Pay Now, Love It Later: Why I Work Out at 4 AM & The Mindset That Wins The Long Game

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It seems that all of you are enjoying this.

I'm enjoying it, so we're going to do it again. And we're going to kick this one off with a question that I have been getting a lot of lately, which is rich. What's the deal with you getting up so early in the morning for a clock in the morning

“and sharing photos and videos of you in your home gym?”

What's the story there? Well, the story is pretty basic, actually. I wake up early in the morning, and I work out in the morning. And as I shared in the earlier solo episode, I have this renewed commitment to my fitness and well-being.

Now that I am basically somewhat recovered from my spinal fusion surgery, and I've made this commitment to myself that I'm going to work out every single morning. And by sharing photos and videos of that experience on the daily, it basically just creates a degree of public accountability that makes it more likely that I'm not going to flake out.

Now, do people really care if I skip a day or I don't show photos, of course not. But I care. And so it's just that little nudge that gets me in there when I wake up on days when I don't feel like doing it. It helps me create consistency, consistency builds momentum.

And momentum is like this incredible, beautiful, invisible source of energy that turns

hard things into second nature. When you have momentum, you want to do everything in your power to protect it. Once it gets interrupted, it's hard to recreate it. And it is something that's sort of sacred. And so by just committing to sharing these photos and these videos every single day, I am

basically taking an insurance policy out on ensuring that I am consistent in my workouts and that I'm working towards building that momentum. And now I have momentum and it's easy for me to get up early and get into the gym. It's also been this really cool sort of dual experience. On the one hand, physical exercise, yes, but it's also been a creative exercise.

The commitment that I made to myself was that I was going to take a photograph of the digital LED clock that I have in my personal gym at home, which is in a shipping container. And that every single day, that photo had to be different than the day before. I couldn't repeat the same photo. So that created this sort of creative challenge of how do I do that, a constraint, if

you will. I'm going to get to that in a minute. For now, let me just say, before I am thing, this is when I wake up early in the morning

“people are like, why so early aren't you all about sleep hygiene?”

Yes, I am. I go to bed at like eight o'clock. So most nights I'm getting about seven to eight hours of sleep and I wake up without in the alarm. So when I get up, I make some coffee and I go right into the gym.

What people don't know is that plenty of times I actually wake up at like three o'clock in the morning. I go in. I make coffee. I take my supplements.

I do a load of laundry. There's like 45 minutes of like Michagos before I even actually get into the gym. But it would be insane or kind of too much maybe to take a photograph of that clock when it was still in the threes. So usually it's in the forest.

But I get up early, I get in there right away. And then this taking of the photograph aspect of it has turned into something I didn't expect, which is almost like a chapter out of Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way, where she advocates for going on an artist's date. Once a week, this commitment to taking a photograph of the clock has turned into this beautiful

And it's almost like this artistic experience of blending my fitness routine into like this

artist endeavor of like how to create something cool visually out of this experience that really isn't about me, it's about like finding the light and seeing how the light bounces off the windows and the headlights of my car and the moon and all this sort of thing, which is almost like a page right out of David Epstein's new book inside the box.

“In that book, if you remember this podcast that I did recently with David or you've had”

a chance to read his book already, he argues that constraints drive creativity. It's the limitations that open the door to possibility. And it's sort of counterintuitive.

We like to complain, oh, if I just had this resource or if I had the opportunity to access

this person, et cetera, then I could do X, Y, or Z. But in truth, and as he proves out through talking to tons of people and mining the social science research, it turns out that when you have these constraints, it actually pushes you to find solutions that are better than what you might have previously imagined. And I'm proof of this.

If you've seen any of these photos, they are starting to get better. I thought I was going to run out of options. But instead, I just find new and interesting ways to take these photographs every day and sharing them has become a very fulfilling exercise for me.

David got bless him, always sends me DMs or texts after I post them and he's like, you

should put a book out, these are amazing photographs. And so I might do that. I might self-publish a book of photographs from this experience, which obviously wasn't even on my mind at all when I began this exercise, you know, I don't know, a handful of months ago.

So that's a really cool byproduct of doing this.

“But back to the accountability piece and what am I doing every day?”

Essentially, this is just, again, an added layer of accountability to making sure that I live up to and fulfill this commitment that I've made to myself to honor my fitness. And even on days when I'm very time-pressed, I'm only in there for a half an hour, at least I did it and I didn't shirk it off. Again, nobody cares whether I post these photos or not.

