- Even if you are normally a happy, motivated,
and generally high-energy person,
it's likely that at some point in your life,
you're gonna find yourself in a rut.
You know, a period of time where you feel
listless and demotivated.
You feel burnt out.
You don't know what to do with yourself,
and you don't really feel like doing anything.
And now you're wondering to yourself, how did I get here?
And more importantly, how do I get out of this rut?
Well, I have certainly gone through my share of ruts
and listless periods of my life before.
So what I wanna do with this video
is share a few of the things
that have helped me get myself out of them.
Now, before we get into it, I do wanna note
that I think there is a big difference
between a temporary rut and actual depression.
And if you feel like what you're experiencing
is actual depression, well the tips in this video
may end up helping you, but I don't wanna come off
as saying that they are the be all, end all solutions
because this is obviously a much more
complicated and serious condition.
So in addition to what I'm gonna share in this video,
I'm also gonna have a link in the description down below
to a resource written by a much more qualified person
that you might want to check out.
(bass music)
The first strategy that I wanna talk about here,
and something that almost never fails to lift my spirits
and get me out of the ruts that I sometimes find myself in
is maintaining relationships with people who inspire you.
This is something that all of us need to be doing.
And to punctuate that, I wanna share a passage
from Ray Dalio's excellent book Principles.
Meaningful work and meaningful relationships
aren't just nice things we choose for ourselves.
They are genetically programmed into us.
The meaningful relationships we get
from social cooperation make us happier,
healthier, and more productive.
Social cooperation is also integral to effective work.
It is one of the defining characteristics of being human.
And one thing that I wanna point out here
is that you might not be getting these types of interactions
from your normal, everyday friend group.
One thing that I realized about my friend group in college
is that while I loved my friends dearly,
a lot of our interactions basically boiled down
to playing video games together and sharing references
and inside jokes that we'd said a million times before.
And those kind of interactions, while fun,
and a good reminder that you're inside your comfort zone,
that you're safe, are not challenging,
they're not inspiring.
They don't really give you that sense of purpose
that keeps you from falling into a rut.
When all of your interactions on a day-to-day basis
are only of that kind, it's almost as if
you've locked the part of your brain that craves growth
and challenges into solitary confinement.
And a lot of studies have conclusively proven
that solitary confinement, like the real kind,
has really bad psychological consequences,
can cause brain damage.
Now obviously we're not talking about
the exact same kind of thing here,
we're just kind of making a metaphor,
but you can see how locking that part of your brain away,
denying it those types of relationships and interactions
for a long time can negatively impact your mental state.
Now if your friend group is like mine,
it does not mean you need to go ditch your friends,
and try to find friends who are
super productive all the time.
But what it does mean, is that you need to spend
at least some of your time seeking out interactions
with people who are doing inspiring and challenging things,
the kind of things that are going to motivate you
to go stretch your own capabilities.
I'm reminded of this every single time
I go to a professional conference like VidCon,
or even when I just get on Skype
and chat with one of my entrepreneur friends.
I always come away from these conversations
feeling energized and brimming with new ideas.
So if you find yourself in a rut,
one way that you can start to get yourself out of it
is to seek out these types of conversations
and interactions with people
who are going to challenge you and inspire you.
One way can be to go to events,
whether it's something across the country like VidCon,
or just a local organization in your town
or a club at your school, but something even easier
is just to reach out to a friend
you haven't talked to in a while and ask them to catch up.
My friend Ben Altman, who's one of the guys
who runs the Charisma on Command channel
actually did this to me a couple of weeks ago.
He emailed me, said hey, we haven't caught up in a while.
Let's set up a time to chat on the phone.
And then last week we had a great conversation.
And I came away from that conversation really motivated,
and I bet he did too.
And if you wanna get the benefits
of these types of conversations on a regular basis,
then one thing you can do is set up
what I like to call a Jedi Council.
Now if you're the kind of person who's into reading
all those other personal development blogs and books
out there, and you listen to all the other
gurus quote unquote, then you're probably
gonna hear this called mastermind groups.
