Andrew McConnell is the Founder & CEO of Rented.com, WSJ Bestselling Author of Get Out of My Head: Creating Modern Clarity with Stoic Wisdom, & Keynote Speaker.
Andrew is a two-time Inc 500 winner and, in under 3 years grown his company by a 50X increase!
As an avid swimmer, Andrew has always followed a strict routine that has been carried through into his professional life.
With the understanding that time is finite, living with a Zero-Based design routine has created a runway for success in Andrew’s life.
Routine | Routine of Living Life with a Zero-Based Design
Andrew’s routine is not static, his routine of developing a routine is malleable.
When developing his routine he assesses his calendar. Asking the questions like:
- What is my routine?
- What is the right answer for me at this season of life and the season of the year?
- What is it I want to get done over this period of time?
- How much time is going to work? H
- How much time is going to family?
- How much time is going to friends or travel?
Then weekly and quarterly reflecting back to ensure that his goals and routine are still in line.
Listen to the whole episode for a breakdown of this process with Andrew.
Success
Andrew defines success as “living the life that I want to live now.”
Connect With Andrew McConnell
Website: https://www.mandrewmcconnell.com/
Book: https://www.mandrewmcconnell.com/book
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandrewmcconnell/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MAMcConnell
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mandrewmcconnell
Transcript
Hannah Mitrea 0:05
Hello, everyone, this is Hannah, your host, and you are listening to the success is routine podcast. Our show is on a mission to talk to leaders in life and business that have achieved success, and to learn what their routine is, if you’re ready to create your routine to success, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s get started. Welcome back, everybody to the success is keen podcast, I am so excited to have Andrew McConnell, here with us today. He is the founder of rented.com, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Get out of my head and keynote speaker. And I’m super excited to talk to him about his routine because he is also an inc 500 list, and of how he’s achieved that success and how the routine has played a role in it. So thank you, Andrew, for joining us.
Andrew McConnell 0:50
It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.
Hannah Mitrea 0:54
Awesome. And I know we talked a little bit previously. And you mentioned how like, Swimming was like a big part of your team. But also just kind of like how I got started. So tell me a little bit about your story. And you know, at what point did routine kind of start coming into your life? And was it always something you had?
Andrew McConnell 1:13
Yeah, so I grew up in a lot of people who are very, very serious in swimming get really young, I think my wife was young before she was 10. Whereas for me, it was more kind of eighth grade, I was 1314, when I really started getting serious and swimming, started doing doubles and mourning practices. And what that did, I think served in a couple of different ways. So one, the habit of getting up early to go to bed earlier than maybe some of my peers are do, which when you’re no longer swimming, and you’re up earlier, it gives you all this extra time where you’re not bothered. And you get things done at a different rate than anyone else. But the other piece of gave kind of twofold is you’re compressed on time, because you had so much practice most sports, they have a season and they have an offseason. And in college sports, a lot of times they’ll say the athletes have better grades in season than offseason. Because when they’re in season, they have so little extra time that they have to be really diligent on their schedule on getting their work done, making sure it gets done when they have all this extra time. They play video games, they go out more, and they actually end up doing less work because they have more time to do it. It’s this funny dichotomy. And so with swimming, we never really had an offseason. So we were always used to this routine of compressed time and of being tired. So we had to be really efficient, really efficient. Because we had little time and really efficient cars, we were very tired, because we always had really, really early morning practice. And I think those end up being kind of a cheat code later in life of if you’re getting up two hours before everybody else, you’re going to be more productive. Right other people that are staying up late those typically aren’t productive hours for people they’re watching Netflix or having an extra glass of wine that they’re not getting stuck on. That’s adding to the life force. If you have those two hours in the morning that’s your life is just bigger than other people. And and if you’re used to having compressed time and building a routine of efficiency and structure that is the second piece that just really curious over so I think my my background swimming Do you want all American being on the US national team for for swimming, it just it carried over? I was back for an alumni swim meet just this past weekend, actually. And while we still talk of ourselves as over swimmers, or we were swimmers, it was half a life ago, we walked across the bridge to practice at five in the morning, half a life ago, because we’re now all in our 40s. But it’s still something we really all carry with us.
