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Last year, I released over 50 episodes that were filled with strategies to help you upgrade your money, points and life. And today, I'm going to distill all of that into 10 powerful takeaways. The most impactful insights from all the research I've done and the conversations I've had with some incredible guests. So welcome to my 2025 top 10 takeaways. If you've been listening for a while, you know my character as the optimizer, it might also be you as well. And I've spent years hunting for every marginal gain, fighting for better returns, cheaper flight, and the perfect routine. And the belief is simple, right? If we stack enough hacks, if we get enough deals, we win the game, right? Well, looking back at 2025, I realized there was a turn in the story. We learned that more does not always equal better. In fact, optimizing for pure efficiency often crowds out things that actually matter. Resilience, connection, joy. So the theme for 2025 isn't about stopping the optimization. It's about shifting from accumulation to wisdom. And. And it's about knowing why you actually wanted the points in the first place. So let's jump into it. But before we do, we need to realize what winning or what more actually looks like. Because for so many people, myself included, the metric we've always been using was money or wealth. So in a way, this first takeaway is the foundation for the rest of this episode, because it's how we're going to redefine what wealth actually means and why it's not just about your bank account. And so takeaway number one is that true wealth is multi dimensional. We usually score ourselves on just one dimension of wealth, our financial wealth. But in episode 213, Sahil Blooms taught us that if you have $10 million, but no control over your calendar or your life, you're actually much poorer than you think. He asked me if I'd trade lives with Warren Buffett, right? He's worth $130 billion, but he's 95. And the answer is obviously no, you wouldn't trade your time for his money. And on the flip side, I am sure he would trade his money for your time. So this year I realized I was often trading time for marginal gains in money. And the goal here isn't just to have all the wealth in the financial sense. It's to be wealthy across all dimensions. Now, Sahil has a book, Five Types of Wealth. He has his five dimensions, which are financial wealth, time wealth, physical wealth, mental wealth, and social wealth. You may decide your own framework has four or six or seven or eight. The important thing is that I want you to think about wealth as something way outside of money. So for this takeaway, I will challenge you all in 2026 to stop maximizing your financial wealth at the expense of your other types of wealth, whether that's time, physical, mental, social, or whatever's important to you. Now, despite wanting to focus on areas outside of money, that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about money, which is actually the theme of the next three takeaways I have. And when it comes to money, the old mindset, I think, was a bit more about efficiency. Squeezing every last drop out of every transaction, fighting over 4x versus 3x on dining, obsessing over best cards. But the big takeaway from 2025 is that return on investment is more important than just being efficient. And it's not about being perfect. It's about focusing on the big levers that actually move the needle. Where does your effort give you 10x return instead of 10% return? So let's get into these next three takeaways. First, number two, focus on what moves the needle. So here's the thing about optimization. When you first start, everything feels like it matters. You're clipping coupons. You're fighting over what card earns the most. You're agonizing over the organic strawberries at Costco Go. And whether they're worth the extra $4. Believe me, I have been there. And at some level, it all does matter. Every dollar counts when you're getting started. But then at some point, or really multiple points in your life, you cross thresholds. And if you don't adjust your strategy, you end up wasting a lot of your most valuable resource, which isn't money. It's your time and your mental energy in episode 230. And keep in mind, the reason I keep using these episode numbers is because one, you could scroll the podcast feed, or you could just go to allthehacks.com 2:30 and you'll jump straight page that has links to that episode has the YouTube video. So episode 230. Nick Mi taught me something when we were talking about his book the Wealth Ladder. And he said you have to know which ladder you're on, because the strategies that make sense for someone with $50,000 are totally different than someone with 500,000, 5 million or $50 million. You're not playing the same game anymore. And in a world where we aren't, in our society, very open about how much money People have. You often don't know if who the advice you're hearing is even made for in the first place. And that's where these two rules that he shared came in that I really love. And the first is the 1% rule. He said, don't spend time on side hustles or income opportunities unless they can move your net worth by at least 1%. So if your net worth is a hundred thousand, your cutoff's a thousand. If your net worth's a million, the cutoff's 10,000. And you just keep this in mind as you evaluate new opportunities, because as your wealth grows, you, Your time should be worth more and you should be more scrutinous over things. And I know it can be really hard to train