How to Create a Masterpiece Day

Today I'm going to share something with you that I wish I had learned 10, 15, 20 years ago. And if I had, it would have changed the very trajectory of my life. And some people say, "Well, it's about the morning routine or the perfect day or the perfect week or the formula for creating the right productivity." In fact, I think it's bigger than that. I think it's better than that. What if I could show you a way, a formula, a system, a framework that's some of the biggest baddest entrepreneurs use to have insane productivity and an overall joyful life? I call it the concept of a masterpiece day. What is it? And if you think for one second, there's anything Fufu associated with this thing again, because I go into extreme tactical detail on how you can install this concept of a masterpiece day into your life that will change your life forever, make you more money than you ever thought and give you the time and the joyfulness that you've always wanted. Get ready for what I call the masterpiece day. One thing is for certain. Just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this, where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how-to. How to go your business. How to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Tribata and welcome to Business School. Hey, this is Sharon and welcome back. Today I'm going to tell you about how to create a masterpiece day. How to create a masterpiece day. I know gurus around the world have talked about how to have a perfect day. What is your formula for having the perfect week? How do you create the most amazing morning routine and all of that stuff? But this idea dawned upon me when I realized that what I do and how I can show up and how I create is much deeper, much bigger, much better than all of that. I want to take this and go super tactical on this and share with you how to create a masterpiece day. In fact, I'm going to be vulnerable and share with you exactly how I think about it. What I've done to install it in my life and the funny part is I'm human. What I'm sharing with you is my framework, my blueprint, and with full and complete acceptance that I don't do this every single time because that is almost impossible. When was the last time you've heard this phrase, a masterpiece day or a perfect day? If you ask somebody, "Tell me, go back in time, go back in your memory and tell me about a perfect day." We all will think about things in common, such as, "Hey, I remember the day that I got married." That was a perfect day. I remember the day my first child was born and my second child was born and my fourth child was born. That was a perfect day. I remember the time when I was honored by the president. I remember the time that I graduated from college. I remember the time that I sold my business. I remember the time that I did X or I did Y. We can think about those. Those are the first few days that come up. I want to give you a different idea of not a masterpiece day, but a totally epic day. This epic day I want to share with you is something so cool that I got to do and I really want to take you on this journey with me because it sets the stage for everything that we're going to talk about today. I was with my mastermind group of business owners here in Orange County and the ringleader for this trip had put together this trip and just said, "Not given us a lot of detail." He just said, "Hey, Sharon, I need you to be at the airport with this packing list. You're going to be gone for seven days or six days and I'll give you the attenery when you get here." I kind of liked that. I didn't really know what we were doing or where we were going. I'm not going to walk you through this whole trip, but I want to walk you through day one. I show up at the airport and instantly realize that I was not at the commercial terminal, but we were at the private terminal, which is already pretty cool. Then we realized that 14 of us are flying on a G450, which is a cool Gulfstream private airplane. Then I realized that we're going to Central America for six days. We were going to do five countries in six days on a Gulfstream, which is way cool. I didn't really know where the first stop was. We get on the plane and the next thing that you see, you see this little icon on the screen moving that says California to Panama. I had never been to Panama, so I was really excited about the trip. We get to Panama. We check into our hotel and we wake up the next morning. We have a great breakfast and two former Navy SEALs show up. They say, "All right, you guys ready?" I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing. I said, "Sure." The 14 of us get into two jeeps and we start driving. We drive to these two helipads. I see these two former military choppers and we get on these choppers and we start flying. This is all day one, by the way. This is just the morning of the first day. We're flying in these choppers and I realized from the headset that I was wearing that the pilot was telling us that we were going to actually go to the Panama Canal and we were actually going to see a ship go through the locks of the Panama Canal, which I had never seen, only a scene on a YouTube video to go from the Atlantic side to the Pacific side. Actually go through the canal and I thought, "Wow, that's awesome." I'm like, "Who gets to do