all right hey friends welcome back to the Vlog this is probably the second of the two Vlogs of our trip to Turkey we are still here on the team Retreat it is a Sunday so Sunday is a non work day in theory although various people seem to be working anyway and we are starting the day off at this cute little coffee shop uh called Ed's coffee which is a 10-minute walk from from the house getting some food getting some teas and coffees it's going to be good vibes to start off the day and we'll see where the day takes us [Music] oh dear earlier today I decided to start reading a new book called the big leap it is good where's my phone I don't know where my phone is who cares um a friend recently recommended I read this book the big leap I can't remember who recommended it but it's pretty good so far it's uh a book written by this guy who seems to have been an executive coach for like massive CEOs like Michael Dell the founder and I suspect CEO of Dell and the guy who was like the CEO of eBay and a few other sort of big shot people and his whole stick is there is one problem that is sabotaging your success and not just success in a financial sense but like the amount of love and joy and money and impact and abundance that there generally is in your life and he thinks that he refers to this as the upper limit like you reach an upper limit of stuff success uh success more holistically defined rather than just financially defined so you reach an upper limit of success and then you it's almost like there's this glass ceiling where you can't like break through it and his stick seems to be the reason for that is because there is a certain amount of positive emotions that you are comfortable with and then when life starts getting too good or you start having too much success in a particular area you then sabotage yourself by then the mind starting to worry about things or like in the context of Health you know you're doing really really well for a few weeks or a few months and then you sort of quote throw it all away by going on a massive binge and then sort of your health healthy eating goes out the window and or you find yourself kind of just feeling too good about life and so you start finding things to worry about and you know the example he gives was like you know life's going pretty great his daughter's away at a summer camp whatever and he finds himself just really worrying about his daughter and like she going to feel lonely and stuff and then he Rings up the summer camp and they're like no she's chill but also like eight different parents have rung up the summer camp asking if their kid is okay and he's like what do you think that is and suamp Lady is like oh well you know parents are surprised by how much they miss their daughter and therefore they think that something must be wrong she must hurting in some way yo oh we've got a lighter do we need a lighter and I found myself relating to this a fair bit because basically last night I found myself feeling a bit like uncertain and a bit stressed I I don't like to use the word stressed but like a little bit stressed shall we say about the business cuz we're launching this new product productivity lab we don't know how it's going to go and then like you know the YouTube channel isn't getting as many views this month as it did last month and stuff and I started thinking hm you know what's a point of all this is it all going to come crumbling down you know the usual fears as I was starting to read it this morning I kind of wondered maybe I'm doing that like life is pretty freaking sick right now I'm here in turkey with my whole team we've got a barbecue going the sun is shining the Vibes are great and last night after having a whole day of like activities and stuff I found a reason to worry I found a I found a thing that I could lat on to a sense of uncertainty or a sense of anxiety about this freaking new product that we're launching and like when viewed from the outside with a bit of perspective it's like it's all going to be totally fine the product's going to be good even if it's not we'll fix it it's like who cares but it was it was so interesting how my mind started to go to the negative scenarios and when I read the stuff in the book this morning I was like huh maybe I also have this upper limit of feel goodness even though I'm the Feelgood productivity guy I can relate to that as well uh in January and February it was actually very stressful workwise job helping Ali film we introduced these filming days and it just took up a lot of my time and then I've worked to free up my time over the past like month or two and I suddenly have a little bit more time to do stuff and then I have that sense of like when things get busier I feel a bit more comfortable cuz I'm I'm like the sense of like weak to weakness is almost the default and then when there's more time and head space it's almost a bit uncomfortable you'll like wait what do I do with this how do I organize my time how do I prioritize things like I almost want something to worry about yeah can relate to the feeling after Ali's very brief description of the book which I have not read Tinton is very is very Adept at talking to a camera with zero prep so that's that's good check out his YouTube channel link down below [Music] oh gang okay got a little fun little uh segment from uh on this day on my journal so on Saturday the 14th of April 2018 which was 6 years ago something something something Charlotte came over this is my friend Charlotte Johnson came over in the morning to run through examinations which was semi-productive cuz we were preparing for our Med schoal exams edited the April favorites video and decided last night to start an email newsletter woo I drafted the first post of it which I think I'll schedule for tomorrow morning here goes nothing LOL night nightxx on this day 6 years ago I decided to start an email newsletter