The argument in one line.
Rob Dyrdek built a 20-page personal operating system in 2015 that gamifies and automates every domain of his life, and the compounding clarity of running it produced what he describes as an effortless, alien-like existence.
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- High-achievers who feel productive but suspect their life has no intentional operating system underneath it
- Entrepreneurs obsessed with systems thinking who want to see the same rigor applied to personal life as to business
- Anyone trying to bridge the gap between personal development content and actually executing daily with consistency
- Fans of Rob Dyrdek curious how the empire-building mindset actually works behind the scenes
SKIP IF…
- People looking for quick habits tips — this is a 55-minute deep conversation about a 20-page life OS built over years
- Those who find gamified self-optimization off-putting or overly mechanical as a life philosophy
The full version, fast.
Rob Dyrdek argues that a high-performance life is not built on willpower or hustle but on a deliberately engineered operating system applied to every domain simultaneously. In 2015 he codified this into a 20-page personal OS he calls the Rhythm of Existence, covering health metrics, marriage protocols, parenting rituals, and business routines — all designed to run automatically so that discipline eventually becomes effortless rather than effortful. The design phase comes first, then consistent execution, then optimization, then acceleration. The conversation with Greg McKeown explores how Dyrdek applied essentialism before reading the book, why system design must precede consistency, and what it feels like to live on the other side of the atmospheric threshold where the system finally runs itself.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:54hostGreg McKeown
00:54guestRob Dyrdek
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:54
01 · Cold open - ramifications quote
Episode opens mid-Dyrdek monologue with the thesis statement before formal intro.
00:54 – 03:00
02 · How Dyrdek found Essentialism
Brent Montgomery introduced the books. Dyrdek describes how McKeown work clarified a philosophy he was already living.
03:00 – 07:44
03 · The part-alien self-myth
Dyrdek half-joking alien claim as a metaphor for living beyond ordinary paradigms. McKeown reframes it as permission to live differently.
07:44 – 09:43
04 · Everything is created twice
Emotionally and mentally first, then physically. Life-as-systems vs. life-as-goals. Generational preservation as the horizon.
09:43 – 18:21
05 · The Rhythm of Existence document
20+ page personal OS. Four subrhythms: Work, Life, Health, Sleep. Built 2015, took 5 years to fully operate. Chief of staff and assistants run within it.
18:21 – 18:54
06 · Balance vs Harmony vs Dynamic Equilibrium
McKeown introduces dynamic equilibrium. Dyrdek settles on harmony. The seesaw metaphor of work-life balance is rejected.
18:54 – 29:55
07 · Data-driven health gamification
Six years of daily 0-10 qualitative scores for Life, Work, Health cross-referenced with quantitative health behaviors. 2020: 18.2 of 30. 2021: 21.4 of 30, 92% compliance, only 12 bad days.
29:55 – 35:17
08 · Capacity management and mega trade-offs
2021 overload: 6 companies, 250 TV episodes on 30% of time. Health and family time protected absolutely. Trade-offs lived inside the work bucket only.
35:17 – 45:25
09 · Relationship systems with Brie
Built-in marriage protocols: Thursday breakfast, Wednesday date night, Sunday sushi, Tuesday talk night, daily 6am email, biweekly house-call therapist, daily relationship score.
45:25 – 50:20
10 · The Machine Mindset
You are a living system whether you like it or not. Default systems compound disorder. Designed systems compound harmony. The output of your system is the quality of your life.
50:20 – 55:17
11 · Legacy and closing
Dyrdek legacy will be the philosophy of how to create any life you desire. Living proof: quit school at 16 in Ohio, now designing heaven on earth.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Rob Dyrdek built a 20-page personal operating system before personal operating systems were a concept anyone talked about.
- The Rhythm of Existence runs on a gamification layer — every domain of life (health, marriage, business, fatherhood) has metrics, and winning is the only acceptable outcome.
- Dyrdek describes his current state as 'alien-like' — not as a flex, but as an honest description of what systematic optimization eventually produces.
- The phases are design, learning, commitment, optimization, acceleration — and most people quit at commitment because it feels like effort before it feels like flow.
- Effortlessness is not the starting state; it is the reward that only appears after the optimization phase is fully complete.
- A 55-minute podcast is the wrong format for a 20-page life OS — the document does more work in 20 minutes than the conversation does in an hour.
- Essentialism gave Dyrdek language for a mode of living he had already built intuitively — the book confirmed the system, it did not create it.
- Most people who talk about work-life balance are solving the wrong problem — Dyrdek solved integration, not balance, and the distinction is everything.
- A life OS only works if you actually live inside it — the document is inert without the daily commitment to run every decision through the system.
- The acceleration phase is not accessible until the optimization phase produces enough margin — trying to accelerate before optimizing is the most common high-performer mistake.
- Dyrdek's gamification approach treats relationships and health like a business unit — the instinct feels transactional until you realize the alternative is letting them decay by neglect.
- The 'effortless' description is a leading indicator, not a destination — when things stop feeling hard, it means the system is working, not that you can stop running it.
The automation-first playbook.
What creators can steal
You cannot optimize what you have not automated, and Rob Dyrdek spent five years proving it.
- Document your operating rhythm. Dyrdek 20-page doc is special because it exists. Most creators run on invisible defaults.
- Track qualitative data daily. A 0-10 score for how you feel about your work, life, and health takes 30 seconds and produces years of signal.
- Cross-reference behavior with feeling. The correlation between what you did and how you felt is more motivating than any goal.
- Protect your non-negotiables first, then trade off inside what is left. Dyrdek launched 6 companies in a year without touching family or health time. Trade-offs lived inside the 30% allocated to work.
- Gamify the trigger moments. The system does not remove cravings, it gives you a concrete reason to decline them. The score is the reason.
- Build for automation first. Design the system, then learn it, then get good at it, then optimize. Trying to optimize before automating is the mistake most creators make with their content workflow.
Terms worth knowing.
- Rhythm of Existence
- Rob Dyrdek's personal life operating system — a 20-page document he built in 2015 that defines protocols and automated routines across every domain of his life (health, marriage, business, mindset), designed to produce consistent high performance with minimal willpower.
