Aubrey
00:00
I just have to eat every day and decide what to eat and then cook it? Then I have to cook again the next day? What do you mean?

Peter
00:19
Well, welcome back to Generations. I am one of your hosts, Peter.

Aubrey
00:24
And I am your other host, Aubrey.

Peter
00:26
Aubrey, how are you?

Aubrey
00:29
I am doing Good. Yeah, I'm doing okay. It's getting to be the end of the school year, so I'm kind of ready to have a bit of a change. from work. I love the kids a lot, but I need a bit of a break.

Peter
00:50
I believe that. I get that.

Aubrey
00:52
I can't I can't imagine how the teachers feel having to deal with them for like seven hours in a day and I only have like four hours of them in a day, but

Peter
01:08
I can believe that.

Aubrey
01:09
I'm happy it is being it is now feeling like Like summer, because now I truly know how long the winters are here and how short the summers are. So I am excited to enjoy the summer weather to say the least.

Peter
01:27
Uh yeah, I believe that too.

Aubrey
01:30
Yeah. But yeah, other than that, I've been doing okay. Um, I don't think I mentioned it on the podcast, but I am working on getting my person personal training certification.

Peter
01:39
Yeah, that's awesome. Your mom mentioned that and then you mentioned it to me, but

Aubrey
01:42
Yeah. So I'm excited about that. I'm I'm learning a lot. There's obviously a lot I kind of all already knew um but it's kind of fun to see the things that I knew already like written down in textbook where you know there's actual resources for the things that I know and I'm impl implementing into my program, stuff like that. So I'm excited to continue it. And And I'm in like the kind of the nitty gritty like how to actually create programs part of it right now, which is super cool 'cause that's the part I don't really know. Like I know basics of, you know, cardiorespiratory fitness. and muscular training and stuff like that. Like I know all that stuff. Um, but I don't actually know the proper way to build programs for different types of classes. So I'm excited about that. So that is interesting.

Peter
02:37
That's awesome. I like that.

Aubrey
02:39
So yeah.

Peter
02:42
Anything interesting else though you want to mention? Hopefully no tornado uh warnings during this episode.

Aubrey
02:48
No, no tornado warnings. I I will I would hope. Um yeah, I've just been we've just been chilling. I've been playing a lot of Cult of the Lamb. Okay. Because I thought I had beat the game. Uh, and then I went back into it and I was like, wait, there's actually so So much more. Cause the like the credits rolled. The credits like rolled after I did like a sort of final boss fight. And so I was like, oh, I beat the game. All right, I'm done. And then I like didn't go play it for a while and then I rediscovered it and I was like wait there's so much I have not done. This is there's so much more. So I've been more into that, which is super fun. And there's like the DLC pack that I think hate and I are gonna get after I've completed what is obviously not in the DLC. So that has fun. That's been interesting.

Peter
03:39
Very good. Very good.

Aubrey
03:40
But yeah, how are you?

Peter
03:42
Um, I think I'm on the getting better side of things. I got pretty sick this last week. Just a stupid cold, but enough that uh I felt real lousy for a lot of the week. And And it was okay on my surgery days because they were fast days. They didn't have any big cases. But boy, I tell you what, Wednesday, full day of clinic. I was doing okay and then like at 11, 11:30, I was like, oh, I'm dying. How am I gonna make it through the rest of this like five and a half hours of clip? Yeah. But uh I think I think that we're through the worst of it. So good. But uh yeah, I've been see for me I've been playing a crap ton of Forza Horizon six Okay. I love the Forza Horizon games and I fell hard for this last one. I don't know how many hours, but last night I got my legendary gold wristband, so I climbed all the way up. Now I just have a bunch more There's a the the the race that I was like looking at last night. I'm like, man, should I start this race? It's the giant something I don't remember what it's called, but it is a fifty-three mile race around the island, one of the islands of Japan.

Aubrey
05:00
Oh wow.

Peter
05:01
So I'm like, that's I gotta I gotta plan enough time to do a 53 mile race. Usually it's like you know, it's like two to five minute races, and this one's gonna be a little bit longer than that. So

Aubrey
05:14
Yep. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Peter
05:15
But uh I have one other question for you before we move on to the topic. Have you finished Dungeon Crawler Cardal Book Eight?