it's been running ever since I've written about an issue every weekish for the last six years it's called Sunday snippit you can subscribe down below if you want and actually that reminds me I need to write today's issue because today is also coincidently a Sunday so it was also a Sunday 6 years ago no it was a Saturday 6 years ago and I scheduled it for the following morning so I was that was very productive of me [Music] [Laughter] all right so there's a game of traitors happening as we speak we've been playing for the last few days it's called the traitors most of us have been are dead or banished but there's six people left in the game and we think there are two traitors left in the game so one jaob if you could put one finger up be very helpful who did jaob didn't you okay your a I'm going to trust yeah I was y you could reveal yeah I was a [Applause] [Music] [Applause] paper just want to point out that this is the third time that I vote for tra so we're down to six I said all right team we're down to six it didn't work amazing okay we got six people left another murder will happen tonight team you did Jesus it's like children one more word of tonight and then we will banish someone tomorrow I think that will bring us to four if I could do maths okay so the game of traitors has had another casualty yakob has been banished and he was indeed a traitor so yakob Addy and inz have been the three traitors so far no I'm [Applause] trait I am a traitor now because it is a Sunday and as I mentioned earlier is the sixth anniversary of Sunday Snippets the weekly email newsletter it's time for me to at 9:56 p.m. to write the issue of Sunday Snippets I always I always leave it to the last minute like this is one of those things where it shouldn't be that hard to freaking write an email newsletter in the week at some point so I can just schedule it for the Sunday but no I have to wait until freaking 10 p.m. on a Sunday night before I write this bloody thing actually most of my issues I think I've written after 10 p.m. on the Sunday night after the first one I I wrote on the Saturday and managed to schedule it in advance man annoyingly hard to be consistent with this sort of stuff [Music] it's Monday it's 7:20 the sun is just about to set look at that that looks very nice not me but that okay well it doesn't quite do it justice on this camera uh well it sort of does and we are about to head out to dinner at a restaurant nearby and today's been a very solid day I've spent most of the day cranking away at the structure for our upcoming course the life productivity system which is going to be a life cohort that I run as part of productivity lab which is V exciting so just sort of doing a lot of stuff on a Miro and fig Jam board trying to really simplify the structure of the course to its Essentials and sort of then plan out what the four weeks of the life course are going to look like all that kind of stuff more details down below if you want to check it out although this might come out way since way after the course is finished I also had a really good zoom call with Eric partaker who is my CEO coach we did a bit of a quarterly review where we talked about kind of some wins for the quarter and some challenges and Lessons Learned and I have some action points for things that I want to I want to take forward this next quarter and one of those things is to basically figure out a system for my health and put it on autopilot with irum my executive assistant this is a little bit like champagne problems basically I kind of want to just Outsource all of my thinking about and executing on my health stuff because it is something that I know is very important but it's something that I don't normally make the time to take particularly seriously or rather sincerely myself so in the last 3 months I found the power of having a personal trainer it was just like unreasonably effective so I was working with this guy Jade and Fitness First in Alin who was great he was my personal trainer and so we do sessions four times a week in the mornings and I got like into the best shape of my life but then since moving to London and sort of being in between gyms and it's like I wasn't sure how long I was going to be London for and stuff I haven't just resigned up to another personal trainer and that's just a known goal it's a bit of a miss you know Eric was saying that he's had he's coached a bunch of CEOs who've also had issues with their health where they been like oh I'm not taking my health seriously bro just hire a personal trainer when you're a CEO and you got enough money there's just no reason not to invest the money to Outsource that aspect of your life and then also when it comes to nutrition I'm going to work with my fitness coach Dan go link down below he's got a sick YouTube channel to figure out macros and stuff and then arum will be able to organize this sort of sort of meal delivery service that gets me the right meals with the right macros this sort of stuff as I say this out loud I'm probably coming across as very out of touch this is one of the key learnings that i' I guess learned from hanging out with entrepreneurs and people who are very very successful financially and otherwise in that they recognize that money is a tool and resource and money can be deployed to kind of improve areas of your life without you having to put in the brain work to improve those areas of your life like if you want to get better at tennis and you have money you just hire a tennis coach rather than trying to faf around YouTube and trying to figure it out yourself there are some people who really enjoy you know actively making their own workout plans and taking care of their health in that way I'm not one of those people the less I have think about it the better and so yeah I just need to kind of recognize that huh I could just use the resources that I have to take