- Essentialism (McKeown)
- A philosophy and book by Greg McKeown arguing that people should ruthlessly identify and focus on only the most important 20% of activities, eliminating the non-essential so that the essential can be done effortlessly and at the highest level.
- Effortless (McKeown)
- Greg McKeown's follow-up framework to Essentialism, arguing that doing the right things should also become easier over time — through automation, simplification, and designing systems that make the correct behavior the path of least resistance.
- Life operating system
- A personal framework — often documented and structured like software — that governs how a person manages time, energy, relationships, and decisions across all domains of life, reducing reliance on in-the-moment willpower by baking good behavior into the system itself.
- Gamification (life design)
- Applying game mechanics — scoreboards, streaks, levels, and measurable progress — to personal health, habits, or business goals to make repeated behavior feel rewarding and to sustain motivation through visible progress markers.
- Automation (personal systems)
- Removing decision-making from recurring activities by setting defaults, rules, or routines that execute without deliberate thought — used in life-design contexts to preserve mental energy for high-value creative and strategic work.
Things they pointed at.
14:14bookThe Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles
25:05toolGoogle Calendar and Google Sheets
Lines you could clip.
10:22
“You have got to get things to automation before you can begin to optimize them. Because optimization is where the extraordinary happens.”
49:15
“The output of your system is essentially the quality of your life.”
47:30
“You are a living system whether you like it or not. You just have an entire system that is disorder by design.”
51:27
“You expand into a goal. And it reveals itself about a third of the way through.”
15:01
“You don't just decide to be balanced one day. You being balanced is difficult. There are so many aspects of balance that you need to do self-discovery and realize what rhythm you can live in in order to have balance.”
27:33
“A lot of us don't have a reason not to do these things. When the trigger happens, you go along with it. This game, the gamification of your life around what is essential to you, is helping you to go in that moment, okay, now I have a reason not to.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:54 – 07:44steadyOrigin story and essentialism connection
09:43 – 18:54denseThe Rhythm of Existence personal OS
18:54 – 29:55denseHealth gamification and data tracking
29:55 – 35:17denseCapacity management and trade-offs
35:17 – 45:25denseMarriage systems and relationship optimization
45:25 – 50:20denseMachine Mindset framework
50:20 – 55:17steadyLegacy and closing
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metaphoranalogy
00:00When you become so sensitive to basically the ramifications of your decisions, it also becomes easier to not do them.
00:09You get there after you've optimized the system. I had to design it first, then I had to learn how to do it, get fully committed, then I had to, like, get better at it.
00:19And then I began to optimize it so I could get more and more efficient, more and more consistent. Then it finally basically has this acceleration, you know, that equate it to almost like where you need a certain amount of acceleration in order to, like, get through the atmosphere.
00:36It's that sort of other side of what it takes. Once you get beyond that, now it becomes effortless and intuitive by your natural ability where before you were fighting to be consistent and fight these triggers.
00:51Now it's almost the opposite.
00:54Okay. Rob Dyrdek, welcome to the What's Essential podcast. Thank you.
00:59It it is great to be with you. We were first introduced, uh, by Brent Montgomery, and he sent you, I think, Essentialism and Effortless.
01:11Yeah. Sent me Essentialism. In a minute, but sent go tell tell me, first of all, just a little bit about that,
01:18what that did in your mind, and then I have a couple more follow-up questions. Yeah. You know, I think when he you know, because obviously, he's a big fan of yours, uh, considering your, uh, connection in business.
01:30And, you know, we we had always sort of shared philosophies and and different aspects of sharing the way that I operate.
01:38And he said, you gotta read this book. You know, this stuff is brilliant. I've given this to everybody at the company.
01:44Like and and it started the, you know, the journey of you know? And to me, there's always these great tools that if you're someone that's constantly growing and evolving, you you get shared another philosophy that then almost kind of brings clarity what you were already feeling.
02:03And and, again, I that was essentialism for me. And then and then I'm like, boy.
02:10But, you know, even back then, it's like, well, what happens when you're only doing the essential and you're you're pushed up to the top? Right?
02:17It's then effortless was right behind it because and it's the book started with, like, you know, your like, and then that's effortless. And then I realized, like, man, like, the way that I drive everything to automation and then the optimization, my whole existence is driving to this effortless existence.
02:35Right? So I I think that's where, you know, I connected with your philosophy on a practical side as it as it was related to how I run my life as a whole.
02:46You know?
02:47So after you and I first connected, I sent a note to Brent that basically said something like this. I said, Rob's not really human.
02:59You don't you don't really meet Rob. You experience him. That was my sense of when we of when we talked.
03:07Uh, the intensity that you bring to whatever you do is really remarkable to me.
03:15Uh, and and I and I want to get to some specific things that you do that we talked about, but I want to go into some detail with. But first, I want to just reference something, and and maybe maybe this is funny for you, or maybe it's serious for you.
03:29I don't know. But but you are on record as having said so I was sort of saying it as a, you know, you're not really human. But you are on record as having said, I am part alien.
03:39I truly believe that. I believe I've been abducted, and I'm some form of an extraterrestrial race, a sixteenth part alien or something.
03:48Now, maybe that was a joke at the moment, part of the crazy, but talk to me about that.
03:54Well, look, I'm you know, there was this this gentleman who, um, was abducted by aliens.
04:01That's from the Howard Stern show who we had on Fantasy Factory who was, like, basically explaining to me that you are, in fact, you are you are alien, and you are this extraordinary being.
04:13If you understood who you really were, it would blow even your mind. And I'll it was always funny to me. You know, I you know, I'm the guy who once purchased a a hyperdimensional resonator, which is a time machine off a guy in Nebraska.
04:27And because I thought it was funny, I thought this this guy's really selling time machines, and I thought it was amazing. So I bought one. It was 365.
04:35And and then years later, I tried to bring him on one of my television shows to talk about it, and he's like, I ain't talking to you. I know what you are.
04:45And I'm like, what? He's like, you're an alien. And I'm like, what?
