Let’s say you follow a sleep schedule where you go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6am every single day. Great. I recommend it. Now, let’s say you’re required to go to bed two hours earlier at 8pm to wake up for an early meeting. You may find it difficult to fall asleep two hours earlier than normal. This is because your body produces melatonin, which induces sleep, based partially on daily routines and partially on your actions and environment. If you have a routine of going to bed at 10pm every night, your body will start releasing melatonin just before that to help induce sleep. So, if you’re required to break that routine and fall asleep at 8pm then your body likely isn’t producing much melatonin for this new sleep schedule yet. This is why its difficult to fall asleep earlier than usual and why the quality of that sleep is quite poor… Read More

According to Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, keystone habits are “small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.” One example of a keystone habit for almost everyone is exercise. Once a person introduces exercise into their daily routine, they start to unintentionally adopt other new healthy habits too. This new routine of exercise tends to trigger people into eating healthier, sleeping better and smoking/drinking less. Not only does this keystone habit of exercise trigger additional healthy habits, but it also is correlated with a host of other benefits too. In this post I’ll detail the benefits of regular exercise, how to structure your exercise program, and debunk a few common myths. Let’s get started… Read More

Throughout all of college I focused on learning, athletics and visiting my family. I never really thought about the cost of my meal plan, apartment and education. I assumed like most, that this is what college was and what everyone did. You focus on your schooling, interests and social life while allowing all of your expenses to be put on loans or some sort of debt. Eventually, when you got a job after college, everything would work itself out and your job would easily pay back all the accumulated debt. Well, 150 thousand dollars later, it turns out that almost any job would make paying back this amount of debt quite difficult. And, with a ~7% interest rate, that meant my debt was growing by around $10,500 a year. That meant, I needed to pay $10,500 each year just to keep my debt from growing. Wow… that realization shocked me. But, great lessons from my parents and education had taught me to be a problem solver and to see challenges as opportunities. With that mindset instilled in me, I put together an aggressive plan that helped me pay back all my debt within 6 years. And now, I’m using that same plan to invest and grow my wealth each month… Read More