#E21 How to Unleash Your Inner Superhuman With the CEO of Smarter Not Harder Boomer Anderson
Read the HYPERSCALE transcript.
(00:25) Briar: I'm Briar Prestidge, and this is Hyperscale, the podcast of the future. We don't know for certain what the future of technology might look like, but we're starting to form some ideas. No answer lasts forever, but we drive transformation with all the right questions. We're curious, we're adapting with the times we're enjoying the discovery.
Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of Hyperscale. It's your host Briar Prestige. And today I have Boomer Anderson on the call with me. Welcome to the podcast, Boomer.
(01:07) Boomer: Thank you for having me, Briar. I'm really excited for our conversation.
(01:12) Briar: Can you start off by telling people a little bit about your background and how you came into the position where you are today?
(01:20) Boomer: Well, to give that full story, it would probably take, I don’t know, a couple of hours, but let's try and give the Cliff Notes version. And I'm dating myself by using that term Cliff Notes, right? But the highlights have basically been, I worked in finance for a decade, but I was always interested in this space called health. When I was in finance, I could easily correlate or calculate actually a return on health. And so the amount of money that I would spend on health was directly correlated to the amount of money that I would make in a bonus at the end of the year. It's one of the benefits of actually working in finance, but I was largely confused on what health was. And because to me at that time, health was sleeping less, looking good naked, and working more. And that was really all I viewed health to be.
Around the time I turned 30, I had accomplished everything that I wanted to in finance, and I started looking to like what is next? Because I saw around me, it was myself and my, my position at the bank I was working in and I was looking around and everybody around me was 20, 30 years older. And I kept saying to myself, Hey, do I want to be doing this for 20 to 30 years? And I began looking at what was next. And along that exploration, if you will, I found out I had a heart condition because again, I got my priorities confused when it came to what health is. And so I started dissecting that heart condition. I moved to a different country. I live here in the Netherlands, and I really started going headfirst into the data side of health.
And this was really just as things like genetics were becoming somewhat popular. I was an early adopter to the whole 23andme area. I was an early adopter to a lot of this. And along the way I actually started a podcast myself because believe it or not, one of the best ways to get cheap consults is to ask people to come on your podcast. And so I started podcasts along the way, started several companies in the health space anything from supplements to distribution to products to a non-profit. And have had a credited good time and, have been blessed with some great mentors along the way. And really it was all driven by curiosity. Curiosity first on how to as I mentioned, look good, naked, work harder, and sleep less. Curiosity later on how to fix my heart condition. But always that continuous curiosity on how to remain a high performer because I wanted to do everything-- I wanted to make the most of my time on as Carl Sagan would put at the pale blue dot. And so that was really what drove me to this space.
(04:11) Briar: Amazing. And we're gonna be deep diving into this, and I know that Georgia, my producers spoke to you a little bit about how it's very much a topic of interest for me at the moment because I'm also on my mission to become better, stronger, faster, healthier. I'm just very aware that I've got all of these things that I want to be doing and these companies that I want to be running. And it's so frustrating to me that I start to feel tired and I have to sleep and, do all of these things. I'm trying to maintain my social life, my gym life. I'm trying to eat healthy. And I've been asking people as well, like, what's the magic pill? What do I need to take? Is there a magic pill? Can you tell us a little bit about, the secrets to biohacking?
(05:01) Boomer: Yeah, sure. And so the phrase that I kind of love a little bit more than biohacking is health optimization. And I, like you, began this journey in sort of a search for the magic pill. In the early days, people thought it was butter in their coffee or perhaps a prescription drug called Modafinil. But I came to conclude that there really wasn't a magic pill. And in fact, there are some things where a human physically has to do some sort of work. At a base level, there are a number of things that people can do for themselves to start down this path of health optimization. But one of the first ways that you can ensure that, and the analogy I like to give is sort of a house of cards. Like if you have a house of cards, simple wind can, can blow it over.