04:49So it has been validated on a handful of different occasions where random people have expressed to me that I may in fact have some alien blood.
05:00And and for you, even if we just put it aside as as as symbolic Mhmm.
05:07There's something about that that's still powerful for you. I can tell that it is, that you're just going forget whether you call it alien or not. Just the idea that there's something in us, something in you that that's above and beyond what would normally be expected.
05:24It's like somehow it names for you or gives you permission to live differently, to to live in a in in a really differently to what you see other people doing.
05:34Am I reading that right?
05:36Yeah. Look. I I'm I'm who I am is unexplainable in in sort of the normal way that life works.
05:46Right? The evolution, the growth, the expansion, the development of of a way of living in a mind that I wouldn't even have thought possible, you know, even five, six years ago.
05:57You know? And so, you know, when you get to a state where you begin to evolve and grow beyond your wildest dreams, right, you then you and and you begin to have the ability to control reality because you get better and better at, uh, deciding what you wanna do and achieving it no matter what that is.
06:18You you begin to feel like you are controlling the universe in at least in the sense of your own universe.
06:27And then you can't help but be filled with gratitude and and awe that all the stuff that you set out and had a vision for actually was realized and your way of life has been realized, you know, you you certainly take pride in feeling like you are living like a one of one existence.
06:45You know? I I am a strong believer in a simple principle which is that everything is created twice.
06:52Once, you know, emotionally, you know, mentally, even maybe spiritually, and then a second time physically.
07:01And I think what you just described is the extraordinary ability that that idea gives you.
07:12Did you say, my goodness. At one time, it was just a list. One time, it was just an idea.
07:17And then I've seen this unbelievable thing actually happen and be manifest and be created. And and it changes everything because then it says, not only is that something to be grateful for, but it's also like, well, what else could be created?
07:33If if the creative process is something that is is available to me, well, what do I want to create?
07:41That's what I sense when I hear you talking about it.
07:44Yeah. And look. And it it goes a little bit deeper.
07:47Right? Because it's not a goal. It is a life.
07:52Right? And when I began to see my life as all these sort of interconnected systems, and then I designed those systems.
07:59And each of those systems had goals and ambitions. And then as I got better and better and started drawing closer and closer to those goals associated with these different parts of my life, then the energy started to build.
08:12The harmony started to build. The law of attraction kicks in. All this opportunity begins to fulfill the vision.
08:20And then what happens when you get closer and closer? You can see further and further because you begin to see more clear. You begin to to have the bigger ideas that you can see of what's possible that you couldn't see before.
08:34Then you dower basically in this perpetual state of evolution and growth that basically feeds your energy and passion to basically, uh, push to see what's possible.
08:46Right? And for me, it transitioned from self preservation to generational preservation to where it's like, wow. How can I affect the next five hundred years of the Dyrdek family instead of just affecting my children and or affecting my way of life in this lifetime?
09:03That that's the the other side of when you find that harmony and life's potential reveals itself to you by having deep clarity on what you want to achieve and then growing towards achieving it. And that's what I've done. You know?
09:18Well, you have, and it and it's really fascinating to me to hear you describe, like, all the systems
09:25and the layers that you've put together that you know, it's not just, as you say, a goal, take action, next goal. It's build systems so that so that these goals start to happen whether you're, you know, forcing or pushing it today or not.
09:43I I want to get to a document that you have created. I have never seen anything like this.
09:50You call it the rhythm of ex the the rhythm of existence. You call this the rhythm of existence. And it's a document, uh, something like 20 pages long.
10:05I've read lots of documents. I have even guided people in creating documents, planning tools of one kind or another for people's lives.
10:14But this is different, a rhythm of existence. Can you just, first of all, describe, you know, what it is from your point of view?
10:22Yeah. And I I think simply put, it's like the operating system for my life.
10:27Right? And and and, essentially, it it it has every aspect of how my life operates and then all the documents associated with it. And and it's built to basically drive all aspects of my life to automation.
10:42Right? And because at the end of the day, you've got to get things to automation before you can begin to optimize them.
10:49Because optimization is where the extraordinary happens.
10:53You know? Now I've just applied that to all aspects of my life. And first, it starts with designing time.
10:59Right? Then then I've gamified my mental health.
11:02I've gamified my physical health. Right?
11:05I've systematized, like, my financial systems and structure, how I operate, my daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly schedules, like, I integrate my family, my nannies, my diet, all of these things into this this this moving system that can be operated by chief of staff and assistants and then all my COO, president, and all the people that work for me.
11:33Because I decided I would design a fully integrated life that included both my business and my family and my well-being, and that document basically represents how that system operates together.
11:48Yeah. And and, again, this is the difference between setting goals only, which is what I think a lot of people do.
11:55It's if they're going to try to live by design, that's what they think it means, versus build systems and how those systems interplay and automating those systems so that you can not just live life, but stand apart and look at your life and look at the machine and look at the the ecosystem of your life and keep designing and tweaking it.
12:20Just like you said, you know, optimization happens after automation automation.
12:27Optimization happens after automation. Okay. But I wanna go through a few pieces of this document.
12:32Okay. First of all, uh, what does it have in it? The overview.
12:37Has your purpose statement. It has your four subrhythms, work, life, health, and sleep.
12:45You have a section for definitions, principles, framework rules, and success criteria. That's just the overview of the document.
12:54Let's let's just start with the top. I mean, what do you include when you think about purpose?
13:01Uh, you know, look. It's you know, much to you, it's about living a high energy, effortless existence.
13:09Right? Because at at the end of the day, like, you you have a limited amount of capacity, and that capacity is drained by decision making, stress, uh, bad sleep, not eating right.
13:23Like, you know, in in we think that all these things kinda live separately and, like, oh, we're gonna try to take care of ourselves. Oh, we're gonna try to be less stressed and be more grateful. But in fact, you know, if you really wanna live like that on a consistent basis, all of these moving parts that are in this document make up sort of the system that allows you to be able to operate at a really high level that gives you the clarity to manage your time, manage your mind share, manage your capacity, manage your energy and your health, and and be and look.