Aubrey
05:23
I haven't Not yet. I think I'm like chapter f fifty or something like that. Yeah. I I've been moving a little slow because I don't really have anything new like a new book to look forward to to read, so I'm kind of going slow through it because after I finish it, I don't really have anything else lined up. And then I'll just be sad. So

Peter
05:49
see, I I am further along than you. I'm in chapter 80 something. But I'm Real ready to be done. Yeah. Really ready to be done.

Aubrey
06:01
Why is uh

Peter
06:02
I'm tired of them. Just tired. I don't know if reading all eight of them back to back to back for the most part was was a great idea. I just, you know , and I understand why, but especially this last book just feels so dour. Like it's just a bummer. Like big time bummer of a book. And it fits the what's happening in this story. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. It's just It's making it a book that is distinctly unfun to read.

Aubrey
06:43
I see. So Yeah, I have definitely noticed that in where I'm at so far. is they're just kind of like things keep happening that I'm like oh that just happened we can't get out of that that just happened yeah oh dear

Peter
06:59
yeah there's a lot of that so

Aubrey
07:01
Yeah, no, I definitely get that.

Peter
07:03
Well, let's move on to our topic for the week. And the topic that we decided to talk about this week is uh I there there is a quote that I found in some of my readings that I think sums this all up nicely, and that quote is the following. uh and i i'll try and give credit where credit is due uh but this quote was from oh come on where is it I have it in the notion, but I can't. Here we go. It's from Sum Sumit Sawaii. I apologize if I'm saying their name wrong. But they said motivation is weather, systems are climate. So Aubrey, when I say that, what does that what does that mean to you? How do you interpret that?

Aubrey
07:50
Um, I guess for me, the way I would interpret that is weather, you know, is something that can change. day to day and is pretty pretty up and down, pretty variable versus the climate is kind of like the overall average w way that a place is, you know, like a tropical climate versus a desert climate, but you're not gonna have like tropical weather in a desert cry stuff like that where it's kind of more of the more baseline um geographical you know whatever is happening in that area so for this quote um motivation being weather is that can be something that changes day to day. That is not necessarily something

Peter
08:42
I think I'd even say it can change minute to minute. You know, weather weather is extremely fleeting. Yesterday, I never ended up mowing the lawn. because it was raining, but then it wasn't raining. But it was gonna rain. Then it rained some more, but then it stopped, but then it was like it I never had a period of time. Where it was both raining hard enough for me to be like, oh, the rain's gonna be soaked all day, but also never sunny long enough for me to be like, should be dry enough to go mow.

Aubrey
09:10
Right, exactly. Versus the systems being climate, the system Systems are what are in place to stay consistent when the motivation being the weather changes. so much. Yeah. Um is how I would interpret that.

Peter
09:27
I think it's perfect. So you know, we talk a lot and we've talked a lot on this show about things like goals and habits and you know, setting, doing, you know, personal improvement. We've talked about our exercise and all of these different things. And lately I've been thinking about them in terms of If we want, I don't want to say if we want change to be successful, if we want whatever we're doing to be successful. then we need to, I think, personally, create systems to support those things into our lives. That that should be where a lot of our major our our energy is going into is How do we establish and create these systems for ourselves? Because like you said, the motivation, just like weather, it's going to change and it can change day to day, it can change hour to hour. I got up yesterday and I when I woke up, I was motivated to work out within 30 minutes of being awake and feeling kind of like poo I no longer had the motivation to work out. Right. You know, it can change that fast. So, um, and I think that this is especially interesting as you mentioned you're going through this uh this training to be a personal trainer and everything. I would imagine that there's some overlap of some of the things that we're going to talk about and some of your experience there. So I look forward to hearing that. But I thought I'd tell you kind of what this was born out of, this idea for this topic, and then we can kind of go from there. So, and I wrote about this over on Imperfect Practice, but I have had a long and shall we say storied history with task management So as a kid, I was so excited when I finally got a hand-me-down leather Franklin Day Planner from my father. And I remember trying to put that thing to use and reading the Franklin Covey system for that, and it didn't really work for me. I kind of bounced off it But I tried. I mean, I bought multiple, you know, multiple years I bought those stupid expensive refills for that Franklin Day planner. And I don't know, I would maybe use it for a week or two and then it would just sort of fade off. So it didn't work for me And then, you know, I had a Palm Pilot, and I had then I had a Dell uh Pocket PC during medical school. And Then in residency, you know, I got an iPhone. And and so just in the time I've been using an iPhone. I'm going to try and list for you the task managers that I have used and which ones I have paid in some cases a decent amount of money to use. So one of the very early ones I remember was called Wonderlist, W -U-N-D-E-R-L-A S T. It was beautiful. Everybody was talking about it. Then Microsoft bought it and sort of turned it into Microsoft To Do, which I also tried. So I used both of those. I've used Apple Reminders. I've used there was something called AnyList. Any list. No, it was called Any Do. AnyList is a grocery store app. Yeah, I was gonna say that. Any do was this cross-platform one that had a web interface. So I remember using that. There was this one, this app that came out that had this really neat little swiping interaction thing that was kind of cool. I don't remember what it was called, but I I used that one. And then I got to the big boy. And I was like, oh no, now I'm going to get to like the real task managers. And so I paid for things three because everybody was like, oh, it's the most beautiful, aesthetically pleasing task manager. And I bought it. And of course, the way they did it and the way I think they still do it, because I got things three when I bought my first MacBec in 2018. They're still on Things 3.

