Ultimately, we are building toward one single day for you to plan, in advance, to completely own. It could be next week or next month or next fiscal quarter, but as you read, feel free to employ any of the techniques you find in these pages as you go along. That will only help you troubleshoot and be fully ready for that very first fully owned day. But make no mistake about it, your goal is to prepare and own one full day, like a total boss.
1: Water Light Movement
You want to take control of your day from the word go. So hydrate immediately (not with coffee!), then seek light and get moving to reset your internal clock. That’s three simple things to do within twenty minutes of waking—and your day will be primed for perfection.
The hydrating water in the coffee is somewhat offset by the dehydrating nature of caffeine. Yet we still reach for coffee in the morning, in large part because these adrenal effects are so damn good at dealing with the other problem we face when we wake up: we’re still tired.
Morning Mineral Cocktail 12 ounces filtered water 3 grams sea salt 1/4 lemon, squeezed
In a perfect world, you’d be able to suckle from the teat of Mother Nature and drink spring water exclusively. Spring water has the right balance of what you want (useful minerals), with little to none of what you don’t (chlorine, heavy metals, contaminants).
For those of us not quite that lucky and who also do not have a line item for water in our grocery budgets, the next best thing is filtered water—either through a Brita pitcher you fill and stick in the refrigerator, a Pur filter you attach straight to your kitchen faucet, or whatever high-quality filter is available near you.
A small pinch of sea salt into distilled or filtered water should help reset the balance. Add a wedge of lemon juice for some additional refreshing nutrients (a lighter version of the morning mineral cocktail) and you’ve optimized your water.
First, the water should be room temperature. When you’re looking to maximize mineral absorption and aid digestion, room temperature is always best for any beverage. And second, the salt needs to dissolve or stay off the bottom of the glass when you drink it.
Upon waking, either from sleep or a nap, blast yourself with five to ten minutes of direct blue-light exposure.
A device called the HumanCharger25, made by a company named Valkee out of Helsinki, Finland, has pioneered this technology for consumer use.
The key to overcoming that resistance is understanding that what we’re talking about here is not a morning workout. This is morning movement.
pick what you like: light yoga, pushups, air squats, jumping jacks, a Richard Simmons clip on YouTube. Chase your dog around the house or pick your kid up and fly her around like an airplane.
QUICK AND DIRTY: 1–3 MINUTES Twenty-three burpees.
SLOW AND SEXY: 5–10 MINUTES This is a little yoga flow I developed for the morning. I hold each position for two full intentional breaths, allowing up to one breath for the transition.
2: Deep Breath, Deep Freeze
STEP 1: THIRTY TO FIFTY POWER BREATHS Inhale through the nose or mouth into the belly with deep, powerful breaths. Exhale without additional effort, just let the chest fall. Keep a steady pace and make sure to focus on drawing the breath deep into your belly. Do this until you feel a slight light-headedness and a tingling sensation in your extremities. That is the sign that a shift is happening and your blood is hyperoxygenated. For most people that effect starts to kick in around thirty breaths, but it can take up to fifty, depending on certain factors.
STEP 2: THE HOLD (RETENTION AFTER EXHALATION) After the thirty to fifty breaths, or once you start to feel the tingling, draw the breath in one more time and fill the lungs to maximum capacity. Then calmly let the air out and hold for as long as you can at the bottom of the breath. You don’t need to set a world record, just hold your breath until you feel that gasp reflex and you really want to breathe again.
When you get sick, it is not the virus that gives you the symptoms; it is your immune system. Fatigue, mild fever, body aches, congestion—the stuff we colloquially identify as “the cold” or “the flu”—are actually manifestations of the inflammatory response.
once you’ve completed the actual hygienic part of your shower, and while the water is still hot, begin a cycle of Wim Hof breathing (thirty breaths or until you feel a tingling sensation in your extremities, whichever comes first). At that moment, turn the water as cold as it can go and let it hit every part of your body.
you should aim to be in the cold water for a minimum of three minutes.
Turn the shower to hot and wash. Do Wim Hof breathing (thirty to fifty breaths, or until you feel tingling and/or mild light-headedness). Turn the shower as cold as it can get. Continue Wim Hof breaths until breathing calms. Hold at the bottom of breath until the gasp reflex kicks in.
