061: Crafting Your Perfect Day with Craig Ballantyne

Pete Mockaitis
Craig, thanks so much for being here on the How to Be Awesome at Your Job Podcast.

Craig Ballantyne
Hey. Happy to help, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m so excited to talk about the idea of a perfect day. I’ve imagined that from time to time. I’ve tried to establish it, and sometimes succeed, but more often, fail, so maybe if you could just give us the background. How did this idea enter your head in the first place?

Craig Ballantyne
Great question. When I was a young man, I was a personal trainer, and I was starting an online fitness business. For people that are listening, they can imagine like P90X, Beachbody. That’s what I sell online, which, you know, videos and stuff like that. I was doing both of those at the same time, and then in 2006, I had my big break where I was able to quit being a personal trainer, which means I didn’t have to be at the gym at 6:00 in the morning, and that gave me the ultimate in freedom. But the ultimate in freedom is actually dangerous for some people because then it’s like, “Oh, I can get up whenever I want. I can do whatever I want all day. I can work whenever I want.”
The next thing you know, after a couple weeks you’re like, “I’m actually less productive now than I was when I had a full-time job.” And so that set me down the path of becoming more productive. I also had to overcome some anxiety attacks and issues, and so some of the stuff that I learned, I put in the book as well because you need to have that structure to give you freedom in life as the overriding message.
That allowed me to become more successful. That allowed me to coach thousands of entrepreneurs and allowed me to see what this system did for them, both financially and personally, and then I put it all into a book because it really is my life’s work in a book, in a kit that I put together as well to help people get more done, make more money, still get home on time for dinner, which really means to succeed both personally and professionally, to be able to be present with your loved ones, to enjoy doing your hobbies and your travel, but also to be successful and to have an impact on the world.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds like something I want.

Craig Ballantyne
Good.

Pete Mockaitis
So beautiful. That’s so cool. I’d like to hear a little bit about that. That tension, or the insight or discovery you’ve come to the relationship between freedom versus structure. You’re saying freedom isn’t really just doing whatever the heck you want whenever the heck you want. Freedom is something different.

Craig Ballantyne
Absolutely. If anybody’s ever read the book “The Alchemist,” then they’re familiar with a very famous author from Brazil named Paulo Coelho, and Paulo Coelho has a very excellent quote. He says, “Discipline and freedom are not mutually exclusive, but mutually dependent because without discipline, we would sink into chaos.” If you think in this in terms of a regular day-to-day analogy like traffic lights, it really does make sense because if you think … Imagine we had no red lights and we had no stop signs at our intersections. What would happen? Everyone would be getting into accidents. No one will be able to get anywhere and would have no freedom. We wouldn’t be able to safely enjoy going somewhere, and it’s the same with our lives.
If we really want to have an impact, wa can’t be goofing around all day long and not getting anything done. Eventually, you would get sick of that. You’ll get sick of surfing all day and lying in a hammock all day, drinking margaritas all day. Yes, you would get sick of it. I know people are like, “No, I would not. I’d love that,” but no, you would get sick of that because you’re young, and you have this energy and you want to help people, and you see the injustice in the world, and you want to go out there and do great things. The only way to achieve great things is to be relatively structured in your day.
If you want to be the next Toms Shoes guy who’s making a huge impact and also building a business, you don’t do that by sitting around in a hammock. Now, sure, he goes away and has some times where he gets away from the office, and he just goes out, and he spends time at introspection, but there has to be some work done, and there has to be some structure in your life. That’s what The Perfect Day Formula is all about, Pete, is really helping people achieve their potential while still giving them a great amount of freedom in their lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very good. Tell us, how does one go about crafting or inventing with their perfect day would look like?