that? Who gets to be on a former military helicopter watching ships go through the Panama Canal and through the locks?" I was like, "This is amazing." We fly information, go through the Atlantic side, go to the Pacific side, watch a ship, go through the locks most of the way. It was a fascinating experience. Then the chopper started flying in a formation and they all threw the canal and they finally get to one part of the canal where there's not a lot of boats or ships or anything like that. They started hovering closer and closer to the water and they were about, I don't know, 15-16 feet from the water and they tilted in one direction. The seal turns around and he says, "You ready to jump?" I said, "Jump, jump where?" In the canal. Literally this guy wanted us all to jump into the Panama Canal. While this may be an exhilarating experience for you as you're listening to this, for me is a little bit terrifying because I am not a very good swimmer and I could barely stay afloat in a three-foot pool. I poke the Navy Seal and I'm like, "Hey, I can't swim." He's like, "You can't swim." He goes, "Do you tell me this now?" Then I said, "Well, I'll jump but do you have a life jacket?" He points to under the seat where I pull out this canister which had those orange life vests. I put the life vest on and it didn't even have plastic buckles. It had these little mini metal chain links because it was probably not used for so long. I pull out this canister and I open it up and there's so much dust in the air that everyone starts to sneeze. I remember this vividly all mad at me. The other, the seven guys on the chopper, I put this life vest on and I'm furiously blowing into the little pipe thing to blow up this life vest. I finally get that to happen and I'm one of the last guys and I jump out out of this helicopter 14 feet and Hale jump right into the Panama Canal. I actually jumped from a helicopter into a Panama Canal and then I started to barely figure out my waist and swim and all of that and I get to the rescue boat that had us all. After that, of course, I never realized that I get to the boat and I take off this life jacket. I have this X mark on my chest which is literally my bot, my skin had ripped from the life jacket of me jumping in the water in two lines with an X like a gladiator because of these little metal chain links. Now I got over that because it was an exhilarating experience. It was an epic day. That was day one in Panama. It wasn't even lunchtime yet. The things that we did after that were blow your mind as to what I shared because this guy who had planned the trip was just an epic planner and epic planner. Now, while that was an amazing day, right, our start to this trip of doing the doing five countries in six days on a G5 and jumping into the pan of my canal, which almost no one will ever get to do. While that was amazing, I can't have that day every day and I wouldn't want that day every day. Why won't a create, I want to create a masterpiece day for myself every day. So I sat down and I asked myself this. I asked myself what needs to happen for me to have a masterpiece day. Like what are the components of a masterpiece day? Now I want to share with you my components of a masterpiece day that I don't really share with others. These are the six components that I like to have in my day that I know that if I knocked these off, I have an amazing day. In fact, I have such an amazing day that it is a true masterpiece of a day because when you start to stitch together masterpiece days, you get masterpiece weeks. And when you start to get stitched together masterpiece weeks, you get masterpiece years and when you start to stitch together masterpiece years, you get a masterpiece of a life. And none of that starts without having a masterpiece day and none of that starts without actually defining what your masterpiece day is because unless you can actually define what it is, you don't know whether you actually got it. You need the clarity around it. So let me give you the six components of my masterpiece day, how I think about it, and maybe that will allow you to think about how to design yours in some way, shape or form. So here are the six components. Eat, move, sleep, service, growth, and deep work. I say it again. Number one, eat. Number two, move. Number three, sleep. Number four, service. Number five, growth. And number six, deep work. Right? Number six, deep work. So let's actually quickly go through each of these because I think you'll appreciate how I think about them and maybe you can use some version of it to install and deploy into your life as well. Let's talk about the eat part. I want to, when I talk about the eat part, I want to introduce you to a concept called the Neurotransmitter Cascade, the Neurotransmitter Cascade. I was talking to the ultimate strength sensei, strength go Charles Polenquin in my master angle. And if you don't know Charles, he's the one and only to appear on Tim Ferriss's show three times and also reference numerous times in his book. He's like totally a brilliant beast. And he said something that completely changed the way I think about nutrition. And I'm not even going to tempt to paraphrase it because I recorded what he said and I transcribed it word for word. And I actually have written it down right here on a note card and I want to read this