Episodes
The best moments and biggest learnings from 100 Episodes! We did it! 100 Episodes and still we’re just getting started. In this very special episode, Rob reflects on the origins of the show, how it evolved, and what he’s learned along the way. As a show that spent its early days interviewing Dyrdek Machine portfolio founders, it soon began leaning into advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. But as Rob continued honing his life philosophy, working on a book, designing software, it became clear...
Published 05/22/23
Make it simple. Make it measurable. Make yourself happy. If you create simplicity and measurability in several areas of your life, you will then be able to strategize how to achieve those goals, resulting in happiness upon completing those goals. Then you’re able to set new, simple goals, measure success, and create even more happiness. It’s a process Rob calls Quantified Joy. In this episode, Rob takes us through his process of creating measurable outcomes and then allowing the numbers to...
Published 05/15/23
It’s probably a lot less than you think… Have you ever wondered how much you really make per hour of work? It’s a bit more complicated than dividing your salary by 40 hours per week. First of all, there’s the obligatory taxes we all pay, so subtract those–that money goes straight into Uncle Sam’s sizable pockets. Next, you have to account not just for said supposed 40 hour work week, but also the actual amount of time and energy you spend thinking about work, preparing, networking, training,...
Published 05/08/23
A simple technique that reveals extraordinary insights about your life. Asking yourself how you feel about something on a scale from 1-10 is about as simple as it gets. But this practice, if applied consistently over time, begins to show you insights about your overall life, or aspects of your life, that you can then continue to improve to better your overall experience. You can begin with “how do I feel about my life overall today?” as a more general way to start, or you can get more...
Published 05/01/23
Knowledge is power. But learning with the intention of making your life better is a superpower. We tend to spend an incredible amount of time learning things that have no applicable value to betting our lives. One may call it gathering useless knowledge. While that could make us the hero on trivia night, it does nothing to aid our evolution into a better version of ourselves. Dedicating an inordinate amount of time to researching characters from your favorite TV show or learning everything...
Published 04/24/23
Time is the canvas of your entire existence. Thinking about time design as life design, and using the metaphor of time being the canvas on which you get to paint your life however you want it to be, opens up unlimited possibilities. You are the artist, and by designing your time, you have the opportunity to create the life you desire. It’s not just about efficient scheduling day to day. It’s actually much broader. If you look at your time more holistically in the past, present and future,...
Published 04/17/23
Optimizing what you can control can protect you from what you can’t. Your life is a series of interconnected systems that connect with other larger systems, which connect with even larger global systems. The farther away from you these systems are, the less ability you have to control them. However, by optimizing the systems you have the most control over, you can lessen the effect of those larger, uncontrollable systems on your life.  Rob breaks these systems down into 3 orders: First...
Published 04/10/23
Are you overwhelmed, or are you out of capacity? It’s time to change the way you think about being overwhelmed. No matter how much you have going on around you, it comes down to the amount of things you can handle at once. That is the limit of your capacity. When you run over your capacity, your mind essentially breaks. It drives you, without your consent, into irrational thought, poor decision making, and overreactions to stimuli. You try to do too much, you end up in a worse place, not a...
Published 04/03/23
If you haven’t experienced Part 1, go back and check that out first. Rob is slinging completely unrelatable levels of optimization detail (unless you are an ultra-high performer!) for a second straight week. This episode is the continuation of a deep dive into his process, thinking, and output of an extreme level of living. We’re talking about an almost unimaginable quality of life. We’re talking quantified joy. We’re talking about an extraordinary pace of measured evolution as a human...
Published 03/27/23
*Unless you already consider yourself an ultra-high performer In the first episode of a two-part deep dive into Rob’s otherworldly personal optimization, he implores you not to listen to this unless you are an ultra-high performer ready to take the next steps toward true greatness. The information contained herein is so detailed, so next level, only those who are prepared to take this leap will enjoy it. That said, if you are prepared to do what it takes to perpetually evolve, quantify your...
Published 03/20/23
The more you understand about your goals, the faster you can realize them. There is a very direct correlation between the holistic understanding of your goals and the speed at which they can be achieved. The more you know about every aspect of your goals, the more likely you are to bring them to life. An issue that many people run into is setting a plan to achieving a goal without full knowledge of the challenges that lie ahead, and only understand the faults in that plan when it becomes...
Published 03/13/23
Rob’s taking a break from dishing out his philosophy on creating a high quality, harmonious existence to talk with fellow Ohio native and fellow human optimizer, Lewis Howes. Lewis is, of course, a New York Times bestselling author and extremely popular podcaster (The School of Greatness). His new book, The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today provides lessons and strategies to shape the life you want to lead. This is a fascinating conversation...