But I care and it's been just a little added layer of motivation to make sure that I'm honoring those commitments to myself. Another reason why I've been sharing these photographs in videos every single day is because I am attempting to model what living and intentional life looks like, a life in which you are committed to certain goals and aspirations that you set for yourself because I think

“that we are in this late stage capitalism, consumerist society that we're all living in.”

What we're seeing, especially with younger generations, is people who are living their lives reactively. It's just too easy to be distracted by our devices, these highly addictive supercomputers that we're all carrying around in our pockets. And so now, this notion of the human being as consumer is now at an exponential level where

we're seeing people who are just consuming all day long, consuming content from their mobile devices, spending all day on screens, living their lives completely reactively without any room or conscious awareness or commitment to doing anything intentional. Young people aren't reading books. It's just too easy to tune out, to use your device for distraction, gambling, porn, crypto,

doom, scrolling, you name it, and this is not good, obviously. Now by dint of these devices, we have to really go out of our way to live intentionally. There's no more room for boredom and checking out has just become a way of life. So me taking a picture of my clock when it's 4 o'clock in the morning is my way of saying, you guys, you got to be more intentional about your life.

Like I'm not expecting other people to commit at that level, but hopefully it motivates people to rethink the reactive way in which they're living their lives, because we all have agency over our time. We're all living life 24 hours a day and even the most time-crunched people can find opportunities

meaningful purpose-driven goal in their life to invest in those things. I'm a very busy person, that's one of the reasons why I get up so early.

“I have the podcast, which I think is a lot more work than people realize.”

I have a media company voicing change, I've got four kids, I'm married, I travel a lot, I have commitments to the brands that make this show possible. I have a very big and busy life, and if I'm going to honor this commitment to my fitness to repairing my body, to getting fit again, then I'm going to have to find the time for that.

For me, that time is super early in the morning, and if I'm willing to do that, then hopefully that helps other people, you, hopefully rethink your relationship with the 24 hours that you have within a given day. Maybe go into your settings in your phone and look at how much time you're spending on them every single day, it's quite shocking.

When you realize the extent to which you're face planning in your device, and let me

“point out a distinction with these highly addictive devices.”

You can use them to consume, which is how most people use them, or you can use them to create, you can take photographs, you can use the notes app to record ideas. You can edit video on them, you can write a book on them, so it's about the quality and the nature of that relationship with your device.

It can be this incredibly powerful thing to help you actualize your dreams and your ambitions

and your aspirations, or it can just suck the life out of you. You can watch an entire season of Star Trek on the couch vaping and ordering postmates through your phone, or you can get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and work out and take amazing photographs, it's up to you, so that's the idea behind that. Based upon conversation after conversation with so many microbiome experts, it's just undeniable

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This taking the photograph of the clock is also an illustration of this idea that the little

By committing to taking a single photograph, which let's face it takes five seconds, I have

then rooted myself in a daily practice.

“When I raise that, only to say that all of us can find five minutes, ten minutes out”

of our day to commit to something, a tiny habit. It could be getting morning sunlight in your eyes every morning, it could be five minutes of journaling, it can be a meditation practice, it could be brushing your teeth if that's a foreign concept to you. The point is, what is it that you can commit to every single day that is a tiny little

thing that aggregated over an extended period of time would translate into moving you in a better direction in your life. We all have five minutes. In fact, I would argue that we all have probably hours in our day that we're misallocating that we're wasting on our devices or some other unfruitful activity.

So I would encourage everybody to actually begin by tracking how you spend your time every single day. That might be an initial great and informative practice, just right down what you do. Every 15 minutes from the moment you wake up until you go to bed, just do it one day.

“I think you'll be shocked because it will give you a very objective perspective on how”

you're actually spending your time versus how you think you're spending your time. So for people who say, I don't have time, I get it. Like I said, I'm super busy, you have two jobs and you're just trying to make ends meet. Like I'm compassionate towards that, but that is still not an excuse to not objectively assess areas in your life, periods of the day that could be allocated towards a more

productive, aspiring activity. And again, start with five minutes, that's all it takes. This goes back to the James Clear idea of atomic habits, this notion that the little things really are the big things, and mastering just one tiny, very doable, repeatable, sustainable task, roots you in a new practice that then engenders over time in emotional

connection to that practice, and then that practice expands. Then you create consistency, consistency builds momentum.

“And before you know it, your life is in a very different place than it was even a few”

weeks ago, if not a few months ago.

And so the mantra that I always return to, especially on those days, when I really don't

want to do the thing that I committed to doing, is mood follows action. If you've listened to me or followed me for a while, you've probably heard me say it many times before, but let me take a few minutes to just illustrate what that mantra means and why it has been so vital in my life and why I think it'll be important or helpful to you in mastering a new habit.