But I think that term is kinda cringy and way too businessy
so I'm goin' with Jedi Councils.
Basically this is a pre-planned conversation
that happens maybe every week, or every two weeks,
or maybe even every month with people who inspire you,
people who have the same values,
people at maybe the same level of professional development,
people with whom you can swap feedback on projects,
and stay mutually accountable.
I actually have one of these set up every single week
on Thursdays with my friends Andrew and Matt,
and these conversations are incredibly useful
for both my business's success,
but also my level of personal motivation.
But even if you don't wanna go
as far as setting up a Jedi Council,
I do encourage you to call a friend sometime this week,
and just have a casual conversation.
(bass music)
All right the next strategy we're going to talk about
is giving yourself permission to take a break or a vacation.
And I wanna put emphasis on that word permission.
See, I think one of the biggest culprits
for us falling into ruts is that we put
too much on our plate, we expect too much of ourselves,
and then we find ourselves constantly behind
and constantly stressed.
This is incredibly common for students,
and it's incredibly common for anybody
who's really ambitious in their career.
And when we are constantly in this state,
we are putting chronic stress on our bodies and our minds.
This can lead to burnout, and this can lead to feeling
like we really don't have any motivation to do anything.
And I think the solution to this problem
is to take an actual planned break,
something that you again, give yourself permission to do.
And this is something that I kind of ignored
for a really long time.
I didn't take a real, actual vacation
from halfway through 2016 until halfway through 2018,
a period of two years.
Now during that period, I did definitely travel a lot,
but it was always for business.
And any time a travel opportunity came up,
I would only take it if there was a business reason for it,
be it flying out to speak at a conference,
or going to New York just a month ago
to record my audiobook, it was always business,
business, business when it came to travel for me.
Now I took little, small breaks,
but I never really gave myself permission
to take an extended break from my work.
So finally in May of last year,
my girlfriend hounded me enough, and we booked
an actual vacation to San Diego for about a week.
And other than one day where I took the opportunity
to see somebody out there who I really liked
and looked up to, we spent the rest
of that entire time just relaxing.
I surfed, I ate at restaurants,
I hung out and played video games, that was about it.
And when I got home from that vacation,
I was reminded of just how useful vacations could be.
Because I found myself having a lot more motivation,
both for my work, but also for staying consistent
on my daily, healthy habits.
I found it much easier to consistently go to the gym
and work out, to read more often,
to go for bike rides so I get my Strava miles,
and to follow a healthier diet.
And the reason for this, which I will now take
much more seriously in the future,
is that we operate on cycles of work and rest.
Just like on a daily time scale,
we need to work and have waking hours,
and then go to sleep, on a larger time scale,
we need to have periods of work and intensity,
and then periods of relaxation
so we can basically recharge our batteries.
So if you're in a rut and you believe the reason
is that you're burned out from chronic stress,
give yourself permission to take a break.
And it doesn't have to be something big or crazy
like flying out to San Diego for a surfing vacation.
By best friend Martin, just a couple of months ago,
actually booked a hotel room in our city of Denver
for one night, just so he could get out of his apartment
and be near a bookstore that he really liked.
And while that was much less expensive,
and didn't require him to take any time off of work,
he still got the same benefits.
(bass music)
All right, the final tactic I'm gonna talk about here
is exploring new interests.
Because whenever I find myself in a rut,
it's usually because I feel like I've stagnated,
I haven't learned something new in quite a while,
and I don't really know what I'm doing with myself,
and life kinda feels boring.
But the moment that I kind of pull out a thread of interest
and let it take me somewhere,
that's when life starts to feel exciting again.
That when I start learning new things
and I'm really, really motivated,
and just basically psyched about life in general.
So to give you guys an example for this idea,
let's rewind the clocks about a year.
Because last July and last August,
I found myself in a pretty bad rut.
I felt listless.
