Stop Tripping Over Dollars To Pick Up Pennies

I’ve been on a George Mack binge and one of his core concepts is the memeification of everything.

You probably think of a meme as one of those funny pictures your friends on Reddit keep sending you. But, a meme is an idea that is ‘sticky’ or memorable.

That’s where we get the title of this newsletter.

It’s a lot less memorable to say: “stop trying to optimize all of the little areas of your life while neglecting all of the important things that you should be doing first.”

Stop Tripping Over Dollars To Pick Up Pennies.

What does that look like?

Let’s start with someone you might be familiar with, Andrew Huberman.

He brings complex topics about neuroscience and health optimization to the masses by making it more accessible in podcast form.

Remember the 90% of people not following the basic advice that I mentioned last week? As a consequence of breaking down complex topics, most of Huberman’s content falls into the final 10% of optimization. The pennies.

So then what are the dollars?

• Get enough sleep

• Sleep at regular times

• Eat >80% whole foods

• Get enough protein

• Stay hydrated

• Move your body for 60+ minutes a day

• Stretch regularly

One more example to drive this home.

How many people read 2 books and watch 6 YouTube videos on a topic, looking for the perfect solution that slots into their life? Or read 532 reviews before buying a toaster or choosing the restaurant for dinner?

If you read 1 book summary and apply the knowledge you would fix 90% of the problem. It wouldn’t be perfect but you would learn and adjust. Instead you spent 10 days trying to find a better solution and it still wasn’t an 100% fix.

Most consumption is procrastination disguised as productivity.

I know I’m guilty of this problem myself. How many things have I tried — that work — only to realize there was a much easier and much more effective solution if I had just done the basic thing.

You don’t need a fancy CRM for managing your relationships…

You need to text your friends.

You don’t need a 90 minute morning routine…

You need to go to bed on time.

You don’t need a fancy multivitamin…

You need to stop loading the freezer with TV dinners.

You don’t need the newest camera that can shoot in 4k 120fps…

You need to film with your phone camera.

My challenge to you is to find some of the areas in your life where you are trying to over engineer a solution. Instead work on solving the problem with the most basic solution available.

My bet is that you’ll make your life less complex, free up brain space and get a better result.