PODCAST · education
Optimal Agency
by Jon Gilson and Patrick Cummings
Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.
Episodes
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Make Habits Fun: Stop Making Health So Serious
What we’re talking about: Strategies for balancing personal health, family responsibilities, and work obligations, focusing on developing sustainable habits and routines. Why it matters: Pursuing agency requires finding ways to effectively manage our time, energy, and priorities to ensure we are...
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Agency in Action: Building a Life with Zero Compromise
What we’re talking about: We discuss personal agency, self-improvement, and overall well-being with Dr. Sean Pastuch, founder of Active Life, a brand that combines education, exercise, and mentorship to empower a life of freedom without compromise. Why it matters: Understanding and pursuing…
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Healthier Weekends: Give Up Your Gains Grudgingly
What we’re talking about: How to maintain healthy habits and a balanced lifestyle on the weekends, avoiding the tendency to overindulge after being strict during the week. Why it matters: Maintaining consistent healthy habits and avoiding cycles of overindulgence is crucial for Agency, as it…
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The Organizing Principle: Choose More Time Over More Money
What we’re talking about: The importance of choosing more time over more income as an organizing principle for achieving greater agency and life satisfaction. Why it matters: Prioritizing time freedom over wealth accumulation allows individuals to diversify their identities, reduce stress, and...
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Low Volatility Jobs: Overcoming Limitations & Finding Opportunities
What we’re talking about: The financial challenges and opportunities faced by teachers, emphasizing the importance of leveraging free time and alternative sources of income to optimize wealth. Why it matters: It highlights how understanding and leveraging the underlying benefits and sureties of...
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Agency in Action: Running a Successful Business from an Airstream
What we’re talking about: The journey of Jonathan and Blakely, founders of Digital Barbell, in pursuing agency and helping others overcome the victim mindset to take control of their health and fitness. Why it matters: Mindset and taking ownership of one's health and well-being are key aspects of...
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Doubling Your Net Worth: Concentration, Diversification, Liquidity, & Patience
What we’re talking about: The importance of diversification and liquidity in maintaining wealth, using the example of a Texan realtor couple aiming to double their net worth in five years. Why it matters: Understanding the principles of diversification and liquidity is crucial in managing wealth...
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Don’t Acquire Things: Stealth Wealth vs. Conspicuous Consumption
What we’re talking about: The importance of conscious spending, understanding the trap of the hedonic treadmill and the pitfalls of consumer debt, and strategies for avoiding unnecessary acquisitions to increase personal wealth and agency Why it matters: Understanding and implementing these...
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Prioritizing Life: Strategies for Balancing Work, Family, and Self
What we're talking about: Practical strategies for managing time and balancing priorities in a busy life, focusing on two key frameworks: one is to articulate, communicate, and defend your priorities; the other is to turn intentions into plans and routines. Why it matters: The ability to...
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Cult of Done: The Value of Seeing Life as a Draft
What we’re talking about: The “Cult of Done” manifesto and how its principles can be applied to the pursuit of personal agency, emphasizing the importance of action, viewing life as a series of drafts, and learning from failures. Why it matters: Gaining personal agency is fundamentally about…
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Kids or No Kids: Exploring the Impact on Agency of Having Children
What we’re talking about: The complex question of whether or not to have children, focusing on how this decision can impact individuals' sense of agency, particularly in relation to aspects of health, wealth, and time. Why it matters: This topic is essential in pursuing agency as it involves a...
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The 3 Pillars of Personal Freedom: Health, Wealth, & Time (Consistency Project Replay)
What we’re talking about: The concept of 'Optimal Agency', emphasizing the importance of balancing health, wealth, and time, and how these three metrics contribute to our overall personal freedom and ability to impact the world. Why it matters: Understanding and properly balancing health, wealth,...
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Exercise First: The Power of Cascading Habits
What we’re talking about: The importance of prioritizing exercise, particularly doing it first thing in the morning, and how it is a keystone habit that sets off a cascade of beneficial behaviors throughout the day. Why it matters: It emphasizes the essential role of physical health and wellness…
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3 Keys for a Successful Diet: Knowledge, Preparation, & Environmental Control
What we’re talking about: The importance of diet and nutrition, focusing on sustainable, health-focused, and imperfect guidelines, and how to manage these aspects amidst a busy lifestyle. Why it matters: Maintaining a balanced and healthy diet directly impacts one's overall health, energy levels,...
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Permanent Wealth: The 4 Areas of Self-Development
What we’re talking about: The importance of self-development as permanent wealth and the need to diversify and amplify skills in various areas of life. Why it matters: Self-development is important in pursuing agency because it allows individuals to future-proof themselves, maintain their sense…
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Hack the System: Creating Time to Earn More Income
What we’re talking about: Strategies for a listener named Nicole, who is a music teacher struggling with finances and seeking ways to earn extra income while balancing her responsibilities. Why it matters: Finding creative ways to generate income is important in pursuing agency because it enables...
