This video delves into the feelings of lethargy and apathy that people can experience without clear reason, shifting from periods of high energy and productivity to states of low motivation. It reassures viewers that these feelings are normal aspects of life, highlighting the "chaotic path of improvement" where ups and downs are expected. The key is to recognize when you've been below average for too long and act to reverse the trend, potentially increasing the frequency of feeling good over time.

The speaker shares five small habits to help get out of a rut and improve baseline happiness and productivity. These are defining what winning the day means, waking up at the time you promised yourself, viewing important tasks as a "daily dragon" to tackle, getting more sunlight and exercise, and reviewing daily performance by reflecting on what went right or wrong. By implementing these habits, one can maintain positive momentum, build self-esteem, and experience greater satisfaction.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. apathetic [ˌæpəˈθɛtɪk] - (adjective) - Showing or feeling no interest, enthusiasm, or concern. - Synonyms: (indifferent, uninterested, unmoved)

Tired, lethargic, apathetic.

2. chaotic [keɪˈɑːtɪk] - (adjective) - In a state of complete confusion and disorder. - Synonyms: (disordered, disorganized, tumultuous)

This is what we call the chaotic path of improvement, and we're all on it now.

3. perpetual [pərˈpɛtʃuəl] - (adjective) - Never ending or changing; occurring repeatedly. - Synonyms: (everlasting, continuous, eternal)

This leads most people to experience a state of perpetual low grade discontent and frustration.

4. virtuous cycle [ˈvɜrtʃuəs ˈsaɪkl] - (noun) - A beneficial cycle of personal or system growth where positive actions or outcomes lead to further positive actions or outcomes. - Synonyms: (positive feedback loop, beneficial cycle, self-strengthening cycle)

And this gets you excited to tackle the next day, which creates a virtuous cycle of success.

5. groggy [ˈɡrɒɡi] - (adjective) - Dazed, weak, or unsteady, especially from sleep or illness. - Synonyms: (drowsy, sleepy, lethargic)

In that moment when your alarm has just gone off and you're groggy, you're half asleep.

6. self-esteem [sɛlf-ɪˈstiːm] - (noun) - Confidence in one's own worth or abilities. - Synonyms: (self-respect, self-regard, self-confidence)

Your self esteem is the reputation you have with yourself.

7. reframe [ˈriːˌfreɪm] - (verb) - To look at, present, or think of something in a new or different way. - Synonyms: (rephrase, reinterpret, reconceptualize)

For instance, if you want to motivate a child to do something they wouldn't normally want to do, you've just got to reframe it as an adventure

8. iteration [ˌɪtəˈreɪʃən] - (noun) - The repetition of a process or set of instructions a specified number of times or until a condition is met. - Synonyms: (repetition, cycle, duplication)

See, improving at any skill requires three things you need feedback, reflection, and iteration

9. amygdala [əˈmɪɡdələ] - (noun) - A roughly almond-shaped mass of gray matter inside each cerebral hemisphere, involved in experiencing emotions. - Synonyms: (none)

More studies show that a 60 minute walk in nature versus in an urban environment, it decreases the activity in the amygdala.

10. meta-analysis [ˌmɛtə əˈnæləsɪs] - (noun) - A statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. - Synonyms: (review study, combined analysis, synthesis)

A Meta analysis of 15 different studies found that by taking around 6,000 steps per day, it wards off premature death and boosts level of psychological wellbeing.

5 habits that will fix 93% of your problems

Have you ever rolled out of bed one morning and for whatever reason, you just kind of felt bleh. Like you're not sick and there's nothing wrong per se, but you feel kind of drained and unmotivated, like you don't really feel like doing anything. And as you sit there observing this kind of bleh feeling, you realize that you've kind of felt this way for a few weeks now. Tired, lethargic, apathetic. And it's frustrating because you can think back and you're like, man, I was crushing it last month. I was focused, I was energized, I was productive. And then one day you just. You woke up and everything was different. You didn't even realize it at first, but your mojo just kind of up and disappeared.

Now, if you've ever felt this way, don't worry. This is completely normal. We all experience these highs, these lows, because that's just how life is. Half the time you're going to feel above average, and half the time you're going to feel below average. That's how averages work. The trick is to simply recognize when you've been spending too many days in a row falling below average. That way, you can quickly take action to reverse the trend. And if you make a habit of this, then in time, your baseline of how often you feel good, it starts to increase. And now what constitutes a bad day would have qualified as a good day only a few years ago. This is what we call the chaotic path of improvement, and we're all on it now.

