📚 A&B #126

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👋 Hey everyone,

Here are a few popular posts you may have missed:

• If you want to become a writer, read this.

• 21 Tips that will make you a more effective and efficient reader.

• How to read well without getting lucky (advice from Naval Ravikant).

PS: I'm giving away 50 BOOKS to 1 lucky reader. Learn more about the giveaway here!

📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is The 3 Alarms by Eric Partaker.

I got this book after it was recommended by Ali Abdaal and Sahil Bloom. It's a short read (125 pages) about how setting 3 simple alarms can help transform your health, wealth, and relationships.

Here are 3 key lessons from the book:

📖

1) Be Careful of The 3 Extremes

To have a fulfilling life you need to balance work, health, and relationships. If you go too extreme in any one direction, life will become imbalanced and deteriorate overall.

The Workaholic prioritizes their career over everything else. This leads to financial success, but their health and relationships suffer because they don't make time for themselves or anyone else. Being a workaholic can lead to serious health problems, divorce, and other unfortunate events.

The Martyr prioritizes their relationships over everything else. This may sound wonderful since they focus all of their energy on their family and friends, but doing so will lead to them neglecting their health and a part of them may feel unfulfilled as they know they'd like to contribute to the world in more ways than one.

The Health Nut prioritizes their health over everything else. They'll be in great shape, but their career will suffer as they spend more hours in the gym and kitchen than in the office. It also becomes more difficult to spend time with them since they'll obsess over where they can eat, when they can hang out, and what they can do.

Ask yourself, which area are you overly focused on and how you can start giving equal priority to your health, work, and relationships. For a truly successful life, you need to be doing well in all domains, not just one.

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2) Set 3 Alarms To Become Your Best Self

Now that we know we need to excel equally in our work, health, and relationships, here's Eric's advice for doing so.

You want to pick an identity or title that describes excellence in each of those three domains and set an alarm for each.

For example:

• 6:30am Alarm labeled "World Fitness Champion."

• 9:00am Alarm labeled "World's Best Coach."

• 6:30pm Alarm labeled "World's Best Husband & Father."

Each identity gives Eric a goal to aim for and prompts him to start focusing on being great in that domain.

This way, when he wakes up he knows his goal is to focus on his health, when his 9am alarm goes off he knows to focus on his career, and when his evening alarm goes off, he knows to prioritize his wife and kids.

"Setting these simple alarms is the single most important thing I have done to change my life and become a peak performer," says Eric.

(Here's an in-depth explanation of this lesson)

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3) Evening Routine > Morning Routine

Everyone is obsessed with morning routines but your evening routine is just as, if not, maybe even more crucial to your success.

Here's Eric's evening routine:

• End the workday with a shutdown appointment where you take time to reflect on the tasks you need to accomplish the next day and schedule them into your calendar.

• Then log off work and go spend time with your partner, kids, and/or friends.

• Set an alarm that goes off one hour before you usually go to bed to remind you to shut off electronic devices (phone, TV, laptop, etc.).

  • Why? Bright devices before bed can reduce melatonin production by up to 50% and make it harder to get a deep and restorative sleep.

• You also want to make sure you're getting 8 hours of sleep.

  • Long-term sleep deprivation has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental illnesses.

Following this simple yet powerful evening routine will help you end your day in a productive manner and set you up for a successful day tomorrow.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Take a minute to reflect on your health, career, and relationships:

• Which of the 3 areas have you been overly focused on?

• Which of the 3 areas have you been ignoring?

2) Set 3 alarms on your phone for tomorrow:

• Set an alarm for when you want to focus on your health, your career, and your relationships.

• Label each alarm with an identity that reminds you to excel in that domain.

3) Start an evening routine:

• Take 10 minutes at the end of your workday to find the 3 most important tasks you need to complete the next day and add them to your calendar.

• Set an alarm to go off one hour before bed that reminds you to turn off all electronic devices.

PS: You can get a FREE ebook copy of "The 3 Alarms" by signing up for Eric's newsletter here.

📖 Reading Lesson:

My best reading tips in 1 tweet.

⭐️ Weekly Quote:

"Don't feel bad about having unread books. It's better to have books but not the time to read them than to have the time but no books to read."

(share here)

Thank you for your support everyone, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.