In the latest episode of my series learning from history's most influential people I chose to pull from the tech giant who has shaped the
Last two decades just about as much as anybody else
It feels like a good place to start while we all try to figure out how to adapt to this super connected world
we're not living in it's so easy to lose momentum or get lost chasing the wrong things and I'm I sense that most people
Encounter this at some point or another. I feel like daily stresses can really wear on you
Well, I recently came across this idea that Bill Gates calls they think week
It's actually something that he's been doing for decades now
And I'm pretty sure I stumbled upon this idea from the mini Netflix series that recently came out on him
Let me first say that I have huge respect for Bill Gates. You can say what you want about him
I'm pretty sure you could criticize just about anybody out there, but come on
I mean he has changed the world on more than one occasion through his work and his philanthropic
endeavors and I find his thirst for knowledge and his
Drive to make an impact on the world very inspiring. Anyway twice a year
He locks himself away in a cabin in a super location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest
And for an entire week, he just thinks and reads voraciously
I don't know if you're picking up on my enthusiasm right now, but I think this is amazing
I think the underlying idea here is that you're escaping from the frenetic chaotic energy of
daily life and
Focusing completely and intensely on something that we energizes
This is not a vacation so after kind of thinking about it for a little bit
I thought to myself, you know Bill's concept is really pretty amazing. I should try it
Is it weird for me to refer to him by just his first name?
For Bill Gates. Let's say that thing that we energizes him is books
He's known to take tons of books with him wherever he goes
How great would be to have an entire week for thinking forgetting clearing? Why don't I go for it?
I mean, I've never done anything like it before maybe it'll make me a billionaire too
No, but seriously a huge focus of this channel and this whole project I've been doing online over the last year and a half has
been
about my search for clarity of thought and
Clarity of mind and this sounded perfect
So I decided to rent a cabin in a secret location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and recreate a Bill Gates
week
I am super excited about this
Finally unplugging god it was so difficult. It was so challenging to just
Stop with everything I have since deleted
Pretty much every messaging app on my phone including Gmail
whatsapp and facebook Messenger Skype
There's just so many. There's too many. This is cool. It's raining a bunch right now
But snow is in the forecast
Let me paint a picture for you. This cabin is on four acres of land has absolutely no Wi-Fi and snow was coming
Okay, you are barely going to be able to see me. Yeah, that's a light. There we go
I
Finally got here. I'm in a winter wonderland the drive was gorgeous
I feel cocooned by the forest. Check this out Wow. Check it out. There's the cabin. Haha Wow
Okay, I just dragged all my stuff up in a sled. It's not that much and
My god, this is a beautiful little cabin. It's so huge ax. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's a Danish word
To mean cozy and well, there's a lot of meaning to that word. But anyway, this is just beautiful. Oh my goodness. I'm so
Excited for these next few days. There are some important differences to keep in mind here
He's a billionaire. I am NOT
So he would allegedly arrive in a helicopter and have a caretaker bring him meals twice a day
I'm not quite at that level
I've never even been in the helicopter the very moment I decided to actually go for it and
Walk off a week to do this. I felt so excited to not be
Worrying about the same things. I'm always worrying about for a little while, you know
I decided to adapt things a little bit to myself to give myself the best odds of having a positive experience
So while I did bring a book, I am a very slow reader
So I brought like a dozen audiobooks as well as materials to paint to write
And some online courses that I downloaded on my phone before leaving
these are some of my very favorite things in life and they make life worth living in my opinion and
It really goes to show you how backwards our priorities can get sometimes
Because I find that I often don't have enough time to get to these things
I was on the fence on if I should film anything at all
Because that's something that I do in my day to day life for work and to make a living
But I did end up deciding that it would be really great to
Document things and have something to look back on beyond the minimal effort
Documentation that I did during this week. This was really about creating I guess a personal retreat if you will
Okay, I look like shit right now
But I just left for more than eleven hours. I
Cannot believe that. I almost never sleep that amount of time, but I think the fact that I didn't set an alarm and just
Let myself sleep. Essentially. There's so much quiet here. I'm so ready for a creative day
Let's do this thing. Look what is outside this is
unreal
Gorgeous I mean seriously, it looks like I'm in a movie or something in every direction
by the way
I mean no matter which way I look is all white here is where I will be working today
I am one lucky guy Wow
So excited
Wow
Wow, oh my goodness
Holy smokes
This is crazy
Wow it is so beautiful right now
This is where I came from last night and
This is where I'm staying right now
doing this and all this time that I have on my hands right now has kind of made me think about the fact that
You know
there's a very real cost every single time you reach for your phone and respond to a text or respond to an email or
You know watch the latest news or try to keep up with what's going on
There's a very real cost to that every single time
It happens and the insidious part is that it seems invisible each little time that that happens
Doesn't have a huge impact in and of itself, but all add it up
It's a life that's distracted and constantly being interrupted and I get frustrated with myself because I fall into that trap
And find that I can sometimes set up this environment for myself
that
Doesn't allow me to stay focused like I'm getting caught up in all the fast-paced changes that are going on around me
And I don't want to do that all the time. It's it's
exhausting and that's what I mean by a very real cost is that it adds up and it
It sort of degrades your quality of life in a way, you know
so
anyway, just
Thinking about that and absorbing what's around me right now and shivering my ass off
All right, just a little update I spent the last three hours
Almost like two hours 45 minutes writing
the time flew by
Was just super focused and every time I think I was maybe considering reaching over to my phone and I don't know
Unlocking it and checking what's up. I realized that's completely pointless. There's nothing waiting for me. So I just got this
Impulse in the last few minutes to get up and leave and go do something else run get out of here
I think I'm used to
Distracting myself. I think I'm not
so used to staying focused on one task and just
putting all of my
Concentration into one thing at a time and I think there's something a little bit scary and uncomfortable
About committing myself to just one thing for a extended period of time I
Feel like I can be such a complicated mess of emotions as it is
I think there is something a little bit scary to me about going to a place by myself and
Not letting in other noise that can distract me from my own thoughts and what's going on in my head
It's interesting that my first reaction is that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with
the things I might discover if I just take the time to
Listen to what's going on internally and explore. That's the weird thing right that we don't know ourselves
Sounds paradoxical it sounds like it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. How can you not know yourself?