Craig Ballantyne
It really comes down to something that most people don’t think about which is, what do they really want their lives to look like? In 3 to 5 years, where do you want to be living? What do you want to be doing with your day? Who do you want to be engaged to or married to? Do you want to have kids? What do you want to name your kids? What do you want your kids to be doing after school? What do you want your family be involved in? What community organizations? Where do you want to spend the winter? Where do you want to spend the summer? How do you spend your Sundays? What do you do with your family, your parents, her parents, his parents? What do you do with all these things?
What you need to do is sit down and write a movie script for your life as if you are have already accomplished these things 3 to 5 years in the future, and this is called a “vivid vision” by some people like my friend, Cameron Herold, but really, it’s just simply having a vision for your life. When you have this vision for your life, it’s like having a destination like knowing exactly where you want to go. If you want to go to Disneyworld, you know exactly what road to take to get there. It’s the best way to do it. Go this road, this speed on the highway. You’re going to get to Disneyworld in the fastest, shortest amount of time.
Now, if you didn’t know where you want to go, you’ll be all over the place, and you’d be taking these detours in life, and you’d feel struggling, and frustrated, and stuck like you’re spinning your wheels, and that’s because no matter how hard you work, you just don’t have a destination, and so that’s why young people often struggle because they’ve never sat down and thought, “Well, what the heck do I really want?”
When you decide that first, then you can go and do all the planning and preparation that I teach people to do and get the coach, the right coach for your life, the person who has achieved what you want to achieve so that they can cut down your learning curve by years, and years, and years, and help you become more successful. That’s what all of this is about, Pete, so that people like you can become more successful and take that energy in and that intelligence that you have that’s unpolished, and then really turn it into a gem of a life.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds beautiful. So then, let’s see. What’s the translation? Let’s say you have a clear vision then associate a vivid vision associated with all of those components about what you wanted to see happening in your life some years down the road. So then, how do you translate that into I’m thinking, when I hear perfect day, I’m thinking about, “At this hour, I wake up. At this hour, I shower. At this hour, I exercise,” sorts of things. How do you bridge that gap?

Craig Ballantyne
Then, you know what important actions you have to do. Let’s say that someone listening to this wants to write a book. They know that in 3 to 5 years from now, they want to have a book done that’s helping young people become entrepreneurs and making a difference in Africa. Okay. If that’s the case, then I’m going to need some experience. I’m going to need to go and get involved in organizations helping in Africa. Maybe like Charity Water. Maybe Toms Shoes.
I need to get some experience in there. I need to get connected with these 10 entrepreneurs who are doing things. I need to be able to interview them for an hour or two, and in order to interview them for an hour or two, I have to show… I have to work my way up to get connected to these people, so who do I have to be connected with first? Okay. These people, these people. I need to get involved in these organizations. You basically just plan this roadmap to this great accomplishment, and then, “Here are all the things I need to do. If I’m really focused on this and all these people bring in these other opportunities into my life, I know that I’ll be able to say no to those other opportunities because they don’t get me closer to my goals.”
Then, you can break it all the way down to, “Okay. That means I have to work 8 hours a day, 4 days a week or 5 days a week in order to accomplish this, and by looking at my personal physiology, and my personal habits, and my personal productivity, I realized that I am most productive between the hours of 10:00am and 2:00pm, so every day, I need to be focused on writing this book and on making this connections between 10:00am and 2:00pm, and I have to block everything out. That means in order to be productive during the day, I need to be energetic, so that means I need to do yoga at 6:00am or 6:00pm, or do some exercise at those times, and I need to eat very well.”
Then, you figure out, “Well, okay. If I’m going to do yoga at 6:00am, I’m going to shower after that at 7:00. I’m going to eat breakfast at 7:30. I’m going to get into the office at 8:00 or to my computer at 8:00. I’m going to take care of some admin, and then at 10:00, from 10:00 tile 2:00, I’m going to work really, really hard that, then have a lunch break at 2:00. Then, at 4:00, I’m going to be done and spend time with my significant other.” That’s how you go from massive, massive goal all the way down to, “Here’s what I should be doing on a regular day,” and that is how you just dominate your life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool, and I’m wondering then, I guess the rubber meets the road at I guess 10:00am in this example in which there it is. You have the choice to either comply with your master plan or to deviate and I guess do whatever you feel like doing instead. What are some keys for in that moment to just really locking it in and being faithful to the game plan?