Hannah Mitrea 3:48
Yeah, no, that’s so interesting, too, because I know. So you said that you didn’t get into swimming until about eighth grade. Right? So did you have like a routine before that was like, Did you see your family? Did they like kind of have a routine that helped you be able to say hey, let’s go get up every morning at 4am to start swimming that helps you bridge into that routine?
Andrew McConnell 4:10
No, I mean, both my parents were physicians and I was born when they were in med school. And so they were compressed on time as well. But took things very seriously. So they took us having something hot to have for breakfast like it wasn’t just cereal. It wasn’t just a pop tart. It was cold like it really cooked breakfast as a family together every morning, us sitting down together as a family for dinner every evening. And that actually was something that got in the way of us doing swimming when my sister wanted to do it before saying oh that swim practices during our dinner time and we have dinner as a family we that’s not a commitment that’s going to work and so that kind of bookended the days but without the other things taking my time. School was relatively easy. It didn’t take a ton of time and I think it I wasn’t great shape. I wasn’t super healthy. I didn’t eat Healthy at that time in my life. And so no I don’t. I think it was swimming that really helped create that framework. And it could be any kind of sport, it could be an instrument that you get very serious and you have that structure. For me. It just happened to be swimming. And so I got those ancillary benefits from that particular sport.
Hannah Mitrea 5:17
Awesome. And then, so Okay, so you’re doing swimming? And then you stop. So how was that transition out of like, not getting up every morning to swim? Or do you still get up every morning to go swim?
Andrew McConnell 5:30
Yeah, I now, in transparency, we live in Bermuda, my back stairs, go into the ocean. And I have not been on the island, where I have not swim in the ocean every single day. Now, some days, it’s kind of dangerous, because there are hurricanes and I’ve been really cut up and bloody in. So maybe that’s not a thing I continue to do. But on principle, I’ve gotten in the ocean to swim every single day. And some days, longer swims and others you might go 8k versus just to 800 meters, wildly different. But it is something I do every day, in terms of whether I’m near a swimming pool near an ocean or not getting up is something I do every day. So it was for a time on workdays like this is my routine, I get up, I don’t set an alarm, I just naturally wake up between kind of 515 527 Trying to get up a go, I’ll do some movement, some activity. So I have these kind of hip exercises like exercises that helped me in my low back anyway, and it helps me get the blood flowing. Do a little Mandarin on Duolingo to get my mind going. And then I’ll sit and meditate for 20 minutes. And then I go do a little journaling. And then typically try to at that point, once I’ve gotten through some things, get some emails done before my daughter comes through. So is there anything I need to triage before I jump in to doing her breakfast, her lunch and getting her to school. And so that’s a typical workday. But then I learned on sleeping, you’re much better off not building this deficit during the week and having these wildly variant. You’re basically jet lag in yourself if you have totally different bedtimes wait times on the weekend. So I’ve been much better at trying to have the same bedtime wake time, even on the weekends. And being consistent on that, which is absolutely fantastic. Great. You get all this extra time and my daughter loves to get up early on the weekend to write she doesn’t treat them separate school day for snot. So we get a lot of time together. She’s six years old, and we get a bunch of play time. So yeah.
Hannah Mitrea 7:33
Oh, that one question for it. I’m fully into the routine. And he mentioned a lot of it there. So going from no routine, other than just having the morning breakfast with the family dinner at night with family. Was it hard to switch into that routine? Or was there something that kind of triggered it to help you?