Aubrey
13:46
Oh.

Peter
13:46
So. Needless to say, I bought it on the Mac and the iPhone and the iPod or i iPad so I could have it everywhere. So I paid, I paid for it on all three of those. I've used Todoist. Most recently, I kind of for a couple years was going big into Omnifocus, which is kind of like the granddaddy of all. Apple-based uh productivity, you know, task management tools to the point that look, this should tell you everything you need to know about omnifocus. There is a website that you can subscribe for $100 a year that is literally called learnomnifocus. com

Aubrey
14:31
Oh wow.

Peter
14:32
They have whole series of courses that you can take on how to use Omnifocus and building custom perspectives and all this kind of stuff. And there's a part of my brain that saw that was like, oh, that's what I want. Look at this. And then I started using it. I'm like, this is not what I want. Like, I don't view my life. as complex enough to need a tool that complex. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure somebody could come and tell me why I'm wrong. I've read David Allen's Getting Things Done. I've read all of these books and everything. And I'm like, I still haven't found a system that I love, but maybe I have.

Aubrey
15:13
Okay.

Peter
15:13
So, so here was m the process of me building my system, because this was the key. I needed something that would engage me enough to engage with it. I needed to build a system that I found not motivating again, because the motivation's gonna fade, but a system that I found pleasant enough to interact with, that I found benefit from, that I found myself interacting with it even when I didn't feel Oh, I'm gonna master my day, you know, that kind of stuff. And the funny thing is, is it involves something that I have eschewed for many years, and that is the Daily Note. I've heard people talking about Daily Notes and all the, you know, the different PKM things and all this stuff, and I was like, I don't know. I don't get it. But at the same time, I've I have uh journaled on and off for many years and we've talked about that. I find great benefit in that. So I thought to myself, okay. Let's start with a daily note. There's a really nice note on Apple platforms called Note Plan. Basically they're just markdown files, but it presents things in a very pleasant way. And so in the beginning of uh May, kind of end of April, I decided, you know what, this should be a good experiment for imperfect practice. This will be my refinement for the month of May. Let me let me try this I'll see if I see any benefit from the daily note. So I start doing the daily note and in the morning it's like kind of here's some of my intentions, here's some goals, and then here's a lift an area for tasks. And I start putting tasks in there and I start using this daily note as my task management system. And I can open up Note Plan on my iPhone and I can tap off tasks when they're done. And at the end of the day, then I have a record of, you know, what did I say I was going to do, which ones did I get done, and then I can kind of do my wrap-up for the night and and see if I could combine my task management and my journaling into one. Because because that's one of the things that, you know, you look at like um Atomic Habits by James Clear. He talks about this a lot, about the idea of habit stacking. and and take something, if you want to start doing something new, well, take something that you're already doing. And find a way to link those two things. So I thought to myself, based on this idea, I'm I enjoy journaling. I find value in it. I don't need to force myself to do that, but can I link task management to journaling and have this be a system of these two things together? So I go and I start doing it. But then, you know, there's there's little hassles with using a daily note as your full task management system because If you want to be able to see all of your task mana all your tasks in spread across other days and projects and things that don't have due dates and stuff, it's it starts to get just a little messy. So then I had an idea. And look, I get it. I'm gonna say uh two letters and they're gonna trigger some people and I'm sorry. Um, those letters are AI. You can't get away from it. I know that there are straight up Luddite type grognards who are like No, AI is all evil, blah, blah, blah. The Pope just released a whole encyclical on AI. But I think that what we get down to is number one, these aren't tools that are going to go away. And number two, I think the more we learn how to interact with these tools in a productive way, I think there can be great value. If people don't like that, cool. They don't have to. They don't have to use them yet. But eventually you will. So good luck. Anyway. I used Claude Cowork and went through, I won't go through the process because it's