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah. It’s a really, really great question, Pete. A lot of people are going to… quite frankly are going to have so many opportunities. Even at a young age, there’s going to be so many things that they can be doing with their time, and when you have something that you want to do that the due date is in 3 years like you want to have this book done in 3 years, it seems so far away, but what it comes down to is being proactive in life, and so I believe… I like to make this generalization because all the generalizations are right, of course, and so I like to make this generalization that there’s only 2 types of people in this world. There are reactive people who struggle, and there are successful people who are proactive.
Proactive means planning out your days. Reactive means you’re the type of person who because you watched too much TV last night or too many shows on Netflix, you slept in. You hit your snooze button. You were late to have breakfast, so you grabbed like a Frappuccino, and because of all that sugar and caffeine, you ended up feeling terrible for the rest of the morning, and so you grabbed some fast-food at lunch to try and feel normal, but then you fell asleep in your chair at 2:00. Then, it’s 5:00, and you’re like, “Ah, I was really busy today, but I didn’t get anything done,” and then you have like 14 days of those in a row, and you just get so frustrated and you’re like, “Oh, this book is never going to happen. I’m going to quit on this big dream and do something. I’m going to settle for something else.”
That’s the reactive approach, but the proactive approach in this is like, “Okay. Tomorrow, I’m going to work from 10:00am till 2:00pm on chapter 1, so I’m going to write an outline right now so that when the rubber meets the road at 10:00 tomorrow, I am prepared to knock out the best 1,000 words possible during my most creative time in the day.”
I always tell people that your best day tomorrow starts tonight. The planning and preparation only takes 5 minutes just to write down, “Here are the priorities I will work on tomorrow. Maybe a little outline of my work so that I don’t come in and stare at a blank screen, and in that way, I can be off to the races when it’s magic time and I’m most creative.” Hopefully, that will help out the people listening and hopefully that will help out you, Pete, with preparation for your podcast and for the world domination that I’m sure you want to achieve.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Yes, much appreciated. The proactive kind of mindset, and gear, and getting ahead of it, it absolutely makes great sense, and I think there’s a crazy stat from Stephen Covey about folks who are proactive have like 20X-plus the results of reactive people. I don’t remember the number, but it was major. It wasn’t like double. It was insane, so that makes sense. You got the plan. I’m just thinking about the breakdowns. You got the plan. You do the outline in advance. It’s 10:00am, and maybe this is … It doesn’t happen to you so much because you’ve got such a habit of discipline going in your life, but with folks who are just getting started, I can see this like, “Ah, Facebook or whatever is calling my name,” or Pokémon Go or whatever this distraction du jour is. Do you have any mantras or kind of things you do to click it back on the program?