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Vision, Capital, & People: Knowing the World is Clay (Replay)
What we’re talking about: Living as though the world is clay, emphasizing the importance of having a clear vision, understanding the role of people and resources, and taking action to deliver value. Why it matters: Recognizing the world is clay allows us to shape our lives according to our vision...
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Mindful Communications: Responding Slowly, Carefully, & Purposefully
What we're talking about: The significance of responding slowly and thoughtfully to communications, avoiding hasty emotional reactions, and prioritizing progress to foster agency and retain control in professional relationships. Why it matters: Responding slowly and carefully enables us to…
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Take Control of Your Work Environment: Exercising Agency for Success
What we’re talking about: The importance of exercising agency in a work environment where priorities are unclear, distractions are constant, and control feels limited. Why it matters: Exercising agency is crucial in pursuing autonomy and personal impact in a work environment, allowing individuals...
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Pro Agency Mindset: Challenging the Consumerist Mentality
What we’re talking about: The practice of avoiding unnecessary purchases by creating pause, asking questions, and prioritizing agency. Why it matters: Because it allows us to take control of our choices, prioritize our health, wealth, and time, and avoid being influenced by external factors. What...
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Exploring Alternative Paths: Navigating Burnout and Finding Fulfillment at Work
What we’re talking about: We’re answering a listener question about finding alternative avenues to make a positive impact when work is leading to burnout. Why it matters: Addressing burnout and exploring alternative career paths is essential in pursuing agency and personal freedom as it allows...
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The Power of Compounding: The Key to Long-Term Wealth
What we’re talking about: The concept of compounding and its importance in wealth accumulation and financial independence. Why it matters: Understanding and leveraging the power of compounding is crucial in pursuing agency because it allows individuals to grow their wealth over time and gain...
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Roadmap to Agency: Making Hard Choices for Quick Transformation
What we’re talking about: Achieving Optimal Agency through making hard choices in various aspects of life, including health, wealth, and time. Why it matters: We can take the slow road to Agency or the fast road. If we want the latter, having a clear roadmap is essential. What actions to take: ✦...
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Sleep Better: Practical Strategies for More Rest
What we’re talking about: Health Rule #6, which states that we should sleep at least 7.5 hours every night. Why it matters: Good sleep has a myriad of knock-on, positive effects on our physical and mental health. As such, it demands as much respect and attention as we give our nutrition, our...
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Overcoming Burnout: Strategies for Reengaging with Your Work
What we’re talking about: The concept of burnout, its symptoms and causes, and how to overcome it by focusing on achieving impact in one's work. Why it matters: Understanding and addressing burnout is crucial to personal freedom. It enables us to stay engaged, effective, and fulfilled at work,...
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Eliminating Distractions, Getting Better Rest, Family Friction, & More
We’re talking about the importance of setting boundaries and eliminating interruptions to maximize productivity and time freedom. We discuss the need to prioritize personal well-being, decompression, and creative pursuits, rather than simply filling time with more work. ABOUT THE SHOW Optimal...
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Consuming a Low Information Diet, Choosing Downsides Carefully, Linchpin Rules, & More
We’re discussing the concept of a low, low-quality information diet, emphasizing the need to focus on high-quality, actionable information while filtering out low-quality, distracting noise. We’re also answering a listener question about transitioning out of corporate work, and Patrick talks…
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How to Join the Investor Class, Coast FIRE, The Importance of Curiosity, & More
This week, we're talking about Wealth Rule #5 (Purchase passive income and appreciating assets with your savings), breaking down the specific strategies and accounts you need to make it happen. Some specific advice we're giving: · Allocate dedicated time for exploring personal interests and...
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The Value of College, Recognizing the Two Yous, The Laziness Tax, & More
This week, we're giving advice to 20-year-olds who want to achieve health, wealth, and time freedom. We emphasize the importance of recognizing both present and future selves, making good decisions that benefit future well-being, and acquiring hard and soft skills to maximize earnings. ABOUT THE...
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Eliminating Screen Time, Finding Flow, The Value of Your Attention, & More
We’re exploring the negative impact of spending too much time in front of screens this week, offering strategies for achieving a state of flow in tasks, emphasizing the significance of intrinsic motivation, defining success in one's role, minimizing distractions, and using visual timers. ABOUT…
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Knowing the World is Clay, Balancing HWT, Asking For What You Want, & More
We’re discussing the importance of having a clear vision and aligning it with health, wealth, and time to achieve the life you want. We’re also talking about the significance of capital and people in achieving success and the importance of asking for what you want. Expect to learn: • The value of...
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Volunteering with Caution, Having Clarity of Purpose, Picking The Right Projects, & More
We are discussing the concept of volunteerism and how to approach it intentionally, talking about why it’s important to understand our purpose and only say “yes” to opportunities that align with it. Here are the four strategies we discuss to consider when figuring out how to volunteer smarter: ·...
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6 Ways to Live Your Values, Finding Serenity, Limiting the Universe, & More
In pursuit of closing the gap between our aspirational and our practiced values, we’re talking about reducing starting friction, building a rule-based identity, discarding false values, and more. ========== ABOUT THE SHOW ========== Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the...