your brain in this way because there was a time where if someone offered me a hundred dollars to do almost anything, I would. And now that part of me is kind of still wired in there. And so I tried to apply this a lot of times this year. It was difficult sometimes. But when I considered different avenues of income, whether it was continuing to run our trips to Iceland or reselling gold or gift cards, I decided that if I wasn't optimistic that I could get any of them to the 1% level, I decided it wasn't an area I wanted to invest time into. Now, that doesn't mean the first aspect of it had to hit that 1% level, but it needed to feel like it could get there in some reasonable amount of time. Now, that doesn't mean I don't like to explore. There's a period of time where it's fun to learn a new thing. And I'm not saying don't do any new thing unless you can earn 1% of your net worth doing that thing. But as a barometer for investing in a new area, whether that's a new size hustle, a new part of your business, a new job, I'd like to see it be that meaningful to your net worth if it's going to be a thing you spend a lot of time on. The second Rule is the 0.01% rule for spending. You just take your net worth and you multiply by 0.01%, or you can just divide by 10,000, and that number is the extra amount you could spend in a day without needing to stress out. I love this rule because I stress out about spending all the time. So let's go back to these strawberries, right? If you're going to spend an extra $4 for organic strawberries, if you have $40,000. You probably shouldn't stress out about this. If you have a hundred thousand dollars, the threshold's $10. If you have a million, that threshold's a hundred dollars. Now, I love these two rules because they help you figure out what matters, but also because they work for any level of wealth. Another example of focusing on what matters came from optimizing credit cards. I recently turned my credit card spreadsheet tool into an app, and I'm hoping to share it all with you very soon. But in it, I built a recommendation engine that would tell me what which card I should layer into my wallet to get that most value out of all of my spending. And it turns out, and this is probably a symptom of having as many credit cards as I do, that the maximum value I'd get of adding any single card to my wallet right now was 4,000 points per year. Meanwhile, there are a ton of cards out there with 75, 100,000 or more point welcome bonuses. So a new card that would give me a hundred thousand points is worth 25 years of a card. I was actually trying to figure out which was the best to optimize my spending. So, sure, if you're spending all of your money on a card earning 1%, there is a lot of room to optimize your spending. But after you have two or three cards and you've hit your major spending categories, unless you're spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year, the thing that's going to move the needle is isn't getting 5x instead of 4x on streaming, it's opening a different card that's gonna give you a hundred thousand points. So in 2026, I really want to challenge you guys to focus on what moves the needle. It's something I'll be doing, and I'm going to try to forget about the things that aren't as impactful. This episode is brought to you by Gusto. Every January, I get the urge to level up, not just personally, but for my business as well. And upgrading to Gusto is one of the easiest ways to do it. And this year, we've moved our health insurance to Gusto. We're which gives me one less thing to worry about so I can focus on the business. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. I'm a huge fan of Gusto. I've used it for almost Every company I've started and I love that they also do automatic payroll tax filings, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp, 401k, and so much more. There is a reason that Gusto is the number one payroll software on G2 and trusted by over 400,000 small businesses. Try Gusto today at gusto.com allthehacks and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com alltheHacks One more time Gusto.com alltheHacks this episode is brought to you by Notion. There is only so much you can do in a day because we only have so many hours and so much focus. What if you had a teammate who could just work like you do, with all the context you have, but faster? That's what Notion's new AI agent feels like. Integrated right into your workspace. Your agent can do anything you can do. In Notion, tasks that used to take days can now happen in minutes. And if you're not familiar, Notion brings all of your notes, docs and projects into one connected space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use. With AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and more time creating great work. And now with Notion Agent, your AI doesn't just help with work, it finishes it. It can tap into your Notion workspace, the web, and connected tools like Slack and Google Drive to complete assigned actions end to end, so you can focus on the hard stuff. So try Notion now with notion agent@notion.com allthehacks that's all lowercase letters, notion.com allthehacks to try your new AI teammate, Notion Agent today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show notion.comAllTheHacks okay, takeaway number three is that you need to build a portfolio that can weather any storm. So let me share a story. I've seen a lot. You work in tech, you're good at it. You get paid well, maybe you get some stock options. You invest in tech stocks because you