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah. That’s a really insightful question, Pete, because most people don’t notice that, and what I found, what I teach is that most people aren’t massively successful in life because of the things that they do. It’s because of the things that they’re able to avoid, and so if you take a look at somebody in an extreme case like someone who’s an alcoholic, they can be sober 6 days a week and do the right things, but if they go into a bar on 1 night a week, all heck is going to break loose, and they might spend the next 40 days in a bender.
Same with someone who wants to lose weight. They might be doing the right things 5 days a week, getting a little bit exercise, eating some vegetables, but then from Friday night through Sunday night, they eat pizza every night. They go and have pancakes and waffles every morning, and then they drink 6 beers and eat a bag of chips in the afternoon. Two days of bad behavior outweighs 5 days of good behavior by a factor of 10 to 20, and so it really is setting up boundaries in your life.
The great thing is, you used that example of Facebook. You just go and you download something like Internet Freedom Program that says, “You’re not allowed to go on Facebook.” You’re not allowed to use the internet from 10:00pm till noon, and you’re blocked from the internet on your phone or on your computer, and in that way, you’re putting this fence around you. Really, that’s what all of my discipline has been built in because I am a weak person like anybody else. I want to check my email first thing in the morning, but I know that if I do, it will send me in rabbit holes that will stop me from having a big impact on life and on other people’s lives, and really helping people, so I do not allow myself to check email until very late in the morning.
I do a whole bunch of other things in order to do that. It’s one of the reasons I get up very early in the morning because I know that if I get up at the same time as everybody else, it’s going to be less time for me to get work done before people start calling me, before I have to do meetings with my team, before I’m tempted to go on ESPN and see who won the Blue Jays game last night. All this stuff. I am very week just like anybody else, and so I set up these boundaries.
What I recommend somebody do is I have a free tool on my website at craigballantyne.com/freegift. It’s called the “Time Journal.” It’s very simple. You could do it without the Time Journal, but all I want you to do is just write down what you’re doing for every 20 minutes of the day for 2 days straight, and you’ll identify where you’re most productive. You’re going to identify where you are weakest and wasting time on the internet or where you are low energy because you didn’t eat right or just when you’re naturally low energy, and you’re going to have this big “aha” moment where you’re like, “Oh, look at this time journal. It shows me where I should schedule my work,” because that’s where you might find that you’re most productive at 10:00am in the morning, and it really, really is helpful to know as much about yourself as possible.
When you do that, you can say, “Okay. Here are all the good things I need to foster. Well, here are my weaknesses. I’m a little ashamed of them.” You shouldn’t be because everybody has weaknesses, and so you should go, “Okay. Here are the things I need to protect myself from. If I want to be successful, I can’t go to happy hour on Tuesday because then, I’m going to ruin my Wednesday morning, and I’ll probably still be tired on Thursday morning, so I need to say no to that for my future.” It really just is this matter of what I like to call and what it truly is called “introspection.” If someone is willing to look at their habits, and to admit where they are wrong, and to try and fix their flaws, then they are going to get ahead of somebody who does the same amount of hard work as them but refuses to eliminate those obstacles and temptations from life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. I’d love to hear some of the clients and folks you’ve worked with. I’d say… Does anyone regret not looking at Facebook or not going to Tuesday happy hour like they say, “You know what? This trade off wasn’t worth it, Craig.”

Craig Ballantyne
No. Most of the people I’m working with have young kids, and every single extra second they can get with their young kids, they would trade for anything else in the world. Now, there’s so many examples of us wasting time, and I think even those people still waste time. We read email newsletters that we don’t need to read and all that sort of stuff, but at the end of the day, if you want to have this… I don’t want people to be put off that there’s no fun in this system because there really is a lot of fun.
For example, this summer alone, I spent 3 weeks in Europe, and I’m going to the Olympics for 10 days next week all because of the structure in my life. It has allowed me to make an impact with my working days so that I’m able to go and enjoy these non-working days in epic adventures, and so I would trade never going on Facebook for going to go to the Olympics. Facebook and random updates about nothing and funny videos, that’s always going to be there, and it really isn’t going to be something that I’m going to sit and say, “Oh man, I wish I would’ve watched that video about that dog pooping to that music.”
I’ve watched that video, and I wish I had that minute back, but to go to the Olympics, this is an incredible event. I’m going to see things that are just going to be memories burned in my brain forever with really, really important people in my life. This is what matters, and so I got to sacrifice a few other things because otherwise… We all have to draw the line somewhere, which is essentially what I’m saying.
You could either watch Game of Thrones or you could watch Game of Thrones and 30 other television shows, but then you would have no job, and you would be broke, and you wouldn’t be able to afford Netflix, so you have to draw the line somewhere in your life. If you really want to make a big impact, you have to draw it a little bit closer than most other people are willing to draw that line.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds tweetable
.
Craig Ballantyne
Yeah

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us maybe some examples of what are a few lines that you’ve drawn, or clients have drawn, or particularly the young professionals that have made a world of difference in terms of rules, boundaries, lines, things they’re protecting themselves from? Facebook has come up a couple of times. Happy hours come up. Earthy arising has come up. What are some other just best practice boundaries you’ve seen pop up again and again?