I felt like I really didn't know what to do with myself,
and it was kinda weird because I had moved to Denver
about four month prior, and because of that
I kinda had this feeling like
life was supposed to be awesome all the time
since I lived in this awesome city,
but that wasn't the case.
Now, luckily around that time,
my friend Alex flew out from Texas
to visit me with another one of his friends.
And of course we did all the cool Colorado things,
we went hiking, we went to all the cool restaurants
here in Denver.
But at one point during his visit,
we also ended up talking about something
that was a big interest of his at the time
which was blockchain and cryptocurrency.
And this was an area that I really had no interest
in myself at the time, I had never really dabbled in it,
it seemed really complicated.
But because I wanted to have a good conversation
with my friend, I heard him out.
And after the conversation, I started getting
a little bit interested in the subject.
Not a lot, but a little bit.
And I know from experience,
when I get a little bit of interest,
I should pull on that little thread,
because again, you don't have innate passions, right?
You have little bits of interest that you explore,
and then maybe that turns into something bigger.
Interest is like a little fire, right?
You have to fuel it, you have to feed it
so it can get bigger, until it's eventually
something that is burning very brightly.
So I went and did some reading.
I started reading some tutorial articles,
some basic stuff, and I got a little bit more interested.
And then I went and read the original Bitcoin White Paper,
and got a little bit more interested.
And it didn't even stop there.
My interest eventually grew to include cryptography
as a general subject, I went and read books
like The Code Book, which made it
onto my 2017 favorite books list, fantastic book by the way.
And I even remember at one point
trying to code my own encryption algorithm
in JavaScript one afternoon just because I was curious,
and I wanted to see if I could do it.
Now I'm not trying to say that the way
you're gonna get yourself out of a rut
is to go learn about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
That's just one particular thing that caught my interest,
and I honestly have a lot of interests.
Later that year, my interest in cryptocurrency
and cryptography eventually faded,
and then I got really into cooking.
And I spent a ton of time learning how to cook,
learning the science of cooking, learning tons of recipes,
and that was yet another time in my life
where I was not in a rut,
and I was very motivated and very happy.
All I'm trying to say here is that when you find yourself
in a rut, one of the likely causes of it
is that you're stagnating,
you haven't learned something in a while.
So if a thread of interest presents itself
in any shape or form, tug on it,
no matter how thin it is,
because it might take you somewhere really interesting.
And it's worth noting that learning new things
on a constant basis could also lead you
to a useful new skill that could even change
the trajectory of your career.
Like, maybe you have an interest
in learning how digital animation works.
Well, why not learn how to go out and do that yourself?
As someone who dabbles in digital animation personally,
with programs like After Effects,
I've learned that this is a really useful skill,
that not only helps me make higher quality videos,
but could also help me land a job if I ever needed one.
And with a skill like digital animation,
and an increasingly large number of others,
you don't have to go to school
or enroll in a big, formal program to get really good at it.
There are a ton of great resources online
that you can use to start learning,
and one of the best ones out there is Skillshare.
While they have a huge library of over 20,000 courses
spanning a ton of different skill areas,
Skillshare's selection of digital animation courses
is particularly strong.
One of my favorites is Jake Bartlett's course
on animating with light and after effects,
which teaches you these really cool
neon-lighting techniques that seem impossibly difficult
to pull off at first, until of course you learn
the relatively simple techniques behind them.
You'll also find more comprehensive animation courses
if you're a beginner, and complimentary courses
on skills like video editing
and mastering vector illustration.
And naturally, with such a big library,
you'll also find courses on photography,
and programming, and business and marketing,
and a ton of different skill areas.
And the best part is that almost all of their courses
include hands-on challenges, sample projects,
and an area where you can get feedback and ask questions.
So if you wanna start learning new skills,
then Skillshare is the place to do it.
And if you're among the first 500 people who click the link
in the description down below and sign up,
you're gonna get a two-month free trial
with unlimited access to their library.
I wanna give a big thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video,
and being a continued supporter of this channel.
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and if you did, definitely give it a like
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