I'm guessing your mood and productivity resembles more of a yo-yo than the Instagram of Jocko
Willink. You may be crushing it for days or weeks on it. You're waking up every day 5:00 AM without
your alarm clock, you're exercising regularly. Heck, you're even reading books again. And then
just like that it all disappears. Next thing you know you've got Cheeto dust on your fingers and
you can't even remember the last time you went to the gym. No one is immune from
getting into a rut or feeling like crap. Here is how to get out of it.
What's going on guys? For those of you who are new here, my name is Kevin Jubbal. Physician
entrepreneur based in Las Vegas, formerly in plastic surgery. Now, I'll admit that intro was
a little bit dramatic, but you get the idea. It's very common to find yourself oscillating
between one end being really productive, having everything tied down for some period of time.
And then on the other hand feeling like a sloth and just not getting anything done. Before we dive
in, of course the necessary disclaimer. This is not medical advice, I am not your doctor. If you
have concerning symptoms, seek professional advice from your physician or a licensed therapist. All
right, so step one is a foundation audit. This is something I've only been doing for the last few
months. And by doing this, most of the other steps actually become unnecessary because this usually
addresses it. So what I do is I run through a checklist of three core foundational habits.
And those are number one sleep, number two exercise and number three, my morning routine.
So breaking it down further. For sleep it's not just a matter of how many hours I'm sleeping,
but also the quality of that sleep. And our memory is of course notoriously unreliable.
So I rely on data and I use the aura rank to do that, to track my sleep stages, the
total amount of sleep, my HRV, my resting heart rate, things like that. Number two is exercise.
If I haven't gone to the gym or exercised for three days and I feel like crap,
I have a pretty easy fix that usually works most of the time. And then number three is the morning
routine. The importance of this one was really highlighted only recently when I got my second
dose of the COVID vaccine. The next morning I felt like total crap. I had a terrible headache,
just body feeling off, right? And because I was feeling so off, I actually skipped
my morning routine which rarely happens. What I ended up doing was doing my morning stretching
routine at noon rather than at like seven or 8:00 AM. And instantly I felt way better.
All the tension in my shoulders, traps, neck disappeared, my headache was gone. I just felt
way better, way looser, way less tense. And now this is definitely part of those foundational
habits that I check. Whereas in the past I didn't think of it as much. Now I had this whole
kind of overkill morning routine that works for me, for a lot of people it's probably too much.
And I would say the two most important things for me because not all of those things are really
mission critical, but the two most important things would be number one the stretching.
That really helps my body just feel way better. And then number two, mindfulness
of some sort. And that can be as little as five minutes just focusing on my breath. But Kevin,
I feel so crappy I can't even get to the point of looking at these three foundational habits.
Look, I get it and I've been there too. When I'm at that much of a slump I ask myself,
"What do I hate more? Do I hate feeling this way? Feeling like crap and just not being proud of how
I'm spending my time or do I hate working on these three foundations?" That usually gets
my ass into gear. Now, before we get to step two, a quick little detour. I don't think it's
always necessary or important to be running away from your emotions if that makes sense. A lot of
times we have these difficult emotions and rather than trying to push them away and then try to just
feel better by following these four steps, you may want to actually explore them and see what's
there. Do you feel lonely? Do you feel helpless? Do you feel angry? What is the underlying emotion?
And I find that by being mindful and curious about this, I've actually grown a lot personally in my
life. And everyone has different ways of dealing with that, whether it's journaling or talking
to friends or talking to a therapist, but I do think there is true value there. And back to your
regular scheduled programming, step two is the one small win rule. Oftentimes we're so overwhelmed
by all the things we need to take care of that even getting started is intimidating. And this
is actually the reason why the Pomodoro technique is so incredibly effective. Because it reduces the
activation energy so getting started becomes just way easier. So to get out of a rut we use
the same strategy, the same tactic, but through the one small win rule. And what you want to
do is focus on one small, simple, easy task that shouldn't take you any more than a couple minutes.
The idea here is that once you get that ball rolling, once you get moving, it's going to be
so much easier to do the next thing, and the next thing, and the thing after that. If you've
seen my book summary of Mark Manson's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, then this diagram is
going to look familiar. Essentially action isn't just the result of motivation and inspiration,
but also the cause of it. So to get the ball rolling and to get inserted into this loop,
we can take this one small action and then we'll feel motivated and inspired
to take on further action. When I say small I really mean small. This can be as simple as
making your bed or putting away the dishes. It should be something small,
easy, and bite-size. If you get too ambitious here, you're going to be stuck where you started.
Step three, build momentum. Now that you have the ball rolling
don't stop. Keep building that momentum. And if you find yourself slowing down and getting
tired of whatever it is that you're doing, which is totally normal, then switch tasks
to something else that is also productive to keep that ball rolling. For example, let's say you're
cleaning up your apartment and you're getting tired and bored of that. You can feel yourself
slowing down. Rather than just stopping try switching it up, get on your computer,
batch those emails, do your physics practice problems or go cook a meal. Whatever you do
do not plop yourself down on the couch and start mindlessly scrolling on Instagram.
The way this normally works out in my life is actually the reverse where I'll be on my computer
handling medical insiders or ma'am the business side for a couple hours. Sometimes on a bad day
maybe only 30 minutes, then I'm just like, "God, I'm feeling really out of it, I want to stop."
And then I'll switch to something like cleaning up the house or cooking food or getting to the
gym and doing my workout routine. Doing something that is productive in some capacity. Step four
is to trust your past self. Now getting in a rut sucks and I'm not aware of any full-proof way
that is 100% going to eliminate that risk moving forward. But there are some things that we can do
to mitigate that risk in the future. Now that you're in a position where you have some
positive momentum and some motivation seize that opportunity by actually creating some systems that
are going to help you stay on track in the future and avoid those bad habits that you know you just
shouldn't be doing. Now, the reason I call this trusting your past self is because sure,
there are some systems you can put in place where they're completely external, right?
So for example, one of my favorites is my lights will turn red to remind me to get
ready for that. That's completely external, but there are many other rules and guidelines you
may want to create for yourself where you just need to trust what you decided in the past.
That's why it's trusting your past self. But if you're too aggressive or unrealistic with this,
you're just going to blow past it and ignore those guidelines or rules that
you've set for yourself. So for example, back when I was in med school one of my buddies he
was trying to cut down his alcohol intake every time we went out. And he'd be like,
"You know what guys? I just stopped drinking. I've been having too much I'm done." You gave
it like two hours into the night and he was like five drinks deep. So obviously that didn't work.
But in the future later on he realized, "Hey, all right, that was a little bit too extreme.
I couldn't stick to that. What I'm going to do is say no more than three drinks a night." And
what do you know? He actually stuck to that. Three drinks was an improvement for him. He
was able to decrease his alcohol intake and he was consistent, he's stuck with it. Now,
regardless of where you are on the spectrum right now in this moment,
maybe you're feeling really inspired and you want to take action or maybe you're on the
other end and you're just like, "Dude, I can't do anything." Remember that emotions are fleeting.
They are just directions on a compass. They are temporary by nature. And as humans we're
just really bad at estimating how are we going to feel about doing something in the future.
So don't get ahead of yourself here and remember that it's much better to be
consistent with a small behavior change over time, rather than trying to take this big
grand change and only hitting it once every few months. Kind of like my friend with his alcohol.
All right, guys. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, you may enjoy this one
or possibly that one. Much love and I'll see you guys there.