Craig Ballantyne
Great question again, and I want to say one thing. Again, for people that are listening going, “Uh, I did not want to get up at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning,” and the fact is you don’t have to be an early riser in order to use this system. Now, I truly believe that most people are going to have fewer interruptions earlier in the morning, so we’re just going to get more done and move ahead closer to our dreams earlier in the morning.
Now, you can also do it at night. I have a friend who runs a hundred-million-dollar year supplement company, and he works from 10:00pm to 3:00am. That is his magic time, but there are very few people who have the discipline to have dinner with their family, put their kids to bed, hang out with their spouse, and then go to work for 5 hours. That is a lot of discipline, and it’s very difficult. You have a social life when you’re 27 years old or 23 years old, and you go over to your girlfriend’s house, and you watch Netflix, and then she wants to go cuddle in bed. You’re like, “No, I got to go and write sales copy.” That’s not going to go over very well. It’s going to be very difficult for a lot of people to have the discipline to do that.
It’s much easier and easy is a relative term here for someone to say, “I’m going to get up at 6:30 in the morning even though I don’t want to. It’s only 7-1/2 hours of sleep, but that’s the time if I want to work on my business before I go into my real job, I need to do this. That’s a sacrifice I have to make.” That’s just the reality of the getting up early aspect that I want to share with people.
Now, one thing that I rejected for years, and years, and years, Pete, but made a huge impact on my energy levels is when I eventually started going to bed and getting up at the same time every day. I know that so many people will reject this as I did until I was in my early 30’s, but when I did it, when I started going to bed at 11:00 and getting up at 7:00 every day of the week, even on weekends, I was no longer tired on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. I was no longer tired at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I was able to be much more productive and effective.
If somebody can set in that type of boundary, they’ll really get a lot out of it, and so I would just say to everybody listening, the next time you have a real lull in your social calendar like maybe in January when everybody is like, “Okay. The holidays are over. I’m just going to chill and hang out here, and get my health back for a couple weeks,” and if you… Around that time of year, when there’s no parties going on, you can say, “Okay. I’m going to try this going to bed and getting up at the same time every day thing for 2 weeks,” and you’re going to go, “Holy cow, I had so much energy all day long and I’m not even drinking caffeine. This is amazing,” and then you can try and stick to it on a somewhat regular basis.
That’s another boundary to put into place that has really made a difference in a lot of people’s lives, and so hopefully, that will help people, but around that, it’s just having boundaries around that not-to-do stuff, and focusing and making sure that they free up time for their number one priority in life, and that’s generally going to be assisted by getting up early before anybody else, and just sitting there, and having some clear thinking time about either taking advantage of an opportunity in their life or fixing a problem in their life.
For example, people that might be in some credit card debt. If they got up 15 early minutes early, sat down on the kitchen table, and figured out a way to cut expenses or increase their income, and then also research credit cards so that they had a lower credit card interest rate so that they paid less interests each month, they did that 6 days a week for 15 minutes in a couple of weeks, they would’ve paid off their credit card debt faster than if they just tried to do it on their own. That is another thing I recommend is having some time focused on your number one priority before the world gets in your way.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Thank you. I’d also like to hear… With the consistent bedtime, that happened with me lately, and it’s been pretty cool. I’m wondering to what extent, whether it’s through your… through an opportunity you can’t pass up like a wedding or from circumstances beyond your control with a boss, how do you handle the deviations and exceptions that that pop up smoothly, and gracefully, and get back on the horse quickly?