Do the Wim Hof cycle of thirty breaths while still on dry land, or in shower after completing necessary hygiene. Prepare an ice bath, or jump in water as cold as you can find. Set a timer for two minutes, or start playing a song that is two minutes long. Continue Wim Hof breathing until you can breathe calmly and normally (remember, the cold will make you want to gasp for air). Exhale fully, and hold your breath at the bottom. If you have extensive experience (or have a buddy with you in case you pass out), submerge completely. Get out of the water at the end of two minutes.
You know what is beyond that mountain? More fucking mountains. If you’re going to climb, then you better adapt.
3: More Fat, Less Sugar, or Don’t Eat
Here is a closer look at five of my all-time favorites that I regularly reach for at my first meal of the day:
WHOLE-FAT YOGURT
The fats and the protein are the only good parts of dairy for an adult human. The lactose is not, because lactose is just another word for milk sugar. By cutting out the fat from dairy, you are basically saying that you want to increase the percentage of sugar relative to the other macronutrients. Great plan! That’s like saying you want to increase the amount of smog relative to your fresh air.
There are a few coconut yogurt brands, including the one from New Earth Superfoods, which I mentioned above, but the coconut cream under the Coconut Cult brand name will ship nationwide in cold packs, so you can yogurt like a baller.
AVOCADO
I like to eat half an avocado with lime, sea salt, and cayenne when I want a lush, nutrient-dense snack or a quick breakfast and I don’t have time to sit down to a proper meal.
BONE BROTH
BACON
Just be sure not to burn the bacon
BUTTER
It is also generally going to be better to reserve the more complex and hard-to-digest foods for later in the day, since the morning correlates to the lowest levels of digestive enzymes and gastric acid. Eggs are easier to digest than red meat, for example. This is also why I like smoothies for breakfast, as everything is already premasticated by the teeth of the blender.
4: Essential Supplements
we deal with more chronic stressors than our ancestors did, most of which our bodies are not designed to thwart—and it shows.
our environment is robbing us of a lot of the nutrients, minerals, and microbial defenses that used to come into our diets by default.
a disturbing percentage of the food we’re eating is so processed that even insects won’t eat it.
It is now commonly held that the immune-system challenge from commingling of intestinal (fecal) bacteria in the birth canal is an important initial hormetic stressor to build a healthy gut biome and kick-start infant immunity, and we’ve removed that first gut gauntlet for nearly half our children, to their detriment.
The key things to consider supplementing are greens, probiotics, B vitamins, krill oil, vitamin D, and additional minerals.
5: Drive Time, Alive Time
What Greene says, and what I agree with, is that any time can be made into alive time, because alive time is a choice, just as dead time is a choice.
Bringing this time to life is a two-step process. It requires preparing and opening your mind, then flexing and filling it. Or, as I like to call it: mindfulness and mindfillness
Mindfulness is simply being aware and conscious in the present moment. That’s it.
In classic Zen training the masters proposed four very simple practices: archery, calligraphy, pouring tea, and arranging flowers.
THE WIDE PERIPHERAL GAZE Open your eyes as wide as they go without engaging any muscles of the face. Keep your focus relaxed in the center of your vision. With your mind only, become aware of everything happening at the periphery of your vision. Up, down, left, right. Things might be a little fuzzy, that’s fine. Then, still without focusing on anything at all, become aware of everything. Each leaf moving in the wind. People walking by. A bird in the distance. Wrinkles in fabric. See everything, focus on nothing. Every moment something will be different, always changing, just like life. It is life. Breathe with your belly. Become aware of all things happening at all times. Become the observer of every detail in the environment, ignoring nothing, yet focusing on nothing. That strange feeling you have now—of a clear mind, of freshness and lightness? That is mindfulness meditation. Nothing more and nothing less.
As soon as you get in your car take six deep breaths. Expand your lungs as much as possible, and focus your breath into your belly—
6: The Power Plants
Poppy tea was a mild pain-relieving folk medicine. Then it became opium. Then it became heroin. Then it became OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet.
