Tucked within the training programs
of many in athletic discipline
is a particularly challenging type of workout called
the AMRAP workout.
Standing for as many reps as possible,
these types of workouts challenge athletes
to do a specific move as many times as they possibly can
within a set amount of time.
These types of workouts are intense
and they can be a great way to track the progress
of your fitness over time.
In fact, the climbing gym that I go to
actually uses the AMRAP format
to test our fitness in their general exercise classes.
But aside from its benefits in the gym,
the idea behind the AMRAP workout
can also help you become more productive as well.
This is an idea that I learned about from Jason Khalipa.
An athlete and successful entrepreneur
who competed in the Crossfit Games eight times
and actually won it in 2008.
Among other feats, Jason has backsquatted 450 pounds,
deadlifted 550 pounds and done
a single set of 64 pull ups,
which makes the 13 that I did for this video's opening shot
look pretty pathetic by comparison.
In addition to being an elite athlete though,
Jason is also the owner of a successful gym business
with six different locations.
And his ability to manage that business
along with his athletics and his family
stems from a concept that he calls the AMRAP Mentality.
I first learned about this concept
when I listened to Jason's interview on The Tim Ferriss Show
which is one of my favorite podcasts.
And ever since, it has been a very helpful
mental tool for me which is why
I wanna share it with you today.
To start, I wanna pose to you a question
that Jason brought up in that interview.
Are we more productive today than we were 20 years ago?
It's tempting to jump to an immediate yes
since we now have access to vastly better technology,
information, and automation than we had
back when A Bug's Life came out.
But is that actually a good thing?
Sure, I can now tell a robot to put things on my calendar
which is admittedly pretty cool
but all this technology also makes it
so much easier for us to constantly
pull our attention away from the present.
And this becomes habitual.
How many times have you been out to dinner with friends
and had the urge to check your phone for text messages
even though you're literally sitting
across the table from people you can talk to in person?
And how often do you feel your attention
being pulled away from your work
because you just have to know
what the best selling Godzilla movie is?
It's become easier than ever
for us to spend almost all of our time
in a distracted, unfocused state.
However, in these modern times,
there is still one situation where you almost
never find your mind wondering from the present.
As Jason points out in that interview,
when you're in the middle of an AMRAP workout,
when you're trying as hard as you can
to raise your chin to that bar just one more time,
that's when your mind is completely focused
on the task at hand.
The level of sheer intensity involved in an AMRAP round
makes it impossible to focus on your weekend plans
or that video game you played last night.
And this leads to the core idea
behind Jason's AMRAP Mentality.
Channeling that intense focus,
that present mindedness that you experience
during an intense workout and applying it
to the rest of your life, whether it be your homework
or the time you spend with friends and family.
Jason breaks the process of using this mentality
into four steps.
First, you need to work to identify your areas of focus.
Ideally, you should only have a few of these
and each of them should have what's called
a strong internal why, a compelling reason
for why you're focusing on them instead of something else.
And this part of the process might also involve
abandoning certain areas of focus
or at least putting them on the back burner
if you have too many.
Remember, you can only spin so many plates at once.
Actually I can't spin any plates.
Anyway, the areas of focus that I've chosen for myself
include one, creating videos with a specific focus
on the writing process and filming process
now that I have an editor.
Number two, my athletics, specifically training
in rock climbing and figure skating.
Three, spending time with my girlfriend Anna
and four, working on a talk for a conference
that's coming up in a couple of weeks.
Now before we move on to the second step in the process,
I wanna mention that you should be doing this
on a more micro level as well.
These are all macro goals that I just outlined
but everyday I also try to write down
a list of the things that I want to accomplish
by the end of the day.
And for each item on the list,
I ask myself, does that item have a strong internal why?
Alright, so after you've chosen all of those areas of focus,
the next step is simple.
Choose one area, focus on it with all of your attention,
and work hard at it.
Or in other words, AMRAP it.
In one of his talks about the AMRAP Mentality,
Jason gave this concept weight
by using the image of a bicycle.
When you're riding a bike,
your only focus is on where you're going,
it is not you're probably going to crash.
And if you wanna get where you're going
with any amount of speed, you're gonna have
to crank those pedals hard.
And this metaphor was especially fitting for me
just a couple of days ago because over the weekend,
I decided that I was gonna ride my bike
from my place in Denver over
to a friend's place in Boulder and then back.
The total distance of that ride is 70 miles
which is actually the longest
that I've ever ridden a bicycle.
Now I made pretty good time and I ended up
arriving in Boulder around 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon.
But since I stayed and hung out
at my friend's place for a while,
I didn't start heading back until around six p.m.
And before I even hit the halfway mark
on the ride back, it started getting dark
which meant that I had to spend about 20 miles
riding with my bike's headlamp.
It was a perfect example of the AMRAP Mentality in action.
The dark forced me to concentrate intensely
on where I was going and my surroundings
and the fact that it was getting darker and darker
motivated me to pedal quickly even though
the previous 50 miles had already worn me out.