Andrew McConnell 7:54
Yeah, I mean, at that age, right? Like it may seem later at 13 than others but so much is changing, right? Your routine is what a lot of times adults are saying or school is saying. So my routine when I show up at school, each year with change of fifth grade, you’re in the same classroom all day. And then sixth grade, oh, you go here between these different subjects and seventh grade, you have different teachers eighth grade. So I think there’s some malleability, and openness of hey, this just changes like when I go to high school, I’m gonna have a different routine. And then there’s certain bookends to it that put some structure there. Of Okay, here’s when we get up and have breakfast, here’s when we have dinner as a family, and then work and play time kind of fit around school and those pieces. So you had these open pieces with swimming did was just compressed that quote, free time, it put more firm blocks that you are working around. And I think similar to what they say about college athletes, and the better grades, the less of that floating time that you have, the more structured and focus you tend to be that you still need some floating time you don’t want every single minute of your day accounted for. But if you have too much, you wasted, right?
Hannah Mitrea 9:07
Yeah, no, definitely. I think that makes sense where you’re transitioning already. And so creating those boundaries was an easier thing to do than maybe, you know, just having so much freedom and then being struck down. Now we have to wake up every morning. So no, I love that. And then so let’s talk about the routine. And I know we talked about before I have there’s like this two core elements of your teens that you have your morning and then you have like the zero base design that you mentioned. So share a little bit or a lot of it really about your routine and how it works for you every day.
Andrew McConnell 9:43
Yeah, so the tactical morning routine I think we covered right the wake up at this time and kind of tick through these things before they get started. Now that isn’t static. And I think that’s where the zero based routine comes into play right Mandarin I only started three years ago, because my daughter was studying Mandarin and she barely spoke English. So it’s hard to tell if she’s speaking gibberish. Or if she’s speaking Mandarin, it’d be helpful if I actually know what she was saying. So let me go learn it. The hip exercise the low back thing. So those are maybe 12 to 18 months old, right? That’s not a thing. That’s always been there may have been different movement before. And so when you talk about the zero based design, my routine of developing a routine is malleable. So one thing that my routine is is to assess, what is my calendar? What is my routine? What is the right answer for me at this season of life and season of the year? So on a quarterly basis, my routine is to go and do this zero based budgeting of my time, saying, what is it I want to get done over this period of time? Given that, how much time is going to work? How much time is going to family? How much time is going to friends or travel? Are these other pieces? Right? You fill it in? And then making sure that adds up? Right? Is it the right number of weeks in the month? Is it the right number of hours in the week to get there, and then backing from they’re going to the work bucket? And I do a deep dive double click there. Okay. It’s one thing to quote, work 10 hours a day. But what are you doing each of those hours? So how many hours a week? Do you need to have with your direct reports? How many hours a week do you need to have with people who are not your direct reports for skip level meetings? How many hours for client meetings, how many hours doing real work, how many hours learning reading about what’s happening in your industry or the world at large, that’s probably work, right? Like you need to learn how to grow, how much time towards writing, whether it’s blogs or books, or whatever it is, you want to carve that out and building my calendar budget, from the ground up to design what I want. And then that informs what my routine will be of, okay, I know I want to exercise as much time per week, let me get it on the calendar, these are firm blocks that I work around. As opposed to the other way around of hey, I’d really like to work out but I don’t have the time. Well, you all started with the same 24 hours, you decided how you wanted to budget that time. And if you didn’t decide, then someone else did without thinking about you. They just filled your time. And then you’re you’re renting your own life back from other people. So really taking that time of owning your calendar, which is owning your time, which is owning your life.
Hannah Mitrea 12:31
I’ve never heard of called a calendar budget before, I think that is an amazing way to look at it because everybody knows what a budget is. And they know that they need to manage their money. But I don’t think people look at time that way. That’s I think that’s like a huge like shift there on how you look at your time
Andrew McConnell 12:51
you have because it’s finite money, you can go make more money, that’s a thing. You can take another job, you can go to another skill set, get a different career, there are all sorts of ways you can make more money, you can decrease your costs to have more flexibility, flexible money to have, but you cannot create more hours in the day. Jeff Bezos gets the same 24 hours you and I get. It’s how you choose to allocate those. And most people don’t choose how to allocate those. they default to whatever’s left. Hey, I really wanted to exercise but I sat down last night to watch 30 minutes of Netflix, and four and a half hours later, I’m going to bed at 130 because it was on autoplay, okay, well, you just let someone else take over your life. You let Reed Hastings and the Netflix algorithm just take over your life. Is that really how you want to live? And you don’t you can’t earn more of those hours? You have, that’s all you had. So you need to be if anything more diligent with your time budget than your financial budget, because you can go make more money, you can’t make more time it doesn’t exist.