transcription to you. He says the first thing you put in your mouth in the morning provided its food will dictate the Neurotransmitter Cascade for your whole day. The very first thing you eat in the morning makes a huge difference for your whole day. It's even been shown to affect the willpower later on during the day. What you eat at 7 a.m. can affect how much willpower you have at 6 p.m. regardless of what you eat for lunch. How insane is that, right? The first thing that you put in the morning provided its food will dictate the Neurotransmitter Cascade for your whole day. The very thing you eat in the morning makes a huge difference for your whole day. It's even been shown to affect your willpower later on during the day. Fascinating. I have a lot of health related issues. I have type 1 diabetes. I'm limited to what I can eat and how I live my life because I'm on insulin. I have to manage what I eat. But regardless of that, you need a plan. You need a plan. Let me give you a few things that I wrote down on how I manage what I eat. Number one, you choose right now before it's actually time to eat because when you have to choose while you're hungry, you make bad choices. Number two, identity is really important. I have a friend who always says, you know, he switched drinking diet coke at every single meal and every single restaurant by saying, I am a water drinker. He just made it an identity. He said, I am a water drinker. So when he shows up at the restaurant and someone has what would you like to drink, he says, he literally doesn't say I want water. He says, I am a water drinker and I'll have water. He reaffirms the identity every single time. A lot of people have rules. All of those are really good because if you don't have a set of rules, then you don't really know how you're living your life. One of the things that I love is environmental exposure. Environmental exposure is just eat with healthy people and you will just eat better. It's very hard to go to eat with your trainer and you're not going to order a cheeseburger fries on a shake. Like literally that will not happen. Environmental exposure is super important because I love going to dinner with my super healthy friends because I know I'm going to eat healthy because of them. It's super easy. Right? Now a lot of people will say this. I'm throwing out a lot of tactics at you because I want you to come up with your own version of what eating means to you. And people will say, well, Sharan, I can't be that strict moderation. Moderation, everything is good in moderation. Well, there's an interesting quote. It says moderation is halfway between discipline and disaster. So that may be good for you, but it's not going to get you a masterpiece day. Right? Food is fuel most of the time. And my health coach Brad Davis and always says, hey, Sharan, choose between whether it's a performance meal or a recovery meal, right? Choose between whether it's a performance meal or a recovery meal. Ask if you're going to put this in your body. Is it to get you to perform well or is it good? Get you to recover from a tough performance you already have had. What's this? If you cannot nail what you eat, you can't make it up with sleep, exercise, drug, spills, supplements, etc. If you can't nail down what you eat with design, there are days where if I don't eat right, my whole day is completely broken. And which is why I want to give you the gift of saying, hey, how can you decide? How can you define? How can you design what you eat? And if anything, if there's any thought process here, it is, can you just make the choice before you actually have to do it? That's number one, eat. So a couple tactics there. Number two, move. I'm not going to belabor the exercise point with you at all, but I'm going to read something to you that my friend and a real badass real estate entrepreneur, CEO Todd Conklin wrote. And I'm going to read it to you. He wrote it on a really great post and I want to share it with you. He says, I do not like the gym, but I love the outcome. I do not like prospecting, but I love the results. I do not like recording videos, but I love the impact. I do not like getting up at 5 a.m. But I love how productive it makes me. I do not like living to a schedule, but I love how much I can accomplish. I do not like making the bed, but I love the way it makes my wife feel. I do not like practicing, but I love when I'm prepared. What don't you like to do? I do not like going to the gym, but I love the outcome. I do not like exercising, but I love the way I feel after. We know the exercise thing. I'm not going to tell you how to work out, when to work out, etc. But if we don't move, it doesn't work. I'll tell you what I've been doing because of some health stuff that I've been going through. I just realized that the greatest exercise is just break my body down. For now, as I'm recording this for you, I've been starting and ending my day with long walks. When I say long, I mean hour plus long. You may say, "Who has the time for that?" I'm like, "I don't. You don't." But now I wake up earlier to do that. I just create the time earlier because I think it sets myself apart, sets me in a really good place. In the mornings, I go for over an hour. I walk for over an hour. I walk with, for the first 30 minutes, I walk with no headphones, nothing. I just