Hi Everyone,

I hope you’ve been reading and taking action.

To make up for the list I slammed you with last week, I’m keeping this email short.

Let’s get to it.

Just Use Your Sleep.

There are countless ways to measure your life. Many are complex but few are as simple as using your sleep.

There are two simple tests to reveal the quality of your life almost automatically: How quickly you fall asleep and how you feel when you wake up in the morning.

Sleep problems aside, these metrics are dead simple.

Are you falling asleep easily after a long-day of good work, or are you lying awake thinking of how you wasted away another day?

Are you waking up and launching out of bed, pumped for the day ahead or are you wishing you could stay in the covers and avoid what’s waiting for you?

Levers to help.

If you realise that you’re failing the sleep tests, there are three levers that seem to help people the most:

1) Be In The Arena.

If you have goals you’re chasing or interests you want to pursue, you’ve got to be moving towards them.

That will give you something to get excited about in the morning, and help you feel like you made progress when you lie down at night. 

Get yourself in the Arena - it’s all that matters.

2) Grow More Antifragile.

At times, we struggle to fall asleep because we’re worried about something or we have fears eating away at us.

One solution is to work on conquering those fears and making positive progress towards them - but we should stack that with becoming Antifragile: someone who can grow from setbacks and challenges.

A great example of this combination comes from people who want to improve financially. Being frugal and saving will increase their available cash reserves (solution 1) but they can also acquire new skills that make them more valuable and secure in the marketplace (solution 2).

Become Antifragile and get a great sleep.

3) Workout.

Most of us are way more sedentary than we should be. We fry our dopamine systems, flood our eyes with blue light, and don’t tire out our bodies. We rust out, rather than wear out.

Going to bed tired from working out (on top of being in the arena and feeling Antifragile) will give you a deep sleep, and give you more energy in the morning.

More Books to Ignite Your Mind.

In response to last week, I received a few recommendations from readers on books that “ignited their mind”:

• Endure by Cameron Hanes
• An Iron Will by Orison Swett Marden
• No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover
• Iron Ambition by Mike Tyson
• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich Cohen
• The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
• Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

These books are being added to my to-be read list (and a couple on my re-read list). Remember, we are what we are consume - so make sure the books you’re reading are pushing you to be the person you want to be.

(For those who haven’t replied yet, what’s a book that ignited your mind?)

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And that’s all for now.

Thanks as always for reading.

Until next week,

Zachariah.