Essentially, mood follows action means that instead of waiting to feel like doing the thing, you do the thing, and the feeling that you were waiting for happens as a consequence of actually executing on the task. This is vetted by neuroscience, Dr. Andrew Huberman actually said that on my podcast. Behave your first feelings and emotions follow.

For some reason, we're hardwired to think that we have to feel like doing the thing in order to do it. Like, "Oh, I'll go on that run when I feel like it." Or, "I'll call that guy back when I'm in the right mood."

That mood never arrives, that call gets pushed back, that run doesn't happen.

But nobody gets back from a run wishing they hadn't gone and they feel better, which illustrates the point like mood follows action. So, when you are in that situation where you really don't want to do the thing, if you can develop the reflex towards action, turning the brain off and just doing the thing, you will realize that you feel better in the aftermath because you've accomplished something.

And that was the mood that you wanted to have in order to do the thing, but that mood is a product of doing the thing. So, mood follows action, say it out loud the next time you wake up and you really don't feel like doing the thing that you said you were going to do and just do it anyway. And miraculously, magically, you will feel better.

You will inhabit that mood that you were chasing as a precondition for doing the thing, realizing that it's actually a consequence. I say all of this sensitive to the fact that some people are going through a lot emotionally. And if you are completely dysregulated emotionally, it can be very difficult to get out of that rut and take action.

But I've also come to understand that emotions are just emotions. Sometimes they feel like they're going to kill you.

They can be paralyzing, but they always change.

If you can develop the willingness to sit in that discomfort, you will notice that they will morph over time. And even if they feel like they're going to kill you, they're just feelings. And feelings always, always shift.

“And so the question then becomes, what can you do in that state?”

You can go to therapy and talk about your feelings. Sometimes that just reinforces the rut. And I found that if you can find one action that you can take in the midst of having that

experience, you will feel an emotional shift.

So ask yourself if you're in the midst of such an experience like, are you getting enough sleep, have you moved your body at all, have you nourished your body with healthy foods? Or are you eating junk food, staying up all night, vaping, doom scrolling, whatever it is. Like, can you interrupt one of those patterns and take some kind of positive action that

is a steamable that will help to shift you out of that state. It will help you claw your way out of that rut because a steamable acts are the foundation of building self esteem.

So if part of your emotional rut is not feeling good about yourself, can you find something

that you can do that does value yourself? And that is an antagonist to the emotional state that is paralyzing you and that you are seeking to overcome. I should also point out that A, I'm not a mental health professional and B, I'm super pro therapy, I've been in therapy for decades, I'm still in therapy, I've gotten a lot

out of therapy, I got a men's groups, I go to alcoholics anonymous, like I am a super fan of all kinds of mental health modalities.

“The only point I'm trying to make is that you have to pair that with some kind of contrary”

action. And what is it that you are willing to do differently than you were the day before that can shift that energy and put whatever your therapist is telling you into some kind of tangible action. And as for action start with physical movement, go for a walk, do a quick breath practice,

go outside and breathe fresh air and look at the sun, get your morning sunlight in. I'm talking about super, super basic things that every single person is capable of doing. To the extent that some of you might find what I'm sharing unrelatable, rich, you're this successful podcast or you have a media company, you've got a book deal, you have a healthy, happy family, your super fit, you have a home gym, you have all of these resources

that I don't have, allow me to transport you back to me in my late thirties, fast food addicted, 50 pounds overweight in a career that I loved, completely detached from any sense of what I wanted out of my life, very unhealthy, and really on the precipice of an existential crisis about what I was doing with my life, no relationship with physical movement at the time, no understanding of healthy nutrition, no interest in that whatsoever.

If I was to transport myself back like a ghost of Christmas past to talk to that version

“of myself, I think that that version of me would have set those same things like who are”

you, like you're not living my life, you don't understand the things that I'm going through, you don't understand my confusion, my problems are unique to me and go away, and what I am saying is that if I was able to go from that guy into this person that I've become, this person who has gone on and done all kinds of feats in the ultra endurance world, has published books, has a successful podcast, has a healthy, happy marriage, and is a fulfilled

dad, and has opportunities all over the place, you know, I'm living a life well beyond my wildest imagination, but it's only because I started doing these tiny little things on a consistent basis that moved the needle that don't translate on a day-to-day basis

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Again, the little things are the big things, and the small, tiny, imperceptible daily commitments that we can make to ourselves are actually the engine of change and transformation. And this is a really great segue into me talking a little bit about my spirit animal. What is my spirit animal?

