Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex. Aubrey Marcus

you, though, with formulas that pack all the key vitamins and minerals, along with greens and krill oil, plus a host of herbal nutrients in convenient day and night packs. We also offer a complete care kit for your gut that includes probiotics you can take with any meal. All the packs are sleek, easy to travel with, and absolutely comprehensive. I could pretend that I don’t think ours is the best solution, but that would be withholding information from you just to avoid seeming biased. It’s what I use, and it’s the starting point for our pro team and many of the customers we serve.

      Now Do It

      What is a supplement really going to do for me? That’s the question you were probably asking as you worked your way through the material in this chapter. It’s definitely the question I get most often when I meet new people and tell them what I do. If it’s the right supplement, the answer is … something. The clinical research backs that up.

      Suppose your mood is a little better from the vitamin D. When your daughter asks you “Why, Daddy?” for the tenth time, instead of getting snippy you can answer her with a tickle and a smile.

      Suppose you have more mental energy from the B vitamins. Instead of surfing Facebook at work because your brain is too tired, you actually start working on the long-term project that is going to take your career to the next level.

      Suppose your joints don’t ache after the krill oil. Instead of sliding onto the couch when you get home, you go for a nice long run to clear your head.

      Suppose you can relax better after mineral supplementation. Instead of being stressed all night, you read a book that changes the way you think about some aspect of your world.

      Suppose you don’t have to worry about getting diarrhea when you travel that world. Maybe you book that trip to Peru and come back a different person.

      Small things have big consequences. Over time, those consequences compound. We are the accumulated momentum of all our choices. Some of those choices are binary. Go to the gym or not: that choice in that moment is going to change your day. Over time that choice will change your life. We tend to ignore the importance of fractional benefit because we lose sight of the concept of the tipping point—the little benefit that tips the cup to release a flood of benefit. It may be a 2 percent difference in force or momentum that flips the coin from heads to tails, or yes to no.

      Supplements stack the odds in your favor. You will survive without them. But will you thrive without them? Will you be your best? Probably not. You’re likely leaving some level of performance on the table. What is that costing you? That’s for you to find out. Whether that means scheduling time in the sun, eating mad greens, taking Epsom salts baths, or purchasing some supplements from a reputable source, the key is to treat yourself like a pro. Because you are a pro … you are professional at being you. You get paid for it, right? So be the best fucking you that you can be.

      THREE POINTERS

       There are two primary reasons to supplement: to remediate potential deficiencies, and to gain access to unusual or hard-to-find nutrients. You don’t need to think of supplements as something that comes in a capsule, either. Getting the right amount of sun, sleep, and food is itself a kind of supplementation, and the first line of defense.

       The key things to consider supplementing are greens, probiotics, B vitamins, krill oil, vitamin D, and additional minerals.

       While dietary supplements are generally safe, and more regulated than you might have heard, they are not all created equal. Look for companies that engage in clinical research on their products and use natural forms of ingredients when possible.

5

       DRIVE TIME, ALIVE TIME

      If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

      BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

      Your commute does not need to be the most dreaded and frustrating part of your day. On the contrary, it can contain some of the most enjoyable and productive minutes of your morning and your evening. But only if you stop looking at your commute as a prison sentence—and see it instead as an opportunity. It’s a choice to turn the dead time where you can’t do anything to alive time where you are learning, growing, or practicing mindfulness. It’s a simple distinction: alive versus dead. Choose to be alive.

      Getting Owned

      One of my favorite comedies of all time is Office Space, directed by Mike Judge, the genius behind Beavis and Butt-Head, Idiocracy, and Silicon Valley. It’s about a software engineer named Peter Gibbons who has basically had it with his boring life, his unfulfilling relationship, and his dead-end job. Early in the movie, he goes to a hypnotherapist with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend to get better. He tells the therapist that the reason he’s there is that every day is the worst day of his life. His nemesis is a clueless middle manager who passive-aggressively hounds him about making sure he uses the proper cover sheet on his TPS reports. Later on, talking to his neighbor about what he’d do with a million dollars, he says he’d sit on his ass, relax, and do nothing. Peter’s neighbor, like a redneck Confucius, reminds him that you don’t need a million dollars to relax and do nothing. “Take a look at my cousin,” he says. “He’s broke, don’t do shit.”

      Know where Office Space starts? In the car. On the way to work. In the span of ninety seconds, we see Peter go through anger, frustration, panic, desperation, exasperation, and defeat as he tries to navigate gridlocked traffic on the way to a job he hates. Mike Judge made this the very first scene in the film because he knew millions of people would immediately identify with Peter’s plight and every single emotion he was experiencing. Office Space came out in 1999, and not a lot has changed about our daily commute since. Actually, that’s not true. One thing has changed: our commute has gotten worse.

      Since 1980, when the US Census began tracking them, commutes have gotten 20 percent longer. And it’s not just one part of the country—it’s all of it. The average New Yorker spends nearly 70 minutes commuting to and from work each day. In Washington, DC, the average lobbyist, cabinet secretary, and government worker spent 32.8 minutes getting to work. On the West Coast, it takes the average Oakland resident 29.9 minutes to get to her desk, and the average worker in the Inland Empire 29.8 minutes. Three percent of the US population commutes more than 90 minutes each way.

      And that’s just America: the land of long drives, suburbs, and five-lane highways. In Western Europe, where they supposedly have superior public transportation and are more “enlightened” about the environment, the average commute is actually longer than America’s most congested cities. Better grab another éclair for the road!