Today I want to talk about how to change the quality of your life
Today I want to talk about how to change the quality of your life. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our longevity? That is the question, on this podcast, will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch, and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to the Roadman Cycling Podcast. The countdown to 2021 is on December 29th. I'm consistently asked what is the magic session? What is the magic pill? What is the magic workout? What is the magic piece of equipment? And my answer is normally pretty, pretty boring. it's normally an answer to focus around consistency, quality of work, repeatability. And today I want to give you 10 really quick fire habits that I've built into my daily life that have been super super successful for me in 2020. And I would highly encourage you to take some of these habits and integrate them into your 2021 daily practices to see significant differences. Folks, before I dive into today's podcast, it's been a super year for the Roadman Cycling Podcast. We've founded the podcast and it's always hard to get something off the ground from zero to one is a really, really big step. And from one to two gets a little bit easier and a little bit easier. But at some point, we need to turn the attention to monetizing the podcast. And I've chosen up to this point to monetize it solely off you guys, the listeners, user support. And it's something I really believe in and I want to be backed up and I want to be validated in this belief in that people are good and people pay for things that they enjoy doing because I know I do it myself and I support a bunch of independent podcasters. So I would ask you if you're getting some value from this podcast if you're picking up some tips and definitely if you feel like it's changing your life in even a small way. I'd encourage you to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch by me the price of a beer Once a month That's what supports the podcast. That's what keeps us moving forward And that's what keeps small independent creators like me bringing new content that you like five days a week Let's talk about these habits because habits perform daily They matter way more than the big one-off gesture or the binge behavior, you know somebody who says, I've gone on a diet and then it's super strict, it's my fitness pal and it's every macro and micro calorie measured for two weeks and then they fall off the wagon again or the guy that gets out training and he hasn't trained in ages and then he gets out and rides 200k but then he doesn't go for another three days. One off grand gestures they matter so so little when we compare them and we stacked them against daily routines and daily habits. So installing this new daily habit it will change the quality of your life and here's some of the ones that have really impacted me in 2020 and you know Einstein talked about the 8-100 world is compound interest well compounding these habits I would argue is just as powerful. We're in an ear and now where it's you know it is okay not to be okay and people so often are speaking about mental health difficulties that are going through and it's so many of my DMs on over on Instagram, if you're not following me on Instagram, go to thatroman.sotland. So many of my DMs over there and I try to get back to as many people as I can, but so many of them around people aren't doing that well and hopefully yesterday's podcast about the idea of consciousness and only experiencing sadness or anger or happiness in your consciousness and isolating that from externalities like world events or health related events, body events. Hopefully that will help a little bit. But I always say to these people, if you're sorry to these people, I always say to anyone who reaches out on the DMs to try and get a healthy daily practice of habits, yes, mental health problems exist. Yes, this isn't a substitute for medication from a professional, but these have massively helped a lot of my clients and and they continue to massively help me every day. So I'm going to crack in and give you 10 of my habits. Some of them are small, some are big, some will take a little bit of investment, some you'll do knockout in a couple of seconds. And they're all different, you know, from productivity to nutrition to all sorts of work, weird and wonderful things that have worked for me in 2020. One is hydration. For so long, I think I've been living in a perpetually dehydrated state and I equate to hydration with cycling and I knew the rule of, Oh, when you're out on the bike, drink 500ml of water a day, but I neglected hydration indoors, or neglected hydration just around the place.