And you're an entrepreneur you’ve got multiple businesses you want to run. We were talking earlier about how you fly back and forth across different time zones. That is a stress that your body has not encountered or our cells have not encountered in evolution. And you think about it this way the plane was invented not that long ago. Electricity was invented not that long ago. So we are dealing with environmental stressors that we haven't evolutionary adapted for. And so that requires us to take extra precautions. And one of the ways I could tell people to start doing that is to build a solid foundation. And that starts with cellular-level health optimization. And I can get into that a little bit more if you want Briar.
(06:47) Briar: No I'd love for you to get into that. So what is cellular optimization?
(06:52) Boomer: Sure. So if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, our cells are essentially a marriage or a sort of a forced marriage between mitochondria and ancient bacteria. And what happened was is that, the cell then developed into kind of a series of organisms. And we eventually evolved into a human where we became that collection of organisms. And that collection of organisms is called the holobiont. And what makes up the holobiont, it's your cells. Its things like fungi. So the microbiome, it's your gut bacteria is show your microbiome and a whole bunch of these “omes” that collectively make that holobiome. So you, so you are just a collection of organisms, but in order to really understand and build that solid foundation, we want to measure you at the lowest common denominator, which is your cell. And so we can measure that through a science called metabolomics.
Metabolomics actually looks at your cellular level health, both where you are now and where you've been very recently. And we can determine things like, are you able to produce your body's energy currency or adenosine triphosphate ATP effectively? Do you have heavy metal toxicities getting in your way of performing at your best? Do you have all of the aspects needed to handle the stresses of flying back and forth across the pond? As some of my British friends like to say. And so we can measure all of that and then really accurately give you supplements to help optimize that function. And so you mentioned earlier that magic pill, does it exist? Well, that magic pill comes in different forms for different people because your cells are different than mine. You live in Dubai and you fly back and forth from New York, you have different environmental exposures. I fly back and forth from New York and DC from Amsterdam, different environmental exposures. And so it's silly to say that there's one magic pill for everyone, but we can certainly narrow it down a bit through this process of cellular-level health optimization.
(09:16) Briar: Wow. Okay. So sleeping. Do I really need eight hours sleep, or is there some way I can bypass this procedure?
(09:31) Boomer: So one of my favourite studies of all time Briar is this one where they compared somebody who was given forced sleep deprivation to somebody who was drinking at a bar. And they measured the brain waves in those people. For two hours of forced sleep deprivation. So in this case, meaning that you're getting six hours of sleep per night, it's the equivalent of drinking about two full pints, not the continental pints as some of my British friends, again, like to say, but full pints of beer now that's just at six hours a night. And keep in mind, like I worked in finance, I spent a decade sleeping four hours a night. And so what happens when you pull that all-nighter because you're an entrepreneur like it's going to happen in that process? Either you're gonna do it because you're jet-lagged or you're gonna do it because it's just the nature of the beast sometimes.
If you have a full night of not sleeping, it's the equivalent of drinking 12 full-pint beers. And so what does that do to you? I think that's an easier analogy for people to relate to because I don't know about you, but my tolerance isn't that high. And so I would be on the floor. And so is sleep necessary? Absolutely. Now, I'm also a realist. I'm an entrepreneur myself. The people I work with are entrepreneurs. And I know that there are times where you're not gonna be able to get that eight hours or maybe you're only able to get six. And so I have to meet you where you are now and give you the insurance policy to help protect you. And so let's say you're getting six hours of sleep per night while that predisposes you to oxidative stress, which can lead to inflammation.
And so I want to make sure that you have enough antioxidants in your diet, either in the form of supplementation or in food, and just make sure that you're getting that. Now that doesn't mean that I'm not also trying to get you to get to that seven to eight-hour sweet spot. And that's really what I do with those types of people is I work with them over time, meet them where they are, and kind of guide them along that path to better sleep. Because we do know that I grew up as sort of fan of Nas the Rapper. And he had this song in it, it was New York State of Mind where he said, sleep is the cousin of death. And I took that very, very literally through my 20s, basically, until I was 30. Or I get four hours of sleep a night, and I pushed it as hard as I possibly could. And I can tell you, when somebody diagnoses you with a heart condition, things change. But also I never want anybody to go through that experience. And so when I work with somebody, it's looking at the antioxidant reserve, it's looking at how to get them to sleep more. And the good thing is, is that once they start sleeping more, they realize that they perform better, and success is addictive. So it kind of snowballs on himself.
