What does it take to achieve your biggest goals in life? How can you set yourself up for success in any endeavor you pursue?
According to the classic work The Boron Letters, there’s a clear path to building a productive lifestyle that leads to achievement. The secret lies in three key areas: maximizing mental clarity, developing a strong work ethic, and surrounding yourself with the right people.
Keep reading to explore how you can implement these powerful strategies to transform your approach to success.
The Productive Lifestyle
In The Boron Letters, Gary Halbert and Bond Halbert provide some general life advice for anyone trying to accomplish ambitious goals. Here are three tips for cultivating a productive lifestyle that can help you succeed at anything in life.
Tip #1: Build Your Life Around Periods of Mental Clarity
You almost always need a clear head to do your best, most productive work, argue the authors. Mental fog or emotional turmoil will make it impossible to write clear, effective marketing copy. More generally, they make every task seem more difficult and often lead to unwise and unproductive decisions in every area of life.
(Shortform note: In Deep Work, Cal Newport argues that it’s not possible to permanently maintain the mental state necessary for maximum productivity. On the contrary, even experts can only maintain clear, effective concentration for around four hours a day—and to even reach that level, you need to practice exerting this kind of effort. Thus, don’t schedule more than four hours of copywriting or high-stakes decision-making each day unless you want the quality of your work to drop.)
To maximize your productivity, build habits that allow you to work during periods of mental clarity and quickly recover when you’re feeling mentally drained. Getting regular exercise is vital for increasing your mental clarity. Specifically, the authors recommend running, jogging, or walking for an hour every morning as soon as you wake up. This will massively boost your mental clarity from day to day.
(Shortform note: In Spark, John Ratey explains why regular exercise has such a dramatic impact on the quality of your thinking. Our ancestors needed to think quickly primarily while they were hunting, so the human brain evolved to function optimally when the body is active. When you exercise, you balance the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, increasing your ability to sustain focus and motivation. Ratey would assert that the Halberts are right to recommend daily runs, as extended aerobic exercise like this offers more neurological benefits than anaerobic exercises like weightlifting or sprints.)
According to the authors, another habit that’s vital for maximizing your mental clarity is maintaining a healthy diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, and protein. On top of this, try fasting one day a week: You can skip your morning exercise on the day you fast, but don’t eat any food whatsoever. This will help your body rest and reset for the rest of the week. That said, the authors diverge in their opinions on fasting: Although Gary Halbert swears by a weekly fast, Bond Halbert dismisses it as unpleasant and unnecessary.
(Shortform note: Research shows that eating fruits and vegetables can not only boost your mental acuity, but also help fight off depression. One study of 4,000 women found that those who consumed at least five servings of vegetables a day were 19% less likely to develop depression over the next 15 years, and those who ate at least four servings of fruit were 25% less likely.)
| To Fast or Not to Fast? Like the authors of The Boron Letters, modern health experts are divided in regard to whether fasting is beneficial. In Outlive, Peter Attia warns that the majority of people should think twice before fasting. When you fast, you’re not giving your body the protein it needs, which can lead to dramatic muscle loss over time. This is dangerous because the majority of people already have low muscle mass, which can lead to an increased risk of injury and chronic disease. Furthermore, low muscle mass can increase your risk of insulin resistance, which limits the amount of energy getting to the brain (in the form of glucose), potentially hindering your mental clarity. On the other hand, Jason Fung argues in The Obesity Code that regular fasting is beneficial for the majority of people. Research shows that fasting helps lower your insulin resistance (which, by Attia’s logic, means that more energy can get to the brain). Fung asserts that the lower insulin resistance caused by fasting decreases the body’s set weight, reducing cravings to overeat and making it easier to permanently lose fat. In regard to Attia’s concern about muscle loss, Fung notes that fasting boosts the production of human growth hormone, which helps the body conserve muscle despite decreased protein intake. |
Recover Mental Clarity by Staying Active
When you’re feeling stuck in a mental rut, the authors recommend taking a break and focusing on some other productive action. Even if you’re working on something that isn’t a top priority, productivity-focused effort of some kind will help get you inspired and re-energized.
(Shortform note: In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson agrees that productive action is a powerful source of inspiration, and he elaborates that you can leverage this power to overcome another major obstacle in life: procrastination. If you don’t feel like doing something, whether it be because you’re preoccupied with distractions or you’re afraid of failure, taking a productive first step will make you feel more confident and inspire you to do more.)
What kinds of productive action do the authors recommend? Keep two to-do lists: One of important tasks that require mental clarity, and one of simpler yet also productive tasks you can do while mentally drained, like organizing the files on your computer or mowing the lawn. This way, whenever you’re feeling off your game, you can immediately switch to a doable task that still feels satisfying to complete
(Shortform note: If you keep two to-do lists to make sure you always have something productive to do, be careful not to fall into the trap of believing that you always need to be productive. In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman warns that if you adopt this mindset, you’ll spend all your time thinking about the future instead of living in the present, and you’ll feel guilty whenever you’re not being productive. To avoid this, Burkeman recommends intentionally scheduling time to do something purposeless: Have fun and practice the vital skill of enjoying the present moment.)
Tip #2: Cultivate a Strong Work Ethic
According to the authors, your work ethic can determine whether you’ll succeed. Specifically, cultivate the qualities of motivation, consistency, and resilience.
First, work up a strong sense of motivation. The authors contend that if you’re motivated to pursue success for its own sake, you’ll be able to make money without feeling like you’re trying. Thus, when deciding what to sell, make sure to choose something you’re excited to work with.
Second, commit to consistently working hard and practicing habits that lead to success, even when unforeseen problems disrupt your life. The authors explain that over a long enough timeframe, everyone gets offered opportunities for wild success. However, you can only take advantage of these opportunities if you’re ready for them; that is, if you’ve built habits that allow you to tap into your full potential at work every day. You’ll never have the perfect conditions to build these habits, so consistently work on them no matter what unexpected obstacles appear.
Finally, develop mental resilience. Life is hard, but you can conquer it by cultivating a willingness to move forward despite the pain, argue the authors. Once you become mentally resilient, your demeanor will instinctively change, and it’ll be easier to gain respect from others. Working out and building muscle can help you cultivate this resilient mindset.
Tip #3: Avoid Unhealthy Social Relationships
The authors warn that, if you’ve set an ambitious goal—and especially if your goal is to make a lot of money—most people will protest and try to discourage you, including your family and close friends. The more great things you accomplish with your life, the more likely they are to feel bad about not accomplishing as much.
To avoid getting discouraged, be ruthless in cutting unsupportive people out of your life. Many people feel a sense of guilt or obligation to indefinitely maintain their close relationships, even if those people continuously make life harder and less pleasant. This will make it much more difficult to motivate yourself to succeed and will generally make life less fun. When cutting people out of your life, don’t purposefully try to hurt or offend them, but don’t feel bad about spending little to no time with them, either.
Instead of nurturing unhealthy relationships, the authors recommend spending time with ambitious people with aspirations similar to yours, or people who have already achieved success. You’ll be much more likely to succeed if your friends are a constant source of encouragement and are willing to help you reach your goals.