taken, I mean, it's still, I'm still adjusting it slightly. But for the second half of the month, I moved everything into Obsidian because I really like Obsidian and I ride a lot in Obsidian. But Obsidian is a little fragile on mobile, so it's not great for trying to do the task management in there. But through a series of using some of these AI tools and connecting things, I was able to eventually. Here's what happens in the morning at 4:30. Claude CoWork, running on a always-on computer, looks at Todoist, the task management app, through its MCP, its Model Context Protocol. looks at Todoist and it sees all tasks in there that have been that that are in my inbox. Do they have dates, due dates, deadlines, all this kind of stuff? And then, based on a template that I gave it, in Obsidian, it creates a new daily note. And in the task section specifically, puts in anything from to-doist that is due that day or that doesn't have a due date. And then I go sit down in the morning when I get up first thing in the morning and I do my kind of daily, you know, what's my intention for the day? What are my goals? And then while I'm writing, I start thinking, oh, I want to do this, add it to the task list. Oh, what about this? Add it to the task list. Because what I realized is that for me, writing is very much a discovery process that as I write My brain engages in such a way that it thinks about this stuff a lot more. Yeah. And so because my brain is thinking, it's a lot easier for me to come up with ideas of tasks. So I put them all in there at 7. 30 in the morning. A different task looks at my obsidian daily note looks at what's in the task thing, uses the MCP, talks to Todoist, and says, are there any new ones here? Oh, there are, puts them in Todoist. And through a series of just instructions I've given it and certain syntax in the note that it says, oh, and this one has a due date of this day, and this has a due date of this day, and automatically assigns those tasks into doist and gives them a due date if I put it in there Then during the course of the day, I use Todoist as my task management, which is what it's made for. It's designed just for that. It does it very, very nicely. At eight o'clock at night, Claude Cowork runs another skill, looks at Todoist and says, okay, what tasks got checked as done? Update those in the daily note. What tasks got added? That should go in today's daily note. And if there's none, then it'll carry them over. And then it writes to the daily note. Then when I sit down between nine and nine thirty to do my end of day shutdown and journaling, all of that stuff is automatically updated in my daily note.

Aubrey
21:47
Yeah.

Peter
21:47
Aubrey, I freaking love it. Yeah it's great. Because again, the way my brain works When I'm writing, it just engages in such a way that I'm capturing these things. And then because my brain is more wired up to do this, and I have a system that I trust , During the day, it's easy for me to add stuff in there really quickly. And then just to s to be able to look at basically what is my journal and go, how am I doing at logging off these tasks? How am I doing it getting things done? It's actually really, really nice and has made task management for the first time literally in my adult life feel like something that isn't burdensome, but that is actually useful for me. Yeah. And so so that's kind of the system that made me think about boy, if you find uh number one Work on building a system. Number two, be willing to adjust, tweak, and change a system if it's not immediately working for you. And this was the big kind of realization for me is my brain works a certain way, but I was trying to make myself operate in a way that wasn't consistent with that. And that gets at a few other things that I want us to talk about. But but what are what you know, I I talk for a lot. So your term, what did you want what do you want to mention about this? What are some either what are some places where you've built systems for yourself? Uh and and kind of how has that been? What were you trying to solve and what has been successful for you?

Aubrey
23:19
Yeah. Yeah, so I'm pretty similar where I like our brain works our our brains work decently similar where I'm like also obsessed with task management and planners and I'm always like like every year I'm like looking for a new planner that someone did and trying the new one and you know you buy the little two dollar PDF so I can put it in good notes because I like to have it on my iPad and because I like I like the writing does the same thing for me where it gets the juices flowing and then I'm remembering more things as I'm writing and um all that. So I am like always like I have not found a planner that I have wanted to consider consistently stick with like ever.

Peter
24:06
So it's like every year you're trying a new version.

