I want you to imagine that you’re walking along a golden and sandy beach, the sun is shining on the back of your neck.

100m from the beach, there’s a village with plenty of open and solid land.

But why are you walking along the beach in this village?

You’re trying to decide where to build your dream house.

It's everything you could dream of. High ceilings, open-plan marble kitchen, swimming pool - it’s perfect.

Where would you choose to build?

Would you choose the sandy beach with the tide coming in every evening and a poor foundation?

Or would you choose to build in the village, safe, secure, and with room for solid foundations?

The answer is obvious - you would build in the village, right?

You’ve got solid, open land to build on. You can build strong and deep foundations that will last a lifetime.

But if you build on the beach, everything’s going to sooner or later collapse.

You’ve got nothing solid or stable underneath, no foundations.

If you’re building anything you need foundations. Strong foundations that you can rely on, that aren’t going to collapse in a week or a month, or even a year.

That includes building the foundations of peak productivity and performance.

If you don’t build them, everything collapses - and that’s when you burn out.

Burnout is nothing but an inability to manage your mental and physical states. And to manage your mental and physical states you need solid foundations.

Without them, it’s only a matter of time before everything falls apart. It could be a week, it could be 6 months, but it will happen and it will ruin your chances of achieving Self-Mastery.

The Optimisation Paradox

What most people do is skip straight to the top, they try to optimise everything.

And sure, optimisation is great. But if you don’t have the fundamentals or foundations built, what are you optimising?

So when people ask me “Ross, what’s wrong with tips and tricks”

My answer is always “Nothing. But tips and tricks are for optimising, and you can’t optimise nothing. You need foundations”

This creates what I call ‘Optimisation Paradox’ where you get caught in a cycle of tips and tricks trying to optimise. Yet, somethings not quite right.

And you can feel it, you just don’t know what it is. So you decide to optimise more with some more tips & tricks and it creates a never ending cycle.

It also creates a habit. 

It gives you the impression that you can skip the fundamentals in everything and jump straight to the top. And it means you can never achieve anything, whether it’s business success or Self-Mastery.

The Innate Desire For The Path Of Least Resistance

The problem is that it’s wired inside you to conserve energy and take the easy route, the path of least resistance

And that equates to you skipping the foundations, because the foundations are hard to build, they take time.

Optimisation doesn’t. 

You can *try* to optimise from the get go and implement something RIGHT NOW.

But, like you now know, without putting the time and effort in to building the foundations, optimising is useless.  Everything will come crumbling down around you and you’ll lose any sign of progress you’ve made.

Luckily, the foundations require front loaded time.

You put in the work now and then it’s just a matter of maintenance.

You delay gratification to build something that will support you for the rest of your life - and then let you optimise.

But it requires you to do what you don’t want to do - take the path of most resistance.

Time. Effort. Energy. Sacrifice.

It’s all required to build these foundations.

And it’s hard, but it’s worth it.

Of course, if you’ve been through my Life Tapping and Conscious Alignment process (which I highly recommend you go through if you struggle to align your actions with your dream life and goals), this whole entire process of building foundations, for anything, is much easier.

You understand the importance of these foundations and how they play in to your goals and dream life.

Look, if you want short term success - you don’t need foundations.

You can optimise your bad habits and behaviours (due to your lack of foundations) and *potentially* get short term success before everything comes crumbling down.

But if you want long term success, progress, productivity and mastery - you need your foundations to be strong.

Everything else is built upon them.

Without them, your success, progress, productivity and mastery will collapse.

Building The Foundations

Now, when it comes to peak productivity and performance, there are a few essential foundations that you need.

Sleep

Sleep is the most important behavioural foundation you can build. 

Without sleep, you can’t control your mental and physical states adequately and you will collapse, you will burn out.

You cannot slack on sleep, you need 7-9 hours of high quality sleep each night.

To build your foundation of high quality sleep:

• Avoid caffeine 10 hours before bed

Yes, you might be able to sleep after downing a double espresso 30 minutes before bed but you ruin the quality of your sleep.

• Supplement magnesium and zinc

These both help with melatonin production - the sleep hormone

• Avoid blue light 1 hour before bed

Blue light (from your phone, laptop, TV etc) triggers neurones in your eyes associated with the day time. Preventing melatonin release and ruining sleep.

• Get sun exposure when you wake up

Sun exposure as early in the day as possible helps wake you up, control cortisol levels and sets your bodys internal clock to go to sleep 16 hours later.

• Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day

Your circadian rhythm, is well, a rhythm. Keep it consistent if you want good sleep.

Training

You need to be training and lifting weights.

This is essential.

It has all the obvious benefits of improved confidence, physique and more respect

But it also helps with mental clarity, energy and staving off burn out.

How? Exercise relaxes your nervous system (after the training) through the release of endorphins and anandamide.

Now, I can’t exactly tell you how to train as there are a tonne of factors that go into that, but:

• Lift weights 3+ times / wk

• Hit every muscle group

• Focus on compound lifts

• Get a coach if you’re new to the gym

Nutrition

You are what you eat.

If you want to perform well, you need high quality fuel.

• 90%+ of your calories from high quality, whole foods (steak, chicken, rice, fruits etc)

• Consume 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight

If you feel tired despite getting 7-9 hours of high quality sleep each night, I guarantee you it’s because you’re not eating enough protein.

Protein is essential for recovery. And yes, 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight is safe - so long as you’re not 400+ lbs you’ll be good.

Focus

If you can’t focus (macro + micro), you can’t progress.

Now, instead of rehashing a previous Self-Mastery Letter, check out this previous edition for how to optimise focus (but after you finish this one of course) 

Prioritisation

Life gets messy.

Everyone has so much going on.

If you can’t prioritise, you won’t get anything done without letting something else slip.

I recommend using the Eisenhower matrix for a brief overview of prioritisation combined with daily time blocking, or you can check out my Get Sh*t Done system

Once you’ve all of these foundations built, that’s when you can optimise. That’s when you can focus on tips and tricks.

- Ross

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