I've personally fallen into a whole lot of ruts over the years, and what I've found is that to get out of them and get my baseline trending back up, it doesn't require me to do anything crazy. I don't need to take massive action. Usually I just need to recommit myself to five small habits, which I'm going to share with you in this video. The first is to define winning the day. I want you to imagine that you sit down to play a game for the first time. Your friend tells you all the rules. He explains how the pieces move and maybe even shares some basic strategy. But if he leaves out one piece of vital information, then none of it actually helps. So what is that one thing that you need to know in order to play any game effectively? It's this. You gotta know how to actually win the game. Like, is it the person with the most points, the fewest points, or is it the person who completes the level the fastest?

I mean, you would play golf very differently. If you thought the goal was to get through all 18 holes as quickly as possible, right? That might actually make it fun. Now, the truth is, if you don't know how winning is determined, then it doesn't really matter what you do, how smart you are, how creative or hardworking you are. Ultimately your strategies are useless. And whether or not you actually win the game is going to be determined by blind luck. Now, it's pretty obvious to see why this is not a good strategy in the context of a game, but this is exactly how most people are playing the game of life. Most just never stop to define what winning the day actually looks like. And as a result, they go through the motions, just hoping they get lucky, and somehow they stumble into a win. But. But that's generally not what ends up happening.

Here's what does. Since you don't have a clear idea of what winning looks like, you go through life always feeling like you're losing, because there's always more that could be done. And this leads most people to experience a state of perpetual low grade discontent and frustration. They never get that euphoric high that comes from winning the championship game. Not only does that suck, but it's entirely avoidable. So if you want to get off this treadmill of psychic discontent, then just take 10 minutes every morning to chalk the field and define for yourself what does winning that day look like. Get clear about what it is you want to accomplish, and perhaps more importantly, how you want to accomplish it. And here's a pro tip. Make the game easy to win.

If you go above and beyond, that's great, but it's more important to just get positive momentum moving in the right direction. When you do that, you get to the end of your day on a high note. And this gets you excited to tackle the next day, which creates a virtuous cycle of success. Now, in our next habit, I'm going to share with you a super simple trick for initiating that virtuous cycle. And to do that, all you have to do is wake up when you said you would. So much of success in life is just maintaining momentum in the right direction, which is why it's so important that you start the day with positive momentum. And the easiest way you can do that is by giving yourself an easy win before you even get out of bed in the morning.

In that moment when your alarm has just gone off and you're groggy, you're half asleep, and you're faced with one of the most important decisions of the entire day will you do as you said you would. Hit the alarm and get up. Or are you going to break the promise you made to yourself and hit snooze? Now I get it. This might seem like a small decision and you're probably thinking what's the big deal Anthony? Another five minutes isn't really going to change anything. And to that I say yes, yes it will. It changes the most important thing, which is are you the type of person who shows up and does what you say or aren't you? It's that simple.

Now listen, only one person in the entire world is even going to know what decision you made in that moment. But it also happens to be the only person whose opinion of you matters. Yourself. Your self esteem is the reputation you have with yourself. And when you break the promises you make to yourself, such as I'm going to wake up at this time or I'm going to hit the gym three times this week or I'm going to make 100 cold calls today, whatever it is, when you don't follow through, you subconsciously degrade the opinion you have of yourself. You stop setting as ambitious of goals, you lower your standards. You stop taking the actions which would lead you to success. Because deep down in your heart of hearts you don't believe you have what it takes. Because you couldn't even get out of bed in the morning when you said you would.

But to clarify, I'm not saying you need to wake up at 5am or compromise your sleep in any way. The key here is to make a decision the night before about when you're going to wake up and then follow through with that. So if you say I'm going to wake up at 9am Great, get up at 9amif that's 5 then cool, that's 5. Also, I just want to point out here, if you use the snooze button as part of your process, that's okay. Just don't compromise the process. For example, if you know that the alarm is going to go off at 5:30 but you plan to hit the snooze three times and be out of bed by six, that's fine. But when 6:00 comes around, you better not hit that snooze button a fourth time or you're going to be starting your day behind the eight ball with a loss. But which is going to make our third habit way harder than it already is.

And that habit is all about fighting the dragon. First, I've got a confession to make. I am a massive nerd in a Past life, I was a science fiction and fantasy author. I wrote a whole bunch of novels. And one of the things I love most about science fiction is how every story revolves around a hero doing something incredible. Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star. Frodo treks across Mordor to drop the ring in a volcano. Katniss Everdeen goes full Rambo mode on a bunch of teenagers to save her sister against impossible odds. Our lives, by comparison, are dominated by a to do list filled with things like go grocery shopping or walk the dog or pay the bills. As a result, this can start to make you feel like you're the hero of a really lame story.

Now, I've discovered something pretty incredible recently. We can make things feel more or less epic simply by the words we use to describe it. For instance, if you want to motivate a child to do something they wouldn't normally want to do, you've just got to reframe it as an adventure. So instead of we need to find your coat so we can leave, reframe it as, we need to go on a quest to find your mythical missing jacket so we can go on an adventure to the grocery store. All right, so this works incredibly well on children. But you're not. You're not so gullible, right?