Aubrey
24:09
Because I want it to look aesthetically pleasing. I don't want it to be like sterile and clean looking and corporate looking. Like I'm not I don't need it to be, I don't want it to be super not interesting to look at. I want it to be interesting to look at, but also simple. Have enough lines that I can because I have lots of m I like to write down like every mini task no matter how small it is. There's never enough lines there. There's never enough lines for like a reflection. There there's just like never everything that I want in the planner. Ever. Yeah. Um so I at least tried to make not like a daily planner on Canva, but I tried to make like a weekly goal review sheet. on Canva to just have everything that I wanted on it because I'm always like I do goal review and basically like plan My week every week. Yeah. Um, and nothing ever had everything that I wanted. I wanted to be able to have like bigger goals, break broken into smaller tasks, broken into like habits, like nothing could ever Be broken up in the way that I wanted it to be. And honestly, I'm still kind of searching for it. I have found this one. planner from a creator on TikTok. Um, but I kind of like what she stands for. She has a very simple planner. It breaks down like things and into kind of quarters of the year so you can have like longer term quarterly tasks and then like monthly tasks, weekly, you know, like just it it kind of broke it down in a nice nicer way. But I'm still always kind of searching for systems, whether big or small, whether it's like an overall task management system or how can I make it easier to do the things that I want to do? Like how can I make a mini system, which I know we'll talk about a lot, um like the smaller ones, um, to do The tasks or create the habits or make progress towards the goals that I want to do. So I was super excited for this topic. Because we're very, I think we're both very, very into this.

Peter
26:21
I think, I think you are correct. I think we are.

Aubrey
26:25
And my my my being like my brain being an anxious brain is always like I I love a schedule, I love a spreadsheet, I love a to-do list. And it tickles my brain to have a good system. So I'm excited. I'm excited for our topic.

Peter
26:46
So I want to show you um I'm gonna paste for you an example of my daily note So it's a big long screenshot because it's a scrolling, but I'm sending you in your iMessage so you can see. This was uh Fridays, I think. Yeah, this was Friday. But so you can kind of see in there what what my day looked like in the morning. Yeah. And so everything down to the end-of-day processing happens in the morning. And then that end-of-day processing on is what happens in the evening. And then down at the bottom I have a section called Daily Capture where I click the action button on my phone and any thoughts I have go to there. And then when I've done something with it, I do the strike through thing. But it gives me this way in a single document to capture my tasks, my ideas, my gratitude, what is my plan for the day, all that kind of stuff. So I don't know. It's it's been really, really powerful to have this tool that both, again, the key is It's engaging my brain. That was the problem, is I would open a task management app and I would just see this whole big long. you know, list of checkboxes and my brain would just be like, it didn't love that. But you mentioned smaller systems. So here's a recent one that I've been working on. And the hardest part of this is I'm still trying to remind myself to do it. But to try and make sure that I get my workout done in the morning. I'm laying my workout clothes out the night before, and then when I stand up before I go to take a pee or anything, And sometimes I'm like, you know, I'm like, I gotta pee. So I gotta hurry. But I hurry and change into my workout clothes. Yeah. Then I go into the bathroom, use the bathroom, put in my contacts, all that kind of fun stuff. And just that little moment of there not being a chance to think, oh, am I going to do my workout today? Oh, am I not? But just to already be in my workout clothes and be like, I mean I already changed. Let's just walk downstairs or let's walk out the front door, whatever. Yep. Exactly. So are there any little, little systems like that that you've built? Again, and and when I talk about systems, this is the problem, is system, the term system makes it sound like it's this great big thing. And it doesn't need to be that. When I think about systems, what I'm thinking to myself is removing points of meaningless friction. And I put the word meaningless in there for a very important reason because there are times in our life where I think friction can be very helpful. Friction can be where we grow and and where we you know, we become better versions of ourselves to some degree. But that's some friction. That's not all friction. So it's like, you know, there's a slight bit of mental friction if I have Walked out in the morning, had my beetroot juice and all that crap and my supplements that I take in the morning. And then I go upstairs because I want to do my daily note. Do my writing and now I have to make that decision. Do I go down into the bedroom and change into my workout clothes and then go down. That's it is it is a small amount of friction, but it is a meaningful amount of friction that my thought was, can I build a system to remove that point of friction? Yep. So are there any other like are you are there any small ones that you've um you you've set up for yourself?