understand the sector. You live in a tech city because that's where the jobs are. Your network is tech people. Your real estate is in that tech city. And one day you wake up and you realize your income, your investments, your home equity, your entire social capital are all tied to one industry. If tech has a down year, it hits you on all fronts at the same time. I have friends in oil and gas with the same problem. We have friends who have their Entire net worth tied up in real estate. And it feels safer for them because they know the sector. But you're not diversified. You're really concentrated. And in episode 233, Ben Carlson said, concentration builds wealth, but diversification keeps it. And once you have that savings, I think the goal is to build an investment portfolio that can weather any storm. And not just weather it, but thrive in it. If you had invested in just the US stock market in 2025, at least through December 12th, when I'm recording this, you'd be up 16%. Now, normally you'd think, who doesn't want that return? That's an excellent year. But it turns out that international stocks were up 28% this year so far. So if you had a globally diversified portfolio, you were even happier. And this principle applies to your reward strategy as well. Years ago, I got amazing value booking our honeymoon with Delta miles, and now I'm lucky to get 1.2, 1.3 cents a point out of them. Devaluations happens all the time. Programs change their rules. And if you're earning 100% of your points on one airline or one hotel group and there are big changes there, you're totally out of luck. So when I think about my point strategy, it's similar to my financial strategy with my investment portfolio. I want a pool of points that have as much flexibility and diversification as possible. And so that means earning points in different programs, that means earning points in different programs that can transfer to even more programs. The value of transferable points plays really heavily here because if you have an AMEX point that can go to 15 airlines and one of those airlines like Delta stops being worth using for your points, well, then you have 14 other options that might work. And the perfect example of this was our trip to Japan next April. We had originally booked flights we didn't love, and Capital One added Japan Airlines as a transfer partner. And we'd been earning a ton of capital one points. Not because we even knew that this was a possibility, because it was brand new. And as soon as that happened, we were able to rebook all the flights we wanted. We canceled everything else. We got all of our points back there, and now we're on nonstop flights, all sitting together on the same plane, which was not happening before, in business class, round trip, on the exact dates we wanted to. And had we only been accumulating one other type of point, that just wouldn't have been possible. Now you want to take this further. You could even layer in some cash back to your strategy because sometimes you can't get the flight you want with points. And so that's something. I've been experimenting with this as well. And so my takeaway here is look at your whole financial life and are you overly concentrated in one way? One geography, one asset class, one rewards currency. Because I think one of the biggest risks is realizing that everything is in one basket. And if that basket crashes, it really is going to hurt. Okay, as optimizers, I know we always default to this kind of vertical thinking. How do I squeeze more out of what I already have? How do I get a 5% raise at my current job? How do I earn 4x instead of 3x on this category? How do I get 1 more percent of interest on my savings account? But as I reflected on last year, I thought a lot about how horizontal scaling can often beat vertical optimization, which is why takeaway number four is scale horizontally, not vertically. Now, in takeaway number two, I talked about how welcome bonuses can really move the needle in points accumulation. But here's the problem. Welcome bonuses have limits. There's bank approval rules like Chase's 5 24. There's lifetime limits on bonuses on the same card. And sometimes this game is seasonal. The bonuses that are great are bonuses you can't get right now and they're not available when you need them, and you hit a wall. So in episode 249, I talked with Kai about another strategy, which is playing this game in multiplayer mode, which not only lets you repeat bonuses, but it also layers in referral bonuses, which make one plus one actually worth more than two. You get double the 524 slots, you can split your loyalty programs, you can double up on promos. But best of all, the work doesn't double. And that's why this lesson applies outside of just points. Because the knowledge you have scales. And it doesn't have to stop at two people. I know lots of people who manage credit cards and points and miles for their siblings, their parents, even their extended family and friends. But like I said, this principle of scaling horizontally goes way beyond credit cards. Instead of getting a 5% raise at your current job and going deeper there, maybe you add a side income stream that brings in a lot more. Instead of optimizing a single rental property, maybe you add a second one. Instead of fighting for one more client at your agency, maybe you hire someone and you double the entire capacity. The lesson is look for the horizontal move before you keep grinding vertically. You can apply a Pareto principle and say, look for the 80%. And instead of going for that last 20%, find some