Wrong. You are nothing but a big kid. And the same principle applies. We can alter our behaviors simply by changing the words we use to describe the actions we need to take. For me, reframing things so that they feel epic is incredibly effective for improving my productivity. And a really powerful reframe is in how I think about the one thing. Now, the one thing is a concept that's all about determining what is that singular most important task that if you were to complete it, it would move you towards your goal the fastest. Recently, I've started calling my one thing the Daily Dragon. And again, I know I'm a nerd, but I'm not going to apologize for it.

But something about the idea of fighting a dragon is just so much more motivating to me than a simple to do list item. And it might not be the same for you, but maybe give it a shot. Now, here's the thing about the Daily Dragon. It's never going to get any smaller or weaker than it is at this very moment. So delaying isn't going to do you any favors. In fact, you're probably delaying the inevitable by wasting time and energy fighting all the smaller monsters in your life. All you're really doing is tiring yourself out, which is going to make your battle with the daily dragon harder than it needs to be.

So to get out of a rut and get your life back on track, wake up in the morning when you said you would define what winning the day looks like. And then go fight the biggest, baddest dragon as early as you possibly can. Just get it out of the way. Then get on with the rest of your epic life. And this leads us to the fourth habit that's going to solve 99% of your problems. Get more sunlight. For the majority of humanity's existence, we've only had access to two sources of light, the sun and fire. And of these two, the sun has by far been the biggest source of light in our lives.

As a result, our brains evolved to process sunlight in a very unique way. For example, exposure to sunlight increases the brain's production of serotonin, which boosts our mood and helps us feel calm and focused. If you take away sunlight, then the brain thinks it's nighttime and therefore it triggers the release of another hormone called melatonin, which makes you sleepy. Our relationship with sunlight, which evolved over millions of years, has been massively disrupted over the past century by the rise of artificial lights now dominating our lives. Now, this is great for society at large, but it's not always great for the individual who spends more and more of their life disconnected from natural sunlight. And the result is that our cycles and rhythms are all out of whack. And this leads to issues with sleep, focus and creative thinking.

As a result, more than ever, people are experiencing increased levels of anxiety, depression and overwhelm. But the solution is simple. Spend more time outside in the sun and you can actually make your time outside even more effective for your mental health by doing one more thing. Go for a walk. Seriously. A Meta analysis of 15 different studies found that by taking around 6,000 steps per day, it wards off premature death and boosts level of psychological wellbeing. That seems like a pretty achievable goal, all things told. But if you really want to get the most bang for your buck, go for a walk in nature. More studies show that a 60 minute walk in nature versus in an urban environment, it decreases the activity in the amygdala, which is the part of your brain which processes emotions.

So this can go a really long way towards getting you out of your rut. Just go for long walks outside in nature. Now, of all the habits we've discussed so far, they're all great and they will produce beneficial results in your life. But if you want to get the most out of them, you got to make time for our fifth habit, which is to review the game footage. Defining what winning the day looks like is only half the battle. The other half occurs when we review our performance for the day. And this is one of the most important steps, because if you don't do this, you just go through life on autopilot, repeating the same actions again and again and again, never really stopping to question whether or not you're actually getting any closer to your goals.

Now, here's a crazy concept that really changed how I move through the world. I started thinking about living life as a skill. And like all skills, it's something that can be improved if we deploy something called the learning loop. See, improving at any skill requires three things you need feedback, reflection, and iteration. Feedback is required so we can know whether or not the thing we just tried worked out or not. For example, if you shoot a basketball and it hits the backboard and misses, then you've got immediate feedback that whatever you just tried didn't work. Now we need to reflect on what we did and come up with a hypothesis for what we might have done wrong.

Then we use that information to iterate, which is really just another way of saying we change our behavior to test our hypothesis. And this leads us back to the beginning of the learning loop, because one way or another, whether the ball goes in or out, we're collecting more feedback. Now, our rate of learning any new skill depends on how quickly and effectively we can cycle through the learning loop. Unfortunately, most of us aren't improving our living life skill, because while we might be collecting feedback and maybe even iterating, if we're not actually taking the time to reflect on what and how we're doing, then we're just a monkey throwing a ball mindlessly at the hoop, hoping it gets lucky.

And this is why it's so important just to take time each evening to just do a quick scan and evaluate your day's performance. Personally, I like to use my values as the scorecard. And to do this, I use a technique called vision casting, which I broke down in a video called how to get ahead of 99% of people in 2024. A link for that should appear here on the screen somewhere, but I'll also drop one in the description below. I highly recommend you check that out, because I found value casting to be a really powerful tool for solving many of my life's problems. And if you combine that with the other four habits we've discussed in this video, I don't think you're ever going to get stuck in a rut again.

Education, Motivation, Inspiration, Self-Improvement, Habit Building, Mental Health, Anthony Vicino