, and then lunch, and then nothing.

13:35Yep. And so I eat, I personally eat 2 ,250 calories a day by 130 grams of protein. Some people I know eat like 250 grams of protein a day. There's like this idea that you need a lot, but most people consume too much protein. And then two is measurement. So over the past couple of years, I've become the most measured person in human history. There's more data on my body than any human that's ever existed. Measurement is an absolute superpower. And so people are oftentimes trying to assess, how am I doing? Is this therapy working? Is this food good for me? the best thing you can do is measurement and to measure you want to do a basic blood panel i just did this one i did a blood test because i was taking vitamins i did a blood test i was taking the wrong vitamins basically yeah you think you know what you need and then your blood tells you what you actually need exactly so listen to the body so at blueprint you can go to our website we have blood panels that are low cost and they give you more markers they give you 117 markers you just can't get it from your doctor if you go to your doctor it's a hassle you have to persuade them they can't really do it there's a limited set so get a panel a blueprint that's 117 markers and that would give you a great baseline of expensive to do this how much is it i think it's 350 i think so yeah to be clear on this like with my incentives i arguably have the best biomarkers of anybody in the entire world which is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it considering how much technology is meant to be out there yeah and so i've shared this and i share everything i do with everybody and so i share it for free so anybody can do what i do this That's one of the reasons I really love what you're doing, because you've based it on scientific information on your own body and understanding the body.

15:16Yes. These things are based upon population-level evidence. So a lot of people say, oh, but Brian, that's you and your body. My body's different. This stuff is based upon population-level evidence. So it's as applicable to me as it is to someone else. Three is a realization that we have a culture of dye. So if you think about the things we do on a daily basis, what is in our society, we celebrate die. It's like when your birthday comes around and you're celebrating life, what do you do? When are you going to die? You have a sugar-filled cake. Oh, I see what you mean. Sugar-filled cake. My birthday's coming up.

15:54My birthday's next week. So I'm thinking, go on. You're right. We eat crap. So just realize that basically our 2025 culture is trying to kill you. Yeah. Yeah, we patched it up as fun. Exactly. Big lie. It's a gigantic lie. All of our cultural norms, like you do a good job, you celebrate some big win at work, you go out and get drunk and lessen your life. Birthdays, you fill yourself full of sugar. So if you start looking around, you're going to realize, it feels funny, you walk down the street and everywhere you go, it's like fast food, people starting sugar. I think people resign to it. I'm going to die, I might as well enjoy myself until I die.

16:32And that goes back to our previous conversation. This is why it's very hard to understand these ideas. When you realize we are the first generation who won't die, it changes your outlook on everything. Now you see a fast food joint. That's for primitive people who didn't realize that we are the first generation who won't die. So we are a new species. And that's why it's a really big disruption now, we think. A lot of people listening to this will be eating in and out and five guys on these people. It's very hard to change habits, isn't it? I think that's what it is. if you're already in that habit, and a lot of 21-year-olds are in that habit already.

17:06Like you say at college and stuff. Let's do this. So none is better than some. So my challenge to each one of you, don't eat fast food. Ever. No cheat days, no one-off, don't eat it. Because when you say every once in a while, it never is once in a while. Cheat days become cheat weeks, cheat weeks become cheat months, cheat months become cheat years. And so embrace this idea that we are evolving into a new species. We are the first generation who will not die. We're giving birth to superintelligence. This is the most spectacular moment in this part of the galaxy. It's an extraordinary opportunity.

17:44Don't waste it by eating junk food, by drinking, by smoking. Go to bed on time. Take care of your health. Like this is an epic opportunity to be human, the most epic in our history. Right now, think of everybody in your life. Is there anybody in your life or your viewer's life that is encouraging you to not die? Like wholesale, wholesale don't die. Like don't do anything to kill yourself. Even the ones that love you still give you the shit. Exactly. The junk in your life. That's a really interesting point. They love you and they don't do anything. Is there any human on planet Earth? You. That's what I'm saying.

18:18You are the first. It's such a weird situation. It is, it is, it's crazy. No one's talking about this, it's crazy. Everyone else is just like, they're trying to show you their love by helping you die. I want, as a successful business person that you are, I want to build a financial model around making this happen. I like what you just said there. So they can have chicken, just don't have the fries and the other. In fact, they're saving money. Yes. So what else can people do to financially be able to live this way? So my short-term hack is start a side hustle. A business that buys back time. So if you're selling something online, like TikTok shop now is actually amazing.

18:54I can leave my TikTok shop running all day. and in the morning I can wake up and I've sold a load of stuff. I've got money coming in. I can afford to like eat well and spend the day. Is there anything that jumps into your mind when you go back to your younger self? Yeah. You know, you were like a lot of young people, you wanted to make money. And you know, you built a company up, you sold it for 800 million, you know, and you built this incredible brand. What would young people do today? They're going to copy that right now, by the way. Yeah. That's the blueprint they have. The principle I've always worked with is I didn't want to trade my time for money.