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah, another excellent question. I do have a lot of this, what are called “mastermind meetings,” and we go to Las Vegas, we go to San Diego, and I coach like 40 people, and so we have these dinners that keep me out well past my regular bedtime. On those nights, what I recommend is you accept the fact that you’re staying up a couple hours later, but try not to deviate too much from the wakeup time, and that might mean, “Okay. Tonight, I’m just going to get 5-1/2 hours sleep, but then I’m going to get in a nap at lunchtime for 45 minutes, maybe a pre-dinner nap to catch up a little bit of sleep because the next night, we have another dinner, we have another meeting that’s going to keep you out late.”
The odds of anybody sticking to their regular bedtime 7 days in a week is exponentially low, but being able to stick to your wakeup time is really important because if you start deviating from that and sleeping in an extra 3 hours like I used to on the weekends, that just throws everything off because then, Sunday night, you can fall asleep, right? We’ve all felt this. You have that anxiety about going back to work on Monday morning. That keeps you up plus the fact that you got out of your regular sleep routine, so you woke up at 10:00, and you’re not really tired at 10:00 when you try to go to bed, and you’re tossing and turning, and you also watched Game of Thrones, so you’re excited by that.
The next thing you know, it’s 1:00 in the morning before you fall asleep, and you have to get up at 7:00 in order to get to work for 8:00, then you drag in your butt. The more you can stick to that earlier wakeup time or regular wakeup time, the better off you will be, and it’s really just the matter of delayed gratification, right? You want to have that sleep-in so bad on the weekends because you feel like you’ve earned it and it’s a habit you have from college or your teenage years, but really is not the best saying for you to do if you want to get ahead in life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, noted. How about other exceptions of deviations and recovery?

Craig Ballantyne
In terms of what?

Pete Mockaitis
I guess that was one boundary, the consistency of time and a wakeup time.

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
How about with another one?

Craig Ballantyne
Okay. Another boundary that I have for me is I never want to be hangover again because I was hangover a lot in my 20’s, and so I have a boundary of 3-drink maximum, and I rarely drink anymore at all. Another thing that I do is just making sure that I don’t have a drink within 2 hours of bedtime, so that allows me to have what I call “cutoffs,” and it keeps me out of trouble. Essentially, I’m building in all these boundaries that keep me out of trouble.
I remember the last time that I had 6 drinks in a night, and I slept in very late, and I was groggy for the rest of the day. It just reminds of me like, “Listen, man. You’re too old for this. You really want… Your big goals in life are so much greater than staying out late and drinking.” You just have to put these things in a balance, that scale of in one hand, you have short-term immediate gratification of going out and partying Thursday, Friday, Saturday “Okay. I’m happy with making these sacrifices of not drinking on a Monday night, so that I can be in really great shape on Tuesday, and I’m going to work really hard Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”
“Thursday night, I’ll allow myself to go for happy hour and have a drink, be social, maybe have a couple slices of pizza, so that I can still go into work on Friday and be successful and productive. At Friday night, I’m going to really get focused on having an amazing dinner with my girlfriend, or spouse, or whatever. Then, on Saturday, it’s going to be a total free day. I’m going to spend it with my friends. Then, on Sunday, I’m just going to spend a more personal day in reflection, and plan ahead for the week, and prepare my meals, and do all these things that allow me to be super awesome from Monday to Thursday.”
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable approach to life. You still really get the value of the people and the experiences, and I look at that as a way I wish I would’ve lived my late 20’s instead of being the Thursday, Friday night out until 3:00, 4:00. Again, I’m looking back and saying, “This is what I did, guys and girls. Don’t make the same mistakes I did because I could be so much further ahead in life if I would’ve set a few more boundaries and maybe grew up a little bit faster.” That’s my experience. Everybody’s mileage will vary, but I do hope that they take some ideas from this and say, “You know what? I’m just going to try this one experiment, and if I get a couple extra hours of work and productivity out of it, I think I can make an even bigger impact.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. Thank you. You mentioned meal prep on Sundays, so I’ve got to ask with your training background. Do you have just a couple pro-tips when it comes to training or supplementation or nutrition when it comes to maximizing your daily experience of energy, and focus, and retention, and productivity?