Aubrey
30:37
Yeah, like um it it is very helpful to have Hayden have so many similar goals to me 'cause that I feel like is a little bit of a system in of itself where if I don't want To get up and work out, that sucks because to Hayden's already up. And that's gonna be embarrassing if I'm gonna say, I don't, I'm gonna sleep. He's gonna be like, no, you're not. You're gonna get up and you're gonna go to the gym with me. And vice versa. So that's a little bit of a system where we always we kind of have built a routine that I I would definitely call it a system where Yeah, no it totally. We both get up, we get into our gym clothes, one of us prepares the gym snack while probably me is having to do my hair because I have You can tell I have a lot of it, and if I'm going to go to the gym, I have to do something with it. So he goes and he's making the gym snack. I'm getting ready for the gym. We eat the gym snack, I make the pre-workout, we do the pre-workout and we go. That's like down to the we do it as fast as we can s cause and we say very little words. in the morning. Sure. Because it's like it's like 5 30 a. m. Thankfully now the sun is out at that time, which is fantastic. But we're not awake. We say like I think the two words we say is bottoms up when we clink to drink our pre-workout. And then we get out the door and we go to the gym. So that has been very good to reduce Any oh what that's other things we have a very specific gym snack. We don't think what do we what do you want for a gym snack this morning What do you want for pre-gym? Nope. We have one of those cereal bars that are like Lucky Charms or Reese 's Puffs and a banana. Yeah. That's every day. We set it out, we have a pre-workout, we go. And that has been fantastic to decrease the amount of time it takes to get ready for the gym because the longer it takes to get ready for the gym, the less you want to go and the less it's just easier if you just ha get the momentum and you just are going. You don't need to think about it. You're taking out again, like you said, all the meaningless friction. You just go and you do it. The other thing, the other small system is at night we have supplements that we take obviously got metamucil creatine. some vitamins, random stuff. Um, we both have little pill old people pill containers for morning and night, and the night ones have all the pills. So that is right there. There, I don't have to get out every pill and then take it. I put creatine metamucil in a cup, and then I have my pills. And I take the water-based ones and I take the pills. Bam. It's done.

Peter
33:14
Yeah. Like for me, a really simple little one is I keep my Kindle. just on the little round table right next to where I usually sit in the evening. So if I sit down there and we watch a show or something and then the show's done It's like, I don't know, I I've gotten to the point because it's sitting right there. My instinct, instead of grabbing my phone and doom scrolling, which is so easy to do, I pick up the Kindle and I go, okay, let me read something. Or that or the iPad, because again, I read a lot of articles on like in ReadWise on my iPad and stuff. But it's it's setting up these things where um You can have, again, there's so much cognitive load in every day that is useless cognitive load. There are times we should load our cognition. And and what we want is we want our brains to be ready for the times When those things matter. We make who knows and you and it if we went through and you actually jotted it down every time, it would probably blow your mind. as to how many decisions we make every day. So many. Yeah. We make so many little decisions every day. And the truth of the matter is, is that you're going to be worn out by the end of the day, or at some point during the day, just from the sheer number of decisions that you've had to uh that you've had to make Yep. So what meaningless decisions can we remove? How can we make things more automatic or more systematic? So that the decision is I'm gonna start in your case, the decision is I'm gonna engage in my morning ritual.

Aubrey
35:11
Yep.

Peter
35:11
And that's you're not now you're not thinking, okay, I'm gonna do my hair, I'm gonna have make a pre-workout snack, eat the pre-workout snack, drink the pre-workout, change into my workout clothes, and go to the gym.

Aubrey
35:23
Exactly.

Peter
35:23
You've taken all of those decisions and built them into a single system that is, I'm going to do my morning routine. That's just one decision now. And that's huge because those five or six or seven other decisions, well, you can save those for more meaningful decisions later on during the day. Exactly. You know, I like this quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger. He says, there are going to be days when you don't want to get out of bed. Those are the days when you need momentum, not motivation. You need a routine. And that's the thing is you know, the more the more we can systematize the simple things, the things that don't really require our input. the more capable we will be of providing that input to the things that matter.