walk with my thoughts. I clean, get to work through the cobwebs in my head, get to think, "Plan, I'm going to plan, be grateful." And then the second 30 minutes, I put on something that is inspirational, put on a meditation, put on like a podcast, something like that. I get to move. I get to move first. I do that the first thing in the morning because I know that once I can get it done, it's out of the way. Now, I've also realized if I can end my day with a walk, it's really, really powerful. So what I've started to do is with my son, who's eight years old, I've started to do like a neighborhood walk with him in the afternoon after dinner. This takes 15, 20 minutes. We'll follow the same exact loop. We do it over and over. I have a great conversation with him. I put my kind of phone and airplane mode just to walk and we walk and we chat and we talk about what we see. But it allows me and him to decompress from the day. I'm not going to tell you what to do, how to work out, etc. But I have realized that if I don't move that day, if I don't move that day, I just say I can't seem to think straight. I just feel like I'm sluggish. I just feel like I'm not sharp. I just feel like I'm not clear. I just feel like I'm not focused. I just feel like I haven't done the work myself to get ready for the day. Again, it's me. Now if you can't work out, it's not about the workout. I'm just getting you to move because our bodies are built to move. Our bodies are built to move. And I'm not asking you to move tremendously. I'm asking you to move a little bit. I'm asking you to move just a little so that you can create the life that you want by putting yourself in that state. Number one, eat number two, move number three, sleep. We know this. The only thing proven across the world in every research study for performance is sleep. Not just the fuel you put in your body, how hard you work out what supplements you take, how many IV drips you get, type of coach that you have. All of that is secondary. The only proven thing for performance is sleep. The only proven thing. And I will tell you the days that I sleep well versus the days that I don't sleep well are a star significant difference, right? And I found that a lot of us think about sleep in very different ways. And I want to give you the three things very tactically that I think about sleep. And some of these may work for you, some of these may not, but allow me to share mine so that you can install them as you like in your own life as your own masterpiece day. But here are the three big pillars of sleep. The first one is it's the routine on how you get ready for bed is your it is your wind down routine. And just like we have an alarm for waking up, we should have an alarm for getting to start the winding down process. And I would offer that if you can stay as close to that wind down routine as possible, you'll get to the sleep, a good sleep much faster. So I've tried really hard to say, hey, I'm going to, I spent a little bit of time looking at looking at my phone, which people say you shouldn't do, but it's okay with me. And after I do that, I like to stretch because that makes me feel kind of groggy and want to go to bed. And then I, I'll try to read and anytime I read something at night, it puts me to sleep. And most importantly, what I do now is I put on a meditation in my, in on some earphones. And I, and the meditation and the sounds automatically puts me to bed. I follow that same routine, you know, over and over every night, over and over every night. And now if I ever want to sleep, I just know that whether I'm traveling or not, I just have to watch something on my phone, stretch a little bit, read a little bit, and then put my headphones on with a little meditation and off I fall asleep. And is it perfect every time? No, but it allows me to know that I have a routine, allows me to know that just if we don't have a routine, it doesn't actually warm us up to sleep well. And so we, that's why we struggle a lot. So even if you are the kind that sleeps like a rock anywhere, even if you are the kind that can sleep at the drop of a hat anywhere, having the routine will actually give you a lot more perspective. And so many parties, it doesn't need to be fancy. It can just be, hey, I'm going to do these three stretches before I go to bed. Hey, I'm going to do this five minutes of gratitude before I go to bed. If you can do the same things over and over, then it allows you to kind of call, call that routine, call that need, and you're able to actually go to bed. For a lot of people, different people sleep different ways, sleep conditions are really important. I'll tell you recently about actually started to use an eye shade. Because I've children and my wife may still be, you know, reading something. So I just put an eye shade on that I completely black out everything. And I invested in a really expensive $13 velvet eye shade from Amazon. And I ordered three of them. I have one of my backpack, one of my travel bag, one right on my bedside. I even got one from my eight year old son who loves it. And I put it on and instantly I have this feeling of everything is blacked out and it's time for me to go to bed. I know that you can't have perfect conditions to sleep all the time. And some, you know, because of your partner, you may be hot, you may be cold, you