Many Irish people, I probably drank too many cups of tea, and it's…
And like many Irish people, I probably drank too many cups of tea, and it's like a hug and a cup. It's what your mom gives you when you go home. Your mom never says you want a glass of water. She's like, do you want a cup of tea? The only debate is if it's berries or a lion's. So what really helped me in 2020 was starting to carry around a water bottle, because that's a constant reminder that I need to hydrate. I typically would recommend you try and get somewhere between two and three liters of water a day And that's difficult to get it in one go and that's what I meant by you know these grand gestures once off That can be in a micro level where nailing two liters water like in one go isn't as good as sipping two liters over the course of a couple of hours Carrying that water, but let's tip number one worked super well journaling Brilliant brilliant. There's something amazing about that tactile getting pen on paper emptying your brain, getting taut down. Also, you can look back in a period of your life where you've had exceptional success or exceptional hardship. You can look back and you can go, oh, well, here's what I was doing. Here's what exercise I was doing. Here was my routine. Here I was hanging around with these people. You can replicate success and you can avoid failure. It's just a beautiful, I just love Jordan. I've always loved writing. That's Number two, I've had full podcasts on Jordan's, I'm not gonna dig too deep into this one. This is more about boom, boom, boom, quick fire. Get your kit ready as an night before, this is tip number three, get your kit ready as an night before, and this is gonna double barrel one because you should sweat daily. Whether that's getting out for a brisk walk, whether it's going for a run, or obviously we love all of riding the bike. Get out and sweat every day, and get your kit ready as an night before, because it's all many times I've said, Oh yeah, I'm definitely trying in the morning. I'll get my kit ready in the morning. If I was to catalog that, a probability of me skipping training when I decided to get my kit ready in the morning versus ready to know it before, it's massive. Get it ready. Check the weather, get it done. Number four is a productivity step, because I find I'm less stressed and I'm more likely to engage and indulge in productive habits when the rest of my life is organized. I have two main tools I use for staying organized. I use Google calendars, which I will, you know, it sinks all across the place, but I'll also schedule like Zoom calls, meetings with friends that are locked in, any business meetings. I'll schedule them all in Google Calendar, and then I'll use a second app called Todo, T-E-U-X, T-E-U-X, not affiliated with either of these. I'll use both of these in conjunction. So I'll go on to my Google Calendar for, you know, say today is Tuesday, I'll have a look at my calendar, okay, what have I got today? I have two meetings on today. I'll flick over to to do in the morning and I'll put in the two meetings that I have today, but I'll also put in anything else I have to do today. And this is very much calibrated around that Gary Keller had a one-ting book. So I'll have what's my guiding start that I want to get done. So it stops you're working randomly. So I'll only insert stuff into my to-do list that is aligned with my mission for the day, my one thing. And that way I'm working on point. But I'll also try and add into my to do just something that makes me happy into it because so often to do lists just become this dispassionate lists of refunds you have to do clients you have to get set up emails you have to do zoom calls. I like to put in things like I'm going to walk the dog. I'm going to spend 30 minutes reading. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to you know speak with a friend I haven't spoken to in a while stick some positive things into your tazoo as well. That's tip number four, generally just being organized, google calendar and to do my two gonna go to tools for this. Number five don't bring junk food into your house. I'm not saying you can never eat cookies you can never have ice cream you can never have a beer but if you do bring them into your house bring them in in single serving so if I want chocolate I'll buy a bar of chocolate and I'll have it with my tea I won't buy a packet of biscuits because I'll have two biscuits and then when I have a weaker moment, you know, four or five hours from now, there's like eight biscuits sitting there, which I wouldn't have eaten if I didn't bring them into the house.
Works, this I use this real for junk food, I use it for breads, I use…
So this works, this I use this real for junk food, I use it for breads, I use it for alcohol, don't bring them into the house. And I typically don't even try and buy them in single serving that if I am gonna indulge, I'll have it like when I'm out in a cafe or out in a restaurant and I'll get my fix that way. That's a cool rule. I didn't that one for a long time. Number six, get a coach and I'm not just simply referring to cycling coaches. I'm referring to any aspect of your life. Anywhere where you're looking to improve. Get a coach. There's a great saying that says, learn from mistakes but they don't have to be your mistakes. We don't have to waste time trying punches in the dark and hoping something lands. Somebody else has already figured this out. They know the playbook, they know the sequence of events that you need to perform to get to where you're trying to go. So lean on that experience. Success leaves clues. So follow that breadcrumb trail of success and get a coach. I love coaches. I have them in almost every aspect of my life from cycling coach to a business coach to a sports psychologist. It's invaluable for me. Number seven, turn off notifications on your phone. notifications on your phone are just so so distracting and we're just in this war of attention at the moment. People are mesmerized by that flashing LED noise or the phone being you've got an Instagram message. Oh who could it be? Could it be that girl you kind of like? It just pulls you to your phone all the time. You don't need notifications on your phone. You can pick your phone up when you're on a break and you can batch all your emails, all your text messages in one go rather than breaking your attention like 40 times every error going to check your phone notifications you can check them all in 60 seconds at the end of the error. I don't even know if I could ever go back to have notifications on my phone. I will