13:58Even the qualitative side of it is really built to give you insight to yourself to make sure that you're optimizing even the system properly because the more you optimize it, the more energy you get back.
14:12And, you know, there was a book written in 1910 called the science of getting rich. And old Wallace d Wattles, you know, talks about, like, evolution happens with a free mind, meaning when you have mind share.
14:26And you just don't realize how much steals from your mind share and and actually pulls from your capacity. And for me, like, this document was built in 2015.
14:40It took me five years be before I could fully operate it, and the last year and a half has been really optimizing it. Right? Because it's, like, a really complex thing that you have to grow into and get better and better at operating it over time.
14:57Simply put, you don't just decide to be balanced one day. You being balanced is difficult.
15:04There are so many aspects of balance that you need to do self discovery and realize what rhythm you can live in in order to have balance. It's not as simple as spending more time with my wife and not working as much.
15:18Right? Like, you have got to put, uh, some serious work into the discovery. And then guess what?
15:24Then you've designed it. Now you gotta start on your journey because becoming really good at being balanced is just like going to the gym or trying to build any other skill. You've got to grow it over time and get better at it in order to for it to actually be extraordinarily effective for you.
15:43There's so much to to to build on here, but one of the things is I don't love the word balance. I've never felt especially attracted to it, which might be surprising given
15:53the people associate my work as being, well, sort of work life balance. But I never even understand what that term means. It's it's it's it's an odd phrase to me where you're trying to I mean, generally, people are spending too much time with work, not enough time with their life.
16:07So it's not really about balance. It's about making sure that work doesn't consume them. But even besides that, it's this idea of a sort of a seesaw where it's like, well, one goes up, one goes down.
16:19Wants that? I don't know. It doesn't inspire the imagination.
16:21You're right. Does it And because you wanna know what it is? Yeah.
16:24Go on. Harmony.
16:26You're searching for harmony. And all aspects of your life system, like your health, your mental health, your financial health, like your quality of work and the relationships at work, the quality of your relationships and your family, your purpose, ambition, all these things create the system.
16:45And when the system is out of balance, like, even if you're, like, you have good time management, you're all wonky and out of balance. It's when there's harmony and there's rhythm, that's that's when you can really find,
16:58quote, unquote, balance because you found real harmony. You know? Well, there's a there's an engineering term, and the term is dynamic equilibrium.
17:07Mhmm. And I love that term. So even as I don't love the term balance especially, I love dynamic equilibrium, and that's what I think you are going for in this document.
17:19Right? This is now six years of development, this document.
17:24Right? It's an ongoing evolution, but it's about trying to get all the pieces to work together in a way that everything works and that it's optimizing, you know, each piece of the puzzle.
17:38And so, anyway, that's what I think of when I when I look at this document, a dynamic equilibrium.
17:43Love that. Love that. And think about it.
17:45It changes every year. I continue to evolve. I have kids now.
17:49I have you know, it's like like and and I I even, you know, really look to my wife and how she's feeling and how we're evolving. Do I need to put another body in?
17:58Do I need to automate something? Like, you just constantly keep adding to it because you're driving back down to your center, which is minimizing how much effort you need to output to live a fulfilling, happy, uh, harmonious life.
18:15Right? Like and that's constantly evolving and requires you to to be constantly adaptive. You know?
18:22Well, this is why I love the term rhythm. I mean, as I say, I've seen lots of documents, more than the average person, let's say, of gold documents and so on.
18:32But but this phrase rhythm of existence, a rhythm, and then even within it, you have, you know, uh, the rhythm of existence has four subrhythms. Work is part of the rhythm. Life, health, sleep.
18:46Uh, how how are you doing, like, on a scale of one to 10 in health?
18:52How are you doing on that right now?
18:54Well, look. You you you know, my my health is a little bit more complicated, right, because I'm I've been on this journey of reengineering my entire biomechanics to where I have flawless neuromuscular and skeletal alignment.
19:12Too deep to get into here today. But what I what I do want to tell you is I've had twelve bad days in 2021.
19:23And the most fascinating aspect of using qualitative data, uh, as it relates to zero to 10, how do you feel right now about your health?
19:34Well, I've tracked zero to 10 how I feel about my life, my work, and my health every day, uh, for the last six years.
19:43Right? And in 2020, it was the first year that I finally collected an entire year of data.
19:51And at the end of that year, I averaged and if you total them up between the zero to 10 between life, work, and health, there's a total score of 30. I averaged an 18.2 for the year.
20:04And then every day I tracked, did I get up at five? Did I brain train? Did I get in the gym?
20:10Did I meditate? Did I eat clean? Did I not drink?
20:14And for the year, my my percentage that I did that was 56%. And wow. How fascinating.
20:22At the end of twenty twenty, I had an entire year of data of both qualitative, how I felt about life, work, and health, and then quantitative, what did I actually physically do for my health.
20:35And it was so obvious in the data that, like, man, look at this. When you were really committed to your health side, look at the qualitative numbers.
20:44Right? And so I made the commitment in 2021 that I'm going to average above 20, and and I was gonna do that by averaging above 80% in my call on my quantitative stuff.
21:00I was going to get up at five, brain train, meditate, get in the gym, eat clean, and not drink 80 of the year. I ended up doing it 92% of the entire year, many of the months at 400%.
21:17My average for the year is 21.4. And so when I look back at how much I accomplished this year, how balanced I was, but ultimately, I have proof in numbers of the quality of my life was the highest it's ever been.
21:37And so when I I I had a bad day where I scored a 16 two weeks ago, and I thought to myself, man, when is the last time I scored a 16? And I went back and through the entire year, had two 16s, and I had 10 17s for the whole year.
21:55And I and I'm like, wow. I only had 12 bad days in this entire year. And then when I went back to my twenty twenty data, I averaged the 16 in October.
22:06I had months that I averaged 17. I had months where I averaged what today would be considered a bad day in an entire year.