Hannah Mitrea 14:02
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier how you know, you shouldn’t have all of your time planned out either. So how does somebody create that balance of you know, making sure they have a structure? Like how much time do you schedule into your calendar? Hey, this is kind of flexible, free time.
Andrew McConnell 14:20
Yeah, that was that was a lesson for me, quite honestly, because I used to budget to 100%. And the reality is there’s some times that a certain chunk will flex up. And really to things flex down. There’s certain times I just sold my company last week, there are certain things at work that we’re definitely flexing. And when you budget into 100%. Like I said, you don’t get more hours in the day. So then you have to start stealing from other parts of your budget. So maybe you’re sleeping less and you’re less effective and it’s this whole cascading thing of everything now is done worse and takes more time because you’re sleep deprived, which makes you more sleep deprived because you needed more time doing things less well, where you steal it from your family, and then you resent it. And it’s all terrible. And so what I had no budget to is kind of 85 to 90%. I’m saying, Hey, here’s what capacity is, I’m only gonna budget 85 to 90%, because other things will flex on. And even in that 85 to 90%. There’s, there’s flex time of okay, there needs to be commuting to this. Okay, I actually need 10 minutes between each meeting, instead of just going back to back to back. Because I have to go the bathroom, I’m still human. I needed time to just catch a breather before I jump into the headspace of the next meeting. And so being more deliberate one on the flex and cushion between things within the day, as well as in the total budget, not going up to that 100% So that when things do flex, have space for it. And when things don’t you have that breathing room to when creative thinking really takes off. It’s when you have that space it your mind can wander and you come up with new ideas for new companies or new ideas for books or whatever it is.
Hannah Mitrea 16:09
No, I love that. So I know probably people listening are like okay, what time do you go to sleep? Like how much do you dedicate to sleep? I feel like Yeah,
Andrew McConnell 16:18
yeah, it’s I try eight hours. So 930 to 530 is my bread and butter. Right? And yeah, I mean, my wife’s like, that’s so sad. You go to bed so early this Sunday? Like, I don’t know, it’s not sad to me. Like I really like my life. I really like how I feel like everything will get done. I after 930 What are people doing anyway? Like, you’re still gonna you’re watching TV. Like, I just don’t care that much about TV. I’m sorry. I don’t I don’t need more time to watch TV. Or going out and partying. Yeah, though, there’ll be times like, I’m not going to be rigorous of a hey, I haven’t seen these people in years. And nope, I can’t possibly stay out till 1030 or whatever. There are times that again, there’s that cushion and give but my bread and butter is 930 to 530.
Hannah Mitrea 17:04
Right? Awesome. Know that I’m assuming I like to go to bed at like, I’m in bed by nine o’clock. Usually, I’m like asleep between nine and 10. And it’s crazy to think because as children like, staying up late was like the coolest thing ever. And as adults, I’m like, Please, no,
Andrew McConnell 17:19
let me go. Over and so much else.
Hannah Mitrea 17:24
Yeah, that carries over everything getting up early. Creating that routine. I really like how you mentioned how, like you stick to this routine through the weekends too. It’s something I want to work better at is sticking to the weekends too. Because in my head, like it was always it was a weekend. But as an adult, I’m like, isn’t really like we don’t go to school. Not a weekend. I want to ask, so if somebody is, you know, never budgeted their time, you know, never even time block their time. What is a way that they can start creating that calendar budget to be like, you know, flexible for them? It’s not so strict that they just like fall off than a week.