other area where you can hit the 80%. But there's actually another important lesson, which I'm not going to level up to a takeaway that I got going through all of this, and that's that when you bring anyone into your optimization system, whether it's your partner, your kids, your parents, there's this trap that optimizers fall into. I know because I've fallen into it so many times. We don't just want to coordinate with people and share information. We want everything to be perfect. And I see this with my friends in the points game. I see it with my parents, helping them make financial decisions. I see it with my kids. In almost every part of life, we're trying to snowplow every obstacle out of the way to build the perfect system. And then we get frustrated when other people don't follow it exactly how we would. And this year, I learned something that applies to relationships across the board, is that you just can't optimize another human like you tried to optimize yourself. And the winning move, I actually took away from a parenting strategy, which is to be a lighthouse and not a snowplow. You stand stable, you beam the light, you share the information, you support people, you give them a path forward, but you let them row the boat, you let them navigate, you let them fall if they need to. With my kids, that means not jumping in to solve every problem. With my parents, it might mean watching them make choices I don't think are optimal and just accepting and supporting it. So for this takeaway, think about scaling horizontally. And as you think about that, if it involves other people, realize that you might not always be able to optimize them like you optimize yourself. And so one version is you could just take over. Say, I'm going to run this process. You don't even have to run it. Or maybe just be a lighthouse for them and not try to snowplow your whole way into their process. Okay, for the next two takeaways, let's shift to time, and not just how you spend it, but how you get more of it back. So takeaway number five is to stop waiting for the perfect time. As you know, there's this mental trap we all fall into. We say things like, we'll travel more when the kids are older. I'll take that sabbatical. Once things calm down at work, we'll do that big trip. When we have enough money saved, I'll start that project when we have more time. And what we're really saying is I'm waiting for the perfect time. But when I talked to Jillian Johns Word this year, episode 2 39, she came on. She was talking about many retirements, but she said, the perfect time doesn't exist. And while you're waiting for it, time is decaying. Now, we all know our kids aren't going to be 5 and 7 forever, or our parents won't always be healthy enough to do a hike through the coasts of Ireland. Even our own body won't always be able to do the things that we might be putting off. We learned this many years ago when I had Bill Perkins on in episode 91 and we talked about Die with Zero. So why do we keep waiting? And I think we convince ourselves that these constraints are too hard to solve. The kids are too young, work is too busy, we don't have the right gear. The logistics are overwhelming. And funny enough, in episode 252, I was talking about family travel with Nick Reyes, and this same line of thinking came up where I was thinking, gosh, it's so much work to travel with kids. You've got to pack all this stuff and you got to bring this stuff. And Nick said something so simple it almost felt ridiculous. He said, chris, kids exist everywhere. You can buy diapers in Tokyo. And that's it. That's the whole hack. We overthink the constraints. We let the fear and the logistics hold us back. We think, what if we run out of supplies? But the reality is every problem you're worried about is solvable. And not only that, but it's probably been solved already for family travel. Kids exist everywhere. Families travel internationally all the time. In fact, almost every international airport has a separate fast track line for families. And the world is sometimes more accommodating than we think. These constraints aren't blockers. They're just variables that we need to think about differently. And sometimes the constraint is actually an opportunity. So Gillian showed us how a mini retirement could actually boost your career earnings. She told a story about a friend who took a year off and came back to a 50% salary increase in his next job. So as scary as it can be to make some of these big steps to give yourself a little more time, I took my baby steps recently and we actually scheduled the podcast off for Thanksgiving and Christmas week, as you might have seen, and it was the first time in four years that we didn't release an episode on a Wednesday. It might sound crazy, but it was really scary for me. It felt like I was letting in all of you down who are listening. I felt like I was letting myself down, but it was really, really great. I remember Thanksgiving being able to spend time with family, not stressing out about getting the episode out, making sure everything's perfect and so don't be surprised if I do that again next year. But also, it's just something that we all have to try to lean harder into and stop waiting for the perfect time for everything. Whether it's a mini retirement, a family trip, or just blocking off a week to be fully present on a project you're working on, the constraints you're worried about are probably solvable, and the thing you're delaying might actually have an expiration date that you don't even see yet. And the biggest regret probably