(12:32) Briar: Oh, amazing. So you spoke a bit about what we could be taking if we weren't getting, our eight hours, so to speak. I've actually become quite a good sleeper, I must say. When I was younger and growing up, I hated sleeping so much. I used to find every single excuse to sneak into my parents' room and be like, I can't sleep. But I think over time I've really come to appreciate getting rest. But yeah, certainly lately with jet lag, it's not been so great. I mentioned to you, I've been up since about 3:00 AM this morning. Should I be taking vitamins in the morning or, because I know that some people say that vitamins aren't very good. I know that there are some brands of vitamins that are better than other vitamins. Like is this something that I should be doing to supplement myself to be better, faster, stronger?
(13:27) Boomer: So I'm gonna take your question at a high level and narrow down. So I am just interacting with Briar here. I know your lifestyle is largely out of your evolutionary origins, let's say. So my evolutionary origin, or my genetics, so to speak, are central Europe. And so if I were living in central Europe, eating a traditional central European diet and not traveling, could I get all of my nutrients from the food? Theoretically, yes, it's actually harder than you would think. And there's a whole lot of factors that play into that. But let's say I'm living a life that is beyond my evolutionary means. I do live in Amsterdam, but I fly back and forth similar to you. You’re from New Zealand, but you're flying back and forth all over the world, and that puts an incremental amount of stress on your body.
So it's within the realm of possibility to see that you would need supplements. Like you're going to need supplements because you are living a life that is different from the way you were built. And so what I like to do with people is really understand what supplements you need. So rather than going and spending 500, a thousand dollars a month, or even $300 a month on supplements because somebody on a fancy talk show told you that you need vitamin C, D, E, all of this stuff, right? I try to identify exactly what those supplements are and give you the dosages that actually help reverse your age. And so what we want to do is guide you to levels that are more appropriate for somebody who's 21 to 30 years old rather than whatever age you are right now. And so that's the way we found actually works best for that goal of health optimization.
Really to answer your question, do you need supplements? Most likely, yes. And the question is, what supplements do you need? that comes through testing and then working with a practitioner, and again, there's a bunch of people like me, and I actually only work with a handful of people, but working with a practitioner to understand what those brands are that are actually useful to you is very important because there's a lot of junk out there, and we really don't want, people taking junk. And so that becomes very important as well.
(16:01) Briar: And in regards to food, is there even a lot of nutrients in vegetables these days? I know back in the olden days, we used to be out there with our little shovel getting the broccoli and the carrots and the onions, and I'm sure it was very nutritious back then. But these days when I'm in New York especially, I go down to the supermarket and I buy berries and I eat the berry, and it tastes literally like water and spray. Like there's not one element of berry in it. And this is from very reputable supermarkets such as Trader Joe's and places like this. So what's your thoughts about food these days?
(16:46) Boomer: Again I like to look at the, science and studies behind this but to simplify for everybody simply, the soil quality has gone down. And what I mean by that is that the minerals, the vitamins that we all got from things like spinach or-- and spinach is one in particular that tends to have a high level of pesticides on it. There's something that you can look up called the toxic 10, and that's worth just knowing so that you know what to buy organic and whatnot. But even organic is a little bit of a, you have to read paragraphs and paragraphs as to what organic entails. And so my general belief is that combination of yes, try to eat organic as much as you can because that's better than not, but recognizing that still if you’re eating organic, the likelihood that your soils are depleted is very high. And so it does help to spend the extra couple of dollars to get the test to figure out what vitamins you need.
(17:44) Briar: Very helpful. So I'm planning on getting a microchip and I'm telling everybody about this. So everyone who's listening is probably so sick of hearing me talk about getting this microchip. They're probably like, when are you getting the d**n thing, Briar? so I'm planning on getting a microchip, and I'm very much starting to explore how my body can start to integrate with technology so that I can be better, faster, stronger. And do you have a microchip or do you not have a microchip?