Andrew McConnell 18:05
Yeah. So I mean, one thing on my website am Andrew mcconnell.com, there’s a free downloadable PDF, with all the tools and exercises from the book. This is one of them. And so if anybody wants the actual worksheets behind this and the steps through, that’s totally free, downloadable on the website. But the starting place, really is to roll back and say how do you want to live your life like Don’t Don’t say hey, when I retired be so great to have this and so I’m going to just mortgage the next 50 years of my life because I’ll be happy these last five or 10 Right? Like is that? Is that the way to live? No. How what is the day need to look like to make you happy? What are you doing in that day? Where’s your time in your life? And start with the big buckets of family friends work sleep exercise, eating, what are the things that fill up that day that make this a great day just starting on the day basis and then how much time for each of those things. So I start with that is the big buckets and you have to add them up. Okay, if I said I want to sleep eight hours and I want this much at work and they’re not 27 hours in the day, okay? Let me figure out where three hours is going to come from I’m going to have to cut some things and adjust and give more here and less here. And that’s that’s the starting point and then whatever area of your life you I work is the one where I do the deep dive and exercise in the book but it applies to any other area of life you say okay, family time Okay, what does family time mean? Is it I’m gonna have this much time taking my kids to events and coaching their sports teams. You can double click on what each of those are on volunteering at their school on one on one time with each of my kids. I have three kids a and I want X number of hours, one on one per month with each and then how Do I do that and then work around from there. But don’t. This is why I call it zero base calendaring. So often, people will start with, Okay, here’s what it looks like today, here’s how I want to change it. But how it is today doesn’t need to be have any resemblance to how it is in the future. If you didn’t proactively design today, in the first place, then it’s mindlessly designed by other people around you. So if you’re gonna go through the exercise, go from starting from zero, if you were building your ideal life, what does that look like? And that’s not to say, Tomorrow, you’re gonna get there next week, you’re gonna get there, but you at least have a template of okay, here’s what I want to work towards. And as I’m doing it, as I’m tracking it, where am I not meeting that? And what do I need to change? So one of the things I do in my calendar, every single quarter is keep 30 minutes on Fridays, where I look at my calendar for the next week, to say, Okay, here’s where I said, I wanted to put my time, my head, my life for the next quarter. Does next week look like what I said, My ideal week would look like? And if not, is there a good reason I’m traveling, I’m not actually with family. So I can take all this family time that I had then and put it towards work. And maybe I’ll catch up on family time, when I get back or whatever that looks like. Or we have had a couple of weeks in a row where it doesn’t look like the calendar that I said, I wanted to look like, has something changed? Do I actually need to go through the exercise of restarting what my zero base calendar should be? Or do I just need to be better at saying no and moving meetings? And so that that’s a separate routine, the routine of assessing the routine.
Hannah Mitrea 21:46
And the question that comes up my to my mind right now, and I love how you’re looking at is like, you know, this is how it should be every week, but there’s flexibility where you’re traveling, stuff like that. And so a lot of people starting out, maybe they’ve let so many people control what their days look like already. How do they start creating those boundaries with people like, hey, actually, this is my time to do this family. So I can’t actually work right now.
Andrew McConnell 22:11
Yeah, I mean, maybe maybe this is coming from a privileged position, right? Like, I’ve owned my own company for the past 10 years. I just sold it. So now. So we’ll see how this all works out. But how are they getting access to you and your time, right? Like I, between 545 and 715, no one can get a hold of me, even if they wanted to. My phone’s off into a different room, I’m not on my computer. So people will try to interrupt my family time. But they don’t have a way to actually do that. I don’t give them the ability to do that. And so if it’s true, that you want these boundaries, you’re the one that decides what gates you leave open, what doors you leave open for people to break those boundaries in the first place. You decide how permeable or not they are. I haven’t, I haven’t actually ever done this. But I’m going on my first family vacation in a long time over Christmas. And I really want to do it. But this person, I can’t remember who did it. But I love the idea. Puts it out of office on. So I’m out of the office from this date to this date. If it’s an emergency, here’s who to contact. And if it’s truly emergency, like this is my first vacation mobile. But here’s my phone number, call me. If this is an email, just know it any email sent between this date and this date. I’m deleting when I return. If it’s still relevant, and you need me to deal with it, then send another email after this date. And I’ll read that. So you don’t come back to 8000 emails waiting for you like Nope, this date to this date. Please all I told you I was going to do it. It’s done. Again, I haven’t haven’t yet done that myself. But I’m planning to try it. We’ll see.