may be different, you may be, you know, it may be, you may have a lot of stress, you may have just eaten, late dinner, whatever it may be, try to see if you can make the conditions the same every time because when you can replicate the conditions, performance, start to happen. And the last but not least is, I just started to wake up at the same time every day. I have one alarm that goes off at the same exact time every single day. Many of you are on the 5 a.m. club with me, the 5 a.m. club, as if you don't know, is a, is a conference call that I lead at 5 a.m. Pacific time every single morning, 365 days a year. And it's a, it's five minutes at 5 a.m. It's inspiration me in a couple of other co-hosts. We run the call where we give you a little espresso dose of inspiration every morning for five minutes. We have thousands of entrepreneurs on the call at the time of this recording. We have over 6,000 entrepreneurs part of the 5 a.m. club. And it is a chance to get up and be a part of something great right away. So if you are on any other time zone, but but Pacific time, you get to dial in at that time zone. So if you're on the Eastern time zone, the United States, you get actually dial in at 8 a.m. for a few minutes to kick start your day. So I wake up at the same time every single day and that allows me to, to kind of have the right sleep routine. Now let me give you the caveat around it. There are some days where I just can't. There are some days where the sleep is more important. And there are some days where I just have to sleep in. And because I know that my body is craving it. Because if I don't sleep the way I need to, I have realized that I don't perform well. So eat, move, sleep at the first three. The next three I'm going to go into super, super, super tactics around this. And I hope you really kind of appreciate this. The next one is service. Now something magical happens when you give your time, your money, your resources, your pure energy in service of others. We know that. And we also know that the more you give, the more people that are impacted, the better we all seem to feel. Now instead of thinking about services just during the holidays where we give money to the Salvation Army, I thought about it and I was like, there has to be a better way. There has to be a better way. And the concept of service to me is much deeper than just giving money. Right? It's doing something impactful for someone without any requirement or obligation. I'll say it again, it's doing something impactful for someone without any requirement or obligation of reciprocation. You do it because you know that you can help that person. You do it because you know that you want to help that person and you absolutely want nothing in return. You do it because you know that you can help that person and you absolutely want nothing in return. Now the interesting part is this. This could be just creating great content. This could be what I do every single morning on the 5 a.m. club. This could be just randomly scrolling back on your phone and sending a text or a video to someone you have not talked to in a while. This could be seeing someone struggling on Facebook and then shooting them a direct message. This could be a random gift to someone in your network. This could be like most importantly, this I think from a family perspective, people will bring the family stuff up. I think the family time is built around service time. Right? What's the best way you can show that the word show that you love somebody? Time, right? And I actually think it starts at home. What is one thing you can do for your husband or your wife or your son or your daughter, your mom or your dad today without expecting anything in return without expecting anything in return? I'll tell you something. It really frustrates me when people say, oh, that's not natural because it's planned and it's forced that you're doing something that is not authentic. Well, that's like that's crazy. That's like saying that because it's planned, a wedding is not authentic. That's like saying because it's planned, your weight loss is not authentic. That's like saying because you planned your vacation, the power of it is not authentic. I refuse to believe that. I'm not asking you to plan your service. I'm not asking you to plan your random acts of kindness. I am asking that we require ourselves to be in service every single day because that's what makes the world go around. And I will tell you a lot of times that starts at home. That starts at home. That starts with our families. If we can't serve them, then who the heck are we going to serve? Number one, eat number two, move number three, sleep number four, service number five, growth. I want to tell you about this topic and I talk about this often and it really frustrates me. And when it comes to growth and I talk about this concept of the influencer junkie, we are all influencer junkies. You and I in many ways are influencer junkies. What I mean by that is we follow various influencers and I say influencers, personalities, media personalities, whatever, different sources of inspiration. We follow them online. So we get on our Instagram feeds and we see something from influencer A and influencer B and you see a Tony Robbins and you see someone else and you go from inspirational piece of content to inspirational