(18:12) Boomer: I don't.
(18:12) Briar: You don't have a microchip. Would you get a microchip?
(18:17) Boomer: Sure. That, that, that's an interesting question. And so let me first say that one of my core beliefs is it's a personal choice and it's your body, your choice. And so I am not gonna tell somebody not to get it, but I can tell you how I look at this process. So what are the use cases? The clear use cases where microchips are like a win for people in handicapped and disabled people for things like access that seems to be just a clear win. And it just makes everything a lot easier for that person. One of the reasons why I've actually looked at this not too long ago was for cryptocurrency wallets, like people carrying a cryptocurrency wallet in their hand. That's an interesting use case. There are use cases, particularly in Sweden where I've spent a lot of time researching this, where people are paying for their train tickets.
Does it make life easier? Absolutely. In certain cases. And as you're able to just sort of use it as a payment device, as you're able to use it for access to different areas. So maybe it's your ID to get in your building. Seems great. So number one reason why I decided against it was because I am an athlete and I still do a lot of crazy workout stuff, and I was uncertain based on the point of insertion that doing, for instance, gymnastic type workouts or doing barbell type workouts would not be impacted. And so that was my first reason. And then the second reason, and this again, there is a huge amount of debate in this field, and I am not sure we have time to get into all of it today, is from an evolutionary perspective.
From an evolutionary perspective, we haven't necessarily had things like chips, metal or any sort of implants from an evolutionary perspective in our body. And so for me, I took a look at it and said, okay, this is great, and I could be supportive under certain use cases, and I'm certainly interested with what's going to happen to Briar when she gets a chip implanted, but am I slightly concerned about electromagnetic radiation? Sure. And it may not be just from the chip, it just might be the fact that we're constantly getting bombarded with things like Wi-Fi and all of that stuff. Again, this is a slightly controversial subject, which we could probably do an entire podcast on. For me, those use cases didn't necessarily apply. And I was perfectly happy, carrying my payments on my phone. I do love the idea of going to paperless currency transactions. So if that's the way we get there, I'll be supportive. But for now I'm waiting just to see what the next-- in Sweden, this has been going on for a while, so we will have, what, 10 years of data pretty soon, and I would like to see what's transpired with those people and if we can even get blood tests just to see if there's been any leeching of the devices, that would be interesting.
(21:39) Briar: It's such an interesting topic and as you were pointing out with anything like this, it's, it's never black and white, you know? Yeah. Especially even, with my opinions on things I can be so for something. And so against that same particular thing, my boyfriend actually thinks that I'm a massive hypocrite for wanting to get a microchip because I was all about data and privacy and all of this, and then suddenly I just had a shift in how I thought about it. I was like, oh, wow, my phone's got so much on me anyway, I've decided I don't even care anymore, sort of thing. I think it is really fascinating. And you touched on Wi-Fi there. I sometimes, because I carry my phone around for about 13 hours every day. I, I do get a little bit nervous about the potential impacts of my phone. Can you reveal anything about this to the audience?
(22:32) Boomer: There's been a recent meta-analysis on this, and I think in particular what they looked at was either testosterone or follicle-stimulating hormone in men. And follicle stimulating hormone is a rough proxy for sperm count. And again, it's rough, but the effects were not great. And so what the end conclusion was is, and again, these are like meta-analysis and system systematic reviews. And so there were reviews of multiple studies. And so the end conclusion was is that having your phone and your front pocket all day long is probably not a great idea. And so what can you do about it? Well, I like you Briar I have two phones. They're right here. They're all on airplane mode right now. That's one thing that you can do is to put your phone on airplane mode as much as you can. Then making sure also that the Wi-Fi isn't turned on while you're in a point airplane mode, or having it in an area that isn't necessarily attached to your person. That's harder to do than most people realize, but if you have your phone on loud then throwing in your backpack shouldn't really be, or your briefcase or whatever shouldn't really be a big deal. And so those are just a couple of things that people can do to protect themselves.