isn't the messy trip or the imperfect sabbatical. It's the experience you didn't have because you were waiting for the stars to align. So in 2026, please stop waiting for the perfect time and try to seize the moment when you can. This episode is brought to you by Superhuman Mail. Coming back from the holidays usually means the same thing every year. An inbox that's already out of control before January even really starts. If you want this year to feel different, check out Superhuman Mail, which I've been using for years to make email just work better. It's an AI native email and calendar designed for people who want their email to feel calm instead of chaotic. What I like most is how it handles small stuff automatically. It helps me write better emails faster, organize my inbox automatically, draft follow ups makes meeting scheduling so much easier and a lot more the result is that email feels like a system again, not a fire hose. So if Your goal for 2026 is to be more focused, more intentional, and less reactive, your inbox is a great place to start. And best of all, Superhuman Mail is running a new year new inbox offer right now two months free. If you sign up before January 31st. Go to allthehacks.com superhuman to try it and see how much calmer email can be. Again, that's allthehacks.com superhuman this episode is brought to you by Deleteme. One of the smartest things I did a few years ago was clean up my digital footprint. And that started with Deleteme. There are hundreds of data brokers whose job is to collect and sell your personal information. Things like your home address, phone number, email, even your relatives names. At first I tried removing all the data myself and it was a total game of whack a mole. After spending Hours and hours, barely making progress. I finally switched to Delete me. Since then, Deleteme has been continuously finding and removing all my personal information from all those sites. And I've since signed up my entire family. It is one of those things that I love that I just don't have to think about anymore. If you're thinking about how to start 2026 safer and more organized, you've got to check out Deleteme. It's simple, it runs in the background and it actually reduces risk. Go to allthehacks.com deleteme and get 20% off a plan for you or your whole family. Again, that's allthehacks.com deleteme takeaway 6 Scale yourself with technology. Here's how much time I used to waste. I'd have an idea for a tool that I wanted to use in my life or for my business and I would search all over for something off the shelf shelf that could do what I wanted. Maybe it didn't. Maybe I found two tools and I tried to work them together. Maybe I tried to hack together a spreadsheet to make it work. Or I'd find something that was really expensive and I'd think I'll do a seven day trial and see if it works. This year this entire process completely changed when Kevin Rose came on the show in episode 2 17. He told me about how he was trying to build a tool to bridge two systems together. And he described what he needed to chatgpt and it just wrote the code he needed and he deployed it that afternoon. He said, I'm not a coder, but I built exactly what I needed without waiting for someone else to do it. And I've had the same experience. I built multiple products and tools for you guys for myself. And by tiny fraction, I mean in the past I would hire people, start a company, raise money from investors. And now I can build something myself. I'm not an engineer. I can deploy it, get it out there working and using. And it's so fast. And it's not just software. We recently got a 3D printer. It's unlocked an entire another side of building for me. I wanted to fix a part in an ice tray for our fridge that I broke. And instead of searching the Internet for a small piece of plastic, paying money and waiting a week or two for shipping, I could have it in minutes. If you wanted the perfect way to organize your desk, which is something that if you're interested, 3D printing office and desk organization videos on YouTube are like therapy at night. For my wife, Amy and I, we love watching them. But you can build custom everything for your desk, for your office, for your home with a 3D printer in minutes. It's so cool. And even if you're not building software or physical things, you can scale yourself in so many other ways with a lot of AI tools. You can have these tools call five restaurants and see if they have a table to walk into for dinner. You could have it read a 50 page research paper you were interested in but never had time for and ask it to turn it into a 15 minute podcast you could listen on your commute. I want to challenge you to not think of this as replacing your thinking, but it's really multiplying your capacity. I'm a builder at heart. I'm a tinkerer at heart. Between all of these tools, I've never been more excited about what's possible in 2026. Honestly, I am just like, where am I going to find the time to do all this stuff to explore? Because if there's a dashboard for your health that you'd want, which is a great example, because a friend of mine wanted one, he's like, I just wish there was an app that had these three things on it and the data sources existed, I was like, why don't you build it? You could just build it in an afternoon. And especially if you're building tools for yourself, you don't need them to be perfect to the level that, you know, you could make them available to the world. You could just make them available to yourself. So stop waiting for someone else to create the thing you