this aspect of my life very very seriously another major level up for the last year is investing the money in a relationships therapist relationship coach which I've been doing for the last 12 months plus and we meet with our guy Thomas every few weeks and it's great even when nothing is particularly going wrong in the relationship which is most of the time I might add uh it's still really useful having that touch point every 2 3 4 weeks to just sit down for 90 minutes with a couple therapist and just stuff just comes up and it's just really really helpful this was a tip I got from Bill Perkins the author of die with zero I asked him you know what advice he'd give to me uh I hung out with him in Austin last year and he said two things number one get a relationship therapist as soon as you enter a relationship and meet with them like regularly and then the second piece of advice which I still haven't quite taken forward is to celebrate whenever possible so throw parties for things you get a win in the business celebrate it throw a party he was like you know this guy's in his 50s he's big on kind of um Maxim imizing life fulfillment his whole thing was that like yeah we as entrepreneurs tend to celebrate the wins very seldom and that is something to actively fight against and as I say this I realize I could just ask your and my assistant to be like hey I struggle to celebrate wins uh can you just uh suggest some celebrations that we could do as a team or with friends and stuff and she might be like like you know my 30th birthday is coming up and IR was the one who was saying Oli your 30th birthday is coming up you know we should do a potty and initially I was like uh kind of CBA to do a party and she was like no we should do a party and then I remembered what Bill Perkin said and I was like okay fine we should do a party happy birthday to [Music] you um so yeah that's some of the stuff that came out of the session with Eric Eric partaker and I hope this doesn't make me sound like an entitled privileged absolute freaking [ __ ] maybe it does but hey you know guys this Vlog is all about keeping it real with you showing the true behind the scenes and sharing lessons as I learn them however out of touch uh they might appear at first glance but hopefully there's something from that there might be even vely useful to [Music] someone Molina please can you reveal whether you were a traitor or a faceful I can now reveal that I have always been a what are you being serious I'm waiting for her to go I'm being 100% serious can you I I I can confirm so shocked I feel [Music] like yo dang so it is the final day of the turkey team Retreat the time is 10:29 and I am going to do get get in some steps walk to the local coffee shop where Tintin saf Molina and a couple of others are already co-working from it is a work day W up around 8:00 a.m. and one thing I've been doing recently this is a big part of my philosophy around life productivity is that just thinking in terms of experiments so one experiment that I've been running in my life is something that I actually used to do in med school when preparing for exams which is basically as soon as I get up not even brushing my teeth but just making a coffee and getting straight to work you know not having a shower not doing a morning routine not brushing my teeth none of that stuff I know yes I know first hour of the day coffee doesn't work cuz it denzine receptors and all that but like it's an experiment we're trying it out and whenever I whenever I do this where just without thinking I just go straight to work I always feel really focused and I feel like I get a lot of work done so this morning from 8:00 till like 9:15 I did an hour and 15 minutes of focused work on the productivity course uh looking at our mirror boards and we've got all the components of the system and it's just really about simplifying and Distilling them into a handful of key pillars and there's like a bunch of different ways of doing this and I've sort of been working on it myself and then sort of running it past various team members to sort of practice practice the system and see what resonates and see what feels more actionable seems more clear anyway managed to do an hour and 15 minutes on that and the way that I timed it was my usual method of having a YouTube video that was like 3 hours long in the background playing background music this morning was Bag End music from the Shire from The Lord of the Rings and then I just play that and then while I'm focusing I have that have that music on in the background and then when I stop focusing or when I get distracted or when I decide to stop I just pause the video and it means I lit it just acts as a timer a focus timer for how much time I've actually spent focusing but one of the things I've realized around focus is actually just tracking the number is unreasonably effective and know this is the whole thing in business that what gets measured gets managed what gets measured gets improved and being able to just see on a spreadsheet or in an app or on a Google doc I've experimented with various methods over the years how many minutes or how many hours or how many Focus blocks of time I actually did is a number that just stares stares at me in the face and it means I can't lie to myself I can't convince myself that oh was super productive today when I already wasn't or if I'm feeling I wasn't very productive today I can just look at the thing and be like oh well I did like 3 and a half hours of focus or and that's pretty solid because really 3 to 5 is the maximum number a lot of people swear by four and so as long as I've done three to five Focus blocks that is a win that is like upper limit of what is reasonable and then I can feel like I I deserve an evening on the PlayStation and usually with this experiment it's like the first one or two hours I'll do pure Focus work while I'm