19:24Yep. That's what you should teach at school. You can't get time back. Exactly. So in college, I thought, okay, I can get a job in college. I can make$11.50 to do a given job. If I work 10 hours a week, I get that much money. I thought, I don't think I want to trade my time for money. I want to invest in something where I can determine the value of what I do. And so I basically made the gamble. Like entrepreneurship is the gamble that if you work for nothing for some duration of time, that there's a big payout over time. From when I started Braintree to when I sold it, I forget the actual math, but it was something like I made the equivalent of like$15 ,000 per hour around the clock.

20:06From the time you started it. Yeah, exactly. Now, if you realize that if you're an entrepreneur and you're doing that, you realize that 60 minutes you just spent, you just got paid$10 ,000 for that 60 minutes. That's mind-blowing. But you can't do that. You just have to realize that you're trading time to build on this bigger outcome. Well, it's basically equity in something. Yes. Isn't it? It's that simple. Because, I mean, I think a lot of people are selling an hour, which you can't get back. Whereas what we're talking about, one of my basic principles for what I try to share with people is like, buy time, don't sell time.

20:40Yes. Which I think is very related to what you're talking about. We can buy time by eating better. Yes. Right? We can get back time, the most valuable thing, by having more time if we look after our sleep and our nutrition. My argument is as well, can you build something where eventually, like your son, for example, who's clearly very smart, if I was him, I would drop out of university and I'd build something. Maybe an AI advisory service. I don't know. Something that can last five, ten years. Maybe that has some value as an equity item. And yes, for the first few years, you probably won't earn a lot of money from it.

21:06But he doesn't have a wife to worry because he can live in review. So if someone's listening and they can live with their parents and build something up that isn't selling time, I think that's still a good bit of advice for today, despite our kind of slightly scary future. It is. Equity is good. also like if you build something via software you build a software application and then you build it once but you can sell it a million times that's the appeal of software now you have to update it keep it like improve it but you're still you're building something once right and you're selling it some n number of times it's a versus if you uh like are washing windows or walking dogs you're constrained to only doing that thing right you can only make money by walking the dog you can't walk $300 at the same time.

21:45Such a good point. So you're always trying to scale the value of your time. Well, one way to do it now on the modern world, I think social media is totally underrated. A lot of people, a bit like we're talking about with nutrition and sleep. Also, social media has given this very bad rap as a negative thing. I actually think it's a liberator. So if you're dog walking and you go live on TikTok and you video it, you might then put the video up. That video can make money while you're not walking the dog. Exactly. So the walking the dog was just a byproduct of how you make money. Exactly. And I think I worry about building software products now because I think AI is going to replace them quite quickly.

22:17All the SaaS businesses are going to get wiped out. I think personal brand is quite a big opportunity for people. You can have small following and build quite a nice income stream from it. Again, you post a video. I got a video up. I put it up a year ago. It's a business video, how to do business. 10 million views. In the last 30 days, it's made$35 ,000. We made it a year ago. Anything else you think? I mean, tech businesses still, of course, are very big. Any other, if you were trying to make money 21 years old now, what would you just say? Yeah, so I would equate this money thing with health.

22:47Right now, the grand prize in society is money. And I'm saying right now, the grand prize is shifting to become life extension. Because the more time you have, the more things you can do that you enjoy, money you can make, money compounds over time. People have always assumed death has always been inevitable. When that's inevitable, people then say like, okay, in my short period of time, I want to maximize wealth creation. If I do that, status, power, wealth, and cars, and homes, and whatever the case may be. And I'm saying that you can do those things. Certainly. Very cool. Also, I'm trying to be a voice of wisdom that the world is moving so fast.

23:31You'll need to be adaptable to how things change. You have ideas now what you're going to do. Maybe you start doing that today. In three months, like we said, maybe that's no longer possible because AI is now doing it. So now you have to redo your entire plan. So as you try your different iterations of what to do and deal with this changing world, the best thing to do is have your sleep in place, exercise in place, nutrition in place, that you'll have the emotional resilience. Because there's nobody in the world right now, nobody, that can give somebody advice on what to do. And if I were to try to suggest I do that, nobody knows.

24:05And so the wisdom is realizing that nobody knows. Don't listen to them. Like you really, we're in an unknown landscape. That's true for everybody. What I really like about this is what can you control? Well, you can control your own body. Yes. You can control your own well-being. That should never change. In fact, hopefully technology can only help you do that better, especially with the pioneering work that you're doing, being able to measure your biomarkers and understand yourself. I think the – I want to help your mission. like it is exploding but i want to i want to amplify it and what i'm what i'm seeing at the base level is that people don't necessarily want to live longer yes so it's a problem they don't think they need solving because they're like well if i live to 70 that'll be all right and you know a lot of people in their 80s like i'm in pain do i want to keep on living but of course if they're better they probably won't be as much pain i think the the thing is the reason that this 21 year old not going to do it is because I don't think we've taught them how to buy time.

25:04I think buying time is just as important as extending the amount of time you've got. So maybe there's something we can think of there together. Again, I'll give you a copy of my book and you can see where I'm going with this. People can't buy time right now. They're selling time. And if they're selling time, they value their life less. Yes. Because they're in slavery. Basically, they're modern-day slaves, a lot of people. They have to do the job. The rent's so high because the property companies own everything. They can't afford the rent. they can't afford to buy. Then they're basically having to pay food they can't afford.