Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

Since I've been using Sunsama for the past three weeks, I've felt a lot more productive. Being more productive has led me to think long and hard about my own productivity, and the motivation and willpower required for me to be that way.

What ended up happening is that I remembered some older wisdom I had somewhat forgotten about.

Distractions destroy productivity, focus, and your ability to fall into the flow state. The only way to reduce distractions is to take firm control over your environment.

I've written about controlling your environment before, but it's time to do so again, with fresh words and a fresher perspective.

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

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🧠 Wisdom Focus Tips of The Week: Tame Your #1 Distractor, Your Phone

It's rather hard to tame or control your environment if you don't start with your cellphone. For many people, their phones are a part of them and are often the primary means of distracting themselves to reduce downtime out in the world.

This means that almost all of you are training yourselves to look at your phones instead of training yourself to think.

Step 1: Get comfortable leaving your phone on "Do Not Disturb"

It's a common setting, and it should be commonly used. These days I leave my Do Not Disturb engaged for my entire phone, all of the time. Why? Well, I use my phone all the time for podcasts, music, and audiobooks.

I also use Apple AirPods. Would you like to know an interesting feature of Apple Airpods? If your phone is not in Do Not Disturb, your AirPods will read you every. single. text message. You will be interrupted from whatever you were listening to 100% of the time. It's infuriating, so I now always leave DND turned on.

Step 2: Activate a Screen Timer for apps you shouldn't be using, and then stop using them

Apple iPhones have a Screen Time tool as a part of all iPhones. This is a tool you can use to:

1. Monitor how much you use your phone
2. Set boundaries for yourself on how much you can use certain apps during the day
3. Set downtime for yourself to leave your damn phone alone

Androids have similar functionality or have apps that can be downloaded that do similar functions.

Step 3: Delete Social Media apps from your phone

This is an advanced step, and one that I hope all of you strive for over time. I've slowly gotten myself into the habit of deleting Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit from my phone if they start becoming too big of a distraction.

If the app isn't there to click on, you can train your mind to stop wanting to click on it.

Plus, if you really get the urge, you can always use the web browser versions of those apps on your computer.

🥑 Health Focus Tip of The Week: Rig Your Environment For Health

Only keep healthy-ish food in your house:

This week I snacked on carrots and hummus.

I only snacked on carrots and hummus because it was the only snacks I had. It was either carrots and hummus or cook myself a full meal. I chose the carrots.

Under almost all circumstances I am not a fan of wasting or throwing away food. The exception to this rule is when you've stockpiled your house with snacks, sugary soda, and alcohol.

I don't let myself buy any kind of unhealthy snack, because I know that if I do, my ape brain will focus on those foods to the exclusion of everything else. Junk food is too tempting to me, and my brain is capable of rationalizing anything if it means I get to eat some cookies.

So I just don't give myself that option.

If I must have junk food, then I will have to use an app like DoorDash or UberEats to do it, and I have started deleting those apps from my phone after I use them, to discourage me from doing so too many times in a row.

P.s - I realize this can be almost impossible when you have children or roommates. If you have children or roommates and are subscribed to this newsletter, then you are a person that gives a damn about your health.

This means you can take the time to troubleshoot your obstacles.

Some ideas:

1. Only buy your kids snacks that you hate, or make them think fruit is candy
2. Tell your roommate you might eat their junk food if it stays in public areas (this tactic is extraordinarily effective)

Go for short walks to clear your head or to think

I am a big fan of going for walks. It's one of the best ways to think about problems you have, and also happens to be good for you.

There is always time for a walk.

If you are too busy to go for a walk, it's likely due to these two reasons:

1. You're full of shit
2. You refuse to prioritize walking over other stuff

Going out for a walk allows you to step away from your environment, detach from any associated stressors, and give your brain a chance to relax. When it comes to reaching focus or a flow state, I've found that sometimes the only real impediment is that it's been too long since I went for a walk.

Seriously. Walks are superpowers.

💲 Wealth Focus Tip of The Week: What's Right for You is What's Right For You

Building wealth can be a very personal thing. Money terrifies many people, and for a lot of successful adults, there can be deep anxiety around whether or not you are doing enough with your finances.

At what point are you worrying about wealth too much?

The entire point of systems and routines is to offset work from your brain into a repeatable process. It's supposed to give your brain a break.

Beyond the four basic pillars of wealth generation, the specifics aren't important to anyone but you.

If you are actively:

1. reducing expenses
2. increasing income
3. paying off or avoiding debt
4. investing

Then you are far ahead of 90% of people.

The specifics of what you do are important but are not so important that you should spend too much of your brainpower thinking about it.

For example:

• If you have no interest in Crypto, then don't invest in it
• If budgets stress you out, then don't use a budget
• If you really don't want to do a side hustle, but instead want to focus on your job and family, then that is what you should do
• If you'd rather pay for everything with cash or a debit card so you don't have to worry about credit card debt, then only use debit cards!

Sometimes I feel like the personal finance world spends too much time worrying about optimization and perfection. The 80/20 principle works with your finances too. Meaning that 80% of the results of your wealth-building comes from the first 20% of the changes you make.

• Spend less than you earn
• Pay off debt
• Invest the rest

That's it.

You could spend your entire life fidgeting with and optimizing your finances, only to discover that your life is over and you never got to enjoy any of it.

Figure out what is right for you, and then do it.

Quote of the week:

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 6% interest on BTC, 5.25% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.