piece of content, inspirational piece of content, inspirational piece of content. And then you're so distracted by all the pieces of inspirational content that it just frustrates us that we don't do anything about it. We get an idea and then we just swipe to the next piece of inspirational content. We are total influencer junkies because the inspirational content makes us feel better about ourselves, better about our lives, better to do more, be more. I understand that. But it's a, but it's like just taking a drink. It doesn't do anything. It only, it just doesn't do anything for us. So what I have, what I did once in the last couple of years, or I realized that maybe there's a way around it. Maybe I can do better. Yeah, I like these influencers. I like these media personalities. I like these people that I'm inspired by, but I don't want so many of them clouding my life and clouding my judgment and clouding my mind space. How can I do better? So I decided on an experiment and I said, well, what if I, every single month, what if I dedicated it to one, the study, the deep dive into, you know, one person or one topic? And I've tenderly made it about a person because I like diving into a certain person's life. And it's super helpful. It's been extremely helpful. And I'll give you an example of the couple of people that I've done deep dives up recently. I did a deep dive into one of my heroes, the author Malcolm Gladwell. I love Malcolm Gladwell. I love his ability. ability to tell stories, I love how he speaks, I love how he writes. And I realized that how amazing would it be to dedicate an entire month of learning just to Malcolm Cloudwell. So I read a couple of his books, I read all the blog posts that were out there on him, I watched all, I watched almost every YouTube video that I could find to forget my hands on. I even downloaded this masterclass app where he had done his own masterclass and I just totally fell in love with his storytelling ability. I love that. And so what I do now is I spend 30 minutes every night before I go to bed, 30 minutes every night before I go to bed in growth. And my growth, as I'm sharing with you, my growth is a deep dive into one of these, into the person or the topic of the month. So if I, if this month was Malcolm Cloudwell month, I would deep dive in my 30 minutes before I started stretching and getting ready for bed would just be doing something where I learned and deep dive into that person and that would be my growth. That's what I do at 30 minutes at night. Now I do an hour of really structured growth every day and I actually planned this out for the entire week on the weekends, I just planned it out for the upcoming week. So if I'm doing 30 minutes at night, I also do 30 minutes during the day and generally I do it around 2 to 3 pm in the afternoon, I do it 30 minutes, it's something very tactical. And let me tell you what I mean by that. I like, I've realized that just learning something for the sake of learning is, doesn't like float my boat. So I ask myself this question, what can I learn today that I can use tomorrow? I say it again, what can I learn today that I can use tomorrow? So generally in the 30 minutes and the afternoon, I watch a video about maybe a piece of software or a tool that I can use, maybe an organizational system from some productivity. I read an article about copywriting or making better videos, maybe I read about leadership or a business strategy, maybe I read about finances or the financial markets. I want to read about something today or learn something today that I can use tomorrow. So my growth is essentially based into two parts. 30 minutes in the afternoon and 30 minutes at night. And I don't do growth in the mornings. My mornings are dedicated to driving opportunities for my life for my business. My afternoon is dedicated what I call operations. So mornings I do opportunities, afternoons I do operations. And the 30 minutes is generally when my energy gets low, so I want to get a break, I want to get a coffee, and that's when I want to infuse something growth oriented in my life. So 30 minutes a day in the afternoon of something tactical that I can learn today that I can use tomorrow. And the second 30 minutes is at night, right before I go to bed is my deep dive of the day where I learn to grow and deep dive into a certain either personality or topic. That's my growth. That's my, I've given myself a framework. It's easy for me to follow. I don't have to overthink it. I don't have to read, I only read three pages today and not 14 pages tomorrow. I didn't get this book done. My nightstand is filled with books. I bought a course online, but I didn't actually do it. I don't have to do any of that stuff, right? I just given myself a structure to manage all of this. Here are the topics again, eat, move, sleep, service, growth. The last but not least is deep work, deep work. You've heard this topic of deep work before. Cal Newport talks about it in this book. But how many times do you feel like you did so many things in a day, but you feel like you didn't get a lot done? There were days where I would have, you know, 15, 18, 24 things on my to-do list. I would, I would maniacally knock them off. I actually have one of the portfolio, one of the, you know, operators of one of my portfolio companies tell me, he's like, "Shron, just