Tom Rath

That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%, that's T-W-O percent, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You mentioned earlier that you were very careful with how you spent the early hours of the day.

is just getting a good night's sleep the night before.

So my morning routine starts by making sure I'm in bed by 10 o'clock so I have a wide enough window to hopefully get seven or eight hours of sleep before I need to get up.

And I've really learned that no matter how

rough things are, whether I'm traveling or have a lot going on or stress, that if I get just one real good night of sleep, at least seven hours, ideally eight, that that's kind of like the reset button on a smartphone or a video game or whatever.

I get a whole new energy level the next morning.

So it starts the night before with a good night's sleep.

When I wake up in the morning,

I think if on days when I'm not traveling, I can exercise really early on, getting ideally outdoors, 10, 15 minutes outdoors, 20 minutes of pretty vigorous activity where my heart rate's between 100 and 125 to the point where it'd be tough to maintain a real good conversation.

That's the key to having enough energy to exercise.

get into my office, make sure my phones are still on focus mode, not getting into my email and response mode and being able to work on whether they're entrepreneurial projects or things I'm working on with AI tools or new books or getting into editing, kind of that substantive hard work that I feel good about.

And I know that if I can do that in the first three to four hours of my day, then I will be able to kind of get into the responsive stuff and feel good about it.

And then

Ideally, you know, I've spent

10 years now working most of my days on a walking treadmill desk.