Published 03/06/23
That’s right. You are a system of systems that ultimately make up your entire existence. And with that realization comes enormous power and control over the way this machine operates. You have the ability to determine the design and function of the machine. You get to upgrade and optimize it over time until it works the way you want it to. At that point, you’re living the highest quality version of your life. Unfortunately, you didn’t come with an instruction manual, but in this episode Rob...
Published 02/27/23
It is possible. And the keys to unlock this state are discipline, consistency and commitment to life mastery. To be clear, this is not something that will be achieved overnight. It requires a great deal of conscious effort to get to a place where your days are optimized to provide energy and your evenings are dialed in to provide a proper wind down and prepare you for yet another extraordinary day. Rob’s approach includes a super clean diet, devoid of alcohol, sugar and snacks, only lean...
Published 02/20/23
Happiness is a hard thing to define historically. But Rob defines it as experiencing joy in the present moment on a consistent basis. Then you have a happy life. And it sounds simple, but a lot goes into achieving this much sought after state of being. Living a life with intention, ensuring you define your time to allow room to do things that bring you feelings of joy, creating a balanced and harmonious existence. The default way we tend to get in a rhythm tends to cram all of our joyful...
Published 02/13/23
Goals can be boring and rigid and overly tactical. The constant pursuit of goals can become monotonous or downright mind numbing at times. In this episode, Rob shares his technique for taking all those goals and aggregating them under a common theme. He applies themes to years, and even decades to encapsulate those goals in something larger and more exciting. Even when goals are specifically linked to different aspects of your life such as family, health and work, they can still be tied...
Published 02/06/23
Make no mistake, it is truly a decision. It’s you drawing a line in the sand and deciding that from now on, your primary purpose will be to take control of every aspect of your life and drive them all toward your ultimate self. Mastering your own reality, your own being. Controlling your own wants, your needs and your actions. Rob is here in this episode to tell you the cold hard fact that no one else is going to save you. No one is ever going to take an action or give you information that...
Published 01/30/23
We all know the feeling of friction, or resistance in our life. It’s those things or people that grate on us over and over. Recurring events or ongoing relationships in our personal lives or work that continuously drain our energy. We start to dread those things, and that has an emotional and energetic effect on the quality of our entire existence. The first step is to become attuned to the aspects of your life that are causing the friction, and try to work out why. Then figure out how you...
Published 01/23/23
Changing with intention is all about taking control of inevitable change, doing so actively with a goal in mind, as opposed to waiting until it’s too late and change is forced upon you. Forced change is typically unexpected, and that puts you in a state of being reactive, which, depending on the scale of the change, can be incredibly disruptive to your life. If you can assess your life and decide where to make proactive changes, you maintain control and can guide that change into contributing...
Published 01/16/23
Habits get a bad rap. They’re often seen and expressed in terms of things you do on an ongoing basis that you shouldn’t. But Rob is here to tell you that we need to rebrand habits into things you do as an initial stepping stone to a much more profound way of living. The definition of a habit is: a regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. If those habits are additive to your life and overall goals, and they’re hard to give up because they give you energy or improve...
Published 01/09/23
On this episode, Rob explores an important thesis with respect to the mind. Our entire existence is both experienced and controlled by the mind. And he believes that the mind operates on 4 different levels, which determine our experience in the world. The present state of your mind on this spectrum affects your decision-making, your reaction to outside stimuli, your discipline, and many other factors. Level 1 - The Reactive Mind: The state of only dealing with what comes at you, trying to...
Published 12/18/22
Being ultra present is not just about being in the moment. It’s about developing the skill to step way back and feeling every aspect of that moment. How does one experience the world in a deeper and more vibrant way? Rob really started thinking about this concept after he read The Greatest Secret book by Rhonda Byrne, which he distilled down to the idea that awareness is everything. When you shift your perpetual state from trying to think about all the things going on around you, and instead...
Published 12/12/22
Personal capacity is both mental and physical. There are limits to both, and those limits are unique to every individual. The more you are able to understand what those limitations are for you, the better you can stay within your capacity and avoid feelings of being overwhelmed or exhausted or burned out. When we get overwhelmed, we question our decisions, we become erratic, we don’t think things through as well, and that can compound quickly. But when you operate within your capacity, you...
Published 12/05/22
You can be wealthy and still not have financial harmony. This was the situation Rob found himself in, where he made money, but also spent money and felt the pressure of needing to continue to grind to continuously make more and more. It was when he designed and implemented the financial system he still operates on today that that pressure was relieved and he was truly able to work smarter rather than harder. Financial freedom comes back to security. The security of not having to work anymore...
Published 11/28/22
But wait, how can a goal be a living thing? A goal has a lifespan, it evolves and changes, and it requires nurturing and care in order to make into the best version of itself. Just like us. Your goals are always shifting and moving based on new information and external factors beyond your control. Even the simplest goals can face unexpected complications, and the more ambitious goals can become exponentially more complex. That’s why being flexible and treating your goals not as a black and...
Published 11/21/22