give me a list and I'll burn them off." And I was like, "That's fine, but your entire job is just burning things off a list. You don't really actually get anything done. You don't actually move the ball forward. You're just knocking stuff off your to-do list." Even if you knocked everything off your to-do list, only to feel a mile sense of accomplishment and then you put more on the plate tomorrow. I know you have felt that way. I feel that way often. So what does deep work really mean? It means that we are prioritizing easy, prioritizing burning things over progress. We prioritize checking things off the to-do list. But we know this massive progress happened when we can do, like, literally deep work and deep work by deep work, I mean 90 minutes of uninterrupted, focused work. If you've not read the book, you know, deep work by Cal Newport. You did a really good job writing it. Different people have different ways of, you know, mechanics on how this actually gets done. But the days that I block off to work in a deep state, uninterrupted, I get more done and I feel more fulfilled. The problem was not just getting more done. The problem was feeling more fulfilled because it was not an exercise and more productivity. This is an exercise in designing and creating masterpiece days. I realized that it was not about just more efficiency anymore. It was about, how do I create masterpiece days? I want to be more fulfilled. So let's talk about this tactically, right? What does this mean? And how do I do this? And maybe you can, you know, you can use some of these ideas in your life. My deep work, as I shared, consists of opportunities and operations. My mornings are filled with opportunities and my afternoons are filled with operations. Mornings is when I can just my mornings, just for my based on my bio rhythms, I'm better in the mornings. I am a fresher in the mornings. I have more willpower in the mornings. I have more creativity in the mornings. I can write better, speak better, you know, create better in the mornings. My deep works are built in mornings and the afternoon. So those mornings are opportunities afternoons are operations. Every day, every day, I strive to do at least one and 90 minute block of deep work. All right. Say it again. Every day, I strive to do at least one 90 minute block of deep work. I put this 90 minute block on my calendar and treat this block as a non-negotiable. Now this is not a non-negotiable time. Let me be very clear. It is a non-negotiable block. This is what I mean. I have given myself permission to move that block around during the day, but it's non-negotiable for the day. And what I mean is, let's say I put a 90 minute block on my calendar and I get an important call or a meeting. I take it and I just move that block. I slide that block on my calendar somewhere else. It is a non-negotiable block, not a non-negotiable time. That way I give myself, I relieve the pressure of saying, "Oh, no, I'm not going to take that call because my 930-11 is my deep work." Yeah, you can do that. But our lives are not built the way. Sometimes we have to move around other people and do the best we can. So it's a non-negotiable block, not a non-negotiable time. And sometimes I may have to stay up late to get the block done, but it will get done. Because you know why? It's a non-negotiable block. Now you may ask, Ron, all right. That's interesting. What do you do in your deep work? Well my deep work is based entirely on my goals for the quarter. Every 90 days I give myself a set of goals that I want to accomplish that has a binary yes or no. Did I get it done or did I not get it done? And I ask myself this question, what is one project that I can do to move the goals, to move one of the goals that I have in this quarter forward? What is one project that I can do to move one of the goals that I have in this quarter forward? And so let's say my goal this quarter was to launch this podcast, right? Then my deep work block would be to say, all right, I'm going to, today I'm going to stop and think about the various episodes I want to create. I'm going to think about the guests that I want to bring on and I want to invite them. And I want to build out a plan for the content I want to build for you. So I turn off all the devices, I turn off all notifications, I sit down for 90 minutes and I just think I draw, I create. And how great I feel after that planning has been done because that is laid the roadmap to move one of my goals, this quarter forward of launching this podcast. Otherwise it's very otherwise you end up thinking about it while you're driving or when you're, you know, with your children and there's no real time to think about that. Therefore, it starts to bleed into other important time. Well, but is that the only way that we use deep work? No. You can also use deep work blocks where I use them operationally and I generally do this in the afternoon. It's where I'm pushing buttons and not thinking too hard. A lot of us only think that, you know, deep work needs to be done by big strategic things. I think, no, not really. We all have operational things to do, right? We all have operational things to do. And I like having blocks of time where I can push buttons and do some magic. I work on operations, automations and efficiencies in the afternoons time. So for example, let