still smelly and haven't had a shower and haven't brushed my teeth and then once I'm done with that I'll take a break and in that break I will then kind of brush my teeth have a shower change put on my sun cream and my my moisturizer the usual shebang um and what I'm doing this morning is now going sort of changing location a bit Yeah I find that changing location is often often really nice for just making the thing feel more like an adventure making it feel more fun and also helps boost creativity in various ways I'm very about my health goals that I sort of sorted out with theum last night so now I'm like yeah it's quite nice having a goal plan and a system in place um for for any area of life really I find that when when I have a clear goal and a clear plan and a clear system it's infinitely more likely that I'm actually going to do the thing and given that the thing is something I want to do anyway it's like cool I know that if I'm ever not doing a thing that I think I want to do or feeling like an area of my life is uh not as aligned as I would like it to be was really thinking GPS go plan system I find to be incredibly helpful in figuring out huh like where where is the problem here and Cally what can I what can I do about it [Music] say testing hello hello hello oh nice my aces of a land I have Achi and maybe how for you to stop but for you you I leave it [Music] [Applause] all seing in the night I know that you'll never feel s the way you talk to her we were again L you with your words but that didn't matter it took you two weeks to go off and dat yes you didn't Che you're still you're still [Music] tra you're still tra [Music] darling I will be loving you till it's [Music] 23 17 maybe my heart is still full as 23 for me I fall in love with you every single day and I just want to tell you I am it's funny now [Music] take me into your loving hearts kiss me under the light of a thousand stars place your head on my Beating Heart Thinking Out Loud maybe we love right where we are maybe we found love right where we are baby We Found Love right where we are [Music] turning 26 this year as this was coming out I was just feeling this immense sense of gratitude to have all of you guys over here and I feel so privileged to have you all in my life I talk about you all the time to all of my friends outside of work and I'm just so happy to be 26 years old and to be surrounded by such wonderful people that I love so so dearly thank you guys that was really special and I agree with everything he says you guys you are the best team ever I genuinely feel these are going to be the best years of Our Lives you all mean the world and your support and encouragement thank you so much for for everything that you do and everything that you stand for love you all of the four I can now confirm that saf has been murdered yeah we now have three people left tinon we're just both fighting for tin's we both trust we him yeah so it's tinting as a sweating boat so you say you're B through each other I'm so sh yeah you are the star man you're star let's go I'm swinging towards AR but I'm feeling the pressure of getting it wrong and it being out so so I really don't know I am going to go with I'm waiting for youum is banished having two votes if you could now confirm and bring the game to an end are you a faithful or are you a traitor I can confirm okay that for this whole time yeah for [Applause] this I have and I am and I have faithful God I was the traitor are talking about a conversation about this I know but I was saying loads of different things all righty everyone so we now come to the end of the thing and in classic style we're going to do a little bit of a uh reflection exercise take note of who is the who is the person to your left and now everyone close your eyes and you're going to yeah you can close your eyes as well I'm waiting for you to finish the sentence and you're going to think of three things you're going to share a reflection about the week or about the year or whatever you like any sort of reflection secondly a learning from the week slash year probably secondly a learning from the week and thirdly you're going to give a heartfelt and sincere compliment to the person to your immediate left so like I was casually EES dropping on inz and Allison's conversation about what it's like kind of managing people and stuff I was like oh [ __ ] like i' I've never I've never really thought of thought of management in that way but like yeah I guess that makes perfect sense sort of being on being in the background on my laptop and sort of just keeping an ear out for conversations uh that were not related to the traitor stuff was just quite quite a useful learning experience to see how people think about their roles about their jobs and interacting with the rest of the team and one thing I really like is how like sincerely everyone is trying to be and mostly succeeding at being CEOs of Their Own platforms and really kind of leveling up in entrepreneurial thinking and all that jazz so I think that's that's been really nice to see then finally uh amber you are an absolutely [ __ ] phenomenal singer I've never heard you sing never heard you sing in real life and it's incredible and as soon as you opened your mouth I was like whoa [ __ ] like it was right there is no autotune on these on those YouTube videos uh so [Music] have just wrapped up the final official night of the trip went around the circles everyone shared a reflection a learning and a sinere compliment to the person next to them which was very wholesome some of the nice things brought a te to everyone's eye which is very sweet it is now like what is it it's half past midnight we are saying our goodbyes so thank you for joining Along on this uh this Vlog which is probably quite long but that's quite all right anyway thank you so much for watching and we'll hopefully see you next time bye-bye