Hannah Mitrea 23:59
Yeah, no, I like that. But I think it’s really good. And I think a lot of people you know, especially if you know somebody that could be listening right now, I don’t think they realize they have that power to turn their phone off to say, Hey, I am not available to you right now. Because I think we live in this on demand world where like if somebody doesn’t reply back to you within 10 minutes, oh my goodness. Like they don’t care about what I said they’re not there. And so being okay with like i Right now my phone is upside down. And as soon as I turn my phone upside down, it silences everything. I will get a notification until it flips back over. And so I’m very much like you and my morning my phones in another room and I don’t touch it until eight o’clock. And that’s what my day starts. So I love that. You mentioned that just like that power that you we all have. And I think sometimes they don’t realize we have it. Yeah,
Andrew McConnell 24:51
I mean it’s our smartphones are these incredible tools that create efficiencies, our ability to do so much else right like, hey, we actually can work from anywhere now because we have this visibility to go. But that also means we do work from everywhere. And we end up working for the technology instead of the technology being a tool that we use, and realizing where that power is. I mean, when I first started my career at McKinsey, it was pre iPhone, and it was Blackberry, you had these bloody, red blinking lights when you had your email. And it was so stressful, it was awful. I mess up my sleep all this, and I learned, you can turn the light on. Changing like, I didn’t have to think about it. Us, I wanted to go pick up the phone and look at it. Now there’s a separate thing. And this is why it’s in a separate room when it is near you. I mean, there’s studies on this of just being in the same room as you IQ goes down. Literal IQ on tests, if your phones in the room with you versus not IQ goes down, we are less smart when our devices are near us. So we become this kind of slave to the device, as opposed to hey, here’s how I want to use it. Here’s when I don’t want to use it when I don’t want to be available. And there’s certain things like if you’re a physician, and you’re on call, you don’t get that like you’ve you’ve set those boundaries of right now I don’t have any I am on call. I’m getting a call anytime. If you’re any warzone. And you’re having to deal with stuff like it’s a different situation. Most of us are not EMTs actively working at a given like an EMP can be off as well and not available. You decide what you’re doing. And few people actually take advantage that.
Hannah Mitrea 26:36
No, I agree. Love it. Let’s talk about your success, though. Because I know we’re close to wrapping up here. So how do you define success? And how do you relate that success back to your routine?
Andrew McConnell 26:47
Yeah, so for me, success is living the life that I want to live now. Right? It’s, there’s the hedonic treadmill of hey, we think when we get x, we’re going to be happy when we get to this age, or we graduated from school, or we get this amount of money or buy this car, whatever it is, and how human psychology is, is we get that immediate dopamine hit. And then we have the fall off that is commensurate with how high that hit is, and longer. And then we just balance back to where we started. So that brand new car feels great for the first week, maybe the first month. And then it’s just routine. And you see the next round, you really want that. And so I don’t define success, not just on material things, but even on accolades, or labels or anything like that. Because it it doesn’t like it doesn’t, it’s never going to feel like success, because then there’s always next thing you want. So success is for me. My life success is, Hey, am I living the life I want to live? Am I getting fulfillment and joy, and impact and living a life of purpose? And that is what success is?
Hannah Mitrea 27:55
Yeah, no, I completely because we can always get more money, we can always try to get the next accolade or, you know, next business and next thing. But true success is are you happy?
Andrew McConnell 28:11
Or fulfilled? Are you living a life of purpose? Like it is dependent on what? For you? It is, in my mind. And for me it’s is each day? Hey, was today a great day? was if I woke up knowing I’m going to do this tomorrow? Would I be happy about that? Yeah, that is success. Am I living a life that I want to live?