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. I’m happy to help with that. What a lot of this comes down to is consistency and going back to that introspection. Everything that you do is a science experiment, so if you try different exercise programs for a couple of weeks, make sure you give it a couple-week shot. If you go do CrossFit, if you go do yoga, just give it at least 4 weeks to figure out, “Is this something that I like? Am I getting results from it? Can I keep on doing this? Is it fitting with my schedule? Does it fit with my personality?” Until you find that thing that you like.
For example, I got interviewed by a guy the other week, and he’s from Australia, and he’s around my age. He says, “Craig, all that matters to me is I get 3 20-minute ocean swims in a week. That’s my exercise. It reduces my stress. That’s all that matters to me.” He’s consistent. He’s found something he loves to do, and it gives him the benefits that he’s looking for, and so you don’t have to train 6 days a week. You don’t have to be fully committed to being a yogi. You can just find something that gives you that energy boost and pleasure.
Same with nutrition. I believe that every diet works for some people. It just… I can’t guarantee which diet is going to work for you. There’s individual genetics. There’s individual likes. There are some people who would never commit to any diet that restricts bread. By all means, you don’t have to do that if you just want to be healthy and energetic. You shouldn’t eat a loaf of bread a day obviously, but just cutting out all bread because you heard that cutting out all bread is something you have to do, so you end up miserable is not a way to go through life. You don’t have to give up alcohol. You don’t have to give up chocolate. You don’t have to give up anything, but you do have to take a look at how these things affect your body.
For me, I know that I can’t have more than 100 milligrams of caffeine a day. Otherwise, I’m anxious. I can’t fall asleep at night. Even though I like the alertness that caffeine gives me, I just know that I can’t do too much caffeine personally, and so I’ve learned that by doing the experiments where I’ve had different amounts of caffeine and figured out, “Okay. This is the right amount for me.” It’s the same sort of thing with any nutrition program. Just go, “Yeah. I can stick with this paleo program. It’s no problem. I really like steak, and I don’t really care about giving up bread, so paleo is the thing for me. It gives me a ton of energy in the way I go.”
That way, you don’t have to think about all these nutrition things. You could just ignore the latest nutrition information that comes up as you got something set that you can be consistent with that jives with your exercise program and the way you go. Really, for energy, and health, and fitness, and longevity, and happiness, Pete, consistency and not getting too hung up on being neurotic about things really goes a long way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, anything else you want to put out there before we shift gears to the rapid fire fast faves?

Craig Ballantyne
I’d just say one thing is that happiness in life really comes down to the people that you spend the time with and the experiences that you have, and so it’s not money. It’s not physical appearance that matters. It’s not having a super cool car. It really is about amazing people and experiences, and that’s what I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing over the years of building businesses with friends and impacting people around the world, and traveling, and just having really, really great times with people even at home as opposed to exotic locations. Just make sure that everybody listening is spending good, quality time with people that mattered to them, positive people, family, friends, and doing some really cool stuff that they’re going to remember forever.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. Can you kick us off by sharing a favorite quote?

Craig Ballantyne
Favorite quote is a twist on Winston Churchill’s “Never ever give up.” Mine is, “Never ever give up on what is important to you.” Because sometimes, there’s actually things that you need to give up on. You need to give up on binge watching TV shows that aren’t worth it. You need to give up on drinking and getting drunk 3 nights in a week. There are things that you need to give up on, but when you find something really important to you, never ever give up on achieving it.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite study, or experiment, or a piece of research?

Craig Ballantyne
It really comes down to the interval training research that I studied back when I was in college. I just wrote a book. It’s now available for pre-order on Amazon called “The Great Cardio Myth,” and all this research that I found showed that you can get health benefits from very short burst of exercise. You don’t have to go and do 40 minutes of long, slow, boring cardio. You can do these short 10-second and 30-second bursts of exercise in a few minutes a day a couple of times a week, and you can get the same health benefits. That was the biggest research that’s impacted my life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about a favorite book?

Craig Ballantyne
It would be The Art of Living, which is a small book written by a woman named Sharon Lebell, and it’s translations of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus and his most important lessons. That book actually led me to the foundation for my book, “The Perfect Day Formula.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How about a favorite tool, something that you use often?

Craig Ballantyne
I actually had never used an app ever in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
[No kidding 00:34:37].

