- One of the most common problems I hear about nowadays.
And I'm sure everyone else does
is this feeling of being chronically tired
Because sometimes it feels like
no matter how much sleep you get
you just can't seem to perk up,
feel energetic for most of the day, every single day,
so that you can tackle your day and your life with energy.
You know, this lack of energy throughout the day,
this chronic tiredness is something
that you would expect to happen to you
if you were like 60 years old, 70, 80 years old
but it's happening to 20 and 30 year olds, 15 year olds
young people who are supposed
to have this youthful exuberance to them,
but they find themselves operating in life
with a sluggishness and dread.
Believe me, I've been there.
I've been there so many times in my life.
So many times in fact,
that it really caused me to dive deep and figure out
what are the things that are actually going to contribute
to me having more energy
and how do I make those things happen every single day.
And through all my research and self experimentation
I've found out that the most important things
are kind of the things that you hear all the time.
Sleep, exercise, and diet.
You might be tempted now to click away from this video
because you already know this
but that's exactly where I ran into problems.
I was treating sleep, exercise and diet like a checklist.
It's like, yeah, I get a reasonable amount of sleep.
I exercise.
I'm an athletic guy.
Yeah, I eat food.
So those things can't be the reason
why I'm feeling sluggish.
So I started looking for these like quick tips
and maybe I was iron deficient
or maybe I had a gluten sensitivity
or maybe I needed to decalcify my pineal gland.
I skipped over the fundamentals in search
for some miracle pill that would make me less tired
throughout the day.
It wasn't until I revisited the basics
and try to absolutely nail them
that I realized that was the problem the whole time.
Especially sleep.
So in this video
I wanna go over some things that I've implemented
in my life that really has given me a lot more energy
throughout the day on a consistent basis.
And yeah, hopefully they work for you as well.
- [Narrator] Are you always tired?
Do you move around the house?
Dreaming big dreams
but like the energy to make them come true?
Well, maybe it's because you suck.
(bright upbeat music)
What the fuck?
- Okay, so thing number one, I stopped misusing caffeine.
Now caffeine is one of those weird ones.
People think they know a lot about how caffeine works.
You know, you've probably heard
that caffeine lasts between five and seven hours.
So, you know, don't drink too much caffeine
in the afternoon, or you might not be able to fall asleep.
But the weird thing about caffeine is
that it lasts a lot longer than five to seven hours.
The half-life of caffeine is five to seven hours.
And half-life means that after five to seven hours
half the caffeine is still in your system.
And then it takes another five to seven hours after that
for half of that amount of caffeine to leave your system.
So if you have a cup of coffee at like 4:00 PM,
which is, you know kind of late,
but it's probably not gonna ruin your sleep
or something like that.
Think again, if you have coffee at 4:00 PM
by 11:00 PM, there's a good chance
that 50% of that caffeine is still in your system.
That means by like 5:00 AM.
There's a good chance
that a quarter of the original 4:00 PM cup of coffee
is still in your system.
You know, deep into the night
is when you're supposed to be having some of your deepest,
most restorative sleep of your life.
This is the kind of sleep that helps you form memories
process the information you were bombarded with
throughout the day, form connections
form new ideas, so that you can be more creative.
The kind of sleep that's supposed to be healing
your muscle tissues, purging your body
of adenosine so that you don't feel tired in the morning.
There's a lot of important things that are going on
while you're sleeping and your body being filled
with this caffeine is seriously inhibiting those processes.
So the simple tweak that I did
that helped me not misuse caffeine
is to just not drink caffeine past lunchtime.
I have the one that I wake up with in the morning.
And since I'm a little bit of a caffeine fiend,
I have another one about two hours after that
to really get my morning productivity
the kind of meth head high that I'm looking for.
I'll still get the caffeine crash late after lunch.
I expect that, it's the kind of game you play.
If you're a caffeine addict like me,
but at least when I want to put my head on the pillow
after a hard day's work
I'm actually able to get the sleep that my body needs.
So do not drink caffeine past 12:00 PM.
Just don't do it.
The other thing that I started implementing
was I gave myself a lot more sleep opportunity.
Everyone's heard that you need eight hours of sleep a night,
but the truth is in order to sleep for that long,
you probably need to be in bed for longer.
I take about half an hour to 45 minutes
to fall asleep every single night.
So I need to be in bed half an hour or 45 minutes earlier
than I'm planning on falling asleep.
And that makes sure
that I actually get the sleep
that I need every single night.
Because the benefits of a good night's sleep
is something that's cumulative.
You know, if you give yourself that much opportunity
every single night, your amount of sleep baseline
will go up over a long period of time.
And you'll kind of work off your sleep debt.
You'll work off your sleep deprivation
that you've been chronically plagued with.
All you need to do is give yourself
more opportunity to sleep.
The other thing that I did was I fixed my circadian rhythm.
For those of you who don't know
your circadian rhythm has sort of like this internal clock
that tells your brain whether it's daytime or nighttime.
When you should be given energy,
and when you should slow down and get ready for bed.
And a lot of your circadian rhythm is dictated by sunlight.
How bright it is around you, how dark it is around you.
Which is why you've heard
that you shouldn't go on social media or on smartphones,
or look at screens right before bed,
which is very, very true.
When you're looking at all this blue light,
your brain thinks that it's daytime.
So it's not giving you the melatonin that you need
that your brain needs to know
that it's like time to slow down and go to bed now.
So one thing that's really helped me
is to not look at screens right before I go to bed.
And especially not in bed.
That way my brain can actually
start producing adequate melatonin.
You know, I can start slowing down psychologically.
And by the time my head hits the pillow
during my little sleep opportunity window,
I'm out like a light.
The other thing I did to fix my circadian rhythms
was I pinned a black blanket over my windows
because I'm a barbarian with no sense of interior design.