me give you a crazy example. I'm a stickler for doing my own emails to my community right over a couple of million emails a month that I send out and I write them. I schedule them in our software just because I'm weird that way. I'm kind of, you know, nuanced that way. So I, I generally write in the mornings because I'm clear and I always do operational tasks like scheduling, automations, funnels, etc. in the afternoon. So the deeper work slot for me in the afternoon would be, hey, maybe I've written 10, 10, 15 days worth of emails I've gone through and the operational task. I put some deep work block on my calendar where operationally I go, I schedule the automation. I schedule the emails. I think to the call to action, I think about how I'm going to serve my community and it has an impact moving things forward. The deep work is just time where you get uninterrupted time where you get to make massive progress on your goals for the quarter. progress. on your goals with the quarter because when you hit your goals with the quarter, the quarter after quarter, you hit your goals for the year. Deep work slots are both strategic, which are opportunistic and operational, either are fine. But if you do one or the other, it's almost you get lopsided. It's like working your biceps on on your right arm, but not on your left. I'll tell you this is super, super hard to have fulfillment without deep work and we end up doing a lot of what shallow work, right? 90 minutes, non-negotiable block every single day. 90 minutes. If we can give our goals 90 minutes every single day, then who is going to give that to us? 90 minute block, non-negotiable every single day. It can be opportunities, it can be operations, but uninterrupted work that pushes our goals forward. All right? Let's recap really quickly. Number one, eat number two, move number three, sleep number four, service number five, growth number six, deep work. So let me give you the highlights of each of them. Number one, eat. Number the neurotransmitter cascade, which you put in your mouth in the morning, is going to determine your level of willpower and ability to create all day. Number two, move. Moving is the fastest way to getting happy. Number three, sleep. Sleep is the only proven performance indicator that we have. Service is important because the world is bigger than you and it starts with your family. Number five, growth. Growth is what fuels the human spirit. Work drives both productivity as you know, and fulfillment because without it, with having a life where we do all these things, creating all this wealth, creating all these results without fulfillment really, really sucks. So let's not do that. I hope you liked that six part framework. I every single day before I close my eyes, I ask myself, did I eat? Did I move? Did I sleep? Did I serve? Did I have growth? And did I do deep work? If I hit all six of them, I have had a masterpiece day. And when I can string a bunch of masterpiece days together, I get a bunch of masterpiece weeks. And when I get a bunch of masterpiece weeks, I get a masterpiece ear. So what are some immediate next steps for you? My first thing I would tell you is, hey, what are your components of a masterpiece day? Is it the eat, move, sleep, service, growth, deep work? Or is it some combination of those? Or do you have your own? Because until you design your masterpiece day, at least on paper or even in your head, you're just not going to have too many because you don't know if you had one, if you did even have one in the first place. The other thing I would tell you is, be very clear about what time of day you're at your best, what time of day you're at your best, that time of the day is when you drive opportunities and the rest of the time you do operations. And last but not least, when can you put a non-negotiable block on your calendar for deep work? Can you actually put that in morning, noon or in the evening? Can you put that in early morning where you create some opportunities? When is it? Is there a way to do that? Remember, a masterpiece day is done by design. A masterpiece day is something you can control. A masterpiece day is something you can create. And all you have to do is design it up front and then magically your life will start to organize around it. Design our eat, move, sleep, service, growth and deep work. If this resonated with you, I'd love to maybe just shoot me a message on social media and say, hey, Sean, listen to this episode. Here are my components of a masterpiece day. Or can you expand more on this? Or can you do a deeper dive on that? I'd love to do that because if I can inspire you to create your own masterpiece day, design your own masterpiece day, I know that you'll have a lot more masterpiece weeks and some amazing masterpiece years to come. I appreciate you staying on it. I'll catch you on the next episode of the Business School Show. Hey, Sean, I have a cool gift for you. I took some of my best ideas from the last 20 years and created a five day MBA. It's a quick connection pact that you could listen to on the go just like this podcast. I want to give it to you for free. Just as a thank you for listening to the show. No fluff, no gimmicks, just pure actionable ideas for you to use instantly. You can grab it right now at businessschoolshow.com. That's businessschoolshow.com.