Marcus - Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping and Sex

Contents

Contents

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This book contains advice and information relating to health care. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect you have a health problem, it is recommended that you seek your physicians advice before embarking on any medical program or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. This publisher and the author disclaim liability for any medical outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.

OWN THE DAY, OWN YOUR LIFE . Copyright 2018 by Warrior Poet LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

is a registered trademark of Onnit Labs, LLC.

FIRST EDITION

Cover design by Stefanie McBride

Cover photography by James Law

Digital Edition APRIL 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-268409-7

Version 03292018

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-268407-3

Dedicated to your future self

We have to transcend the tendency to place all of our effort on one thing at a time, instead of one day at a time. Just look at the flood of transformational programs out there: twelve days to detox, twenty-eight days to skinny, forty days to enlightenment, ninety days to astronaut. What do they give you? A diet that statistically fails 95 percent of all people or some email batching tips that are magically supposed to make you more productive. If youre lucky youll leave with one or two takeaways that you actually implement in your life for a week or two. But real transformation? Unlikely. What is more likely is that everything else falls out of balance while you doggedly pursue your eight-pack abs.

So we are going to flip the script and recalibrate. We are going to focus on that single indivisible unit. That twenty-four hours. Just one day. You gotta walk before you run, and a day is the first step. To own your life, you gotta own the day. Youre going to read this book, and then prepare to live one single day completely optimally.

Mark it on your calendar, get your head right, get your food right, and do it. You wont live every day like this right away. You may never live another day exactly like this again. But owning just one of them will be the catalyst to meaningful, demonstrable change. Maybe its your morning routine, maybe its how you prepare for sleep, or how you spend your drive to work. Maybe its how you work out, or how you eat. Maybe its everything! But one of those things is going to click first, and when it does, every day after that will be different. I dare you to read this book and not find things that substantially change how you live, and how you look at life. Maybe that will seem small at first. But small things, when compounded over time, tend to have big consequences. That, after all, is the essence of evolution.

Tipping Points and the Process

How many choices in your daily life are essentially toss-ups? Pizza or home cooking? Soda or sparkling water? Netflix or a night out? Should I go to the gym or not? Every day, nearly all of these choices are a fifty-fifty call. You could just as easily land in one place as the other. If you changed one thing you do within the first twenty minutes of waking up (I am going to give you three), however, or you had just a little bit more energy from a high-fat, low-sugar breakfast, maybe youd choose differently. Maybe it would cease to be a question at all. Of course youre going to the gym. Then, because you went to the gym, you find yourself less stressed that night. So you have sex. Then you sleep better. Then you wake up more vibrant and with more energy. And you have set in motion a positive cascade of choices. The tipping point was one small change in breakfast. You exchanged your Apple Jacks for an avocado, and all of a sudden your day was different, your week was different, maybe your whole month was different.

Nick Saban, possibly the greatest coach in the history of college football, tells his players to follow what he calls the Process. He tells them that the average down in football lasts about seven seconds. If they want to win an SEC championship, or a national title, they should focus on that smallest unit of measurement. Seven seconds. Dont get lost in the big picture, he says, and risk taking your eye off the prize. Focus on whats in front of you, focus on something you can chew and swallow. Focus on the micro, in other words, and the macro takes care of itself.

Thats the approach were going to take: The way to own your life is to own your day. Today. Because thats all you have.

The samurai master Miyamoto Musashi told students in his Book of Five Rings, When you freely beat one man, you beat any man in the world. The spirit of defeating a man is the same for ten million men. The strategist makes small things into big things, like building a great Buddha from a one-foot model. The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things.

To live one day well is the same as to live ten thousand days well. To master twenty-four hours is to master your life.

Everyone Has Room to Improve

All human beings, every single one of us, have in some way taken a detour off the blueprint of optimal living. We cant help it, its the world we live in. So we have to take measures as strong as the forces opposing us, or else we struggle.

I know from experience. Before I built Onnit into a movement that touches the lives of millions of people, I was stressed, depressed, and suffering as a consequence. Wild blood sugar swings from poor diet choices were exhausting me. I hurt my body with all sorts of toxic substances. I was sick... a lot. Then one day near my thirtieth birthday I made a commitment to be better. It was so significant that I decided to adopt my middle name as my first name, Aubrey, and to strike out from that moment as a better human being. I didnt have a perfect plan yet, like the one contained in this book. I wish I did. But I had choices, and I started making them.