22:16This is extraordinary and really, really over the top, but it is what happens when you commit and get really good at using qualitative data and creating gamifying your health with quantitative metrics and then getting motivated now by seeing them work together and the output being the quality of your life is higher and better than it's ever been, not just on how you say it feels, but in the data and truly what you've been able to do over an entire year's period.
22:53And for me, how I know I will be at the sustained level of happiness forever because I know I still have even further to go from from what's possible from an optimization standpoint. You know?
23:06Okay. So I'm looking right now at your time data, you know, tool that you'd sent over to me.
23:12So, I mean, I can see literally day by day every breakdown, all of these points that you are referencing, color coordinated. You know, this is this is a level of precision.
23:23Normally, I ask somebody, how are you doing in health zero to 10? They offer one number. Right?
23:30Nobody offers well, over the last six years, you know, I've averaged 18.2, and then this year, I've been at 21.3, and 12 bad days in one year.
23:41I mean, like, nobody's doing that. Right? And and it might seem overwhelming to people, but but the whole point of the of this system is to reduce the the the stress and the pressure and the burden.
23:55You just got a better machine that's running rather than, oh, I'm just trying harder than anybody else alive. It's the system that you've been building that really works. My question to you is what what are you using to gather this data?
24:12I mean, are you using particular tools or apps or, uh, you know, what are you using?
24:19But but let me let me say to another point because every time I describe it and and show people that I do it, it, like, makes them tired because it's just like, how could anybody do when do you have the time to do all this? But but think about it, and you know this.
24:34Like, it's now second nature to me and intuitive. I don't even, like I can't even imagine. I got up at four today, brain trained, and meditated before 05:00 because I had a bunch of other things I wanted to do, and my nanny wasn't here today.
24:49And it's like, normally a a year and a half ago, I've been like, I'm gonna skip brain training and meditating today. It eventually becomes habitual, and habits eventually become intuitive.
24:59They just become a way of of who you are. And so for me, it's it's, um, since I developed it on my own and it it doesn't really exist, I had somebody write me the script for my Google Calendar.
25:13So I essentially, every day, get up, put in how much I slept, um, then I rate my sleep zero to 10. I then rate how motivated I am that day.
25:22Right? Because I wanna track how motivated I am. And then I go back to the previous day and go through the core four.
25:29Did I did I meditate? Did I get up at five? Did I eat clean?
25:34Did I get in the gym? Right? Then I give my score for how I feel about my life, work, and health.
25:38And, of course Just into your calendar? You just put it into your calendar?
25:43Into my calendar. Right? And then then, um, my I asked my wife every day how she feels about our relationship, zero to 10.
25:51Right? Because even that now, the beauty of qualitative data between you and your wife is you now you always have to have the conversation about, like, in my case, because I'm more of a robot, her feelings.
26:06Right? So I'm always, like, aware of her state, which allows me to be a better husband and be more aware of her energy rather than than constantly, um, you know, this high energy, everything's amazing life can can tax somebody who's feeling empty.
26:23You know what I mean? So, uh, all of that data goes straight into, um, my Google Calendar, then it all gets pulled into a Google spreadsheet.
26:34So I get to look at it every month, every day. You know? It's like, I'm, like, motivated by the gamification of my discipline.
26:41You know? And so it's like, it it it stops me from, uh, wanting a pizza.
26:49It stops me from like, I'm just tired. I need a glass of wine. Like, it it because I'm I'm I've gamified it, and and there's just these moments.
26:59These moments of weakness are the hardest to break, especially depending on where you're at from a stress level. And and and I've found as I've cleared out so much in my life and gotten to this highly optimized state that I still carry these certain triggers that have been with me my whole life.
27:16And one is when I feel stuck. When I feel stuck, I just wanna drink and eat pizza. You know?
27:22And it's and but now it's so hyper aware. When I get stuck and then have that feeling, it's like, oh, look at that trigger. Look at that trigger.
27:29You know? It it's like you begin to be able to seal them.
27:33And this system gives you a reason not to. You know, a lot of us don't have a reason not to do these things. When the trigger happens, you go, okay.
27:41Well, you just go along with it. This game, the gamification of your life around what's essential to you is helping you to go in that moment, okay.
27:53Now I have a reason not to. I want to put in my score. I want to be able to say today was great according to my own criteria.
27:59Go ahead. Right. And and again, you it's it's not even my it's like you know
28:06what happens if you have two glasses of wine and a pizza. You know that it brings it slows your brain function down. It brings your motivation down, which gives, like, a a lapse of a few days.
28:18And and I swear to you, I can feel like if my energy shifts because I decided to go out on a on a Saturday night and booze it up and then get up in the morning and and, you know, eat, you know, a bagel.
28:34And I know that sounds light, but it would still affect me. It's like I get to see the the ripple effect into the entire week. Right?
28:41And so it's like when you become so sensitive to basically the the ramifications ramifications of your decisions, it also becomes easier to not do them.
28:52Right? And and that's the you you get there after you've optimized the system.
28:59I had to design it first, then I had to learn how to do it, get fully committed, then then I had to, like, get better at it. And then I began to optimize it so I could get more and more efficient, more and more consistent, then it finally basically has this acceleration. You know, it equated to almost like blasting through, uh, you know, the atmosphere where you need a certain amount of acceleration in order to, like, get through the atmosphere.
29:25It's that sort of other side of what it takes. Like, once you get beyond that, now it becomes effortless and intuitive by your natural ability where before you were fighting to be consistent and fight these triggers.
29:41Now it's almost the opposite where there's so few and far between, and then it's like, okay. Do you really want a pizza?
29:48No. Right? But sometimes you do it just for enjoyment, and then you have three responsible slices in the early afternoon knowing that you're going to, like, intermittent fast in the evening and the pizza doesn't affect you whatsoever.
30:00Yeah.
30:01Yeah. You're you are this idea of not just living life, but learning from living. You're just taking that to a really, you know, high level where you're constantly paying attention, adjusting, and then not just generally not just not just putting the pressure on your mental exertion to remember what you're observing.
30:25You've just built a system to be able to pour that data into it so that you can learn fast from the experiences that you're having.
30:34Right. And you almost get really good at optimization.