There are also companies out there that, and this is again, a mixed bag because some of them are not necessarily great in terms of their effectiveness, but there are companies out there that do provide blocking technology. So if you have to keep it in your pocket because that's the type of person that you are, then using the sort of radiation-blocking technology could be a way around it.
(24:17) Briar: Interesting. Do you think that in the future we might all be walking around with neural links and our brains might be connected to technology or to the internet?
(24:27) Boomer: It's funny because right now, obviously, the topic that everybody is talking about is chat, GPT, and artificial intelligence. And I'm excited about that. You would venture to guess based on what I said before about my skepticism around chips and everything that I may not be in support of transhumanism in particular, but I spoke at the Transhumanist conference in the United States, the last one that they had, in I believe 2019. And I, I met a bunch of people who were doing amazing things with human augmentation, and a lot of these people were doing it out of need. Like they were an amputee, for instance, or they were doing out of curiosity, they just were very curious and built this device whereby the implant on their back always told them where North was.
Do I think we're headed that way? Maybe, but it may not be neurolink, It may be some other AI plus human interaction, and I'm excited for that. And so there's a lot that we can already do with things like chat GPT and artificial intelligence. I'm just learning more and more every day about all of those use cases. But the future of having a neuro-link, and I think what ultimately people want is that scene in The Matrix, Where Neo gets kung Fu downloaded into his brain, and all of a sudden he's a black belt, Like, everybody wants that. And it may happen, I don't want to kind of cross it off, but I'm gonna ask the same questions. And so, from a first principal standpoint, I believe everybody has the choice or should have the choice to do what they want. And then, there are certain areas whereby you may have, if you're an athlete, for instance, you may have your choices limited.
If we're approaching this, I'm gonna ask the same questions like, what are the long-term implications of having a neurolink in my brain? What are the potentials for something like an EMP to wiping out a bunch of people? And so, as long as we're asking those questions along the way, I think that there's an exciting future to be had here.
(27:08) Briar: I think it's such an interesting discussion, and part of me gets excited about the thought of not having to carry around my phone and having augmented reality glasses in my eyes and being connected to the internet so I can just access chat GPT without needing to type anything on my phone. But then, as you pointed out, there's almost such a dark side to it, how do we even differentiate our personalities if we're all sort of hooked or our intelligence if we're all hooked up to the internet or what happens if a hacker comes along and is hacking into our brains. It does really seem like this dystopian future, but at the same time, I just think about how quickly phones and the internet evolved, which it may not be such, a distant reality. So it gets me thinking a lot. Really.
(28:00) Boomer: Yeah. To me, utopia is an interesting concept, but it's pretty boring to think about, Like, we're sitting there on a beach all sipping our pinacoladas, and in my case, probably some sort of sparkling water. But it's quite a boring topic. Then you start to think about the dystopian side of this, which is also the way we should look at this is like, what are the potential downsides? And that is so much more interesting to me. If we were to have a podcast on that, we can go on it for hours about dystopian topics, right?
(28:39) Briar: We could do a follow-up on that. I'd actually really enjoy that. I was reading recently that Sam Altman, who's the CEO of OpenAI, which obviously runs chat GPT, and he was saying that if they had kept it in their garage, experimenting, tinkering with it, not released it to the world until version seven, then he believes it would've done more harm than good. He thinks that he's done society a bit of a favour by giving it to us now so that we have time to experiment, prepare for whatever version seven may hold. And I thought that was really fascinating to hear.
(29:13) Boomer: Absolutely. I, one of the key features of why chat GPT works, as is sort of that feedback loop, And so I can also see selfishly why him releasing GPT I think we're now on four, at the time of this recording, we're on four. And so I can see why releasing GPT four is actually from a selfish standpoint, the thing that he's not saying is that it actually helps accelerate the feedback loop because more people are using it and more people are giving feedback to it. And so 567 iterations are not that far in the distant future. And so it's, I think there's a lot he's not saying. There again, this is my dystopian view of the world. It is a good idea that we're starting to at least have conversations among people like us about what are the ethics of AI, Unfortunately, that hasn't reached a government-level conversation yet, and that is actually what concerns me most when it comes to artificial intelligence.