Aubrey
36:14
Yep. Exactly. Yeah, another one that is pretty important. That I kind of didn't really on purpose create this as a system. I just kind of started doing it and then now it just makes my life so much easier is my meal planning and like grocery shopping list making is I always have a few minutes. Usually doesn't take longer than like ten to fifteen minutes. minutes at the beginning of the week, like on a Sunday, where Hayden and I come up with our meals for the week. We come up with next week's Sunday's meal prep, because we always do a meal prep on Sundays. Sundays and then we both tag team and go through each of those recipes and add those things to the shopping list. Go through the things that we use every day that may not necessarily be in the recipes, like for our breakfasts and snacks and stuff like that. Add the things to the shopping list. I have an Aldi shopping list, a Woodman's, and a Costco. And we do all of those. And then I do not stray from the shopping list. Yep. I go on Mondays and I don't get anything else. Except for what is on the shopping list. Because then it takes all of the fatigue, decision fatigue out of it if I literally am like I already know what I'm making for dinner. I'm not going to the store and being like, oh, it could be good to maybe get some more ground beef because sometimes we like like to make spaghetti, maybe I will get some of that. Because then you're constantly making micro decisions where you're like, oh but do I need to get this thing? But should I? I don't know. But I made the decision beforehand. with Hayden to decide what we're gonna do for the week. We already have everything down and now I can just go and get in and out as fast as possible. Yeah. I also just hate grocery shopping. Because it is like it is everybody's first day on earth. And they go to the store and they stop in the middle of the aisle. And I try to be a patient and kind person, but I'm not my best self when I go to To the grocery store. So if I can get in and out as fast as possible, that's better for everyone involved. Yeah. So that is a super important system. That now is just like a routine, a habit. It's like instead of being like, I need to do this, I need to make the grocery list for the week, I need to do this, it's just like right now I'm meal planning. Now I will do this for 15 minutes and then it's over.

Peter
38:49
And then it's done. And you've kind of linked those things, you've linked these different little steps together into a system. that has become now a flow, more automatic, something that you're able to do.

Aubrey
39:02
Yep. So cause it's exhausting. I won't lie. One of the most exhausting things about being an adult is having to decide to what to feed yourself three times a day.

Peter
39:12
Yeah.

Aubrey
39:12
Oh my gosh. Are you kidding? I just have to eat every day. And decide what to eat and then cook it? And then I have to cook again the next day?

Peter
39:21
Yeah. What do you mean? It's it's garbage.

Aubrey
39:25
It's garbage. I hate it. Totally. So yeah, t it's just taking all of the friction out. It's taking like the financial stress of grocery shopping too, where if I already have those financial decisions Decisions made. Like if I know we are going to have this and this fruit in the week, then I'm not like, should I get the fruit or not? We decided already it was gonna be good for us to get, I'm gonna get it. And then it just takes all of those mini things that are gonna add up and make you worn out. like you said.

Peter
39:55
Yeah. Yeah. Well there's just, I think, two final little thoughts that I've had about this that I want to share, and then we can wrap up. And again, the the point of this isn't Oh, we're gonna tell people how to make their systems. The point is be willing to ask yourself the question, what systems can I make? So what I an exercise that I've started doing recently is I have a notebook. And I've written down in there what are, you know, I'm making I got a list of the biggest, I think I start with like the top six or seven. What are the biggest places in my life I feel like I'm challenged or struggling with right now? And I wrote down what that thing was and then made a list of, okay, what are some of the challenges that I'm feeling? Why does that thing feel hard? And then I chose one, just one of them. And I've taken that one and now I'm like, okay, let's build a system. Let's build a system. And it can be a very iterative, it should be probably a very iterative process. Where I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this and let's try this. Do that for a day or two. All right, I'm still feeling some friction here. Come back to that notebook. Let's brainstorm a few other ideas and build it. But it's just that being willing to systematically build a system has been hugely powerful and beneficial. And then the final thing is none of this matters if the things we're trying to do contradict our identity. I mean, you know, the the it has to all be towards the purpose of becoming who we believe we are. Our brains are going to rebel if If we tell ourselves I hate exercise, that is part of our identity, that I am a person who hates to work out. You're not going to wake up tomorrow morning and go, oh, never mind, I'm going to start working out. Right. You might do it once or twice. But the motivation will fade very quickly. And now because this behavior contradicts an identity , You're gonna stop. And so we need to think about behavior change is identity change. Yep. And if we look at it and say, well, I haven't been someone who works out and I want to start working out, then then what would the first change in our brain and in our mindset has to be Instead of thinking I'm someone who doesn't work out, you need to start thinking about I'm someone who maybe you can't honestly come out of the gate and say, I I am someone who works out, if you haven't, because then your brain's gonna be like, no, you're not. But you can say, I'm someone who values being healthy.

Aubrey
42:50
Yep.

Peter
42:51
I'm someone, that's why I have that values section in my daily note where it's like every morning. It's like what are two things that matter to me that are that are valuable to me and then make sure that those are things I'm thinking about throughout the course of the day. So I don't know.