“Well honestly, if I was to be reincarnated into the animal kingdom, I think I might opt”

for being a bottle-nosed purpose. I think that they're probably smarter than humans, they seem to be having a good time. I think they have life figured out a little bit better than us. That aside, that is not my spirit animal. My spirit animal is actually the tortoise.

And I'm going to make the case for why the tortoise mindset is a mindset that we would all be better off adopting.

The reason why the tortoise is my spirit animal and why the tortoise basically rules

is because the tortoise is playing the long game, the long game of life. And to illustrate this concept, I'd like to take you back to 1987 and introduce you to my friend, Hank Wise. Now Hank was a teammate of mine on the Stanford University swim team back in the day, and Hank was sort of a court-juster figure, kind of a Jeff Spacoli-esque character who had

a very large personality. And I can tell you that on countless occasions, the team would be assembled on the pool deck particularly during Christmas training when it was very cold out. We're talking freezing temperatures, like 31 degrees Fahrenheit, contemplating the prospective of jumping into this swimming pool for another brutal, you know, 10,000 meter session.

night before, nobody wants to jump in the pool at 5 o'clock in the morning when it's dark

out and cold.

“And this would always be Hank's cue to burst out into song.”

And the song that he would sing in the voice of Morrissey, his favorite lyricist, was "Pay Now Love It Later," he would like dance on the pool deck in his speedo in the freezing dark cold and go "Pay Now Love It Later," "Pay Now Love It Later," and everybody would crack up, it would break the tension. And suddenly we would be snapped out of our daydream and everybody would jump in the pool.

"Pay Now Love It Later," basically just means we have to sacrifice instant gratification for long-term satisfaction because long-term success depends upon present-day effort. We have to sublimate mood and develop this reflex towards action. We have to unclutch from our expectations around outcomes and most importantly, we have to completely detach from our attachment to the calendar.

Those humans have a very funny relationship with the calendar. We tend to wildly overestimate what we can accomplish in a month, a period of months, or even a year, while simultaneously completely underestimating what we can achieve in a decade.

In my experience, I've never been able to accomplish anything significant in less than

a ten-year window, but we're just not wired to think in terms of decades. We see people accomplishing things on social media, we read about them, we watch documentaries, we're inspired by people who are successful out in the world, in the fields that we're interested in. And for some reason, we dilute ourselves into thinking they're either naturally gifted,

or that this all unfolded naturally over a very short period of time, but nothing could be further from the case. We need to start to acclimate our thinking around decades. And this is where the tortoise mindset comes in. The tortoise, which also happens to be a gold medal winning longevity to Catholic, by the way.

So for anybody interested in longevity or health span extension, I think it's wise to start thinking of yourself as a tortoise, the tortoise has this figured out. And when we can cast our gaze much further out over the horizon, we begin to realize, see and understand, that our attachment to outcomes in the short and intermediate term over a period of months, or even a year, this is why we abandon our goals too soon.

It's why we give up on our New Year's resolutions, it's why we end up beating ourselves up, it's why we have such an unhealthy relationship with failure, and why too many people end up abandoning their aspirations too soon, because they opt out of the game before the game has barely even begun.

“Obviously life is not a sprint, life isn't even a marathon, it's an ultra marathon of”

the umpteenth degree, and similarly, we should talk about our goals in our aspirations in the same context. Your goal should not be a sprint, your goal should not be a marathon. Your goal really should be thought of in the context of an ultra marathon. Whether it's a goal, an aspiration, a dream, or just your life, these are our or deals

of the ultra endurance variety, and when we think in this context, we realize that slow is actually fast, and patience is paramount, patience is actually a superpower. And this requires a little bit of counter programming, because we live in a culture in which we incentivize and celebrate speed, but speed is not our concern, because as my coach

Chris Houth used to always say to me, the prize doesn't go to the fastest person, it goes

to the person who slows down the least. Speed is irrelevant, it's constant forward motion, in which even your pace really isn't

“an important variable, the key variable is persistence, patience, and unrelenting commitment”

to constant persistent forward motion. This of course conjures ASOP's famous fable about the tortoise in the hair. I don't know if most people realize this, but it's the tortoise that wins in the fable.

else is doing becomes.