But really how much do you know about yourself?
Being out there really puts on things into perspective for me and I felt that in giving myself some time to rest and
to slow down I
Was able to feel so much more grateful for all the amazing things happening in my life right now
I decided I needed a little break from writing. I can use some air so I'm gonna take a walk in the snow
I just think I'll take my camera and I think a couple of photos here and there I don't get this opportunity to walk around
in a snowy
Forest that often I've got to say I am finding this
Experiment this whole project this experience whatever this is to be delightful
One of the things that has jumped out to me has been my ability to focus for a long period of time
I've been sitting down and writing for two three four hours at a time and that's not typical for me. I don't usually
Work that way. It's actually reminding me of a winter break. I had in particular when I was like
13 I kind of actually stumbled upon the concept of flow where I spent the entire winter break at
my
Dining room table with my computer and I tried to write a book and I got a hundred five pages in there really crappy
so the book didn't get anywhere, but
it was amazing to just sit down and I would just write for like I don't know six or eight hours at a time and
lose track of time
This is reminding me of that a little bit because every time I have the impulse to like reach over to my phone or whatever
There's really nothing I can do so at best
What I'll do is maybe take a little break and walk around outside, which is wonderful the fresh air and visuals and everything are
stimulating for me, but that aside there's not really I don't have that many options like it's either keep writing or
You know, maybe do something else creative. It's been cool. I mean, this makes me think a little bit
No falling
This really makes me think about one of the things that I talked about right at the end of last year
Which was that I wanted to focus on
environment among a couple other things to really
give myself a better chance of
succeeding, you know and
living the kind of life that I want to live and I
Feel like this is a really clear example
It's like this is the ideal environment for me to do the creative work that I want to be doing
I can wake up late. I can sleep in
You know I can futz around and I can still have an incredibly productive day a day
That's maybe more productive than an ordinary day that I live in the city simply because there's just nothing to pull me away
From what I want to be doing and that's like unbeatable
Personally I think this is a way better way to spend a week than going on vacation somewhere
I find that it doesn't take my body very long to recover. It's more so about
Getting my mind off of things and focusing on this kinds of stuff that recharges me on a creative and emotional level, you know
I didn't notice a bit of a compounding effect where with each day that passed I was able to dig deeper into the work that
I was doing and just focused more on it
it takes a while to
Actually unplug and I completely understand the fear of falling behind with work by taking an entire week to do something like this
But if you think about it
If work always takes priority, how free are you really? I also want to add that
I find that taking breaks actually results in me becoming more productive long-term
It's very counterintuitive
But it's just so important to break away from stuff sometimes since I am NOT a huge reader
I've been listening to audio books and painting for the last
Actually, like four hours. This is the original photo that I took
And I mean the process of now of recreating it. I'm the very beginning still so you
would not it's not ready to be shown to the world, but
having a lot of fun and I'm listening to audiobooks at the same time Malcolm Gladwell is incredible and
yeah, so
It is the end of the week. I really really enjoyed this week
I feel like it took me a full day or two to start to slow down and
Unplug and focus on the creative work that I wanted to do. This is a really cool way to reset
I don't know refocus in many ways on the really important stuff the stuff that like refuels me
I'm looking forward to tackling the stuff that I was working on before and just diving back into my work which is exactly the
result the goal I was going for
Just kidding gotta take my phone with me I
Came back just so much more excited about life, and I'm realizing that that's priceless
Like that's not something you can buy with money. Alright
I'll see you soon