need. I think this year we can all create whatever we need ourselves. And we can use all these tools that I'm not even gonna try to name, because by the time this comes out in three weeks, they'll probably be an even better tool to start scaling yourself. They are amazing. They will give you back time and agency. Now let's talk health. For most of our lives, we've been taught to be good patients. Show up for your physical, listen to what your doctor says, and trust the system. Well, last year I talked about the foundations of health and sleep, food, exercise, and how those things are really easy to take control of and they absolutely matter. But this year, there's a new lesson that's, I think, a little harder, and that's that the system is not designed for what we need or what we want. At least what I need and what I want. Which is why takeaway number seven is that you need to be the CEO of Your own health. Now, let me tell you what I mean. For almost a decade, I had high cholesterol. Every year I went to my doctor and got the same advice. Eat less cholesterol, get more exercise. So I stopped eating eggs, which by the way, doesn't impact your cholesterol at all. I exercised more. Nothing changed. Year after year, I was being this good patient. I was showing up, I was following instructions, testing the system, but the system wasn't optimizing for me at all. So I stopped waiting. I ordered my own labs, I got a calcium score test, I started talking with AI tools. And when I saw the results, I realized I'd wasted a decade waiting for someone to tell me what to do. And the crazy thing is that one of the solutions for a lot of people with high cholesterol is a statin, which is a very inexpensive, low side effect drug. So why did we wait this long to try something like this? I know the reasons why. I could talk about them at length. But the big shift was I can't just be a passive patient. I need to be the CEO of my own health. And this year, the lesson kept showing up. It showed up with my wife's health, with our kids health. I even remember when I asked my dentist if I were willing to spend some money out of pocket, what should I be doing? And he said, immediately get a third cleaning. I was like, oh, how much is that going to cost? 120. And I asked, why didn't you tell me this sooner if this is really that important? He said, well, insurance doesn't usually cover it, so I don't want to bring it up. And, and it's just crazy. Like sadly, the system only tells you what the system covers. And then later I talked to Joseph WOODMAN in episode 2:15 about medical travel, and he showed me that you don't even have to stay in the system. You could fly to Mexico or Thailand and get world class care at accredited hospitals for less than half the cost in most developed countries. And often you get better outcomes. Now, the lesson is not you should fly to Thailand for everything you do with your health. The lesson is that you have options. And our healthcare system might never tell you about them because unfortunately, nobody cares about your survival like you do. Doctors are overwhelmed, insurance companies are optimizing for cost, and the system is designed for a population management, not an individual person. So you have to fire yourself as the patient and hire yourself as the CEO. That means asking different questions. Is there anything I should be doing that insurance doesn't cover? Do I get a second opinion? If something feels off, that means you might want to test biomarkers that aren't always covered. Which, by the way, some of these tests cost as little as four or five dollars. So the takeaway Last year we talked about what to optimize your sleep, your food, your exercise, and this year I'm telling you who has to drive it, and it is you. The system's designed to keep you alive. But if you want to be truly healthy and you want to live a long, incredible life, you have to take control. This episode is brought to you by Bilt. It's 2026 and if you're still paying rent without Bilt, it is time for a change. BILT is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you for your biggest monthly expense. Rent. With bilt, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and so much more. And here's something I'm really excited about. Starting in February, BILT members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. Soon you'll be able to get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits with more than 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies and other neighborhood neighborhood partners. Personally, I'd redeem my points for business class flights to Japan, which we actually just did for a trip this spring. It's simple. Paying rent is better with bilt, and soon owning a home will be better with BILT too. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the loyalty program for renters@AllTheHacks.com built that's AllTheHacks.com built. B I L T make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Thank you so much for being here today. You can find all the links, promo codes and discounts from our partners@AllTheHacks.com deals. These are brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us. Finally, let's talk about life for the last three takeaways, and the theme here is connection and meaning because we've spent so much time optimizing for efficiency, faster workflows, better returns, cheaper flights. At the end of the day, what makes life worth living isn't how much you got done, it's what you did, who you did it with and why. So takeaway number eight is to prioritize friendship like you prioritize your health. So here's a question. How much time this week did you spend on your health? Maybe you went to the gym a few Times you tracked some of your metrics, maybe you got eight hours of sleep. We treat health like a non negotiable. We know the data, we know that exercise matters, we know sleep matters, and we invest in it. Now here's a follow up. How much time this week did you spend investing in your friendships? For most of us, the answer is not that much. Maybe we texted someone, maybe we went out for lunch, maybe we liked a photo on Instagram. But deep intentional time with friends is constantly getting pushed to the bottom of the list. Yet there was a Harvard study of adult development which followed over 2,000 people for 85 years. And they found the single greatest predictor of your physical health at age 80 was your relationship satisfaction at age 50. Not whether you smoked, not your blood pressure, not your cholesterol, your relationships. So if we know this, why do we chronically underinvest in friendship? I think it's because we treat it like it should just happen. And that makes sense. When we were kids, it just happened. You saw the same 30 kids at school every day in college, same thing. Whether it's your roommates, your classes, your fraternity, your sorority, you're all in it together. But as an adult, it's so much harder. In episode 256 we talked about how hard it is to make new friends as an adult. Especially when you're working from home, if you moved, if you're overwhelmed with your kids, all these naturally recurring interactions disappear. And Nick said friendships require exposure over time, that there's a specific number of interactions you need before acquaintances become friends. And that's why things like run clubs work. That's why we end up being friends with our kids parents. You see them over and over again at drop offs or at school events. So without some structure, nothing happens here. So one of the ways Nick does this is he hosts these simple two hour cocktail parties. He has a whole book about it. We did an episode on it. One thing I like to do is I keep a contact list on my phone called walking calls. And I try to schedule these calls anytime I'm out. It's a list of people that I want to stay close to. Walking, driving, just have a spare 10 minutes. I. I'll call someone and I'll just try to catch up. Another tactic Nick uses is he has a friend's newsletter where he shares what he's reading, what he's working on, where he's traveled. It keeps him top of mind with people he doesn't get to see regularly. And I am so excited that after the episode we did a few weeks ago with him, I have started to get a few newsletters from friends who started their own friends newsletters. And it felt so great because I actually felt a lot more connected to them after reading it, and almost every single one, not just because it was inspired by the podcast. I wanted to write back and say, hey, you're going to this place. I have a suggestion for you. Someone wrote a list of games they liked, and I said, oh, you gotta check out this one if you like those. Some of them were things that I just took away, and now I'm gonna go watch this show or actually, in one case, buy another game. So the takeaway here is that friendship isn't optional. The data's clear. It impacts your longevity as much as exercise. So we have to treat it like health. We have to build structure, be in charge, host gatherings, send updates, make the walking call, because all of it really, really matters. And it gets so much harder as we get older. Takeaway number nine might feel a little fresh because we talked about it last week, and it's that your purpose is already here. You're just too close to see it. I cannot tell you how many times I've thought about what I want to be doing with my life. And I've always assumed the answer was out there somewhere, hiding, waiting to be discovered. But when I was talking to Mark MANSON in episode 259, he told me, purpose isn't found. It is revealed. Now, this isn't some kind of magic trick, right? It's not like it's hiding under a rock somewhere. It's already part of us. We're already doing it in some way. And when I first started this podcast, I remember telling a few friends, and they were like, well, yeah, of course you are. And I said, well, what do you mean? I've been trying to figure out what I should do with my life for 20 years. And they said, yeah, this is you. This is what you should be doing. It was so obvious to me, to them, and it took me two decades to figure it out. And Mark actually explained why this often happens. And it's because people who are close to you and they love you, they have a strong sense of who you are, but they don't feel any of the social pressures you have or the guilt about not doing something important enough. And they can see your purpose clearly, even if you can't. So my advice is talk to your friends if you're struggling with this and see what comes out of it, and not just see what comes out of it, but see if you can refine it. Because I started a company about 10 years ago that was all about financial planning. And I've always been someone who liked helping people optimize their personal finances. And I thought that was my purpose and I didn't push hard enough. Right. I think Mark has three ingredients for purpose. It's something you're uniquely positioned to do, it's something that adds value to others, and it's something you're willing to sacrifice for. And as much as I loved personal finance, I think being a financial advisor, which is what