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The 4 Strategies to Pay Fewer Taxes, Joining the Investor Class, the Value of Professional Advice, & More
This week, we're talking about (wait for it) taxes. Specifically, we're breaking down Wealth Rule #4: Pay as Few Taxes as possible. Topics include strategies for paying less, who the tax code is designed to benefit, entrepreneurship, and why hiring a tax professional is almost always worth the...
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Turn HWT into Your 3 Big Priorities
What do you do when everything feels important? That’s the question this week as we pull from a conversation that Jon and Patrick had recently on the Chasing Excellence podcast. ========== ABOUT THE SHOW ========== Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact…
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Health Rule: Prioritize Friendship & Connection
The link between overall health and strong relationships is well-known, but it remains a challenge for many to prioritize friendships. We’re talking about why that is and what we can do about it this week. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========= 📍 Why friendship and connection are at odds with...
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Play Offense & Defense
We have 18 Rules across Health, Wealth, and Time. This week, we’re doing a speed round through each one with an eye toward whether we should consider them offense or defense in this game of Agency we’re playing. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 Why we include Health as a key ingredient…
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Time Rule: Preserve Unstructured Time
Returning to our Rules of Time this week, we’re discussing the importance of keeping slack in our calendars. We’re talking about where our fears and resistance to “free time” comes from, how to start creating it, and much more. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN ========== 📍 What unstructured time is…
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Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage
Parkinson’s Law states that work will expand to the time and space it’s given. This week we’re looking at how we can use Parkinson’s Law to our advantage and talking about the 80/20 Rule, why voluntary deprivation isn’t a bad thing, and much more. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN ========== 📍 Why you...
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Wealth Rule: Spend much less than you make
We’re talking about another one of our Wealth Rules this week, discussing savings rates, how to stack rank where to try to spend less, how savings is related to your serenity, and more. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 Why our goal should be to save…a lot 📍 How to determine your…
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Use the HWT Rules as a Filter
We recently joined Jonathan Fletcher of Digital Barbell for a wide-ranging conversation about the Rules and Behaviors of Time, as well as why we started Optimal Agency, how to know what the “most important” element of Agency is, and much more. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 Why “no”…
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Use Money to Buy Happiness
It’s not that money can’t buy happiness, it’s that we don’t know HOW to use money to buy happiness. That’s the argument the authors of “If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right” argue. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 The 8 principles of using money to…
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Health Rule: Do not drink alcohol or eat sugar
The only two foods that our Rules push back against are alcohol and sugar. We talk about why that is in this episode, touching on the similarities between the two substances, the cost of both across our Health, Wealth, and Time, and they’re hard to say no to - but only to a point. ==========…
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Everything is Perfect & You Need Nothing
Do you need a new car, or do you want freedom? Do you need more money, or do you want security? So often, we don’t do the hard work of recognizing the abundance we have, living with gratitude, and examining why we want the things we want - often times to the detriment of our Agency. ==========...
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Time Rule: Limit recurring commitments
We know what it’s like to have a calendar filled with recurring meetings. But even outside the office, our Agency can be limited by time given away to things that don’t line up with our priorities. We’re talking this week about some of the ways to fight back against recurring commitments....
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Wealth Rule: Make as much as you're able
We’re talking about the second Rule of Wealth this week, breaking down the primary strategies for how you can begin making more money soon (and some of the ways to avoid trying). We’re also talking about skills, networking, and work diversification. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 How…
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Aim For Optimal, Not Maximal
Why isn’t this project called “Maximum Agency”? That’s the question this week, and to answer we’re talking about defining “enough”, why aiming for “maximal” gets us into trouble, and much more. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 Why we called this project what we do 📍 The difference…
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Health Rule: Eat unprocessed foods and cook your own meals
Eating unprocessed foods and cooking our own meals is a powerful, simple way to ensure we are getting the nutrients we need, all while avoiding the problems that cheap and convenient foods often create. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 What unprocessed foods are and why we care about…
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Confront the Dragon But Don’t Accept the Dragon
In order to make things better, we’ve got to first be willing to see things as they are. That’s what confronting the dragon is all about - whether we’re talking about our health, wealth, or free time. ========== EXPECT TO LEARN: ========== 📍 Why it’s always better to know than not know 📍 Why...
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Time Rule: Default to “no”
We’re continuing our exploration of the Rules this week, diving into the first rule of Time: defaulting to “no.” We talk about why it’s so easy to default to “yes,” how you can use HWT as a filter for making better decisions, and much more. =========== EXPECT TO LEARN: =========== 📍 How to think...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.
HOSTED BY
Jon Gilson and Patrick Cummings
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Optimal Agency have?
Optimal Agency currently has 56 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Optimal Agency about?
Optimal Agency aims to help you own your life so you have the freedom to impact the world, pursue work you love, and spend your hours how you want. Be sure to subscribe or follow the show to avoid missing any new episodes.
How often does Optimal Agency release new episodes?
Optimal Agency has 56 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Optimal Agency?
You can listen to Optimal Agency on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Optimal Agency?
Optimal Agency is created and hosted by Jon Gilson and Patrick Cummings.
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