(30:14) Briar: I agree, I think we need to be having these discussions, and it just fascinates me how so many people sit in government I'm sorry, but they're just old-fashioned fogies almost, I don't even know if fogies is a word. I think that's a New Zealand,
(30:30) Boomer: Yeah. Fogie is a great--
(30:33) Briar: I think that's from my childhood growing up. Maybe we called the grandpa that or something.
(30:39) Boomer: I live not too far from Sweden, where Greta Thunberg of course, says, okay, boomer, which some people say to me, But it's just like this incessant need to clinging onto power by a generation that is far too outdated to deal with our technologies of today is holding us back and actually will cause the issues that we're all worried about. Because rather than us talking about putting some guardrails around artificial intelligence, around the ethical guardrails rather than politically correctness guardrails which is what people are obsessed about. We’re having discussions on whether or not TikTok can take over your Wi-Fi. And so that's just like the kinds of things, and I'm American, so it used to be a place where people would be proud to be from, but like, I still love the United States, but the fact that we're having discussions where politicians clearly just do not understand the issues at hand, and we need somebody to at least step in and start having these conversations at that level.
(31:50) Briar: Do you think that the recent letter that Elon Musk and lots of these characters wrote is helpful getting people to sign and telling chat GPT that they have and other people, other AI companies, that they have to put everything on pause for six months. Do you think that that's a good solution? Because to me, it almost sounded like you're telling a pregnant woman to keep the baby inside her for an additional six months. How can you enforce the fact that people aren't still racing ahead in their garage?
(32:22) Boomer: And I took it a similar way to you in sort of Elon used to be on the board of Open AI, and I, I took that letter in sort of a message that said, other companies want six months in order to try to catch up because they're worried that they're falling behind. And rather than any sort of concern about the ethics of AI, because if there was really a genuine concern, they would have something like an open AI non-profit that would be established right away to lobby for these conversations to be had. And that, to me, would've signaled much more action than an intention to delay open AI from progression
(33:09) Briar: And jumping into health optimization as you call it, which, I love, by the way. Do you think that things such as cold showers and these sorts of very trendy things that a lot of people are doing these days are these helpful? Are these something that I should start looking into?
(33:27) Boomer: It's funny, one of the reasons why I'm probably not a great influencer Briar is because my answer is always, it depends. So cold showers, are they a good source of health optimization for people? Or like, what is the purpose behind cold showers? And so use cases for cold showers building resilience. So if you're a person who lives a largely unstressed life, like most of us in society, having cold showers every day does help build resilience because it's something you don't want to do. Nobody really likes taking a cold shower. And so there's that element of it. There's certainly an element of mitochondrial health. So improving energy through cold showers, you can do that as well. And so those use cases certainly work. But if you were a person who is trying to put on muscle, for instance, taking a cold shower right after your workout is a really bad idea because it will halt muscle protein synthesis.
Muscle protein synthesis is essentially the way that happens is through inflammation. And most people think of inflammation as a bad thing. But it's also a naturally it's a good thing when you're trying to put on muscle. It's a natural body process. And so, cold showers can stop inflammation. And so if you're a person who's got chronic inflammation, maybe that's a good path for you. I tend to prefer the ice bath over cold showers or cryotherapy, because one, you can sit there for a little bit longer. Two ice baths tend to be cheaper than cryotherapy. And three, it's just fun. And so, it's a little bit of a different way to take those cold showers. So if you are gonna do it. I would look towards ice baths or someplace you can do a cold plunge.
(35:30) Briar: And yeah I'm not a super fan of cold showers, to be honest. I am one of these awful people that has super-hot showers, which I don't think is necessarily the best thing to do.
(35:43) Boomer: I do super-hot showers as well. If I'm going to deliberately expose myself to cold, I'm gonna go jump in one of the canals, one of the clean canals here in Amsterdam, which is very, very few and far between. Or I'm going to find a cold plunge where I can get the right temperature.
(36:00) Briar: Fair enough, fair enough. And so you've interviewed a wide range of experts on your podcast. What would you say are some of the most interesting things you've discovered?