I was, in a word, AMRAPing the entire way home.
Putting in focused, intense effort
until the job was done and I was ready
to switch to something else.
Which as it happens is the third step
in the AMRAP Mentality.
Switch gears and do it deliberately.
And of course when this happens,
you then go right back to step two,
right back to focusing intensely
in working hard at that next thing.
The idea here is that mentally,
switching from your math homework
to say hanging out with a friend
should be exactly like going from an AMRAP set of pull ups
to another AMRAP set of push ups.
Your focus calmness switches to a new thing
and then all of your attention becomes fixated upon it.
Lastly, the AMRAP Mentality requires
frequent periods of reevaluation.
You need to sit down quite often
and ask yourself, do my areas of focus still make sense?
Ask yourself if there's still
a strong internal why for each one
and whether or not there's still room
in your life for all of them.
And Jason gives a great example of this
in his interview on The Tim Ferriss Show.
After competing in the Crossfit Games for eight years,
Jason sat down and realized that his business
was growing, his family was growing,
and the competition in the games
was getting tougher and tougher each year.
So after reevaluating his priorities,
he decided to stop competing
so he could be a better father
and husband and business owner.
He realized that if he wanted to excel at these things,
there wasn't enough room in his life
to also be a serious competitor.
And this act of reevaluating is something
that you need to do as well.
Especially during periods of change in your life.
Even though the AMRAP Mentality will enable you
to be more productive, you always need to keep in mind
that your time, attention, and energy
are all limited resources.
So to recap, the AMRAP Mentality involves
one, identifying your areas of focus
and defining a strong internal why for each one.
Two, choosing a single area of focus,
working to remain mentally present the entire time
you're doing it and going at it hard.
Three, switch gears deliberately
and have a good reason for doing so.
Don't just jump back and forth between focuses.
And four, take time to reevaluate your areas of focus often
especially when you go through a life change
or you decide you wanna start spinning another plate.
Now the steps outlined in this process
might seem similar to other concepts
that I've shared in the past but there's a reason
that I wanted to share it with you now.
Namely that it's been a very useful visual metaphor for me.
As an athlete, I often do AMRAP workouts
as well as other high intensity forms of training.
I'm well acquainted with the all encompassing focus
that comes with trying to do as many pull ups as I can
or trying to do a difficult bouldering problem,
or trying to climb a big hill on my bike.
And when I remind myself of what it's like
to be in those situations, I find it easier
to slip into the flow state with my work as well.
In fact, I've actually started writing AMRAP
at the top of my daily to do lists.
I am a huge believe in the idea that visual metaphors
can be strong motivators.
When I'm out on a long bike ride,
I often picture the pistons in a car engine moving
which helps me regard my own legs as similar machines
that won't be influenced by whatever complaints
my brain wants to throw up about them.
This type of visualization is powerful
and many elite athletes actually use it before competing.
So even if you already known
that you should be focusing intensely
or switching gears deliberately, ask yourself, are you?
If you're not currently doing as well as you'd like,
well maybe give the AMRAP Mentality a try
because you might find it just as helpful as I did.
Now there is one last thing we need to talk about here.
A lot of you have readily admitted to the fact
that you watch my videos as a way
to procrastinate on your work.
And while I'm flattered, and while it's definitely
a better way to procrastinate than watching
baby otter videos, which I did yesterday,
you need to get back to work.
Now I know what some of you are going to say here.
But Tom, I'm completely stuck on my homework.
I've got a bunch of problems,
I worked as hard as I can but I can't solve them
and my professor doesn't have office hours until next April.
Well, if that is you, then one app
that you might wanna consider adding
to your phone's home screen is the Chegg Study app.
This app along with their website for you desktop users,
gives you access to step by step solutions
to the problems that you're gonna find in your textbooks.
And their library is massive,
spanning over 22,000 different textbooks
including, because I wanted to test
this service out for myself, the JAVA programming textbook
that gave me so much trouble back in college.
Additionally, if you get stuck on a problem
that's not in one of your textbooks,
you can also use the app to send a picture
to Chegg's team of Q&A experts
who can then send you an answer in as little as two hours.
And this is a great tool to have at your disposal
when you're in a pinch.
Chegg Study subscription is super affordable
and can be canceled at any time
if you find yourself not using it and what's better,
you can also get five bucks off
your first month subscription
by going over to chegg.com/ThomasFrank.
When I was in college, I used to use Chegg's Marketplace
of used and rental textbooks to save myself
a ton of money so I've been a fan of the company
for quite some time and it's cool
to see them adding these new features
to help students even more.
With that being said, I wanna give a big thanks
to Chegg for sponsoring this video
and being a supporter of this channel
and as always guys, thank you so much for watching.
If you found the ideas in this video helpful,
maybe give it a like to support this channel
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Thanks for watching and I will see you guys in the next one.