grant you I miss a lot of phone calls but I get back to people at a time that suits me and if somebody actually that wants me for something. They'll send a message and go, hey, are you free to talk today? And I'll write back a message. Yeah, I can talk between four o'clock and six o'clock. And they'll send, there's actually a tool I use as well. And I'll put it in the description. I think it's called Calendly, like calendar LY. And what it does, if somebody says, can you talk today? Or can you do a Zoom call today? I'm like, yeah. And it sends them basically more availability for the day. pick a slot and that'll notify into my Google calendar that they have picked that slot. It worked super well during the roadman so much where I was trying to coordinate 30 interviews all in one go because you're working on other people, schedules, but obviously you can't double book people and you have your own life to live. That was a super good tool. I'm gonna get you the name of that. If I don't put it in the description, it means I didn't find it today but I will tell you in tomorrow's podcast. The next one and this is going to be controversial for a lot of people because I'm a massive reader. Read less. I'm going to preface that by read with more purpose. We're not in an era of too little information. We're in an era of too much information, too many conflicting messages. And I see this in sort of a business sense where I chat to a friend last week who's looking to he's looking to walk away from his nine to five job. And he's kind of brainstorming ideas And one minute he wants to do like a social media marketing agency next minute. He's like a shop before he store for e-commerce You know next minute He's dropshipping like yeah any of these things could potentially work But if you read a book on dropshipping then your next book is on e-commerce And then your next book is on setting up a social media marketing agency You're so distracted and this is what's happened us in so many areas of our life you take nutrition We read a book on paleo. We read a book on Atkins we read a book on, you know, whatever, New Cool Diet is, the big town of Beach Diet, read a book on different dietary philosophies. And at the end of reading all these books, you are just so, so confused. Instead, I would say read in a just in time fashion. So what are you looking to fix at the moment? Is it nutrition? What are you looking to learn about the moment? Pick one area, niche down on that until you get the result you're looking for it because we're all in some place and we're looking for an outcome.
If you take, you know, if you take nutrition diet, we're all looking…
So if you take, you know, if you take nutrition diet, we're all looking for an end goal, maybe it's body composition. So defining what that goal is and then read with purpose steps around that. Okay, what's the dietary steps? What's the strength and conditioning steps? What's the endurance steps? Read with purpose. And when you're not reading with purpose, read for So read Dennis switched off read fiction reads sci-fi read horror But don't be in this constant loop of reading self-help book Productivity book after productivity book after productivity book and guess what you're not getting any more productive How can you read ten productivity books and not get any more productive? This is something that's taking me a long long time to figure out and I've got through a lot of books to actually come to this conclusion inclusion and it's only been in the last seven eight months that I figured out I need to niche down figure out one thing I made this mistake from years with my social media and that's why I've largely switched off all social media like it's still there but I don't put any effort in all the effort goes into this podcast I tried to do YouTube Instagram Twitter Facebook you know yik-yok all these things but I spread my attention too broadly and it was only when I came back and focused all of my attention on just the podcast that the podcast started to grow, started to grow, started to grow and now at some point if I want to build my Instagram following I will just start pushing it on the podcast and a portion of my podcast listeners will go across and follow me on roman.towling on Instagram and my Instagram account will grow but for For years I spread myself to 10 and people do this reading all the time. Number 9. Number 8 was a big one. It was a meaty one because I felt passionate about it. Number 9 is meditate. Sam Harris waking up is a brilliant app. Headspace is a brilliant app. There's a stigma around using apps for meditating but again back to point 6 get a coach. Get someone to bring you through this. If it's not an app you're using go into a meditation center lean on experts. just trying to sit in silence and trying to figure out yourself because I've tried it and you won't figure it out yourself unless you're some sort of meditating prodigy. And number 10, it's something that is elusive to a lot of people this year, seek adventure. And I had a full podcast on this that it's something that when I sat quietly with us that the opposite of sadness, the opposite of happiness isn't sadness, the opposite of happiness is boredom. So how we alleviate that boredom, it's seeking adventure. Helen Keller said, life is a daring adventure or nothing at all. And I really love that quote. And it's one I've pulled out on this podcast a number of times. And life needs to be a daring adventure. Don't settle 2021 for just the ordinary, the mundane, don't settle for the routines that you don't enjoy, the life that's... Joe Rogan has this brilliant, if you Google Joe Rogan, like life advice, he has this brilliant rant he goes on about how you should live your life, like you're the character in a movie and the movie starting right now and whatever's happened to you up to this point, you're a fuck up, unemployed, your family is left to you, you're alone, you're miserable, you're overweight, you eat chips and watch TV all day. It doesn't matter what's happened to you up to this point because the movie starts right now. And imagine you are the hero in this movie. What's the hero's journey? What does the hero do in 2021? Be that hero in your movie for 2021. I'm hoping those 10 tips will help you to be the hero in your movie for 2021. Roadman, thank you for joining me and we'll be back again tomorrow. Hey everybody it's Anthony again, really quick I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge, it's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced, there's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.