30:39So you're constantly nuancing. And when you feel stuck, when you feel the rhythm get tight, you know, because what what happened to me this year was I didn't account for that, okay, I'm was finally doing press and interviews again.
30:54I launched six companies this year. I shot 250 episodes of television this year.
31:00I launched my foundation this year. I've shot 35 episodes of my podcast this year. I'm all of the I launched a consumer feedback group called the machinist that are consumer collaborators inside my venture studio.
31:13Like, I hired, you know, seven or eight new people. You're talking about, like, this excessive amount of work.
31:21Now keep in mind, I did all of that with only 30% of my time because I would never compromise my balance. Right?
31:30I would never compromise the time with my wife, the time with my family. And what I ran into now was that capacity issue where I I would not compromise my balance, so I had to start making mega trade offs. Right?
31:46Like and the trade because it was not but the trade off was not going to be at the expense of my balance. It was going to be at the expense of what I could do in the allotted time that I worked. And that forced me to really recognize capacity and then drive everything into hiring a bunch of new bodies and and and fast track everything from automation to optimization to pull back from that capacity in order to allow myself to get back in a more comfortable rhythm.
32:18Because even though I was fully balanced in in my health and and my family and my work and all these these sort of essential balances that we think of, I still had pressure on that 30% because I had packed it so tight that I I didn't take on anything else and drove everything to automation, released that pressure, restructured my schedule with my executive team, restructured the org chart of my business to a flat org chart, then they did daily or every Monday half hour meetings all day with every executive to keep everything flowing and organized.
32:53And going into 2020, I've just cleared Tuesdays for only execution. That way, I have fully organized Mondays, and then I have fully cleared Tuesday to allow me to get caught up, breathe, free think, and only now set meetings inside the remaining three days of the week.
33:14Only now inside the 30% that I allot for work.
33:20And It's in
33:21and there's it's so it's very impressive. It's very interesting. I've taken a day now, Wednesdays, where I I don't schedule any appointments and, uh, except with rare exceptions.
33:32And I'm amazed at the value of that day to me, to be able to just to do things, to actually do deep thinking, uh, and to not be so reactive even with great things. You can be reactive even with great things.
33:45You used the term mega trade offs. What's a what's a mega trade off you've made this year?
33:50Yeah. You you know, look. I'm I'm I've tried not to get to the point of, um, the mega trade off.
34:00Right? Because because since I'm I'm I never traded off for my family time or my health time.
34:08I stayed more committed to it than ever. You know what I mean? And Mhmm.
34:11Because in the past, what would I do? What's the first trade off you make? It's always health.
34:18Always health. It's always meditation. It's always, uh, the gym.
34:23And then what's the first thing what's the easiest thing to go when you're exhausted all day? Diet. Right?
34:28Like, you just wanna sit and veg and be out of it. Right? And and so to me, by by by staying so getting so good at leaving balance, I was jammed in that capacity.
34:39Now what are my trade offs? My trade offs are I'm going to push the book I wanna do out a year.
34:45I'm going to I'm not going to shoot it. I was, uh, offered a a a a business television show that I stopped. My trade off was no longer inside my life, but it's inside my allotted time of the business that the time that I would be willing to do for business.
35:03And the beauty of it is you have so much you know, I have so much clarity in all aspects of my life as it relates to the things that would ever put pressure on you, fine especially my financial design. Right? Because there's at at a certain point, like, finances will always put pressure on you unless you design a way where they don't.
35:22And and I did that by, like, creating a plan in 2015 that I was going to push all of my net earnings into cash distributing non correlated real estate.
35:38So I get to live a life I wanna I wanna time out for a second because I want to get separately to the business systems. Let's just wrap up on the rhythm of existence and then move to that.
35:48Does that work? Sure. Sure.
35:49Um, okay. So just other aspects really quickly as part of your rhythm of existence, uh, you go through the principles that you want to, uh, you want to run your rhythm of existence by.
36:02You want them to be predictable, adaptable, balanced, and relentless. You go through framework rules.
36:09Uh, each of these things, intention, measurement, triaging, time allocation, energy allocation, three sixty review, cadence.
36:18I mean, each of these have definitions and specificity, success criteria. Uh, you know, that's all part one.
36:26Part two is the rhythm of existence actors and roles. What your role is, what your chief of staff role is, what your executive assistant does, what your personal assistant does, uh, what your DM team does.
36:42And and underneath there so that's part two. Part three, I think it's part three, is tools and resource management.
36:50Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Doc, Calendar, Gmail, Dropbox, you know, goes through various living documents, the Hot Sheet, the living doc.
37:01Uh, I mean, I I could go on. You go through your relationship with Brie, know, and and, well, my goodness, I thought I was further through the document than I am.
37:11I'm I'm, like, literally halfway through the document. I thought I was managing this better. Uh, you you go through a weekly activity management, constants within that weekly event.
37:25I'm gonna mention some of the weekly haircut to maintain a low maintenance and clean appearance. Like, that's the level of specificity it goes to.
37:33Do you have someone just come to you? Is this an obvious question? How do you make the weekly haircut effortless?
37:39Yeah. So someone comes to my house every Friday at 09:30. You know?
37:43Every Friday at 09:30. So every single week, you get your haircut.
37:47Yeah. Because to me, think about it. It's like it's like, okay.
37:50Now it's it's like like, you just it's one thing now you never have to think about. You know what I mean? It's like, it doesn't matter if you're going out.
37:56You know? And because it's like, what do you do otherwise? Like, oh, it's been a while.
37:59Now you're now you're worried about it. Now it's taking mind share. Then you gotta schedule it.
38:03There's all these things. It's like it's a perfect example of as many of those things that you can do release you from mindshare and give you more freedom.
38:11You know?
38:12A 100%. You've you've got a weekly wife breakfast.
38:17A weekly weekday breakfast is scheduled every Thursday morning that you're gonna be with Brie. A weekly date night, dinner date night and movie, you know, set same time every week, uh, weekly date night.
38:31So, yeah, that's two date nights a week. That's what you're describing there, isn't No. I do I do Friday I do Thursday movie night, Wednesday breakfast day date.