“The tortoise is not concerned with what the hair is doing, the hair is bouncing around,”

rushing here and there, reacting to the world, almost like somebody from Gen Z looking at their phone, like living their life reactively, who's being prodded and provoked to live their life in accordance with somebody else's program, chasing rather than coming from a place of integrity. The tortoise just does its thing completely unconcerned with what anyone else is doing, and

just stays the course. And when the game is long, it's this capacity to endure that matters the most.

So these small little habits that you're doing every day become critical because they're

sustainable. When they're sustainable, that fuels the endurance to persist and to endure over a long period of time. So in this game of transformation, over a long window, speed is subservient to direction.

“What matters the most is just staying the course, and that is what the tortoise is excellent”

to add. So let's let the hair, which let's face it, is basically the average, hairy human, imagine a young Gen X person, imagine yourself, imagine somebody who is just living one, reactively, anxiety fueled in our modern day world bouncing from one thing to the

next, basically being impulse by the new cycle, or being overly caught up in what somebody

else is doing or investing themselves in some drama between other people that has nothing to do with their lives, that's the hair. We are not the hair. We are the tortoise. We are focused on our goal and our ambition.

“It doesn't matter how long it takes for us to get there because we have a direction.”

And we have this series of very small daily habits that we practice relentlessly, that are propelling us forward persistently undaunted in the direction of the better version of our self.

The tortoise is centered, the tortoise is a quantumus.

The tortoise is not riddled with anxiety or self doubt. The tortoise just takes one step and then another step and just moves forward, inch by inch by inch. The hair will mock the tortoise, making fun of the tortoise, I'll slow the tortoise is, how deliberate the tortoise is in its motions.

The tortoise doesn't care because the tortoise knows exactly who he or she is and knows exactly where they're going. The longer the game, the more certain it is that the tortoise is going to emerge victorious. So the point I'm trying to make is that we live in an incredibly fast past culture. And the incentive structure of our culture is such that we are being impulsed into sprinting

all the time. From one thing to the next, by these addictive devices, by the new cycle, by consumerist culture, by the pressures of just trying to get through the day in a capitalist society. And that is leading to this reactive reflex where we're not actually exerting agency over our lives.

But we're very quick to come up with excuses why we're too busy to be more intentional, to be more focused, to be more plotting and values-based and purpose-driven in our actions. So the message really is slow down, take stock of your life, do an inventory on what's working and what's not working and try to escape the vicissitudes of our fast-paced life. The daily ups and downs that pull us in one direction or another, recognizing that we have

responsibilities and there are certain things that we have to do every single day acknowledging that, but then being intentional about carving out time for you to plot your tortoise course in the direction of the person you would like to become. Letting go of the timeline and just practicing that inch by inch forward motion without being attached to outcomes, without being captured by expectations of what it'll look like or

operating from a perspective of decades, not days, not months, not weeks.

“This idea that we're headed in the direction of a destination, knowing at the same time”

that there also is no finish lines. But matters is the practice, your devotion to this practice that is in lockstep with the esteemable aspirations that you hold for yourself.

Don't worry about what anyone else is doing, be focused on your goals, ensure self in the

direction of them, knowing at the same time that this is an adventure, a journey without a destination.

“This reminds me of something Scott Harrison told me on the podcast many years ago.”

Some of you may know that Scott is the founder of Charity Water. He was a former nightclub and presario who realized that his life lacked meaning and he took a complete U-turn and has now created this extraordinary nonprofit organization that is committed to solving the global clean water crisis. What he said to me is, don't fear work that has no end.

So while we can set goals and hold aspirations for ourselves, it's also not contradictory to understand that this journey that we are on towards greater self-actualization, towards greater authenticity towards living a life of greater purpose and meaning is by definition

a journey that lacks a destination, but that should never be in excuse to not pursue it.

Because what gives it such richness and what makes that journey so worthy is the fact that it doesn't have a destination and that we commit ourselves towards it anyway, knowing that transformation is the prize for those who move towards it undeterred.

“All of which brings me back to Hank Wads. You remember Hank? What happened to Hank is”

30 years later, this guy jumped into the ocean and swam from Catalina to Los Angeles and broke the record for the Catalina Channel Swam, a record that it stood for nine years by 10 minutes. He did it at age 50. So this is a guy who thinks in terms of decades who understands and practices his mantra of pain now, love it later, who had no care for the timelines, wasn't concerned about

what anyone else was doing and actually executed on an audacious dream, breaking this long standing record so many years later. Because he wasn't concerned about short-term expectations. He just had his eyes set, worked very hard for a very long period of time, and it took a long time, but he achieved his goal. So what I'm saying is, just start, keep moving forward and be undeterred.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning, getting into my home gym and taking those photographs.