Hannah Mitrea 28:35
Now? Awesome. So I have two more questions for you. So the first one is like if they somebody is listening to this, and they’re like, Okay, I need to start the zero based design life. I need to create this routine in my life. So that I can have the life I want to live. What’s that one thing they need to start doing tomorrow to create that life they want to live?
Andrew McConnell 28:56
Yeah, I think being thoughtful about it. If you want to live the life you want to live, as opposed to one that other people designed for you that they by the way they didn’t design, it just fell in to what it is, then you have to know what that design is what it is that you actually want. So there are few people who proactively design it. And fewer people who think about what do I actually want so many other people, so many people think about, oh, what I don’t want, hey, here’s everything I hate about my life right now. Or it’s going to be great when all these things go away or all this stuff’s different. Just again, erase all that erase the context of today and tomorrow. What is it that you want to start from that? Start from that exercise, and then you can start filling in the pieces from there to start working towards it. But you don’t know even what to work towards until you know what it is.
Hannah Mitrea 29:47
Awesome. And question number two is what book would you recommend somebody go and read right now? And then I guess three questions and then tell me about your book as well.
Andrew McConnell 29:58
Yeah, so uh, Uh, the most recent book that I just think Well can I give to, okay? Now just because of World Cups going on a book from a Uruguayan writer, I just read this absolutely phenomenal about the sport of football, slash soccer is soccer in the sun and shadow. And it’s all these little vignettes of the sport and World Cups and everything. So that’s kind of a fun book, in terms of finding that life of purpose living that life of purpose, Arthur C, Brooks’s new book, from strength to strength, is magnificent. It is just such a great book. In fact, when I was back, this weekend, I was in the bookstore, to sign books. And I saw it on the way out, and I just bought it for the guy with me. I was like, No, this is so good. You’re getting this. I’m buying it right now for you. Just think it’s a great book.
Hannah Mitrea 30:51
Awesome. And then tell me about Get out of my head, the book The euro. Yeah. So
Andrew McConnell 30:56
this is a book that it takes us concept of treating our mind like real estate. So like we talked about, we’re tight fisted with money, we’re tight fisted with our material things. But we give away our time, we let other people design our time in our lives. And that’s where our mind goes. And yet, that’s the one finite resource, the one asset we can actually own is our mind. physical goods they break, they can be stolen, our body can get sick, we can’t control if a virus gets in. But our minds are one thing we own. And yet, we default to renting the pieces back. We give it away to social media, we give it away to Netflix and autoplay feature, we give it away to the news cycle, we give it away when we’re laying in bed, we say hey, I want to sleep. But I can’t stop thinking about what my boss said yesterday. We live our lives, as renters of our own mind. And get out of my head gets into why scientifically is that the human default, if this is misery, why in the world isn’t what everybody does. And it gets into to that. And then also, more importantly, the remedies of here’s what to do about here’s how to stop running to other people. Here’s how to stop running to events and circumstances outside of your control. Here’s how to stop running to and from different and imagined versions of yourself, so that you are truly the owner of your mind that you have now, which is only you that exists. And it has illustrations from really high performing people, Navy SEALs, founder of DocuSign, social activists, artists, musicians all over the board. And then it has each chapter because it’s one thing to know and feel good of like, oh, this is great. But the more important thing is, are you actually going to do something differently? Is your life going to be different as a result? So every chapter has exercises and worksheets and tools to how do you go put this into practice? How do you actually make tomorrow, different from today, so that you have that ownership for life and maintain that ownership. And so that that’s the book.
Hannah Mitrea 32:52
Awesome, we will play the book and I’ll see your website in the show notes as well as the email that we send out. Sort of in this listening, make sure you go and look at the show notes so you can actually go to his website, get the book, get out of my head, and learn how to make your mind yours. Thank you for listening to success is routine podcast. If you found value in this episode, share it with a friend episodes go live weekly on Sunday at 8am. Every week with the right routine, like follow and review the podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, Amazon music or wherever you’re listening. Join the success of routine movement and get exclusive downloads and content from the guests go to www dot success is routine.com and follow the conversation there or on social media. Until next time, remember
