- Hey, this is Eric Nam,
and this is everything I do in a day.
[upbeat music]
So I don't have a normal, regimented schedule at all,
but on a normal day, I'd say I wake up around 10 a.m.
I use the alarm tune that it's like Apocalypse Now.
It's a bam, bam, bam.
It's the immediate heart attack as soon as you wake up,
so you wake up with anxiety.
I will snooze anywhere from five to 10 times.
If I need to get up at 10, I will start at like 9:30,
and there will be increments just to get me up.
So the first thing I do when I get out of bed,
I will check my phone real quick
because I live in Korea,
but my stuff is split between LA and Korea.
There's always stuff that happens overnight
while I'm sleeping, so I check my phone,
make sure there isn't anything crazy urgent
I have to jump on the phone for,
and then I will head to my bathroom.
The first thing I do when I get to the bathroom
is I look at myself in the mirror,
and I'm usually shocked at how I look,
and then I tell myself it's gonna be okay
and jump in the shower.
[laughing]
Nobody looks good getting out of bed.
When you get out of bed, you are swollen,
you are bloated, your eyes are kind of like this.
I look like a Sesame Street character in real life
when I wake up.
But not like the cute ones, like kind of like the ones
that look a little rough around the edges.
So I go to the bathroom, get in the shower,
shampoo your hair, body wash, face wash,
and then I'm out.
And then I will take my toothbrush, toothpaste,
and I brush my teeth, really just get in there
'cause nobody wants that stinky morning breath.
I have an electric toothbrush and a regular toothbrush.
I think I find myself
gravitating towards a regular toothbrush more often.
I don't have the patience to sit there
and let it actually just do its job.
I would rather just be aggressive
and just get in there and just get it done.
And then I take some gargle, Listerine,
just start the day feeling real fresh.
Then I go through my morning skincare routine.
First of all, shave.
Once I shave, I try to put some aftershave on,
so I do that, and then I go through my routine
which is you have toner and essence.
You've got some serum, you got eye cream,
you got moisturizer, you got your SPF.
Am I missing anything?
I think that's good, right?
That's enough, that's enough for a day.
Skincare routines can take a long time,
but for me, I really think I'm done with it
in about a minute and a half, two minutes,
and then I dry my hair.
I didn't use to dry my hair either,
but my hair stylist team was like
that's really bad for your scalp
because you're letting your scalp just sit there wet,
so I've started to dry my hair.
That's what grown people do apparently.
Then I get dressed.
Typically I find myself wearing sweats,
so really comfortable, track pants and sneakers from Nike,
and a hoodie.
As I get ready, I'm always playing music
or I'm listening to a podcast,
so in the morning I'm listening to "The Daily"
from "The New York Times" or I'm listening to Dax Shepard.
I have a few podcasts that I do,
and I like to go back and listen to what I did, my work,
just to make sure the quality's there,
so I have two shows.
One's called K-Pop Daebak,
which is kind of like a personal K-Pop show,
and then another one called I Think You're Dope
which is interviewing interesting, fascinating people
from all around the world, so Olympians, actors, authors,
musicians, a lot of pod casts in the morning.
So I do that, go to my kitchen,
and if I'm in a rush, I'll have like an espresso pod,
and if I have some time, I'll do the French press thing.
I usually don't really eat breakfast,
but if I am having breakfast,
breakfast is pretty simple.
It's oatmeal, and if I have whatever frozen fruits,
blueberries or bananas or whatever I have laying around,
I'll just kind of throw it all in,
and that's my breakfast for the day.
And then I'm out the door to do whatever I need to do.
Depending on the day, it's very different,
but if I'm out the day, let's say like 10:30,
get picked up by my manager,
and we have a van, it's called the Carnival.
We spend so much time in it,
that it's like a second home on wheels.
If it's a day where we're shooting something,
we have press, we're gonna head to hair and makeup,
and we'll spend about an hour there getting hair, makeup did
'cause we gotta look good on camera.
If I haven't had breakfast, I'll probably order something
like Poke bowls, but in Korea they're called
[speaking Korean]
so it's a little bit different.
You have your raw Sashimi on a bed of lettuce
over rice with red pepper paste
with a little bit of vinegar.
It's sweet, it's tangy.
I like to think it's nutritious and healthy,
It is, right?
Yeah.
So once we're done, we're ready.
So we go to the studio.
Usually, I'd say normal studio, I get in around two o'clock.
If it's a good day, you know, the song is really easy
or we've already worked on it
or I know exactly what I'm doing,
we'll be in and out within a span of three to four hours.
On a long day, let's say six o'clock.
We'll be there from two to six.
You've been singing for a few hours.
You've been using your creative juices.
We're hungry again, so we gotta eat again.
We either order to the studio,
or if we have some time,
we'll go out to a restaurant nearby,
and then usually we have a bunch of other stuff to do.
I will head usually to a studio to do a podcast.
I have two weekly podcasts,
and so editing those, recording those,
writing for those, setting things up,
that takes up a lot of my time,
so after recording, we'll go do a podcast.
Sometimes it's with myself, sometimes it's with a guest,
a special guest.
Take all of our photos, make sure everybody looks good,
everybody's happy, we've got our social assets,
and then we will usually go to the studio
to get into dance rehearsal.
We start, tend to start around like 10-ish.
It's just easiest for us
to get all of our schedules together
with me and my team later at night.
It'll be either cleaning up pieces
that we haven't done in awhile or learning new ones
that we have to prepare for the tour
or the album drop,
and typically we'll go to about midnight,
I'd say on a short day.
Usually it'll go a little longer.
After you've danced for a few hours, what happens?
Everyone's hungry again,
and Korea has this amazing nightlife and night culture
that revolves around specific types of food
that are available at night.
For example you may have heard of it,
Chimaek, chicken and beer.
You have like your regular fries,
you got your spicy fries,
you got your sweet and sour, you got your onion,
you got your cheese, you got your barbecue,
like literally the list goes on forever.
I wish I was making this up.
This is completely true.
You can look this up,
so we will either order it to the studio,
or if I have friends that are waiting around,
I'll go to like a local watering hole
that I like to frequent.
Once you're eating, you're drinking,
you can't immediately go to bed,
so like you kind of sit there, you kind of talk for a bit.
At this point, my team's gone.
I walk home, and I get ready for bed.
Drink a lot of water.
I tend to light a candle or so,
I really like different scents, so I light a candle.
I will play some music, shower, all my makeup off
because I've been doing press stuff
and shooting stuff all day.
Do my nighttime skincare routine.
I probably go to bed around 4:30.
Stare at my iPhone, on Instagram looking at photos
or videos or whatever, and then I recently,
and this is probably the worst addition to my room.
I got a t.v., so I end up watching Netflix on that,
watching some murder mystery,
and feeling really bad about life,
and then I'm like, be thankful that your life is amazing,
and I fall asleep.
So, yeah, that's kind of like a condensed packed schedule
of what I do in a day.
It's a lot, but that's why I'm always awake.
Anyways, hope you have a great day.
See you all soon.
Bye.