this company was doing, might not have hit all those criteria, even though it was closer and more in the ballpark than maybe something I'd been doing before. And one other thing to keep in mind is that what your purpose is doesn't have to be this wild, crazy thing. It might not look impressive for the outside. It might not be you on a TED stage or starting a company that changes the world. But if you're in a position where you could, let's say, help foster kids because you grew up in the foster system, that could be your purpose. Or if you're just the person that all of your friends and family call when they're going through something hard because you are an incredible, incredible, empathetic listener, that could be your purpose. I don't think it has to be world changing. It just has to be you. So my takeaway here is that your purpose probably isn't hiding. It's probably already here. And even if you think you found it, you might be able to refine it further and find even more joy in life. And I could tell you firsthand that having found something that I thought was my purpose now, I found something else. And maybe, who knows, five years from now it'll be something else. But it's probably something you're already doing in some way, shape or form in your life or something you've already done, or it's so close that it actually feels hard to see it. But you might get a lot more insight talking to those around you who know you the best. Okay, we're at the end. Takeaway 10. The ultimate optimization is knowing when to stop now. This year, my wife Amy and I recorded an episode together. 2:54. Thank you for all the feedback. We are going to be doing this more throughout 2026. And it was all about this behind the scenes of our relationship and how we think about optimizing and how sometimes it just gets in the way of living. And the example we Talked about was we had this furniture buying saga where I turned what should have been a five minute decision into weeks of analysis paralysis. And we were so focused on getting the optimal outcome that it just consumed our lives. We were living in the optimizer's curse. And in episode 248, Tim Ferriss told me, you are doing something very lazy if you are constantly trying to optimize. And it just made me think, oh gosh, now I need to optimize the way I optimize. And he explained that the magic is knowing you don't need to be a surgeon all the time. And he said the place he paid the highest price for this was his relationships. He was always trying to apply logic to emotion and trying to use data that was objectively right in an argument. And one big takeaway there was that you just can't optimize relationships, love or connection. And if you try, you will probably lose. When I think about what you're optimizing for, I think Back to episode 251 with Ryan Holiday and he told me about the first time he hit number one on the bestseller list. And he thought it would feel incredible because it was a huge goal and it really felt like nothing. He said no external thing really ever feels like anything. All the metrics we're chasing, the status, the rankings, the validation, they never deliver on what we think they will. And then last week Mark Manson said, you have to be very careful with what you measure because you will naturally start optimizing for that metric. And if you pick a poor metric for life, you're going to end up in a life you don't really enjoy. So here's the kind of roundup here. The ultimate optimization isn't finding the perfect solution every single time for everything. As much as I love trying to, it's about knowing when good enough is good enough so you can stop the analysis in that area of your life and start living. And for me, sometimes just walking away from a problem is helpful. Sometimes calling a friend is helpful. Almost everyone that I know can stop optimizing for me better than I can. And when you can find that and you unlock the ultimate optimization, which is knowing when to stop, I can't tell you how great it feels. I am still a work in progress here. There are areas of my life where I figured it out. There are areas where I have not figured it out. But if there was a big wrap up takeaway from last year, going back, listening to a ton of the episodes I did, reading my notes, it's that the ultimate optimization I want to work for is knowing when to stop. All right, that is it. 10 takeaways from over 50 episodes. Honestly, narrowing this one down was one of the hardest but most valuable things I did this year because it forced me to ask, what is the common thread? What has actually changed for me? And the answer was this. I'm moving from more to better. More points, more money, more optimization was the old game, and the new game is what actually matters. Where should I focus my time, my energy, my money, and when should I stop? So if you take one thing from this episode, let it be this. Please don't stop optimizing. Just make sure you're optimizing for the right thing. And don't get me wrong, I'm still going to be optimizing and hunting for deals and racking up points, but I'm going to do it through this new lens where I'm using these hacks and I'm using these optimizations to buy time, buy freedom, not just to keep score. All right, thank you so much for listening. I'd love to hear what resonated with you from this episode. What are you taking into 2026? Please leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify and let me know, especially if you had any other big takeaways. Or email is podcastlthehacks.com that is it for this week. I will see you next.