38:39I do Sunday sushi night. I do Tuesday night talk night.
38:45I do Thursday. We meet with all of our assistants, and we have a family living document hot sheet that we go through every aspect of the family. I then we I then we walk through my calendar for the month to make sure we're all on the same page.
38:59Every single morning, I sent her an email at six in the morning of everything that I'm doing that day and what it means to me along with a love quote so she never, um, has visibility on everything that I'm doing.
39:14Now all of this, it just it it started with, like, hey. Let's have two date nights a week. Then it then it's like, okay.
39:21That's not enough. And all of this optimization with this relationship, all of this, when she's down, I'll still clear a day and take her to the movies in the afternoon.
39:31Right? Like, I still this is I'm still incredibly adaptive inside this rhythm that becomes as intuitive and normal to the whole system, but I don't I'm not rigid with it.
39:43Right? Like, I will still allow flexibility depending on how I'm feeling or how how my wife's feeling.
39:50Because at the end of the day, it's still about making sure and protecting the energy
39:55of the house and the family above everything. You know? So there's two parts when I listen to all of this.
40:01I I see on the one side, I could imagine wives everywhere listening to this going, well, I'd quite like if my husband had time for breakfast with me once a week scheduled, two date nights, sushi night, you know, talk night, and so on.
40:16That that part of them would welcome this. Uh, there's another side that I could see many people listening to this going back to your comment about it, uh, seeming exhausting, feeling like, is is she really the center of it, or is this machine, you know, owning it?
40:34How is your relationship with Brie right now?
40:37Yeah. I mean, look. I have an extraordinary relationship with my wife.
40:42You know? And and I like to say, like, she's never even, like, really made me mad. Like, this entire optimization is based off of, like, managing her emotions and feelings and making sure that she's always feeling in in in the best place and feeling the best about about her life and our life together.
41:01And and look. It's it's it's it's been created based off of her needs. And then it'd be like, she I we feel like we don't even, talk.
41:08Okay. Let's you wanna make Tuesdays? We we don't watch any TV and always make, uh, talk at night.
41:14Like, okay. Perfect. It's like, like, we only go out at night.
41:17Alright. Let's do let's do a breakfast day day. What do wanna do with that?
41:20Then it's like, I feel discon alright. Let's get the the family together and do with all the assistance and do a family meeting every week. Right?
41:27It's like you're this is over, you know, going in seven years of marriage where I just keep optimized. You gotta think another thing that that I refer to it as , but I also we also have a therapist come to the house every other week.
41:42So it's like now we have a neutral party. Even though we have this extraordinary relationship that I literally I put on as the most precious thing in my life because I know how rare this type of love is, and I'm I'm going to defend its purity at all costs.
41:58Right? I put it above everything. And but we still bring in a neutral party so that, like, you can have these conversations that, like, you you there's just some conversations that even though you're so close and have such a great relationship that you just can't have without some sort of support system between you that has allowed which in turn continues to keep the energy of your home and your relationship, um, constantly being, like, like, taken care of.
42:30Right? And then asking her to to get the score each day, she gives me ones and zeros all the time.
42:37Like, if I like and it's like and it'll be, like you know, it'll be something, like, so nuanced, but I don't. I never question why she feels the way she feels.
42:49And and that's what I think is probably the greatest growth gift that I was able to give her at this age and this level of optimization that don't don't bother arguing with her about how she feels.
43:02Just help understand why she feels that way and try to not make her feel that way again. And if you just think about that fundamentally, that's what's allowed our relationship to grow so strong and and stroke so good over the years we've been married.
43:21They get now she's giving you Brie's giving you a score of one or two on a 10 scale. On a what scale?
43:28Yeah. On a 10 scale. I look.
43:30She gave me a zero. She gave me a zero, and I had we had to rewrite the sprint and give you a better.
43:38You know, I wanna say that we got I got the zero because I'm like, she had been traveling and came back the next day, and I was in my normal day rhythm. And then I stopped and watched football instead of working on a Sunday.
43:56And and to her, I chose she had been gone for two days, and rather than spend time with her and her, she felt like I chose football over her.
44:08Mhmm. So I can be like, what? You were going two days.
44:11Like, you know, it's like, I don't you know, like, I there's no reason to argue it. I just I'm in it's and so what did I do to optimize it? I told my assistant, okay.
44:21From every now on when she's out of town, this is now the third time where when she's gotten back, she's felt like all of us didn't miss her. And so I'm like, from now on, when she's out of town, put it let's go through it on the calendar and make sure that, like, we I take her to lunch that day and make sure that we do a family activity so that we don't otherwise, if we try to just live our normal lives when she comes back, it's then she's going to feel like we didn't even miss her.
44:49And, again, nuance. Feel it.
44:54Make the change. Add it to the system. Like, then in that week with that week with my assistant, we go through it and lay out on what I'm gonna do on Sunday when she comes back.
45:02And people could say that's crazy, but that's what I wanna continue to do to have this highly, uh, amazing, beautiful relationship
45:12with my wife. You know what mean? If if if I had Brie on and by the way, I have her on speed dial right now, so she's about to step into this.
45:20What would she say about all of this? Would she say like, what's her honest view? Does she say, man, I love that system, or does she say, man, I wish I could throw that system out sometimes?
45:31What what would she say of all of this?
45:33No. I I I think, you know, uh, she's transitioning this year to starting to collect her own data. She won't show it to me, but how she feels about her life, work and health, zero to 10, to begin to create that qualitative awareness.
45:47But here's what she would tell you. I know how much he absolutely loves and puts his family first and how committed he is to our relationship and our love and our lives.
46:00That's what she would tell you. Right? Because at the end of the day, the system's irrelevant.
46:04Right? Because the system falls away and is in the background. It seems like the the system's driving everything, but it's not because the system was designed.
46:13It was automated. It was optimized, and now it's intuitive. It's just the rhythm and the flow of life.
46:19So it doesn't feel like it's even in her world. You know? Well well and something I wanna say about that is that everybody
46:26has a complex system right now, and the results they're getting people listening to this, the results that you're getting in your relationship with your spouse, with your children, you know, with your health, with your sleep, with your life.