Craig Ballantyne
My Blackberry phone is 6 years old, so I’m not the most technical guy in the world. I like pen and paper, and that’s why when I mentioned that 15 minutes in the morning with pen and paper, I really believe that getting away from the electronics for just a few minutes and really being able to let your mind do some big thinking with pen and paper is very, very valuable for everybody.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How about a favorite habit, a key practice of yours that boosted your effectiveness?

Craig Ballantyne
I started meditating on January 28th of 2013 after failing at it several times, and I haven’t missed a day since of at least 5 minutes, but most days are 20 minutes. I tend to get anxious even without caffeine, and this habit of meditation has really calmed my mind. I don’t’ worry too much about what runs through my mind when I meditate. I’m not the type of person who insists on blocking out all thoughts. I just really focus on my breathing and just being able to breathe properly which I didn’t really realize. I had no idea how to do for the first 30 years of my life. I was breathing in a way that actually increased my stress levels. When I figured out how to breathe properly, it made that a part of my daily habit. It made a huge, huge difference for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I got a follow-up. What’s the bad breathing? What’s the good breathing?

Craig Ballantyne
Okay. Good breathing is through your belly. You probably heard about belly breaths. In through your nose, fill up your belly, nice, slow inhalation. That will actually calm you down, but what actually will increase the stress level and increase your adrenaline is if you do short, shallow breaths from your upper chest. If you did that like if you were going to go into like a UFC fight and you were a UFC fighter, you would do like a couple of short shallow breaths right before to get you pumped up or if you were a hockey player going on the ice. It would be a couple of short breaths just from like your sternum area.
I realized that when I went through my anxiety attacks that I was breathing from my upper chest and I never was doing that belly breathing, and so it was increasing my stress. As I would get stressed out, I would breathe even worse, and it would just be this vicious cycle. Now, I was able to … When I was 30 years old, here I was thinking I was a pro in breathing, but I was failing at it, and I got better at it with these lessons through the qigong, the yoga, all the stuff that I did in order to overcome my anxiety that I finally learned how to breathe properly, Pete. Now, I am much more calm.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. How about a favorite … a nugget, or gem, or quote from some of your writings, and coaching, and speaking that really seems to connect with people, and gets them nodding their heads, and taking notes, and retweeting, and such?

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah, good question, and so one that I just posted the other day. It’s a little bit long, but it says, “Failure isn’t bad and failure isn’t fun. If there’s one thing I know after having observed this crazy world for 41 years, it’s that you can survive almost anything and come back better and stronger than ever before, so don’t let the fear of failure stop you from achieving the success you deserve.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Thank you.

Craig Ballantyne
Yeah. Hope that helps.

Pete Mockaitis
What you say is the best way for folks to find you if they want to learn more?

Craig Ballantyne
I’ve got that website, craigballantyne.com/freegift. There’s a couple of tools in there that aren’t in my book, The Perfect Day Formula. They can watch a video about The Perfect Day Formula book and kit at perfectdayformula.com, and then if anybody uses Twitter, twitter.com/craigballantyne. If you want to send me a quick note, ask me a question, I’m happy to help and answer that there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Do you have a favorite challenge or parting call to action for folks seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Craig Ballantyne
I would just challenge everybody to do 2 things. One, when they get that low in the social calendar to try that going to bed and getting up at the same time every day for at least 14 days, and then two, to really carve out 15 minutes a day where they think. Now, it should be first thing in the morning, but if it’s the last thing at night, that’s fine too, or if it’s right after dinner, before dinner, but just sit there and think for 15 minutes about your number one opportunity in life which could be writing a book or it could be solving your number one problem in life which could be a relationship problem or a money problem. Even with that writing a book, if you sat there and wrote for 15 minutes and you did 500 words, you would have a 30,000-word book, a nice short book in just 10 weeks at 500 words a day, so you can really accomplish great things in just 15 minutes a day. That’s my challenge to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. Craig, this has been so much fun. I really appreciate it and wish you tons of luck.

Craig Ballantyne
Thanks so much for letting me rant and rave, Pete. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
That was good.