MoMatchajito Juice of 1/2 lime 3 sprigs mint 1 teaspoon matcha 3 drops liquid stevia 8 ounces sparkling water INSTRUCTIONS In the bottom of a cocktail shaker, muddle the lime and mint. Add the matcha, stevia, and 2 ounces of sparkling water. Shake briskly and pour into a large glass. Add ice, if desired, and top with the remaining sparkling water. Stir and serve.
Adding good fat to caffeine is not a new concept. In Tibet, where the conditions are cold and harsh, the work is long, and people need fuel throughout the day, they have been putting yak butter in their tea for ages.
Robb went the other direction and started recommending adding fats like butter, cacao butter, or MCT as supplements to your morning coffee. Not only does that taste delicious but the feeling of time-released caffeine through fat’s slower absorption rate has fueled the butter coffee craze.
In a pinch, full-fat dairy like whole cream will do, but better than that is to whip out a blender and add a serving of grass-fed butter, coconut oil, or cacao butter to make a frothy fatty latte, and get those fat macronutrients into your life! Perhaps the best fat source for your caffeine, though, is MCT oil.
The tricky part for us, as we talk about owning this day and taking our work to the next level, is that nicotine—the active component of tobacco—while carrying its own risks, has a ton of performance benefits.
Swedish snus, a moist tobacco powder you tuck under your upper lip, appears to be one of the healthiest forms of smokeless tobacco.
For now the best analysis comes from the same highly respected London Royal College of Physicians paper, which suggests that the hazard to health arising from long-term vapor inhalation from the e-cigarettes available today is unlikely to exceed 5 percent of the harm from smoking tobacco. That is to say, it might be twenty times safer. And while they acknowledge that there are no medical standards for the production of vapor, largely made of glycerin (though many have begun to move away from that), they strongly encourage all cigarette smokers to make the switch.
NICOTINE GUM OR PATCH This is the cleanest way to get nicotine into your system, period. With the clinical efficiency, however, the ritual and a lot of the fun is lost, which is why these alternatives don’t work so well in helping people quit. But for the biohacker on a mission to optimize mental performance for short stretches, this is the cleanest way to do it.
It was this experience with the plant that eventually led me to place Huperzia serrata at the heart of supplementing high brain function.
I woke up and put in my HumanCharger earbuds. I did twenty-three burpees. Power shower. I had a great breakfast. I took my supplements.
If I’m writing, working late, podcasting, or playing chess in the boardroom, it is caffeine, nicotine, and Alpha Brain that I bring to the front lines.
If they are controlling your life, consider the well-established practice of harm reduction, and find ways to transition to a less harmful method or frequency to limit your downside exposure. To check myself, I’ll pause with them for a week or sometimes even a month.
7: Doing Work
I’m a firm believer that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who need to find purpose and meaning in what they do for a living, and those who find purpose and meaning elsewhere and use work as a means to those ends.
This, then, is your job. To figure out your mission so you can own not just this day, but every day after it.
So what do you want to do? What does your best self want more than anything else, want so bad that your inability to stop thinking about it will make it impossible for anyone to stop you from achieving it? Think about it, because in a few chapters we’re going to ask you to write it down.
Their research found that “54% made fewer errors when they could smell lemon, 33% fewer with jasmine and 20% fewer with lavender.” Lemon-jasmine-lavender tea for the win!
Suppose that every time you know you are going to (try to) enter a flow state, you have a certain essential oil that you smell. After a while your brain will link that flow state to the scent. Eventually, you will be able to use that scent in reverse, helping you to invoke that desired flow state,
In fact, evolutionary biologists credit laughter with exactly that purpose: diffusing what would ordinarily be tense situations. The moment you can laugh about something, the threat is over. If anyone is in an energetically challenging place, instead of indulging it, or telling them to fix it, be a good teammate and shoot for laughter.
if you start the day off with the hardest thing you need to accomplish, you are going to enjoy the whole day a hell of a lot more.
Once you figure out your mission, write it down and put it somewhere you’ll see it.
The first thing I do is turn on my Zen fountain and my oil diffuser.
8: Eat a Weird Lunch
calories aren’t real, and humans don’t actually “burn” them.