46:42I mean, you have a system already, and it's highly complex, and it's highly inter interdependent and interrelated.
46:50And so it's not like building a system like Rob has created suddenly is more burdensome. It's just more by design.
46:59It's more deliberate instead of this complex system being created by default.
47:06And so in a sense, I can see how both systems really become quite invisible over time.
47:13It's just whether that system is built in your favor around the things that matter most, around the relationships that matter most, or whether they're built in some other form, uh, without such purpose.
47:28Am I getting that right? Tell me where I'm wrong.
47:30Hallelujah. It is the cornerstone of my entire philosophy that is the machine mindset.
47:37Right? It is this idea that you are a living system whether you like it or not. You just are have an entire system that is disorder by design.
47:47You basically have grown and evolved into because what do we drive? We drive everything to the least amount of effort as possible.
47:55So if you're driving if you design it poorly and then drive it to an effortless state where it's out if you become extraordinary at eating chips every night and watching Netflix, guess what?
48:08The the ramification of the lack of disorder in the in in your health and your entire happiness in your system, you've created it. And and the further along you get, the harder it is for you to redesign your systems to actually find harmony and have balance and create the output of your ideal life.
48:26And then most people have to, like, try as hard as they can to try to get it to work, and then they give up because it takes too much effort because there's so much drag on the systems. And I really believe you cannot change one part of your life without changing all of it.
48:44And and it's just the reality that people think they can just go to the gym and be healthier. Oh, I'm gonna spend more time with my wife, and then my relationship's going to be good. It is like, if you do not have the harmony in all of your life systems, then master your life systems, then grow your life systems and optimize them to have the output of what?
49:07The highest quality of life possible. Because the the output of your system is essentially the quality of your life. And and some people just build a system that is so out of balance and and so lax that has so much just, like, wobbly dysfunction in it that they they literally no longer believe it is possible to to find true happiness or a high quality of life.
49:34So they just spend a lifetime in between being in a constant state of drudge, you know.
49:43Uh, now
49:45I wanna say hallelujah to you because because that's it. Right? Essentialism is an ecosystem or nothing.
49:52You know, it's it's all about all the interrelated pieces and and how to it's a living organism. And so how to keep tending to it.
50:02It's more like it's more like a garden than than a single goal. Okay.
50:08Go get that. There's so many ways in which you could you could go get a single goal and actually violate all the things that really matter to you, uh, because they all get dropped at the same time. But go.
50:20What is everybody has the exact
50:23same goal. It is to live a high quality, effortless, happy, harmonious existence.
50:30We all seek the same thing, true happiness. But the problem is it seems so elusive and complex, and we dabble in it and and never seek to design what would actually achieve that for us, then that's what I did.
50:48In 2015, I defined what my ideal life would be, And then I designed all the parts of it, and then I grew into it.
50:58And guess what? I live it. And it took me five years to get there.
51:02And when I got here, it's like, wow.
51:07You are overwhelmed with gratitude. You are overwhelmed with ambition and motivation because guess what?
51:14I can now see so much further than I ever thought possible once I reached my ideal life. And and my ideal life keeps evolving. And because here's the thing too, you don't you don't go straight to a goal.
51:27You expand into a goal. And here's the other aspect of an of of a goal.
51:34You you can put a couple milestones to your big achievement, but it reveals itself about of a third of a way through. A third of a way through when you're really hoping to achieve something, you finally see everything you actually have to do to achieve it.
51:50And at that point, most people either quit or they buck they get extra motivated because now there's the clarity that's needed to achieve it. But you expand into life, and life reveals itself.
52:03But I'm telling you as living proof, when you design all those systems and and around growing into the ideal version of yourself and life and then you do it, boy, you are you are truly living an alien like existence.
52:20You know what I mean? You that's just the
52:23perfect way to bring that about. One of the let me just sort of end this episode on this point.
52:30When I think of people watching, you know, ridiculousness and you say that.
52:37You say it perfect.
52:38Ridiculousness.
52:39You said it. Oh, yeah. But I love the way you say it.
52:42The the when I think about people watching that and and and this is obviously not a knock on the show because the show is what it's supposed to be, entertaining, funny. We people need that escape, that laugh when life gets burdened.
52:55But when people see one there, I just don't see anybody connecting the dots back to the conversation we've just had.
53:04You know, people oh, hey. The, uh, you know, a skater, uh, you know, skater boy who built this life and so on.
53:13But but the level of precision, the level of thinking, the systems that have been developed, I mean, this is this is this, let's say, is the real Rob Deereck.
53:28Yep. Any final thoughts for us? Yeah.
53:30I mean, look. You you know, the the beauty of life is you get to continually evolve and make it whatever you desire.
53:39Right? And and I, in the process of choosing to do that, I've actually began to put together a philosophy of how to create any life that you desire that I believe, you know, twenty years from now will be my great legacy, and people won't even think about the fact that I shot 250 episodes of television this year, uh, and have the number one cable television show by consumed minutes with 55,000,000,000 minutes consumed this year, albeit with 4% of my time, uh, in an entire year because I tracked it, they would never connect it.
54:22But it's the beauty of life is that I continue to evolve and have no paradigms on what is possible for me, which in turn will allow me to be a great, um, sort of inspirational person to look at of truly anything is possible.
54:44If this kid quit high school at 16 in Ohio and became a professional skateboarder, then went on to, uh, be this, uh, television star and then this super successful venture capitalist and entrepreneur, and really at the end of the day, his greatest achievement is the pure happiness in heaven on earth that he created with his life, anything is possible.
55:07You know?
55:09That is beautiful. That's what's essential.
55:12Thank you so much for being on the show, Rob.
55:15Great. Love being here.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Rob Dyrdek opens this episode in mid-sentence, no music, no graphics, no preamble, delivering the thesis of his entire philosophy before the podcast logo even renders. The premise: once you build the right system and get sensitive enough to your own data, self-discipline stops being a fight. It becomes effortless.
How they asked for the click.
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