(36:10) Boomer: Everybody's crazy, but in a good way. What I mean by that is that the line between genius and insanity is very, very fine. The phrase that I heard that best explains it is genius is being able to see patterns before anyone else does, and data that is very hard or whatever, that is very hard to interpret. And then insanity is being able to see patterns where none exists, And so there's a fine line there, but there are a couple of kind of key themes that I think is key like tactics that almost all of these people have. One is routines. A lot of people use routines, whether it be morning or evening routines to get themselves going and to get themselves in a very particular state.
Number two is with most of these people, there's no concept of work-life balance. And the ones that have done it well, believe more in what is termed work-life integration. And so what I mean by that is if you think about balance work-life balance as you're striving towards an equilibrium, and by definition that equilibrium can only exist for a very finite period of time, and always implies a trade-off between work and life. And actually, this is something that my wife and I practice together. We just said, okay, get rid of that concept altogether, because it does keep a lot of human resources people employed, but it causes a lot of anxiety in individuals that are entrepreneurs and always striving for more because they're being told that they need to do this work-life balance thing, which is inherently hard to grasp. Work-life integration is just seamlessly moving between your work and your life. That can often look like blurred work days sometimes working on weekends, but also taking, the mornings to go out for coffee when there's downtime. I think those two things are some of the key elements that I've, I guess, distilled from the 200-plus people I've interviewed on that podcast. And almost all of them have some sort of exercise routine as well. So I think there's an element of exercise that is needed in everybody's life.
(38:44) Briar: Is there, I know that a lot of these 5:00 AM gurus, so to speak, speak a lot about routines. Do you have a routine in the morning that you follow?
(39:01) Boomer: It's interesting that you asked that one Briar, because I was just on, the largest health podcast, and he asked me a very similar question. And my routine, I call it before 11:00 AM and before 11:00 AM which is also why I didn't schedule this podcast before 11:00 AM. But before 11:00 AM is my putzing time. And so what do I mean by putzing? And so putzing is a term that largely refers to just sort of wandering without a particular direction. When I explain my 11:00 AM putzing to a lot of people, it often doesn't sound like putzing because I have three things that I want to get done in that time before 11:00 AM. One is I want to meditate. And so I have certain types of meditation that I do.
Number two is I want to study something new or interesting to me. It's funny, we've been talking a little bit about generative AI and chat GPT, and so that's largely my focus at this moment. And number three, I want to do some form of exercise and I want to get that done all before 11:00 AM. But you can imagine that that doesn't take, if I wake up at six or seven, that doesn't take four hours. And so I am, doing it with a little bit of a lazy pace because I know that that's how I set myself up so that when 11:00 AM comes, I can hit a flow state like that and get into whatever my hardest project is for the day, whatever calls I have, and I know that's how I show up and perform best.
The reason why also 11:00 AM works for me is that a lot of the stuff I'm doing is in the US time zone. And so when you're thinking about this for yourself back out to what time zone that you work in, if you live in Dubai and you work in Dubai, well, maybe you need to start it a little bit earlier than I do or maybe you need to wake up a little bit earlier than I do, but that works for me. I'm not necessarily a fan or I think its Hal Elrod. And, and I think there's a lot of good in Hal Elrod's work, the 5:00 AM Miracle Morning or something, I forget what it's called. But there's a lot of good in that work for people, and I've been through that time in my life. But for now, what works for me is that 11:00 AM putzing because it actually allows me, my mind to get very, very creative and wander, and that just works for me, Briar.
(41:38) Briar: So I remember when I first became an entrepreneur, and I was thinking every single morning that I would have to wake up at five and do what all these gurus say, but I don't think I am intrinsically a morning person. Granted, sometimes I wake up, I have a lot more energy, but I have a lot more energy in the evening. And what I was finding is that I was already feeling like a failure come 9:00 AM because every single morning I would skip through my alarm or I would just struggle to get out of bed and do my things and rush around. And what I found after trying to do that for a while, that that just was not my thing. And I'm a little bit like you, I do try and take my mornings a little bit slower, and because I do have the US calls in the evening as well, often I start a little bit later too. So I think it's interesting that you bring this up and I think it's really important for entrepreneurs to be thinking about themselves and not be getting so overwhelmed by all of this advice and guru stuff that's thrown at you. So yeah I'm happy you revealed your morning secrets with us.