But what that did was
when it's the earlier hours of the morning
when I'm still sleeping, like 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM.
I still want it to be dark
so I can still be deep in sleep.
Getting as much high quality sleep as I can.
Rather than having all this sun blasting in the window
interrupting my hard earned slumber.
So make your room darker so that for the time you're asleep
your brain thinks it's nighttime
and that you should be sleeping.
And the last thing that I implemented to improve my sleep
seems like a little quick fix.
I don't know if this applies to you.
But I was reading this book called Breath by James Nester.
And he talked about the benefits of nasal breathing
as opposed to mouth breathing.
And I noticed that when I put my head on my pillow
every night, my nose gets really congested.
And I end up opting in the middle of the night
to mouth breathing.
And in the book he talks about how nasal breathing
is a lot better for you.
So anyways, if you can't breathe out of your nose at night
fix that, I fixed it by using Breathe Right strips.
This video is not sponsored by Breathe Right,
but that's just what I did.
And they work for me.
I'll put a Amazon,
actually, I'm not going to put an Amazon,
like just type in Breathe Right strips.
Okay, so let's talk about exercise.
There is a fascinating link between your psychology
and your physiology.
It seems like what's good for the body
is also good for the mind.
It's the reason why power posing somehow, you know
like you're like standing up
and putting your hands on your hips or whatever,
that kind of stuff increases testosterone.
It's bizarre to think of it,
but literally just power posing, feeling powerful
lowers your cortisol, which is your stress hormone
and increases your testosterone
making you feel more confident and powerful.
And you hear so many accounts of people
who fix their posture
which allowed them to go about the day with more confidence.
It's like a chicken or the egg thing.
They fixed their physiology
which translated into benefits for their psychology.
The only reason why I'm saying this
is because one of the most effective ways
that you can have more energy throughout the day
is to move your body.
- [Narrator] See how the hips act as a pivot.
- You would think That if everyone had the same baseline
energy to work with,
that if you expend that energy by being active
you'll have less energy throughout the day.
But the exact opposite is true.
People who regularly expend their energy
having a higher baseline of energy to expend.
- [Trainer] He's tight with the buttocks
and slowly put the buttocks way back.
- It's almost like there's a golden rule
baked into the universe that says,
"That which costeth energy, giveth energy."
I should probably make a t-shirt with that.
- [Narrator] It wasn't long before Ernie began
to feel the benefits of his regular exercise.
- So you might be thinking, Joey, you're an active guy.
You go to the gym, you play hockey.
So that probably wasn't that big of a problem for you.
Well, it turns out it was.
I play hockey once or twice a in the evenings.
And then I go to the gym for like half an hour to 45 minutes
to do some heavy lifting
three to four times a week.
But I spend the rest of that time by and large
sitting on my butt, editing videos,
writing content, whatever.
This sedentary lifestyle was draining my energy.
So I made a simple tweak.
Not only do I make sure I get out and take a walk
every single day, I do something to get out of the house,
get moving, but I also bought a standing desk.
So I spend a large portion of my time
when I'm being productive, standing up on my desk
rather than sitting down.
And this has that power posing effect.
The fact that I'm standing up my body kind of learns
that I'm more active and I'm somebody who stands up.
So it's like here have more energy.
So use this weird phenomenon to your advantage.
Make sure that every single day you're getting up,
out of your chair you're going for a walk.
You know, a minute, every hour,
three to five minutes every hour.
If you're wanna be ambitious, get up from your chair,
go for a walk, go do something.
The energy benefits will come in droves.
- [Singer] ♪ Take good care of yourself ♪
♪ It's so easy ♪
- And now just briefly
I'm actually not gonna talk about diet
because I feel like I don't want to add to the noise.
One thing I've learned is that
it's really genetically dependent.
If your ancestors were from a certain part of the universe
Maybe a Paleo diet works better for you.
Maybe you have a gluten sensitivity.
By and large though, avoid packaged food, avoid sugar,
drink enough water.
You know, all these things.
There's a million diets
that you can look up on the internet.
If you're putting a reasonable amount of effort
into what you're putting into your body,
and you're not taking care of your sleep or exercise,
you'll probably still be sluggish.
It's the combination of these three things,
especially sleep, especially exercise
with like a reasonable effort put into your diet.
You'll have energy to work with.
You know, you'll finally be somebody who is perky
who has energy, who can, who can tackle their daily tasks
and actually get things done without constantly feeling
like somebody is just dragging you down,
holding onto your shirt
and just like covering your eyes all the time.
I don't think that was a terrible analogy.
I just want to give a big thank you to Audible
for sponsoring this video.
And I actually only made this video
because I started reading the book
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker on Audible.
It was just like a really fascinating book.
Talking about the benefits of sleep,
the complex mechanics that go on under the surface.
You know, it talked about the mechanics of dreams
which is some Christopher Nolan's stuff.
And I'd highly recommend the Audible version specifically
because the guy who's narrating it
has just such a golden voice and you can listen to it
as you're drifting off into slumber.
And for those of you who don't know,
Audible is the leading provider
of spoken word entertainment and audio books,
ranging from best sellers to celebrity memoirs,
to news, business and self-development.
Every single month Audible sends you one credit,
which you can spend on any audio book of your
regardless of price.
Audible members also get instant access
to a bunch of news digests and guided meditation programs,
which is also pretty cool.
And by far, one of the most useful things about Audible
is that if you cancel your membership
for any reason at any time,
you still keep your entire library of audio books,
including the books that you got for free
using their credit system.
So to sign up for your free 30 day trial,
either click the link in the description below,
or text "betterideas" to 500 500.
Once again, to sign up for your free 30 day trial
click the link in the description below
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Thanks so much for watching guys.
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(bright upbeat music)