Aubrey
43:04
Yeah, because if it's not if it's not important to you, you're not gonna do it. You have to like genuinely decide that you value the thing and that it is important to you in some way. If you're doing it because you feel like you have to and not because you see any value in it, that is like it is a big thing in my personal training. Training textbook is like intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. And if you're trying to do something because you think it will please the people around you or make you see like be a certain way, but you don't actually believe there's value in it, you're not gonna do it. And it's not gonna work.

Peter
43:41
You are correct. You are correct.

Aubrey
43:44
And there's I do want to um really quick um just say this quote from my um this little section from my personal training textbook um because it talks about willpower Um and willpower motivation, like similar stuff where it's just do you have just the force of will to get up and like, for example, go exercise if you've not been someone who's exercised in the past. And so it says willpower is the ability to ignore temporary pleasure or discomfort to pursue pursue a longer term goal. And it's a biological function. It is a mind-body response, not a virtue Anyone using willpower for longer long periods or for multiple tasks will have less revolt resolve to make better choices, because self-control depletes willpower in much the same way that exercise temporarily Using willpower is essentially relying on your rational side to control or dictate what your emotional side wants, and it's not a fair fight because emotions are are more powerful driver of decisions than reason.

Peter
44:50
Yeah.

Aubrey
44:50
Um and again of course this is in the context of personal training. So if clients set too many goals or have goals that are too large and imposing, they can, by force of will, maintain things for a short period. At the first sign of trouble or obstacle, their resolve will crumble, and they get too worn out to maintain the need New difficult behaviors. So you have to plan for moments of diminished self-control. Because planning for that reinforces the willpower when it is needed most. yourself in the future so you do not have to rely on the force of will to do something that you're trying to do.

Peter
45:25
Absolutely. I agree with it.

Aubrey
45:28
So Yeah.

Peter
45:30
Any other thoughts before we wrap it up here?

Aubrey
45:34
Well, I'm a little more motivated, I guess you could you could say, to um create maybe a few more systems for things I am struggling with doing. Um sometimes I tend to take this whole self-improvement and goal making thing a little too far. I am in fact a um victim of put making like 17 habits. I'm Trying to do in a day. No, I'm I'm with you. And then I end up not checking half of them off, and I'm like, I failed the day. Look, I did half of my 17 habits. But it's like, okay, no shit you feel like a failure because you you have written down reasons why you didn't succeed in the day. Whether they're stupid or not, they usually are stupid. Like that's a dumb thing to think is that you're a failure for not completing your habits. But it's written down that I didn't check it off. And then I feel like garbage 'cause I'm like, well I didn't Do the things I wanted to do. So recently I have been trying to scale it back a little bit and like you said, kind of see which things. are more important, which things I'm valuing more that are more important actually. Try and work on becoming habits or tasks that need to get done, stuff like that. And the things that are more difficult, like I'm not able to complete this task every day, but I still see really big value in it, is where I can maybe create a better system.

Peter
47:13
There you go.

Aubrey
47:14
So

Peter
47:15
I think the key, there's been a lot about this that I've read this week, and one of the thoughts, um, you know, one of the things said something to the effect of uh talks about how optimization has no soul. Uh and and I think that's an important thing for us to remember in all of this. This was from Scott Barry Kaufman. He said, the system hand keeps the lights on. The soul hand decides whether the lights are pointing at anything worth looking at. You need both. And And this idea that we're all again, this was from another article I read this week. It says, you're always practicing something. The only question is whether you have chosen what that is. And so I think that that's the key is we need to have our identity, we need to be moving towards a state of eudaimonia and arate, as Aristotle would put them, the excellence of ourselves. and a state of flourishing, becoming the kind of person who does the things that matter to us, not because anybody's watching, not because we care about anyone else, but because We value it. Somewhere inside of us, we say, this is what I want to be. This is the kind of person I want to be. And then build systems to help get there or build systems to stop things that are preventing us from getting there. Either way, it works. So

Aubrey
48:40
Yep.

Peter
48:41
Cool. Well, I don't have a medical thing because, you know, this was all just like kind of pertinent in some ways. So I figured I felt like I had

Aubrey
48:51
Yeah, I forgot about getting an astro back to very soon.

Peter
48:55
Oh good. No worries. Well, we'll wrap it up here. We'll be back in another couple of weeks. And until then, bye.

Aubrey
49:03
Bye.