(42:46) Boomer: Yeah. The science of this is actually called chronobiology, and chronobiology is the study of our biological rhythms. And I'm simplifying that definition. So if somebody listening to this as a chronobiologist, it's okay. I'm just simplifying things. And we have biological rhythms. The most famous one is our circadian rhythm. And so that's a 24-hour rhythm, but we also have rhythms for things like testosterone, cortisol, et cetera. And what I initially spends a lot of time on was delving into my own rhythm, how do I work best? And that actually, there's a biological input in there. And so when you get to know yourself a little bit better, and some of that can come through health data, it allows you to put a filter on the world so that you say, okay, Hal Elrod, your advice may be good for other people, but maybe not for me.
Or Mel Robbins is the other one she's one of the people who people often bring to me their ideas, and it's just like, okay, is this right for me? And I now have biological data that says, okay, maybe not. And the idea of putzing actually came from Jeff Bezos, and I figured if there's one person who had a reason to be up at 4 or 5:00 AM every day, it would be Jeff Bezos. But I found out that Jeff doesn't start his workday until 10. And so I looked a little bit into the whole putzing concept. I'm like okay, this works for my life too. And it, a lot of this is experimental. And so what I would just encourage people to do is if you either don't have the money for the health data or you do the next step is really to experiment. And over time develop that feedback loop to figure out what works best for you. And for me, it's that before 11:00 AM routine.
(44:33) Briar: Amazing. Well, thanks for sharing that. So to finish off the podcast, we describe a situation, or I want you to, imagine the vision that I'm about to describe, and
(44:46) Boomer: My brain is already going. So let's go
(44:48) Briar: Every single guest has added to the story. Okay? So it's already a little bit random. Okay. So picture this, it's 2043. You have traveled into the future. You've woken up in the morning in an organic breathing bed, and you've walked into the kitchen and any dish you desire is available at your fingertips. You get ready for your day at work, and you put on your suit, which has integrated AI telling you what you need to do for the day. You then go and work out and you remember you forgot to say good morning to your breathing bed. So you go back and you say, good morning to it. Your room is very small because there's not much space because we're in the future and there's not too much nature. What happens next?
(45:40) Boomer: This is a very good question. So what happens next? If we're 2040, I would assume that my workday is done by a robot and that robot, because I'm not even really a Star Wars fan, but I'm just gonna call it R2D2. And so the robot R two D two then goes and does my work for me so that I can sit and have some other robot deliver me my double espresso.
(46:14) Briar: Sounds great. Sounds like a puttzing morning.
(46:20) Boomer: Yeah, it's funny because we think about this briar and it's like 2040. By then we might have generative AI doing work for us, what does a morning look like? I also think that in 2040, we're going to probably if you look at population data and population growth data, and a lot of the concern around this population cliff is because everybody looks at the world from an economic point of view, but it could actually be a benefit to nature and sustainability and climate change, is that if we were to experience a population cliff, well then maybe our rooms aren't as small. We're not going into our Tokyo apartment. We're going into a little bit more of a nature experience or maybe something like what we have right now. So I'm not one who is necessarily thinking we're all gonna live in a shoebox, like more of a bullish about sort of that reintegration into nature, if you will. And let's see where that carries us. I'm not sure if I added very well to your story, but I am very interested in, the combination of AI and robotics and all of these technologies coming together.
(47:39) Briar: It was perfect. And yeah I do think that the world will be a very different working place for us in 2040 as well. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Boom. It was an absolute pleasure. Nice to have you. Nice to meet you. Thanks so much for sharing all your opinions.
(47:53) Boomer: Yeah, thank you so much, Briar. It's been an absolute pleasure. Hopefully, we can get together in New York sometime in the near future.
(48:00) Briar: I would love that.
